“You don’t need to. They aren’t such a bad lot. My first attitude was one of intolerance, but now I pity them. There they are, up to the ears in thankless routine, frozen by the currents of pure mentality, no heart left, lopsided, fossilized, hopeless. I wish I were running the university.”
There was such frank zeal in her wish that Mauney inquired as to what changes she would make if she had her way.
“Well,” she said. “In the first place I’m so sorry for the president that I could shed tears of real brine. They put him up in the clouds with a gold halo round his head and forget that he eats meat and potatoes and frequently perspires. He’s so busy addressing meetings, signing documents, preaching sermons and being necessarily nice to everybody in general that he has practically nothing to do with the university. He might as well have an office down town and be done with it. They expect him to be as perfect as the god they have made of him, and if he ever makes a mistake the big howl starts. I’d like to go into his office some day and kiss him right on the forehead and say: ‘Cheer up, old chap, you’re a winner!’”
“That ought to help a little,” laughed Mauney. “What else would you do for the university?”
“Why, I’d cut a great big window to let some sunshine into the history department. And I’d fire Nutbrown Hennigar and give him a job as aide-de-camp to some fat society woman up in the North End. He’s an example of the vapid young man who gains preferment solely through family influence. Then I’d take Uncle Alfred Tanner aside and explain to him that he can never gain the personal development to which his noble heart entitles him so long as he submits to the curbing influence of his brother-in-law’s clever dictatorship. Then I’d walk into Freeman’s office and, for purposes of smoothness, agree with him at the outset that nothing is good for anything, that all human effort is futile, that there naturally is no God, and then inquire naively, having got this settled, what he wanted to do next? I’d like to see that man get loosened up, just for once. I’ve often sat at my desk and just simply suffered to foxtrot with him all over the history department. When Freeman dies they ought to put a book in his hand instead of a lily.”
Mauney was reminded of Freda’s tirade against Freeman a few nights later when he accepted an invitation to dine at the historian’s quiet home. Of late he had unconsciously shunned the family, for reasons none too clear even to his own understanding. At heart he dimly realized that Lorna herself was the reason. He justly accused himself of having treated her with a species of neglect which must have been decidedly puzzling to her. Her matrimonial decision might have been arrived at long ago, for all he knew. Although it was his place, as the lover he had depicted himself, to inquire, he had nevertheless procrastinated. There was a great deal of apathy in his nature. He noticed that, so long as he did not see her or talk with her, he found no element of his being that regarded her as necessary. When, however, he was presented with Lorna in person, as upon this evening, the old attractions sprang to life once more, as if her presence were the essential cause.
He arrived early and talked with her on the rear lawn while they awaited dinner, which was being prepared by Mrs. Freeman herself. The high stone wall at the back of the lawn abutted directly on the western portion of the university grounds, so close to the history department that a small door had been cut in the wall to facilitate the professor’s short cuts to and from work.
They talked of many impersonal matters. It struck Mauney as almost absurd that this young woman had been asked to marry him. The impersonal attitude into which he had gradually drifted seemed to suit Lorna well enough, and as he talked with her he began at last to understand her real nature. Though pure and blameless, she was so narrowed by the lack of certain emotions as to be, from a romantic standpoint, negative. He saw it better now than ever before. The words that are a woman’s words and never a man’s, the whimsical details of deportment and address that belong peculiarly to women, the glances, the accents, the delicate tricks of wit, the sallies of playfulness—these were not in Lorna. He knew she liked him, but her presence was neither warm nor comforting. Her college training had bestowed, or perhaps merely emphasized, this negative quality of mind which Mauney at length recognized and disliked. Lorna knew that men loved women; knew it to be an accepted and doubtlessly beautiful arrangement, and one worthy of emulation, but she did not realize that this love of a man was no mere arrangement of pretty presentations, but a vital, all-absorbing, tremulous thing from beginning to end. Most women lived by the power of it: Lorna labelled it, pigeonholed it, and missed it.
He was tolerably sure that she did not hold it against him, that he had not again referred to matters of love. He could more easily imagine her appreciating his silence. Like her father and mother, her true character became evident only after long acquaintance.
He had imagined the professor and his wife to be passably happy together until impressed by Mrs. Freeman’s constant, mysterious sadness. Whether or not they began life together in perfect personal harmony was uncertain. But regarding their present relationship Mauney entertained no doubt. They had drifted so far apart that scarcely any common ground remained. Mrs. Freeman, shocked by her husband’s growing agnosticism, had clung for refuge more tightly than ever to dogmatic tenets of religion which at all times she had held to tightly enough. The farther Freeman drifted from simple religion the more desperately did she hold on, until their home life was rendered a frequent scene of controversial unpleasantness.