A few minutes later Mauney knocked on the professor’s door, having learned from Freda that he had returned.
“Come,” said the well-known and pleasant voice.
Mauney found him seated in a Morris chair with a book on his knee, a pipe in his hand—picture of unruffled serenity. It was the first time Mauney had been in the dignified official precincts of the departmental head, but he could have described the room, so characteristic was it of the occupant. A simple desk bereft of all paraphernalia save a ruler, a blotter and an ash-tray. A wall with two cases of monotonously colored volumes, and between the cases, an empty grate. It was severely simple, just like Freeman, whose smile to-day was as hospitable as ever, as kindly as ever, as cruel as ever.
“Well, Mauney!” he said, as if no atmosphere of displeasure were being contemplated. “Won’t you sit down?”
“Thank you, Professor.”
He accepted the only other chair in the room and avoided Freeman’s keen, grey eyes. He noticed that the historian’s long dextrous hand was playing with the ornaments of his chair-arm and that his eyes, whenever he glanced at them, seemed full of racing plans.
“I sent for you, Mauney, for two reasons,” he said, gently, so gently that Mauney, for a moment, thought Tanner had made a mistake. “In the first place I wanted to mention your book, which I have here in my hand and which I am reading with interest. Are you in a hurry?”
“I have nothing to do, Professor,” said Mauney, more at ease by reason of Freeman’s polite deference.
“You say here, somewhere—oh yes, here’s the place,” continued Freeman, fondling the pages and quoting a passage. “‘History must cease to be a subject for the five-finger exercises of defunct mentalities, and become rather the earnest objective of men who are in tune with the issues of current society. It must cease to be the property of an elite academic dispensing agency, and become the property of those, who, valuing form less than substance, will not so much dispense it as interpret it. It must be rescued from fossilization, as every branch of learning requires, at times, to be rescued.’”
Freeman closed the book gently and laid it on the arm of his chair.