CHAPTER X.

THE RELIABLE MAN.

Next day, Freda was agreeably surprised to be called on the telephone, about ten in the morning.

“Are you going to church?” asked Mauney.

“No, are you?” she asked.

“I’m too fed up, Freda, to bother. It’s going to be a warm day and I think we ought to get out in the country, up the river some place. I’ve got a lot to talk about.”

They motored to Shadow Bay, a dozen miles west of Lockwood, and had dinner together at the Chalet, a summer place, which, owing to the auspicious weather, was still open.

“I’m beginning to understand Lockwood better,” Mauney said, as they sat on a shaded cliff after dinner. “I don’t remember ever having put in a more disagreeable week in my life.”

“What’s wrong?” she enquired, with no suggestion in her voice that her own past week had been the most unpleasant she could recall.

“Just everything,” he said. “I’m foolish to mind it at all. But the staff of the collegiate are the hardest people to get acquainted with. They’re all capable, unusually so, but terribly stand-offish.”

“That, my dear boy, is the key-note of Lockwood,” she interrupted. “They’ve just naturally acquired that manner.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he nodded. “But I wish they’d get over it. They seem to think I’m a high-brow, or something just as bad. Inadvertently I heard a couple of the men discussing my book, knocking it to beat the deuce.”

“And do you actually care, Mauney Bard?” she asked in a surprised tone.

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I’ve always been damnably lonesome for pals, for good fellows, who, like Max Lee, could see the motive behind the act. Freda, you know the motive behind my book. You know it was merely a wish of mine to warm up the subject of history a little bit. Well, these chaps agreed that it was mere nonsense.”

“That,” sneered Freda, “was mere jealousy. They haven’t tried to write a book. If they had they’d be more lenient. But really,” she added, looking Mauney seriously in the eye, “I think you must be tired, for I never saw you so down in the mouth, before.”

She wanted to pillow his head in her lap, and tell him that his book was the best one ever written. She longed to comfort him and change his loneliness. There were great allowances, after all, which she would gladly make for him. She knew all about his life now. She knew _him_, too—just how stimulating a little praise was to him, just how diffident he was about himself, and how hard it was for anyone to reach his real open self. As she sat there beside him and watched his strong, splendid profile, while he gazed at the river, she knew that she could never pity him. He was too big and strong. To-day was but a passing mood in his strong life. Rather than comfort him she would prefer to cast her inmost self upon his support and be comforted. But he was too immovable either to come to her or to receive her.

“I’ve got a bone to pick, Mauney,” she said.

“All right. What is it?” he asked pleasantly.

“Can’t you imagine?”

“Possibly, but I’d prefer that you present the bone.”

“Why didn’t you call me up all week?”

“My easiest excuse would be that I did not think you cared.”

“But,” she answered, “as we happen to be sensible people of the twentieth century, and as you _know_ I cared, tell me your real reason.”

“Would work be a decent excuse?” he laughed.

“With anyone else but you, Mauney, it would do fine. But you must remember that I’ve only got three more weeks, perhaps, to stay in Lockwood.”

“But three weeks is a long time, too, Freda,” he said, seriously. “Just think how terribly much can happen in three weeks.”

“I suppose you’re thinking of history, are you?” she asked in a delicate tone of mockery.

“No, Freda,” he replied, quickly. “I’m thinking of you. I’m thinking of you all the time, all this week. Please do me the honor to believe me.”

“Sorry,” she said, dropping her hand suddenly on his.

Her week of impatience quickly melted from her thoughts, and in the silence, as they sat so close together, she could have wept. Why had she used that little, mocking tone? If he could realize how she felt he would take her hand in his and not leave it just where she had dropped it. But there he sat looking away toward the river, so very self-contained.

“And I was going to tell you,” he said presently, “about the young people I’m teaching. I like them all right and I think they have unusual ability. But they have no enthusiasm, except a very few of them. I decided that I’d like to start a seminary for one of the classes where we could get right down to business and have open discussions. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

“Yes, Mauney, splendid,” she replied, lifting her hat carefully from her head, and tossing it on the grass. “Why don’t you do it?”

“Just one reason. Dover, when I put it up to him, didn’t think it could be done. I talked it over with him in his office, Friday night. He’s a good fellow and capable and has got a line on Lockwood that I wish you’d heard. He impressed on me that his words were confidential, but I’m going to tell you. He approved of the round-table idea immediately, but said it had once been tried out, and failed. They had to be held after regular classes, you see, and a lot of the wealthy people objected to their children being kept in. They sent doctor’s certificates and raised the devil. Of course, once robbed of its spontaneity, the seminaries proved a failure.”

“Enthusiasm,” said Freda, “is one word that dear old Lockwood will never learn. They hate enthusiasm.”

“You should have seen Dover,” laughed Mauney. “When he grows warm under the collar he always gets on those two feet of his and hikes all over the room, like a madman looking for a hole by which to escape from his cell.”

“He was just the same when I went,” she nodded.

“I had touched a tender spot when I mentioned seminaries,” Mauney continued. “It got him off on a general criticism of Lockwood. After he had paced the floor for a moment or two he stopped and said in his slow, nasal, sarcastic way: ‘Mr. Bard, I’ve lived here for twenty-five years. That’s exactly a quarter of a century, and I’m going to tell you that it’s been exactly a quarter of a century too long. I don’t know what’s wrong with Lockwood, because I’ve been much too busy to try to find out.’”

“That sounds just like him!” laughed Freda.

“‘But, there’s something wrong, I can assure you. A teacher who teaches in this town, is just a paid servant of the community. He has no social status, whatever. His wife has none either. His planetary orbit reaches as far as school at nine in the morning, and as far as bed at nine in the evening. If he tries to do more than he’s paid for he becomes unpopular. They want uniformity, here in Lockwood and, by George, they’re going to get it. That’s why seminaries won’t work, Mister Bard.’”

“Oh, well,” Freda said, “you mustn’t be discouraged, boy.”

Mauney shook his head slowly while the muscles of his jaw hardened. “I’m far from being discouraged,” he said quietly. “I’ve started in on this work, and I’m going to stay with it.”

There, in that simple statement of his, Freda felt that his whole reliable character showed itself. Born of parents who had dug their living out of the ground, Mauney would persist in whatever task he undertook—obdurate, stubborn, steadfast and gloriously reliable.

They had supper at the Chalet and then returned to their nook under the trees. Freda had, by this time, attuned herself to the quiet and dispirited mood which seemed to possess Mauney. It would pass, she felt, but it was lasting unusually long.

“I couldn’t come to see you this week,” he said awkwardly. “I got a letter from the nurse at Rockland, and Max is dying.”

“Dying!” she exclaimed.

He nodded his head slowly several times. That was all the explanation he could give for his conduct during the past week, and it had taken him all day to give it. They drove home in the twilight and later, on the verandah at MacDowell’s, as he was bidding her good-night, the illumination of a red moon shining through a hot, smoky, sky showed him her face. Never would he forget the quietness of that moment, disturbed only by the wind in the pines, as he looked down upon her features, and suffered to clasp the vision in his arms. But he did not.

And when he had gone, Freda, unable to understand his restraint, suffered, too. Idealization was a bogey cast out of heaven years ago. She coveted actuality and the simple, sweet rewards of affection, and, in a pang of loneliness, she wished that Mauney was less immovable and self-contained and reliable.