“He’ll have to mix his drinks a little better than that anyhow,” said the landlady. “Don’t you think so, Max?”
“It takes all kinds of people to make a world, Gertrude.” Lee reminded her. “I feel so darned cut up about my biochemistry, I can’t be expected to give an unbiased judgment.”
“Poor boy. You’ll get it, all right. When do you write?”
“This morning.”
Mauney accompanied his friend, whom he began to address now as Max, down to the university and, after Lee had disappeared into one of the buildings, stood thrilled by the spectacle before him. Here, surrounding the square, reposed the exemplary specimens of architecture that housed the various faculties. Max, in leaving, had pointed them out hurriedly—medicine, industrial science, Methodist theology, the great library, the convocation hall, the gymnasium, and last, but most impressive, the arts building, a solid, reposeful mass, as sure as learning itself, with its vine-dressed, dull grey walls of stone, it’s turreted tower, its marvellous gothic entrance, leading from the common day, past its embellished arch, into the dim twilight of contemplation. The square was belted by a gravel road, serving the various buildings, and was itself divided into eight triangular lawns by wide cinder paths, crossing from side to side and from corner to corner. It was a pleasant view, for the art of the landscapist had relieved the conventionality of the pattern by maples and ash-trees, distributed over the lawns, and by clusters of spiræa and barberry set attractively at the edges of the paths. The square was nearly deserted, save for one or two students who sat on the benches reading.
Mauney wished that with the fall opening he could be ready to enter upon his college course, but, knowing this to be impossible, turned sadly away, but yet with burning ambition, to find the tutor whom Max had recommended. He was discovered in a little office on College Street, a small, withered individual, almost swallowed up in the cluttered disorder of his administrative quarters. His yellow face, creased like old parchment, bent into a mechanical smile as he listened to Mauney’s desires. For a moment he fingered the paper-knife on his desk, then cast a weary look at his young customer through tarnished silver-rimmed spectacles.
“The matriculation requirements, Mr. Bard,” he said, in a cultured, but infinitely dreary voice, as if repeating a stereotyped speech, “are becoming increasingly onerous. The departments of the University of Merlton have established rather severe standards for college entrance, and I fear you will experience disheartening difficulties in attempting to gain matriculation status within the limits of a single winter term. However, your ambition is indeed commendable and, with perseverance, combined with extra tutoring, you may perhaps be able to succeed. The course that I would recommend”—he reached for a folder and, opening it, ran his yellow forefinger down its pages—“is partly a correspondence course, but partly, also, one of personal supervision, especially in science subjects. The cost of this course is considerable, but I am glad to be able to quote an average of sixty per cent. successes over a period of the last fifteen years. Other preparatory tutors have not, unfortunately, been able to compete with these figures. The fees are payable strictly in advance, and if you decide to embark upon the course, you are promised the same individual, careful attention that is given to everyone.”
Mauney questioned nothing, but embarked. He was almost delirious with happiness over the proceedings, the enrolment, the purchase of a score of interesting books which the tutor recommended, and the prospect of commencing so quickly the life for which he had longed. His room at seventy-three Franklin Street, next to Max’s, was soon a student’s den, with its own table, its own volumes and its easy chairs. His life became a very pleasant thing, for, with his daily visits to the little office on College Street, and the diversions of the boarding house, he found what seemed to him a wealth of variety. He was astonished at his own contentment and at the self-sufficient quality in him that scarcely, if ever, caused him to think of his former home, or to reflect upon the dearth of relatives in his new existence. He wrote to his aunt in Scotland, expressing high satisfaction with his present occupations. He settled down in the loved quietness of his room, to master the rudiments of education. Never once did he stop, weary, for with the sharp appetite of a starved mind, he thought of nothing but more information, and more.
Max, who had been successful in his supplementary examination and was now engaged in the fourth year of his medical course, frequently dropped into Mauney’s room for a smoke and a chat. Max never spoke about his own home, and Mauney refrained from questioning him. The basis of their friendship was something personal and gloriously indefinite, that neither thought of analyzing. They felt at home with each other, and never, from the very beginning of their acquaintance, did anything disturb this quite unaccountable understanding. Mauney always felt that there was a hidden thought at the centre of Max, with which some day he would be favored, for behind his dark and often weary eyes great dreams seemed to pass, greater than the drawl of his clever and sarcastic tongue. He ventured to think that perhaps Max had drifted into a profession for which his nature disqualified him, for he naturally gained the impression that a medical student needed to be, in one particular sense, a feelingless person, with certain vulture-like qualities to steel him against the revoltingly physical aspects of his work. The skull in Max’s wardrobe, the illustrations in his books—there were many symbols of the idea. In secret, however, Max was evidently no materialist, but sought the wide comfort of philosophic generalities. No one, to be sure, would suspect it at seventy-three Franklin Street, where he was known by his smile, but Mauney would catch the plaintive note in some quiet remark, as when one evening, in discussing college work in general, he said:
“Wrap up your colleges and throw them in the ocean. They furnish us a few years of diversion, but after that there’s life, and, strange to relate, Mauney, my son, they have not prepared us for that.”