CHAPTER I.
Mauney Reaches Merlton.
“The house is a fine house when good folks are within.”—George Herbert’s Collection, 1639.
Mauney was seated in the green-upholstered seat of a railway car, with a ticket in his pocket marked Merlton. His baggage, consisting of a new trunk and two new leather suit-cases, was safely on board, or so he found himself anxiously hoping from time to time, as the train quickened its speed. He wore a new grey serge suit, purchased in Lockwood, the town from whose outskirts he was now passing, a suit that clung neatly to his big shoulders with a strange, new feeling of smartness. On his head reposed an attractive grey, soft hat with a black band, itself as new as the rest—as new as all the weird experiences of the present day which had kept him busy and curious. He was dazed by the rapid events, as if he had not become implicated voluntarily, but was being led by a magic power.
He was going to Merlton. That was the only fact of which he was momentarily certain, except that his brother William had motored him to Lockwood the previous night, and that he had sat beside Evelyn in the back seat, trying to steal time to think of a multitude of different matters that naturally flooded his mind. But he found it quite impossible and gave over eventually to her sentimental jabber concerning the marvellous character of his newly-contemplated life in Merlton, how much she herself would love to be coming, and how tedious life would be at Lantern Marsh without him. “Tedious,” scarcely described it, for, since the death of his father, especially during the unpleasant process of settling the estate, in which process William had proved to be a very difficult person, he had realized a great tragedy in the atmosphere of the place. It depended not only on memories of his father’s end, but equally also upon William’s implanted selfishness. There had been scenes in the lawyer’s office between the brothers, and William’s contentiousness had created a hateful situation from which Mauney had glided easily along peaceful exits of least resistance. As a result the brother retained the original farm besides money, and Mauney took for his share twelve thousand dollars, with half the proceeds from the sale of the McBratney farm sometime in sight.
It had all been too drastically tragic to be tedious. Nothing quite so upsetting and revolutionary had ever occurred as the sudden death of his father. It had altered everything, like the stroke of a magician’s wand. Here he was, for example, dressed as well as any man on the train, departing, probably forever, from scenes which until recently had been prison-like. Here he was, with more nerve than sense—or so he felt—launching without advice from anybody, straight at the metropolis, drawn thither like a shad-fly to an arc-light. Here he was with money enough and more for an education, but without the faintest idea of how to go about it. Above all, here he was, the loneliest chap imaginable, without one friend to talk to, and nothing ahead but a bleak horizon of uncertain years and an absolutely unfamiliar world.
He almost longed, by a natural reversion of feeling, for the old times at home, for his father cursing him roundly, for William’s sneers, for poor old Snowball’s silent laughter, doubly silent now, and for the hired woman’s rough sympathy.
During these cogitations he frequently interrupted himself to finger his vest pocket and be assured that he had lost neither the ticket marked Merlton nor the baggage checks. The casual observer, knowing nothing of Mauney’s previous existence, would have received an impression of a young, well-to-do man, of kindly disposition, of keen sensibilities, and of, perhaps, unusual powers of mind. He might have passed for a young commercial traveller, save that his eyes possessed a glamor of imagination too vivid to have long withstood the prosaic details of business, and yet, on the other hand, though his bright face, nearly smiling, might have been that of an artist, there was about him a certain air of staid reserve that negatived the impression.
But these golden opinions about the young man in the grey suit, were, to be sure, purely from without, since there existed within Mauney a much poorer estimate. He would have said that of all the people on this train he was unquestionably the most ignorant, the most awkward, the most lamentably inexperienced. He was going forth into the enigmatical universe unsupported, but with a kind of mock self-assurance approaching bluff. And he was stepping very rapidly along, pushed by uninvited and irrevocable events, with inelegant steps, as if his body were being bunted from behind. A big truck-load of baggage at the Lockwood Station platform had given him the same feeling a few moments previously. He wished the train would go more slowly, because of the importance of the journey. After all it was the real transition, the deportation from one phase of life to the unrealized next one, and certainly no occasion for being hurtled along with terrific speed, but rather one for slow adjustment of mind and body. He had never worn as stiff a collar, but the clothier in Lockwood must be relied upon. The seat of his trousers seemed tight, but that too, was undoubtedly a matter for the ruling judgment of an expert.
Well, he would try to bluff it bravely. Just what he would do on reaching Merlton was uncertain. There were the hotels, if necessary, but he felt that the sooner he got right down to work the better for his peace of mind. He wanted to go to the university, but knew that, unless he could discover some way of circumventing a high school training, college halls were very distant. Here again he would have to rely on expert opinion. In fact, he philosophized that he was now in a world where he was no longer independent. The lazy come and go of Lantern Marsh was realized to be at an end. He was now exploring hazy territory and so decided to keep out his feelers. There was nothing else for it than to be patient and wait, and go easy, and keep his feelers out. After all it was a wonderfully thrilling experience, containing as much opportunity for spiritual enjoyment as for discomfort.
Pulling down his collar out of the crease of his neck he cast his eye at a book which his seat companion was reading. The title at the top of the page was “Biochemistry.” The reader was a young, black-haired fellow with an eager, enthusiastic face, but with a deep, vertical crotchet of puckered skin between his eyebrows. That he was not reading for pleasure was doubly evident from his impatient manner of turning over new pages and from the monotonous tone in which, from time to time, he half spoke what he read. At length he finished a chapter, slammed the book shut and sat comfortably back with a sigh of relief. Mauney would not have ventured to speak to him, and was therefore pleasantly surprised, anon, to be addressed by the other.
“Awful stuff this!” said the stranger, tapping the closed volume with his knuckle.
“What is Biochemistry?” Mauney enquired curiously.
“Oh!” drawled the other, with a perplexed look, “it’s the study of the chemical processes that go on in the animal body—awful headache, this stuff! Are you going to Merlton?”
“Yes,” nodded Mauney.
“Go to the University?”
“Not yet.”
“But you are later, eh?”
“I don’t know,” Mauney explained. “I want to go, but I haven’t had enough education to get in.”
“You don’t need much, I can assure you,” said the other. “You’ve got your Collegiate off, I suppose?”
“No. Just public school.”
“Well, of course that means a devil of a lot of preliminary ahead of you, and they’re getting crankier up there every minute about that stuff. By the way,” he said, after stealing an appraising glance at Mauney’s face and clothing. “My name is Lee.”
Mauney took his proffered hand and shook it warmly.
“Bard is mine,” he said, a little awkwardly.
“We may as well know each other, Mr. Bard,” said Lee, sitting up and smiling. “I’m just going back to the city to write off some sups. Do you know what I mean? Well, I hope you don’t ever learn by experience. I got ploughed in Biochemistry, this spring. Do you know what I mean? Well, at the exams, you see, I went down hard on this stuff. So I’ve got to plug it up and write it off, now.”
Lee followed his explanation by a glance of curiosity at Mauney’s face before smiling indulgently.
“You’ll get on to these college expressions sooner or later. Of course I like my work well enough,” he explained, “and I shouldn’t have dropped on this dope, didn’t expect to either—it’s kind of made me bolsheviki for the present. I hope you’ll pardon my seeming rudeness if I continue to sink myself in this book?”
“Certainly, shoot into the dope, hard,” ventured Mauney.
With a look of surprise Lee settled down into the depths of the seat and, before commencing a new chapter, stole a sly, curious glance at his new acquaintance, while Mauney, faintly satisfied at his recent attempt at slang, found courage and a somewhat new belief in his own powers of adaptation.
Lee, buried in a new chapter, continued to frown, slap the pages, and repeat ill-temperedly passage after passage, while Mauney would turn from the window and its vision of long farm lands turning rapidly past like the spokes of a great wheel, to snatch a glance over his companion’s shoulders, to read perhaps a snatch of technical treatise concerning the combustion of fatty acids (whatever they might be), or to notice complicated designs of apparatus, reminding him of puzzles he had seen in the Beulah Weekly. Lee, he noticed, was an appealing sort, though delicate, with long, thin hands and a thin body that bent easily into his slouched attitude of reading. Over his vest he wore a thin, low-cut jersey whose front was decorated with a large, blue M, ornamented with wings sprouting from the two upright limbs of the letter. Mauney deduced that it stood for Merlton, probably being a trophy bestowed for prowess in some particular sport at the University of Merlton. At length Lee finished another chapter and closed the book with a snap, dropping it into his black hand-bag under the seat.
“That’s enough of that,” he said. “Pass or no pass I’m not going to read any more of it. And, more than that, I’m going to see a good show to-night. What do you say if we go?”
“How long before we reach Merlton?” Mauney asked.
Lee glanced at his wrist watch. “It’s two-forty. We don’t get there till six-thirty. Deuce of a long trip! It’ll be too late to do anything but a show.”
“I’d like to go all right,” Mauney admitted, “but I want to find some place to stay.”
“What kind of digs are you after—you know, what kind of a place?”
“I haven’t a very good idea myself.”
Lee studied Mauney’s open face for a moment as if trying to decide what category to place him in. It was evident from his own expression that he found something likeable about his new acquaintance, for he smiled with combined indulgence and curiosity.
“What have you been working at, Mr. Bard?” he asked.
“Farming, all my life.”
“Oh, I see. Decided to shake the plough now?”
Mauney nodded. “Yes, I wouldn’t have stayed so long at it, only you know how circumstances sometimes determine a fellow’s fate.”
“Sure thing, you said something,” admitted Lee, a little sadly. “I’d have been in the army except for the astounding circumstance, quite a surprise to me, that some imaginative medical officer fancied he heard a menagerie inside of my chest. There’s never been a thing wrong with me,” he affirmed, “but just because that chap with the stethescope didn’t like the way I breathed, I am here to-day, plugging along in third year medicine. Why! I managed to clean up the intercollegiate tennis last fall. I cite that merely as evidence of health.”
“You can’t tell me anything about it,” Mauney laughed. “I got turned down on account of my eyes. But I only have to wear glasses when I read. Eyes are good. I’d have been away long ago except for that. It’s tough luck to get treated like that. However, I’m ready any time they want to take me. But, war or no war, Mr. Lee, I’m not going to beg them to take me. I practically did that once; so I feel it’s their move next.”
“Hear, hear! My heart’s in the right place, too. Though I hate to be regarded as a slacker by those who don’t know the details. Sometimes I think it takes as much grit to face the home forces as the Germans. I mean the why-aren’t-you-at-the-war brand. However, got to put up with it. Say,” he added presently. “How would you like to get a room at my boarding house?”
“Fine. Could I?”
“I believe you probably could,” he said, “It’s a queer sort of digs, but just unusual enough to be interesting. It’s worth making an effort to get into it, too. The bunch there are off the beaten path—never was quite able to size ’em up—but they all mind their own business. You know,” he said reflectively, “I’ve been there over a year and I can’t tell you just what keeps me there. I guess it’s because we’re all rebels.”
“Rebels?” repeated Mauney, in great surprise.
“Surely,” nodded Lee with a broad smile breaking over his face. “Do you know what it means to be out of love with life?”
“I—I should say I do. That’s me exactly.”
“I thought so, Mr. Bard,” replied Lee with an intimate little sparkle in his eye. “I judged you to have something of the same spirit about you. Well, it’s a kind of grouch that lurks under the surface, if you will. Anyhow, it’s easily recognized by anyone who is a rebel himself.”
Mauney’s blue eyes narrowed as he glanced at his new friend’s face.
“Are you a rebel, Mr. Lee?” he asked seriously.
“Certainly,” said Lee. Then he laughed at Mauney’s sober aspect. “Don’t be alarmed. My disaffection has not, at present, any political aspect, you know. My rebellion is not against the government. It’s just a plain, homely, disposition of grouch.”
“I see,” smiled Mauney. “Do you know, I like that.”
“And I knew you would, my son,” continued Lee, almost affectionately. “You’ve got inoculated, somehow, with the same virus. You’ve caught the disease somewhere. We belong to a great fraternity that doesn’t wear any silver badge. A person has to be born to it, to some degree, and then he has to get properly messed up, into the bargain.”
“How do you mean—messed up?”
“Oh, just that everything goes wrong. Plans smashed, ideas smashed, everything smashed,” laughed Lee with just a small trace of queer seriousness in his face. “Fate picks out a few of us to join this big fraternity. We always know each other when we meet without any masonic sign. Our watchword is discontent—unexplainable discontent. We are just misfits, my son,” he concluded, with a slap at Mauney’s knee.
Mauney could not help liking his new friend who, though evidently not much older than himself, called him “my son” so easily, and who, either consciously or otherwise, had succeeded in establishing a most unexpected bond between them. But his skillful, verbal harangue on the present topic was still puzzling to him, so that, after a moment, he put a question.
“Do you mean that the people who live at this boarding house all belong to a secret fraternity?”
“Yes and no!” said Lee. “It’s a fraternity, as I’ve said, secret enough from all who don’t belong. But it hasn’t any organized constitution and no particular purpose or aim.” As he paused, his black eyes softened with a visionary aspect. “It’s distributed all over the world. You don’t join it. You’re either in it or not. If you’re in it you find it impossible to get too much worked up over any enthusiasm. You prefer irony to barbarous optimism. You retire by choice, into the shadow of things. Do you get me?”
“I think so, yes,” nodded Mauney. “You all feel out of gear with things, all the time.”
“That’s it. You can’t get an ideal which isn’t sooner or later rendered a mere idea. Your hands slip off from the round edges of everything you grasp. You know before you start that your efforts will eventually peter down to child’s play. Well, well,” he said, pulling himself up out of his half reverie. “I suppose I’d better read some more biochemistry.”
“Do you like the study of medicine?” asked Mauney.
Lee smiled.
“I like it all right,” he nodded. “But it’s just like me to get the wrong angle on it. I keep wondering about the profession—it’s so damned illogical.”
“How do you mean?”
“We patch people up after they’re damaged, instead of trying to keep ’em from getting damaged. We throw out the life-line, but we don’t teach ’em to swim. It’s all topsy-turvy philosophy, upside down, cart before the horse. However,” he said with a drawl as he opened his hand-grip to take out his book, “I’ve decided not to revolutionize the world, just yet. It’s a game, my son, but worth playing, after all.”
He was soon lost in the pages of his big Biochemistry volume again, and Mauney contented himself with reconstructing Lee’s philosophy. It struck him as perhaps picturesque, but unnecessarily bleak. No, he did not quite agree with his new friend. There was use in things. Just the prospect of an education was sufficient now to lift Mauney into a mood of happiness. To turn from mental darkness to mental light, to learn of the mysterious forces that promulgated life on the globe and kept it living, to know how peoples had lived and how they lived now, to pierce the meaning of war. In short, to pick the pearls of knowledge from the vast, pebbled coast-line of life—this was a task and an opportunity that thrilled him with splendid resolve and high hopes.
When they reached Merlton Union the platforms bore a busy swarm of humanity through which the two new friends made their way with difficulty to the great waiting room. Mauney had a sense of being suddenly dropped into a seething sea of being that emphasized his own minuteness. People sitting, tired and impatient. People walking eagerly about, searching for friends. People consulting official-looking clerks in information booths, or rushing at the heels of red-caps who carried their valises to departing trains. The great roar of the room rose to the high expanse of the roof, like the rushing sound heard in a sea-shell. Individual sounds were lost and swallowed up in the vague, but intense vibrations that beat back from the glazed ceiling, to be disturbed only by the deep, sonorous voice of a man by the gates who called the trains in measured periods, each speech ending in a wistful, sad inflection. Here were people, coming and going, as if it were the very business of life and not, as in Mauney’s case, the great epoch-making event of his whole existence. At the curb, outside the front entrance, he was dismayed by the mad rush of snorting taxi-cabs, pausing but long enough to take their passengers before darting off down the crowded street.
“I’ll tell you,” said Lee, pressing his long forefinger against Mauney’s vest buttons. “Suppose you give your baggage cheques to the city delivery here, then take my grip and go up to the boarding house. Tell Mrs. Manton I’ll be up later. You don’t need to say anything yet about getting a room there. Things are done very deliberately at seventy-three Franklin Street, as you’ll find. Tell her you’re waiting for me. Then just sort of edge in slowly. If she doesn’t ask you to sit down, just grab a chair and make yourself comfortable. Be sociable. Do you get me?”
Mauney nodded.
“I’m all for a show to-night,” Lee continued, “so I’ll be off to one now. If you’re hungry ask Gertrude for something to eat.”
“Who’s Gertrude?” asked Mauney.
“The landlady, Mrs. Manton. She’ll love you if you do. Don’t be bashful, see? And I’ll be home around midnight and we’ll have a chat before we turn in.”
Soon he had gone, leaving Mauney holding his grip and waving for a taxi. One promptly disjoined itself from a waiting line, while an attendant opened the door.
“Where, sir?” asked the driver, craning his neck about.
“No. seventy-three Franklin Street.”
He nodded and away they flew through congested thoroughfares, missing other motor cars by what seemed veritable hair-breadths, passing noisy street-cars, avoiding wary pedestrians who ventured across their way. After traversing what appeared to be the business section of the city, they began to pass along quieter streets and eventually stopped in front of a respectable red-brick house. Mauney paid the driver and got out to inspect the residence. It was a three storey building, squarish in appearance, with a side verandah leading to the only entrance. The cream-colored shades of the front lower room were drawn. As Mauney paused to survey the place a few drops of rain struck his face; so that he hurried up the broad steps, along the verandah to the door, and rang the bell. It was already growing dusk and he could make out nothing through the door-window. Presently a light was switched on and he saw the figure of a man approaching, who, when he had opened the door, regarded Mauney silently from an expressionless face.
“Does Mrs. Manton live here?”
“Sure! Come in,” invited the man. He was about forty—short, thick-set, agreeable. His smooth, flabby face, devoid of color, was as grey as his short hair, and he had lazy, mirthful, grey eyes, and a lazy smile that exposed many gold teeth. He struck Mauney as a flippant individual. When he had closed the door he turned about and called, “Ho, Gertrude!” Then he faced Mauney again.
“Is it going to rain?” he asked good-naturedly.
“It’s raining now a little.”
The man produced a penknife, opened it, and pried with the blade between his gold-filled incisors. “I knew it was going to rain,” he said. “I’ve got the most expensive barometers here I could afford. These teeth have cost me more money than I’ve got in the bank, and they always ache before a storm. What do you know about that?”
Mauney smiled. “It’s hard luck; that’s all I can think of at the moment.” He was trying to follow Lee’s advice about being sociable, and striving with equal effort to gauge the stranger’s disposition and character. He remembered that Lee had also mentioned the importance of making himself at home. Accordingly, he now removed his hat and hung it on the hall rack, then walked to a hall chair and seated himself comfortably, while the stranger followed his movements with an amused, curious smile.
“Ho! Gertrude!” he called again. Then, after lighting a cigarette and flipping the burnt match into an empty brass jardiniere on the hall stand, he glanced at Mauney. “She’s still the same old Gert,” he explained, as if presupposing a former acquaintanceship to have existed between Mauney and his landlady.
“Is she?”
“Sure! She’s in on a little game in the dining room now. I guess she’s building up a jack-pot and don’t want to decamp.”
Just then a burst of mixed laughter was heard. The door at one side of the hall-way opened and Mauney obtained his first view of Mrs. Manton. Her appearance was not typical of landladies, as Mauney had fancied them. In fact her appearance denied that she was a landlady at all, but suggested that she had just walked out of a theatre at the opposite end from the audience. Mauney had seen pictures of actresses in magazines, and as he beheld Mrs. Manton the word “Spanish” flashed in his mind. She wore an extreme costume of black velvet, with yellow silk facings, and an artificial red poppy stuck into her heavy stock of jet-black hair. About her neck was a long string of pearls, and on her fingers diamonds were flashing in the light. For a moment she regarded Mauney curiously, then walked, with an unhurried, precise, but rhythmic grace that suited her solid, short form, until she stood near him. He rose.
“Good-evening,” she said in a deep, purring voice that was very soothing. “I fear you have the advantage of me.”
“My name’s Bard,” he said quickly, smiled, and stuck out his hand.
“How do you do, Mr. Bard,” she replied with a brightening of her swarthy, pensive face.
“I came up to wait for Mr. Lee,” he explained.
“Well, Mr. Lee is home on his vacation, Mr. Bard, and won’t be back till about October, you know.”
“Oh, yes, he will,” Mauney corrected. “He’ll be here to-night! I just came up on the train with him. You see he got ploughed in biochemistry, and had to come up to write the dope off. Stars and sups, you know.”
“Indeed,” she exclaimed. “Poor old Max! Well, we will be glad to have Max with us again, eh Freddie?”
“You bet. He’s sure a winner, Gertrude,” replied the man who was now introduced to Mauney as Stalton.
“Fred,” she said, “you better go up and see if Max’s room’s all right, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
“And now Mr. Bard,” said Mrs. Manton, indicating the dining-room door by a graceful gesture of her bejewelled hand. “We’ve got on a friendly game of poker, if you’d care to join with us while you wait for Max?”
“I’ve always been unlucky at poker,” prevaricated Mauney, who had never seen the game.
“Ho,” she laughed. “You’re like me. I’m the greatest she Jonah that has been discovered to date. Never mind, it’s only a nickel-ante.”
“That’s not much, is it?” he ventured.
“Of course, we never allow big games, you know,” she explained, as her dark eyes indulged in a scrutiny of his features. “Just a pastime. May be you’d prefer to read, or perhaps just watch the game?”
“Look here,” said Mauney, touching her on the breast with his forefinger, just as Lee had done with him at the Union Station. “I’m about starved—hungry as sin. Do you suppose you could rig me up a bite to eat?”
“Why, you poor boy!” she purred softly, and took his arm to lead him to the dining room. “Just off the train. Of course you’ll have a snack directly.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Manton.”
“Not at all,” she said indifferently, in a tone that indicated that thanking was not quite normal to seventy-three Franklin Street. “Sadie Grote’s in here. She’ll fix you up.”
The dining-room was a spacious chamber with a large central table. A drop-lamp, whose large oval shade in the design of a huge yellow water lily hung low over the table, distributed a cone of light that revealed four or five people busy at cards about the table. Mauney’s eye caught the other details of the room—a large fire-place at one side, a long Chesterfield couch under the window at one end, with a man reclining on it, a sideboard, with a mirror and a display of glassware upon it, a cabinet gramophone, several large easy chairs, and a smoker’s ash stand.
“I can wait awhile for the grub,” said Mauney, who was really too excited with his new boarding house to be hungry.
“All right. We’ll all be eating after a while,” Mrs. Manton replied. Then, turning to the crowd, “This is Mr. Bard,” she said, simply, took her chair at the table and picked up her hand of cards. Mauney, left to his own devices, sat down in one of the easy chairs and familiarized himself with his surroundings. Besides his landlady were two other women, one addressed as Mrs. Dixon, a fleshy person of forty, with fat, ring-adorned fingers, the other, evidently Sadie Grote, a pretty wisp of a girl top-heavy with blonde hair. One of the men, known familiarly as “Doc,” was a painfully bald individual of fifty, whose speech and gestures breathed a foreign atmosphere, and whose erect body had a military poise. The other man, not over thirty, was heavily built, but had an effeminate smile that exposed teeth perfect enough to be envied by the most renowned beauty. He was called “Cliff,” and seemed to have been fascinated by Mrs. Manton, although she treated him with discouraging indifference.
The man on the sofa was completely absorbed in a newspaper, behind which his face was hidden. He lay for fully twenty minutes without moving a muscle, with his long legs stretched out to the very end of the couch. Suddenly he crushed the paper between his hands, and swung himself up to a sitting posture.
“The damned thieves!” he exclaimed in an English accent. “Cutting wages at a time like this. The working man in England to-day is usually either over military age or else crippled from war service. To think of the curs cutting down their wages now! Well, it’s only one more evidence of the fat-headed manner in which everything is done in England—England, the land of blunders!”
Mauney noticed with surprise that none of the people at the table were paying any attention to the irate Englishman’s declamation—the more remarkable that he should continue:
“If they go on messing things up much worse, the working man is going to kick over and raise a bit of hell, and it will serve the skunks jolly well right. I hope that they put so big a land tax on the capitalists that they will lose every square foot of property they possess. It’s not theirs, anyhow. It belongs to the working man.”
Mrs. Manton presently glanced in his direction to behold him still bathed in the glow of his enthusiastic pronouncement.
“What’s wrong, Jolvin?” she purred softly. “Have they not yet recognized the rights of the working man? How discouraging!”
There was a note of sarcasm in her deep, melodious voice that irritated Jolvin. He had a long, thin face, scooped out at the temples and the cheeks, a narrow, black moustache directly under his long, thin nose, and a permanent dimple in the middle of his long chin. His long, narrow neck rose out of his collar like a jack-in-the-box, and he had an uncanny way of suddenly rotating his face, in conversation, full toward a speaker.
“Oh! damn it! Talk will you!” he fumed, looking at his landlady out of furious eyes, as if he had been much more content to have continued in monologue. “Some people are going to wake up one morning to discover the working man in possession of the helm of affairs!”
He jumped to his feet and stamped ill-temperedly toward the hall door.
“And,” he resumed, as he opened the door quickly, but paused to give Mrs. Manton the full benefit of his rage, “this is no dream of a fantastic mind. It’s just truth, damned-well truth!”
He closed the door violently, while Mrs. Manton merely put up her hand to tidy her hair, as if Jolvin’s commotion had disturbed its excellent coiffure. Then Stalton came softly in from a back hall-way.
“What’s the matter with Jolvin to-night?” he enquired casually.
“Just ranting on Bolshevism, as per usual,” replied Mrs. Manton, as she dealt out the cards.
“Don’t ever get him started on socialism,” Stalton advised. “He got me cornered one night and just about proved that it was sinful to own property at all. It gave me a Sunday-school feeling right down to my boots to think how righteous I was in at least that one respect.”
“That man does irritate, occasionally,” she admitted. “However, he’s not such a poor sort, at other times.”
“I wish I could play the guitar as well as he can, Gertrude,” put in Miss Sadie Grote, as she picked up her cards and examined them.
Stalton walked to a chair, which he pulled up near Mauney’s.
“That bird,” he said, indicating the door through which Jolvin had just gone, “is the only Englishman I ever met who hated England. He’s troubled with a bad form of ingrowing Anglophobia, and he does everything possible to Westernize himself. He even plays a Hawaiian guitar. Any time during the night we’re liable to hear it mewing like a cat up in his room. If he keeps on he’s certainly going to qualify for one of the leading parts in a murder scene.”
Mauney laughed.
“I suppose he’s kind of a rebel,” he ventured.
“Rebel!” repeated Stalton, with a puzzled look in his eyes. “How do you mean?”
Mauney realized just then that Lee’s categorization of the people at seventy-three Franklin Street was no doubt an individualistic bit of philosophy somewhat beyond the people themselves, so he accordingly changed the topic of conversation. He was finding them all very interesting studies—the most unusual people he had ever known. But, as the evening wore on, dissipated by cards and gramophone selections, scraps of dancing executed fantastically by Mrs. Manton and the enamoured stranger, whose name he did not learn, he grew gradually weary of the desultory entertainment, and wished Lee would return. At length he came. After receiving warm welcomes from everyone present, he led Mauney up to his room. The hallway on the first floor was too dark to give any view of the place except that Lee’s room was at the front end of the corridor on the right side, and when illuminated was seen to be a large, comfortably furnished chamber with two windows facing Franklin Street, and a flat-topped desk placed between the windows. Upon the desk were a long row of large technical volumes, an ink-well, blotters and a ruler. There were two big, leather-upholstered, easy chairs in the outer corner of the room, facing each other, and a small smoker’s stand between them. Lee raised the windows to freshen the stale air, then turned in a general survey of the familiar place.
“What do you think of the bunch?” he asked casually, as he lit a cigarette.
“I like them fine,” said Mauney. “They’re quite clever, these people.”
“Oh, yes. So they are,” Lee agreed, as he dropped wearily into one of the chairs and waved Mauney to the other. “Are you smoking?”
Mauney raised his hand.
“You know, Mr. Lee,” he smiled, “I’m just a green-horn from the country. I’ve had quite a lot of new experiences to-day already. I’m not snobbish about tobacco, but I’d rather leave that for another day or two, if you don’t mind.”
“Fine,” laughed Lee. “You’ll get along in the world all right!”
“Do you think so?”
“Surely. You don’t need to take my word for it. I find that Gertrude is an extremely shrewd judge of men, and I’d like to tell you what she said about you—if you wouldn’t misunderstand her.”
Mauney was greatly interested. “No, I won’t. I like her a lot. What did she say?”
“Well, she said in the kitchen, while she was making those sandwiches, ‘Where did you get this big, refreshing country breeze, Max?’ I told her you were coming to the city for the first time to take up some kind of academic work, and she looked up at me as if surprised. ‘Clever kid,’ she said. ‘He walked right over to me like a confidence man at the start. I pretty near gave him my heart.’ Now, of course,” added Lee, “when Gertrude feels that way about anybody, he’s elected!”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, the house is yours. You can stay and board here. In other words, you gibe, fit in, dovetail—do you get me? I told her you might like to remain here, and she just nodded, which means that to-morrow night, without anything being said about it, a room will be ready for you to occupy.”
“Do I pay in advance?” Mauney enquired.
“No, no,” laughed Lee, as if at his friend’s inexorable ignorance; “you don’t do anything of the kind. She may not ask you for money for a month. Then she’s liable to suggest it very delicately, and, as a rule, you give her just a little more than it’s worth—see? You pay for atmosphere here and for her peculiar selection of other guests.”
“How much should I pay a month?”
“Oh, forty-five or fifty is what I usually contribute. And then, if you ever see any ice-cream or fruit or a new victrola record or anything in that line, down-town, you just buy it and bring it home as an occasional treat.”
Mauney sat back in his chair and smiled. There was a flush of comfort in his face and a new relaxation. He liked the place, although he was still overcome, almost exhausted, by the swift changes of the day. Especially did he like Maxwell Lee, this comforting fellow with visionary dark eyes who sat opposite him now, smoking meditatively as if quite aware of the epoch-making significance of a simple railway journey; as if he realized how great an event it had really been to Mauney’s inexperienced soul.
CHAPTER II.
Mauney Prepares for College.
“I consider it most becoming and most civilized to mingle severity with good fellowship, so that the former may not grow into melancholy, nor the latter into frivolity.”—Pliny the Younger, Ep. Bk. 8.
When he awoke in the morning, he was vaguely conscious of some one talking in the room. Over the edge of his counterpane his eye caught the pyjama-ed figure of Lee, shaving in front of the dressing-case mirror, and he soon realized that Lee was talking to him.
“—thinking it over,” Lee was saying. “And I believe your best stunt is to look up a tutor who will give you your matriculation work extra-murally. That won’t tie you down to any formality of going to a high school. You can work as hard as you like, and, at your age, you’ll clean up that preliminary dope just like ice-cream.”
Mauney sprang out of bed and shaved. He fell in with Lee’s suggestion and decided that he would look up a tutor that very morning. He was thrilled with excitement and happiness. Outside the windows, rain was splashing on the sills, but it was the merriest, gladdest rain he had ever listened to. Before him stretched the great adventure of education, rich in its promise of compensation for all the years of miserable waiting. In fact, could it be quite true that he was actually conscious? Was he not rather treading the air of a delightful dream, from which, at any moment, he would awake to bleak realities?
There were only three at the breakfast table when they descended—Mrs. Manton, seated at the end in a rich dressing gown of yellow silk, and Jolvin, with Stalton, at one side. The Englishman, fully dressed as for business, ate in dignified silence. Stalton, whom to know was to love, sat in his shirt sleeves without a collar, as if he had no other business in life than to act in the capacity of a cross-corner mentor for his landlady. Mauney was assigned to a place between the two men, while Lee sat down at the opposite side.
“It’s a grand morning, Mr. Bard,” said Stalton, as he poured some medicine into a spoon from a large bottle by his place. Perhaps, thought Mauney, Stalton’s gray hair and flabby grey face were evidence of some chronic ailment—the wearing effects of pain. He felt sorry for his table companion.
“Hello,” laughed Lee, glancing across at the bottle, “What are you taking now, Freddie?”
“This is a new consignment of dope, Max,” he replied good-naturedly. “It’s guaranteed to contain the real wallop. Made up of yeast, raisins, vitamines and monkey glands. Don’t be surprised to see me challenging the heavy-weight champion next spring.”
Jolvin, whose mind at the moment may have been grappling with serious business problems, was evidently irritated by Stalton’s remark. Suddenly his face whirled directly about toward Mauney, who nearly jumped with astonishment. “For God’s sake,” whispered Jolvin, “I wish he’d stop that stuff at breakfast.” Then his head snapped back to receive the last spoonful of his cornflakes.
“One would fancy,” he said aloud, “it would stop raining!”
“Yes,” murmured Stalton. “One would. But I guess there’s a few bucketfuls left up there yet.”
“How’s the tooth this morning, Freddie?” enquired Miss Grote, as she walked into the room.
“It’s still in my head, Sadie, but I expected it would jump out, about two this morning.
“For God’s sake,” whispered Jolvin into Mauney’s ear; “he can’t talk about anything, but teeth—teeth!”
He made a nervous stab at a rasher of bacon and cleared his throat. “I fancy,” he said aloud, “we’ll be getting some prime weather after this!”
“Yes, no doubt,” replied Stalton. “This rain ought to prime anything, including the cistern pump.”
Mrs. Manton cast a reproving look at Stalton, shook her head hopelessly, sighed, and continued her breakfast. Mauney, in the best of spirits himself, unconsciously cast his sympathy with Stalton.
“Did you hear the rain on the roof last night, Mr. Stalton?” he asked, by way of making conversation.
“Sure thing.”
“Did it help you to sleep?”
“It doesn’t affect me like that, Mr. Bard,” he answered. “Unfortunately I passed through a period of my life when I had the rain without the roof, and rain ever since brings up the past. And then, in this kind of weather my teeth are always—”
“For God’s sake,” exclaimed Jolvin aloud, bolting from the table, stamping indignantly into the hall, and presently banging the front door behind him, as he left the house.
“What’s wrong with that long drink?” purred Mrs. Manton.
“He’s just acting natural,” Stalton said. “I knew he got out of bed over the foot. He’s had more hard luck with his uncle’s estate in England, too, and I knew he’d scoot if I said anything more about teeth.”
“Well, he can tame himself,” Mrs. Manton submitted calmly. “This is not an institution for the nervous, and if Jolvin doesn’t like it, he’ll discover that there aren’t many invitations out to remain.”
“These fits of his are getting more frequent,” Stalton remarked.
“He’ll have to mix his drinks a little better than that anyhow,” said the landlady. “Don’t you think so, Max?”
“It takes all kinds of people to make a world, Gertrude.” Lee reminded her. “I feel so darned cut up about my biochemistry, I can’t be expected to give an unbiased judgment.”
“Poor boy. You’ll get it, all right. When do you write?”
“This morning.”
Mauney accompanied his friend, whom he began to address now as Max, down to the university and, after Lee had disappeared into one of the buildings, stood thrilled by the spectacle before him. Here, surrounding the square, reposed the exemplary specimens of architecture that housed the various faculties. Max, in leaving, had pointed them out hurriedly—medicine, industrial science, Methodist theology, the great library, the convocation hall, the gymnasium, and last, but most impressive, the arts building, a solid, reposeful mass, as sure as learning itself, with its vine-dressed, dull grey walls of stone, it’s turreted tower, its marvellous gothic entrance, leading from the common day, past its embellished arch, into the dim twilight of contemplation. The square was belted by a gravel road, serving the various buildings, and was itself divided into eight triangular lawns by wide cinder paths, crossing from side to side and from corner to corner. It was a pleasant view, for the art of the landscapist had relieved the conventionality of the pattern by maples and ash-trees, distributed over the lawns, and by clusters of spirÆa and barberry set attractively at the edges of the paths. The square was nearly deserted, save for one or two students who sat on the benches reading.
Mauney wished that with the fall opening he could be ready to enter upon his college course, but, knowing this to be impossible, turned sadly away, but yet with burning ambition, to find the tutor whom Max had recommended. He was discovered in a little office on College Street, a small, withered individual, almost swallowed up in the cluttered disorder of his administrative quarters. His yellow face, creased like old parchment, bent into a mechanical smile as he listened to Mauney’s desires. For a moment he fingered the paper-knife on his desk, then cast a weary look at his young customer through tarnished silver-rimmed spectacles.
“The matriculation requirements, Mr. Bard,” he said, in a cultured, but infinitely dreary voice, as if repeating a stereotyped speech, “are becoming increasingly onerous. The departments of the University of Merlton have established rather severe standards for college entrance, and I fear you will experience disheartening difficulties in attempting to gain matriculation status within the limits of a single winter term. However, your ambition is indeed commendable and, with perseverance, combined with extra tutoring, you may perhaps be able to succeed. The course that I would recommend”—he reached for a folder and, opening it, ran his yellow forefinger down its pages—“is partly a correspondence course, but partly, also, one of personal supervision, especially in science subjects. The cost of this course is considerable, but I am glad to be able to quote an average of sixty per cent. successes over a period of the last fifteen years. Other preparatory tutors have not, unfortunately, been able to compete with these figures. The fees are payable strictly in advance, and if you decide to embark upon the course, you are promised the same individual, careful attention that is given to everyone.”
Mauney questioned nothing, but embarked. He was almost delirious with happiness over the proceedings, the enrolment, the purchase of a score of interesting books which the tutor recommended, and the prospect of commencing so quickly the life for which he had longed. His room at seventy-three Franklin Street, next to Max’s, was soon a student’s den, with its own table, its own volumes and its easy chairs. His life became a very pleasant thing, for, with his daily visits to the little office on College Street, and the diversions of the boarding house, he found what seemed to him a wealth of variety. He was astonished at his own contentment and at the self-sufficient quality in him that scarcely, if ever, caused him to think of his former home, or to reflect upon the dearth of relatives in his new existence. He wrote to his aunt in Scotland, expressing high satisfaction with his present occupations. He settled down in the loved quietness of his room, to master the rudiments of education. Never once did he stop, weary, for with the sharp appetite of a starved mind, he thought of nothing but more information, and more.
Max, who had been successful in his supplementary examination and was now engaged in the fourth year of his medical course, frequently dropped into Mauney’s room for a smoke and a chat. Max never spoke about his own home, and Mauney refrained from questioning him. The basis of their friendship was something personal and gloriously indefinite, that neither thought of analyzing. They felt at home with each other, and never, from the very beginning of their acquaintance, did anything disturb this quite unaccountable understanding. Mauney always felt that there was a hidden thought at the centre of Max, with which some day he would be favored, for behind his dark and often weary eyes great dreams seemed to pass, greater than the drawl of his clever and sarcastic tongue. He ventured to think that perhaps Max had drifted into a profession for which his nature disqualified him, for he naturally gained the impression that a medical student needed to be, in one particular sense, a feelingless person, with certain vulture-like qualities to steel him against the revoltingly physical aspects of his work. The skull in Max’s wardrobe, the illustrations in his books—there were many symbols of the idea. In secret, however, Max was evidently no materialist, but sought the wide comfort of philosophic generalities. No one, to be sure, would suspect it at seventy-three Franklin Street, where he was known by his smile, but Mauney would catch the plaintive note in some quiet remark, as when one evening, in discussing college work in general, he said:
“Wrap up your colleges and throw them in the ocean. They furnish us a few years of diversion, but after that there’s life, and, strange to relate, Mauney, my son, they have not prepared us for that.”
Mauney excused such criticisms of the university on the basis of a personal warp in Max’s character, forgave him for what seemed a vandal attitude, and went on believing more firmly than ever in the light that spread from the lamp of learning. By its flame, comforted and inspired, he forgot the passage of time. He failed to notice the blush of late autumn that swept like a passion over the trees of the city, scarcely saw their bare arms raised in supplication to the greying skies, nor heaven’s response of swift winds carrying fleecy burdens. Not until the firm banks of snow began to settle down, smaller and smaller, under the warming suns of a windy March, and energetic streams of murky water rushed along the street gutters, did he wake from his steadfast dream to realize that his term was nearly over. Then came a sharp bout with the examinations and at the end of May he stood looking curiously down at the withered old tutor who was smiling less stiffly, less professionally, than usual.
“I am pleased to tell you,” he said, “that you have gained your university entrance standing. Your work with me in the preliminary subjects has been, to say the least, good, and it will afford me pleasure to produce documentary evidence of your success.” He paused to reach a small certificate from a drawer. “This,” he continued, handing it to Mauney, “should be carefully preserved and forwarded to the university in making your application for admission thereto, sometime before September.”
“Thanks.”
“And before you go,” said the tutor, rising stiffly from his chair, “let me express the pleasure I have had in overseeing your early academic career. Moreover, I would be interested to learn what particular course you contemplate taking at the university.”
This was a new idea to Mauney. He looked at the instructor for a moment, with a perplexed expression.
“I’m much interested in people,” he said, “and I think if I could get a course in history it would suit me.”
“Remember,” cautioned the old man, lifting his finger as if admonishing a wayward son, “history is a culture course which, from the financial standpoint, leads you nowhere. It would fit you only for teaching, a profession which, as I have learned from acrid experience, is not perfectly appreciated by the public. You have other courses to choose from, the more practical ones, as they might be called, such as engineering, law, medicine.”
“Well, I’ll have to consider the question,” Mauney replied.
“Just so. In the meantime, I would be glad to advise you on any points and to see you, from time to time, in order to learn of your academic progress.”
There was a light almost of kindness in the wrinkled, yellow face as he bade him good-bye. Mauney did not know how seldom that light had been there under similar circumstances, nor did he know that the affection of the old tutor was the same kind of affection that he unconsciously inspired in most of his associates. Burning with gleeful happiness over his success, he hurried home to tell Max.
“Well, you old bear!” exclaimed Lee, violently shaking Mauney’s hand on learning the news. “You couldn’t have done better. I’m as happy as if I’d done it myself.”
“Behold the hero,” Max said, as they went into supper together. “He’s just laid ’em all out. Four years’ work in one.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Mrs. Manton, putting her arms about Mauney’s neck and kissing him prettily on the cheek. “I knew you’d do it, Mauney,” she said.
“Maybe you did, Gertrude,” he laughed, trying to cover his embarrassment, “but I didn’t expect that. However, don’t think I didn’t like it.”
Even though Mrs. Manton’s impulsive embrace was decidedly consoling, Mauney nevertheless disliked it. He felt immediately afterwards that he would increase his diligence to detect her next time before it was too late. He accused himself of being perhaps by nature too cold. But from the evening, some years since, when he had felt a woman’s hand upon his own, he had disliked the feeling. A woman’s hand was too soft. It reminded him unavoidably of a snake, and made him shiver. This thesis ran through his private thoughts a good deal. He did not know women. He thought they were rather pleasant beings at times, but the danger of having their warm, soft hands suddenly upon him, inspired an attitude of caution. He felt confident of managing them in conversation, but confidence flew to the winds at the approach of hands, or arms, to say nothing of lips.
The summer months passed with snail-like tardiness. Having no place in particular to go, and nothing in particular to do, he remained in Merlton at his boarding house, and divided his time between reading and making excursions on foot, exploring the city. He now seized his first opportunity to gratify a long desire, and spent many of his mornings on the river. Max, who had this time passed his annual examinations without stars, had gone out west to teach school for the summer, in order to make enough money to finance his final year in medicine. The balance of the personnel at the boarding house remained unchanged, until one morning at breakfast he learned that Jolvin was about to return to England. The news came from Stalton, who said he had been talking to Jolvin the night before.
“Gertrude,” he said, “do you know what’s happened to that bird? He’s fallen into a big estate—his uncle’s estate. Why, it’s worth a couple of hundred thousand. I saw the lawyer’s letter last night. What do you know about that?”
Mrs. Manton ate in silence for a moment. “Do Jolvin’s socialistic beliefs prevent him from accepting it?” she asked.
“Not very much!” Stalton replied with sarcastic emphasis. “And, by the way he was talking last night, he’s forgiven England for being such a dough-headed outfit. Why, that fellow came out here two years ago like an understudy of Columbus. England? Not if he knew it. And now I’ll bet he gets the first boat home. Just watch him skidaddle.”
It was not many minutes until Jolvin, the centre of conversation, came down to breakfast, unusually smart, his face wreathed in smiles.
“Good morning, people!” he said expansively, with a very full bow. “Isn’t it a lovely morning? Good-morning Stalton!”
“How do you do?” said Stalton crisply.
After taking his seat, the Englishman, noticing the silence of the table, thought perhaps to stir up conversation.
“You know,” he began, glancing at his dish, “these corn-flakes are really beastly grotesque things. In England one scarcely sees them. They are, I fancy, an expression of American commercialism which invades even the time-honored ritual of breakfast.”
Stalton suddenly dropped his spoon on the table.
“Well, I’m damned,” he said, simply, and once more took up his spoon, having received a stern look from Mrs. Manton.
Jolvin appeared not to have heard Stalton’s remark, but continued, “But, of course, America is too busy to cook porridge. There is no leisure or time for what one might call a comfortable dignity.”
“All this don’t jibe very well with what you usually say about England,” Stalton remarked. “Most of the time you seemed to hate the word.”
“Not at all,” argued Jolvin. “Any criticisms I have ever made of England were meant most heartily. But they were criticisms, not blasphemies. If I were indifferent to England, I should never bother even to criticize.”
“Have it your way, Jolvin,” said Stalton. “But you were always damning the leisure class. Now you’re praising them.”
“I still damn them for their faults. Why, then, should I not praise them for their virtues?”
“Sail right ahead,” invited Stalton. “You’re in good form this morning. Got me outclassed, that’s a cinch.”
Even without Jolvin the place was still a most unusual boarding house. Mauney had learned, by this time, some of its tacitly-established principles. In the first place Mrs. Manton, at thirty-five, being widowed as was understood, regarded her house as a master hobby. Great attention was bestowed upon the furniture, the rugs and the walls. She wanted her guests to be comfortable and, to that end, would put herself about unceasingly. No advertising of vacant rooms was ever done, for it was better to have an empty room without a monthly revenue, than a full room with an unknown, undesirable stranger. Certain standards had to be satisfied. Mrs. Manton’s boarders had to possess what she tersely designated as “savez.” This meant a number of things. It meant the faculty of living in harmony with other boarders, of being informally polite and not impolitely formal. It meant keeping in the background all grandiose ideas, but at the same time indulging in enough conversation to register one’s consciousness. It meant that one should not comment upon the doings of others, but at the same time that one should avoid doing anything to invite comment. It meant even this, that if one’s breakfast were not placed before him as quickly as desired, he was expected to go to the kitchen and get it; or if one’s bed was not made up, the understanding was that it be made up by oneself. And finally, of course, that after a few days’ residence as an introduction, one would notice that the landlady was to be addressed familiarly as “Gertrude.”
Mrs. Manton preferred men to women boarders. Mrs. Dixon was permitted because her husband was a good sort, with funds of information about racing horses and the track in general. Sadie Grote, a stenographer down town, was agreeable and sweet, very unselfish and therefore helpful. Women had often been under consideration. At one time Mrs. Manton conducted an experiment by letting the whole top flat to four university girls. They remained a whole term, but when the last of their baggage had left the front door in the spring, Mrs. Manton had turned to Stalton with all the impatience of a disappointed experimenter.
“Freddie,” she had vowed, “never again! If we ever have girls, they’ve got to have blood in their veins, not pasteurized milk. Isn’t it pitiful how that dreadful disease known as brain-wart seems to get them.”
There was no gainsaying it—eligibility to seventy-three Franklin Street required unusual, indescribable qualities. If Mrs. Manton had written down rules of conduct (which, of course, she never did), and hung them on the wall, they would have read much as follows:
“1.—Avoid extremes.
“2.—Nourish high-falooting ideas, if you wish, but keep them under your hat.
“3.—Be as happy as you choose, but don’t explode with nauseous hilarity, since somebody else may be sad.
“4.—Be downcast when you must, but don’t spread your gloom.
“5.—Be erudite, but don’t teach your ideas.
“6.—Be chuck-full of anything you choose to be chuck-full of, but sit on it.
“7.—Remember that seventy-three aims at averages, prefers neutral tints and the soft pedal.
“8.—Don’t effervesce—most of us have passed that stage.
“9.—Don’t criticize—we all have to live.
“10.—Live, but don’t plan. To-day was to-morrow, yesterday.”
Mauney felt unlikely to transgress many of these tacit rules of conduct. He was quiet enough in disposition to melt into the quiet shadows of the place, and was fond enough of the inhabitants to pattern his superficial manners after theirs. But he well knew that there was danger of breaking one of the rules. He had not yet passed the stage referred to in number eight, and was quite liable to burst forth enthusiastically to some one. His enthusiasm for his books and the sheer happiness he obtained from them was dangerously concealed. It troubled him. He wanted to talk to Max Lee, and longed for his return. Then, too, the present, though charming, was so incomplete! The others at the boarding house truly lived for the present moment, but Mauney was feeling the great future beating like a pulse. He was standing like a benighted sailor on the dark coast, feeling the break of waves he could not distinctly see, and coveting the dawn when all would be revealed.
CHAPTER III.
The Other Half of the Class.
“A morning sun, and a wine-bred child and a Latin-bred woman seldom end well.”—Herbert’s Collection.
Mauney met Lorna Freeman the first day of college. He did not know her name at first, but she impressed him. This was partly because certain grooves, instituted that day, promised to guide her in his company for the next four years, brilliant in prospect. It happened that out of the great University of Merlton, only two first year students had chosen the “straight” history course. Many others had elected to take combined courses of history plus something else or other, but of the entire academic population of the first year only two showed the real specialist thirst for history alone. This meant that they would receive much that the others would not. They would be inducted more deeply into the records of human development. They would be together, a class all by themselves, at times, penetrating further than the dilettanti, who stopped with constitutional history of Germany. For these two out-and-out students there would be interesting journeys afield.
He faced Lorna Freeman, therefore, with at least the vague knowledge that they two were the real, serious history class. They enrolled together with the assistant professor of history, Dr. Alfred K. Tanner, M.A., Ph.D., D.C.L. (and other degrees usually taken for granted), in his particular upstairs office in one of the wings of the Arts Building. Miss Freeman had already submitted her name, just as any other student might have done, although there were reasons, as shall be seen, why it was superfluous. There were a score of students outside Dr. Tanner’s door, waiting to be enrolled. But they were the part-timers, the non-specialists, the great unwashed. First attention must be given to the “straight” students, and Alfred Tanner had already given his attention to Lorna Freeman, had waved her to a stiff chair by the mullioned windows, and was now giving his attention to Mauney.
He was a big, energetic figure, even as he sat behind his flat-topped desk, with a look of keen awareness mixed with love of his work. He was grey, and bald, and hugely present. He leaned forward, gesticulating, snapping his grey eyes eagerly.
“Your name is what?” he asked.
“Bard.”
“Bard, yes, Bard. What else?” he mumbled, as he wrote it down.
“Mauney.”
“Mauney, yes; Mauney Bard! I see!” he looked up to subject Mauney to a severe scrutiny, during which he was absent-mindedly biting the nail of his little finger.
“And now, tell me, Mauney Bard,” he said suddenly, aiming his plump forefinger at his new pupil, “Tell me, as well as you can—that’s to say offhandedly—tell me exactly why you elected the straight history course?”
As he waited for an answer, he looked frowningly toward the window, rubbed his nose, and held his head like a musician preparing to judge the quality of a chord of music.
“I would say the reason is simple enough,” said Mauney.
“Good,” commended Tanner, hammering the desk with his fist: “Simple enough? Yes? Good. All right, Bard; explain that. Tell me exactly why you elected it?”
“Because,” said Mauney deliberately, “I’ve always wanted to understand the basic principles of human progress.”
Tanner, still frowning at the window, mumbled in an absent-minded tone: “‘Basic principles of human progress.’ Yes; basic principles.” Then, turning suddenly toward Mauney, he once more aimed his finger like a pistol at his face, while his voice came out with great clearness and deliberation: “Good for you. That’s good, Bard, very good. Now, you will consult your time-table to find out your classes, and, by the way, it’s a very small class this year.” He turned toward the young lady seated by the window.
“Lorna!” he said.
“Yes! Uncle Alfred,” she responded, in a clear voice, rising and gracefully approaching the desk.
“This is Mauney Bard—Miss Freeman!”
“How do you do,” she said, with a faint smile and a nod of her head.
As Mauney bowed to her he noticed what clear, blue eyes looked fearlessly into his—calm, quiet eyes, with almost a suggestion of challenge. She was in a grey street costume that clung neatly to her spare, trim form, and wore a wide-rimmed black hat that sat smartly upon her blonde hair and emphasized the natural pallor of her face. Her features were regular—a straight, refined nose, and thin, pretty lips. Her hands were extremely white. In different attire she could have played a part in a tableaux of the vestal virgins. She gave Mauney the same feeling as he had often experienced on looking across the meadows in the white light of a dewy dawn.
“You and Mr. Bard are the class,” laughed Dr. Tanner. “I hope that a friendship of reasonable rivalry may exist in the class, at all times, and that we will be able to find a room somewhere small enough to hold us.”
“I know a good place, Uncle Alfred,” said Miss Freeman.
“Where, then?”
“In the tower.”
“Well, we shall see, Lorna. We shall see. I don’t like it myself, but your suggestion merits consideration. H’m! The tower? Why on earth, my dear child, do you say the tower?”
“It isn’t in use.”
“No. Neither is the furnace room.”
“But the tower would give one such a philosophical elevation, just like old Teufelsdrockh in Carlyle’s book.”
“Oh, damn Carlyle!”
“Uncle Alfred!”
“Excuse me, Lorna,” he laughed mischievously. “Well—a place will be found. Now, you two, clear out. There’s a congregation of pilgrims near by, seeking the shrine of Magnus Apollo.”
Mauney did not know that the young lady with whom he walked down the worn stone steps of the history department was the daughter of Professor Freeman of that same department, whose office they passed on their way to the square. That was to be learned later. He only knew that she seemed an exceptionally fine person.
“Isn’t it funny,” he remarked, as they passed through the long corridor of the Arts Building. “That there should only be two of us in the class.”
“No, I don’t think it’s funny,” she said.
“I mean remarkable,” he corrected himself.
“Well, it’s a small class, certainly,” she admitted. “There are few people who elect history as a straight course in Merlton, I believe. There should be more. I had wished there would be at least another woman.”
“That would have made it pleasanter for you, Miss Freeman.”
“Naturally.”
Mauney noticed how little deference her manner contained. After he had left her at the front entrance and was on his way home, he wished that she had said: “Oh, I think we’ll get along all right.” But she had frankly admitted that another woman in the year would have made it pleasanter for her. Queer little blaming thoughts rose up in his mind against her. Then his thoughts changed. He began to admire her attitude. She had been absolutely frank. Was that not rather unusual? Was she not an unusually truthful kind of girl?
Presently he lost all touch with the argument. His brain was painting pictures of her, in dignified poses, representing some abstract idea of virtue. Finally he checked the images and cursed himself for being such a susceptible person. Miss Freeman was merely a member of the class. Half the class had no right to be thinking such thoughts of the other half.
Nevertheless Mauney’s first impression of university life was an impression of a woman, the first woman, in fact, who ever seriously disturbed his thoughts. That night he went into Max Lee’s room to have a smoke. Max was tired after his summer of teaching, and was viewing the fifth and last year of his course with evident distaste.
“Sit down, Mauney, my son,” he invited. “There’s some good cigarettes. I’m glad you’re taking to smokes. It will make things evener between us. Well, how’s things?”
“Not bad, Max,” he replied, taking one of the easy chairs. “I got enrolled to-day, but haven’t seen much of the university life yet. The assistant professor of history, Dr. Tanner, is a good fellow. I’m going to like him. He’s got a big-brotherly sort of way with him, and I hope he lectures to us. I didn’t see the professor yet. I suppose he’s too important for a mere first-year man to meet so soon.”
“How many are in your group?”
“Just two. Myself and a young lady, whom I met this morning in Tanner’s office. Her name is Freeman—rather a good-looking person. She and I are apparently booked up together for a four-years voyage.”
“In that case,” smiled Max, “I hope she’s companionable.”
“Well,” he replied very seriously, “that’s doubtful. I wish there was another man along—somebody I could swear at when I felt like it. I’ll make the best of it. She may be a really fine person. She’s a niece of Tanner’s, too. When do you start work?”
“To-morrow. Fifth year is pretty easy, but I wish it was over. I’m getting sick of the whole game.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Money, of course.”
“Do you mean you’re short of cash?”
“Sure. It’s going to be tough wiggling to get through this year,” he admitted. “Do you know, lack of money is the one, big, damned tragedy of my life?”
“Could I lend you some?” Mauney asked simply.
“Could you—what?” exclaimed Lee, sitting up. “Have you got money?”
“Some,” admitted Mauney. “I could lend you a few hundred, if you need it.”
“It’s mighty decent of you, boy,” Max said. “But I couldn’t accept it.”
“You don’t need to feel that way.”
“But I do nevertheless. No, I couldn’t. That’s all.”
“Will you promise to let me know if you need it, later?”
“Look here,” said Lee, settling back in his chair wearily. “I mentioned money only to dismiss the topic. I have no desire for wealth, and it’s not immediate needs I’m thinking of. But here I am, fagged, at the start of my last year. When I get my M.D. I’ll be as far from making money as I am now. It’s getting to be an up-hill game, you see? There are certain things that a fellow wants to do some time before he dies, and getting married is one of them.”
“Yes,” said Mauney; “I suppose that comes into the scheme of things.”
“The scheme of nothing!” scoffed Lee. “It simply gets into your blood when you meet the right woman.”
“Am I to suppose,” asked Mauney, in a teasing tone, “that you have met her?”
Lee was silent. His dark eyes were seriously looking into space, while his cigarette burned slowly between his fingers. Mauney realized that he had trampled carelessly on holy ground, but allowed his own silence to be his only apology.
“We’ve known each other long enough, Mauney, to understand how things affect us individually. I’ve never mentioned women to you. But there has been one, all along—this past year. She’s real. I love her, but I can’t tell her. She regards me only as a friend, and I wouldn’t let her know how I feel for anything.”
“You may wonder why I wouldn’t,” he continued. “Well, it’s like this, I’ve made up my mind to go into research work next year, if my health remains good, and that kind of work won’t give me a living, let alone enable me to marry. She’s a girl who deserves happiness. Some one else will give it to her—not me.”
“But the future may be brighter than you think, Max.”
“I’m not a pessimist, Mauney,” he said thoughtfully, leaning his head away back and closing his eyes. “I keep up a cheerful front most of the time. But I know—I simply know that I’ll never marry Freda MacDowell.”
“What is she like, Max?”
“I’ll have you meet her some time. She’s just like nobody else.”
The opening days of college dragged slowly for Mauney. There were broken classes, time-tables not yet perfected, initiations and other interfering details. Then, as if suddenly, the great university wheel quivered to a start and immediately swung around with remarkable smoothness and astonishing rapidity. In the daytime he sat listening to interesting lectures. In the evenings he lived with his books, deeply absorbed, as the weeks passed, with the problems of history. The records of human progress drew him with a warm, romantic attraction, for his imagination filled in the gaps that make history different from story. Characters became real and living. He rose and fell in sympathy with the dim fortunes of forgotten men. The formal page, with its caption and its paragraphs, faded into invisibility, leaving a glowing passage of actual life in which he brought himself temporarily to live.
It was very engrossing. Lorna Freeman found it so, too. She grew somewhat more friendly as the weeks passed, and by mid-term she would talk volubly with Mauney on historical subjects. He found her mind to be an acutely exacting one. It surprised him at first to discover such a mind in a woman. He thought her mental powers exceeded his own, because she could nearly always trip him up in an argument, a thing which she habitually did without exultation, but just methodically, as if tripping him up were part of her natural occupation. One day he learned that her father was Professor Robert Freeman, the seldom-seen head of the department. Mauney only saw him once, as he was pointed out walking thoughtfully through the corridors, a small, shrewd-appearing man, with grey eyes and a fixed smile.
History was absorbing, but our young hero was finding himself a good deal in thought about Lorna Freeman. Not once had he ever said a thing even faintly familiar. One Monday morning, however, the temptation became unduly strong. Miss Freeman was seated in the seminary room by the long table, waiting for Dr. Tanner to take the class. It was winter, and her fur coat was laid neatly over the back of an empty chair. She never removed her hat, a prerogative gained from the intimate size of the class. As Mauney entered the room she looked up from a book and nodded.
“Good morning,” he said, as he took a chair at the opposite side of the table. The large Gothic window at the front of the room commanded a view of the square, busy with students hurrying in various directions to their lectures. Dr. Tanner was late. They sat for fully a quarter of an hour, she quietly reading, Mauney stealing occasional glances at her pensive face. He tried to categorize Lorna Freeman, but could not. She did not fit into any types existent in his mind. She was definitely unusual. She attracted him on this account. There was also about her a certain queenliness. Why had they never once found anything to talk about except their work?
“I guess Dr. Tanner has been waylaid,” he ventured at length.
“He’s usually so punctual, too,” she replied, and then continued reading.
“Do you ever get tired of studying?” he went on, determined to sound her.
“Well, naturally. Don’t you?”
“I certainly do. I suppose if there was another man in the class I wouldn’t mind it so much.”
She glanced quickly up.
“Mind what, Mr. Bard?”
“Well, you see, Miss Freeman, perhaps there’s something else in life besides continual study. I’d like to have somebody to chew the rag with, once in a blue moon.”
She laughed.
“I don’t know whether I’m qualified for chewing the rag or not,” she said slowly. “What does the process signify?”
“Oh, just being sort of human, once in a while.” There was a savor of mild cautery in his tone that did not fail to reach his fair companion.
“And what, pray, does being human mean?” she inquired.
“Personal, I imagine. It means cutting down this constant barrier you keep up.”
Her eyebrows lowered into a delicate frown, while her calm, blue eyes took on an expression half-way between surprise and displeasure. Then her pale face blushed.
“Well, Mr. Bard, I hardly understand!” she began. “I—”
“Hold on,” he interrupted. “You mustn’t be offended. That’s the last idea in my head. If I didn’t care at all I wouldn’t have mentioned it.”
He rose from the table and walked slowly, to stand by the great window. Her eyes followed his big form, and then rested on the back of his auburn head. She was not only puzzled, but even confused. After a hesitant moment she rose very slowly and then walked quickly to his side.
She touched him on the arm and looked up into his face.
“Oh, tell me,” she said with some distress, “have I done anything to hurt your feelings? You’re such a genuine sort of a man, I really wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
Mauney’s blue eyes opened wide with surprise. He saw such child-like simplicity in her face that he smiled with admiration. He knew, just then, that he could have surrounded her shoulders with both his arms.
“Thanks,” he said. “You’ve got me trimmed a mile for brains. That’s the whole trouble.”
“How do you mean?”
“Brains! You seem to have more of them than I have.”
She frowned and glanced at his mouth.
“Well, does one usually say that, even if one thinks so?”
“I don’t know,” he answered seriously. “I said it because it’s so, and because it’s just your brains that keep you from treating me humanly.”
“Oh—you mean chewing the rag?”
“Sure. You see, I don’t know how to act with you. We’re always together and I think it would be better to be a little more informal.”
She placed the end of her fountain pen against her lips, pensively.
“Oh, let’s!” she suddenly exclaimed. “That would be so nice, wouldn’t it?”
“You see,” he said, glancing toward the great square, “the trouble has been that I didn’t know whether you had any heart or not. You have just been a sort of disembodied intelligence.”
“Now, listen,” she said, with a look of mild reproach. “I’m sorry if I’ve made things unpleasant. As you say, it would be better if there was another man in the class. But there isn’t likely to be. So, consequently, we will have to hit upon a reasonable modus vivendi. I think it’s really awfully nice of you to be so frank. But, really, I don’t quite understand what’s wrong. I have always just been natural, I think.”
“Perhaps. But we never took time to get acquainted,” he explained. “I know what you think about the secession of the plebs, but I have no idea what you think about Tanner, or me, or music, or friendship. I don’t know what your hobbies are, or what you think about in your spare time. I’d like to talk over these things if you ever find time.”
“That’s fine. Why shouldn’t we? Will you come over to my house for tea some day?”
“When?”
“Why—any time. Say to-morrow?”
It was agreed.
CHAPTER IV.
The Professor.
“Let the fools talk, knowledge has its value.”—La Fontaine Fables.
The tea at Freeman’s was over.
Mauney was sitting in Max Lee’s room after supper. These evening chats had become almost necessary. There was a time when they could both digest their evening meals downstairs in the dining-room in conversation with the rest. But now they neither felt ready to settle down to their studies without brief exchange of ideas and impressions.
“Anything new, my son?”
“Very new,” admitted Mauney, lighting a cigarette. “Sit down, Max. I’m going to tell you about the Freeman’s.”
“The young lady, Lorna, I suppose,” drawled Lee, as he sprawled in one of the easy chairs. “Women are always an interesting matter to me. And you’re a popular devil with women, too—”
“Hold on—”
“True. Only they all wonder. They all wonder at you.”
“At me?”
“Correct. You have a woman-hating nature. You don’t warm up to women very much. That acts as a challenge and keeps them coming. Do you do that on purpose?”
“I don’t hate ’em, boy,” he contradicted. “But I find they are very uncertain beings. Take this Freeman girl. Why, you’d travel fifteen days before you’d find another brain like hers, Max. She’s like a steel-trap with the real snap to it. If she doesn’t quite ‘savez’ what you’re talking about, she lights right into your remark, like an expert surgeon with a knife, and dissects it down to the heart. Then, having established your meaning, she frames her reply with the greatest care.... My God!”
“What’s wrong?”
“You’d think she was being interviewed by a reporter. She’s so precise about giving you her real, unbiased, judicial opinion. Whew! That brain of hers! It’s wonderful, wonderful. I wish I had her brains, Max. A memory like a photograph album. Just turn it up, see? A judgment as deft as Solomon’s—a good judgment—nothing leaks out of it—every point receives due weight. She’s different. She speaks differently from most people. You never know what she’s going to say. In fact, you can be sure she won’t say what any other girl would say. Suppose you were to ask an average girl how she likes playing cards, what would you expect her to say?”
“Oh, she might say ‘I adore cards,’ or ‘I’m not especially keen,’ or ‘I’d like to play them with you in a cosy nook,’ and so forth, ad nauseam.”
“Well, you’d never guess what she said. I asked her if she liked cards. She said, ‘That all depends on the cards. If they’re very new and slippery, I could sit for hours sliding them through my fingers; but if they stick the least bit they make me shiver.’ That’s only one example. I asked her what her aim in life was.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“You impertinent rascal! Nobody does that.”
“Why not?”
“Nobody has any aim in life—we just drift. Well, what did she say?”
“She sat back in her chair, smiling as if she enjoyed trying to figure it out. Then she said, ‘Oh, Mr. Bard, did you ever listen to a violin until you were entranced?’ I admitted that I had, at times, done so. ‘Well!’ she said, ‘that’s just it. I want to make my life just like a beautiful strain of music.’ Now what do you think of that, Max?”
Lee frowned. “Frothy stuff to me. Unreal, hyper-imaginative, away off the trail, anÆmic and supermellifluous.”
Mauney laughed.
“You should have taken up writing,” he said. “Queer family, these Freemans. I never met nor ever heard of anybody a bit like them. The professor is as gentle as a woman, but he gives you a feeling like a storm brewing. It’s hard to express. He’s courteous, refined, and pleasant, but he’s diabolically clever. We haven’t had any lectures from him yet. He was up in his study at home, slaying a book. She introduced me. He couldn’t have been nicer, and yet—well, damn it—you can’t get hold of him. He’s like the ivory playing cards. He slips through your fingers. You think you’ve got him, and just then you notice that he’s miles ahead of you.”
Mauney then shook with sudden laughter.
“What’s the matter with you?” Max said, glaring at him. “Been having a tooth extracted under gas?”
“No. But, I don’t get that family at all. There’s Mrs. Freeman, too. She’s like a velvet comforter laid softly about your soul. Her voice is like velvet. She’s more genuine, I’d wager, than her husband. But—oh, Lord!—there’s some tragedy. Such an endless, engulfing tragedy; so big and endless that she has developed a kind of martyr attitude. She’s like a Sister of the Perpetual Adoration, suddenly required to do penance by living a civil life.”
“I’ll bet the tragedy is her husband!” said Max, with a tone of certitude.
“Maybe it is. Well, Lorna’s an only child. A queer girl; never met anybody like her, and—”
“You seem quite interested, though, don’t you, my son?”
“Well, she’s beautiful, Max.”
“Oh, that changes the situation. More power to your elbow. But wait.” His black eyes wandered casually over Mauney’s open features and a smile stole over his lips. “Do you know, you’re liable to fall for her.”
“I know it. I’ve fallen already,” Mauney admitted. “I’m in hot water. I want to be near her. She’s like an Easter lily. I want to—to pick that lily.”
A man never knows his capacity for action along any line until put to the test. Mauney, burdened with trying to find himself in many ways, received the added burden of a woman’s attraction. It was all new to him. Never before had it happened. Here was Lorna Freeman, fresh as the lily to which he had referred, with him every day of the week except Sunday. Even the Sabbath began to hold her, too, for she accepted his invitations to stroll out Riverton way. There were long reaches of broad, board walks stretched beside the river where they perambulated, just like less sophisticated clerks and stenographers, who also found Riverton good. The Freemans never had a motor-car. Mauney did not realize that he had money enough to buy one. Consequently their feet took them wherever they went. Long strolls on Sunday, during which they got away from history entirely! In fact nothing could be farther removed from history. The vivid present swelled up before him so gigantically that he had trouble sticking to his books.
He wanted to say something to Lorna, but kept putting it off, partly because he was uncertain as to the thing itself, and partly because more preparation seemed necessary. He found that he could keep on looking at her for hours, but that, on attempting to describe his feelings, he was overtaken by a sense of diffidence. Would she quite understand him?
He was on the third term time-table now. Christmas and Easter were past. Spring and the prospect of examinations were at hand. There came languorous evenings. The precincts of his bedroom grew tiresome. April moved the lace curtains inside his open window. He got up from his desk and stretched himself and went straight to Freeman’s, on Crandall Street, and asked if Lorna was at home. She was out, but was expected home soon, and he was invited to wait for her. Perhaps, Mrs. Freeman suggested, he would like to go up with the professor until she came back.
“Of course you know where to find him,” she said, with a soft gesture toward the staircase. “Up in his study. Always, always studying, you know.”
He thanked her and went up. He had been up once or twice before with Lorna, indulging in very deep talk. Moral philosophy, ethics, conceptions of history! Very pleasant occasions, to be sure, but equally as strange as Freeman himself. Now, to be alone with the head of the department! The study door was closed and he knocked.
“Come,” called the professor.
As he entered he beheld the historian, lounging in a deep Morris chair before a grate fire, with an open book on his knees.
“Well, Mauney,” he said pleasantly, as he rose. “Won’t you sit down?”
Professor Robert Freeman was such a mite of a man that Mauney wondered how he had managed to brave the storm of life for fifty years. Whenever he saw him he felt like saying: “Well, professor, I expected, before seeing you again, to hear of your funeral. I expected you’d pick up a pneumonia germ somewhere and pass out.”
Mauney would know him better later on, for the biological tragedy entailed in a struggle between germs and this frail body had been given as careful consideration by its owner as almost everything else, and, arguing that continued existence depended either on keeping up a strong physical resistance or else on avoiding germs altogether, Freeman chose to pursue the latter policy. His cunning brain saved him. He never rode on street cars. He avoided funerals, theatres and churches. “Germs? Why, don’t get them. That’s all!”
Freeman’s long, thin face, with its grey eyes trained upon the world like vigilant sentinels, smiled perpetually. His nearly-bald pate sported a little patch of thin, grey hair, parted carefully in the centre. But that smile! It was, in a sense, all of Freeman.
“What kind of smile, in reality, is it?” thought Mauney.
Never a happy smile, though at times it betokened delight. Never a suspicious smile, though it frequently indicated deep-buried fires of irony that could not be given full scope. Usually it was a polite, deferential grimace, that suggested Voltaire ever so slightly. So far from being repulsive, it put Mauney immediately at ease. Its social value was its hospitality, an almost pitying hospitality, as if the professor was pleased enough to have intercourse with others of the same biological species, seeing what a mess life was for all of them.
“That’s exactly it,” soliloquized Mauney. “That unpleasant, insuperable, unavoidable mess—human life. It’s his stock-in-trade.”
The man’s erudition was profound. He had wracked his brains energetically on every department of thought, from religion to geology, and back again several dozens of times, looking for just one peep-hole of light and hope. The tragedy was that not one peep-hole had been found. Philosophy, logic, ethics, comparative theology, political economy, history of all kinds, literatures of all nationalities—he had dissected them all, pruned them all, reduced them all to their elemental fallacies, and there the matter stood.
“Mauney,” he had said during one of their discussions, “you can’t be sure of anything. You can prove nothing. Why? Simply because, in any conclusion at which you arrive, you can never be sure of your premises.”
Just why the uncertainty of one’s premises should so rob life of its many enthusiasms, Mauney could not understand. At heart he never enjoyed talking with Freeman, for, although he admired his adroit intellect, the professor always left him temporarily transfixed on the horns of a logical dilemma, or else temporarily treed by a savage, snarling premise. But as a mental exercise it was great fun, and its depressing effects yielded to fresh air as an antidote.
At any rate Robert Freeman was a great man. His opinion on historical questions was a high court of appeal. His monumental work on the constitutional history of France was on the shelf of every self-respecting library in the country. It was an honor to have access to the great man’s home. “Freeman on Constitutional History” was a familiar marginal reference in text books. Freeman, alone in his library, with a big pipe and a huge, red can of tobacco beside him on the table, was a privilege. With almost reverent eyes Mauney looked upon the man who held the chair of history in the renowned University of Merlton—Merlton, that light set upon the summit of the world for the world’s illumination, that arch-planter of wisdom’s germs, that spring of the river of knowledge. And Freeman, that inextinguishable flame, whose brilliant radiance shone abroad—here he sat, smiling, smoking, conversing.
“I hope I’m not taking your time, Professor,” he apologized.
“No, I’m just reading a light thing,” he said, indicating his book. “You know I read everything, Mauney. I’m like a butterfly—taking a little honey from this flower and a little from that!” His long fingers turned lightly through the pages. Mauney observed them—those long fingers, those restless hands of Freeman’s, those long, thin hands like a woman’s, that were always twining themselves about some object. If they were ever still it must have been during sleep, but even then Mauney could more easily fancy them moving sinuously about the folds of his counterpane. They were like his mind. If they held a book before his eyes they kept feeling the covers, as if his brain, in its intent of complete mastery, took cognizance even of the texture of the binding.
“And I find,” continued Freeman, “that it’s wise to read light, little things like this. You know, enjoyment is everything.”
“But is it?” ventured Mauney, consciously drifting into the familiar channel of their arguments. “Is enjoyment really everything?”
Freeman’s face became delicately ethereal as he considered the question.
“I think so,” he said softly. “But if you are in any doubt, please begin by stating your own opinion, will you not?”
For a moment Mauney smoked in silence, reminded of Socrates.
“Yes,” he consented. “Now I think that enjoyment is comparatively incidental. A man has a duty to perform in the world, and he must perform it whether he enjoys doing so or not.”
“All right, Mauney,” smiled Freeman. “But won’t you admit that the motive that empowers you to perform your duty is the prospect of future enjoyment in seeing your task completed?”
“That, professor, is equivalent to saying that all effort is inspired by the hope of getting a thrill.”
“Well, isn’t it true? We are selfish at all times. We want the thrill. I don’t care where you take it. It’s the same principle everywhere. Socrates drank hemlock because it thrilled him to think he was abiding by the legal decision of his country. And even of Jesus Christ it is written: ‘For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross.’”
This last example came as a jolt to Mauney’s being. His thoughts drifted. There was a long pause before they resumed conversation. For an hour they continued. To whatever argument they turned—and they turned to several—Mauney felt that, while he was consistently defeated in a superficial sense, he was victorious in a deeper sense that Freeman could not, or would not, grasp. As in their previous conversations, they eventually arrived at the blind, stone wall of nullity, where Freeman’s declared position was one of absolute mental helplessness, and Mauney’s one of undeclared boredom and impatience.
When at last he heard Lorna playing downstairs, he rose and took leave of the professor.
Why had he come so eagerly to-night? The question forced him to pause on the lower steps of the staircase. In the drawing-room he saw her seated by the piano. The riddle of his attraction faded out of his thoughts as he leaned on the banister to watch and listen. She was absorbed in the skilful rendering of a scale-infested classic. Although her hands, like racing elves, flew with dexterous speed upon the ivory keys, her body was reposefully still, her chin slightly lifted, her eyes viewing the performance like impartial critics. When she finished, quite unconscious of Mauney’s presence, and picked up her kerchief from the music holder to rub her hands, he remained on the steps spell-bound with admiration. Then she turned her head and, as she saw him, rose gracefully, but with much coloring of her face.
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” he explained, as he came near her. “What is that?”
She told him the name of the selection.
“It’s quite difficult, Mauney. Not very entertaining, either. I fear it will be some time before I venture to exhibit it.” She looked up with a serious, accusing glance. “You took a very unfair advantage of me, didn’t you?”
“How, Lorna?” he asked in surprise.
Then he realized what she meant. Queer frankness! Queer bashfulness! Did she ever think anything without saying it? Did she ever withhold a criticism?
“Why, no,” he said, “I—I didn’t mean to be—rude, you know. Aren’t you a strange girl?”
“What will I play for you?” she asked, turning through some sheets of music. “Do you like this?”
She held up Nevin’s “Day in Venice.”
“Um—h’m,” he nodded. “That’s wonderful!” He had never heard it in his life. He was looking into her blue eyes above the sheet of music. “Don’t you think so, Lorna?”
“What are you staring at?”
“Was I staring? Forgive me.”
As she began the piece he lounged in a chair near by. Nevin’s dream, in all its pretty moods, all its imagery! He half-listened. He wanted to think.
The Freeman home was growing comfortable. All its members were, no doubt, off the beaten path. Mauney felt a commendation in their very originality. If the professor chose to spend his time in the desultory travail of mental investigations, was not his occupation as justifiable as the time-wasting hobbies of most men? If Mrs. Freeman wished to limit her mind, as she apparently did, to devotional pursuits, was this any more to be criticized than the asininity of bridge-parties and the hypocritical commitments of woman’s average social life? And if, finally, Lorna chose to be so uncomfortably frank as to inform him how little she relished eaves-dropping over a banister, was her frankness not, in reality, part of a truthful, clean-cut personality, that admitted no deception? The home was growing comfortable.
But he did not know what he wanted to say to Lorna. Their conversation roamed aimlessly and pleasantly along accustomed paths. He found himself admiring her queenly face and groping for words. After an hour the professor’s soft step was heard on the stairs. He came in, to find them sitting in separate chairs, five feet apart. He smiled and glanced from one to the other.
“Well, people,” he said, in his quiet voice, “what is the big topic of discussion to-night?”
“We haven’t struck one yet, sir,” Mauney replied. “We’ve been avoiding controversial subjects.”
“Would you like some tea?” Freeman asked.
This was the historian’s failing—tea at night, hot, weak and in quantities, before he retired to the midnight vigil of his more serious study. Lorna led the way to the dining-room and made it. Holding their cups and saucers they stood talking about art for art’s sake. This was introduced by a still-life group in oils, hung over the sideboard, and completed, at length, by an appeal to the professor, who stated that, without any shadow of doubt, art had no higher aim than art. But while he talked he looked from one to the other, as if, in the undercurrents of his brain, he was attempting to decide how intimate a relationship existed between them, and as if, so Mauney felt, he himself would be the greatest obstacle to any suitor for his daughter’s hand.
Later Lorna bade Mauney good-night in the vestibule, between the hall-door and the street-door. Some sense of being closeted from the world stole upon him and with it a desire to take Lorna passionately in his arms. With an effort he checked the impulse.
“Lorna,” he said, “do you know that I nearly kissed you. What would you have done?” He still held her hand.
“I suppose I should have shivered and been angry!” she replied, simply.
“Then,” he said, giving her hand a little pat, “aren’t you glad I didn’t?”
“Naturally.”
From her complacent tone he might have been asking the question, “Do you prefer wealth to poverty?”
CHAPTER V.
Dinner at the de Freville’s.
“Her voice, whate’er she said, enchanted;
Like music to the heart it went.
And her dark eyes—how eloquent!
As what they would ’twas granted.”—Samuel Rogers, Jacqueline.
Mauney soon realized that, unsatisfactory as was the progress of his affair with Lorna Freeman, he was gaining some advantages from his connection with the family. Life was now a very different thing from that of Lantern Marsh farm. He had at last arrived into the midst of education. He had found people who knew things and were willing to teach him out of their knowledge. Moreover, he could discern that he was being gradually adopted by the Freemans. Through their influence he received an invitation to a dinner at the home of FranÇois de Freville. It was written in French. It was to be, for him, a most unusual pleasure and a very exciting one. He had a tailor measure him for a dinner-jacket suit. Lorna fell in love with it, when she saw it, on the evening of the function at de Freville’s. They met at Freeman’s and walked up Crandall Street behind the professor and his wife.
FranÇois de Freville, the popular professor of French, always entertained charmingly. He could not do it in any other way. This was a “Faculty dinner,” all the guests being members of the university staff, with a few exceptions, as in Mauney’s case. As a matter of fact it was a rare privilege to be invited and to meet personally the brilliant men who, on such an occasion, put off the garments of their wonted academic restraint, to indulge in free, good-fellowship. FranÇois himself lent a distinctly exotic atmosphere. With delightful informality he stood butler inside his own street door, and roared greetings to the guests as they arrived. He was a giant who must bow his head on entering doorways to avoid striking his skull—a man of unusual stature, big-bodied, big-handed, big-headed. Perhaps the charm of being received tempestuously by FranÇois lay in the ludicrous idea that this herculean host need not necessarily receive anyone, for if a party of armed militia presented themselves demanding reception they would certainly never get in. FranÇois, standing with his big, red face, his enormous black eye-brows, his enormous smile, that burst forth from lairs of brows and black moustaches, would hurl back invasion with smiling ease. In every detail of appearance he suggested the strong-sinewed “kicker-out” of the continental restaurant—just as brusque, just as impulsive, just as toweringly imposing. It was his perversion of function that titillated the fancy, for he was welcoming his guests. One by one he received them, with a fitting word for each, a word of liberty, in fact, which only FranÇois would be permitted, of all men, to speak.
“Ah! Madame Freeman!” he took her hand, as she entered, between his own enormous hands to pet it. “Vous Êtes trÈs charmante ce soir!”
Mrs. Freeman was not charming to-night. She was never charming, being always too instinct with the soft, great mystery of her personal tragedy. That, however, was quite immaterial. Even if, after thirty years of married life, only dim relics of charm had survived, there was still a truant delight in being told this falsehood. Mauney saw her warm to the salutation of FranÇois, and manage to get past his great bulk in excellent spirits.
“Ah, M’sieur le Professeur!” bellowed the giant as he greeted Freeman. What a contrast the two men formed! Freeman smiled apprehensively at the pile of vibrant life before him, as if dreading the forthcoming bon mot.
“Le grand homme, mes amis,” FranÇois vociferously announced to a cluster of guests in the drawing-room. “Le grand homme est arrivÉ!”
The laughter which greeted this announcement was restrained because, apparently, the guests felt that Freeman actually was a great man.
“Bon soir, Mam’selle,” to Lorna.
“Bon soir, M’sieur Bard. Vous Êtes bienvenue.”
The host still stood at his post, when Mauney wandered, a few minutes later, through the hallway, and beheld him welcoming a new arrival. Mauney was impressed with the new arrival’s appearance. A woman of perhaps twenty-two, and of bewitching beauty, she stood, her hand still grasped by the Frenchman and laughing at his words.
“Bon soir, bon soir, Oiseau!” burst forth FranÇois and bent to kiss her hand with perfect gallantry. “Bienvenue, ma petite Oiseau, la maison est À toi!”
Mauney wondered at the nickname. Perhaps her movements, her manner, as lightsome as a bird’s, had suggested it, or perhaps the plaintive alto note of her voice made FranÇois think—as it did Mauney—of treetops on summer evenings. She stood for a moment looking up with admiration into her host’s eyes.
“I don’t know the French for it,” she laughed, “but if your house is Oiseau’s it’s a roost, isn’t it?”
Thereat de Freville roared, and, holding his sides, watched Oiseau’s neat ankles (as did Mauney also) while she climbed the staircase to remove her cloak.
While the guests waited for dinner, they talked in several groups about the hall and the tastefully arranged drawing-room. De Freville found Mauney standing alone and introduced him to “Oiseau.” Mauney had difficulty understanding the Professor’s French, his only admitted language, but managed to draw from his explosive encomium, that Miss MacDowell was in some way or other an exceptional person in the University of Merlton. When FranÇois left them she laughed with amusement, turning from his hulk of a figure to her new acquaintance.
“Have you known the professor long, Mr. Bard?” she asked.
“Just met him to-night. A good sort, isn’t he?”
“Oh, remarkable,” she said. “His robust voice always makes me think of somebody yelling into an empty rain barrel.”
Miss MacDowell was a decided brunette, with very beautiful dark brown eyes that permitted themselves to be looked into. Mauney at once felt depth after depth revealing themselves as he looked—comforting eyes, that seemed as much alive as the rest of her oval face. She gained strength from her arched nose, and tenderness from her delicate lips. Her upper lip drew up at times, exposing a white gleam of teeth. There was an unusual sympathy about her upper lip. It drew up with delicate quiverings as if attuning itself to catch his mood. Her black hair and brows, together with her youthful color, completed the outward appearance of a woman in whom he became immediately interested.
“Do you attend the university?” he ventured.
“Yes. It’s a habit,” she laughed. “Three years of it.”
“What line are you especially interested in, Miss MacDowell?”
“None, Mr. Bard. I didn’t come to college to get an education.”
“Indeed! Why, then, did you come, may I ask?”
“Oh, just to get enough highbrow information so that I would know what highbrows were talking about.” She said this quite seriously, with a note of unexpected bitterness in her voice. “If there’s one cruel advantage one person ever takes of another it’s to talk about something of which the other person knows nothing. If I hadn’t come to the university, then, no matter where I went, any girl who had waded through Horace, or physics, or solid geometry, could make me shrivel into insignificance by mentioning ‘O fons BandusiÆ,’ or Boyle’s law or conic sections. As it stands now I know a Latin poem by its sound. I know that a law in physics isn’t essential to individual happiness, and that conic sections (so far as I’m concerned) are nothing but an inconsiderate imposition.”
Mauney laughed and drew up a couple of chairs.
“Now, for argument’s sake,” he said, when they were seated—“mathematics is great. It’s wonderful to know that there is an eternal principle of fitness governing problems of numbers.”
“It may be wonderful enough,” she conceded, leaning over the arm of her chair, “but to dwell on it would take the pastoral quality clean out of life for me. I’m lacking in appreciation of such marvels. I’m interested in folks—just folks. I want to know how they feel. I want to understand folks.”
Mauney was somewhat put to it to gauge the strong individualistic note in Miss MacDowell, but was determined to try still harder.
“Do you believe in woman suffrage?” he ventured.
She shook her head.
“Surely,” he said, “you believe in women’s rights.”
“Certainly not,” replied Miss MacDowell, calmly. “We are the weaker sex. God made us weak on purpose.”
“Never!” argued Mauney, although he liked her attitude. “That’s an old bogy that got a fatal foothold in antediluvian days, and it’s taken about fifty centuries to get the idea even questioned. Ask any woman. She’ll tell you that the greatest movement of the twentieth century is the emancipation of women!”
“Tell me,” she said, pointedly, “from what do women seek to be emancipated?”
“Why! from an inferior rating. Woman’s intelligence and her equality demand a better label than man’s helpmeet.”
She cast a shrewd glance at Mauney, as if doubting his sincerity.
“Aren’t you a bit of a bluffer?” she asked. “Well, listen; you’re off the track. Woman’s inherent weakness is the very secret of her strength. Take any man, no matter how stubbornly masculine, and there’s a woman somewhere who can just simply make or mar him.”
“Do you think so?” queried Mauney, looking more deeply into her pretty, dark eyes.
“Well, if you don’t believe me, open your eyes and look at life!”
Mauney enjoyed her mild exasperation and determined to extract her viewpoint still further. There was as yet no sign of dinner, and the score of guests still kept up a monotonous buzz of conversation. He noticed Lorna talking with Mr. Nutbrown Hennigar, a lecturer in the history department.
“Don’t you think men are irrational beings, Miss MacDowell?” he said, turning his chair a little toward her.
“What difference does that make?”
“You might have more respect for them if they weren’t!”
“Respect men!” she laughed. “Why I think they’re just wonderful. I just love men. But, tell me, Mr. Bard, what are you taking at the university?”
“History.”
“Like it?”
“Yes, I do. What are you taking?”
“General course.”
“Like it?”
“Oh, please don’t ask me!” she implored, playfully putting up her slender hands in mock impatience. “The college game never quite phizzed on me, I’m afraid. I’m tired of it. May as well tell the truth, as lie about it, eh?”
“Surely. But what is it you dislike about education?”
“Education’s all right. It’s the university. Some day I’m going to write a book on how to run one’s university—just like a hand-guide on how to run one’s automobile. I’ll send you a copy, if I don’t forget.”
“Please don’t. I imagine it would be hot stuff.”
“Thanks. I take that as a compliment, whether it is or not.” She laughed as she turned toward the other guests. “There’s Nutbrown Hennigar over yonder talking with Lorna Freeman. He’d murder me if he heard me talk about college this way. You know him of course. Funny chap. Likeable in many ways. And he’s certainly in the swim.”
“Swim—how?”
“Why! His father owns the university—Senator Hennigar, yonder, talking with Madame de Freville. He looks like cupid at seventy, minus the wings.”
“He’s the Chancellor, isn’t he?” Mauney asked. “I’m just a green-horn in Merlton. I’m afraid of my shadow at an affair like this.”
“Chancellor—yes—and then some! You certainly are green if you don’t know all about the Hennigars. However, you’ll learn, Mr. Bard. Hennigar is the great password. You can do anything if you have a little bit of Hennigar. There’s Nutbrown, for example, lecturing in history. Someday he’ll be the professor. There’s Professor Freeman, married to Hennigar’s daughter.”
“No,” said Mauney, suddenly sitting up in astonishment.
“But, yes,” quoth Miss MacDowell in surprise. “Didn’t you know that?”
“I certainly did not.”
“Well, how much will I tell you? Who are your friends here?”
“The Freemans.”
“That’s too bad,” she sighed playfully. “My tongue will get me in wrong, sooner or later.”
“Not at all. Shoot ahead. I’m very keen on what you’re telling me.”
“In that case I’ll continue. Professor Freeman is a brilliant man, but, without a little bit of Hennigar, his brilliance would have been doomed to obscurity like the jewel in the cave. He started life as poor as a church mouse, but saw help in two directions. I know him like a book. He got a job as lecturer in history. He stuck to business and avoided individualistic tendencies. I give him great credit. He knew that since the days when Socrates held tutorial groups in porches down to the present when he held his own in university halls, a fair volume of knowledge had been amassed—quite enough historical data to engage anyone comfortably. He had opinions of his own, but ascension on the academic ladder meant consistent self-suppression. He quietly taught the young idea old ideas, and rose in favor, until, gradually passing through assistant-ships and associate-ships, he stretched out finally in the chair of history. But, of course, the magic behind it all was his connection with the Hennigar family. You see, the senator is Chancellor, chairman of the building committee, friend of the university in general, and heaviest endower in particular. If Freeman could have done a cleverer thing than marry Miss Hennigar, it would have required a committee of corporation lawyers to discover it.”
“That’s news to me,” said Mauney. “I appreciate getting in on a little gossip like this, too. Who’s your friend here, Miss MacDowell?”
“I haven’t any,” she said. “Nutbrown Hennigar fusses over me at times. But I’m here just because FranÇois met me in the east corridor this morning and told me I had to come up for dinner. I never made any bids for getting in with this crowd. I don’t fit, anyway. But FranÇois insisted, and then Madame ’phoned me, so what could I do?”
“They seem like a friendly bunch of people, though,” Mauney remarked.
“Friendly!” she returned. “Why not? They’re pretty nearly all related. There is Alfred Tanner—he’s a real fellow—but he married Senator Hennigar’s other daughter. Everybody else here, if not related to Hennigar, has a very special stand in. It’s the great eternal family compact. I’ll mention that in my hand-book, too.”
“But the senator seems to be a good old chap!”
“Certainly. I admire him. You know how he made all his money, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Jam,” said Miss MacDowell simply. It was apparent from her animation that she loved talking about the man. Mauney wondered at her, nevertheless, for it struck him that she was ill-advised to say so much to a stranger. Fortunately, everything she had said, thus far, had struck home with unusual force and greatly appealed to him. But how could she take the risk of committing herself so freely?
“You see, it’s just like this,” she said, lowering her voice and smiling with the mischievous glee of a child consciously undertaking some deviltry, “Hennigar discovered early in life that plums and ginger-root blend in a manner most gratifying to the palate. He persevered with his formula. With the austere self-denial of the specialist, he worked hard and became the arch-confectioner. He pyramided profits into advertising—”
“Is he the maker of Hennigar’s jam?” interrupted Mauney, incredulously.
“Of course he is. He kept at it, as I was saying, until to-day a ten-acre factory buzzes with its manufacture and the plum-trees on a thousand hills grow for Hennigar alone. Oh, but it was wonderful jam,” she laughed, smacking her lips prettily. “It has ‘jammed’ out a small-sized marble palace in Riverton, a fleet of motor cars from Rolls to Buick, one for every mood, an army of liveried servants, one for every duty. It has ‘jammed’ Elias Hennigar into the Senate, into the front ranks of the Church, into the intimate counsels of the university—in fact, this jam has made him. But, of course, one doesn’t mention jam, now. He’s got it all washed off his hands by this time.”
“Doesn’t that beat the devil!” exclaimed Mauney. “Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss MacDowell.”
“Not at all,” she laughed. “I like to hear a man cuss. I sort of know where he stands, then. Listen and I’ll tell you a secret.”
Mauney leaned a little nearer her.
“I’m going to drop my course this spring,” she whispered, “and take a job under Professor Freeman as departmental secretary in history. Won’t that be fun? I’ll have Alfred Tanner to work with. He’s better than a circus any time, and then there’s Nutbrown Hennigar. Have you had him to lecture to you yet? No? I guess he sticks to the general course students. Well, he’s a scream, anyway. He’s very, very fond of me, mind you. Just imagine a Hennigar on my trail. He takes me to theatres often. And dances—oh, he can’t dance at all; he just rambles. He thinks it’s awfully queer of me to have accepted this job in the history department.”
Mauney’s attention was completely engaged by his charming companion. She puzzled him beyond measure. Why, he wondered, did she talk so confidently to him? She did not appear to be a rattle-brained woman, and yet how strangely familiar she had become.
“Say,” he said, after a little pause. “You’re kind of human, and I’m just going to ask you a question, if I may.”
She nodded.
“Why do you tell me so much?” he asked. “Mind you, I like it a whole lot. But how did you know I would like it?”
She laughed tantalizingly.
“Because I know all about you, Mr. Bard,” she replied.
“Me?”
“Certainly. You’re a pal of Max Lee’s, aren’t you?”
His eyes opened with enlightenment.
“Are you Freda MacDowell?” he asked eagerly.
She nodded and teased him with her eyes.
“Of course I am. Max has told me all about you. When I heard the name Bard, to-night, I wondered if you were Mauney.”
“I sure am,” he said, warming up, “and this is a great pleasure, indeed, I—”
“And I was positive it was you,” she interrupted, with a roguish glance at his face, “because Max told me you had an awful head of red hair.”
CHAPTER VI.
In Which Stalton Sees the Doctor.
Mauney did not enjoy the dinner-party. He kept looking at Freda MacDowell and wishing he had never met her. He knew, without further contemplation, that she was the most attractive woman he had ever met. He could have gone on talking to her all evening long, but he was glad that such had been impossible. Every time he looked at her he felt a warmth gripping his breast. Her eyes—well, he knew that he had never seen eyes like them. They were perfect. They were vastly comforting. They haunted him, all the way back to Freeman’s, and then all the way to 73 Franklyn Street. He remembered Max’s description of her, and knew that it was no idle remark:
“She’s just like nobody else.”
He demanded of life to know just how such a thing could come to pass, namely, that he should be attracted so strongly to a woman, all at once, at first sight, at first talk. Of course he would have to put her clean out of his mind. He felt weak when he thought of her. He knew just how much of her he could stand. He was positive that another hour’s acquaintance would have completed the most enthralling fascination. He sat in his own room smoking furiously, trying to accuse himself of a hyper-vivid imagination and an over-developed susceptibility. He tried to tell himself that he was not infatuated with her. He smoked many cigarettes. It grew late. He pulled down a book and began reading, with the book in his lap. Then he came to himself gradually and discovered that he had not been reading at all, but only inspecting his finger-nails, while his thoughts kept returning constantly to Freda MacDowell.
Max would wonder why he had not dropped in to-night. Somehow he could not face Max. He had no wish to see Max to-night. It would be hard to talk to him—just as if he had wronged him in some way. Then, at length, he gained a better perspective of the situation. He tossed aside his book and walked along the hall to his chum’s door.
“Hello, you!” said Lee, looking up from his desk, which was littered with note-books and texts. “You’ve been dolling up a little, eh? Been at a dance?”
“No, just a kind of dinner party, Max. What are you doing?”
“Can’t you see?”
“Sure. What is it, though?”
“Oto-laryngology, if you insist.”
“Is it?” asked Mauney, absently, as he leaned against the wall by the door.
“Well, of course, you fish. If I say it’s oto-laryngology I don’t mean anything else. What’s the matter with you? Sit down. I’m out of smokes. If you’ve got any, hand ’em over.”
Mauney tossed his package of cigarettes on the desk and stretched himself in a chair near by.
“Well, Max,” he said at length. “You’re the luckiest dog in Merlton!”
“How do you make that out, my son?” Lee asked, as he turned to throw away a burnt match.
“Because you are, that’s all. You’ve got a woman who really loves you, and—”
“Wait, now, you poor fish. Did I tell you she loved me?”
“Well, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Lee cast a puzzled look at Mauney, who sat, as if in reverie, gazing up through blue rings of smoke that emerged in slow clouds from his mouth.
“Are you suddenly overtaken with a bachelor’s remorse?” Max queried, sarcastically. “Is that why you come in here to disturb my faithful studies? Why envy me so much? Why don’t you nab onto somebody yourself? You’ve got more to recommend you than I have.”
Mauney was not listening to him, but continued gazing up at the ceiling. Even there he could not avoid the vision of a woman’s dark, comforting eyes.
“You’ve got better mating points than I have. You’re a better man than I am, Gunga-din. Look at that chest of yours—any woman would sigh petulantly to have her head pillowed there. All you got to do is to go out and walk down Tower Street and the girls will be running into lamp-posts as they turn to behold your Apollo-like form.”
Mauney looked into Max’s face, confused.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh I didn’t say anything. I was just humming a snatch from Mendelssohn’s ‘Fatal Step.’ Say, Mauney, what the devil’s the matter with you, anyhow?”
“Nothing.”
“All right: smoke on. I’m going to study. Stay till you get it all straightened out, and, when you’re ready to go, don’t forget the door is on your left. Good-night, dearie.”
Lee turned to his desk and resumed his reading of numerous pages of badly-written notes. From time to time he mumbled sentences, then shifted in his chair, then lit a new cigarette, and mumbled again. During this time Mauney sat quietly back, busy with unpleasant thoughts. He remembered that Lee had explained the hopelessness of his relationship with Freda MacDowell. He had said that, although he loved her, he would never let her know. Mauney had always admired Max. Now he respected him more than ever. He thought it was very noble of him to preserve silence regarding his love.
“I guess we’re both sort of out in the cold, Max,” he said, at length.
“I guess so,” Lee absent-mindedly agreed, as he continued to read. “Out in the cold? How do you mean?”
“With women.”
“Oh, damn women. I’m busy with oto-laryngology. Exam’s coming on to-morrow.”
Mauney rose and stretched himself.
“I’m going to bed,” he announced, tossing his package of cigarettes again on the table. “Keep ’em; you’ll need a few fags before morning.”
Mauney resumed his accustomed life next day with a feeling of gratitude that he had at least his work to occupy his mind. He put Freda MacDowell out of his consciousness—she was the property of Maxwell Lee, and nothing would ever permit him to encroach on his good friend’s property. She grew smaller as she receded in the vista of his thoughts, and he considered it fortunate that he saw nothing more of her during the term.
At the spring examinations Lorna Freeman gained top place, defeating Mauney by many marks and winning the Hennigar scholarship for proficiency in history. He congratulated her cordially, and inwardly admitted her superior ability. She deserved the distinction. He was not jealous, for even at the end of his first year his eye was looking at something different from marks and scholarships. He had passed his exams—that was all he cared. There were other rewards—quiet, inner compensations, from the reading of history. These he had not missed. The story of humanity was growing real to him, something he could touch with his hands and cherish. There came thoughts that pleased his fancy, and he wrote them in a big, empty ledger—wonderful thoughts about history, that he wanted no one but himself to read. He prized his ledger. Many a night during the long summer vacation he took it from the locked drawer of his desk and added more paragraphs to it. It was nothing—just his fancies.
Maxwell Lee, having successfully graduated, and having acquired the degree of M.D., gained an appointment in the department of biochemistry, as a research fellow, at a salary of seven hundred dollars a year, and began work immediately. Mauney was introduced to his laboratory, a big upstairs room in the Medical Building, with two bald, great windows that flooded the place with a brilliant light. It was a busy room, filled with long tables of intricate apparatus, retorts, gas burners, and complicated arrangements of glass tubes, resembling a child’s conception of a factory. He often dropped in to talk with Lee, who was always absorbed in his new work, bent over steaming dishes of fluid, or seated before a delicate scales, contained in a glass case. He spoke seldom of Freda MacDowell, now, but much of a certain disease upon which he was working, in an attempt to discover its cause. Mauney disliked the laboratory, pungent with fumes of acid, but was glad to see Max so happy in his work.
Lee still remained at Mrs. Manton’s boarding-house and in the evenings, when he was not busy at the Medical Building, was to be found, sitting in his shirt sleeves, in an alcove of the upstairs hallway, reading technical treatises on biochemistry.
Fred Stalton gradually formed his own original opinion about the intense occupation of Lee.
“Since he got that M.D. tacked on to his name,” Stalton remarked to Mauney one night in the dining-room, “he’s sort of waded out into biochemistry a little too deep. Max has changed, Mauney. He’s changed a lot. When he first came here to stay, he was the life of the party, a real midnight serenader, believe me. Of course, I suppose somebody’s got to do the tall studying, but I hate to see him so much at it. His health won’t stand it. He’s not very strong. He ought to rig up an office down on College Street, hang out his shingle and practise. Why, if he just had the lucre I’ve spent on doctors he could take a holiday in Honolulu. People would be bound to come to him. Doctors don’t do any good except to ease your mind a little, and that’s why people go to them. You get a pain in your almanack, and you hike right over to the nearest medico. He just lays on the hands, tells you it’s a very minor trouble; you pay him a couple of bones for a piece of paper and go home tickled all over. It’s a game, but Max ought to play it. He’s getting too serious.”
“Maybe,” admitted Mauney. “But he’s all taken up with the idea of striking the cause of pernicious anÆmia—”
“AnÆmia?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that like?”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell you. Max did describe it to me. People with it are sort of pale and yellow and lose their pep.”
Stalton’s brow puckered up thoughtfully.
“I wonder if there’s any chance of me having that lot,” he said slowly. “I certainly haven’t got any more pep than a Ford car leaking in oil in three cylinders. Here I am, Mauney, only forty-two years old; I shouldn’t be like this. I can’t do much more work than a sundial on a rainy day, without getting all in, down and out. I’ve been to about a hundred doctors and only two ever agreed on what ails me.”
“What seems to be the trouble, Fred?”
“All I know is how I feel,” replied Stalton. “Some say it’s hyperacidity. Some call it auto-intoxication. One bird claimed I had an ulcer of the stomach. About ten of ’em laid all the blame on my teeth. Others said I had weakness of the nerve centres. I don’t believe any of them ever really hit it yet. As soon as I collect enough dust I’m going to call and see Adamson.”
“Is he good?” asked Mauney, but casually interested in Stalton’s recital of his bodily woes.
“Good? I guess he is! That chap, they say, never makes a mistake. He’s a professor in the Medical School. You have to make an appointment four weeks in advance to see him at all. He charges about a hundred a minute, but, from what I hear, he’s worth it. I’d never begrudge it to him. I haven’t been able to hold down a steady job for five years.”
Mauney had observed Stalton’s manner of life. Gertrude allowed him to play on an easy financial margin. He made what money he got by speculating on theatre tickets, playing the horses at Riverton Park, and from his rare, but always successful, indulgence in big poker games down-town. When he was in pocket he paid his board cheerfully and bought new clothes and quantities of cigarettes. When he was financially embarrassed he helped Gertrude with the housework and made his own cigarettes. He was the soul of good-heartedness. He would lend money to any of his friends if he had it. If not, he would thank the intending borrower for the compliment of being asked. His popularity at 73 Franklyn Street always remained at flood-tide—he was so cheerful about his own infirmities and so eager to listen to the troubles of others. Mauney found him as restful as other men who lived purposeless lives.
Late one night Mauney was awakened by the sound of his bedroom door opening. In the light which entered from the hall he beheld Stalton standing in his bathrobe, smoking a cigarette. He was unusually pale.
“I didn’t want to disturb, Max,” he said, “but I’m suffering the tortures of the damned with this stomach of mine. I wonder if you would mind going downstairs and calling up Dr. Adamson. I’ve got to see that bird, sooner or later, and I’d like to have him see me when this real attack is on.”
Mauney agreed, sprang out of bed, and feeling that Stalton was actually in great pain, persuaded him to take his own bed. After helping him to get into it, he covered him quickly with the sheets and descended to the telephone. After giving the number he waited for fully a minute before receiving a reply.
“Yes,” said a tired, business-like voice at length.
“Doctor Adamson?”
“Yes.”
“Could you come to seventy-three Franklin Street?”
“What appears wrong?” he asked pleasantly.
“Mr. Stalton has a severe pain in his stomach.”
“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” he replied. “It might be a surgical case, you know. Anyway I never go out at night, except under very exceptional circumstances. I think you had better call my assistant, Dr. Turner.”
“Well, listen, doctor,” persisted Mauney, “Mr. Stalton is a fine chap and he thinks the sun rises and sets on you.”
The physician laughed.
“Indeed? Well, that’s very nice of him,” he said. “Tell him I’ll break a custom. Seventy-three Franklin? I’ll be up soon.”
Within half an hour the distinguished physician arrived. He was a cheerful, clean-shaven, well-dressed man of perhaps forty-five, and looked extremely awake, considering the hour. Mauney showed him upstairs to his room and introduced him to the patient.
“How do you do?” said Dr. Adamson, pleasantly, as he took Stalton’s proffered hand. “Are you in trouble?”
“I feel as if there was a mud-turtle inside my stomach, doctor, trying to land on the edge of my liver,” confessed Stalton.
Adamson laughed as he drew up a chair, and sat down leisurely beside the bed.
“Well,” he said, in his cheerful way, “your description lacks nothing in vividness. Do you think he will manage to land?”
Stalton put his palm over the pit of his stomach.
“Right there,” he said.
“Pain?” queried Adamson.
“It isn’t exactly pain, doctor. It’s an all-gone feeling. If it would only pain I’d know where I stood. But it really doesn’t pain—it’s just sort of churning.”
Adamson’s grey eyes became keen, as he inspected his patient.
“When did you first notice it?” he asked.
“I’ve had it for ten years; only it’s got unbearable to-night.”
“Exactly,” nodded the physician, as he lapsed into a silence, and felt his patient’s pulse.
“Are you a student?” he asked, glancing about the room.
“No. This is Mr. Bard’s room. I haven’t followed any regular occupation for a few years back.”
“Why?”
“I don’t seem to have the pep, doctor.”
“Exactly. Do you have headaches?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Right in the dome,” explained Stalton, placing his hand on the top of his head.
“Exactly. Any backache?”
“You’re right.”
“Where?”
“All the way from my neck to my heels. My legs ache most of the time, too.”
After the physician had very carefully examined him he dropped his stethescope into his bag, which he closed with a snap.
“What horse is going to get the Lofton Plate to-morrow?” he asked, as he sat down and lit a cigarette and proffered the case to his patient.
“I’d bet on the Grundy stables to-morrow, doctor.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. I don’t pose as an expert, but if I had the money I’d play Grundy to win for a thousand dollars.”
“I used to imagine I could pick the winners,” laughed Adamson. “I think every man passes through that stage.”
“Yes, and the sooner he passes it the better,” smiled Stalton.
“Exactly.”
For a few seconds the physician smoked in silence.
“What’s the matter with me, doctor?” asked Stalton, at length.
“Are you prepared for my verdict?” replied Adamson, somewhat seriously.
“Well—yes—that’s why I sent for you. I know you will tell me.”
“No matter how serious, I presume you would rather know the truth?”
“You bet I would,” said Stalton, perching himself up on his elbow, and gazing with fearful apprehension at the renowned physician. “Some doctors said there wasn’t anything wrong with me.”
“But there is,” said Adamson, emphatically.
“Well, I knew it, I—”
“You have a really serious complaint, Mr. Stalton.”
“Is there any hope of curing it?”
“That all depends on you, Mr. Stalton. But first let me explain. And in doing so I want you to believe every word I say. I don’t want you to be hurt by anything I say, either. I have given you a careful examination and have located your trouble, but it’s not the kind of trouble you think it is.”
“No?”
“No. Your stomach is anatomically normal, although it is not working in perfect physiological harmony. It is influenced by your mind very considerably. Your head contains a real ache, and your back contains a real ache, and your legs get really tired. You feel weak most of the time. You find it hard to stick at one occupation. These are real troubles, not imaginary. Your body is—well, rather rebellious against work. Is that not true?”
“It certainly is, doctor. I—”
“Exactly. It doesn’t want to be put to a test, where it knows it will be unsuccessful.”
“You’ve sure expressed it, doctor.”
“And now, Mr. Stalton,” said Adamson, leaning back in his chair and fixing his patient with his keen, grey eyes, “would you believe me if I told you that your body is merely working in harmony with a wrong idea in your mind?”
“Well, I’d believe anything you say, doctor,” said Stalton, slowly, but with evident surprise.
“Good. I appreciate your confidence very much. You have a wrong thought complex. In some way or other you have acquired a wrong mental attitude toward work. It’s not your fault. I do not blame you in the least. But I want to remove that thought complex, because in so doing I will remove your disease, and if you will but believe me now, you will be immediately cured. You have for the past few years actually feared work.”
“I know it, doctor, but I—”
“This fear of work has been a real disease, Mr. Stalton. You feared work. You mentally rebelled against work. Your body took its cue from your mind and rebelled also. Your body rebelled so much that it instituted pains and aches, so as to avoid the thing your brain feared. In other words, your whole trouble has been a mental and physical rebellion against work. Do you believe me or not?”
“Well, doctor, I’ve got to believe you,” said Stalton slowly. “But what am I to do?”
“First, you are going to remind yourself that work is really a blessing—nothing to be feared—but rather something to be desired. It will not hurt you. I give my word. You need not have this old timidity any longer. In the second place, you are going to get a job somewhere at once and begin to work steadily at it. Have you any trade?”
“I learned electric wiring years ago.”
“Fine. Go to-morrow, confidently, and get a job, wiring. If you do, you will find all your pains and aches gradually disappearing. If I am wrong, I will charge you nothing for this call. I know I’m right.”
“How much do I owe you, doctor?” asked Stalton, getting out of bed, as the physician started toward the door.
“It will be twenty-five dollars,” he replied. “But I would like it to be the next twenty-five you earn. Good-night.”
He extended his hand.
“Good-night, sir,” said Stalton, taking it. “I believe you’ve hit the nail on the head.”
When Mauney returned to his room, after accompanying Adamson to the door, he found Fred Stalton walking up and down.
“What do you know about that, Mauney?” he asked. “That bird certainly put his finger on the tender spot that time. In one way I feel like a damned slacker now. Don’t mention this to anybody, Mauney. But Adamson is right. Why, that pain is gone already. I’m a liar if it isn’t. No drugs about that bird. I’m going out to-morrow to buck the old world for a living again.”
A few weeks saw a great change in Stalton. He embraced work with a good will and never once faltered. He obtained a good position with a down-town electrical company, and came home each night hungry and happy. Gertrude was puzzled completely.
“Why, Freddie!” she said one night, “you’re all better. What on earth did it? You look ten years younger, and I haven’t heard a word about teeth for a long time.”
“Do you remember that last bottle of Burton’s Bitter Tonic I punished?” he asked with a broad smile. “Well, it’s the greatest stuff on record. I’m going to pose for a portrait and give ’em a red-hot personal letter of recommendation to put in the newspaper. ‘It has cured me—why not others? Eventually—why not now? At all druggists, the same wonderful, world-beating, little tonic!’”