He had become a man, at length, with a man’s viewpoint and a mature sense of a personal participation in the affairs of the world. Three years of history had brought him to a point of view which included himself. Every student cannot be so favored by the unseen mechanism which moulds personality. Many, including the brilliant Miss Lorna Freeman, failed nothing in gaining an accurate knowledge of history. She seemed in eagerness for learning to be like the dry, cracked earth, eager for the rain that never quite fills it; but with all her great capacity for information she lacked the quality that had made Mauney older and more serious. The war did not make any appreciable difference in Lorna. It was a phenomenon, similar to, if vaster than, other wars, which would, in due course, afford her fascinating study. But to Mauney it had already loomed up as a vital obstacle to his philosophy of optimism, for all things culminated in it. All good that had ever been, met in it a blasting contradiction. All hope of a satisfactory society met in it a destructive rebuff; all the quivering aspirations of his own developing mind found in it a dark abyss, frightful enough to quench them.
So it was that Mauney, at the end of his third year, lost immediate interest in his academic work and grappled with a problem of reality.
He grew serious and questioning. His auburn hair, which had darkened until its color was scarcely present, was parted carelessly above a face somewhat paled by thought, a face whose blue eyes were intense with sharp mental strife, and whose lips had changed from their boyish happiness to the determined line of serious manhood.
His problems had thus changed a good deal from the time when they concerned merely his personal liberty, for they now concerned rather the liberty of the human race. He had gradually emerged from selfish considerations. He had lost touch with his family. Old bonds no longer held him. The new thing—the cosmic consciousness—which he owed to the university training, took possession of his mind. Wonderful gift of the college! That a man, through its agency, should unconsciously loose himself from all that relates to personal passion and tune his being to the pitch of the general passion of mankind!
From Maxwell Lee, constantly bent over his laboratory desks, constantly delving into the secrets of disease, constantly at work, heroically striving against handicaps of poverty and ill-health, he absorbed a great truth of conduct, for he gradually came to understand that it was the vast desire for human betterment that inspired this frail, but active, research student. Max loomed bigger than ever in his esteem. Three or four years had ripened their friendship, tested it in many ways, and proven it to be solid. Neither of them cared to leave 73 Franklin Street, partly because Mrs. Manton and Fred Stalton and the others had become strange fixtures in their lives, but mainly because they meant more to each other than either quite realized.
And Freda MacDowell had joined the ranks. Shortly after dropping out of her arts course she had met Gertrude and adopted 73 Franklin as her boarding house. She had now served two years as secretary in the Department of History, and was no more favorably impressed by education than on the evening of her conversation with Mauney at Professor de Freville’s. Frequently she had a good deal to say on the subject, although Mauney always tried to avoid her. She had the big front room opposite Max’s on the first floor, and there was a tasteful alcove with a desk and chairs in the hallway, where Max and she always sat to talk.
Apparently she had at last found her ideal boarding house. Her taste, cultivated by a half-dozen seasons in Merlton, and moulded by a gradual elimination of features objectionable or stereotyped, had become as whimsical as a middle-aged Parisian’s taste in diet. Two years as an undergraduate of the university had sufficed to draw the ban upon women’s residences and the mild espionage of fellow students. Her third year in arts had taught her conclusively that living with a maternal aunt was laying oneself needlessly open to constant misinterpretation. There were things she wanted to do—such as show herself friendly with Max Lee. There were other things which she did—such as allow Nutbrown Hennigar to call upon her. Evidently, Mrs. Manton’s house furnished what she wanted—freedom, comfort, protection from idle scandal. At any rate Mauney drew as much from her usual conversations.
But he was too busy to be greatly concerned with Freda; and, moreover, he had long since decided that she belonged to Lee. Max occasionally denied this, and characterized their relationship as merely a good friendship, but Mauney heard between his words.
Moreover there was Lorna Freeman, whom he had watched develop into an attractive womanhood. They were still together daily. He still took dinner at the professor’s occasionally and followed dinner with long discussions in the smoky study upstairs. He liked the Freemans. He liked Lorna. He liked Merlton and his university life.
But at the end of three years, with only one more year to study, he began to take synoptic views of the general situation and to cast into the immediate future for a career.