"Take up religion. Do you know anything about Confucius, Shintoism, or Swedenborg, beyond the names? Of course you would not know that under Louis XVI a determined movement was made to reunite the Catholic and Protestant branches, which almost succeeded. That's unfair, because of course it is the forerunner of the great religious movement to-day. Do you know the history of the external symbols of the Christian religion, and what is historically new? Darkness denser and denser.
"Take literature. You have excavated a certain amount of Shakespeare, and grubbed among Elizabethans, and cursed Spenser. Who has read Taine's History of English Literature, or known in fact who Taine is? Only Bob Story. And yet there is the greatest book on the whole subject; you could abolish the English department and substitute it. Beside Story, who else has had even a fair reading knowledge of any other literature—Russian, Norwegian, German, French, Italian? Who knows enough about any one of these writers to look wise and nod; Renan, Turgeniev, Daudet, Björnson, Hauptman, Suderman, Strindberg? Do you know anything about Goethe as a critic, or the influence of Poe upon French literature? What do you know? I'll tell you. You know Les Misérables and The Three Musketeers in French literature. You know Goethe wrote Faust. You're beginning to know Ibsen as a name, and one may have read Tolstoi, and all know that he's a very old man with a long white beard, who lives among hispeasants, has some queer ideas, and has started to die three or four times. The papers have told you that.
"Take another field, of simple curiosity on what is doing in a world in which by opportunity you are supposed to be of the leading class. What do you know about the strength and spread of socialism in Germany, France and England? In the first place no one of you here probably has any idea of what socialism is; you've been told it's anarchy, and, as that only means dynamite to you, you are against socialism, and will never take the trouble to investigate it. What do you know about the new political experiments in New Zealand?—nothing. What do you know about the labor pension system in Germany, or the separation of the church and state in France?—all subjects dealing with the vital development of the race of bipeds on this earth of which you happen to be members.
"Now here is a catch question—all candidates for the dunce-cap will take a guess. The Botticelli story is such a chestnut now that you all know that it isn't a cheese or a wine—credit that to ridicule. I'm going to give you a few names from all the professions, and let's see who can tag them. What was Spinoza, Holman Hunt, Dostoiefski, Ambrose Thomas, Savonarola (if you've read the novel you'd know that), Bastien Le Page, Zorn, Bizet, Bossuet! Unfair?—not at all. These things are just as necessary to know to a man of education and culture as it is to a man of good manners to realize that peas are not introduced into the mouth by being balanced on a knife."
"Help!" cried Hungerford, as Brockhurst went rushing on. "Great Scott, whatdowe know?"
"You know absolutely nothing," said Brockhurst savagely. "Here you are; look at yourselves—fouryears when you ought to learn something, some informing knowledge of all that has developed during the four thousand years the human race has fought its way toward the light, four years to be filled with the marvel and splendor of it all, and you don't know a thing.
"You don't know the big men in music; you don't know the pioneers and the leaders in any art; you don't know the great literatures of the world, and what they represent; you don't know how other races are working out their social destinies; you've never even stopped to examine yourselves, to analyze your own society, to see the difference between a civilization founded on the unit of the individual, and a civilization, like the Latin, on the indestructible advance of the family. You have no general knowledge, no intellectual interests, you haven't even opinions, and at the end of four years ofeducationyou will march up and be handed a degree—Bachelor of Arts! Magnificent! And we Americans have a sense of humor! Do you wonder why I repeat that our colleges are splendidly organized institutions for the prevention of learning? No, sir, we are business colleges, and the business of our machines is to stamp out so many business men a year, running at full speed and in competition with the latest devices in Cambridge and Princeton!"
"Brocky, you are terrific," said Swazey in admiration. There was too much truth in the attack, violent as it was, not to have called forth serious attention.
"I feel a good deal the way you do," said Bob Story, and Stover nodded, "only it seems to me, Brocky, a good deal of what you're arguing for must come from outside—in just such informal talks as this."
"That's true," said Brockhurst. "If the stimulus in the college life itself were toward education all ourmeetings would be educational. It's true abroad, it isn't here. You know my views. You think I'm extreme. I'm getting an education because I didn't accept any such flap-doodle as, 'What am I going to do for Yale?' but instead asked, 'What has Yale got to offer me?' I'm getting it, too."
Stover suddenly remembered the conversation they had together the year before, and looking now at Brockhurst, revealed in a new strength, he began to understand what had then so repelled him.
"The great fault," continued Brockhurst, "lies, however, with the colleges. The whole theory is wrong, archaic and ridiculous—the theory of education by schedule. All education can do is to instil the love of knowledge. You get that, you catch the fire of it—you educate yourself. All education does to-day is to develop the memory at the expense of the imagination. It says: 'Here are so many pounds of Greek, Latin, mathematics, history, literature. In four years our problem is to pass them through the heads of these hundreds of young barbarians so that they will come out with a lip knowledge.'"
"But come, we do learn something," said Hungerford.
"No, you don't, Joe," said Brockhurst. "You've translated the Iliad—you've never known it. You've recited in Horace—you have no love for him. You've excavated the plays of Shakespeare, a couple of acts at a time; you don't know what Hamlet means or Lear, the beauty of it all has escaped you. You'verecitedin Logic and Philosophy, but you don't understand what you're repeating. You're onlyrepeatingall the time. Your memory is trained to hold a little knowledge a little time—that's all. You don't enjoy it, you're rather apologetic—or others are."
"Well, what other system is there?" said Regan.
"There is the preceptorial system of England," said Brockhurst, "where a small group of men are in personal contact with the instructor. In French universities, education is a serious thing because failure to pass an examination for a profession means two extra years of army service. Men don't risk over there, or divide up their time heeling theNewsor making a team. In Germany a man is given a certain number of years to get a degree, and I believe has to do a certain amount of original work.
"But of course the main trouble here is, and there is no blinking the fact, that the colleges have surrendered unconsciously a great deal of their power to the growing influence of the social organization. In a period when we have no society in America, families are sending their sons to colleges to place themselves socially. Some of them carry it to an extreme, even directly avow their hope that they will make certain clubs at Princeton or Harvard, or a senior society here. It probably is very hard to control, but it's going to turn our colleges more and more, as I say, into social clearing houses. At present here at Yale we keep down the question of wealth pretty well; fellows like Joe Hungerford here come in and live on our basis. That's the best feature about Yale to-day—how it will be in the future I don't know, for it depends on the wisdom of the parents."
"Social clearing house is well coined," said Hungerford. "I think it's truer though of Harvard."
"That's perhaps because you see the mote in your neighbors' eyes," said Brocky rising. "Well, discussion isn't going to change it. Who's always talking about school for character—Pike or Brown? We might as well stand for that—but it would not be very wise toannounce it to the American nation, would it?—we might be dubbed a reformatory. Fathers, send your sons to college—reform their characters, straighten out the crooks. At the end give 'em a degree of—of, say—G. B."
"What's that, Brocky?" said Swazey, grinning with the rest.
"Good Boy," said Brockhurst, who departed, as he liked, on the echoes of the laugh which he had inspired.
"Whew!" said Hungerford, with a comical rubbing of his head. "What struck me?"
"And I expect to make Phi Beta Kappa," said Swazey, with an apologetic laugh.
"What a dreadfully disconcerting person," said Bob Story.
"By George, it takes the conceit out of you," said Stover ruthfully. "Shall we all start in and learn something? What's the answer?"
At this moment a familiar slogan was heard below, increasing in riotous, pagan violence with the approach of boisterous feet.
"Oh, father and motherPay all the bills,And we have all the fun.Hooray!That's the way we do in college life—In college life."
"Oh, father and motherPay all the bills,And we have all the fun.Hooray!That's the way we do in college life—In college life."
"Oh, father and motherPay all the bills,And we have all the fun.Hooray!That's the way we do in college life—In college life."
"Oh, father and mother
Pay all the bills,
And we have all the fun.
Hooray!
That's the way we do in college life—
In college life."
The room burst into a roar of laughter.
"There's one answer," said Regan rising.
The door slammed open, and McNab and Buck Waters reeled in arm in arm.
"I say, fellows, we've cornered the sleigh market,"said Dopey uproariously. "We're all going to beat it to the Cheshire Inn, a bottle of champagne to the first to arrive. Are you on?"
Half an hour later, Stover at the reins was whirling madly along the crusty roads, in imminent danger of collision with three other rollicking parties, who packed the sleighs and cheered on the galloping horses, singing joyfully the battle hymn of the pagans:
"Oh, father and motherPay all the bills,And we have all the fun.Hooray!That's the way we doIn college life."
"Oh, father and motherPay all the bills,And we have all the fun.Hooray!That's the way we doIn college life."
"Oh, father and motherPay all the bills,And we have all the fun.Hooray!That's the way we doIn college life."
"Oh, father and mother
Pay all the bills,
And we have all the fun.
Hooray!
That's the way we do
In college life."
Once Stover had reconciled himself to the loss of a senior society election, he found ample compensation in the absolute liberty of action that came to him. It was not that he condemned this parent system; he believed in it as an honest attempt to reward the best in the college life, a sort of academic legion of honor, formed not on social cleavage, but given as a reward of merit. In his own case, he believed his own personal offending in the matter of Le Baron and Reynolds had been so extreme that nothing could counteract it.
So he gave himself up to the free and untrammelled delights of living his own life. His fierce stand for absolute democracy made of his rooms the ante-room of the class, through which all crowds seemed to pass, men of his own kind, socially calculating, glad to be known as the friends of Regan, Hungerford and Story, all rated sure men, and Stover, about whom they began to wonder more and more, as a unique and rebellious personality, which, contrary to precedent, had come to bear down all opposition. Gimbel and Hicks, elected managers for the coming year, came often, willing to conciliate the element they had fought, in the hopes of a favorable outcome on Tap Day. Men who worked their way dropped in often on Regan; Ricketts, with his drawling Yankee astuteness, always laughing up his sleeve; twenty odd, lonely characters, glad to sink into a quiet corner and listen to the furious discussions that raged about Brockhurst, Story and Regan.
It was seldom that Stover talked. He learned more by listening, by careful weighing of others' opinions, than in the attempt to classify his own thoughts through the medium of debate. At times when the discussion wandered from vital sources, he would ask a question, and these sharp, direct remarks had a pertinency and a searching trenchancy that sometimes upset an elaborate argument.
Regan brought him to the romance of commonplace things, to a genuine interest and study of political conditions; Brockhurst irritated and dissatisfied him, and so stimulated him to reading and self-analysis; Story, with his seriousness and fairness, recalled him always to a judicial point of view and an understanding of others; Hungerford, with his big, effusive nature, always dissatisfied and eager for realities, was akin to his own nature, and they grew into a confidential intimacy. In a community of splendid barbarians, their circle was exceptional, due to the pronounced individuality of their several rebellious minds.
Despite the abolition of the sophomore societies, other groups still maintained their exclusiveness, and kept alive the old antagonism, as the approach of Tap Day intensified the struggle for election and the natural campaigning of friend for friend.
As Brockhurst had prophesied, the chairmanship of theLitBoard went to Wiggin, a conscientious, thorough little plodder, who had never failed to hand in to each number his numerically correct quota of essays, two stories, a hammered-out poem and two painful portfolios.
On the night of the election, Stover heard from his room in Lyceum the familiar:
"Oh, you Dink Stover—stick out your head."
"Hello there, Brocky; come up," he said anxiously. "Who got it?"
"Wiggin, of course. Come on down, I want a ramble."
It was the first time that Brockhurst had shown a longing for companionship. Stover returned into the room, announcing:
"Poor old chap. Wiggin got it. Isn't it the devil?"
"Wiggin—oh, Lord!" said Regan.
"Why, he's not fit to tie Brocky's shoe-strings," said Hungerford, who fired a volley of soul-relieving oaths.
"I'm going down to bum around a bit with him," said Stover, slipping on his coat, "cheer the old boy up."
"Well, he knew it."
"Lots of difference that makes!"
Below Brocky, muffled to the ears, brim down, was whistling in unmusical enthusiasm.
"'Tis a jolly life we lead,Care and sorrow we defy—"
"'Tis a jolly life we lead,Care and sorrow we defy—"
"'Tis a jolly life we lead,Care and sorrow we defy—"
"'Tis a jolly life we lead,
Care and sorrow we defy—"
"Hello, that you, Dink?" he said, breaking off. "Come on for a tramp."
At that age, being inexperienced, the undergraduate in questions of sympathy wisely returns to the instincts of the canine. Stover, without speaking, fell into his stride, and they swung off towards West Rock.
"Wiggin is the type of man," said Brockhurst, meditatively puffing his pipe, "that is the glorification of the commonplace. He is a sort of sublime earthworm, plodding along and claiming acquaintance with the rose because he travels around the roots. He is really byinstinct a bricklayer, and the danger is that he may continue either in literature or some profession where the cry is for imagination."
"You could have beaten him out," said Stover, as a solace.
"And become an earthworm?" said Brockhurst. "The luck of it is, he made up his mind to heel theLit. With his ideas he would have made leader of the glee club, president of the Phi Beta Kappa, chairman of theNews, or what not."
"Still, give him credit," said Stover, smiling to himself, for he felt that he saw for the first time the human side of Brockhurst.
"I did; it was quite an amusing time."
"What happened?"
"Why, the little grubber came up to me and said, 'Brocky, old man, you ought to have had it.'"
"Why, that was rather decent," said Stover.
"Rubbish. All form," said Brockhurst impatiently. "Showed the calibre of his mind,—the obvious; nothing but the obvious. He thought it the thing to say, that's all."
"Well, what did you answer?" said Stover wondering.
"I said, 'Well, why didn't you vote for me then?'"
Stover burst out laughing, and Brockhurst, who had lost a coveted honor, was a little mollified by the tribute.
"Of course he stammered and looked annoyed—naturally; situation his imagination couldn't meet, so I said:
"'Come, Wiggin, no stuff and nonsense. You didn't think I ought to have it, and I know damn well, now that you've won out, you'll get a Skull and Bones to wear, pose in the middle of the photograph for the Banner, andbe thoroughly satisfied at our board meeting to sit back and listen while I do the talking.'"
Stover broke into a laugh.
"Brocky, you scandalized him."
"Not at all. He thought I was joking—the last thing that occurs to the grubber is that wit is only a polite way of calling a man an ass."
"Brocky, you're at your best, don't stop."
Brockhurst smiled. It was turning a defeat into a victory. He continued:
"After all, Wiggy is interesting. I'll be revenged. I'll put him in a book some day. He represents a type—the mathematical mind, quantity not quality. He set out for the chairmanship as a man trains for a long-distance run. Do you know the truth? He rose every morning and took a cold shower, fifty swings to the left with the dumb-bell, fifty to the right, ate nothing heavy or starchy for his meals, walked the same distance each afternoon, and worked his two hours each night, hammering out divine literature."
"Oh, I say!" said Dink, a little in doubt.
Brockhurst began to laugh.
"He may have for all I know. Now I'll bury him. He will be eminently successful—I like that word eminently. You see he has no sense of humor, and especially no imagination to hinder him." Brockhurst, in one of his quixotic moods, began to gesture to the stars as he abandoned himself to the delights of his conceit. "Oh, that's a wonderful thing, to have no imagination—the saving of commonplace minds. If Wiggin had an imagination he would never have written a line, he would have perceived the immense distances that separated him from the Olympians. Instead he read Stevenson, Dumas, Kipling, and, unafraid, wrote littleStevenson echoes of Dumas, capsule Kiplings. He'll go out in the world, nothing will frighten him. He will rebel against nothing, for he hasn't an idea. He will choose the woman he needs for his needs, persuade himself that he's in love, and then persuade her. And he'll believe that's a virtuous marriage. He'll belong to the conservative party, the conservative church, and will be a distinguished subordinate, who will stand for tradition, institutions, and will be said to resemble some great man. Then he'll die, and will be pointed to as a great example.Requiescat in pace."
"Off with his head," said Stover appreciatively. "Now he's finished, own up, Brocky, that you are furious that you did not buckle down and beat him out."
"Of course I am—damn it," said Brockhurst. "I know I did right, but no one else will ever know it. And the strange thing is, Dink, the best thing for me is to have missed out."
"Why, in Heaven's name?"
"If I had made the chairmanship, I should probably be tapped for Bones—one of the successful. I might have become satisfied. Do you know that that is the great danger of this whole senior business?"
"What?"
"The fellow who wears his honors like a halo. He's made Bones or Keys, he's a success in life. Nothing more awaits him. 'I was it.'"
"Still, you would have liked it."
"Sure; I'm inconsistent," said Brocky, with a laugh. "It's only when I don't get what I want that my beautiful reason shows me I shouldn't have had it."
"Well, there's no danger of either of us disappearing under the halos," said Stover shortly.
"I'm not so sure about you," said Brockhurst.
The casual doubt aroused strange emotions in Stover.
"I thought you didn't believe in them," he said slowly.
"I don't. I don't believe in organizations, institutions, traditions—that's my point of view," said Brockhurst. "But then I'm in the world to be in revolt."
"You once spoke of the society system—the whole thing as it exists in America—" said Stover, "as a sort of idol worship. I never quite understood your meaning."
"Why, I think it's quite obvious," said Brockhurst surprised. "What was idol worship? A large body of privileged charlatans, calling themselves priests, impressed the masses with all the flummery of mysterious ceremonies, convenient voices issuing from caves or stone idols. What was an idol? An ordinary chunk of marble, let us say, issuing from the sculptor's chisel. When did it become sacred and awe-inspiring? When it had been placed in an inner shrine of shrines, removed from the public, veiled in shadows, obscured by incense, guarded by solicitous guards; the stone is still a stone but the populace is convinced. Look into a well in daylight—commonplace; look into it at night—a great mystery; black is never empty, the imagination fills it."
"How does this apply?" said Stover, impatiently.
"Cases are parallel. A group of us come together for the purpose of debate and discussion; no one notices it beyond a casual thought. Suddenly we surround ourselves with mystery, appear on the campus with a sensational pin stuck in our cravats, a bat's head or a gallows, and when, marvellously enough, some one asks us what the dickens we are wearing, we turn away; instantly it becomes known that something so deadly secret has begun that we have sworn to shed our heart's bloodbefore we allow the holy, sacred name of Bat's Head or Gallow's Bird to pass our lips!"
"It's a little foolish, but what's the harm?"
"The harm is that this mumbo-jumbo, fee-fi-fo-fum, high cockalorum business is taken seriously. It's the effect on the young imagination that comes here that is harmful. Dink, I tell you, and I mean it solemnly, that when a boy comes here to Yale, or any other American college, and gets the flummery in his system, believes in it—surrenders to it—so that he trembles in the shadow of a tomblike building, doesn't dare to look at a pin that stares him in the face, is afraid to pronounce the holy, sacred names; when he's got to that point he has ceased tothink, and no amount of college life is going to revive him. That's the worst thing about it all, this mental subjection which the average man undergoes here when he comes up against all this rigmarole of Tap Day, gloomy society halls, marching home at night, et cetera—et ceteray. By George, itisa return of the old idol-worship idea—thinking men in this twentieth century being impressed by the same methods that kept nations in servitude to charlatans three thousand years before. It's wrong, fundamentally wrong—it's a crime against the whole moving spirit of university history—the history of a struggle for the liberation of the human mind."
"But, Brocky, what would you have them do—run as open clubs?"
"Not at all," said Brockhurst. "I would strip them of all nonsense; in fact that is their weakness, not their strength, and it is all unnecessary. This is what I'd do: drop the secrecy—this extraordinary muffled breathless guarding of an empty can—retain the privilege any club has of excluding outsiders, stop this childishness ofgetting up and leaving the room if some old lady happens to ask are you a Bones man or a Keys man. Instead, when a Bones man goes to see a freshman whom he wants to befriend, have him say openly as he passes the chapter house:
"'That's my society—Skull and Bones. It stands as a reward of merit here. Hope you'll do something to deserve it.'
"Which is the better of the two ideas, the saner, the manlier and the more natural? What would they lose by eliminating the objectionable, unnecessary features—all of which you may be sure were started as horse play, and have curiously enough come to be taken in deadly earnestness?"
"I think you exaggerate a little," said Stover, unwilling to accept this arraignment.
"No, I don't," said Brockhurst stubbornly. "The thing is a fetish; it gets you; it's meant to get you. It gets me, and if you're honest you'll admit it gets you. Now own up."
"Yes, I suppose it does."
"Now, Dink, you're fighting for one thing up here, the freedom of your mind and your will."
"Why, yes," Stover said, surprised at Brockhurst's knowledge of his inner conflicts. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm fighting out."
"Well, my boy, you'll never get what you're after until you see this thing as it is—the unreasoning harm done, the poppycock that has been thrown around a good central idea—if you admit such things are necessary, which of course I don't."
"You see," said Stover stubbornly, "you're against all organization."
"I certainly am—inherited organizations," saidBrockhurst immediately, "organizations that are imposed on you. The only organization necessary is the natural, spontaneous coming together of congenial elements."
They had returned to the campus, and Brockhurst, by intent leading the way, stopped before the lugubrious bulk of Skull and Bones.
"There you are," he said, with a laugh. "Look at it. It's built of the same stone as other buildings, it has in it what secret? Go up, young Egyptian, to its mystery in awe and reverence, young idol worshiper of thirty centuries ago."
"Damn it, Brocky, it does get me," said Stover with a short laugh.
"Curious," said Brockhurst, turning away. "The architecture of these sacred tombs is almost invariably the suggestion of the dungeon—the prison of the human mind."
Stover's conversation with Brockhurst did not at first trouble him much. Curiously enough the one idea he retained was that Brockhurst had spoken of him as a possibility for Tap Day.
"What nonsense," he said to himself angrily. "Here, I know better!"
But the next afternoon, the thought returning to him with pleasure, all at once, following a boyish whim, he passed into his old entry at Lawrence, and, going down a little guiltily into the region of the bath-tubs, came to the wall on which was inscribed the lists of his class.
On the Bones list, third from the top, the name Stover had been replaced and heavily underlined.
It gave him quite a thrill; something seemed to leap up inside of him, and he went out hastily. Then all atonce he became angry. It was like opening up again a fight that had been fought and lost.
"What an ass I am," he said furiously. "The deuce of a chance I have to go Bones—with Reynolds and Le Baron. Can the leopard change his spots? About as much chance as a ki-yi has to go through a sausage machine and come out with a bark."
But, as he went towards Jean Story's home, thinking of her and what she would want, the force of what Brockhurst had said began to weaken.
"Brocky is impractical," he said artfully. "We must deal with things as they are, make the best of them. He exaggerates the effect on the imagination. At any rate, no one can accuse me of not taking a stand."
He saw the old colonial home, white and distinguished under the elms, and he said to himself, hoping against hope:
"If I were tapped—it would mean a good deal to her. I'll be darned if I'll let Brocky work me up. I'm not going up against anything more! I've done enough here."
He said it defiantly, for the courage of a man has two factors, his courage and the courage of the woman he loves.
When he had returned to the college after the summer, he came to his first call on Jean Story with a confident enthusiasm, eager for the first look in her eyes. He had not corresponded with her during the summer. He had not even asked for permission to write, confident though he was that her consent would now be given. He was resolved, as a penance for his first blunder, to hold himself in reserve on every occasion. Bob had written the news, always pressing him to take two weeks off for a visit to the camp, but Dink, despite the tugging at his heart, had stuck to Regan, perhaps a little secretly pleased to show his earnestness.
Now, as he came swinging impatiently toward the glowing white columns under the elms, he realized all at once what was the moving influence in his struggle for growth and independence.
"Here is the horny-handed son of toil," he said, holding out his hand with a laugh.
She took it, turning over the firm palm with a little curiosity, and looked at him sharply, aware of a great change—they were no longer boy and girl. The vacation had made of the impetuous Dink Stover she had known a new personality that was strange and a little intimidating.
He did not understand at all the sudden dropping of her look, nor the uneasy turning away, nor the quick constraint that came. He was hurt with a sudden sharp sting that he had never known before and the ache ofunreasoning jealousy at the bare thought of what might have happened during the summer.
"I'm awfully glad to see you," she said, but the words sounded formal.
He followed her into the parlor puzzled, irritated by something he did not understand, something that lay underneath everything she said, and seemed to interpose itself as a barrier between them and the old open feeling of camaraderie.
"Mother will be so glad to see you," she said, after a little moment of awkwardness. "I must call her."
This maneuver completed his bewilderment, which increased when, Mrs. Story joining them, suddenly the Jean Story of old returned with the same cordiality and the same enthusiasm. She asked a hundred questions, leading him on until he was launched into an account of his summer experiences, the little bits of real life that had brought home to him the seriousness of the world that waited outside.
He spoke not as the Stover of sophomore year, filled with the enthusiasm of discovery, but with a maturer mind, which had begun to reflect and to reason upon what had come into his knowledge.
Mrs. Story, sunk in the old high-backed arm-chair near the fire, followed him, too, aware also of the change in the boy, wondering what lay in the mind of her daughter, camped at her knee on the hearth rug, listening so intently and yet clinging to her as though for instinctive protection.
Stover spoke only of outward things; the thoughts that lay beneath, that would have come out so eagerly before the girl, did not appear in the presence of another. As he understood nothing of this sudden introduction of a third into the old confidential relationship, he decidedto be more formal than the girl, and rose while still his audience's attention was held by his account.
"It's been awfully jolly to see you again," he said with a perfect manner to Mrs. Stover.
"But you're going to stay to dinner," she said, with a little smile.
"Awfully sorry, but I've got a dozen things to do," he said, in the same careful, matter-of-fact tone. "Bob sent word he'd come later."
Jean Story had not urged him. He went to her with mechanical cheeriness, saying:
"Good-by. You're looking splendidly."
She did not answer, being in one of her silent moods. Mrs. Story went with him towards the door, with a few practical housekeeping questions on the ménage that had just begun. As they were in the ante-room, Jim Hunter entered and, greeting them, passed into the salon.
Stover, deaf to anything else, heard her greeting:
"Why, Jim, Iamglad to see you."
Mrs. Story was asking him a question, but he did not hear it. He heard only the echoes of what seemed to him the joy in her laugh.
"If you need any rugs let me know," said Mrs. Story in patient repetition.
"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "Yes—yes, of course."
She looked at him with a little maternal pity, knowing the pang that had gone through him, and for a moment a word was on her lips to enlighten him. But she judged it wiser to be silent, and said:
"Come in for dinner to-morrow night, surely."
This invitation fitted at once into Stover's scheme of mislogic. He saw in it a mark of compassion, and of compassion for what reason? Plainly, Jean wasinterested in some one else, perhaps engaged. In ten minutes, to his own lugubrious satisfaction, he had convinced himself it was no other than Jim Hunter. But a short, inquisitive talk with Joe Hungerford, who magnanimously appeared stupidly unconscious of the real motives, reassured him on this point. So, after the hot tempest of jealousy, he began to feel a little resentment at her new, illogical attitude of defensive formality.
Gradually, as he gave no sign of unbending from his own assumption of strict politeness, she began to change, but so gradually that it was not for weeks that he perceived that the old intimate relations had returned. This little interval, however, had brought to him a new understanding. With her he had lost the old impulsiveness. He began to reason and analyze, to think of cause and effect in their relationship. As a consequence the initiative and the authority that had formerly been with her came to him. All at once he perceived, to his utter surprise, what she had felt immediately on his return: that he was the stronger, and that the old, blind, boyish adoration for the girl, who was companion to the stars, had steadied into the responsible and guiding love of a man.
This new supremacy brought with it several differences of opinion. When the question of the football captaincy had come up he did not tell her of his decision, afraid of the ambition he knew was strong in her for his career.
When he saw her the next night, Bob had already brought the news and the reason. She received him with great distance, and for the first time showed a little cruelty in her complete ignoring of his presence.
"You are angry at me," he said, when finally he had succeeded in finding her alone.
"Yes, I am," she said point blank. "Why didn't you tell me what you were planning?"
"I didn't dare," he said frankly. "You wouldn't have approved."
"Of course I wouldn't. It was ridiculous. Why shouldn't you be the captain?"
"There were reasons," he said seriously. "I should not have had a united team back of me—oh, I know it."
"Absurd," she said with some heat. "You should have gone out and made them follow you. Really, it's too absurd, renouncing everything. Here's the Junior Prom; every one says you would have led the class if you'd have stood for it."
"Yes, and it's just because a lot of fellows thought they knew my whole game of democracy that I wouldn't stand for it."
She grew quite angry. He had never seen her so stirred.
"Stuff and nonsense. What do you care for their opinion? You should be captain and chairman of the Prom, but you renounce everything—you seem to delight in it. It's too absurd; it's ridiculous. It's like Don Quixote riding around."
He was hurt at this, and his face showed it.
"It's something to be able to refuse what others are grabbing for," he said shortly. "But all you seem to care for is the name."
The flash that was in his eyes surprised her, and the sudden stern note in his voice that she had never heard before brought her to a quick realization of how she must have wounded him. Her manner changed. She became very gentle, and before he went she said hurriedly:
"Forgive me. You were right, and I was very petty."
But though he had shown his independence of her ambitions for him, and gained thereby, at heart he had a foolish longing, a senseless dream of winning out on Tap Day—just for the estimation he knew she held of that honor. And, wishing this ardently, he was influenced by it. There were questions about the senior societies that he had not put to himself honestly, as he had in the case of the sophomore. He knew they were way back in his mind, claiming to be met, but, thinking of Jean, he said to himself evasively again and again:
"Suppose there are bad features. I've done enough to show my nerve. No one can question that!"
With the passing of the winter, and the return to college in the pleasant month of April, the final, all-absorbing Tap Day loomed over them only six weeks away. It was not a particularly agreeable period. The contending ambitions were too keen, too conflicting, for the maintenance of the old spirit of comradeship. The groups again defined themselves, and the "lame ducks," in the hopes of being noticed, assiduously cultivated the society of what are called "the big men."
One afternoon in the first week in April, as Dink was returning from the gymnasium, he was suddenly called to from the street. Chris Schley and Troutman, in a two-seated rig, were hallooing:
"Hello there, Dink."
"Come for a ride."
"Jump in—join us."
The two had never been of his intimates, belonging to a New York crowd, who were spoken of for Keys. He hesitated, but as he was free he considered:
"What's the game?"
"We're out for a spin towards the shore. Tommy Bain and Stone were going but had to drop out. Come along. We might get a shore supper, and toddle back by moonlight."
"I've got to be here by seven," said Dink doubtfully.
"Oh, well, come on; we'll make it just a drive."
"Fine."
He sprang into the front seat, and they started off in the young, tingling air. Troutman, at the reins, was decidedly unfamiliar with their uses, and, at a fervent plea from Schley, Stover assumed control. Since freshman year the three had been seldom thrown together. He remembered Troutman then as a rather overgrown puppy type, and Schley as a nuisance and a hanger-on. He scanned them now, pleasantly surprised at their transformation. They had come into a clean-cut type, affable, alert, and if there was small mark of character, there was an abundance of good-humor, liveliness, and sociability.
"Well, Dink, old chap," said Troutman, as he passed along quieter ways, "the fatal day approaches."
"It does."
"A lot of seniors are out buying nice brand-new derbies to wear for our benefit."
"I'll bet they're scrapping like cats and dogs," said Schley.
"They say last year the Bones list wasn't agreed upon until five minutes before five."
"The Bones crowd always fight," said Schley, from the point of view of the opposite camp. "I say, Dink, did you ever think of heeling Keys?"
"No, I'm not a good enough jollier up for that crowd."
"They say this year Keys is going to shut down on the sporting life and swipe some of the Bones type."
"Really?" said Stover, in disbelief.
"Sure thing; Tommy Bain has switched."
"I heard he was packer," said Stover, not particularly depressed. In the college the rumor had always been that the Keys crowd had what was termed a packer in the junior class, who helped them to pledge some of their selections before Tap Day.
"Sure he is," said Troutman, with conviction.
"Wish he'd stuck to Bones," said Schley. "Yours truly would feel more hopeful."
"Why, you fellows are sure," said Stover to be polite.
"The deuce we are!"
Schley, tiring of the conversation, was amusing himself from the back seat by well-simulated starts of surprise and a sudden snatching off of his hat to different passers-by, exclaiming:
"Why, howdoyou do. I remember meeting you before."
He did it well, communicated his good spirits to the pedestrians, who took his banter good-naturedly.
All at once his mischievous eye perceived two girls of a rather noticeable type. Instantly he was on his feet, with an exaggerated sweep of his hat, exclaiming:
"Ladies, accept my carriage, my prancing horses, my groom and my footman."
The girls, bursting into laughter, waved to him.
"Yes, it's a lovely day," continued Schley, in imitation of McNab. "Mother's gone to the country, aunty's visiting us now, Uncle John's coming to-morrow—he'll be sober then. Too bad, girls, you're going the other way, and such lovely weather. Won't you take a ride?What? Oh, do now. Here, I say, Dink—whoa there! They're coming."
"Rats," said Troutman, glancing uneasily up the street.
"Sure they are. Whoa! Hold up. We'll give 'em a little ride, just for a lark. What's the diff?"
He was down, hat off, with exaggerated Chesterfield politeness, going to their coming.
"Do you mind?" said Troutman to Stover. "Schley's a crazy ass to do this just now."
"I wouldn't take them far," said Stover, who did not particularly care. He had no facility for bantering of this sort, but it rather amused him to listen to Schley. He saw that while they were of an obvious type one was insipid, and the other rather pretty, dark with Irish black eyes.
"Ladies, I wish to make you acquainted with my friends," said Schley, as he might speak to a duchess. "The ill-favored gent with the vermilion hair is the Reverend Doctor Balmfinder; the one with the padded shoulders is Binks, my trainer. Now what is this little girl's name?"
"Muriel," said the blonde, "Muriel Stacey."
"Of course, I might have known it. And yours of course is Maude, isn't it?"
"My name is Fanny Le Roy," said the brunette with a little pride.
"Dear me, what a beautiful name," said Schley. "Now girls, we'll take you for a little ride, but we can't take you very far for our mammas don't know we're out, and you must promise to be very good and get out when we tell you, and not ask for candy! Do we promise?"
Schley sat on the rear seat, chatting along, a girl on either side of him, while Troutman, facing about, addedhis badinage. It was not excruciatingly witty, and yet at times Stover, occupied with the driving, could not help bursting into a laugh at the sheer nonsense. It interested him as a spectator; it was a side of life he knew little of, for, his nature being sentimental, he was a little afraid of such women.
"What's our real names?" said Troutman in reply to a demand. "Do you really want to know? We'll send them to you. Of course we've met before. In New York, wasn't it, at the junior cotillion?"
"Sure I saw this fellow at the Hari-gori's ball," said Fanny, appealing to her companion.
"Sure you did."
"If you say so, all right," said Troutman, winking at Schley. "Fanny, you have beautiful eyes. Course you don't know it."
"You two are great jolliers, aren't you?" said Fanny, receiving the slap-stick compliment with pleasure.
"They think we're easy," said Muriel, with a look at Schley.
"I think the fellow that's driving is the best of the lot," said Fanny, with the usual method of attack.
"Wow," said Troutman.
"Come on back," said Schley, "we don't count."
Stover laughed and drove on. The party had now passed the point of interest. He had no desire for a chance meeting that would require explanations, but he volunteered no advice, not caring to appear prudish in the company of such men of the world.
They were in the open country, the outskirts of New Haven just left behind. For some time Fanny Le Roy had been silent, pressing her hand against her side, frowning. All at once a cry was wrung from her. The carriage stopped. All turned in alarm to where thegirl, her teeth compressed, clutching at her side, was lying back against the seat, writhing in agony.
Troutman swore under his breath.
"A devil of a mess!"
They descended hurriedly and laid the girl on the grass, where her agony continued increasingly. Schley and Troutman were whispering apart. The other girl, hysterically bending over her companion, mopped her face with a useless handkerchief, crying:
"She's got a fit; she's got a fit!"
"I say it's appendicitis or gripes," said Troutman, coming over to Stover. His face was colorless, and he spoke the words nervously. "The deuce of a fix Chris has got us into!"
"Come, we've got to get her back," said Stover, realizing the gravity of the situation. He went abruptly to the girl and spoke with quick authority. "Now stop crying; I want you to get hold of yourself. Here Schley, lend a hand; you and Troutman get her back into the carriage. Do it quickly."
"What are you going to do?" said Troutman, under his breath.
"Drive her to a doctor, of course."
"Couldn't we go and fetch a doctor here?"
"No, we couldn't!"
With some difficulty they got the suffering girl into the carriage and started back. No one spoke; the banter had given place to a few muttered words that broke the moaning, delirious tones of the stricken girl.
"Going to drive into New Haven this way?" said Troutman, for the second time under his breath.
"Sure."
"Hell!"
They came to the city streets, and Stover drove onhastily, seeking from right to left for a doctor. All at once he drew up at the curb, flung the reins to Troutman, and rushed into a house where he had seen a sign displayed—"Dr. Burke." He was back almost immediately with the doctor at his heels.
"I say, Dink, look here," said Schley, plucking him aside, as the doctor hurriedly examined the girl. "This is a deuce of a mess."
"You bet it is," said Stover, thinking of the sufferer.
"I say, if this gets out it'll be a nasty business."
"What do you mean?"
"If we're seen driving back with—well, with this bunch!"
"What do you propose?" said Stover sharply.
Troutman joined them.
"See here, leave her with the doctor, I'll put up all the money that's necessary, the doctor'll keep a close mouth! Man alive, you can't go back this way!"
"Why not?"
"Good Lord, it'll queer us,—we'll never get over it."
"Think of the papers," said Schley, plucking at his glove.
"We can fix it up with the doctor."
At this moment Dr. Burke joined them, quiet, business-like, anxious.
"She has all the symptoms of a bad attack of appendicitis. There's only one thing to do; get her to the hospital at once. I'll get my hat and join you."
"Drive to—drive to the hospital?" said Troutman, with a gasp, "right through the whole city, right in the face of every one?"
"Don't be a fool, Dink," said Schley nervously. "We'll fix up Burke; we'll give him a hundred to take her and shut up."
Stover, too, saw the danger and the inevitable scandal. He saw, also, that they were no longer men as he had thought. The thin veneer had disappeared—they were boys, terrified, aghast at a crisis beyond their strength.
"You're right, it would queeryou," he said abruptly. "Clear out—both of you."
"And you?"
"You're going to stay?" said Schley. Neither could face his eyes.
"Clear out, I tell you!"
When Burke came running down the steps he looked at Stover in surprise.
"Hello, where are your friends?"
"They had other engagements," said Dink grimly. "All ready."
"I've seen your face before," said Dr. Burke, climbing in.
"I'm Stover."
"Dink Stover of the eleven?"
"Yes, Dink Stover of the eleven," said Stover, his face hardening. "Where do I drive?"
"Do you want to go quietly?" said Dr. Burke, with a look of sympathetic understanding.
From behind the girl, writhing, began to moan:
"Oh, Doctor—Doctor—I can't stand it—I can't stand it."
"What's the quickest way?" said Stover.
"Chapel Street," said the doctor.
Stover turned the horses' heads into the thoroughfare, looking straight ahead, aware soon of the men who saw him in the full light of the day, driving through the streets of New Haven in such inexplicable company. And suddenly at the first turn he came face to face with another carriage in which were Jean Story and her mother.
When Stover returned to his rooms, it was long after supper.
"Where the deuce have you been?" said Hungerford, looking up from his books.
"Went for a drive, got home late," said Stover shortly. He filled the companionable pipe, and sank into the low arm-chair, which Regan had broken for comfort. Something in his abrupt procedure caused Bob Story to look over at Regan with an inquiring raise of his eyebrows.
"Got this psychology yet?" said Hungerford, to try him out.
"No," said Stover.
"Going to get it?"
"No."
"The thinghood of a thing is its indefinable somewhatness," said Hungerford, with another slashing attack on the common enemy, to divert Stover's attention. "What in the name of peanuts does that stuff mean?"
Dink, refusing to be drawn into conversation, sat enveloped in smoke clouds, his eyes on the clock.
"Hello, I forgot," said Story presently. "I say, Dink, Troutman and Schley were around here hallooing for you."
"They were, eh?"
"About an hour ago. Wanted to see you particularly. Said they'd be around again."
"I see."
At this moment from below came a bellow:
"Oh, Dink Stover—hello above there!"
"That's Troutman now," said Joe Hungerford.
Stover went to the window, flinging it up.
"Well, who's there?"
"Troutman and Chris Schley. I say, Dink, we've got to see you. Come on down."
"Thanks, I haven't the slightest desire to see you now or at any other time," said Stover, who closed the window and resumed his seat, eyeing the clock.
His three friends exchanged troubled glances, and Regan began to whistle to himself, but no questions were asked. At nine o'clock Stover rose and took his hat.
"I'm going out. I may be back late," he said, and went down the stairs.
"What the devil?" said Hungerford, closing his book.
"He's in some scrape," said Regan ruthfully.
"Oh, Lord, and just at this time, too," said Story.
Stover went rapidly towards the hospital. The girl had been operated on immediately, and the situation was of the utmost seriousness. He had been told to come back at nine. When he arrived he found Muriel Stacey already in the waiting-room, her eyes heavy with frightened weeping. He looked at her curiously. All suggestion of the provoking impertinence and the surface allurement was gone. Under his eyes was nothing but an ignorant boor, stupid and hysterical before the awful fact of death.
"What's the news?" he asked.
"Oh, Mr. Stover, I don't know. I can't get anything out of them," the woman said wildly. "Oh, do you think she's going to die?"
"Of course not," he said gruffly. "See here, where's her family?"
"I don't know."
"Don't they live here?"
"They're in Ohio somewhere, I think. I don't know. Ask the doctor, won't you, Mr. Stover? He'll tell you something."
He left her, and, making inquiries, was met by a young intern, immaculate and alert, who was quite communicative to Dink Stover of the Yale eleven.
"She's had a bad case of it; appendix had already burst. You got her here just in time."
"What's the outlook?"
"Can't tell. She came out of the anæsthetic all right." He went into a technical discussion of the dangers of blood poisoning, concluding: "Still, I should say her chances were good. It depends a good deal on the resistance. However, I think your friend's family ought to be notified."
Stover did not notice the "your friend," nor the look which the doctor gave him.
"She's here alone as far as I can find out," he said. "Poor little devil. I'll call round about midnight."
"No need," said the doctor briskly, "nothing'll develop before to-morrow."
Stover sent the waiting girl home somewhat tranquilized, and, finding a florist's shop open, left an order to be sent in to the patient the first thing in the morning. Then, thoroughly exhausted by his sudden contact with all the nervous fates of the hospital, he walked home and heavily to bed.
The next morning as he went to his eating-joint with Regan and Hungerford, the newsboy, who had his papers ready, gave them to him with a hesitating look. All at once Joe Hungerford swore mightily.
"Now what's wrong, Joe?" said Regan in surprise.
"Nothing," said Hungerford hastily, but almostimmediately he stopped, and said in a jerky, worried way: "Say, here's the devil to pay, Dink. I suppose you ought to know about it. Damn the papers."
With his finger he indicated a space on the front page of the New York newspaper he was reading. Stover took it, reading it seriously. It was only a paragraph, but it rose from the page as though it were stamped in scarlet.
DINK STOVER'S LARKENDS SERIOUSLY.
Below followed in suggestive detail an account of the drive with friends "not exactly in recognized New Haven society," and the sudden seizure of Miss Fanny Le Roy, with an account of his drive back to the hospital.
"That's pretty bad," he said, frowning. "What do the others say?"
One paper had it that his presence of mind and prompt action had saved the girl's life. The third one hinted that the party had been rather gay, and said in a short sentence:
"It is said other students were with young Stover, who prefer not to incur any unnecessary notoriety."
"It is said other students were with young Stover, who prefer not to incur any unnecessary notoriety."
"It looks ugly," said Stover grimly.
"Who was with you?" said Hungerford anxiously.
"I prefer not to tell."
"Troutman and Schley, of course," said Regan suddenly, and, starting out of his usual imperturbability, he began to revile them.
"But, Dink, old man," said Hungerford, drawing his arm through his, "how the deuce did you ever get into it?"
"Well, Joe, what's the use of explanations?" saidStover gloomily. "Every one'll believe what they want to. It's a thoroughly nasty mess. It's my luck, that's all."
"Is that all you can say?" said Hungerford anxiously.
"All just now. I don't feel particularly affable, Joe."
The walk from his eating-joint to the chapel was perhaps the most difficult thing he had ever done. Every one was reading the news, commenting on it, as he passed along, red, proud, and angry. He felt the fire of amazed glances, the lower classmen looking up at the big man of the junior class in disgrace, his own friends puzzled and uncomprehending.
At the fences there was an excited buzz, which dropped perceptibly as he passed. Regan was at one side, Hungerford loyally on the other. At the junior fence Bob Story, who had just got the report, came out hurriedly to him.
"I say, Dink, it—it isn't true?" he said. "Something's wrong—must be!"
"Not very far wrong," said Stover. He saw the incredulity in Bob's face, and it hurt him more than all the rest.
"Even Bob thinks I'm that sort, that I've been doing things on the sly I wouldn't stand for in public. And if he thinks it, what'll others think?"
"Shut up, Bob," he heard Regan say. "It may look a nasty mess, and Dink may not tell the real story, but one thing I know, he didn't scuttle off like a scut, but faced the music, and that's all I want to know."
Stover laughed, a short, nervous, utterly illogical laugh, defiant and stubborn. He would never tell what had happened—let those who wanted to misjudge him.
Several men in his class—he remembered them ever after—came up and patted him on the back, one or twoavoided him. Then he had to go by the senior fence into chapel with every eye upon him, watching how he bore the scandal. He knew he was red and uncomfortable, that on his face was something like a sneer. He knew that what every one was saying under his voice was that it was hard luck, damned hard luck, that it was a rotten scandal, and that Stover's chances for Skull and Bones were knocked higher than a kite.
Then something happened that almost upset him. In the press about the chapel doors he suddenly saw Le Baron's tall figure across the scrambling mass. Their glances met and with a little solemnity Le Baron raised his hat. He understood; they might be enemies to the end of their days, but the hat had been raised as the tribute of a man to a man. Once in his seat he looked about with a little scorn—Troutman and Schley were not there.
After first recitation he went directly to the hospital, stubbornly resolved to give no explanations, stubbornly resolved in his own knowledge of his right to affront public opinion in any way he chose. The news he received was reassuring, the girl was out of danger. Muriel Stacey not yet arrived, for which he was physically thankful.
He returned to his rooms, traversing the difficult campus with erect head.
"Now, boy, see here," said Hungerford, when he had climbed the stairs, "I want this out with you. What did happen, and who ran away?"
"You've got the story in the papers, haven't you?" said Stover wearily. "The New Haven ones have in a couple of columns and my photograph."
"Is that all, Dink, you're going to tell me?"
"Yes."
"Is that all you're going to let Jean Story know?" said Hungerford boldly.
Stover winced.
"Damn you, Joe!"
"Is it?"
"She'll have to believe what she wants to about me," said Stover slowly. "It's a test."
"No, it isn't a test or a fair test," said Hungerford hotly. "I know everything's all right, boy, but I want to stop anything that might be said. You're hurt now because you know you're misjudged."
"Yes, I am hurt."
"Sure; a rotten bit of luck has put you in a false position. That's the whole matter."
"Joe, I won't tell you," said Stover shortly. "I am mad clear through and through. I'm going to shut up on the whole business. If my friends misjudge me—so much the worse for them. If some one else—" He stopped, flung his hat on the couch, and sat down at the desk. "What's the lesson?"
But at this moment Regan and Story came in, bolting the door.
"Well, we've got the truth," said Story. He came over and laid his hand on Dink's shoulder.
"What do you mean?"
"Tom and I have had it out with Schley and Troutman. They've told the whole thing, the miserable little curs." His voice shook. "You're all right, Dink; you always were, but it's a shame—a damn shame!"
"Oh, well, they lost their nerve," said Stover heavily.
"Why the devil didn't you tell us last night?"
"What was the use?"
"We could have stopped its getting into the papers, or had it right."
"Well—it all comes down to a question of luck sometimes," said Stover. "I was just as responsible as they were—it was only fooling, but there's the chance."
"Dink, I've done one thing you may not like."
"What's that?"
"I've written the whole story to your folks at home—sent it off."
"No—I don't mind—I—that was rather white of you, Bob—thank you," said Stover. He drew a long breath, went to the window and controlled himself. "What are Troutman and Schley going to do?"
"They're all broken up," said Story.
"Don't wonder."
"They won't face it out very long," said Regan, without pity.
"Well, it was a pretty hard test," said Stover, coming back—and by that alone they knew what it had meant to him.
Despite the giving out of the true story, the atmosphere of scandal still clung to the adventure. His friends rallied stanchly to him, but from many quarters Stover felt the attitude of criticism, and that the thing had been too public not to affect the judgment of the senior societies, already none too well disposed toward him.
Stover was sensitively proud, and the thought of how the story had traveled with all its implications wounded him keenly. He had done nothing wrong, nothing for which he had to blush. He had simply acted as a human being, as any decent gentleman would have acted, and yet by a malignant turn of fate he was blackguarded to the outer world, and had given his enemies in college a chance to imply that he had two attitudes—in public and in secret.
The next morning came a note to him from Jean Story, the first he had ever had from her—just a few lines.
"My Dear Friend:"You are coming in soon to see me, aren't you? I shall be very muchhonored."Most cordially,"Jean Story."
"My Dear Friend:
"You are coming in soon to see me, aren't you? I shall be very muchhonored.
"Most cordially,"Jean Story."
The note brought a great lump to his throat. He understood what she wished him to understand, her loyalty and her pride in his courage. He read it over and over, and placed it in his pocket-book to carry always—but he did not go at once to see her. He did not want sympathy; he shunned the very thought. Before, in his revolt, he had come against a college tradition, now he was face to face with a social prejudice, and it brought an indignant bitterness.
He called every day at the hospital; out of sheer bravado at first, furious at the public opinion that would have him go his way and ignore a human being alone and suffering, even when his motives were pure.
At the end of a week he was told that the girl wanted to see him. He found her in a cot among a row of other cots. She was not white and drawn as he had expected, but with a certain flush of color in her face, and lazy eyes that eagerly waited his coming. When he had approached, surprised and a little troubled at her prettiness, she looked at him steadily a long moment until he felt almost embarrassed. Then suddenly she took his hand and carried it to her lips, and her eyes overflowed with tears, as an invalid's do with the strength of any emotion.