Janet and her baby left on a later train for the East.  Before going she tried to see her mother.  Her mother had wronged her in thought, had slandered her in word; but Janet forgave her and nobly wished her to have the consolation of knowing it.  Mrs. Whitney, however, prevented the execution of this exalted purpose by refusing to answer the gentle persistent knocking and gentle appealing calls of “Mother, mother dear!” at her locked boudoir door.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE DOOR AJAR

Judge Torrey succeeded Whitney as chairman of the overseers of Tecumseh and in the vacant trusteeship of the Ranger bequest.  Soon Dr. Hargrave, insisting that he was too old for the labors of the presidency of such a huge and varied institution as the university had become, was made honorary president, and his son, still in Europe, was elected chairman of the faculty.  Toward the middle of a fine afternoon in early September Dr. Hargrave and his daughter-in-law drove to the railway station in the ancient and roomy phaeton which was to Saint X as much part of his personality as the aureole of glistening white hair that framed his majestic head, or as the great plaid shawl that had draped his big shoulders with their student stoop every winter day since anyone could remember.  Despite his long exposure to the temptation to sink into the emasculate life of unapplied intellect, mere talker and writer, and to adopt that life’s flabby ideals, he had remained the man of ideas, the man of action.  His learning was all but universal, yet he had the rugged, direct vigor of the man of affairs.  His was not the knowledge that enfeebles, but the knowledge that empowers.  As his son, the new executive of the university—­with the figure of a Greek athlete, with positive character, will as well as intellect, stamped upon his young face—­appeared in the crowd, the onlookers had the sense that a “somebody” had arrived.  Dory’s always was the air an active mind never fails to give; as Judge Torrey once said:  “You’ve only got to look at him to see he’s the kind that does things, not the kind that tells how they used to be done or how they oughtn’t to be done.”  Now there was in his face and bearing the subtly but surely distinguishing quality that comes only with the strength a man gets when his fellows acknowledge his leadership, when he has seen the creations of his brain materialize in work accomplished.  Every successful man has this look, and shows it according to his nature—­the arrogant arrogantly; the well-balanced with tranquil unconsciousness.