Suddenly he thought of Regan, who had intruded his shadow across the path of his personal ambition. Had he really been honest about Regan? Could he not have made him see the advantages of belonging to a sophomore society, if he had really tried? Whereupon Mr. Dink Stover began a long, victorious debate with his conscience,one of those soul-satisfying arguments that always end one way, as conscience is a singularly poor debater when pitted against a resourceful mind.
"Heavens! haven't I been the best friend he's had?" he concluded. "Perhaps I might have talked more to him about the sophomore question, but then, I know I never could have changed him. So what's the odds? I'm democratic and liberal. Didn't I go to Gimbel and have it out? I can see the other side, too. What the deuce, then, did she mean?"
After another long period of furious tramping, he answered this vexing question in the following irrelevant way: "By George, what an extraordinary girl she is! I must go around again and talk with her. She brushes me up."
And around he did go, not once, but several times. The first little antagonism between them gradually wore away, and yet he was aware of a certain defensive attitude in her, a judgment that was reserved; and as, by the perfected averaging system of college, he had lost in one short year all the originality and imagination he had brought with him, he was quite at a loss to understand what she found lacking in so important and successful a personage as Mr. John Humperdink Stover.
Naturally, he felt that he was in love. This extraordinary passion came to him in the most sudden and convincing manner. He corresponded, with much physical and mental agony, with what is called a dashing brunette, with whom he had danced eleven dances out of a possible sixteen on the occasion of a house-party in the Christmas vacation, on the strength of which they had exchanged photographs and simulated a confidential correspondence. He had done this because he had plainly perceived it was the thing for a man to do, as one watches the creasein the trousers or exposes a vest a little more daring than the rest. It gave him a sort of reputation among lady-killers that was not distasteful. At Easter he had annexed a blonde, who wrote effusive rolling scrawls and used a noticeable crest. He had done this, likewise, because he wished to be known as a destructive force, as one who rather allowed himself to be loved. But he found the manual labor too taxing. He was cruel and abrupt to the blonde, but he consoled himself by saying to himself that he had restored to the little girl her peace of mind.
On Sunday evening, then, according to tacit agreement, after a pipe had been smoked and the fifth Sunday newspaper had been searched for the third time, McCarthy stretched himself like a cat and said:
"Well, I guess I'll dash off a few heart-throbs to the dear little things."
"That reminds me," said Stover, with an obvious loudness. He took out the last heliotrope envelop and read over the contents which had pleased him so much on the preceding Tuesday. Somehow, it had a different ring—a little too flippant, too facile.
"What the deuce am I going to write her?" he said, inciting his hair to rebellion. He cleaned the pen, and then the ink-well, and wrote on the envelop:
Miss Anita Laurence
It was a name that had particularly attracted him, it was so Spanish and suggestive of serenades. He wrote again at the top of the page:
"Dear Anita."
Then he stopped.
"What the deuce can I say now?" he repeated crossly.
"By George, I've only seen her five times. What is there to say?"
He rose, went to his bureau, and took up the photograph of honor and looked at it long. It was a pretty face, but the ears were rather large. Then he went back, and, tearing up what he had written, closed his desk.
"Hello," said McCarthy, who was in difficulties. "Aren't you going to write Anita?"
"I wrote her last night," said Stover with justifiable mendacity. "I was writing home, but feel rather sleepy."
As this was unchallengeable, he went to his room and stretched out on the delicious bed.
"I wonder if I'm falling in love with Jean Story?" he said hopefully. "I'm sick to death of Anita calling me by my front name and writing as she does. I'll bet I'm not the only one, either!" This sublimely ingenious suspicion sufficed for the demise of the dashing brunette from whom he had forced eleven dances out of a possible sixteen. "Jean Story is so different. What the deuce does she want changed in me? I wonder if I could get Bob to give me a bid for a visit this summer?"
The opening to the imagination being thus provided, he went wandering over summer meadows with a certain slender girl who moved as no one else moved and in a dreamy landscape showed him the most marked preference. In the midst of a most delightful and thoroughly satisfactory conversation he fell asleep. When he woke he went straight to his bureau, and, removing the photograph of Anita, consigned it to a humble position in the study amid the crowded beauties that McCarthy termed the harem.
During first recitation, which was an inconsequential voyage into Greece, his imagination jumped theblackboarded walls and went wandering into the realm of the possible summer. A week on the river at the oars, however, drove from him all such imaginings; but at times the vexing question returned, and each Sunday, somehow, he found an opportunity to drop in and have a long talk with Judge Story, of whom he grew surprisingly fond.
The period of duns now set in, and the house on York Street became a place of mystery and signals. McNab, naturally, was the most sought, and he took up a sort of migratory abode on Stover's window-seat, disappearing under the flaps at the slightest sound in the corridor. Stover himself began to feel the possibilities of vistas and the sense of lurking shadows. He was utterly disappointed in the material for a suit which he had bought from the unsuspecting Yankee. It had a yielding characteristic way about it that brought the most surprising baggings and stretchings, and he had a suspicion that it was pining away and fading in the sun. By the time the tailor's bill had been presented (not paid), the suit might have been on the fashion account of a prince. Then there were little notes, polite but insistent, from the haberdasher's whence the glowing green shirt, now sadly yellowed, had come. In order to make a show of settling, he went over to Commons to eat, and, being on an allowance for clothes, economized on such articles of apparel as were visible only to himself and McCarthy, who was in the same threadbare state.
THE PERIOD OF DUNS SET IN, AND THE HOUSE BECAME A PLACE OF MYSTERY AND SIGNALS
"THE PERIOD OF DUNS SET IN, AND THE HOUSE BECAME A PLACE OF MYSTERY AND SIGNALS"—Page 201.
His candidacy for the class crew kept him in strict training, though he ranked no better than third substitute. His afternoons thus employed and his evenings occupied with consultations, he found his life as narrowed as it had been in the season of football. Every one knew him, and he had learned the trick of a smile and an enthusiasticbob of the head to every one. He was a popular man even among the outsiders now more and more openly opposed to the sophomore society system. He was perhaps, at this period, the most popular man in his class; and yet, he had made scarcely a friend, nor did he understand quite what was the longing in him.
With the end of May and the coming of society week for the first time the full intensity and seriousness of the social ambition was brought before him. The last elections in his own crowd were given out, Regan and Brockhurst failing to be chosen. In McCarthy's society the last place narrowed down to three men; and Stone, who had made theNews, won the choice.
Stover was sitting alone with McCarthy on the critical night, when the door opened and Stone entered. One look at his face told McCarthy what had happened.
"I'm sorry, Tough," said Stone, a little over-tense. "They gave me the pledge. It's hard luck."
"Bully for you!" There wasn't a break in McCarthy's voice. "I knew you'd get it all along."
"I came up to let you know right away," said Stone, looking down at the floor. "Of course, I wanted it myself, but I'm sorry—deuced sorry."
"Nonsense. You've made theNews. You ought to have it." McCarthy, calm and smiling, held out his hand. "Bully for you! Shake on it!"
Stone went almost immediately and the room-mates were left alone. McCarthy came back whistling, and irrelevantly went to his bureau, parting his hair with methodical strokes of the brush.
"That was real white of Stone to come up and tell me," he said quietly.
"Yes."
"Well, we'll go on with that geometry now."
He came back and sat down at the desk quite calmly, as if a whole outlook had not been suddenly closed to him.
Stover, cut to the heart, watched him with a genuine thrill. He rose, drew a long breath, walked to the window, and, coming back, laid his hand on his room-mate's shoulder.
McCarthy looked up quickly, with a little flush.
"Good grit, old man," said Dink, "darned good grit."
"Thank you."
"It won't make any difference, Tough."
"Of course not." McCarthy gave a little laugh and said: "Don't say any more, Dink."
Stover took his place opposite, saying:
"I won't, only this. You take it better than I could do. I'm proud of you."
"You remember what the old man said to you fellows after that Princeton slaughter?" said Tough solemnly. "'Take your medicine.' Well, Dink, I'm going to swallow it without a wink, and I rather guess, from what I've seen, that's the biggest thing they have to teach us up here."
"It'll make no difference," said Dink obstinately.
"Of course not."
But each knew that for McCarthy, who would never be above the substitute class, the issue of the senior society was settled, once and for all.
The excitement of being initiated, the outward manifestation of Calcium Light Night and the spectacular parade of the cowled junior societies with their swelling marching songs, and the sudden arrival of Tap Day for a while drove from Stover all thoughts but his personal dreams.
On the fateful Thursday in May, shortly after halfpast four, he and Tough went over to the campus. By the fence the junior class, already swallowed up by the curious body of the college, were waiting the arrival of the senior elections which would begin on the stroke of five.
"Lots of others will take their medicine to-day," said McCarthy a little grimly.
"You bet."
Hungerford and McNab, seeing them, came over.
"Gee, look at the way the visitors are on the campus," said McNab.
"They're packed in all the windows of Durfee and over on the steps of Dwight Hall," said Hungerford. "I didn't know they came on like this."
"If you want a sensation," said McNab, "just go over to that bunch of juniors. You can hear every one of them breathe. They're scared to death. It's a regular slaughter."
Stover looked curiously at McNab, amazed to note the excitement on his usually flippant countenance. Then he looked over at the herd huddled under the trees by the fence. It was all a spectacle still—dramatic, but removed from his own personality. The juniors, with but a few exceptions, were only names to him. His own society men meant something, and Captain Dudley of next year's eleven, who, of course, was absolutely sure. He felt a little thrill as he looked over and saw the churning mass and thought that in two years he would stand there and wait. But, for the moment, he was only eagerly curious and a little inclined to be amused at the excessive solemnity of the performance.
"Who do you think will be first tapped for Bones?" said McNab, at his side.
"Dudley," said Hungerford.
"No; they'll keep him for the last place."
"Well, Allison, captain of the crew, then."
"I heard Smithson has switched over to Keys."
"They're both after De Gollyer."
All four had tentative lists in their hands, eagerly comparing them.
"Dopey, you're all wrong. Clark'll never get it."
"Why not."
"Look at your Bones list—there's no place for him. You've got to include the pitcher of the nine and the president of Dwight Hall, haven't you?"
"My guess is Rogers first man for Keys."
"No; they'll take some man Bones wants—De Gollyer, probably."
"Let's get into the crowd."
"Come on."
"It's ten minutes of five already."
Le Baron, passing, stopped Stover, saying excitedly:
"Say, Dink, watch out for the crowd who go Keys and let me know, will you? I mean the men in our crowd?"
"Sure I will."
Stover was in the throng, with a strange, sharp memory of Le Baron's drawn face. It was a silent mass, waiting, watch in hand, trying stoically to face down the suspense of the last awful minutes. Men he knew stared past him unseeing. Some were carefully dressed, and others stood in sweater and jersey, biting on pipes that were not lit. He heard a few scattered voices and the brief, crisp remarks came to him like the scattered popping of musketry.
"What's the time, Bill?"
"Three minutes of."
"Did they ever make a mistake?"
"Sure; four years ago. A fellow got mixed up and tapped the wrong man."
"Didn't discover it until they were half way down the campus."
"Rotten situation."
"I should say so."
"Let's stand over here."
"What for?"
"Let's see Dudley tapped. He'll be first man for Bones."
"Gee, what a mob!"
"Packed like sardines."
Near the fence, the juniors, hemmed in, were constantly being welded together. Stover, moving aimlessly, caught sight of Dudley's face. He would have liked to signal him a greeting, a look of good will; but the face of the captain was set in stone. A voice near him whispered that there was a minute more. He looked in a dozen faces, amazed at the physical agony he saw in those who were counted surest. For the first time he began to realize the importance of it, the hopes and fears assembled there. Then he noticed, above the ghost-like heads of the crowd, the windows packed with spectators drawn to the spectacle. And he had a feeling of indignant resentment that outsiders should be there to watch this test of manhood after the long months of striving.
"Ten seconds, nine seconds, eight," some one said near him. Then suddenly, immediately swallowed up in a roar, the first iron note of the chapel bell crashed over them. Then a shriek:
"Yea!"
"There he comes!"
"Over by the library."
"First man."
Across the campus, Dana, first man out for Bones, all in black, was making straight for them with the unrelenting directness of a torpedo. The same breathless tensity was in his face, the same solemnity. The crowd parted slightly before him and then closed behind him with a rush. He made his way furiously into the center of the tangle, throwing the crowd from him without distinction until opposite Dudley, who waited, looking at him blankly. He passed, and suddenly, seizing a man nearer Stover, swung him around and slapped him on the back with a loud slap, crying:
"Go to your room!"
Instantly the cry went up:
"It's De Gollyer!"
"First man tapped!"
The mass parted, and De Gollyer, wabbling a little, taking enormous steps, shot out for his dormitory, tracked by Dana, while about him his classmates shouted their approval of the popular choice.
"Yea!"
"Rogers!"
"First man for Keys."
"Rogers for Keys!"
Stover set out for a rush in the direction of the shout, tossed and buffeted in the scramble. At every moment, now, a cry went up as the elections proceeded rapidly. From time to time he found Le Baron, and shouted to him his report. He saw men he knew tearing back and forth, Hunter driven out of his pose of calm for once, little Schley, hysterical almost, running to and fro. At times the slap was given near him, and he caught the sudden realization, a look in the face that was not good to have seen. It was all like a stampede, some panic, a sudden shipwreck, when every second was precious and,once gone, gone forever; where the agony was in the face of the weak-hearted and a few stoically stood smiling at the waiting gulf.
The elections began to be exhausted and the writing on the wall to stare some in the face. Then something happened; a cry went up and a little circle formed under one of the trees, while back came the rumor:
"Some one's fainted."
"Man's gone under."
"Who?"
"Who is it?"
"Franklin."
"No, no; Henderson."
"You don't say so!"
"Fainted dead away. Missed out for Bones."
All at once another shout went up—a shout of amazement and incredulity. A great sensation spread everywhere. The Bones list had now reached thirteen; only two more to be given, and Allison of the crew, Dudley, and Harvey, chairman of theNews, all rated sure men, were left. Who was to be rejected? Stover fought his way to where the three were standing white and silent, surrounded by the gaping crowd. Some one caught his arm. It was Le Baron, beside himself with excitement, saying:
"Good God, Dink! you don't suppose they're going to turn down Harvey or Allison?"
Almost before the words were uttered something had happened. A slap resounded and the sharp command:
"Go to your room!"
Then the cry:
"Harvey!"
"Harvey's tapped!"
"Only one place left."
"Good heavens!"
"Who's to go down?"
"It's impossible!"
Dudley and Allison, prospective captains, room-mates from school days at Andover, were left, and between them balancing the fates. A hush fell in the crowd, awed at the unusual spectacle of a Yale captain marked for rejection. Then Dudley, smiling, put out his hand and said in a clear voice:
"Joe, one of us has got to walk the plank. Here's luck!"
Allison's hand went out in a firm grip, smiling a little, too, as he answered:
"No, no; you're all right! You're sure."
"Here he is."
"Last man for Bones."
"Here he comes!"
The crowd massed at the critical point fell back, opening a lane to where Allison and Dudley waited, throwing back their shoulders a little, to meet the man who came straight to them, pale with the importance of the decision that had been given him. He reached Dudley, passed, and, seizing Allison by the shoulder, almost knocked him down by the force of his slap. Pandemonium broke loose:
"It's Allison!"
"No!"
"Yes."
"What, they've left out Dudley?"
"Missed out."
"Impossible!"
"Fact."
"Hi, Jack, Dudley's missed out!"
"Dudley, the football captain!"
"What the devil!"
"For the love of heaven!"
"Why, Dudley's the best in the world!"
"Sure he is."
"It's a shame."
"An outrage."
"They've done it just to show they're independent."
Across the campus toward Vanderbilt, Allison and the last Bones man, in tandem, were streaking like water insects. Le Baron, holding on to Stover, was cursing in broken accents. But Dink heard him only indistinctly; he was looking at Dudley. The pallor had left his face, which was a little flushed; the head was thrown back proudly; and the lips were set in a smile that answered the torrent of sympathy and regret that was shouted to him. The last elections to Keys and Wolf's-Head were forgotten in the stir of the incredible rejection.
Then some one shrieked out for a cheer, and the roar went over the campus again and again.
Dudley, always with the same smile and shining eyes, made his way slowly across toward Vanderbilt, hugged, patted on the back, his hand wrung frantically by those who swarmed about him. Stover was at his side, everything forgotten but the drama of the moment, cheering and shouting, seeing with a sort of wonder a little spectacled grind with blazing eyes shaking hands with Dudley, crying:
"It's a crime—a darned crime! We all think so, all of us!"
For half an hour the college, moved as it had never been, stood huddled below Dudley's rooms, cheering itself hoarse. Then slowly the crowd began to melt away.
"Come on, Dink," said Hungerford, who had him by the arm.
"Oh, is that you, Joe?" said Dink, seeing him for the first time. "Isn't it an outrage?"
"I don't understand it."
"By George, wasn't he fine, though?"
"He certainly was!"
"I was right by him. He never flinched a second."
"Dink, the whole thing is terrible," said Hungerford, his sensitive face showing the pain of the emotions he had undergone. "I don't think it's right to put fellows through such a test as that."
"You don't believe in Tap Day?"
"I don't know."
Their paths crossed Regan's and they halted, each wondering what that unusual character had thought of it all.
"Hello, Tom."
"Hello, Joe; hello, Dink."
"Tough about Dudley, isn't it?"
"How so?"
"Why, missing out!"
"Perhaps it's Bones's loss," said Regan grimly. "Dudley's all right. He's lucky. He's ten times the man he was this morning."
Neither Hungerford nor Stover answered.
"What do you think of it—Tap Day?" said Hungerford, after a moment.
"The best thing in the whole society system," said Regan, with extra warmth.
"Well, I'll be darned!" said Stover, in genuine surprise. "I thought you'd be for abolishing it."
"Never! If you're going through three years afraid to call your souls your own, why, you ought to stand out before every one and take what's coming to you. That's my idea."
He bobbed his head and went on toward Commons.
"I don't know," said Hungerford solemnly. "It's a horror; I wish I hadn't seen it."
"I'm glad I did," said Stover slowly. "They certainly baptize us in fire up here." He remembered McCarthy with a new understanding and repeated: "We certainly learn how to take our medicine up here, Joe. It's a good deal to learn."
They wandered back toward the now quiet fence. All the crowding and the stirring was gone, and over all a strange silence, the silence of exhaustion. The year was over; what would come afterward was inconsequential.
"I wonder if it's all worth it?" said Hungerford suddenly.
Stover did not answer; it was the question that was in his own thoughts. What he had seen that afternoon was still too vivid in his memory. He tried to shake it off, but, with the obsession of a fetish, it clung to him. He understood now, not that he would yield to the emotion, but the fear of judgment that swayed men he knew, and what Regan had meant when he had referred to those who did not dare to call their souls their own.
"It does get you," he said, at last, to Hungerford.
"It does me," said Hungerford frankly, "and I suppose it'll get worse."
"I wonder?"
He was silent, thinking of the year that had passed, wondering if the next would bring him the same discipline and the same fatigue, and if at the end of the three years' grind, if such should be his lot, he could stand up like Dudley before the whole college and take his medicine with a smile.
When Stover returned after the summer vacation to the full glory of a sophomore, he had changed in many ways. The consciousness of success had given him certain confidence and authority, which, if it was more of the manner than real, nevertheless was noticeable. He had aged five or six years, as one ages at that time under the grave responsibilities of an exalted leadership.
A great change likewise had come in his plans. During the summer Tough McCarthy's father had died, and Tough had been forced to forego his college course and take up at once the seriousness of life. Several offers had been made Dink to go in with Hungerford, Tommy Bain, and others of his crowd, but he had decided to room by himself, for a time at least. The decision had come to him as the result of a growing feeling of restlessness, an instinctive desire to be by himself and know again that shy friend Dink Stover, who somehow seemed to have slipped away from him.
Much to his surprise, this feeling of restlessness dominated all other emotions on his victorious return to college. He felt strangely alone. Every one in the class greeted him with rushing enthusiasm, inquired critically of his weight and condition, and passed on. His progress across the campus was halted at every moment by acclaiming groups, who ran to him, pumping his hand, slapping him on the back, exclaiming:
"You, old Dink Stover!"
"Bless your heart."
"Put it there."
"Glad to see you again."
"How are you?"
"You look fit as a fiddle!"
"The All-American this year!"
"Hard luck about McCarthy."
"Ta-ta."
His was the popular welcome, and yet it left him unsatisfied, with a strange tugging at his heart. They were all acquaintances, nothing more. He went to his room on the second floor in Lawrence, and, finding his way over the bare floor and the boxes that encumbered, reached the window and flung it open.
Below the different fences had disappeared under the joyful, hilarious groups that swarmed about them. He saw Swazey and Pike, two of the grinds of his own class, men who "didn't count," go past hugging each other, and their joy, comical though it was, hurt him. He turned from the window, saying aloud, sternly, as though commanding himself:
"Come, I must get this hole fixed up. It's gloomy as the devil."
He worked feverishly, ripping apart the covers, ranging the furniture, laying the rugs. Then he put in order his bedroom, and, whistling loudly, fished out his bedclothes, laid the bed, and arranged his bureau-top. That done, he brought forth several photographs he had taken in the brief visit he had paid the Storys, and placing them in the position of honor lit his pipe and, camping on a dry-goods box, like Scipio amid the ruins of Carthage, dreamily considered through the smoke-wreaths the distant snap-shots of a slender girl in white.
He was comfortably, satisfactorily in love with JeanStory. The emotion filled a sentimental want in his nature. He had never asked her for her photograph or to correspond, as he would have lightly asked a hundred other girls. He knew instinctively that she would have refused. He liked that in her—her dignity and her reserve. He wanted her regard, as he always wanted what others found difficult to attain. She was young and yet with an old head on her shoulders. In the two weeks he had spent in camp, they had discussed much together of what lay ahead beyond the confines of college life. He did not always understand her point of view. He often wondered what was the doubt that lay in her mind about him. For, though she had given him a measure of her friendship, there was always a reserve, something held back. It was the same with Bob. It puzzled him; it irritated him. He was resolved to beat down that barrier, to shatter it some way and somehow, as he was resolved that Jim Hunter, whose intentions were clear, should never beat him out in this race.
He rose, pipe in mouth, and, taking up a photograph, stared at the laughing face and the quiet, proud tilt of the head.
"At any rate," he said to himself, "Jim Hunter hasn't got any more than this, and he never will."
He went back to the study, delving into the packing-boxes. From below came a stentorian halloo he knew well:
"Oh, Dink Stover, stick out your head!"
"Come up, you, Tom Regan, come up on the jump!"
In another moment Regan was in the room, and his great bear clutch brought Stover a feeling of warmth with its genuineness.
"Bigger than ever, Tom."
"You look fine yourself, you little bantam!"
"Lord, but I'm glad to see you!"
"Same to you."
"How'd the summer go?"
"Wonderful. I've got four hundred tucked away in the bank."
"You don't say so!"
"Fact."
Stover shook hands again eagerly.
"Tell me all about it."
"Sure. Go on with your unpacking; I'll lend a hand. I've had a bully summer."
"What's that mean?" said Stover, with a quizzical smile. "Working like a slave?"
"No, no; seeing real people. I tried being a conductor a while, got in a strike, and switched over to construction work. Got to be foreman of a gang, night shift."
"You don't mean out all night?"
"Oh, I slept in the day. You get used to it. They're a strange lot, the fellows who work while the rest of you sleep. They brushed me up a lot, taught me a lot. Wish you'd been along. You'd have got some education."
"I may do something of the sort with you next summer," said Stover quietly.
"They tell me Tough McCarthy's not coming back."
"Yes; father died."
"Too bad. Going to room alone?"
"For a while. I want to get away—think things over a bit, read some."
"Good idea," said Regan, with one of his sharp appraising looks. "If a man's given a thinker, he might just as well use it."
Hungerford and Bob Story joined them, and the four went down to Mory's to take possession in the name ofthe sophomore class. Regan, to their surprise, making one of the party, paid as they paid, with just a touch of conscious pride.
The good resolves that Dink made to himself, under the influence of the acute emotions he had felt on his return, gradually faded from his memory as he felt himself caught up again in the rush of college life. He found his day marked out for him, his companions assigned to him, his standards and his opinions inherited from his predecessors. Insensibly he became a cog in the machine. What with football practise and visiting the freshman class in the interest of his society, he found he was able to keep awake long enough to get a smattering of the next day's work and no more.
The class had scattered and groups with clear tendencies had formed, Hunter and Tommy Bain the center of little camps serious and ambitious, while off the campus in a private dormitory another element was pursuing mannish delights with the least annoyance from the curriculum.
The opposition to the sophomore societies had now grown to a college issue. Protests from the alumni began to come in; one of the editors of theLitmade it the subject of his leader, while the college, under the leadership of rebels like Gimbel, arrayed itself in uncompromising opposition and voted down every candidate for office that the sophomore societies placed in the field.
That the situation was serious and working harm to the college Stover saw, but, as the fight became more bitter, the feeling of loyalty, coupled with distrust of the motives of the assailants, placed him in the ranks of the most ardent defenders, where, a little to his surprise, he found himself rather arrayed with Tommy Bain and JimHunter in their position of unrelenting conservatism, fighting the revolt which was making head in the society itself, as Bob Story and Joe Hungerford led the demand for some liberal reform.
However, the conflict did not break out until the close of the season. The team, under the resolute leadership of Captain Dudley, fought its way to one of those almost miraculous successes which is not characteristic of the Yale system as it is the result of the inspiring guidance of some one extraordinary personality.
Regan went from guard to tackle, and Stover, back at his natural position of end, developed the promise of freshman year, acclaimed as the All-American end of the year. Still the possibility of Regan's challenge for the captaincy returned constantly to his mind, for about the big tackle was always a feeling of confidence, of rugged, immovable determination that perhaps in its steadying influence had built up the team more than his own individual brilliancy. Dink, despite himself, felt the force of these masterful qualities, acknowledging them even as, to his displeasure, he felt a rising jealousy; for at the bottom he was drawn more and more to Regan as he was drawn to no other man.
About a month after the triumphant close of the football season, then, Stover, in the usual course of a thoroughly uneventful morning, rose as rebelliously late as usual, bolted his breakfast, and rushed to chapel. He was humanly elated with what the season had brought, a fame which had gone the rounds of the press of the country for unflinching courage and cold head-work, but, more than that, he was pleasantly satisfied with the difficult modesty with which he bore his honors. For he was modest. He had sworn to himself he would be, and he was. He had allowed it to make no difference inhis relations with the rest of the class. If anything, he was more careful to distribute the cordiality of his smile and the good-natured "How are you?" to all alike without the slightest distinction.
"How are you, Bill?" he said to Swazey, the strange unknown grind who sat beside him. He called him by his first name consciously, though he knew him no more than this slight daily contact, because he wished to emphasize the comradeship and democracy of Yale, of which he was a leader. "Feelin' fine this morning, old gazabo?"
"How are you?" said Swazey gratefully.
"Tough lesson they soaked us, didn't they?"
"It was a tough one."
"Suppose that didn't bother you, though, you old valedictorian."
"Oh, yes, it did."
Stover, settling comfortably in his seat, nodded genially to the right and left.
"I say, Dink."
"Hello, what is it?"
"Drop in on me some night."
"What?" said Stover surprised.
"Come round and have a chat sometime," said Swazey, in a thoroughly natural way.
"Why, sure; like to," said Stover bluffly, which, of course was the only thing to say.
"To-night?"
"Sorry; I'm busy to-night," said Stover. Swazey, of course, being a grind, did not realize the abhorrent, almost sacrilegious, social break he was making in inviting him on his society evening.
"To-morrow, then?"
"Why, yes; to-morrow."
"I haven't been very sociable in not asking you before," said Swazey, in magnificent incomprehension, "but I'd really like to have you."
"Why, thankee."
Stover, entrapped, received the invitation with perfect gravity, although resolved to find some excuse.
But the next day, thinking it over, he said to himself that it really was his duty, and, reflecting how pleased Swazey would be to receive a call from one of his importance, he determined to give him that pleasure. Setting out after supper, he met Bob Story.
"Whither away?" said Story, stopping.
"I'm going to drop in on a fellow called Swazey," said Stover, a little conscious of the virtue of this act. "I sit next to him in chapel. He's a good deal of a grind, but he asked me around, and I thought I'd go. You know—the fellow in our row."
"That's very good of you," said Story, with a smile which he remembered after.
Stover felt so himself. Still, he had the democracy of Yale to preserve, and it was his duty. He went swinging on his way with that warm, glowing, physical delight that, fortunately, the slightest virtuous action is capable of arousing.
With Nathaniel Pike, a classmate, Swazey roomed in Divinity Hall, where, attracted by the cheapness of the rooms, a few of the college had been able to find quarters.
"Queer place," thought Dink to himself, eyeing a few of the divinity students who went slipping by him. "Wonder what the deuce I can talk to him about. Oh, well, I won't have to stay long."
Swazey, of course, being outside the current of college heroes, could have but a limited view. He found thedoor at the end of the long corridor and thundered his knock, as a giant announces himself.
"Come in if you're good-looking!" said a piping voice.
Stover entered with strongly accentuated good fellowship, giving his hand with the politician's cordiality.
"How are you, Nat? How are you, Bill?"
He ensconced himself in the generous arm-chair, which bore the trace of many masters, accepted a cigar and said, to put his hosts at their ease:
"Bully quarters you've got here. Blame sight more room than I've got."
Pike, cap on, a pad under his arm, apologized for going.
"Awful sorry, Stover; darned inhospitable. This infernalNewsgrind. Hope y'will be sociable and stay till I get back."
"How are you making out?" said Stover, in an encouraging, generous way.
Pike scratched his ear, a large, loose ear, wrinkling up his long, pointed nose in a grimace, as he answered:
"Danged if I don't think I'm going to miss out again."
"You were in the first competition?" said Stover, surprised—for one trial was usually considered equivalent to a thousand years off the purgatory account.
"Yep, but I was green—didn't know the rules."
"Lord, I should think you'd have had enough!"
"Why, it's rather a sociable time. It is a grind, but I'm going to make thatNews, if I hit it all sophomore year."
"What, you'd try again?"
"You bet I would!"
There was a matter-of-fact simplicity about Pike, uncouth as was his dress and wide sombrero, that appealed to Stover. He held out his hand.
"Good luck to you! And say—if I get any news I'll save it for you."
"Obliged, sir—ta-ta!"
"Holy cats!" said Dink, relapsing into the arm-chair as the door banged. "Any one who'll stick at it like that gets all I can give him."
"He's a wonderful person," said Swazey, drawing up his chair and elevating his hobnailed shoes. "Never saw anything like his determination. Wonderful! Green as salad when he first came, ready to tickle Prexy under the ribs or make himself at home whenever a room struck his fancy. But, when he got his eyes open, you ought to have seen him pick up and learn. He's developed wonderfully. He'll succeed in life."
Stover smiled inwardly at this critical assumption on Swazey's part, but he began to be interested. There was something real in both men.
"Did you go to school together?" he said.
"Lord, no! Precious little school either of us got. I ran up against him when I landed here—just bumped together, as it were."
"You don't say so?"
"Fact. It was rather queer. We were both up in the fall trying to throttle a few pesky conditions and slip in. It was just after Greek prose composition—cursed be the memory!—when I came out of Alumni Hall, kicking myself at every step, and found that little rooster engaged in the same process. Say, he was a sight—looked like a chicken had been shipped from St. Louis to Chicago—but spunky as you make 'em. Never had put a collar on his neck—I got him up to that last spring; but he still balks at a derby. So off we went to grub, and I found he didn't know a soul. No more did I. So we said, 'Why not?' And we did. We hunted upthese quarters, and we've got on first-rate ever since. No scratching, gouging, or biting. We've been a good team. I've seen the world, I've got hard sense, and he's got ideas—quite remarkable ideas. Danged if I'm not stuck on the little rooster."
Stover reached out for the tobacco to fill a second pipe, all his curiosity aroused.
"I say, Dink," said Swazey, offering him a match, "this college is a wonderful thing, isn't it?" He stood reflectively, the sputtering light of the match illuminating his thoughtful face. "Just think of the romance in it. Me and Pike coming together from two ends of the country and striking it up. That's what counts up here—the perfect democracy of it!"
"Yes, of course," said Stover in a mechanical way. He was wondering what Swazey would think of the society system, or if he even realized it existed, so he said curiously:
"You keep rather to yourselves, though."
"Oh, I know pretty much what I want to know about men. I've sized 'em up and know what sorts to reach out for when I want them. Now I want to learn something real." He looked at Stover with a sort of rugged superiority in his glance and said: "I've earned my own way ever since I was twelve years old, and some of it was pretty rough going. I know what's outside of this place and what I want to reach. That's what a lot of you fellows don't worry about just now."
"Swazey, tell me about yourself," said Stover, surprised at his own eagerness. "By George, I'd like to hear it! Why did you come to college?"
"It was an idea of the governor's, and he got it pretty well fixed in my head. Would you like to hear? All right." He touched a match to the kindling, and, hiscoat bothering him, cast it off. "The old man was a pretty rough customer, I guess—he died when I was twelve; don't know anything about any one else in the family. I don't know just how he picked up his money; we were always moving; but I fancy he was a good deal of a rum hound and that carried him off. He always had a liking for books, and one set idea that I was to be a gentleman, get to college and get educated; so I always kept that same idea in the back of my head, and here I am."
"You said you'd earned your living ever since you were twelve," said Stover, all interest.
"That's so. It's pretty much the usual story. Selling newspapers, drifting around, living on my wits. Only I had a pretty shrewd head on my shoulders, and wherever I went I saw what was going on and I salted it away. I made up my mind I wasn't going to be a fool, but I was going to sit back, take every chance, and win out big. Lord of mercy, though, I've seen some queer corners—done some tough jobs! Up to about fifteen I didn't amount to much. I was a drifter. I've worked my way from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, stealing rides and hoofing it with tramps. I've scrubbed out bar-rooms in Arizona and Oklahoma, and tended cattle in Kansas City. I sort of got a wandering fit, which is bad business. But each year I tucked away a little more of the long green than the year before, and got a little more of the juice of books. About four years ago, when I was seventeen—I'd saved up a few hundreds—I said to myself:
"'Hold up, look here, if you're ever going to do anything, it's about time now to begin.' So I planted my hoof out in Oklahoma City and I started in to be a useful citizen."
The pipe between Stover's lips had gone out, but he did not heed it. A new life—life itself—was suddenly revealing itself to him; not the guarded existences of his own kind, but the earnest romance of the submerged nine-tenths. As Swazey stopped, he said impulsively, directly:
"By George, Swazey, I envy you!"
"Well, it's taught me to size men up pretty sharply," said Swazey, continuing. "I've seen them in the raw, I've seen them in all sorts of tests. I've sort of got a pretty guess what they'll do or not do. Then, of course, I've had a knack of making money out of what I touch—it's a gift."
"Are you working your way through here?" said Stover. All feeling of patronage was gone; he felt as if a torrent had cleared away the dust and cobwebs of tradition.
"Lord, no," said Swazey, smiling. "Why, boy, I've got a business that's bringing me in between four and five thousand a year—running itself, too."
Stover sat up.
"What!"
"I've got an advertising agency, specialties of all sorts, seven men working under one. I keep in touch every day. Course I could make more if I was right there. But I know what I'm going to do in this world. I've got my ideas for what's coming—big ideas. I'm going to make money hand over fist. That's easy. Now I'm getting an education. Here's the answer to it all."
He drew out of his pocketbook a photograph and passed it over to Stover.
"That's the best in the world; that's the girl that started me and that's the girl I'm going to marry."
Dink took the funny little photograph and gazed at itwith a certain reverence. It was the face of a girl pretty enough, with a straight, proud, reliant look in her eyes that he saw despite the oddity of the clothes and the artificiality of the pose. He handed back the photograph.
"I like her," he said.
"Hereweare," said Swazey, handing him a tintype.
It was grotesque, as all such pictures are, with its mingled sentimentality and self-consciousness, but Stover did not smile.
"That's the girl I've been working for ever since," said Swazey. "The bravest little person I ever struck, and the squarest. She was waiting in a restaurant when I happened to drop in, standing on her own feet, asking no favor. She's out of that now, thank God! I've sent her off to school."
Dink turned to him with a start, amazed at the matter-of-fact way in which Swazey announced it.
"To school—" he stammered. "You'vesenther."
"Sure. Up to a convent in Montreal. She'll finish there when I finish here."
"Why?" said Stover, too amazed to choose his methods of inquiry.
"Because, my boy, I'm going out to succeed, and I want my wife to know as much as I do and go with me where I go."
The two sat silently, Swazey staring at the tintype with a strange, proud smile, utterly unconscious of the story he had told, Stover overwhelmed as if the doors in a great drama had suddenly swung open to his intruding gaze.
"She's the real student," said Swazey fondly. "She gets it all—all the romance of the big things that have gone on in the past. By George, the time'll come when we'll get over to Greece and Egypt and Rome and seesomething of it ourselves." He put the photographs in his pocketbook and rose, standing, legs spread before the fire, talking to himself. "By George, Dink, money isn't what I'm after. I'm going to have that, but the big thing is to know something about everything that's real, and to keep on learning. I've never had anything like these evenings here, browsing around in the good old books, chatting it over with old Pike—he's got imagination. Give me history and biography—that inspires you. Say, I've talked a lot, but you led me on. What's your story?"
"My story?" said Stover solemnly. He thought a moment and then said: "Nothing. It's a blank and I'm a blank. I say, Swazey, give me your hand. I'm proud to know you. And, if you'll let me, I'd like to come over here oftener."
He went from the room, with a sort of empty rage, transformed. Before him all at once had spread out the vision of the nation, of the democracy of lives of striving and of hope. He had listened as a child listens. He went out bewildered and humble. For the first time since he had come to Yale, he had felt something real. His mind and his imagination had been stirred, awakened, hungry, rebellious.
He turned back, glancing from the lights on the campus to the room he had left—a little splotch of mellow meaning on the somber cold walls of Divinity, and then turned into the emblazoned quadrangle of the campus, with its tinkling sounds and feverish, childish ambitions.
"Great heavens! and I went there as a favor," he said. "What under the sky do I know about anything—little conceited ass!"
He went towards his entry and, seeing a light in Bob Story's room, suddenly hallooed.
"Oh, Bob Story, stick out your head."
"Hello, yourself. Who is it?"
"It's me. Dink."
"Come on up."
"No, not to-night."
"What then?"
"Say, Bob, I just wanted you to know one thing."
"What?"
"I'm just a plain damn fool; do you get that?"
"What the deuce?"
"Just a plain damn fool—good-night!"
And he went to his room, locked the door to all visitors, pulled an arm-chair before the fire, and sat staring into it, as solemn as the wide-eyed owls on the casters.
The hours that Dink Stover sat puffing his pipe before the yellow-eyed owls that blinked to him from the crackling fireplace were hours of revolution. His imagination, stirred by the recital of Swazey's life, returned to him like some long-lost friend. Sunk back in his familiar arm-chair, his legs extended almost to the reddening logs, his arms braced, he seemed to see through the conjuring clouds of smoke that rose from his pipe the figures of a strange self, the Dink Stover who had fought his way to manhood in the rough tests of boarding-school life, the Dink Stover who had arrived so eagerly, whose imagination had leaped to the swelling masses of that opening night and called for the first cheer in the name of the whole class.
That figure was stranger to him than the stranger in his own entry. Together they sat looking into each other's eyes, in shy recognition, while overhead on every quarter-hour the bell from Battell Chapel announced the march toward midnight. Several times, as he sat plunged in reverie, a knock sounded imperiously on the locked door; but he made no move. Once from the campus below he heard Dopey McNab's gleeful voice mingling with the deep bass of Buck Waters: