The Measure of a Man

“You were always the person I could turn to.” And then, as it always did, that nagging little voice from deep inside of him whispered recriminatingly in his head. His one indiscretion weighed heavily on him as always. Mary had never known, but that didn’t lessen the guilt. It was not something he was proud of.

He sighed. Thank God she’d never found out. He would have rather died than to ever hurt Mary. And then an ironic smile slipped over his lips. “Of course, you know now, don’t you? You’re in the position to know everything now.” He blinked, his shame for the affair a burden he’d never lost despite the years he spent trying to make it up to his wife.

He resumed pacing, careful to avoid knocking over any of the files on the floor. In some places they were stacked calf-high. Maybe his current troubles were pay-back, then. Except, somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to think of Mary as being vengeful in the afterlife.

At the window now, he looked out onto the rolling green of the campus. Soon it would be filled with students again, another year beginning. A year he meant to be a part of.

Even as he sought to cleave to the thought of surviving this game the board was playing with him, his thoughts turned to Broadstreet, the man who was spear-heading the none-too-secret campaign to oust him. What had Broadstreet called him in one of his arguments? Old-fashioned, that was it.

Gilbert looked over his shoulder to his wife’s picture again. “Old-fashioned, Mary. They’re saying I’m too old-fashioned. As if caring and compassion, seeing the student, not the grade, was something that had fallen out of favor. When did it stop being about learning?” The sigh that came this time as he shook his head was from deep inside his soul.

Just as he uttered his concern, Gilbert heard a polite cough behind him. Ordinarily, Gilbert would have expected to see a student standing on the threshold of his office. The number of students who had come into his office in the last thirty years, seeking his advice, was legion. He’d long since stopped counting. But in the past six months, there had been fewer and fewer, as if this student body somehow sensed that he was now considered a pariah in the scheme of things and to be associated with him meant tying yourself to not a shooting star, but to a sun that was about to go nova at any moment.

The office door creaked as Jane Jackson closed it behind her. She stood looking at the professor a little uncertainly. A moment earlier, her pale green eyes had swiftly swept around the almost-claustrophobic room, looking for whoever the professor was talking to. There were stacks of books and files on every available surface, as well as on the floor surrounding the scarred desk, like some pint-size invaders. But no person or persons were on the receiving end of the professor’s words.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt, Professor.” Who had he been talking to? She brought her eyes back to him and, because she felt close to him, said the obvious. “You’re alone.”

It wasn’t a question. Unless he’d acquired some small pet she couldn’t see because of the clutter, Professor Harrison was very much alone in the room.

Turning from the bookshelf, the professor smiled at her warmly. “Not alone anymore, now that you’re here.”

“But I heard you talking…”

Jane let her voice trail off, not wanting to upset him or to sound accusatory. It was obvious that he’d been talking to himself. Extensively. She’d heard the sound of his voice as she’d approached from her own office located across the way from his. Ever since the professor’s wife had died, he’d become a little more eccentric and she worried about him, about the state of his mind. He and Mrs. Harrison had been married for decades. So unlike her own marriage, Jane thought ruefully.

She’d long since come to think of Professor Harrison as a surrogate father. Having lost both her parents in her freshman year at Saunders University, she’d found herself at emotional, not to mention financial, loose ends. The financial dilemma had been mysteriously resolved when she’d received a letter from the university’s administration office telling her that her tuition for the remaining three years at Saunders had been paid for and that some money had been set aside for her living expenses, as well. She’d never found out where the money had come from and had spent the first year convinced that there had been some mistake, praying that it wouldn’t come to light until after she graduated.

As for emotionally, that had been an even greater dilemma. She’d been an only child of only children. There was no one for her to turn to. Being shy, there was no network of friends, either. She was utterly alone, isolated. And having very dangerous thoughts about the futility of life. At the time, Professor Harrison had been her English teacher. But he’d become so much more.

He’d found her crying on the steps of the library shortly after her parents’ funeral, feeling hopelessly lost and alone. Very quietly, very gently, he’d expressed his sympathies and extended an open invitation to her to come see him in his office anytime she needed to talk. At first, she’d hesitated, but slowly found herself taking him up on his offer. And feeling the better for it.

Even so, that first Christmas after her parents’ death, when almost everyone at the university had gone home for the holidays, she knew she would have expired from loneliness if the professor hadn’t insisted that she spend them with him and his wife.

As far as she was concerned, he’d saved her life. Professor Harrison had literally been her lifeline back to the world of the living and she wanted desperately to return the favor any way she could.

But at times it was hard to reach him in his grief.

Gilbert smiled at Jane. She was twenty-nine years old, but he still thought of her as a young girl. Time moved by too quickly. His Mary had been very fond of Jane. Very upset, too, when the girl had suddenly announced that she was to marry Drew Walters.

“He’s no good for her, Gil, but she’s too blind with love to see,” Mary had sighed.

“Maybe it’ll work out,” he remembered saying, and Mary had looked at him with that smile of hers. The one that said she knew better.

She’d patted his face and brushed a kiss across his cheek. “Oh, Gil, you like to see the best in everyone, but some people don’t have a best. Or if they do, they don’t try to live up to it.”

And, as usual, Mary had been right. Drew Walters had turned out to be as shallow as he was handsome. The rumor was that Walters had run around on Jane almost from the very beginning of their short, tumultuous marriage.

Gilbert nodded at the photograph on the bookshelf. “I was just talking things over with Mary.”

Jane nodded knowingly, glancing at the photograph. “And what did she say to you?”

“To fight.” The professor squared his shoulders unconsciously.

Jane forced a smile to her lips as she nodded again. She was determined not to show the professor just how worried she was about this skirmish between him and the board. It bothered her that a selfish note had entered into this, but she couldn’t help being worried, not just for him, but for herself, as well. Because if they forced the professor into early retirement, or worse, made him so angry that he resigned, there would be no place for her here, either. She was Professor Gilbert Harrison’s personal assistant and secretary. If he was persona non grata, then so was she. Anyone coming in to take his place would bring his or her own secretary with them.

Not that she could see herself working for anyone who usurped Professor Harrison. But she did need a job. Desperately. Drew had left her with next to nothing when he’d disappeared.

Jane inclined her head toward the professor’s photograph of his wife. “Mrs. Harrison was always a fighter.”

He was unaware of his sigh as he struggled against the sharp sting of longing. “Yes, she was.”

Noting the signs of impending sadness, Jane did what she could to rally the professor’s spirits. “And she would have told Alexander Broadstreet just what she thought of him.”

At that, she succeeded in getting Gilbert to laugh. “My Mary was first and foremost a lady, Janie.” He turned from the photograph. “She would have never used four-letter words to describe anyone.”

“Maybe not,” Jane allowed with a smile. “But Broadstreet would have gotten the message. Mrs. Harrison would have let her eyes do her talking for her.”

Envisioning a scene between his fiercely loyal wife and the sharp-featured Broadstreet, Gilbert chuckled. Mary had never liked Broadstreet. “That she would have.” And then, because he knew he had to keep on pushing forward, no matter how hard it felt, Gilbert turned toward his former student and asked, “So, did you come by to ask me something?”

“Just that I’m going to lunch and I wanted to know if I could bring you back anything.”

He smiled wistfully at her. “Yes, the last thirty years.” He was almost half serious as he added, “I’d like to live them all again.”

Jane patted his arm, hoping that she sounded at least a little convincing as she said, “The next thirty will even be better.”

“Not if Broadstreet has his way.”

Jane attempted to give him a confident look, the way she used to see Mrs. Harrison do. “Then we’ll just have to make sure that Broadstreet doesn’t win, won’t we?”

Genuine concern entered his eyes as he looked at her. “Jane, I don’t want you getting into any trouble on my account.”

“Believe me, Professor, I couldn’t think of a nobler cause to undertake than to make sure that you remain with the university for as long as you want to,” she said firmly. “And even longer than that,” Jane added with a smile. What would she have done without him? And she wasn’t the only one. She knew of a great many students who had come to feel the same over the years. “There are still lots of students who could benefit from your advice, your wisdom and your kindness.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at her serious tone and the look on her face. Bless the girl, she really had helped raise his spirits. “My God, Jane, I feel as if I’ve just been eavesdropping on my own eulogy.”

“Bite your tongue,” she told him. Death was something she didn’t like to even joke about. “Not for many, many years to come.” Pushing the thought away, she summoned as serene an expression as she could and asked, “Now then, can I bring you back a roast beef sandwich from the Sandwich Bar?”

The Sandwich Bar was little more than an afterthought beside the campus bookstore, quite apart from the main cafeteria and the two food court areas that were on opposite ends of the campus. But it served the best sandwiches around and she had been going there for the last year. Since the prices were more than reasonable, it was her one indulgence for herself: not to have to brown bag it, with leftovers every day.

“French dipped,” she prodded. “Just the way you like it.”

Since Mary had died, his appetite had been less than stellar. There were times that he went from one end of the day to the other without eating. There was no rumbling stomach to remind him, no hunger at all. Apparently, Jane had taken keeping his strength up upon herself, too.

He shook his head. “You’re trying to take care of me.”

She saw no reason to deny it. She wanted him to know how much he mattered, not just to her but to so many of them. With his wife’s death and now this campaign to be rid of him, she was afraid his once-indomitable spirit would be killed entirely.

“Doing my damnedest, Professor.” She shifted so that her feet were firmly planted on the worn carpet. “I’m not leaving until you place your order.”