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.