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.