Bradley's Trials at school.
The morning on which Bradley was to begin his term at the seminary was a clear, crisp day in later November. He had rented a room in the basement of a queer old building, known as the Park Hotel, a crazy mansard-roofed structure which held at regular intervals some rash men attempting to run it as a hotel.
Bradley had rented this cellar because it was the cheapest place he could find. He agreed to pay two dollars a month for it, and the use of the two chairs, and cooking stove, which made up its furnishing. He had purchased a skillet and two or three dishes, Mrs. Councill had lent him a bed, and he seemed reasonably secure against hunger and cold.
He looked forward to his entrance into the school with dread. All that Monday morning he stood about his door watching for Milton and seeingthe merry students in procession up the walk. The girls seemed so bright and so beautiful, he wondered how the boys could walk beside them with such calm unconcern. Their laughter, their mutual greetings threw him into a profound self-pity and disgust. When he joined Milton and Shepard, and went up the walk under the bare-limbed maple trees, he shivered with fear. They all seemed perfectly at home, with the exception of himself.
Milton knowing what to expect smuggled him into the chapel in the midst of a crowd of five or six others, and thus he escaped the derisive applause with which the pupils were accustomed to greet each new-comer at the opening of a term. He gave one quick glance at the rows of faces, and shambled awkwardly along to his seat beside Milton, his eyes downcast. He found courage to look around and study his fellow-students after a little and discovered that several of them were quite as awkward, quite as ill at ease as himself.
Milton, old pupil as he was (that is to say, this was his second term), sat beside him and indicated the seniors as they came in, and among the rest pointed out Radbourn.
"He's the high mucky-muck o' this shebang," Shep whispered.
"Why so?" asked Bradley, looking carefully at the big, smooth-faced, rather gloomy-looking young fellow.
Shep hit his own head with his fist in a comically significant gesture. "Brains! What d' ye call 'em, Milt? Correscations of the serry beltum."
Shepard was a short youth with thick yellow hair, and a comically serious quality in the twist of his long upper lip.
Milton grinned. "Convolutions of the cerebrum, I s'pose you're driving at. Shep comes to school to have fun," Milton explained to Bradley.
"Chuss," said Shep, by which he meant yes; "an' I have it, too, betyerneck. I enter no plea, me lord"—
There came a burst of applause as a tall and attractive girl came in with her arms laden down with books. Her intellectual face lit up with a smile at the applause, and a pink flush came into her pale cheek. "That's Miss Graham," whispered Shepard; "she's all bent up on Radbourn."
The teachers came in, the choir rose to sing, and the exercises of the morning began. Bradley thought Miss Graham, with her heavy-lidded, velvety-brown eyes, looked like Miss Wilbur. Her eyes were darker, he decided, and she wastaller and paler; in fact, the resemblance was mainly in her manner which had the same dignity and repose.
At Milton's suggestion Bradley remained in his seat after the rest of the pupils had marched out to the sound of the organ. Then Milton introduced him to the principal, who took him by the hand so cordially that his embarrassment was gone in a moment. "Come and see me at eleven," he said. After a short talk with him in his room a couple hours later, his work was assigned.
"You'll be in the preparatory department, Mr. Talcott, but if you care to do extra work we may get you into the junior class. Jennings, look after him a little, won't you?"
The principal was a kind man, but he had two hundred of these rude, awkward farmer-boys, and he could not be expected to study each one closely enough to discover their latent powers. Bradley went away down town to buy his books, with a feeling that the smile of the principal was not genuine, and he felt also that Milton was a little ashamed of him here in the town. Everything seemed to be going hard with him. But his hardest trial came when he entered the classroom at one o'clock.
He knew no one, of course, and the long, narrow room was filled with riotous boys and girls all much younger than himself. All the desks seemed to be occupied and he was obliged to run the gauntlet of the entire class in his search for a seat. As he walked down the room so close to the wall that he brushed the chalk of the blackboard off upon his shoulder, he made a really ludicrous figure. All of his fine, free, unconscious grace was gone and his strength of limb only added to his awkwardness.
The girls were of that age where they find the keenest delight in annoying a bashful fellow such as they perceived this new-comer to be. His hair had been badly barbered by Councill and his suit of cotton diagonal, originally too small and never a fit, was now yellow on the shoulders where the sun had faded the analine dye, and his trousers were so tight that they clung to the tops of his great boots, exposing his huge feet in all their enormity of shapeless housing. His large hands protruded from his sleeves and were made still more noticeable by his evident loss of their control.
"Picked too soon," said Nettie Russell, with a vacant stare into space, whereat the rest shrieked with laughter. A great hot wave of blood rushedup over Bradley, making him dizzy. He knew that joke all too well. He looked around blindly for a seat. As he stood there helpless, Nettie hit him with a piece of chalk and someone threw the eraser at his boots.
"Number twelves," said young Brown.
"When did it get loose?"
"Does your mother know you're out?"
"Put your hat over it," came from all sides.
He saw an empty chair and started to sit down, but Nettie slipped into it before him. He started for her seat and her brother Claude got there apparently by mere accident just before him. Bradley stood again indecisively, not daring to look up, burning with rage and shame. Again someone hit him with a piece of chalk, making a resounding whack, and the entire class roared again in concert.
"Why, its head iswood!" said Claude, in apparent astonishment at his own discovery.
Bradley raised his head for the first time. There came into his eyes a look that made Claude Russell tremble. He again approached an empty chair and was again forestalled by young Brown. With a bitter curse he swung his great open palm around and laid his tormenter flat on the floor, stunned and breathless. A silence fell onthe group. It was as if a lion had awakened with a roar of wrath.
"Come on, all o' ye!" he snarled through his set teeth, facing them all. As he stood thus the absurdity of his own attitude came upon him. They were only children, after all. Reeking with the sweat of shame and anger which burst from his burning skin, he reached for a chair.
Nettie, like the little dare-devil that she was, pulled the chair from under him, and he saved himself from falling only by wildly clutching the desk before him. As it was, he fell almost into her lap and everybody shrieked with uncontrollable laughter. In the midst of it, Miss Clayson, the teacher, came hurrying in to silence the tumult, and Bradley rushed from the room like a bull from the arena, maddened with the spears of the toreador. He snatched his hat and coat from the rack and hardly looked up till he reached the haven of his little cellar.
He threw his cap on the floor and for a half hour raged up and down the floor, his mortification and shame and rage finding vent in a fit of cursing such as he had never had in his life before. All awkwardness was gone now. His great limbs, supple and swift, clenched, doubled, and thrust out against the air in unconsciouslightning-swift gestures that showed how terrible he could be when roused.
At last he grew calm enough to sit down, and then his mood changed to the deepest dejection. He sank into a measureless despair. A terrible ache came into his throat.
They were right, he was a great hulking fool. He never could be anything but a clod-hopper, anyway. He looked down at his great hand, at his short trousers, and the indecent ugliness of his horrible boots, and studied himself without mercy to himself. He acknowledged that they were hideous, but he couldn't help it.
Then his mind took another turn and he went over the history of that suit. He didn't want it when he bought it, but he found himself like wax, moulded by the soft, white, confidential hands of the Jew salesman, who offered it to him as a special favor below cost. In common with other young men of his sort he always felt under obligation to buy if he went into a store, even if there were nothing there that suited him. He knew when he bought the suit and paid eleven dollars for it that he would always be sorry, and its cheapness now appalled him.
He always swore at himself for this weakness before the salesman, and yet, year by year he hadbeen cheated in the same way. For the first time, however, he saw his clothing in all its hideousness. Those cruel girls and grinning boys had shown him that clothes made the man, even in a western school. The worst part of it was that he had been humiliated by a girl and there was no redress. His strength of limb was useless here.
He sat there till darkness came into his room. He did not replenish the coal in the stove that leered at him from the two broken doors in front, and seemed to face him with a crazy, drunken reel on its mis-matched legs. He was hungry, but he sat there enjoying in a morbid way the pang of hunger. It helped him someway to bear the sting of his defeat.
It was the darkest hour of his life. He swore never to go back again to that room. He couldn't face that crowd of grinning faces. He turned hot and cold by turns as he thought of his folly. He was a cursed fool for ever thinking of trying to do anything but just dig away on a farm. He might have known how it would be; he'd got behind and had to be classed in with the children; there was no help for it; he'd never go back.
The thought ofHercame in again and again,but the thought couldn't help him.Herface drove the last of his curses from his lips, but it threw him into a fathomless despair, where he no longer defined his thoughts into words.Herface shone like a star, but it stood over a bottomless rift in the earth and showed how impassable its yawning barrier was.
There came a whoop outside and a scramble at the door and somebody tumbled into the room.
"Anybody here?"
"Hello, where are you, Brad?"
He recognized Milton's voice. "Yes, I'm here; but wait a minute."
"Cæsar, Iguesswe'll wait! Break our necks if we don't," said the other shadow whom he now recognized as Shep Watson. "Always live in the dark?"
They waited while he lighted the dim little kerosene lamp on the table. "O conspiracy, shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night," quoted Shep in the interim.
"Been 'sleep?" asked Milton.
"No. Se' down, anywheres," he added on second thought, as he realized that chairs were limited.
"Say, Brad, come on; let's go over t' the society."
"I guess not," said Brad sullenly.
"Why not?" asked Milton, recognizing something bitter in his voice.
"Because, I aint got any right to go. I aint goin' t' school ag'in. I'm goin' west."
"Why, what's up?"
"I aint a-goin', that's all. I can't never ketch up with the rest of you fellers." His voice broke a little, "an' it aint much fun havin' to go in with a whole raft o' little boys and girls."
"Oh, say now, Brad, I wouldn't mind 'em if I was you," said Milton, after a pause. He had the delicacy not to say he had heard the details of Bradley's experience. "We all have to go through 'bout the same row o' stumps, don't we, Shep? The way to do with 'em is to jest pay no 'tention to 'em."
But the good-will and sympathy of the boys could not prevail upon Bradley to go with them. He persisted in his determination to leave school. And the boys finally went out leaving him alone. Their influence had been good, however; he was distinctly less bitter after they left him and his thoughts went back to Miss Wilbur. What would she think of him if he gave up all his plans the first day, simply because some mischievous girls and boys had made him absurd? When hethought of her he felt strong enough to go back, but when he thought of his tormentors and what he would be obliged to endure from them, he shivered and shrank back into despondency.
He was still fighting his battle, when a slow step came down the stairs ending in a sharp rap upon the door. He said, "Come in," and Radbourn, the most powerful and most popular senior, entered the room. He was a good deal of an autocrat in the town and in the school, and took pleasure in exercising his power on behalf of some poor devil like Bradley Talcott.
"Jennings tells me you're going to give it up," he said, without preliminary conversation.
Bradley nodded sullenly. "What's the use, anyhow? I might as well. I'm too old, anyhow."
Radbourn looked at him a moment in silence. "Put on your hat and let's go outside," he said at length, and there was something in his voice that Bradley obeyed.
Once on the outside Radbourn took his arm and they walked on up the street in silence for some distance. It was still, and clear, and frosty, and the stars burned overhead with many-colored brilliancy.
"Now I know all about it, Talcott, and I knowjust about how you feel. But all the same you must go back there to-morrow morning."
"It aint no use talkin', I can't do it."
"Yes, you can. You think you can't, but you can. A man can do anything if he only thinks he can and tries hard. You can't afford to let a little thing like that upset your plans. I understand your position exactly. You're at a disadvantage," he changed his pace suddenly, stopping Bradley. "Now, Talcott, you're at a disadvantage with that suit. It makes you look like a gawk, when you're not. You're a stalwart fellow, and if you'll invest in a new suit of clothes as Jennings did, it'll make all the difference in the world."
"I can't afford it."
"No, that's a mistake, you can't affordnotto have it. A good suit of clothes will do more to put you on an equality with the boys than anything else you can do for yourself. Now let's drop in here to see my friend, who keeps what you need, and to-morrow I'll call for you and take you into the class and introduce you to Miss Clayson, and you'll be all right. You didn't start right."
When he walked in with Radbourn the next morning and was introduced to the teacher, Nettie Russell stared in breathless astonishmemt. Hewas barbered and wore a suit which showed his splendid length and strength of limb.
"Well said! Aint we a big sunflower! My sakes! aint we a-coming out!" "No moon last night." "Must 'a ben a fire." "He got them with a basket and a club," were some of the remarks he heard.
Bradley felt the difference in the atmosphere, and he walked to his seat with a self-possession that astonished himself. And from that time he was master of the situation. The girls pelted him with chalk and marked figures on his back, but he kept at his work. He had a firm grip on the plow-handles now, and he didn't look back. They grew to respect him, at length, and some of the girls distinctly showed their admiration. Brown came over to get help on a sum and so did Nettie, and when he sat down beside her she winked in triumph at the other girls while Bradley patiently tried to explain the problem in algebra which was his own terror.
He certainly was a handsome fellow in a rough-angled way, and when the boys found he could jump eleven feet and eight inches at a standing jump, they no longer drew any distinctions between his attainments in algebra and their own. Neither did his poverty count against him withthem. He sawed wood in every spare hour with desperate energy to make up for the sinful extravagance of his new fifteen dollar suit of clothes.
He was sawing wood in an alley one Saturday morning where he could hear a girl singing in a bird-like way that was very charming. He was tremendously hungry, for he had been at work since the first faint gray light, and the smell of breakfast that came to his senses was tantalizing.
He heard the girl's rapid feet moving about in the kitchen and her voice rising and falling, pausing and beginning again as if she were working rapidly. Then she fell silent, and he knew she was at breakfast.
At last she opened the door and came out along the walk with a tablecloth. She shook her cloth, and then her singing ceased and Bradley went on with his work.
"Hello, Brad!" called a sudden voice.
He looked up and saw Nettie Russell's roguish face peering over the board fence.
"Hello," he replied, and stood an instant in wordless surprise. "I didn't know you lived there."
"Well, I do. Aint tickled to death to find itout, I s'pose? Say, you aint so very mad at me, are yeh?" she added insinuatingly.
He didn't know what to say, so he kept silent. He noticed for the first time how childishly round her face was!
She took a new turn. "Say, aint you hungry?"
Bradley admitted that he had eaten an early breakfast. He did not say it was composed of fried pork and potatoes and baker's bread, without tea, coffee, or milk.
The girl seemed delighted to think he was hungry.
"You wait a minute," she commanded, and her smiling face disappeared from the top of the fence. Brad went to work to keep from catching cold, wondering what she was going to do. She reappeared soon with a fat home-made sausage and a couple of warm biscuits which she insisted upon his taking.
"They're all buttered and—they've got sugar on 'em," she whispered significantly.
"Say, you eat now, while I saw," she commanded, coming around through the gate.
She had put on her fascinator hood, but her hands and wrists were bare. She struggled away on a log, putting her knee on it in a comically resolute style.
"The saw always goes crooked," she said in despair. Bradley laughed at her heartily.
"Say, do you do this for fun?" she asked, stopping to puff, her cheeks a beautiful pink.
"No, I don't. I do it because I'm obliged to."
She threw down the saw. "Well, that beats me; I can't saw, but I can cook. I made them biscuits." She challenged his opinion, as he well knew.
"They're first rate," he admitted, and they were friends. She watched him eat with apparent satisfaction.
"Say, I can't stay here, I'll freeze. Are yeh going to be here till noon?"
"Yes."
"Well, when I whistle you come in and get some grub, will yeh?" Bradley smiled back at her laughing face.
"This ain't your folks' wood pile."
"What's the difference?" she replied. "You jest come in, will yeh?"
"Yes, I'll come."
"Like fun you will! Honest?" she persisted.
"Hope to die," he said solemnly.
"That's the checker," she said, and disappeared with a click of the tongue.
Bradley worked away in a glow of cheerfulness.It was astonishing how much this little victory over a roguish girl meant to him. He had changed one person's ridicule to friendship, and it seemed to be prophetic of other victories.
The time seemed very short that forenoon. Once or twice Nettie came out to bring some news about the cooking.
"Say, I'm making an apple pie. I'm a dandy on pies and cakes."
"I guess they would be 'pizen' cakes."
She threw an imaginary club at him.
"Well, if that ain't the sickest old joke! You'll go without any pie if you get off such a thing again."
But as dinner-time drew on he felt more and more unwilling to go into the kitchen.
He heard her whistle, but he remained at the saw-horse. It would do in the country, but not here. He had no right to go in there and eat.
There was a note of impatience in her voice when she looked over the fence and said, "Why don't you come?"
"I dassant!"
"Oh, bother! What y' 'fraid of?"
"What business have I got to eat your dinner? This aint your wood-pile."
"Say, if you don't come in I'll—I dunno what!"
"Bring it out here, it's warm."
"I won't do it; you've got to come in; the old man's gone up town and mother won't throw you out. There isn't anybody in the kitchen. Come on now," she pleaded.
Bradley followed her into the house, feeling a good deal like a very large dog, very hungry, who had followed a child's invitation into the parlor, and felt out of place.
He sat down by the fire, and silently ate what she placed before him, while she chattered away in high glee. When Mrs. Russell came in, Nettie did not take the trouble to introduce him to her mother, who moved about the room in a wordless way, smiling a little about the eyes. She was entirely subject to her daughter. She heard them discussing lessons and concluded they were classmates.
Bradley went back to his wood-sawing and soon finished the job. As he shouldered his saw and saw-buck, Nettie came out and peered over the fence again.
"Say, goin' to attend the social Monday?"
"Guess not. I ain't much on such things."
"It's lots o' fun; we spin the platter and allkinds o' things. I'm goin'," she looked archly inviting.
Bradley colored. He was not astute, but hints like this were not far from kicks. He looked down at his saw as he said, "I guess I won't go, I've got to study."
"Well, good-by," she said without mortification. She was so much of a child yet that she could be jilted without keen pain. "See y' Monday," she said as she ran into the house.
Someway Bradley's life was lightened by that day's experience. He went home to his bleak little room in a resolute mood. He sat down at his table upon which lay his algebra, determined to prepare Monday's lessons, but the pencil fell from his hand, his head sank down and lay upon the open page before him. Woodsawing had worn him down and algebra had made him sleep.
Bradley rises to address the Carthaginians.
He was now facing another terror, the Friday afternoon recitals, in which alternate sections of the pupils were obliged to appear before the public in the chapel to recite or read an essay. It was an ordeal that tried the souls of the bravest of them all.
Unquestionably it kept many pupils away. Nothing could be more terrible to a shrinking awkward boy or girl from a farm than this requirement, to stand upon a raised platform with nothing to break the effect of sheer crucifixion. It was appalling. It was a pillory, a stake, a burning, and yet there was a fearful fascination about it, and it was doubtful if a majority of the students would have voted for its abolition. The preps and juniors saw the seniors winning electrical applause from the audience and fancied thesame prize was within their reach. There was no surer or more instant success to be won than that which followed a splendid oratorical effort on the platform. It was worth the cost.
Each new-comer dreaded it for weeks and talked about it constantly. Bradley, like all the rest before him, could not eat a thing on the morning preceding his trial, and in fact had suffered a distinct loss of appetite from the middle of the week.
Mary Barber, a tall, awkward, badly-dressed girl, met him as he was going up the steps after the first bell.
"Say, how you feelin'! I've shook all the mornin'. I don't know what I'm goin' to do. I'm just sick."
"Why don't you say so an' get off?" Bradley suggested.
"Because that's what I did last time, and it won't work any more." The poor girl's teeth were chattering with her fright. She laughed at herself in an hysterical way, and wrung her hands, as if with cold, and dropped back into the broadest kind of dialect. "Oh, I feel 'sif my stomach was all gone."
Nettie Russell regarded it all as merely another disagreeable duty to be shirked. Nothing troubledher very much. "You just wait and see how I get out of it," she said, as she passed by. At two o'clock the principal came in, and removed even the small pulpit, so that nothing should stand between the shrinking young orators and the keen derisive eyes below.
The chapel was a very imposing structure to Bradley. It was square and papered in grey-white with fluted columns of the Corinthian order of architecture, and that touch of history and romance did not fail of its effect on the country boys fresh from the barn-yard and the corn-rows. It added to their fear and self-abasement, as they rolled their slow eyes around and upward. The audience consisted mainly of the pupils arranged according to classes, the girls on the left and the boys on the right. In addition, some of the towns-people, who loved oratory, or were specially interested in the speakers of the day, were often present to add to the terror of the occasion.
Radbourn came in with Lily Graham, talking earnestly. He was in the same section with Bradley, a fact which did not cheer Bradley at all. Jack Carver came in with a jaunty air. His cuffs and collar were linen, and his trousers were tailor-made, which was distinction enough for him. He had no scruples, therefore, in shirking thespeaking with the same indifference Nettie Russell showed.
Milton, who came in the first section, was joking the rest upon their nervousness.
"Say, when did you eat y'r last meal?" he whispered to Bradley.
"Yesterday morning," Bradley replied, unable to smile.
All the week the members of the last section had been prancing up and down the various rooms in boarding-houses, to the deep disgust of their fellow students, who mixed harsh comments throughout their practice, as they shouted in thunder tones:
"I came not here to talk. ('Then why don't you shut up?') You know too well the story of our thraldom. ('You bet we do, we've heard it all the week.') The beams of the setting sun fall upon a slave. ('Would a beam of some sort would fall on you.') O Rome! Rome!"—('Oh, go roam the wildwood.')
All the week the boarding-house mistresses had pounded on the stove-pipe to bring the appeal of "Spartacus to the Romans" down to a key that would not also include all the people in the block. All to no purpose. Spartacus was aroused, and nothing but a glaive or a battle-axe could bringhim to silence and submission. The first section now sat smiling grimly. Their revenge was coming.
After the choir had sung, the principal of oratory, note-book in hand, came down among the pupils, and began the fateful roll-call.
The first name called was Alice Masters, an ambitious, but terribly plain and awkward girl. She had not eaten anything since the middle of the week, and was weak and nervous with fright. She sprang out of her seat, white as a dead person, and rushed up the aisle. As she stepped upon the platform she struck her toe and nearly fell. The rest laughed, some hysterically, the most of them in thoughtless derision. The blood rushed into her face and when she turned, she seemed to be masked in scarlet. She began, stammeringly, her fingers playing nervously with the seams of her dress.
"Beside his block the sculptor—
"Beside his block—
"Beside, the sculptor stood beside"—
She could not think of another word, not one, and she fell into a horrible silence, wringing her hands piteously. It was impossible for her to go on, and impossible for her to leave the floor till the word of release came.
"That will do," said the principal in calm unconcern, and she rushed from the room, and the next name was called. At length Nettie Russell faced the audience, a saucy smile on her lips, and a defiant tilt to her nose. She spoke a verse of "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," to the vast delight of the preps, who had dared her to do it. The principal scowled darkly, and put a very emphatic black mark opposite her name.
As name after name was called, Bradley's chill deepened, and the cold sweat broke out upon his body. There was a terrible weakness and nausea at his stomach, and he drew long, shivering inspirations like a man facing an icy river, into which he must plunge. His hands shook till he was forced to grasp the desk to hide his tremor.
He was saved from utter flight by Radbourn, who came before him. Whatever nervousness the big senior had ever felt, he was well over now, for he walked calmly up the aisle, and took his place with easy dignity. He scorned to address the Romans, or the men of England. He was always contemporaneous. He usually gave orations on political topics, or astounded his teachers by giving a revolutionary opinion of some classic. No matter what subject he dealt with, he interested and held his audience. Hisearnest face and deep-set eyes had something compelling in them, and his dignity and self-possession in themselves fascinated the poor fellows, who sat there in deathly sickness, shaking with terror.
Bradley felt again the fascination of an orator, and again his heart glowed with a secret feeling that he, too, could be an orator like that. He felt strong, and cool, and hopeful, while Radbourn was speaking, but afterward that horrible, weakening fear came back upon him.
He couldn't look at poor Harry Stillman, who came on a few names further. Harry had pounded away all the week on Webster's reply to Hayne, and he now stood forth in piteous contrast to his ponderous theme. His thin, shaking legs toed-in like an Indian's, and his trousers were tight, and short, and checked, which seemed to increase the tightness and shortness. He had narrow shoulders and thin, long arms, which he used like a jumping jack, each gesture being curiously unrelated to his facial expression, which was mainly appealing and apprehensive. As Shep Watson said, "He looked as if he expected a barn to fall on him."
At last Bradley's name was spoken, and he rose in a mist. The windows had disappeared.They were mere blurs of light. As he walked up the aisle the floor fell away from the soles of his feet. He no longer walked, he was a brain floating in space. He made his way to the stage without accident, for he had rehearsed it all so many times in his mind that unconscious cerebration attended to the necessary motions. When he faced the assembly, he seemed facing a boundless sea of faces. They in their turn were awed by something they saw in his eyes. His face was white and his eyes burned with a singular light. A mysterious power emanated from him as from the born orator.
Like all the rest he had taken a theme that was far beyond his apparent powers, and the apparent comprehension of his audience; but they had been fed so long upon William Tell, Rienzi, Marc Antony and Spartacus, that every line was familiar. Nothing was too ponderous, too lofty, too peak-addressing for them.
He mispronounced the words, his gestures were awkward and spasmodic, but lofty emotion exalted him and vibrated in his voice. He thrilled every heart. He had opened somewhere, somehow, a vast reservoir of power. A great calm fell upon him. A wild joy of new-found strength that awed and thrilled his own heart. It seemed as ifa new spirit had taken his flesh. As he went on he grew more dignified and graceful. His great arms seemed to be gigantic, as he thundered against the Carthaginians. Everybody forgot his dress, his freckled face, and when he closed, the applause was instant and generous.
As he walked back to his seat, the exultant light went out of his eyes, his limbs relaxed, the windows and the sunlight cleared to vulgar day, and his face flushed with timidity. He sat down with a feeling of melancholy in his heart, as if something divine had faded out of his life.
But Radbourn reached out his hand in the face of the whole school and said, "First rate!" The pupils had the western love for oratory, and several of them crowded about to congratulate him on his speech.
Bradley did not feel at all sure of his success. He had been something alien to himself in that speech, and he could not remember what he had said or done. He was not at all sure that he had done the right thing or the best thing. He was suspicious of his power because he no longer felt it. He was like a man who had dreamed of flying and woke to find himself paralyzed. After his triumph he was the same great, awkward, country hired-man.
"Say, look here, Talcott," said Radbourn, as they met at the door of the chapel going out, "I'm going to propose you as a member of the Delta; come up Monday, and I'll put you through."
"Oh, they don't want me."
"Don't be so modest. They're in need of just such men. You'll be in demand now, no fear about that."
There was a struggle now to get him into the societies, which were, as usual, bitter rivals. He was secretly anxious to be one of the debaters. In fact he had counted more on that than upon all the rest of the advantages of the school. He thought it would pleaseHerbetter.
He joined the Delta, over which Radbourn presided, and wore the society pin with genuine pride. He sat for several meetings silently in his seat, awed by the excessive formality of proceedings, and the strictness of the parliamentary rules. It was a curious thing to see the meeting come to order out of a chaos of wrestling, shouting, singing members whose excess of life filled the room like a crowd of prize-fighters.
Rap! Rap!And the sound of the gavel stilled the noise as if each man had received a blow on his head.
They took their seats while the stern president remained standing. One final rap, and the room was perfectly quiet, and every member an inexorable parliamentarian, ready to question decisions, or rise to points of order at the slightest infraction of Cushing's manual. Radbourn ruled with a gavel of iron, but they all enjoyed it the more. Half the fun and probably half the benefit of the society would have been lost with the loss of order.
This strenuous dignity awed Bradley for a time. His fellows seemed transformed into something quite other than their usual selves, into grave law-makers. This strangeness wore away after a time and he grew more at ease. He began to study Cushing along with the rest. It laid the foundation for a thorough knowledge of the methods of conducting a meeting, which was afterward of so much value to him.
His first attempt at debating was upon the question, "Should farmers be free traders?" a question which was introduced by Milton, who was always attempting to introduce questions which would strike fire. Nothing pleased his fun-loving nature more than to take part in a "live debate."
As real free traders were scarce, Mason, a brilliantyoung Democrat, requested Radbourn to take the side of free trade, and he consented. Milton formed the third part of the free trade cohort. He liked the fun of trying to debate on the opposite side, a thing which would have been impossible to Bradley's more intense and simple-hearted nature. What he believed he fought for.
Mason led off with a discussion of the theory of free exchange and made a passionate plea, florid and declamatory, which gave Fergusson, a cool, pointed, scholarly Norwegian, an excellent chance to raise a laugh. He called the attention of the house to the "copperhead Democracy," which the gentleman of the opposition was preaching. He asked what the practical application would mean. Plainly it meant cheap goods.
"That's what we want," interrupted Mason, and was silenced savagely by the chairman.
"England would flood us with cheap goods."
"Let 'em flood," said somebody unknown, and the chairman was helpless.
Fergusson worked away steadily and was called down at last.
He was distinguished as one of the few men who always talked out his ten minutes.
Radbourn astonished them all by saying with absolute sincerity: "Free trade as a theory isright. Considered as a question of ethics, as a question of the trend of things, it's right. The right to trade is as much my right, as my right to produce. The one question is whether it ought to be put into operation at once. There is no reason why the farmer should uphold protection."
From this on his remarks had a mysterious quality. "I'm a free trader, but I'm not a Democrat. Tariff tinkering is not free trade, and I don't believe the Democrats would do any more than the Republicans, but that aint the question. The question is whether the farmers should be free traders."
After the discussion along familiar lines had taken place, Radbourn resumed the chair and called on any one in the room to volunteer a word on either side. "We would like to hear from Talcott," he said.
"Talcott, Talcott," called the rest.
Bradley rose, as if impelled by some irresistible power within himself. He began stammeringly. He had but one line of thought at his command, and that was the line of thought indicated by Miss Wilbur in her speech at the picnic, the Home Market idea, upon which he had spent a great deal of thought. "Mr. Chairman, I don't believe in free trade. I believe if we had freetrade it would make us all farmers for England. It aint what we ought t' do. We've got gold in our hills, an' coal an' timber to manufacture. What we want t' do is to build up our industries; make a home market."
As he went on with these stock phrases, he seemed to get hold of things which before had seemed out of his reach, scraps of speeches, newspaper comments, an astonishing flood of arguments, or at least what he took for arguments, came rushing into his mind. He reached out his hands and grasped and used phrases not his own as if they were bludgeons. He assaulted the opposition blindly, but with immense power.
He sat down amid loud applause, and young Mason arose to close the affirmative. He was sarcastic to the point of offence.
"He has said 'em all," he began, alluding to Bradley, "all the regulation arguments of Republican newspapers. And as for the leader of the opposition, he has got off the usual sneer at copperhead Democracy. This debate wouldn't have been complete without that remark from my esteemed leader of the opposition. Where argument fails, misrepresentations and sneers may do service with the injudicious. I trust the judges will remember that the argument has been onour side, and the innuendoes on the side of the opposition."
The verdict of the judges was in favor of the free traders, but the decision of the judges had less effect on Bradley than the surprising revelation of Radbourn's thought. There were phrases whose reach and significance he did not realize to the full, but their effect was not lost. He never forgot such things.
He was thinking how diametrically opposite Miss Wilbur's ideas were, when Radbourn came up, and said with a significant smile:
"Well, Talcott, youdidget hold of all the regulation stock material. The Home Market idea is a great field for you. You think a city is of itself a good thing? You think a city means civilization. Well, I want to tell you, and maybe you won't believe me, cities mean vice, and crime, and poverty, and vast wealth for the few, and as for the Home Market idea, how would it do to let the farmer buy in the same market in which he sells? He sells in the world's market, but you'd force him to buy in a protected market."
Radbourn went off with a peculiar smile, which left Bradley uncertain whether he was laughing at him or not. He began from that moment to overhaul his stock of phrases, to see if they werereally shopworn and worthless. He was growing marvellously, his whole nature was now awake. He thought, as he sawed wood in the back alleys of the town, and at night he toiled at his books. Those were great days. New powers were swiftly burgeoning.
Radbourn spoke to several of the politicians of the town about Bradley.
"There is a good deal in that man Talcott. Of course he's just beginning, but you'll hear from him on the stump. He is an orator that reaches people. He has the advantage of most of us; he's in dead earnest when he's advocating Republicanism."
Radbourn had times of saying things like this when his hearers didn't know what to make of him.
"It's just his way," some one usually said, and the rest sat in silence. They didn't enjoy it, but as Radbourn was not running for any office and was known to be a powerful thinker, they thought it best not to antagonize him.
"I wonder if he intends the law?" asked Judge Brown.
"I see what the Judge is driving at," Radbourn said quickly, "he thinks he can make a Democrat of him."
The group laughed. Democrats were in a hopeless minority, but the judge and Colonel Peavey never lost their proselyting zeal.
"The Judge is always on hand like a sore thumb," said Amos.
"The Judge'll be on the right side of the tariff one of these fine days, and have the laugh on the lot of yeh."
"What y' idee about that, Rad?"
"Good heavens! You don't expect to have protection always, do yeh?" was his only reply.
A day or two later he said to Bradley—
"Talcott, Brown wants to see you. He wants to make you a 'lawyer's hack'! Now I'd say to most men, don't do it, but if he offers to give you a place take it. It won't be worse than sawing wood thirty hours a week."
Following Radbourn's direction he passed up a narrow, incredibly grimy stairway, and knocked at a door at the end of a hall, whose only light came through the letter-slit in the door.
"Come in!" yelled a snarling voice.
Bradley entered timidly, for the voice was not at all cordial. The Judge, in his own den, was a different man from the Judge at Robie's grocery, and this day he was in bad humor. He sat with his heels on a revolving book-case, a law-bookspread out on his legs, a long pipe in his hand.
If he uttered any words of greeting they were lost in the crescendo growl of a fat bull-dog lying in supple shining length at his feet.
"Down with yeh!" he snarled at the dog, who ceased his growling, but ran lightly and with ferocious suggestiveness toward Bradley and clung sniffing about his heels.
"Si' down!" the Judge said, indicating a chair with his pipe, which he held by the bowl. He made no other motion.
Bradley sat down. This greeting drove him back into his usual stubborn silence. He waited for developments, his eyes on the dog.
"Well, young man, what can I do for you?" asked the lawyer after a long silence, during which he laid down one book, and read a page in another.
"Nothin', I guess."
"Well, what the devil did yeh come in here for?" he inquired, with a glare of astonishment. "Want 'o buy a dog?"
Bradley was mad. "I came because Radbourn sent me. I c'n git out agin, mighty quick."
The Judge took down his heels. "Oh, you're that young orator. Why didn't yeh say so, youdamned young Indian?" He now rose and walked over to the spittoon before going on. Bradley knew that this rough tone was entirely different from the first. It was a sort of affectionate blackguardism. "I heard you speak last Friday. All you need, young man, is a chance to swing y'r elbows. You want room according to y'r strength, but you never'd find it in the Republican party. It's struck with the palsy."
The judge had been talking this for two presidential campaigns and didn't take himself at all seriously.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know, yet."
"Do you want 'o study law?"
"I don't know, sir. Do you think I can be a lawyer?"
"If you're not too damned honest. If you want 'o try it, I'll make an arrangement with you, that will be better than sawing wood anyhow, this winter, and you can keep right on with your studies. We'll see what can be done next year."
The old man had taken a liking to Bradley on account of his oratory, and the possibilities of making him a Democratic leader had really taken possession of him. He had no son of his own,and he took a deep interest in young men of the stamp of Milton and Bradley.
After he reached home that night, Bradley extended his ambitions. He dared to hope that he might be a lawyer, and an orator, which meant also a successful politician to him. Politics to him, as to most western men, was the greatest concern of life, and the city of Washington the Mecca whose shining dome lured from afar. To go to Washington was equivalent to being born again. "A man can do anything if he thinks so and tries hard," he thought, following Radbourn's words.
He bustled about cheerily, cooking his fried potatoes and scraps of meat, and boiling his tea. The dim light made his large face softer and more thoughtful than it had appeared before, and his cheerfulness over his lonely meal typed forth the sublime audacity, profound ignorance, and pathetic faith with which such a man faces the world's millions and dares to hope for success.