Lantern Marsh

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.

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!’”