CHAPTER IV.

THE PROFESSOR.

“_Let the fools talk, knowledge has its value._”—_La Fontaine Fables._

The tea at Freeman’s was over.

Mauney was sitting in Max Lee’s room after supper. These evening chats had become almost necessary. There was a time when they could both digest their evening meals downstairs in the dining-room in conversation with the rest. But now they neither felt ready to settle down to their studies without brief exchange of ideas and impressions.

“Anything new, my son?”

“Very new,” admitted Mauney, lighting a cigarette. “Sit down, Max. I’m going to tell you about the Freeman’s.”

“The young lady, Lorna, I suppose,” drawled Lee, as he sprawled in one of the easy chairs. “Women are always an interesting matter to me. And you’re a popular devil with women, too—”

“Hold on—”

“True. Only they all wonder. They all wonder at you.”

“At me?”

“Correct. You have a woman-hating nature. You don’t warm up to women very much. That acts as a challenge and keeps them coming. Do you do that on purpose?”

“I don’t hate ’em, boy,” he contradicted. “But I find they are very uncertain beings. Take this Freeman girl. Why, you’d travel fifteen days before you’d find another brain like hers, Max. She’s like a steel-trap with the real snap to it. If she doesn’t quite ‘savez’ what you’re talking about, she lights right into your remark, like an expert surgeon with a knife, and dissects it down to the heart. Then, having established your meaning, she frames her reply with the greatest care.... My God!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You’d think she was being interviewed by a reporter. She’s so precise about giving you her real, unbiased, judicial opinion. Whew! That brain of hers! It’s wonderful, wonderful. I wish I had her brains, Max. A memory like a photograph album. Just turn it up, see? A judgment as deft as Solomon’s—a good judgment—nothing leaks out of it—every point receives due weight. She’s different. She speaks differently from most people. You never know what she’s going to say. In fact, you can be sure she won’t say what any other girl would say. Suppose you were to ask an average girl how she likes playing cards, what would you expect her to say?”

“Oh, she might say ‘I adore cards,’ or ‘I’m not especially keen,’ or ‘I’d like to play them with you in a cosy nook,’ and so forth, _ad nauseam_.”

“Well, you’d never guess what she said. I asked her if she liked cards. She said, ‘That all depends on the cards. If they’re very new and slippery, I could sit for hours sliding them through my fingers; but if they stick the least bit they make me shiver.’ That’s only one example. I asked her what her aim in life was.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“You impertinent rascal! Nobody does that.”

“Why not?”

“Nobody has any aim in life—we just drift. Well, what did she say?”

“She sat back in her chair, smiling as if she enjoyed trying to figure it out. Then she said, ‘Oh, Mr. Bard, did you ever listen to a violin until you were entranced?’ I admitted that I had, at times, done so. ‘Well!’ she said, ‘that’s just it. I want to make my life just like a beautiful strain of music.’ Now what do you think of that, Max?”

Lee frowned. “Frothy stuff to me. Unreal, hyper-imaginative, away off the trail, anæmic and supermellifluous.”

Mauney laughed.

“You should have taken up writing,” he said. “Queer family, these Freemans. I never met nor ever heard of anybody a bit like them. The professor is as gentle as a woman, but he gives you a feeling like a storm brewing. It’s hard to express. He’s courteous, refined, and pleasant, but he’s diabolically clever. We haven’t had any lectures from him yet. He was up in his study at home, slaying a book. She introduced me. He couldn’t have been nicer, and yet—well, damn it—you can’t get hold of him. He’s like the ivory playing cards. He slips through your fingers. You think you’ve got him, and just then you notice that he’s miles ahead of you.”

Mauney then shook with sudden laughter.

“What’s the matter with you?” Max said, glaring at him. “Been having a tooth extracted under gas?”

“No. But, I don’t get that family at all. There’s Mrs. Freeman, too. She’s like a velvet comforter laid softly about your soul. Her voice is like velvet. She’s more genuine, I’d wager, than her husband. But—oh, Lord!—there’s some tragedy. Such an endless, engulfing tragedy; so big and endless that she has developed a kind of martyr attitude. She’s like a Sister of the Perpetual Adoration, suddenly required to do penance by living a civil life.”

“I’ll bet the tragedy is her husband!” said Max, with a tone of certitude.

“Maybe it is. Well, Lorna’s an only child. A queer girl; never met anybody like her, and—”

“You seem quite interested, though, don’t you, my son?”

“Well, she’s beautiful, Max.”

“Oh, that changes the situation. More power to your elbow. But wait.” His black eyes wandered casually over Mauney’s open features and a smile stole over his lips. “Do you know, you’re liable to fall for her.”

“I know it. I’ve fallen already,” Mauney admitted. “I’m in hot water. I want to be near her. She’s like an Easter lily. I want to—to pick that lily.”

A man never knows his capacity for action along any line until put to the test. Mauney, burdened with trying to find himself in many ways, received the added burden of a woman’s attraction. It was all new to him. Never before had it happened. Here was Lorna Freeman, fresh as the lily to which he had referred, with him every day of the week except Sunday. Even the Sabbath began to hold her, too, for she accepted his invitations to stroll out Riverton way. There were long reaches of broad, board walks stretched beside the river where they perambulated, just like less sophisticated clerks and stenographers, who also found Riverton good. The Freemans never had a motor-car. Mauney did not realize that he had money enough to buy one. Consequently their feet took them wherever they went. Long strolls on Sunday, during which they got away from history entirely! In fact nothing could be farther removed from history. The vivid present swelled up before him so gigantically that he had trouble sticking to his books.

He wanted to say something to Lorna, but kept putting it off, partly because he was uncertain as to the thing itself, and partly because more preparation seemed necessary. He found that he could keep on looking at her for hours, but that, on attempting to describe his feelings, he was overtaken by a sense of diffidence. Would she quite understand him?

He was on the third term time-table now. Christmas and Easter were past. Spring and the prospect of examinations were at hand. There came languorous evenings. The precincts of his bedroom grew tiresome. April moved the lace curtains inside his open window. He got up from his desk and stretched himself and went straight to Freeman’s, on Crandall Street, and asked if Lorna was at home. She was out, but was expected home soon, and he was invited to wait for her. Perhaps, Mrs. Freeman suggested, he would like to go up with the professor until she came back.

“Of course you know where to find him,” she said, with a soft gesture toward the staircase. “Up in his study. Always, always studying, you know.”

He thanked her and went up. He had been up once or twice before with Lorna, indulging in very deep talk. Moral philosophy, ethics, conceptions of history! Very pleasant occasions, to be sure, but equally as strange as Freeman himself. Now, to be alone with the head of the department! The study door was closed and he knocked.

“Come,” called the professor.

As he entered he beheld the historian, lounging in a deep Morris chair before a grate fire, with an open book on his knees.

“Well, Mauney,” he said pleasantly, as he rose. “Won’t you sit down?”

Professor Robert Freeman was such a mite of a man that Mauney wondered how he had managed to brave the storm of life for fifty years. Whenever he saw him he felt like saying: “Well, professor, I expected, before seeing you again, to hear of your funeral. I expected you’d pick up a pneumonia germ somewhere and pass out.”

Mauney would know him better later on, for the biological tragedy entailed in a struggle between germs and this frail body had been given as careful consideration by its owner as almost everything else, and, arguing that continued existence depended either on keeping up a strong physical resistance or else on avoiding germs altogether, Freeman chose to pursue the latter policy. His cunning brain saved him. He never rode on street cars. He avoided funerals, theatres and churches. “Germs? Why, don’t get them. That’s all!”

Freeman’s long, thin face, with its grey eyes trained upon the world like vigilant sentinels, smiled perpetually. His nearly-bald pate sported a little patch of thin, grey hair, parted carefully in the centre. But that smile! It was, in a sense, all of Freeman.

“What kind of smile, in reality, is it?” thought Mauney.

Never a happy smile, though at times it betokened delight. Never a suspicious smile, though it frequently indicated deep-buried fires of irony that could not be given full scope. Usually it was a polite, deferential grimace, that suggested Voltaire ever so slightly. So far from being repulsive, it put Mauney immediately at ease. Its social value was its hospitality, an almost pitying hospitality, as if the professor was pleased enough to have intercourse with others of the same biological species, seeing what a mess life was for all of them.

“That’s exactly it,” soliloquized Mauney. “That unpleasant, insuperable, unavoidable mess—human life. It’s his stock-in-trade.”

The man’s erudition was profound. He had wracked his brains energetically on every department of thought, from religion to geology, and back again several dozens of times, looking for just one peep-hole of light and hope. The tragedy was that not one peep-hole had been found. Philosophy, logic, ethics, comparative theology, political economy, history of all kinds, literatures of all nationalities—he had dissected them all, pruned them all, reduced them all to their elemental fallacies, and there the matter stood.

“Mauney,” he had said during one of their discussions, “you can’t be sure of anything. You can prove nothing. Why? Simply because, in any conclusion at which you arrive, you can never be sure of your premises.”

Just why the uncertainty of one’s premises should so rob life of its many enthusiasms, Mauney could not understand. At heart he never enjoyed talking with Freeman, for, although he admired his adroit intellect, the professor always left him temporarily transfixed on the horns of a logical dilemma, or else temporarily treed by a savage, snarling premise. But as a mental exercise it was great fun, and its depressing effects yielded to fresh air as an antidote.

At any rate Robert Freeman was a great man. His opinion on historical questions was a high court of appeal. His monumental work on the constitutional history of France was on the shelf of every self-respecting library in the country. It was an honor to have access to the great man’s home. “Freeman on Constitutional History” was a familiar marginal reference in text books. Freeman, alone in his library, with a big pipe and a huge, red can of tobacco beside him on the table, was a privilege. With almost reverent eyes Mauney looked upon the man who held the chair of history in the renowned University of Merlton—Merlton, that light set upon the summit of the world for the world’s illumination, that arch-planter of wisdom’s germs, that spring of the river of knowledge. And Freeman, that inextinguishable flame, whose brilliant radiance shone abroad—here he sat, smiling, smoking, conversing.

“I hope I’m not taking your time, Professor,” he apologized.

“No, I’m just reading a light thing,” he said, indicating his book. “You know I read everything, Mauney. I’m like a butterfly—taking a little honey from this flower and a little from that!” His long fingers turned lightly through the pages. Mauney observed them—those long fingers, those restless hands of Freeman’s, those long, thin hands like a woman’s, that were always twining themselves about some object. If they were ever still it must have been during sleep, but even then Mauney could more easily fancy them moving sinuously about the folds of his counterpane. They were like his mind. If they held a book before his eyes they kept feeling the covers, as if his brain, in its intent of complete mastery, took cognizance even of the texture of the binding.

“And I find,” continued Freeman, “that it’s wise to read light, little things like this. You know, enjoyment is everything.”

“But is it?” ventured Mauney, consciously drifting into the familiar channel of their arguments. “Is enjoyment really everything?”

Freeman’s face became delicately ethereal as he considered the question.

“I think so,” he said softly. “But if you are in any doubt, please begin by stating your own opinion, will you not?”

For a moment Mauney smoked in silence, reminded of Socrates.

“Yes,” he consented. “Now I think that enjoyment is comparatively incidental. A man has a duty to perform in the world, and he must perform it whether he enjoys doing so or not.”

“All right, Mauney,” smiled Freeman. “But won’t you admit that the motive that empowers you to perform your duty is the prospect of future enjoyment in seeing your task completed?”

“That, professor, is equivalent to saying that all effort is inspired by the hope of getting a thrill.”

“Well, isn’t it true? We are selfish at all times. We want the thrill. I don’t care where you take it. It’s the same principle everywhere. Socrates drank hemlock because it thrilled him to think he was abiding by the legal decision of his country. And even of Jesus Christ it is written: ‘For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross.’”

This last example came as a jolt to Mauney’s being. His thoughts drifted. There was a long pause before they resumed conversation. For an hour they continued. To whatever argument they turned—and they turned to several—Mauney felt that, while he was consistently defeated in a superficial sense, he was victorious in a deeper sense that Freeman could not, or would not, grasp. As in their previous conversations, they eventually arrived at the blind, stone wall of nullity, where Freeman’s declared position was one of absolute mental helplessness, and Mauney’s one of undeclared boredom and impatience.

When at last he heard Lorna playing downstairs, he rose and took leave of the professor.

Why had he come so eagerly to-night? The question forced him to pause on the lower steps of the staircase. In the drawing-room he saw her seated by the piano. The riddle of his attraction faded out of his thoughts as he leaned on the banister to watch and listen. She was absorbed in the skilful rendering of a scale-infested classic. Although her hands, like racing elves, flew with dexterous speed upon the ivory keys, her body was reposefully still, her chin slightly lifted, her eyes viewing the performance like impartial critics. When she finished, quite unconscious of Mauney’s presence, and picked up her kerchief from the music holder to rub her hands, he remained on the steps spell-bound with admiration. Then she turned her head and, as she saw him, rose gracefully, but with much coloring of her face.

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” he explained, as he came near her. “What is that?”

She told him the name of the selection.

“It’s quite difficult, Mauney. Not very entertaining, either. I fear it will be some time before I venture to exhibit it.” She looked up with a serious, accusing glance. “You took a very unfair advantage of me, didn’t you?”

“How, Lorna?” he asked in surprise.

Then he realized what she meant. Queer frankness! Queer bashfulness! Did she ever think anything without saying it? Did she ever withhold a criticism?

“Why, no,” he said, “I—I didn’t mean to be—rude, you know. Aren’t you a strange girl?”

“What will I play for you?” she asked, turning through some sheets of music. “Do you like this?”

She held up Nevin’s “Day in Venice.”

“Um—h’m,” he nodded. “That’s wonderful!” He had never heard it in his life. He was looking into her blue eyes above the sheet of music. “Don’t you think so, Lorna?”

“What are you staring at?”

“Was I staring? Forgive me.”

As she began the piece he lounged in a chair near by. Nevin’s dream, in all its pretty moods, all its imagery! He half-listened. He wanted to think.

The Freeman home was growing comfortable. All its members were, no doubt, off the beaten path. Mauney felt a commendation in their very originality. If the professor chose to spend his time in the desultory travail of mental investigations, was not his occupation as justifiable as the time-wasting hobbies of most men? If Mrs. Freeman wished to limit her mind, as she apparently did, to devotional pursuits, was this any more to be criticized than the asininity of bridge-parties and the hypocritical commitments of woman’s average social life? And if, finally, Lorna chose to be so uncomfortably frank as to inform him how little she relished eaves-dropping over a banister, was her frankness not, in reality, part of a truthful, clean-cut personality, that admitted no deception? The home was growing comfortable.

But he did not know what he wanted to say to Lorna. Their conversation roamed aimlessly and pleasantly along accustomed paths. He found himself admiring her queenly face and groping for words. After an hour the professor’s soft step was heard on the stairs. He came in, to find them sitting in separate chairs, five feet apart. He smiled and glanced from one to the other.

“Well, people,” he said, in his quiet voice, “what is the big topic of discussion to-night?”

“We haven’t struck one yet, sir,” Mauney replied. “We’ve been avoiding controversial subjects.”

“Would you like some tea?” Freeman asked.

This was the historian’s failing—tea at night, hot, weak and in quantities, before he retired to the midnight vigil of his more serious study. Lorna led the way to the dining-room and made it. Holding their cups and saucers they stood talking about art for art’s sake. This was introduced by a still-life group in oils, hung over the sideboard, and completed, at length, by an appeal to the professor, who stated that, without any shadow of doubt, art had no higher aim than art. But while he talked he looked from one to the other, as if, in the undercurrents of his brain, he was attempting to decide how intimate a relationship existed between them, and as if, so Mauney felt, he himself would be the greatest obstacle to any suitor for his daughter’s hand.

Later Lorna bade Mauney good-night in the vestibule, between the hall-door and the street-door. Some sense of being closeted from the world stole upon him and with it a desire to take Lorna passionately in his arms. With an effort he checked the impulse.

“Lorna,” he said, “do you know that I nearly kissed you. What would you have done?” He still held her hand.

“I suppose I should have shivered and been angry!” she replied, simply.

“Then,” he said, giving her hand a little pat, “aren’t you glad I didn’t?”

“Naturally.”

From her complacent tone he might have been asking the question, “Do you prefer wealth to poverty?”