CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH MAUNEY CALLS ON THE PROFESSOR.

Youth is liable to misconstrue the world and its heterogeneous motives. Being inordinately eager to fulfil its own pressing missions, it is prone to belittle the halting advice of more sedate age, and to battle against every influence seemingly hostile. Youth, with its mental astigmatisms, is certain to misjudge situations until it gains the corrective lenses of experience. It is bound to clothe with over-zealous colors all that touches its fate, and to defend itself heroically against encroachment.

Mauney was no exception.

He rose next morning in vast determination to assert the rights of his own personality, feeling that he had been spoon-fed long enough, that the hour had arrived when, not only should he think for himself, but throw out his formative impressions upon a moulding society.

No one will quarrel with him for this, since, even if his impressions were mistaken, a matter for opinion, naturally, his mood upon this spring morning, the twentieth of May, to be exact—was evidently the mood of progress. His pain was the pain of growth. It was the pain of birth. And birth is the moment of discontinuous growth.

“All my ideas are due for a great heart-searching, a great sifting, a great consolidation. From now no gloom can be injected into the atmosphere without my consent. Nothing is true because some one so states. Truth is what I personally feel, and I feel that, in spite of the disheartening narrowness of logic, in spite of the misanthropic outlook of fossilized intelligence, in spite of all that a university has raised up to alarm my mind, there does exist a cheerful future for my kind, and a great happiness that, far away as it may be, is not quite out of sight.”

At ten o’clock Mrs. Manton came to his room to inform him that Freda had telephoned from the university to the effect that he was wanted by Professor Freeman in the history department. He went directly, knowing that now with the term ended and the business of the year settled the department was picking up the threads of its autumn work. He was to be initiated into his new duties as a lecturer in history. It was for this professorial interview that he had been patiently waiting. He went quickly, with light steps, down Franklin Street, with eager steps through the great university square where, as he reflected, he had stood five years ago, a raw, country boy, overcome by the aspect of the seat of learning. Much had taken place. Patiently he had sat beneath the illumination of the immortal lamp of knowledge, charmed by its radiations, lulled into a mood of mental delectation. How often during these years he had crossed these cinder paths, going eagerly to his history classes, in the fanciful delusion that God had created a tremendously interesting world for no other purpose than that students might glory in their investigations thereof. It had been a necessary part of life perhaps, but it was all passed now. “What an innocent dream!” he pondered. “How unrecking of the dire forces of good and ill that rule the world, how delightfully blind to actual existence, how elysian, how stupidly brilliant, how sagely detached!”

But here before him was life. Here was his Alma Mater—the great stone house, that like a mother took her children to her breast. Within this mysterious edifice, what quiet whispers of the restful mother did they hear and cherish! To-day they came in, children with plastic minds. To-morrow they went out, citizens of the world, living men and women who must change the world. Ah, this was life! He almost paused as he entered the Gothic portal, with fear of his new responsibilities, with reverence for his high calling, with fear of life.

The rotunda was dusky with filtered light from the stained-glass window above the landing of the dignified walnut staircase, and duskier with its high, dark-panelled walls. No one was there—the customary spring desertion. But, in imagination, there were innumerable hushed whispers, thick in the atmosphere, like an overflow from the dead years of lecturing, which, even now, came back to life once more.

He passed down the dark corridor, lighted by old-fashioned, carbon lamps, with its dull-green mosaic floor, its huge walnut doors closed upon empty lecture rooms. From the open transoms came the imaginary whispers again. He shivered with thoughts of their poignant symbolism. At the end of the long hall, where he turned toward the wing, stood a marble bust of Homer, with heavy, sightless eyes. Above him hung a cracked oil painting of some particularly emaciated celebrity, who had the appearance of peeking timidly above the rim of his high, white collar, to see who, in this quiet, deserted hour, might be disturbing the century-old solitude with his echoing footsteps.

Up the few, worn, stone steps he climbed to the office door of the department of history. Inside he found only Freda, seated as usual, behind her flat-topped-desk. He glanced about to make sure they were alone. Two mullioned windows on either side let in the dull daylight. There were chairs, and shelves of documents, and the broom of a janitor whose labors had been interrupted. A door on the inner wall stood ajar, but there was no sound.

He came quickly toward her and covered her right hand with his own as it lay upon the desk.

“It’s good to see you, to-day, Freda,” he said. “I—”

“S-sh!” she said softly, putting her finger against her lips and nodding her head towards the door behind her.

“Professor Freeman has sent for you, Mr. Bard,” she said aloud, in a most formal tone, the meanwhile returning the ardent pressure of his hand, and acquiring a sudden complexion. “If you will be seated, please, I will see if he is ready for you.”

“Oh, I say, Miss MacDowell,” came a voice from the inner room, “Dr. Freeman has gone over to his house. I imagine he’ll be back soon.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hennigar,” she said politely, but with a grimace toward the crack in the door.

“Not at all,” he replied, in his English accent, in his unforgettable voice of harsh, bubbling overtones. “I say, Miss MacDowell, did you see anything of those dashed first year exam. books?”

“They’re all here,” she replied indifferently. “Any time you want them.”

Nutbrown Hennigar opened the door and gave Mauney a quick, direct stare from his intensely black eyes. He had never lectured to Mauney and had forgotten meeting him at the de Freville dinner.

“May I introduce Mr. Bard—Mr. Hennigar,” said Freda politely.

Hennigar advanced suddenly, in his characteristic abrupt and shuffling way.

“How d’juh do!” he said briefly, taking Mauney’s hand, and then dropping it as if it were hot. “Mr. Bard? Why, of course, how stupid of me!” he said, pushing his bone-rimmed, nose spectacles further down toward the point of his nose, and pulling at a black ribbon that tethered them around the base of his collar. “I understand you are joining our staff.”

“Yes,” smiled Mauney. “I have been given the opportunity and naturally consider it a good one.”

“Oh, _rather_!” coughed Hennigar, with emphasis, as he took a blue, silk handkerchief from its concealed position in his coat sleeve. “It’s really awfully good. By the way, I have the honor to be conversing with an author, if I’m not mistaken. I have read your book, Mr. Bard.”

“You did me an honor, Mr. Hennigar.”

“Oh no, not that,” he said. “It was really awfully well done. Accept my congratulations. Well, I hope you like it here, and all that. It’s not a bad place, you know. I needn’t express how glad we are to have you with us. That goes without saying, of course.”

He swung his left arm up in front of his face and glanced at his wrist watch.

“And now,” he said, backing slowly toward the door, “I have an engagement with a beastly dentist and know you’ll excuse me.”

With a very full, but evanescent exposure of his very white teeth he nodded his head and disappeared, slamming the door.

“The miserable little dog,” whispered Freda, her face flushed. “Just cur enough to fawn. He hates you, Mauney, like sin. He asked me this morning if I had read your book. I told him I had and that I considered it a young masterpiece. He didn’t like me to say that. He’s one of the poorest sports in Merlton. I’d just love to push my finger right into his eyes.”

“Freda!”

“You’re shocked! Well, I’ll bet you’ll feel the same way after you’ve been here a year or so. Sit down and rest your bones. Professor Freeman will be along soon.”

Before he could accept her invitation a heavy, energetic step was heard outside the office. The door opened and Dr. Alfred K. Tanner’s familiar form bustled in. He was, as usual, entirely occupied with his busy thoughts and proceeded straight to Freda’s desk without noticing Mauney.

“Miss MacDowell,” he said, in a low, intense tone, leaning over the desk and pointing his plump forefinger toward the window as if he was about to refer to the dust that adhered to the panes of glass. “Have you had time to make out that list yet?”

“Which list, Dr. Tanner?”

“The pass marks in ancient history. The pass marks, I mentioned yesterday. The pass marks, Miss MacDowell.”

“No, not yet.”

“I see—not yet,” he repeated, straightening up and pressing his little finger nail between his lips. For a moment he seemed on the verge of decision. Then, bending forward again he pointed toward the window.

“Listen, Miss MacDowell,” he said in a very loud tone. “Delay it. Delay it. I may not want them, you see? I may not want them. No. I may amalgamate the pass marks in one lump, Miss MacDowell.”

Then he lowered his voice again.

“You can keep them here, can’t you?”

“Yes, Dr. Tanner.”

“Bully! You keep them here, Miss MacDowell, I may amalgamate them.”

As he turned to leave the office, he noticed Mauney. “Hello, there, Mauney Bard,” he said, pausing. “How are you?”

“Fine, Professor, thank you,” he smiled.

“Did you beat Lorna on the spring exams?”

“No, sir, she defeated me as usual.”

Tanner laughed whole-heartedly.

“Oh—ha! She defeated you as usual. Of course, she did. Very clever girl, Lorna. Of course, she defeated you.”

His expression changed.

“Oh yes!” he reminded himself, “I want to see you, Mauney Bard. Have you got say five minutes to spare?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Bully! Come with me.”

He led Mauney to his office upstairs. Indicating a chair for Mauney he sat down behind his own desk and leaned forward.

“Now, look,” he said, “I want you to understand that I’m in a most friendly mood. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mauney, intensely curious.

“Good! I’m really in a _most_ friendly mood. The professor has already told me that you have joined the staff. I would congratulate you on joining the staff except that I consider it unnecessary. I am glad you have come to us. You are, now, more or less, one of us. I don’t congratulate you, but I welcome you. You are one of us, more or less.”

He sat back in his chair and preserved a short silence.

“Now this isn’t any too pleasant a mission,” he declared, shaking his head, as if Mauney had said it was pleasant. “I—I feel that, as a senior member of the staff I should take you under my wing, more or less. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now here’s what I’m coming to,” he continued. “You must regard what I say as confidential, unusually confidential. Yes, I know you will. I don’t need to ask. _Very_ confidential. It would seem that Professor Freeman is considerably offended with you.”

“Me!” exclaimed Mauney. “Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes—I’m sure—I’m very uncomfortably sure, Mr. Bard. Now, possess yourself in quietness and I shall try to make it clear to you—as it is clear to me—why the professor should be so offended. I, of course, would not bother telling you, unless, as you may haply surmise, I am moderately interested in your welfare in our department. I imagine he will send for you in a few days.”

“He sent for me this morning!” Mauney interjected.

“Indeed—and did he? Well, I’m not astonished. I was talking with him this morning and I may say that considering everything, such, for example, as your pleasant relationship to the family, if I may refer to that, in passing, and considering, too, that your record has been a good one, I say I was taken somewhat by surprise at his attitude. It has reference, of course, to your book on the teaching of history.”

“My book—why!” stammered Mauney, quite pale. “You mean he objects to what I said in it?”

“More or less, Mr. Bard. He feels that, as a member of the staff, you were ill-advised in publishing a book which criticizes the methods of the staff.”

“But I wrote it and published it before I became a member of the staff,” Mauney objected.

“No doubt about that,” Tanner agreed. “I reminded the professor of that. The fact, in itself, excuses you. But no fact, as it would seem, can excuse the result. Now, I am _most_ friendly, Mr. Bard, and am merely trying to give you the situation. I am not stating any personal convictions. In one sense, my position denies me the right to do so. In such an instance, I really think that criticism is helpful, from whatever source it may come. I really think that the university, while doubtlessly far from perfect, has, at least, attained a degree of dignity where it does not need to fear, but should welcome criticism. I have read your book and I am quite frank in saying that it has many splendid points. But here’s the great difficulty. We have been trying to run the university under grave disadvantages. Public sentiment is not always as helpful and kindly as we might wish. Hence, we deprecate criticism which is open and militant. However, from your standpoint, Mr. Bard, the problem is to face the professor, with as good a grace as you can command, and, now that you know the situation, I think you will be better prepared.”

Mauney sat staring at the mullioned windows with the unpleasant feeling of a criminal being prepared by a minister for the death sentence. This room was the death-cell, Freeman’s office was to be the death-chamber. He had committed a heinous offence. He could not put off the superimposed sense of guilt that breathed to him from Tanner’s manner and from the ominous quietness of the room. He told Tanner that he appreciated his confidential talk and that he was now “quite prepared” for the interview with the professor, while Tanner seemed to be struck by a defiant note in his reply.

A few minutes later Mauney knocked on the professor’s door, having learned from Freda that he had returned.

“Come,” said the well-known and pleasant voice.

Mauney found him seated in a Morris chair with a book on his knee, a pipe in his hand—picture of unruffled serenity. It was the first time Mauney had been in the dignified official precincts of the departmental head, but he could have described the room, so characteristic was it of the occupant. A simple desk bereft of all paraphernalia save a ruler, a blotter and an ash-tray. A wall with two cases of monotonously colored volumes, and between the cases, an empty grate. It was severely simple, just like Freeman, whose smile to-day was as hospitable as ever, as kindly as ever, as cruel as ever.

“Well, Mauney!” he said, as if no atmosphere of displeasure were being contemplated. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you, Professor.”

He accepted the only other chair in the room and avoided Freeman’s keen, grey eyes. He noticed that the historian’s long dextrous hand was playing with the ornaments of his chair-arm and that his eyes, whenever he glanced at them, seemed full of racing plans.

“I sent for you, Mauney, for two reasons,” he said, gently, so gently that Mauney, for a moment, thought Tanner had made a mistake. “In the first place I wanted to mention your book, which I have here in my hand and which I am reading with interest. Are you in a hurry?”

“I have nothing to do, Professor,” said Mauney, more at ease by reason of Freeman’s polite deference.

“You say here, somewhere—oh yes, here’s the place,” continued Freeman, fondling the pages and quoting a passage. “‘History must cease to be a subject for the five-finger exercises of defunct mentalities, and become rather the earnest objective of men who are in tune with the issues of current society. It must cease to be the property of an elite academic dispensing agency, and become the property of those, who, valuing form less than substance, will not so much dispense it as interpret it. It must be rescued from fossilization, as every branch of learning requires, at times, to be rescued.’”

Freeman closed the book gently and laid it on the arm of his chair.

“Do you really believe what you have written, Mauney?” he asked.

“I really do, Professor,” the young man replied, determinedly.

“Then we can better discuss it, knowing that you are sincere. In the first place, why do you feel as you do?”

“Because, since the first day I came to college, I have been confronted by this cut-and-dried, academic spirit which, to me at least, acts like poison.”

“You mean that, here in our department, there is a spirit, on the part of the tutors, which is disagreeable to you?”

“Yes, sir. But, of course, I made no reference to any university in particular.”

“I know. But, nevertheless, you gained the impression here?”

“Yes.”

“That is extremely unfortunate,” said Freeman, in a tone of real sincerity. “Of course, as you must realize, your book, in places, assumes an attitude of frank rebellion, and, whether or not you would have written it had you known you were coming on the staff, the appearance is nevertheless equally as ridiculous. You see what I’m driving at?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, I don’t want you to be jeered at by the public. I want you to preserve your dignity as much as you can. I dare say your book will not actually have much practical effect on teaching, since it was written rather as a semi-philosophical treatise. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“But at the same time, Mauney, having written it, you will see how illogical your appearance on a history staff becomes.”

Enmeshed in Freeman’s subtle argument, with its pretence of deferential consideration, Mauney burned with sudden indignation.

“There’s just one solution,” he said rising, and now facing the professor frankly. “I’ve put my foot in it. I’ve criticized the university. I’ve committed the unpardonable sin and must abide by the consequences. I reiterate, without any bluff, sir, that I have suffered from the dampening influence which kills youthful enthusiasm. I’ve dared to believe in what I might term a bright human future. I’ve dared to contradict and defy the cold, pessimistic viewpoint to which I have been exposed. Many a boy comes to college full of ardent belief in the fundamental goodness of things, but few are strong enough to wade through the marsh of brilliant tutoring which believes in nothing. I have been strong enough to wade through, Professor, and I am strong enough now to offer you, most respectfully, my resignation from your staff.”

Mauney started toward the door.

“A moment, please,” said Freeman, turning in his chair. “I think your resignation is the most logical thing you could give me, because, otherwise, your own position—”

“Please, Professor,” he interrupted, “don’t let us befog the situation. You wanted my resignation. You have it, sir. And let me assure you that I hold no personal spite. On the contrary I appreciate to the very limit your many kindnesses to me. There is nothing personal, Dr. Freeman, in all this. It’s principle, and I regret that even a principle should separate us. Was there anything further, sir?”

“No,” said Freeman softly, with a gentle smile on his lips. “I think that’s all.”