When Olivia believed that Dumont was safely forgotten she teased her—"Your adoring and adored Scarborough."
Pauline was amused by this. With his unfailing instinct, Scarborough had felt—and had never permitted himself to forget—that there was some sort of wall round her for him. It was in perfect good faith that she answered Olivia: "You don't understand him. He's a queer man—sometimes I wonder myself that he doesn't get just a little sentimental. I suppose I'd find him exasperating—if I weren't otherwise engaged."
Olivia tried not to show irritation at this reference to Dumont. "I think you're mistaken about which of you is queer," she said. "You are the one—not he."
"I?" Pauline laughed—she was thinking of her charm against any love but one man's, the wedding ring she always wore at her neck. "Why, I COULDN'T fall in love with HIM."
"The woman who gets him will do mighty well for herself—in every way," said Olivia.
"Indeed she will. But—I'd as soon think of falling in love with a tree or a mountain."
She liked her phrase; it seemed to her exactly to define her feeling for Scarborough. She liked it so well that she repeated it to herself reassuringly many times in the next few weeks.
In the last week of March came a succession of warm rains. The leaves burst from their impatient hiding just within the cracks in the gray bark. And on Monday the unclouded sun was irradiating a pale green world from a pale blue sky. The four windows of Pauline and Olivia's sitting-room were up; a warm, scented wind was blowing this way and that the strays of Pauline's red-brown hair as she sat at the table, her eyes on a book, her thoughts on a letter—Dumont's first letter on landing in America. A knock, and she frowned slightly.
"Come!" she cried, her expression slowly veering toward welcome.
The door swung back and in came Scarborough. Not the awkward youth of last October, but still unable wholly to conceal how much at a disadvantage he felt before the woman he particularly wished to please.
"Yes—I'm ten minutes early," he said, apology in his tone for his instinct told him that he was interrupting, and he had too little vanity to see that the interruption was agreeable. "But I thought you'd be only reading a novel."
For answer she held up the book which lay before her—a solemn volume in light brown calf.
"Analytical geometry," he said; "and on the first day of the finest spring the world ever saw!" He was at the window, looking out longingly—sunshine, and soft air washed clean by the rains; the new-born leaves and buds; the pioneer birds and flowers. "Let's go for a walk. We can do the Vergil to-night."
"YOU—talking of neglecting WORK!" Her smile seemed to him to sparkle as much in the waves of her hair as in her even white teeth and gold-brown eyes. "So you're human, just like the rest of us."
"Human!" He glanced at her and instantly glanced away.
"Do leave that window," she begged. "We must get the Vergil now. I'm reading an essay at the society to-night—they've fined me twice for neglecting it. But if you stand there reminding me of what's going on outside I'll not be able to resist."
"How this would look from Indian Rock!"
She flung open a Vergil text-book with a relentless shake of the head. "I've got the place. Book three, line two forty-five—
"'Una in praecelsa consedit rupe Celaeno——'"
"It doesn't matter what that hideous old Harpy howled at the pious Aeneas," he grumbled. "Let's go out and watch the Great God Pan dedicate his brand-new temple."
"Do sit there!" She pointed a slim white forefinger at the chair at the opposite side of the table—the side nearer him. "I'll be generous and work the dictionary to-day." And she opened a fat, black, dull-looking book beside the Vergil.
"Where's the Johnnie?" he asked, reluctantly dropping into the chair.
She laid Dryden's translation of the Aeneid on his side of the table. They always read the poetical version before they began to translate for the class-room—Dryden was near enough to the original to give them its spirit, far enough to quiet their consciences. "Find the place yourself," said she. "I'm not going to do everything."
He opened the Dryden and languidly turned the pages. "'At length rebuff'd, they leave their mangled——'" he began.
"No—two or three lines farther down," she interrupted. "That was in the last lesson."
He pushed back the rebellious lock that insisted on falling down the middle of his forehead, plunged his elbows fiercely upon the table, put his fists against his temples, and began again:
"'High on a craggy cliff Celaeno sateAnd thus her dismal errand did relate—'
Have you got the place in the Latin?" he interrupted himself.
Fortunately he did not look up, for she was watching the waving boughs. "Yes," she replied, hastily returning to the book. "You do your part and I'll do mine."
He read a few lines in an absent-minded sing-song, then interrupted himself once more: "Did you ever smell anything like that breeze?"
"Never. 'Bellum etiam pro caede bovum'—go on—I'm listening—or trying to."
He read:
"'But know that ere your promised walls you build,My curse shall severely be fulfilled.Fierce famine is your lot—for this misdeed,Reduced to grind the plates on which you feed.'"
He glanced at her. She was leaning on her elbow, obviously weaving day-dreams round those boughs as they trembled with the ecstasy of spring.
"You are happy to-day?" he said.
"Yes—happier than I have been for a year." She smiled mysteriously. "I've had good news." She turned abruptly, looked him in the eyes with that frank, clear expression—his favorite among his memory-pictures of her had it. "There's one thing that worries me—it's never off my mind longer than a few minutes. And when I'm blue, as I usually am on rainy days, it makes me—horribly uncomfortable. I've often almost asked your advice about it."
"If you'd be sorry afterward that you told me," said he, "I hope you won't. But if I can help you, you know how glad I'd be."
"It's no use to tell Olivia," Pauline went on. "She's bitterly prejudiced. But ever since the first month I knew you, I felt that I could trust you, that you were a real friend. And you're so fair in judging people and things."
His eyes twinkled.
"I'm afraid I'd tilt the scales—just a little—where you were concerned."
"Oh, I want you to do that," she answered with a smile. "Last fall I did something—well, it was foolish, though I wouldn't admit that to any one else. I was carried away by an impulse. Not that I regret. In the only really important way, I wouldn't undo it if I could—I think." Those last two words came absently, as if she were debating the matter with herself.
"If it's done and can't be undone," he said cheerfully, "I don't see that advice is needed."
"But—you don't understand." She seemed to be casting about for words. "As I said, it was last fall—here. In Saint X there was a man—and he and I—we'd cared for each other ever since we were children. And then he went away to college. He did several things father didn't like. You know how older people are—they don't make allowances. And though father's the gentlest, best—at any rate, he turned against Jack, and—"
Scarborough abruptly went to the window and stood with his back to her.
After a pause Pauline said, in a rush, "And he came here last fall and we got married."
There was a long silence.
"It was DREADFUL, wasn't it?" she said in the tone of one who has just made a shocking discovery.
Scarborough did not answer.
"I never realized till this minute," she went on after a while. "Not that I'm sorry or that I don't—don't CARE—just as I always did. But somehow, telling it out loud to some one else has made me see it in a different light. It didn't seem like treachery to them—to father and mother—then. It hasn't seemed like a—a marriage REALLY marriage—until now."
Another long silence. Then she burst out appealingly: "Oh, I don't see how I'm ever going to tell them!"
Scarborough came back to his chair and seated himself. His face was curiously white. It was in an unnatural voice that he said: "How old is he?"
"Twenty-five," she replied, then instantly flared up, as if he had attacked Dumont: "But it wasn't his fault—not in the least. I knew what I was doing—and I wanted to do it. You mustn't get a false impression of him, Hampden. You'd admire and respect him. You—any one—would have done as he did in the same circumstances." She blushed slightly. "You and he are ever so much alike—even in looks. It was that that made me tell you, that made me like you as I have—and trust you."
Scarborough winced. Presently he began: "Yet you regret——"
"No—no!" she protested—too vehemently. "I do NOT regret marrying him. That was certain to be sooner or later. All I regret is that I did something that seems underhanded. Perhaps I'm really only sorry I didn't tell them as soon as I'd done it."
She waited until she saw he was not going to speak. "And now," she said, "I don't know HOW to tell them." Again she waited, but he did not speak, continued to look steadily out into the sky. "What do you think?" she asked nervously. "But I can see without your saying. Only I—wish you'd SAY it."
"No, I don't condemn you," he said slowly. "I know you. YOU couldn't possibly do anything underhanded. If you'd been where you'd have had to conceal it directly, face to face, from some one who had the right to know—you'd never have done it." He rested his arms on the table and looked straight at her. "I feel I must tell you what I think. And I feel, too, it wouldn't be fair and honest if I didn't let you see why you might not want to take my advice."
She returned his gaze inquiringly.
"I love you," he went on calmly. "I've known it ever since I missed you so at the Christmas holidays. I love you for what you are, and for what you're as certain to be as—as a rosebud is certain to be a full-blown rose. I love you as my father loved my mother. I shall love you always." His manner was calm, matter-of-fact; but there was in his musical, magical voice a certain quality which set her nerves and her blood suddenly to vibrating. She felt as if she were struggling in a great sea—the sea of his love for her—struggling to reach the safety of the shore.
"Oh—I WISH you hadn't told me!" she exclaimed.
"Suppose I hadn't; suppose you had taken my advice? No"—he shook his head slowly—"I couldn't do that, Pauline—not even to win you."
"I'm sorry I said anything to you about it."
"You needn't be. You haven't harmed yourself. And maybe I can help you."
"No—we won't talk of it," she said—she was pressing her hand on her bosom where she could feel her wedding ring. "It wouldn't be right, now. I don't wish your advice."
"But I must give it. I'm years and years older than you—many, many years more than the six between us. And——"
"I don't wish to hear."
"For his sake, for your own sake, Pauline, tell them! And they'll surely help you to wait till you're older before you do anything—irrevocable."
"But I care for him," she said—angrily, though it could not have been what he was saying so gently that angered her. "You forget that I care for him. It IS irrevocable now. And I'm glad it is!"
"You LIKE him. You don't LOVE him. And—he's not worthy of your love. I'm sure it isn't prejudice that makes me say it. If he were, he'd have waited——"
She was on her feet, her eyes blazing.
"I asked for advice, not a lecture. I DESPISE you! Attacking the man I love and behind his back! I wish to be alone."
He rose but met her look without flinching.
"You can send ME away," he said gently, "but you can't send away my words. And if they're true you'll feel them when you get over your anger. You'll do what you think right. But—be SURE, Pauline. Be SURE!" In his eyes there was a look—the secret altar with the never-to-be-extinguished flame upon it. "Be SURE!, Pauline. Be SURE."
Her anger fell; she sank, forlorn, into a chair. For both, the day had shriveled and shadowed. And as he turned and left the room the warmth and joy died from air and sky and earth; both of them felt the latent chill—it seemed not a reminiscence of winter past but the icy foreboding of winter closing in.
When Olivia came back that evening from shopping in Indianapolis she found her cousin packing.
"Is it something from home?" she asked, alarmed.
Pauline did not look up as she answered:
"No—but I'm going home—to stay—going in the morning. I've telegraphed them."
"To stay!"
"Yes—I was married to Jack—here—last fall."
"You—married! To JOHN DUMONT—you, only seventeen—oh, Pauline—" And Olivia gave way to tears for the first time since she was a baby.
Scarborough was neither at supper nor at breakfast—Pauline left without seeing him again.
When the sign-board on a station platform said "5.2 miles to St. X," Pauline sank back in her chair in the parlor-car with blanched face. And almost immediately, so it seemed to her, Saint X came into view—home! She fancied she could see the very house as she looked down on the mass of green in which the town was embowered. The train slid into the station, slowed down—there were people waiting on the platform—her father! He was glancing from window to window, trying to catch a glimpse of her; and his expression of almost agonized eagerness made her heartsick. She had been away from him for nearly seven months—long enough to break the habit which makes it impossible for members of a family to know how they really look to each other. How gray and thin his beard seemed! What was the meaning of that gaunt look about his shoulders? What was the strange, terrifying shadow over him? "Why, he's OLD!" The tears welled into her eyes—"He's gliding away from me!" She remembered what she had to tell him and her knees almost refused to support her.
He was at the step as she sprang down. She flew into his arms. He held her away from him and scanned her face with anxious eyes.
"Is my little girl ill?" he asked. "The telegram made me uneasy."
"Oh, no!" she said with a reassuring hug. "Where's mother?"
"She—she's got a—a—surprise for you. We must hurry—she'll be impatient, though she's seen you since I have."
At the curbstone stood the familiar surrey, with Mordecai humped upon the front seat. "I don't see how the colonel ever knowed you," said he, as she shook hands with him. "I never seen the like for growin'."
"But YOU look just the same, Mordecai—you and the surrey and the horses. And how's Amanda?"
"Poorly," replied Mordecai—his invariable answer to inquiries about his wife. She patterned after the old school, which held that for a woman to confess to good health was for her to confess to lack of refinement, if not of delicacy.
"You think I've changed, father?" asked Pauline, when the horses were whirling them home. She was so busily greeting the familiar streets and houses and trees and faces that she hardly heard his reply.
"'I never seen the like for growin','" he quoted, his eyes shining with pride in her. He was a reticent man by nature as well as by training; he could not have SAID how beautiful, how wonderful he thought her, or how intensely he loved her. The most he could do to express himself to her was, a little shyly, to pat her hand—and to LOOK it into Mordecai's back.
She was about to snuggle up to him as a wave of delight at being home again swept over her; but her secret rushed from the background of her mind. "How could I have done it? How can I tell them?" Then, the serene and beautiful kindness of her father's face reassured her.
Her mother was waiting in the open front door as the surrey came up the drive—still the same dear old-young mother, with the same sweet dignity and gentleness.
"Oh, mother, mother!" exclaimed Pauline, leaping from the carriage into her arms. And as they closed about her she felt that sorrow and evil could not touch her; felt just as when she, a little girl, fleeing from some frightful phantom of her own imagining, had rushed there for safety. She choked, she sobbed, she led her mother to the big sofa opposite the stairway; and, sitting there, they held each the other tightly, Pauline kissing her, smoothing her hair, she caressing Pauline and crying softly.
"We've got a surprise for you, Polly," said she, when they were calmer.
"I don't want anything but you and father," replied Pauline.
Her father turned away—and so she did not see the shadow deepen in his face. Her mother shook her head, mischief in her eyes that were young as a girl's—younger far than her daughter's at that moment. "Go into the sitting-room and see," she said.
Pauline opened the sitting-room door. John Dumont caught her in his arms. "Polly!" he exclaimed. "It's all right. They've come round and—and—here I am!"
Pauline pushed him away from her and sank to the floor in a faint.
When she came to herself she was lying on the divan in the sitting-room. Her mother was kneeling beside her, bathing her temples with cold water; her father and her husband were standing, helplessly looking at her. "Send him away," she murmured, closing her eyes.
Only her mother heard. She motioned to the two men to leave the room. When the door closed Pauline sat up.
"He said it was all right," she began feverishly. "What did he mean, mother?" She was hoping she was to be spared the worst part of her ordeal.
But her mother's reply dashed her hopes, made her settle back among the cushions and hide her face. "It IS all right, Polly. You're to have your own way, and it's your father's way. John has convinced him that he really has changed. We knew—that is, I suspected why you were coming, and we thought we'd give you a surprise—give you what your heart was set on, before you had to ask for it. I'm so sorry, dear, that the shock was—"
Pauline lay perfectly still, her face hidden. After a pause: "I don't feel well enough to see him now. I want this day with you and father. To-morrow—to-morrow, we'll—to-day I want to be as I was when I was—just you and father, and the house and the garden."
Her mother left her for a moment and, when she came back, said: "He's gone."
Pauline gave a quick sigh of relief. Soon she rose. "I'm going for father, and we'll walk in the garden and forget there's anybody else in the world but just us three."
At half-past eight they had family prayers in the sitting-room; Pauline kneeling near her mother, her father kneeling beside his arm-chair and in a tremulous voice pouring out his gratitude to God for keeping them all "safe from the snares and temptations of the world," for leading them thus far on the journey.
"And, God, our Father, we pray Thee, have this daughter of ours, this handmaiden of Thine, ever in Thy keeping. And these things we ask in the name of Thy Son—Amen." The serene quiet, the beloved old room, the evening scene familiar to her from her earliest childhood, her father's reverent, earnest voice, halting and almost breaking after every word of the petition for her; her mother's soft echo of his "Amen"—Pauline's eyes were swimming as she rose from her knees.
Her mother went with her to her bedroom, hovered about her as she undressed, helped her now and then with fingers that trembled with happiness, and, when she was in bed, put out the light and "tucked her in" and kissed her—as in the old days. "Good night—God bless my little daughter—my HAPPY little daughter."
Pauline waited until she knew that they were sleeping. Then she put on a dressing-gown and went to the open window—how many springtimes had she sat there in the moonlight to watch, as now, the tulips and the hyacinths standing like fairies and bombarding the stars with the most delicious perfumes.
She sat hour after hour, giving no outward sign of battle within. In every lull came Scarborough's "Be SURE, Pauline!" to start the tumult afresh. When the stars began to pale in the dawn she rose—she WAS sure. Far from sure that she was doing the best for herself; but sure, sure without a doubt, that she was doing her duty to her parents.
"I must not punish THEM for MY sin," she said.
Late the next morning she went to the farthest corner of the garden, to the small summer-house where she had played with her dolls and her dishes, where she had worked with slate and spelling-book, where she had read her favorite school-girl romances, where she had dreamed her own school-girl romance. She was waiting under the friendly old canopy of bark—the posts supporting it were bark-clad, too; up and around and between them clambered the morning-glories in whose gorgeous, velvet-soft trumpets the sun-jewels glittered.
And presently he came down the path, his keen face and insolent eyes triumphant. He was too absorbed in his own emotion especially to note hers. Besides, she had always been receptive rather than demonstrative with him.
"We'll be married again, and do the gossips out of a sensation," he said. Though she was not looking at him, his eyes shifted from her face as he added in a voice which at another time she might have thought strained: "Then, too, your father and mother and mine are so strait-laced—it'd give 'em a terrible jar to find out. You're a good deal like them, Polly—only in a modern sort of way."
Pauline flushed scarlet and compressed her lips. She said presently: "You're sure you wish it?"
"Wish what?"
"To marry me. Sometimes I've thought we're both too young, that we might wait——"
He put his arm round her with an air of proud possession. "What'd be the sense in that?" he demanded gaily. "Aren't you MINE?"
And again she flushed and lowered her eyes and compressed her lips. Then she astonished him by flinging her arms round his neck and kissing him hysterically. "But I DO love you!" she exclaimed. "I do! I DO!"
It was midday six weeks later, and Pauline and Dumont were landing at Liverpool, when Scarborough read in the college-news column of the Battle Field Banner that she had "married the only son of Henry Dumont, of Saint Christopher, one of the richest men in our state, and has departed for an extended foreign tour." Olivia—and Pierson naturally—had known, but neither had had the courage to tell him.
Scarborough was in Pierson's room. He lowered the paper from in front of his face after a few minutes.
"I see Pauline has married and gone abroad," he said.
"Yes, so I heard from Olivia," replied Pierson, avoiding Scarborough's eyes.
"Why didn't you tell me?" continued Scarborough, tranquil so far as Pierson could judge. "I'd have liked to send her a note."
Pierson was silent.
"I thought it would cut him horribly," he was thinking. "And he's taking it as if he had only a friendly interest." Scarborough's face was again behind the newspaper. When he had finished it he sauntered toward the door. He paused there to glance idly at the titles of the top row in the book-case. Pierson was watching him. "No—it's all right," he concluded. Scarborough was too straight and calm just to have received such a blow as that news would have been had HE cared for Pauline. Pierson liked his look better than ever before—the tall, powerful figure; the fair hair growing above his wide and lofty brow, with the one defiant lock; and in his aquiline nose and blue-gray eyes and almost perfect mouth and chin the stamp of one who would move forward irresistibly, moving others to his will.
"How old are you, Scarborough?" he asked.
"Twenty-three-nearly twenty-four. I ought to be ashamed to be only a freshman, oughtn't I?" He shrugged his shoulders. "I'm tired of it all." And he strolled out.
He avoided Pierson and Olivia and all his friends for several days, went much into the woods alone, took long walks at night. Olivia would have it that he had been hard hit, and almost convinced Pierson.
"He's the sort of person that suffers the most," she said. "I've a brother like him—won't have sympathy, keeps a wound covered up so that it can't heal."
"But what shall I do for him?" asked Pierson.
"Don't do anything—he'd hate you if you did."
After a week or ten days he called on Pierson and, seating himself at the table, began to shuffle a pack of cards. He looked tired.
"I never saw cards until I was fifteen," he said.
"At home they thought them one of the devil's worst devices—we had a real devil in our house."
"So did we," said Pierson.
"But not a rip-snorter like ours—they don't have him in cities, or even in towns, any more. I've seen ours lots of times after the lights were out—saw him long after I'd convinced myself in daylight that he didn't exist. But I never saw him so close as the night of the day I learned to play casino."
"Did you learn in the stable?" asked Pierson.
"That's where I learned, and mother slipped up behind me—I didn't know what was coming till I saw the look in the other boy's face. Then—" Pierson left the rest to imagination.
"I learned in the hay-loft—my sister and my cousin Ed and I. One of the farm-hands taught us. The cards were so stained we could hardly see the faces. That made them look the more devilish. And a thunder-storm came up and the lightning struck a tree a few rods from the barn."
"Horrible!" exclaimed Pierson. "I'll bet you fell to praying."
"Not I. I'd just finished Tom Paine's Age of Reason—a preacher's son down the pike stole it from a locked closet in his father's library and loaned it to me. But I'll admit the thunderbolt staggered me. I said to them—pretty shakily, I guess: 'Come on, let's begin again.' But the farm-hand said: 'I reckon I'll get on the safe side,' and began to pray—how he roared! And I laughed—how wicked and reckless and brave that laugh did sound to me. 'Bella and Ed didn't know which to be more afraid of—my ridicule or the lightning. They compromised—they didn't pray and they didn't play."
"And so you've never touched a card since."
"We played again the next afternoon—let's have a game of poker. I'm bored to death today."
This was Scarborough's first move toward the fast set of which Pierson was leader. It was a small fast set—there were not many spoiled sons at Battle Field. But its pace was rapid; for every member of it had a constitution that was a huge reservoir of animal spirits and western energy. They "cribbed" their way through recitations and examinations—as the faculty did not put the students on honor but watched them, they reasoned that cribbing was not dishonorable provided one did barely enough of it to pull him through. They drank a great deal—usually whisky, which they disliked but poured down raw, because it was the "manly" drink and to take it undiluted was the "manly" way. They made brief excursions to Indianapolis and Chicago for the sort of carousals that appeal to the strong appetites and undiscriminating tastes of robust and curious youth.
Scarborough at once began to reap the reward of his advantages—a naturally bold spirit, an unnaturally reckless mood. In two weeks he won three hundred dollars, half of it from Pierson. He went to Chicago and in three nights' play increased this to twenty-nine hundred. The noise of the unprecedented achievement echoed through the college. In its constellation of bad examples a new star had blazed out, a star of the first magnitude.
Bladen Scarborough had used his surplus to improve and extend his original farm. But farms were now practically unsalable, and Hampden and Arabella were glad to let their cousin Ed—Ed Warfield—stay on, rent free, because with him there they were certain that the place would be well kept up. Hampden, poor in cash, had intended to spend the summer as a book agent. Instead, he put by a thousand dollars of his winnings to insure next year's expenses and visited Pierson at his family's cottage in the summer colony at Mackinac. He won at poker there and went on East, taking Pierson. He lost all he had with him, all Pierson could lend him, telegraphed to Battle Field for half his thousand dollars, won back all he had lost and two thousand besides.
When he reappeared at Battle Field in September he was dazzling to behold. His clothes were many and had been imported for him by the Chicago agent of a London tailor. His shirts and ties were in patterns and styles that startled Battle Field. He had taken on manners and personal habits befitting a "man of the world"—but he had not lost that simplicity and directness which were as unchangeably a part of him as the outlines of his face or the force which forbade him to be idle for a moment. He and Pierson—Pierson was pupil, now—took a suite of rooms over a shop in the town and furnished them luxuriously. They had brought from New York to look after them and their belongings the first English manservant Battle Field had seen.
Scarborough kept up his college work; he continued regularly to attend the Literary Society and to be its most promising orator and debater; he committed no overt act—others might break the college rules, might be publicly intoxicated and noisy, but he was always master of himself and of the situation. Some of the fanatical among the religious students believed and said that he had sold himself to the devil. He would have been expelled summarily but for Pierson—Pierson's father was one of the two large contributors to the support of the college, and it was expected that he would will it a generous endowment. To entrap Scarborough was to entrap Pierson. To entrap Pierson— The faculty strove to hear and see as little as possible of their doings.
In the college Y.M.C.A. prayers were offered for Scarborough—his name was not spoken, but every one understood. A delegation of the religious among his faithful fellow barbs called upon him to pray and to exhort. They came away more charmed than ever with their champion, and convinced that he was the victim of slander and envy. Not that he had deliberately deceived them, for he hadn't; he was simply courteous and respectful of their sincerity.
"The fraternities are in this somewhere," the barbs decided. "They're trying to destroy him by lying about him." And they liked it that their leader was the brilliant, the talked-about, the sought-after person in the college. When he stood up to speak in the assembly hall or the Literary Society they always greeted him with several rounds of applause.
To the chagrin of the faculty and the irritation of the fraternities a jury of alumni selected him to represent Battle Field at the oratorical contest among the colleges of the state. And he not only won there but also at the interstate contest—a victory over the orators of the colleges of seven western states in which public speaking was, and is, an essential part of higher education. His oratory lacked style, they thought at Battle Field. It was the same then, essentially, as it was a few years later when the whole western country was discussing it. He seemed to depend entirely upon the inherent carrying power of his ably constructed sentences—like so many arrows, some flying gracefully, others straight and swift, all reaching the mark at which they were aimed. In those days, as afterward, he stood upon the platform almost motionless; his voice was clear and sweet, never noisy, but subtly penetrating and, when the sense demanded it, full of that mysterious quality which makes the blood run more swiftly and the nerves tingle. "Merely a talker, not an orator," declared the professor of elocution, and few of those who saw him every day appreciated his genius then. It was on the subject-matter of his oration, not on his "delivery," that the judges decided for him—so they said and thought.
In February of this resplendent sophomore year there came in his mail a letter postmarked Battle Field and addressed in printed handwriting. The envelope contained only a newspaper cutting—from the St. Christopher Republic:
At four o'clock yesterday afternoon a boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. John Dumont. It is their first child, the first grandchild of the Dumont and Gardiner families. Mother and son are reported as doing well.
Scarborough spent little time in the futile effort to guess what coward enemy had sped this anonymous shaft on the chance of its hitting him. His only enemies that interested him were those within himself. He destroyed envelope and clipping, then said to Pierson: "I neglected to celebrate an important event not long ago." He paused to laugh—so queerly that Pierson looked at him uneasily. "We must go to Chicago to celebrate it."
"Very good," said Fred. "We'll get Chalmers to go with us to-morrow."
"No-to-day—the four-o'clock train—we've got an hour and a half. And we'll have four clear days."
"But there's the ball to-night and I'm down for several dances."
"We'll dance them in Chicago. I've never been really free to dance before." He poured out a huge drink. "I'm impatient for the ball to begin." He lifted his glass. "To our ancestors," he said, "who repressed themselves, denied themselves, who hoarded health and strength and capacity for joy, and transmitted them in great oceans to us—to drown our sorrows in!"
He won six hundred dollars at faro in a club not far from the Auditorium, Pierson won two hundred at roulette, Chalmers lost seventy—they had about fourteen hundred dollars for their four days' "dance." When they took the train for Battle Field they had spent all they had with them—had flung it away for dinners, for drives, for theaters, for suppers, for champagne. All the return journey Scarborough stared moodily out of the car window. And at every movement that disturbed his clothing there rose to nauseate him, to fill him with self-loathing, the odors of strong, sickening-sweet perfumes.
The next day but one, as he was in the woods near Indian Rock, he saw Olivia coming toward him. They had hardly spoken for several months. He turned to avoid her but she came on after him.
"I wish to talk with you a few minutes, Mr. Scarborough," she said coldly, storm in her brave eyes.
"At your service," he answered with strained courtesy. And he walked beside her.
"I happen to know," she began, "that they're going to expel you and Fred Pierson the next time you leave here without permission."
"Indeed! You are very kind to warn me of my awful danger." He looked down at her with a quizzical smile.
"And I wish to say I think it's a disgrace that they didn't do it long ago," she went on, her anger rising to the bait of his expression.
"Your opinions are always interesting," he replied. "If you have nothing further I'll ask your permission to relieve you of——"
"No," she interrupted. "I've not said what I wished to say. You're making it hard for me. I can't get accustomed to the change in you since last year. There used to be a good side to you, a side one could appeal to. And I want to talk about—Fred. You're RUINING him."
"You flatter me." He bowed mockingly. "But I doubt if HE'D feel flattered."
"I've told him the same thing, but you're too strong for me." Her voice trembled; she steadied it with a frown. "I can't influence him any longer."
"Really, Miss Shrewsbury——"
"Please!" she said. "Fred and I were engaged. I broke it last night. I broke it because—you know why."
Scarborough flushed crimson.
"Oh," he said. "I didn't know he was engaged."
"I know you, Hampden Scarborough," Olivia continued. "I've understood why you've been degrading yourself. And I haven't blamed you—though I've wondered at your lack of manhood."
"You are imposing on my courtesy," he said haughtily.
"I can't help it. You and I must talk this thing to the end. You're robbing me of the man I love. Worse than that, you're destroying him, dragging him down to a level at which HE may stay, while YOU are sure to rise again. You've got your living to make—I don't agree with those who think you'll become a professional gambler. But he his father's rich and indulgent, and—God only knows how low he'll sink if you keep on pushing him."
"You are excited, hysterical. You misjudge him, believe me," said Scarborough, gently.
"No—I know he's not depraved—yet. Do you thinkIcould care for him if he were?"
"I hope so. That's when he'd need it most."
Olivia grew red. "Well, perhaps I should. I'm a fool, like all women. But I ask you to let him alone, to give his better self a chance."
"Why not ask him to let ME alone—to give MY better nature a chance?"
"You—laughing at me in these circumstances! You who pretended to be a man, pretended to love Pauline Gardiner——"
He started and his eyes blazed, as if she had cut him across the face with a whip. Then he drew himself up with an expression of insolent fury. His lips, his sharp white teeth, were cruel.
She bore his look without flinching.
"Yes," she went on, "you think you love her. Yet you act as if her love were a degrading influence in your life, as if she were a bad woman instead of one who ought to inspire a man to do and be his best. How ashamed she'd be of you, of your love, if she could see you as you are now—the tempter of all the bad impulses in this college."
He could not trust himself to reply. He was suffocating with rage and shame. He lifted his hat, walked rapidly away from her and went home. Pierson had never seen him in an ugly mood before. And he, too, was in an ugly mood—disgusted with his own conduct, angry at Scarborough, whom he held responsible for the unprecedented excesses of this last trip to Chicago and for their consequences.
"What's happened?" he asked sourly. "What's the matter with YOU?"
"Your Olivia," replied Scarborough, with a vicious sneer, "has been insulting me for your sins. She is a shrew! I don't wonder you dropped her."
Pierson rose slowly and faced him.
"You astonish me," he said. "I shouldn't have believed you capable of a speech which no gentleman could possibly utter."
"YOU, sitting as a court of honor to decide what's becoming a gentleman!" Scarborough looked amused contempt. "My dear Pierson, you're worse than offensive—you are ridiculous."
"No man shall say such things to me especially a man who notoriously lives by his wits."
Scarborough caught him up as if he had been a child and pinned him against the wall. "Take that back," he said, "or I'll kill you." His tone was as colorless as his face.
"Kill and be damned," replied Pierson, cool and disdainful. "You're a coward."
Scarborough's fingers closed on Pierson's throat. Then flashed into his mind that warning which demands and gets a hearing in the wildest tempest of passion before an irrevocable act can be done. It came to him in the form of a reminder of his laughing remark to Pauline when he told her of the traditions of murder in his family. He released Pierson and fled from the apartment.
Half an hour later Pierson was reading a note from him:
"I've invited some friends this evening. I trust it will be convenient for you to absent yourself. They'll be out by eleven, and then, if you return, we can decide which is to stay in the apartment and which to leave."
Pierson went away to his fraternity house and at half-past eight Scarborough, Chalmers, Jack Wilton and Brigham sat down to a game of poker. They had played about an hour, the cards steadily against Chalmers and Brigham—the cards were usually against Brigham. He was a mere boy, with passionate aspirations to be considered a sport. He had been going a rapid gait for a year. He had lost to Scarborough alone as much as he had expected to spend on the year's education.
Toward ten o'clock there was a jack-pot with forty-three dollars in it and Brigham was betting wildly, his hands and his voice trembling, his lips shriveled. With a sudden gesture Chalmers caught the ends of the table and jerked it back. There—in Brigham's lap—were two cards.
"I thought so!" exclaimed Chalmers. "You dirty little cheat! I've been watching you."
The boy looked piteously at Chalmers' sneering face, at the faces of the others. The tears rolled down his cheeks. "For God's sake, boys," he moaned, "don't be hard on me. I was desperate. I've lost everything, and my father can't give me any more. He's a poor man, and he and mother have been economizing and sacrificing to send me here. And when I saw I was ruined—God knows, I didn't think what I was doing." He buried his face in his hands. "Don't be hard on me," he sobbed. "Any one of you might have done the same if he was in my fix."
"You sniveling cur," said Chalmers, high and virtuous, "how dare you say such a thing! You forget you're among gentlemen——"
"None of that, Chalmers," interrupted Scarborough. "The boy's telling the truth. And nobody knows it better than YOU." This with a significant look into Chalmers' eyes. They shifted and he colored.
"I agree with Scarborough," said Wilton. "We oughtn't to have let the boy into our games. We must never mention what has happened here this evening."
"But we can't allow a card sharp to masquerade as a gentleman," objected Chalmers. "I confess, Scarborough, I don't understand how you can be so easy-going in a matter of honor."
"You think I must have a fellow-feeling for dishonor, eh?" Scarborough smiled satirically. "I suppose because I was sympathetic enough with you to overlook the fact that you were shy on your share of our Chicago trip."
"What do you mean?"
"The three hundred you borrowed of Pierson when you thought he was too far gone to know what he was doing. My back was turned—but there was the mirror."
Chalmers' sullen, red face confirmed Scarborough's charge.
"No," continued Scarborough, "we GENTLEMEN ought to be charitable toward one another's DISCOVERED lapses." He seated himself at his desk and wrote rapidly: