“That’s it. You can’t get an ideal which isn’t sooner or later rendered a mere idea. Your hands slip off from the round edges of everything you grasp. You know before you start that your efforts will eventually peter down to child’s play. Well, well,” he said, pulling himself up out of his half reverie. “I suppose I’d better read some more biochemistry.”
“Do you like the study of medicine?” asked Mauney.
Lee smiled.
“I like it all right,” he nodded. “But it’s just like me to get the wrong angle on it. I keep wondering about the profession—it’s so damned illogical.”
“How do you mean?”
“We patch people up after they’re damaged, instead of trying to keep ’em from getting damaged. We throw out the life-line, but we don’t teach ’em to swim. It’s all topsy-turvy philosophy, upside down, cart before the horse. However,” he said with a drawl as he opened his hand-grip to take out his book, “I’ve decided not to revolutionize the world, just yet. It’s a game, my son, but worth playing, after all.”
He was soon lost in the pages of his big Biochemistry volume again, and Mauney contented himself with reconstructing Lee’s philosophy. It struck him as perhaps picturesque, but unnecessarily bleak. No, he did not quite agree with his new friend. There was use in things. Just the prospect of an education was sufficient now to lift Mauney into a mood of happiness. To turn from mental darkness to mental light, to learn of the mysterious forces that promulgated life on the globe and kept it living, to know how peoples had lived and how they lived now, to pierce the meaning of war. In short, to pick the pearls of knowledge from the vast, pebbled coast-line of life—this was a task and an opportunity that thrilled him with splendid resolve and high hopes.
When they reached Merlton Union the platforms bore a busy swarm of humanity through which the two new friends made their way with difficulty to the great waiting room. Mauney had a sense of being suddenly dropped into a seething sea of being that emphasized his own minuteness. People sitting, tired and impatient. People walking eagerly about, searching for friends. People consulting official-looking clerks in information booths, or rushing at the heels of red-caps who carried their valises to departing trains. The great roar of the room rose to the high expanse of the roof, like the rushing sound heard in a sea-shell. Individual sounds were lost and swallowed up in the vague, but intense vibrations that beat back from the glazed ceiling, to be disturbed only by the deep, sonorous voice of a man by the gates who called the trains in measured periods, each speech ending in a wistful, sad inflection. Here were people, coming and going, as if it were the very business of life and not, as in Mauney’s case, the great epoch-making event of his whole existence. At the curb, outside the front entrance, he was dismayed by the mad rush of snorting taxi-cabs, pausing but long enough to take their passengers before darting off down the crowded street.
“I’ll tell you,” said Lee, pressing his long forefinger against Mauney’s vest buttons. “Suppose you give your baggage cheques to the city delivery here, then take my grip and go up to the boarding house. Tell Mrs. Manton I’ll be up later. You don’t need to say anything yet about getting a room there. Things are done very deliberately at seventy-three Franklin Street, as you’ll find. Tell her you’re waiting for me. Then just sort of edge in slowly. If she doesn’t ask you to sit down, just grab a chair and make yourself comfortable. Be sociable. Do you get me?”
Mauney nodded.