Professor's Progress. Iii: A Novel of Contemporaneous Adventure

I

Now, as Latimer stood at the guidepost and pondered whether he should hold to the highway or follow the dirt road which ran off at right angles, to lose itself immediately around the edge of a pine grove, there came from that quarter a sharp cry of pain in a woman’s tones, and the rasp of grinding metal like a brake suddenly released. The clatter of machinery and the outcry could mean only one thing.

Latimer ran forward. It was as he supposed. A young woman was leaning, white-faced, against the hood of a disreputable automobile, clasping her right wrist to press back the pain with which her face was twitching.

‘ Are you badly hurt ? ’ cried Latimer.

His first impulse was to drop fifty years from his shoulders and to kick out savagely at the crank-handle which, had done the mischief, and now, in utter lack of conscience, hung there with the most innocent face in the world. Latimer almost expected it to begin wagging pleasantly, like the tail of a dog who has tumbled you into the gutter with the very best intentions.

As it happened, Latimer’s commonplace inquiry was the very best procedure he could have adopted. The white face quivered; there was a gush of tears and a violent outbreak of sobbing. It was exactly like a child who manages to hold a rein on his sorrow until a word of sympathy opens the flood-gates. She was not much more than a child, and the pain seemed to depart as quickly as it had come, under the ministration of tears. She let her right arm hang limp and with the other hand dried her eyes. Having done so, she stood upright and unashamed and smiled at Latimer.

‘I am much better, thank you,’ she said. ‘I could be home in a few minutes if only I can get the old thing going.’

‘Let me try,’ said Latimer.

‘ Take care. It’s vicious,’ she replied. ‘Father has been wanting to destroy it, and he will this time if he finds out. But we can’t afford it.’

In the interest of public morals that automobile should have been suppressed.

There are two kinds of ignoble old age. One is decrepit, leery, tottering to the grave. It is the kind which moralists can use as a warning and a text. The other is the infinitely more dangerous kind. It reveals a sound constitution beneath the rags and defilement. It cannot be used as a text, for it works the other way. It seems to show that a man may drink, loaf, and otherwise transgress, and yet keep going physically. That is the kind of old age which comes to Ford machines converted to industrial uses in the country.

The car Latimer was now trying to crank up was streaked with red rust and thick with mud. Wherever there was iron-work to bend it was bent, twisted, wrinkled. Where there was wood-work to chip and flake, it had done so. True, a wagon-body, affixed to the chassis, supplied an element of respectability, but it could not overcome the impression of the dissolute forward part of the car. It was like a staid citizen tooling along arm-in-arm with the village drunkard.

Nevertheless the condition of the machine carried no imputation on the character of its owners. It is simply an unwritten law of nature that a passenger Ford turned to business uses should look like a hoodlum.

Twice Latimer leaped back to escape injury from the crank-handle. His right arm was a torture, but he would have perished sooner than acknowledge defeat at the hands of that obscene vehicle. The girl would have made him desist but for her father’s threat. Nevertheless, after ten minutes of ineffectual effort she was about to say that it was enough, when the spark caught and the ancient reprobate started into life.

‘You cannot drive with your injured hand,’ said Latimer, ‘and though my experience is limited, it may suffice.’

He helped her into the car, rearranged the market-baskets in the wagon behind, and set off at a conservative six miles an hour. The girl sat silent while he steered with a degree of caution which at once revealed his amateur standing. He passed a hay-wagon going in the same direction, with an anxious blast on the horn which evoked derision from the driver. He gave the signal again before taking an extremely shallow curve in the road, and rounded the promontory like a transatlantic liner making dock.

‘My manner at the wheel is not impressive, but it is sound,’ he observed.

She laughed aloud, then blushed, begged his pardon mutely, and took refuge in conversation.

‘You are not staying up at the big house?’ she asked.

‘What big house?’

‘Only a little way down the main road; the Grimsbys’; ever so many people are always visiting there.’

‘What kind of people?’

‘Queer people,’ she replied.

‘Then I must look them up,’ he said; but she missed his mild satire.

‘We are from New York,’ she said. ‘We’ve been here three years. I love it now. Father says the same, but I think it’s harder for him. It was such a change after all the years of night work.’

Night work, thought Latimer. Was this a patrolman’s daughter?

‘Father was a newspaper man,’ — and there was a lift of pride in her chin and eyes. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard of him—Manning, of the Star. He will be glad to know you. You’ll stay for supper, won’t you?’

‘Assuredly I will,’ he said. ‘Are you making a success of farming?’

‘We’ve done pretty well, considering it’s only our third summer.’

‘I should say that was doing well. If you make money on a farm before half a dozen years — ’

‘Well, not making money,’ she said. ‘But we come out even, with what father does for the magazines.’

II

Suddenly Latimer said, —

‘I hope I am not impertinent, but why should a man of your years give up a fascinating profession to come out to this?’

Manning looked up quickly, turned away, and puffed steadily at his pipe. He was hesitating between a straightforward answer and frivolity.

‘It’s the regular thing, Dr. Latimer. When a good reporter dies, he goes in either for poultry or fruit.’

‘But when does a good reporter die, as you call it?’

Supper had been brought in from the kitchen by Margaret, and laid, rural fashion, in its entirety, before they sat down. Of the three, Latimer ate the most heartily, and Manning the least. To him the presence of a visitor from the clangorous world he had left behind was a summons to half-suppressed aches and desires.

‘The good reporter dies when his soul is born,’ said Manning gravely. ‘ Sooner or later it comes to most of us — the longing to stop writing things up and to begin to understand them. Sometimes it comes all at once. Hits you between the eyes.’

‘But who should understand life so well as you men whose business it is to follow it up day by day?’ queried Latimer.

‘That’s just it,’ laughed Manning. ‘Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. When I worked on a morning paper I was a fiend on life from the Bull-Dog edition to the 4 A.M. Metropolitan. And when I was with the afternoon papers there was n’t very much in life that got away from me between 8 A.M. and 4.15 P.M. I saw so much of life that, before I had rushed one piece of it up the copy-tube, another chunk would be pawing at my elbow.’

‘Exactly,’ said Latimer; ‘a wealth of experience that no other profession can even suggest.’

But Manning was not listening. His pipe hung cold in his hand and his gaze traveled beyond his auditors into the years of his pilgrimage.

‘I’ve been through the mill,’ he said. ‘ Police court, police headquarters, magistrate’s court, city hall, copy desk, rewrite, city desk, legislature, dramatic, sport, legislature again, Washington, managing editor, and sometimes ‘Fashions and Hints for the Home.’ I’ve hobnobbed with gangsters and shirtwaist strikers and cabinet officers in rapid succession. The owner of the paper on which I grew up was death on stagnation. He was always punching us up by shuffling us about, and one week I would be rewriting press agent’s dope and the next I would be flashing special correspondence from the capital.’

‘And to every swift stimulus an immediate reaction, which is life,’ said Latimer. ‘Else how could you do your work ? ’

‘ By not reacting at all,’ Manning replied. ‘By turning yourself into a confounded tabula rasa, all smeared over with tenement-house fires and coldstorage eggs and the Japanese peril. Just a machine grinding out the machine-made stuff that clutters the news sheets. After a while you sicken for a breath of reality.’

Latimer waved him aside.

‘You are suffering from the professional fallacy, the conviction held by every doctor, lawyer, preacher, and stockbroker — that his is the one unkind fate.’

‘It’s not so bad the first two years,’ said Manning, ‘until you have graduated from police and the criminal courts. There, I admit, you touch on what is called life, though touch it is about all you can do. The only sincere stuff in the business is crimes and accidents. A man does n’t usually shoot his wife for publication, or fall under a motor-truck with his photograph ready for 64-screen reproduction. Everything beyond that is just formula and makebelieve, acting and speaking for publication — politicians this way, and strike-leaders that way, and woman suffragists their own way. We are the family photographers of the world, and people come to us in their Sunday clothes. If they did n’t, we’d retouch them anyhow; make them, every one, — gangsters, society leaders, shopgirls, secretaries of state, — say what we want them to say; which is what they want us to make them say. How many stories have you read of the YaleHarvard football game?’

‘Ever so many; and excellent bits of writing they usually are.’

‘ Rubber-stamp,’ said Manning. ‘ The newspaper profession is just one big Harvard-Yale story, the most interesting parts of which, except as to who won the game, are written several hours before the game. In all Yale-Harvard games, you will recall, the railroad terminals in New York are jammed with pretty girls in furs and crimson or blue; the roads to New Haven swarm with high-priced automobiles; the ticketspeculators offer tickets at twenty-five dollars a pair; the Yale Bowl is one mass of color; the rival stands challenge each other in song; there is a nip in the air which is just right for football; the hotels in New York are crowded with jubilant bettors after the game; the beaten team goes home greatly cast down — all this happens in the newspaper offices twenty-four hours before the referee’s whistle. It may all turn out to be true; it probably will be true; football games have always been like that in the papers. A police parade always elicits cheers for the fine body of men that goes swinging up Fifth Avenue. A fire always ‘ mushrooms.’ When a national convention starts to cheer, the reporters pull out their watches — and the shouters know that they are being timed and act accordingly.’

‘That is a serious charge to bring against your own trade — it is falsification,’ said Latimer.

‘Not at all,’ said Manning. ‘Just a time-saving device without which the business could n’t go on. Suppose you were managing editor, and the biggest story you can think of broke upon you—’ He stopped and searched. ‘What is the biggest piece of news you can imagine, Dr. Latimer?’

The other man examined the ceiling.

‘Well, say an authenticated case of the persistence of life after death,’ he ventured.

‘Bully!’ cried Manning. His eyes sparkled, the color mounted to his forehead and his fingers twitched — was it for the missing pencil and copy-paper? Then he found himself. ‘ Suppose you were in charge and that flash came over from the Associated Press. What would you do?’

‘I should probably develop a violent headache,’ said Latimer.

‘Here’s what you’d do, Dr. Latimer. You’d yell up the tube to the make-up man to tear open the first page for a seven-column double-ribbon head. You’d then get the telegraph editor to write that head: “Life Holds Beyond Grave Says French Savant.” You’d then turn loose several men on the Encyclopaedia Britannica looking up opinions on immortality by Plato, Solomon, Lucretius, Thomas à Kempis, Mme. Blavatsky, and Huxley. You’d have the city room get all the local clergymen on the wire. You’d telegraph to President Wilson, Billy Sunday, President Eliot, Anna Howard Shaw, Henry Ford, Mary Pickford, the Pope, the Sultan, and the Chief Rabbi of Petrograd. You’d have your Wall Street men interview Mr. Morgan as to the probable effect of immortality on the Stock Exchange. You’d ask the presidents of the insurance companies how immortality would affect their special business. Next day there would be follow-up stories, with reproductions of the most famous paintings of the Resurrection. By the end of the week your hair would be slightly grayer, and if anybody mentioned immortality to you, you’d bite him. Next week something would break loose in Mexico.’

‘Let it come, who cares?’ cried Latimer bringing his fist down on the table. In his mind he was tearing open front pages and writing ribbon heads.

Manning laughed. ‘Take the ten years I held down the managing edior’s desk on the Star,’ he said. ‘From 1904 to 1914. For sheer dramatic interest there have been no other ten years to approach them.’

‘1789 to 1799?’ mused Latimer. ‘ Austerlitz to Waterloo? Well, perhaps not.’

‘I said dramatic, not significant,’ declared Manning. ‘From the standpoint of news-value there has been nothing like these ten years. Things that happen once in a hundred years, in five hundred years, in five thousand years, things that can happen only once and never again — they all happened in that marvelous decade. It’s been seven-column heads week after week almost. In a hundred and twentyfive years no President of the United States has been elected without the vote of the East. Woodrow Wilson turns the trick — though that was two years after I quit. For five thousand years China has been asleep. She wakes up in 1913, climbs out of bed, and sets up a republic. The mastery of the air can be achieved only once; the Wright brothers do it. The North Pole can be discovered only once; Peary nails it, and in connection therewith the biggest hoax in history — Cook; and for good measure Amundsen throws in the South Pole. The biggest earthquake in history: Messina. The biggest marine disaster: Titanic. And that’s omitting second-class matter like a Turkish revolution, or a parliament for Russia, or England muzzling the House of Lords, or Carnegie giving away half a billion dollars. It’s history gone crazy — that’s what it was those ten years.’

‘Manning,’ said Latimer all at once, ‘did you ever study for the ministry?’

Manning looked at him openmouthed.

‘How did you know?’

‘A mere conjecture’; and Latimer smiled. ‘ I was really going to say that you are to be congratulated on having played the historian to a remarkable epoch.’

‘Historian nothing!’ shouted Manning. ‘A blanked old dictograph — that’s what I was.’ He calmed down. ‘ Professionally I had a perfectly gorgeous time. There was n’t a wad of display type in the shop I did n’t have a chance to shove into the paper every other week. But the individual, — Manning, — what of him? His soul was starved for the lack of a little leisure to interpret the significance of his own headlines. A bloated megaphone through whom the march of evolution kept shouting the most astounding news to “Constant Reader.” For you, Dr. Latimer, the loss of the Titanic never brought up the problem of what to do with the dry goods ad on the third page.’

‘Such problems are a stimulus in themselves,’ said Latimer.

‘Stimulus is right. Ten years steady diet of caviar and red-hot curry, until your palate goes dead, the gastric juices dry up, and you open your mouth like a frog under the electric needle. Asia meets Europe in battle, and cleans up: “Japs Smash Russ Line.” The dawn of liberty breaks in Russia: “Duma Flays Czar’s Pact.” The Islamic world breaks open with a loud report: “Abdul Flees Golden Horn.” I say it in all reverence, Dr. Latimer, but if I had been running a paper at the time of the Crucifixion — you know how I would have written its history, as you call it.’

‘My dear fellow, you are altogether too hard on yourself,’ said Latimer. ‘How many of us who are not in the newspaper business, and who have lived through these ten wonderful years, have really responded to them? You know those young fools who write for the radical magazines. They are always clamoring for the great Art that only life in its intense moments can produce. But what have our poets, painters, and musicians produced during these feverish ten years? So far as I can see, centuries have died since 1905 and the history of coming centuries has been born, and about all we can show for it is the extraordinary development of the moving-picture theatre. Be fair to yourself.’

Manning shook his head.

‘It was n’t a question of reasoning things out. The thing simply grew unbearable. And then came the war.’

‘To be sure!’ cried Latimer, leaning forward across the table. ‘Yes?’

‘I quit,’ said Manning.

‘But that’s incredible. The biggest story of your career, as you would call it. Quit?’

Manning stared out into the dark wistfully.

‘I did n’t put in much sleep during that first night of the war. I planned my campaign. Special correspondents, photographers, contracts for the London Times dispatches, the Matin service, the Novoye Vremya, Washington; reorganizing the staff; half the fellows in the city room would have to be fired — it would be nothing but war news — and the price of white paper! — You have said it, Dr. Latimer. It was the biggest job I had ever faced, the biggest newspaper opportunity since newspapers were invented. What copy, my God, what copy! what headlines! A thousand years thrown into the stereotyper’s cauldron and coming out fat, new metal — “Russ Army Enters Constantinople”; “French Crush Teuton Host”; “Kaiser Holds India,” — that’s what was ahead of me.

‘And then all at once things turned sour in my mouth. My soul, I said to myself — what will happen to the soul of John B. Manning? Was it to go through the same dizzy dance through this biggest thing ever? And I knew that, if I held out another day, the game would get me and there would never be another chance to stand aside, to try to understand. So I rang up the old man and resigned. In just a fortnight Margaret and I were down here. Thus you find me: “Noted Scribe Tends Chicks.” ’

He laughed, but it was not a success. Margaret rose, walked to her father, and put her arms around him.

Latimer’s eyes smiled at them, but his thoughts were not on the immediate scene. Manning’s last words came to him dimly; but there was no need for climax, exordium, or ‘Finis’ to the man’s story. Latimer knew him for a fellow rebel and pilgrim; rebel against the doctrine and rule of formula, and pilgrim in search of the answer. Had he found it? No, to judge from Manning’s self-directed irony, and from the longings which reëchoed through his story for the din and whirl and grime of the newspaper office. Well, then, was there any likelihood of his, Latimer’s, faring any better? The accumulating peace of his first day out of doors fell from him. He was once more adrift. ‘Brother,’ he addressed Manning silently, ‘you and I are in a parlous state.’

Immediately came the rebound. No! Was it not a splendid thing, rather, that Manning’s soul should have found him out at his desk, over the make-up table, in the midst of his headlines and formulae? Was not the answer implicit in the question, the goal in the search? A subtle, ironic, pitying God had pretended to formulate a curse in Eden, and had concealed a blessing. Labor and Discontent; Labor to feed the body and Discontent to keep the soul alive. When Manning was throwing off his Extra-Special editions, he did well; and when he kicked out against it all, it was well; and now that he was searching, it was well.

‘And you are happy?’ Latimer heard himself saying.

Manning was playing with Margaret’s hand on his shoulder.

‘Yes.’

‘Restless sometimes?’

‘Um —’

Margaret cautioned Latimer from behind her father’s chair.

‘ And all the time you want for thinking?’ said Latimer cheerily.

‘Too much. More than is fair to this little girl. She does the heavy work while I consult my soul.’

‘You know it is n’t so, father.’

‘No? Well, perhaps I earn my keep. It was rather hard work at first, after twelve years on a morning paper, adapting yourself to the poultry routine. The hours were so different.’

‘The dishes,’ cried Margaret. ‘Oh, my hot water! ’ And she bolted into the kitchen.

Manning got to his feet.

‘That is a task I share in; if you will excuse me, Dr. Latimer.’

‘But you must let me pay for my supper by helping out.’

‘There is no need.’

‘I insist.’

‘Selah,’ said Manning. ‘The kitchen is nine by eight, but by careful juxtaposition we ought not to be too much in each other’s way.’

Latimer followed him out into the kitchen.

‘Dr. Latimer,’ said Manning, as he put a fresh towel to a wet plate, ‘ how do you think God is coming out of this war?’

But at that moment a refined hurricane swept through the dining-room in the shape of a lady in white crêpe, who swung a green parasol cane-fashion, though it was well past sunset. And out of the heart of the storm came a voice, high-pitched, insolently negligent of final consonants, and to Latimer suddenly pungent of uptown New York, calling, ‘Margaret, O Margaret, where are you, dear? I have such good news.’

‘Mrs. Jamieson,’ said Margaret quietly, and smiled as she went to greet her visitor.

They met on the threshold. Framed in the kitchen doorway, Mrs. Jamieson lived up accurately to the promise of her voice. Externally, at least, she was of her class, thought Latimer. That is to say, being a woman of nearly forty, she dressed like a girl of twenty-two, without going to the vulgar excess of dressing like a girl of eighteen. The same touch of successful daring showed in the skillful details of facial make-up. Latimer saw the youthful play of a pair of intelligent gray eyes under sufficiently penciled brows, an elaborate coiffure, an alert, slender figure. Smart, thought Latimer with approval, and clever.

‘Oh, I did n’t know,’ said Mrs. Jamieson.

‘We have with us to-night Dr. Latimer,’ Manning announced. ‘His services in the kitchen are only temporary. Mrs. Jamieson, a member of the fairly idle rich.’

‘How d’ ye do?’ said Mrs. Jamieson. She acknowledged Latimer’s bow with fashionable curtness, and sat daintily on a chair that Margaret placed for her just on the other side of the doorsill; but not until she had kissed the girl. ‘My dear, it is almost too good to be true, but I really think I have got rid of it.’

‘Not the Auditorium?’ said Margaret.

‘Just that,’ replied the visitor exultantly.

Let us sum up Mrs. Jamieson in a few words. If she was, by birth and marriage, committed to great wealth, she had done something to escape her fate. It is unfortunate that a woman of society cannot try to make herself useful without eliciting the cheap satirist’s sneer about fashionable charity. It is a pity that she cannot sincerely feel the beat of modern life without incurring the suspicion of being just in the swim. Mrs. Jamieson had her box at the opera, but her preferences were for the noisy young impressionists. In literature she liked the younger Russians, and if she failed to recognize that Artzibasheff was only a caricature of the earlier giants, more pretentious critics than Mrs. Jamieson have sinned in the same manner. She mothered a young Irish poet, peddled his manuscripts among the publishers, and was suspected of paying out of her pocket for his first volume. She had energy and a good heart. She had made a bid for economic independence by establishing successively, but not successfully, a cigarette factory, a shop for the manufacture of grotesque sculptures for writ ing-table decoration, and a modem laundry.

She found her true sphere in warrelief work. She raised extraordinary sums of money for the Belgians and the Serbs, by working herself very hard, blackmailing her friends, and reducing all the young women of her acquaintance to a state of involuntary servitude as flower girls, programme girls, and booth pirates at her bazaars. But she also had her own views as to the issues of the war. Before we entered the conflict, she was bitter at Mr. Wilson’s lukewarm support of the Allies. To whip up sentiment she planned a great public demonstration and to that end she hired the Auditorium with her own pin-money.

‘Dr. Latimer, do you know any one who could use a hall?’ said Manning. ‘Thirty-five hundred seats, free lights, usher service, printed tickets, everything.’

‘If you don’t mind, it’s all settled,’ shrilled Mrs. Jamieson pointing a triumphant green parasol at Manning. ‘ It was this way, Dr. Latimer. I counted upon a lot of speakers for my meeting. Well, at bottom all men are cowards. Several of them refused to participate in any attempt to put pressure on the government in favor of the Allies. And the rest said they would n’t lift a finger to help Germany. It was too disgusting. Then the newspapers got hold of it and all my vice-presidents resigned. Next, my girls said they had n’t recovered from my last bazaar. I spent two weeks on the telephone trying to save that meeting, until Harmon —’

‘Mr. Jamieson?’ said Latimer.

‘Exactly. Harmon insisted that I call it off and go away for a long rest. So here I am.’

‘I am exceedingly sorry,’ said Latimer.

‘But I did n’t give in,’ said the audacious lady. ‘Of course, I would n’t dream of asking the Auditorium people to give me back my money, but they gave me two postponements. I spent two weeks, before I left town, trying to give the hall away; it was hopeless.’

‘In a city like New York, where the public is always being rallied and appealed to, it is very strange,’ said Latimer.

‘The trouble is, it’s such a big hall. Once I nearly got rid of it to the Community Folk-Dance Association. They kept it a week and found they had disposed of only two hundred and thirtyfive tickets. So they threw it back on me. They said it was too far uptown for a Community audience.’

‘One might advertise,’ said Latimer.

‘And make a show of myself? No. I was just having tea with Lucille Snedeker when the Community people wrote returning the hall. I don’t know what made me tell her. Lucille had an inspiration. She said she had a young Armenian dancer who was a genius and only needed an introduction to the American public. I should have known better. Lucille is a fool. She is always picking up young geniuses in the queerest eating-places you can imagine. Lucille said the Armenian would need an orchestra and I agreed to pay for it. In two days it was all over. The Armenian took one look at the place and said she would never consent to make her début in such a barn. It would be a crime against her art.’

‘And yet,’ said Latimer, ‘ the theatre of Dionysus at Athens was a sizable place.’

‘Things looked desperate,’ said Mrs. Jamieson. ‘For weeks after I came down here I wrote to every body I could think of. I offered the hall to the Juvenile Delinquency Society, but they had other plans. I suggested to the Fire Department that they might use it for an exhibition drill, and they said that something in the City charter prohibited their accepting gratuities from a private person. And, Dr. Latimer, it’s ridiculous the way people have gone crazy about the war. The Society for the Extension of Fort Terminal Facilities wrote, thanking me for the offer, but regretting their inability to accept a favor from a person of such well-known pro-Ally sympathies. It was too disgusting. And then all at once, Margaret, I thought of something.’

‘Yes, dear,’ said the girl from her pile of wet plates.

‘There is a big strike in one of Mr. Jamieson’s factories. I read about it in the papers. I wrote to the union leaders offering them the hall.’

‘And your husband does n’t mind?’ said Latimer.

‘ Harmon mind ? He is the most generous soul alive, and he has been so worried about me. Well, those strike people are willing to take the hall, but they insist that I pay for the newspaper advertising and the posters. They sent me a specimen notice which they expect to print. Their description of Harmon is positively shameful. But I think I ’ll let them have it. If this keeps up another week I shall break down.’

She rose impetuously.

‘I shall be horribly late for dinner. Good-bye, dearest.’ She kissed the girl, nodded to the men, and floated out.

III

Latimer was thinking, inconsequentially, of Mrs. Jamieson and the sick woman at Westville, when Manning’s voice came to him as from afar.

‘I had put a question to you when we were interrupted, Dr. Latimer. How is the war to end for God?’

‘Is that what your mind has been on in the intervals of the poultry business?’ asked Latimer.

‘Before that,’ said Manning. ‘Of recent years He has been with me pretty constantly, and at the most inopportune times. Between editions sometimes; or when I have hung over the make-up table, trying to beat the clock. Like a draught of chill air it would come — a hollow, bitter doubt. You ask yourself suddenly how does this Final Extra Wall Street Complete relate itself to the make-up of the universe and its Maker-Up.’

‘You have your own answer, of course.’

‘The obvious one,’ said Manning. ‘The war has been a disaster for Him.’

‘Father,’ said Margaret, ‘do you call this drying a teacup? Take another towel and do it over.’

‘Yes, my dear,’ said Manning humbly; but it was some time before he bestirred himself in search of a fresh towel.

‘Ten million dead is a bitter thing to contemplate,’ said Latimer. ‘But after all there was the Black Death six hundred years ago, when one third of Europe perished. Yet God survived.’

‘I am afraid you don’t get me,’ said Manning. ‘Of course He survived, just as He will probably survive this war; through force of habit, through the clutch of superstition, through the law of illogic which rules the common life. But the question is, ought He to survive? How does He come out of this war when tested by the standards of reason with which He is supposed to have endowed us? I have no doubt that after the Black Plague there were men who asked the same question. Where is the answer? If ten million dead, if the agony of half the world — Oh, well, I could repeat what’s been said from the beginning of things. For three years evil has had it all its own way. How shall we believe in anything else? — Where is that towel you were speaking of, Margaret? Counsel for plaintiff rests his case.’

Latimer’s eyes were upon Margaret. If to him, Latimer, his host’s way with a great topic was somewhat free and easy, how about this young girl? But Margaret was smiling over the hot water and soap. Plainly she was hardened to Manning’s vigorous methods in search of his soul.

‘You’ve given me a difficult case to defend,’ said Latimer. ‘Under the circumstances I must follow the precedent of all good lawyers when cornered. I must resort to technicalities. I begin by questioning the validity of the indictment. I demand a poll of the grand jury. Are you unanimous?’

‘Speaking for myself, I am not,’ said Manning. ‘That’s the tragedy of it; even when we accuse Him, we do it with half a mind. But that is because of the prestige of the defendant. It is like a jury of plumbers and shoe-clerks indicting the head of the Railroad Trust.’

‘Precisely,’ said Latimer. ‘We are too ready to take it for granted that all men to-day are weighed down by the horror of war. As a matter of fact, there is no such unanimity. We have no means of knowing how many of the plain people like war. There must be a great many; those who enjoy the adventure, the release from the monotony of daily duties, and even, I am sorry to say, those who have not outlived the primitive taste for killing.

‘These are the inarticulate folk. There are the others, who like war and can give a reason: the people who think that war is necessary for righteousness; or as a tonic against degeneration, — national or racial, — which is another form of the argument for war as a factor in natural selection. Not to mention the professionals — the army and navy officers, who may not like war but who certainly do not condemn it. It is true that, if you made a poll of newspaper editors, you might find a great many who think that war is evil. But if you were to take a census among pastors of fashionable metropolitan churches —

‘Well, then. As long as you are not unanimous in your indictment against God it is obvious that your charge lacks validity. Until you can get Russians and Germans and Frenchmen, ministers and aviators and Socialists, mothers and emperors and newspaper editors and clergymen, to agree that war is an unmitigated curse, your case falls to the ground.’

‘Unmitigated!’ cried Manning. ‘That’s just it. You will find very few men who will tell you that war is an unmitigated evil. Of course there are compensations. But what sort of Wisdom and Power is it that can get results only through blood and tears? In all reverence I ask whether it is n’t a Chinese way of ruling a world, to be burning it down every little while for the sake of a little roast pork. Given an unlimited expense account, with no questions asked, any one could rule this universe. Give me permission to cut up a hospital full of people, and there is n’t any doubt but that I can pull off a successful operation for appendicitis now and then — with a kitchen knife. But you would hardly call me a great surgeon. Unmitigated! Of course not. It is undeniable that a millionaire paranoiac cannot squander a fortune in the Tenderloin without giving employment to a certain number of honest cooks, carpenters, and street-cleaners.’

‘Is n’t it a question of what you choose to fix your mind on ?’ said Margaret.

‘A very happy thought,’ Latimer beamed at her. ‘Such as is likely to come in the restful occupation of dishwashing. Do you know, Manning, considering how many women for how many years have ruminated over the dish-basin, it is a wonder that they have made such small contribution to philosophy.’

‘So there is no answer?’ said Manning.

‘Not if you demand proof of a perfect God,’ said Latimer. ‘But if it be a question of a God moving toward perfection I can speak with more confidence. And when you ask me how will He come out of this horror in Europe, I can say that He will come out fairly well. Better, by comparison, than men will come out. This much I am convinced of, that God is improving more rapidly than man.’

‘That is something,’ said Manning.

The two had given up all pretence of making themselves useful to the girl. Manning leaned against the edge of the kitchen table and bit his finger-nails, his eyes fixed on Latimer. The latter, with an unfailing instinct for making himself comfortable, had ensconced himself in the chair vacated by Mrs. Jamieson, his attention divided between Manning, Margaret, and the mass of lilac that hung down over the windows.

‘Take,’ said he, ‘ the heathen and his gods, and compare them with yourself and your own Master of the Universe. Then ask yourself which marks the greater advance — the distance between you and the tribesman of the Congo, or the distance between that black man’s fetish and your own Creator. It is a matter only of five or ten thousand years in the history of evolution; yet certain results present themselves.

‘Now as between the Congo native and yourself,’ he continued, ‘the measure of progress is on the whole inconsiderable. That is, so far as human essentials are concerned. The Bantu tribesman, for instance, is as good a father as you are. In fact, I have read that among many savage races the children are much more fondly treated than, let us say, a boy in an upperclass English family. As a husband the African Negro may be a bit more overbearing, and a harder taskmaster; although here too it is probable that there is less wife-beating in the Congo than there is in Whitechapel. As a member of the social organism he is much more loyal to his king than even the German peasant, much more ready to sacrifice his personal inclinations to the common good. The sense of pity is perhaps not so highly developed in primitive man; this is, to be sure, a reflex of his greater insensibility to pain; but admit that on the whole he is more cruel than you are. Admit cannibalism for instance; though cannibalism is bound up with his religion rather than with his humanity. And there you are. By these values, then, which we use to appraise a man to-day, — not by his accomplishments but by his primal qualities as husband, father, citizen, comrade, warrior, athlete and all-round good fellow, — the Congo aborigine is not very far removed from you. It is with reluctance that I quote Mr. Kipling on anything concerned with real human values, but after all, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.’”

‘Conceded,’ said Manning.

‘ But take now the God of t he Congolese, of the Bushman, the Huron, the Blackfellow of Australia. He is a God of cruelty, lust, and deceit. He rules entirely by fear. He makes life for his votaries an unceasing round of panic and placatory sacrifice. He demands the roasted flesh of enemies, the sacrifice of children, the immolation of virgins, the mutilation of one’s own body. He is not even fashioned by man after his own image; for whereas the Negro is on the whole a well-built, upstanding, clean-skinned biped, his god is a monstrosity, with no head or three heads, no feet or ten feet, a nightmare, an abortion.

‘ Well, then, man for man and god for god, as between you and the native of the Congo, who has made the greater progress in the course of ten thousand years, man or God?’

‘Cleverly put,’ said Manning.

‘Soundly put!’ shouted Latimer. ‘My dear fellow,—’ here he got up from his chair and seized the other by the lapel of his shabby jacket, — ‘my dear Manning, the further back you carry the investigation, the stronger is the showing for a God moving on to higher things. When you spoke of inefficient management in the universe you were thinking of evolution, were n’t you ? Jacques Loeb speaks of one of those obscure deep-sea creatures with which I will not pretend to have even a bowing acquaintance. Well, of a potential 100,000,000 offspring of, let us call it, Medusa hypothetica, Loeb estimates that 10,000 survive, one onehundredth of one per cent. That is what you were thinking, 99 99/100 per cent of waste. You were thinking of war, cancer, tuberculosis, plague, and starvation wages. You were thinking that the God who lets the spawn of the deep seas go down to destruction lets the spawn of human kind go down into senseless destruction.’

‘I was,’ said Manning.

‘ But have you marked the improvement? Of ten thousand eggs of Medusa Hypothetica, one survives. Of ten thousand children born, even in unsanitary and underfed India, probably seven thousand survive. An improvement of 700,000 per cent in the evolution from fish to man. It is something.’

‘Something, yes,’ Manning agreed.

‘It is much,’ said Latimer. ‘And it gives you your answer. How will God come out of this war? Judging by precedent, He will emerge with fair credit. Certainly in much better shape than the German General Staff. If the war shall mark a step forward in evolution, then it is probable that God has moved further forward than man. If the war is a step backward, He has probably fallen back far less than man. The proportion is always in his favor. He is the van and the rear-guard.’

‘ We can go back to the dining-room,’ said Margaret.

IV

‘Go to, now,’ the indignant reader will have been saying to himself this many a page; ‘what sort of romance of the open road is this which has been wandering up and down the countryside for two days and has not encountered a philosophic tinker — with or without a female companion — eating fried bacon from the point of a claspknife?’

Let the outspoken reader be patient only a few minutes longer, and the fault shall be more than remedied.

(To be continued)