CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT HAPPINESS.

The groundwork of Mauney’s book on history was completed, with Freda’s careful assistance, during the Christmas holidays, and finished in final form by the end of March, when the manuscript was submitted to Locke & Son, Publishers. Mauney was willing to allow Freda to choose the publisher, having learned to repose mysterious confidence in her judgment of such practical matters. He possessed none too sanguine an opinion of the book’s fate, suffering from an author’s customary self-depreciation, and was, therefore, greatly and pleasantly surprised a month later, to receive a letter from Locke & Son stating that they had accepted it for publication and would shortly carry it to press. When he expressed his surprise Freda seemed not at all excited by the news, as evidently she had not shared his diffidence.

“Mauney,” she exclaimed, with a hopeless shake of her head, “you are the most mournful prophet. In the first place, what you said in it is just contrary enough to the accepted view of history to stir certain folks up a little. But I have withheld from you the real story until now. Do you know why Locke accepted it?”

“No,” he answered. “That’s what’s puzzling me.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” she laughed. “I knew that the publisher would submit that manuscript to somebody in the History Department for an opinion. They picked on our friend Nutbrown Hennigar. Well, maybe you can imagine what he would have to say about it. He dictated his letter to me. Of all the letters I have ever seen it took the red ticket for pure, unadulterated blasphemy. He told Locke that your manuscript was, to begin with, merely the asinine vaporings of an unsophisticated stripling from away back. He said that your attitude towards history reminded him of a starving laborer suddenly confronted with a seven-course dinner. He considers your arguments subversive, crudely iconoclastic, tinctured by a raw individualistic attitude, blurred by an emotionalism approaching sentimentality, that your position could never be subscribed to by any serious student of history, and that the firm of Locke & Son would be extremely ill-advised in publishing so puerile a production.”

“The dirty cur!” interrupted Mauney. “All he has to do is live on his father’s reputation and crowd down the under-dog. I’d love to poison that small, squeaking excuse for a man!”

“Oh, don’t think of it!” mocked Freda, with a subtle smile. “Don’t poison anybody that can help you. Love your enemies, for they’re useful. If he had contented himself to praise faintly, Locke would never have printed it. It was Nutbrown’s loud damns that excited their curiosity. They thought that anything so subversive and revolutionary and so tinctured by crude feeling would sell pretty well, and I think so, too, Mauney. You did _me_ good when you lambasted these fossilized specimens of the teaching profession who think History is merely an opportunity for displaying academic methods. You are indeed a very raw youth,” she added with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “but you said a mouthful, for until university students are shown that history is _human_ they will never take a proper interest in the subject.”

“I believe that,” said Mauney.

Freda sat up sharply. “Just you wait,” she said, tapping the desk with her knuckles. “It’s going to be a great old splash and Nutbrown will be suddenly seized with an acute pain in his higher criticism.”

“Say, do you know I’ve a secret to tell you,” said Mauney, after a moment’s reflection. “I’m not really supposed to tell anybody, but I’m going to tell you. What do you think has happened?”

“Well, perhaps I have an idea,” she said with a particularly blasé yawn. “But I might be wrong, so maybe you’d better tell me.”

“I’m going to lecture in history next fall. What do you think about that?”

“My dear man, I’ve known that for two months.”

“Well, aren’t you glad?” he asked, puzzled by her apathetic expression.

Her eyes narrowed as if she were weighing the elements of the case.

“I can’t say that I am,” she replied. “You weren’t cut out for a professor. Please pardon my abruptness, but that’s just it. I’m sure you’re happy over it, and I have no intention of prophesying. My knowledge of university life has been gained by keeping my eyes open, and I know the crowd. You won’t agree with them. You’ re too vital, if I may be allowed to use the expression.”

“I feel like thanking you for that, Miss MacDowell.”

“You don’t need to. They aren’t such a bad lot. My first attitude was one of intolerance, but now I pity them. There they are, up to the ears in thankless routine, frozen by the currents of pure mentality, no heart left, lopsided, fossilized, hopeless. I wish I were running the university.”

There was such frank zeal in her wish that Mauney inquired as to what changes she would make if she had her way.

“Well,” she said. “In the first place I’m so sorry for the president that I could shed tears of real brine. They put him up in the clouds with a gold halo round his head and forget that he eats meat and potatoes and frequently perspires. He’s so busy addressing meetings, signing documents, preaching sermons and being necessarily nice to everybody in general that he has practically nothing to do with the university. He might as well have an office down town and be done with it. They expect him to be as perfect as the god they have made of him, and if he ever makes a mistake the big howl starts. I’d like to go into his office some day and kiss him right on the forehead and say: ‘Cheer up, old chap, you’re a winner!’”

“That ought to help a little,” laughed Mauney. “What else would you do for the university?”

“Why, I’d cut a great big window to let some sunshine into the history department. And I’d fire Nutbrown Hennigar and give him a job as aide-de-camp to some fat society woman up in the North End. He’s an example of the vapid young man who gains preferment solely through family influence. Then I’d take Uncle Alfred Tanner aside and explain to him that he can never gain the personal development to which his noble heart entitles him so long as he submits to the curbing influence of his brother-in-law’s clever dictatorship. Then I’d walk into Freeman’s office and, for purposes of smoothness, agree with him at the outset that nothing is good for anything, that all human effort is futile, that there naturally is no God, and then inquire naively, having got this settled, what he wanted to do next? I’d like to see that man get loosened up, just for once. I’ve often sat at my desk and just simply suffered to foxtrot with him all over the history department. When Freeman dies they ought to put a book in his hand instead of a lily.”

* * * * *

Mauney was reminded of Freda’s tirade against Freeman a few nights later when he accepted an invitation to dine at the historian’s quiet home. Of late he had unconsciously shunned the family, for reasons none too clear even to his own understanding. At heart he dimly realized that Lorna herself was the reason. He justly accused himself of having treated her with a species of neglect which must have been decidedly puzzling to her. Her matrimonial decision might have been arrived at long ago, for all he knew. Although it was his place, as the lover he had depicted himself, to inquire, he had nevertheless procrastinated. There was a great deal of apathy in his nature. He noticed that, so long as he did not see her or talk with her, he found no element of his being that regarded her as necessary. When, however, he was presented with Lorna in person, as upon this evening, the old attractions sprang to life once more, as if her presence were the essential cause.

He arrived early and talked with her on the rear lawn while they awaited dinner, which was being prepared by Mrs. Freeman herself. The high stone wall at the back of the lawn abutted directly on the western portion of the university grounds, so close to the history department that a small door had been cut in the wall to facilitate the professor’s short cuts to and from work.

They talked of many impersonal matters. It struck Mauney as almost absurd that this young woman had been asked to marry him. The impersonal attitude into which he had gradually drifted seemed to suit Lorna well enough, and as he talked with her he began at last to understand her real nature. Though pure and blameless, she was so narrowed by the lack of certain emotions as to be, from a romantic standpoint, negative. He saw it better now than ever before. The words that are a woman’s words and never a man’s, the whimsical details of deportment and address that belong peculiarly to women, the glances, the accents, the delicate tricks of wit, the sallies of playfulness—these were not in Lorna. He knew she liked him, but her presence was neither warm nor comforting. Her college training had bestowed, or perhaps merely emphasized, this negative quality of mind which Mauney at length recognized and disliked. Lorna knew that men loved women; knew it to be an accepted and doubtlessly beautiful arrangement, and one worthy of emulation, but she did not realize that this love of a man was no mere arrangement of pretty presentations, but a vital, all-absorbing, tremulous thing from beginning to end. Most women lived by the power of it: Lorna labelled it, pigeonholed it, and missed it.

He was tolerably sure that she did not hold it against him, that he had not again referred to matters of love. He could more easily imagine her appreciating his silence. Like her father and mother, her true character became evident only after long acquaintance.

He had imagined the professor and his wife to be passably happy together until impressed by Mrs. Freeman’s constant, mysterious sadness. Whether or not they began life together in perfect personal harmony was uncertain. But regarding their present relationship Mauney entertained no doubt. They had drifted so far apart that scarcely any common ground remained. Mrs. Freeman, shocked by her husband’s growing agnosticism, had clung for refuge more tightly than ever to dogmatic tenets of religion which at all times she had held to tightly enough. The farther Freeman drifted from simple religion the more desperately did she hold on, until their home life was rendered a frequent scene of controversial unpleasantness.

At one time, not many years since, they had both attended church and found sufficient spiritual satisfaction in the service. But the increasing adventures of his mental life had gradually wooed Freeman away. Something of an authority on ritual, he fell to investigating the subject afresh, to be rewarded by the discovery of a few errors. These had reference to recondite matters of priestly vestment and entailed hair-splitting differences of no importance. It became a hobby. The investigation led him on into comparative theology and biblical criticism, the upshot being a declaration of a position of religious agnosticism. At first he became a cheerful pragmatist, then an adroit sceptic, whereupon Mrs. Freeman’s childlike faith, harshly fortifying itself, grew slowly militant and became eventually not so much childlike as childish.

Even an outsider felt the friction just beneath the surface. Mauney, unprepared to believe how completely man and wife could be separated by matters of faith, nevertheless saw the patent duality of the Freeman home—the professor, ruling his upstairs study and using the place as a boarding house, while Mrs. Freeman roamed the rest of the house in spacious tragedy of manner. The one common ground between them was Lorna, who, as might be expected, had problems of tact and opinion to solve. When guests were in the house she frequently came between her parents in the role of shock absorber, displaying considerable ingenuity. On one occasion, Mauney having broached a religious argument at the dinner-table, Lorna purposely upset a tumbler of water. This meant a quick jump-up for every one and was a complete tactical success since, with the deluged cover tented up on serviette rings, other topics suggested themselves.

On this particular spring evening, relationships seemed happier. They sat down at the table in good spirits. Freeman was apparently satisfied with his mental progress during the day just finished, for he was lightsome of manner, disposed to talk in a good-natured way and looked from Mauney to Lorna with an expression almost of tenderness. Mauney had never been made to feel quite so much at home. The fading light of evening looked in through the large back-windows of the cozy dining-room like a soft caress upon a scene of family compactness, where the four, seated at the cardinal points of the circular table, enjoyed their food by the rich, yellow light of a centrally-placed, silver candelabra. Lorna, gowned in a simple white frock, flickered pleasantly opposite Mauney. The professor’s face stared at the candles while his wife bowed her head to say grace. Mrs. Freeman referred to the younger members of the family as “You children.” It was all very snug and private and natural.

“Just think,” she said in her soft, slow inflection. “Another two weeks and you will both be finished with your college courses. How the time does go! You leave college halls to enter God’s great world.”

“Now, Mother,” said Lorna, good-naturedly, “it’s not quite so serious as all that, I hope.”

“We are taught to believe it’s a pretty serious affair, Lorna,” she responded. “The Scriptures tell us—”

“And the Scriptures are quite right,” smiled Freeman bitterly. “It is certainly a serious, tragic affair. Personally, I can’t conceive of anything half so tragic as life.”

“In what way, Dad?”

“Why, any way you wish to look at it,” he answered quietly, as he served the dinner. “I think life is the most stupendous tragedy imaginable, from the very bottom of the scale to the top. The battle is to the strong,” he said impressively. “It’s the strong who defeat the weak and survive.”

“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Freeman, “that Mr. Darwin will have quite an account to give in the day of reckoning.”

Mauney was not accustomed to such conversation during his meals and felt embarrassed by the evident estrangement of the two viewpoints expressed.

“And when, my dear, is the day of reckoning?” enquired the professor gently.

“If you had been at church last Sunday, Robert,” she said in a childish, teasing way, “you would have heard about it from our pastor.”

“He has no more information on the subject than I have,” affirmed Freeman. “Why should I go to listen to a man who could not possibly express any ideas or argument with which my mind has not already grappled? If there were any such thing as a day of reckoning—which there definitely is _not_—Darwin would be able to present as good a front as most of us. He merely emphasized a few biological laws which have precisely the same application to the _genus homo_ as to the rest. If I could see one solitary reason for thinking that there is a God who cares one iota for us and our fates I might be convinced. But I know one fact for sure—that the strong win and the weak lose. There’s no argument about it, people. It’s a fact.”

“But don’t you think, Dad,” said Lorna politely, “that the weak may win by being wiser than the strong?”

“Oh, yes, but if a man’s wise he’s strong, not weak. Man is stronger than the elephant and the lion for that very reason. He’s wiser than they. His brains have made civilization safe from the inroads of the wild animals. He has subjugated all other species to his own control.”

“And having done so, Professor,” asked Mauney, “what remains? What is the future of man?”

“Endless labor,” he immediately replied. “All he can do is to study his past mistakes, profit by them, and attempt, ever and anon, to improve his social state. New moralities will crop up from time to time, for moral standards are evolutionary and are merely suited to existing states. Man’s fate is solely to move through shifting phases, through various new codes of ethics and to dream of a happiness which is always out of sight.”

Mauney refrained from continuing the argument, for he noticed that Mrs. Freeman was flushed as she ate her dinner in preoccupied silence. They tried to change the subject, but the meal ended in awkward stiffness. Mauney continued to think of that happiness, which was always out of sight and that struggle which was always won by the strong. The thoughts really disturbed him, for he was thinking indefinitely of Maxwell Lee. Could it be possible that Freeman was right?

The historian finished his meal in silence. Mauney, with queer biological insight, imagined the man to be secretly glorying over the victory suggested by the meat on his plate. It had once been alive. Man was subjecting it to the service of his pilgrimage of being.

A subtle chill had entered by the window from the outside world, rendering this compact family group no longer intimate friends. They were now selfish animals, eating other animals, by the light of burning tallow. And it seemed fitting that the light was so dim and flickering—all was mystery, cold, impenetrable, and the great happiness was out of sight.

The two men smoked anon in the familiar study upstairs. Mauney conversed with his professor in a mood of semi-detachment, unable to pull from his eyes a screen that was changing the apparent world to new interpretations. Even the study was permeated with the chill atmosphere that existed only in the imagination. Little currents of cool air played upon his spine like horrid fears. The volumes that filled Freeman’s capacious shelves stood like dangerous enemies against whom he felt he must be on guard. In the chair before him sat and smoked a puny man whom Merlton and a continent acclaimed as great. But the screen was drawing across him too—a dangerous menace grew mysteriously out of the perennial smile that played upon his lips. He would smile life out, this dangerous man who had conquered existence, and reduced existence to its bare biological structure. While Mauney sat beside him the historian’s words affected him more deeply than they had ever done before. The hot spot burned in Mauney’s breast, as it had burned at Christmas with Maxwell Lee. He suffered from its heat; he struggled inwardly, knowing that even seated in a quiet upstairs study, his own fate, hinging on the direction of his tempted thoughts, was in danger of change.

At last it was ended. It was time for him to leave the scholar with his books. He rose from his chair and went downstairs, glad to be away from him. He carried confusion of mind with him to the drawing room where Lorna sat at the piano, playing. He was puzzled. He did not interrupt her, but stood near the instrument watching her. He wanted to leave the house, for the burning, the unexplained, but painful burning continued in his breast, and he coveted solitude.

“Did you like that?” she said, as she finished, and her blue eyes turned to his. In them she saw no conscious response. “You’re moody to-night, aren’t you Mauney?” she asked indifferently.

“Oh, play some more, Lorna,” he said, trying to smile. “Please do.”

He sank thoughtfully into a chair as she continued, but he heard not a note of her music. A sadness such as had never possessed him had settled upon his being. It was as if he had already gone to the professor and said:

“I am leaving. I am going far away. I appreciate all your kindness. But I’ve got to go.”

It was as if he had already gone to Mrs. Freeman and said: “Good-bye. You have been decent to me, but something takes me away for ever from your sad home.”

And it was exactly as if he had interrupted the girl at the piano to say:

“Lorna, it was all a sad mistake. Forgive me, I’ve been inconsiderate. I thought I loved you, but now I know that it was the challenge of your mind that attracted me. I am going. Think of me as a foolish boy who did not understand himself.”

In the keen stress of his present mood he had mentally said these things as he sat near her. Some challenge of this home had awakened him to a confused realization of the vital quality of life. What was it? He could not understand. But he knew that he had a great account to settle with things. His deepest convictions had been touched at their source. He wanted to be up in arms to protect them.

The most absurd thing that he could possibly bring himself to imagine was the fact that he had asked this woman at the piano to become his wife. Still more absurd was his present obligation of chivalry to enquire now as to her final decision. With a sense of playing with sacred things, he wound up his courage and spoke to her, when she finished her music.

“Lorna, please come and sit near me,” he said, automatically rising. “I want to say something to you.”

She turned slowly on the piano stool and hesitated, while she looked in a surprised way from his face to the chair and then at his face again. She had never seen the commanding features before. His blue eyes were severely direct, his brow puckered with seriousness, his mouth determined. He was not to be denied, as she could divine from his manner.

He turned the chair for her to sit down and then when she was seated he quickly resumed his own chair.

“Matters have hung fire long enough between us, Lorna,” he said. “I want to know what you have decided to do about me?”

“Mauney!” she replied, in a tone of anger, that brought a flush to her face. “I thought you had forgotten all about that.... And I have been so humiliated!”

“Naturally you would be,” he admitted. “I apologize for what seemed my indifference. You have had a long time to consider what I asked you, and I am here to enquire as to your decision.”

“Why on earth be so wretchedly business-like about it?” she blurted angrily. “One would imagine you were trying to sell me a house?”

“Again, Lorna, you must pardon me,” he said slowly, and paused, while he shifted in his chair. “I really did not mean to give that impression.”

“You’ve hardly come near me since that night when you—when you kissed me!” She was beside herself with anger, although she spoke in almost a whisper. “Do you think I am the kind of girl you can kiss when you please, and then, after acting coldly for several months resume operations once more at your own whimsical choice? Do you imagine that I relish such treatment?”

“No doubt you don’t, Lorna,” he said. “But do you, on the other hand, realize that you are a girl whom I find it very hard to know _how_ to treat? When I asked you to marry me you replied quite calmly that you would have to consider the business very cautiously. Well, then, I’ve given you time to be about as cautious as you wish. What have you decided to do?”

“I haven’t decided to do anything, Mauney,” she replied in a tone of complete exasperation. “How do I know whether I want to marry you or not? I think it’s totally absurd. I scarcely know you. I know nothing about your family—you’ve never mentioned them.”

“Why should I? The girl I marry isn’t going to marry my family—am I to take your answer as ‘No’?”

“I’m afraid you are,” she replied tensely. “How could you possibly expect any other answer?”

“Well,” he said, hotly, “there are several reasons why I might expect another kind of answer.”

“Oh, please don’t!” she half gasped, raising her hand as if his mood greatly disturbed her.

“I’m going to tell you one or two of those reasons, Lorna. I don’t think I have an exaggerated opinion of myself by any means, but, at the same time, I believe my family were just as good as yours and—”

“Oh, Mauney, don’t, please!” she implored, rising, and burying her face in her hands. While he paused he was surprised to observe her shoulders twitching. In a moment she wept.

“I can’t stand this,” she said, sobbing. “I’ve never quarrelled with anyone before.”

Mauney walked to the piano and leaned thoughtfully against it.

“I’ll say no more, Lorna,” he said at length. “I’m really sorry to have upset you this way and ask your pardon most humbly.”

“All right, Mauney,” she said, gradually gaining control of herself. “You are pardoned, but please don’t ever mention marriage to me again. Will you promise?”

“I promise that,” he said simply.

“You know we are both so young,” she continued. “We were childish to mention it. Don’t you think so?”

“I do indeed.”

She came close to him and did a very unexpected thing. She put one hand on each of his shoulders and looked up seriously into his eyes.

“I don’t know anything about men,” she said with all the simplicity of a child. “I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings. I wouldn’t want to do that. I’ve always liked you. Why can’t we be friends?”

“That will suit me, perfectly,” he said. “As a matter of fact, Lorna, that’s all we _can_ be.”

“I know it,” she replied, turning away. “Let’s not be foolish again. Dad told me something to-day and I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to mention it—your appointment on the history staff.” Her voice had resumed its customary tone. “You’re awfully lucky, Mauney. Dad has unbounded faith in your ability. I just thought I’d mention it. Aren’t you terribly happy about it?”

“I can’t tell,” he said slowly. “I’m not in a mood to lie just now. I’m not happy just now. I’m most unreasonably sad.”