Often after those long, pounding afternoons George returned to his room, wondering dully, as he had done last summer, why the deuce he did it. Sylvia's picture stared the same answer, and he would turn with a sigh to one of the novels Bailly loaned him regularly. Bailly was of great value there, too, for he chose the books carefully, and George was commencing to learn that as a man reads so is he very likely to think. Whenever he spoke now he was careful to modulate his voice, to choose his words, never to be heard without a reason.
The little fellow with the moustache whom the Goodhue crowd called Spike met him on the campus one day after practice.
"My name," he announced in a high-pitched, slurred voice, "is Wandel. You may not realize it, but you are a very great man, Morton."
George looked him over, astonished. He had difficulty not to mock the other's manner, nearly effeminate.
"Why am I great, Mr. Wandel?"
"Anybody," Wandel answered in his singing voice, "who does one thing better than others is inevitably great."
George smiled vindictively.
"I suppose I ought to return the compliment. What do you do?"
Wandel wasn't ruffled.
"Very many things. I brew good tea for one. What about a cup now? Come to my rooms. They're just here, in Blair tower."
George weighed the invitation. Wandel was beyond doubt of the fortunates, yet curiously apart from them. George's diplomacy required a forcing of the fortunates to seek him. Wandel, for that matter, had sought. Where George might have refused a first invitation from Goodhue he accepted Wandel's, because he was anxious to know the man's real purpose in asking him.
"All right. Thanks. But I haven't much time. I want to do some reading before dinner."
He hadn't imagined anything like Wandel's room existed in college, or could be conceived or executed by one of college age. The study was large and high with a broad casement window. The waning light increased the values Wandel had evidently sought. The wall covering and the draperies at the three doors and the window were a dead shade of green that, in fact, suggested a withdrawal from life nearly supernatural, at least medieval. The half-dozen pictures were designed to complete this impression. They were primitives—an awkward but lovely Madonna, a procession of saints who seemed deformed by their experiences, grotesque conceptions of biblical encounters. There were heavy rugs, also green in foundation; and, with wide, effective spaces between, stood uncomfortable Gothic chairs, benches, and tables.
Two months ago George would have expressed amazement, perhaps admiration. Now he said nothing, but he longed for Squibs' opinion of the room. He questioned what it reflected of the pompous little man who had brought him.
Wandel stooped and lighted the fire. He switched the heavy green curtains over the window. In a corner a youth stirred and yawned.
"Hello, Dalrymple," Wandel said. "Waited long? You know that very great man, Morton?"
The increasing firelight played on Dalrymple's face, a countenance without much expression, intolerant, if anything, but in a far weaker sense than Sylvia's assurance. George recognized him. He had seen him accompany Goodhue through the crowd the day of the first examination. Dalrymple didn't disturb himself.
"The football player? How do. Damn tea, Spike. You've got whiskey and a siphon."
George's hand had been ready. He was thankful he hadn't offered it. In that moment a dislike was born, not very positive; the emotion one has for an unwholesome animal.
Wandel disappeared. After a moment he came in, wearing a fantastic embroidered dressing gown of the pervading dead green tone. He lighted a spirit lamp, and, while the water heated, got out a tea canister, cups, boxes of biscuits, cigarettes, bottles, and glasses. Dalrymple poured a generous drink. Wandel took a smaller one.
"You," he said to George, "being a very great man, will have some tea."
"I'll have some tea, anyway," George answered.
The door opened. Goodhue strolled in. His eyebrows lifted when he saw George.
"Do you know you're in bad company, Morton?"
"I believe so," George answered.
Wandel was pleased. George saw Goodhue glance a question at Dalrymple. Dalrymple merely stared.
They sat about, sipping, talking of nothing in particular, and the curious room was full of an interrogation. George lost his earlier fancy of being under Wandel's inspection. It was evident to him now that Wandel was the man to do his inspecting first. Why the deuce had he asked him here? Dalrymple and Goodhue were clearly puzzled by the same question.
When he had emptied his cup George rose and put on his cap.
"Thanks for the cup of tea, Wandel."
"Don't go," Wandel urged.
He waved his hands helplessly.
"But, since you're a very distinguished person, I suppose I can't keep you. Come again, any day this time. Every day."
The question in Goodhue's eyes increased. Dalrymple altered his position irritably, and refilled his glass. George didn't say good-bye, waiting for the first move from him. Dalrymple, however, continued to sip, unaffected by this departure.
Goodhue, on the other hand, after a moment's hesitation, followed George out. When they had reached the tower archway Goodhue paused. The broken light from an iron-framed lamp exposed the curiosity and indecision in his eyes.
"Have you any idea, Morton," he asked, "what Spike's up to with you; I mean, why he's so darned hospitable all of a sudden?"
George shook his head. He was quite frank.
"I'm not so dull," he said, "that I haven't been wondering about that myself."
Goodhue smiled, and unexpectedly held out his hand.
"Good-night, see you at the field to-morrow."
"Why," George asked as he released that coveted grasp, "do you call Wandel 'Spike'?"
Goodhue's voice was uneasy in spite of the laugh with which he coloured it.
"Maybe it's because he's so sharp."
George saw a day or two later a professor's criticism in theDaily Princetonianof the current number of theNassau Literary Magazine. Driggs Wandel, because of a poem, was excitedly greeted as a man with a touch of genius. George borrowed a copy of theLitfrom a neighbour, and read a haunting, unreal bit of verse that seemed a part of the room in which it had probably been written. Obsessed by the practicality of the little man, George asked himself just what Wandel had to gain by this performance. He carried the whole puzzle to Bailly that night, and was surprised to learn that Wandel had impressed himself already on the faculty.
"This verse isn't genius," Bailly said, "but it proves that the man has an abnormal control of effect, and he does what he does with no apparent effort. He'll probably be managing editor of theLitand thePrincetonian, for I understand he's out for that, too. He's going to make himself felt in his class and in the entire undergraduate body. Don't undervalue him. Have you stopped to think, Morton, that he still wears a moustache? Revolutionary! Has he overawed the Sophomores, or has he too many friends in the upper classes?"
Bailly limped up and down, ill at ease, seeking words.
"I don't know how to advise you. I believe he'll help you delve after some treasure, though the stains on his own hands won't be visible. Whether it's just the treasure you want is another matter. Be inscrutable yourself. Accept his invitations. If you can, find out what he's up to without committing yourself. You can put it down that he isn't after you for nothing."
"But why?" George demanded.
Bailly shrugged his narrow shoulders.
"Anyway, I've told you what I could, and you'll go your own way whether you agree or not."
George did, as a matter of fact. His curiosity carried him a number of times to Wandel's rooms. Practically always Dalrymple sat aloof, sullenly sipping whiskey which had no business there. He met a number of other men of the same crowd who talked football in friendly enough fashion; and once or twice the suave little fellow made a point of asking him for a particular day or hour. Always Wandel would introduce him to some new man, offering him, George felt, as a specimen to be accepted as a triumph of the Wandel judgment. And in every fresh face George saw the question he continually asked himself.
Wandel's campaign accomplished one result: Men like Rogers became more obsequious, considering George already a unit of that hallowed circle. But George wasn't fooled. He knew very well that he wasn't.
Goodhue, however, was more friendly. Football, after all, George felt, was quite as responsible for that as Betty Alston or Wandel; for it was the combination of Goodhue at quarter and George at half that accounted for the team's work against the varsity, and that beat the Yale and the Harvard Freshmen. Such a consistent and effectual partnership couldn't help drawing its members closer out of admiration, out of joy in success, out of a ponderable dependence that each learned to place upon the other. That conception survived the Freshman season. George no longer felt he had to be careful with Goodhue. Goodhue had even found his lodgings.
"Not palatial," George explained, "because—you may not know it—I am working my way through college."
Goodhue's voice was a trifle envious.
"I know. It must give you a fine feeling to do that."
Then Betty's vague invitation materialized in a note which mentioned a date and the fact that Goodhue would be there. Goodhue himself suggested that George should call at his rooms that evening so they could drive out together. George had never been before, had not suspected that Dalrymple lived with Goodhue. The fact, learned at the door, which bore the two cards, disquieted him, filled him with a sense nearly premonitory.
When he had entered in response to Goodhue's call his doubt increased. The room seemed inimical to him, yet it was a normal enough place. What did it harbour that he was afraid of, that he was reluctant even to look for?
Goodhue was nearly ready. Dalrymple lounged on a window seat. He glanced at George languidly.
"Will say, Morton, you did more than your share against those Crimson Freshmen Saturday."
George nodded without answering. He had found the object the room contained for which he had experienced a premonitory fear. On one of the two desks stood an elaborately framed replica of the portrait he himself possessed of Sylvia Planter. Its presence there impressed him as a wrong, for to study and commune with that pictured face he had fancied his unique privilege. Nor did its presence in this room seem quite honest, for Sylvia, he was willing to swear, wasn't the type to scatter her likenesses among young men. George had an instinct to turn on Dalrymple and demand a history of the print, since Goodhue, he was certain, wouldn't have placed it there without authority. After all, such authority might exist. What did he know of Sylvia aside from her beauty, her arrogance, and her breeding? That was it. Her breeding made the exposure of her portrait here questionable.
"What you staring at?" Dalrymple asked, sullenly.
"Is this your desk?" George demanded.
"Yes. Why?"
George faced him abruptly.
"I was looking at that photograph."
"What for?" Dalrymple demanded, sitting up.
"Because," George answered, evenly, "it happens to be where one sees it."
Dalrymple flushed.
"Deuced pretty girl," he said with an affectation of indifference. "Of course you don't know her."
"I have seen her," George said, shortly.
He felt that a challenge had been passed and accepted. He raised his voice.
"How about it, Goodhue?"
"Coming."
Dalrymple opened his mouth as if to speak, but Goodhue slipped into the room, and George and he went down the stairs and climbed into Goodhue's runabout.
"I didn't know," George said when they had started, "that you lived with Dalrymple."
"We were put together at school, so it seemed simple to start out here."
George was glad to fancy a slight colour of apology, as if such a companionship needed a reason.
It was a pleasant and intimate little dinner to which they drove. Mr. and Mrs. Alston recollected meeting George at the Baillys', and they were kind about his football. A friend of Betty's from a neighbouring house made the sixth. George was not uncomfortable. His glass had shown him that in a dinner suit he was rather better looking than he had thought. Observation had diminished his dread of social lapses. There flowed, however, rather too much talk of strange worlds, which included some approaching gaieties in New York.
"You," Betty said casually to him, "must run up to my great affair."
Her aunt, it appeared, would engineer that a short time before the holidays. George was vague. The prospect of a ballroom was terrifying. He had danced very little, and never with the type of women who would throng Betty Alston's début. Yet he wanted to go.
"Betty," her mother said, dryly, "will have all the lions she can trap."
George received an unpleasant impression of having been warned. It didn't affect him strongly, because warnings were wasted there; he was too much the slave of a photograph and a few intolerable memories. Sylvia would almost certainly be at that dance.
Wandel appeared after dinner.
"I tried to get Dolly to come," he said, "but he was in a most villainous temper about something, and couldn't be budged. Don't mind saying he missed a treat. I hired a pert little mare at Marlin's. If I can find anything in town nearly as good I'll break the two to tandem this winter."
George's suppressed enthusiasm blazed.
"I'd like to help you. I'd give a good deal for a real fight with a horse."
He was afraid he had plunged in too fast. He met the surprise of the others by saying he had played here and there with other people's horses; but the conversation had drifted to a congenial topic, and it got to polo.
"Because a man was killed here once," Wandel said, "is no reason why the game should be damned forever."
"If you young men," Mr. Alston offered, "want to get some ponies down in the spring, or experiment with what I've got, you're welcome to play here all you please, and it might be possible to arrange games with scrub teams from Philadelphia and New York."
"Do you play, Mr. Morton?" Betty asked, interestedly.
"I've scrubbed around," he said, uncertainly.
She laughed.
"Then he's a master. That's what he told dear old Squibs about his football."
George wanted to get away from horses. He could score only through action. Talking was dangerous. He was relieved when he could leave with Goodhue and Wandel.
The runabout scurried out of Wandel's way. The pert little mare sensed a rival in the automobile, and gave Wandel all the practice he wanted. George smiled at the busy little man as his cart slithered from side to side of the driveway.
"That's Spike's one weakness," Goodhue laughed as they hurried off. "He's not a natural horseman, but he loves the beasts, so he takes his falls. By the way, I rather think I can guess what he's up to with you."
"What?" George asked.
Goodhue shook his head.
"Learn from Spike. Anyway, I may be wrong."
Then why had Goodhue spoken at all? To put him on his guard?
"Wandel," George promised himself, "will get away with nothing as far as I am concerned."
Yet all that night the thought of the little man made him uncomfortable.
George watched his first big varsity game the following Saturday. It was the last of the season, against Yale. He sat with Goodhue and other members of the Freshman eleven in an advantageous part of the stands. The moment the blue squad, greeted by a roar, trotted on the field, he recognized Lambert Planter's rangy figure. Lambert's reputation as a fullback had come to Princeton ahead of him, and it had scarcely been exaggerated. Once he had torn through the line he gave the Princeton backs all they wanted to do. He kicked for Yale. Defensively he was the deadliest man on the field. He, George and Goodhue agreed, would determine the outcome. As, through him, the balance of the contest commenced to tip, George experienced a biting restlessness. It wasn't the prospect of the defeat of Princeton by Yale that angered him so much as the fact that Lambert Planter would unquestionably be the cause. George felt it unjust that rules should exist excluding him from that bruising and muddy contest. More than anything else just then he wanted to be on the field, stopping Planter, avoiding the reluctance of such an issue.
"We ought to be out there, Morton," Goodhue muttered. "If nothing happens, we will be next year."
"It's that fellow Planter," George answered. "He could be stopped."
"You could stop him," Goodhue said. "You could outkick him."
George's face was grim.
"I'm stronger than Planter," he said, simply. "I could beat him."
The varsity, however, couldn't. Lambert, during the last quarter, slipped over the line for the deciding touchdown. The game ended in a dusky and depressing autumn haze. George and Goodhue watched sullenly the enemy hosts carry Planter and the other blue players about the field. Appearing as if they had survived a disaster, they joined the crowd of men and women, relatives and friends of the players, near the field house. The vanquished and the substitutes had already slipped through and out of sight. The first of the steaming Yale men appeared and threaded a path toward the steps. Lambert, because he had been honoured most, was the last to arrive, and at that moment out of the multitude there came into George's vision faces that he knew, as if they had waited to detach themselves for this spectacular advent.
He saw the most impressive one first of all, and he stood, as he had frequently stood before her portrait, staring in a mood of wilful obstinacy. It was only for a few moments, and she was quite some distance away. Before he could appreciate the chance, she had withdrawn herself, after a quick, approving tap of her brother's shoulder, among the curious, crowding people. George had seen her face glow with a happy pride in spite of her effort at repression; but in the second face which he noticed there was no emotion visible at all. The hero's mother simply nodded. Dalrymple stood between mother and daughter, smiling inanely.
Lambert forged ahead, filthy and wet. The steam, like vapour from an overworked animal, wavered about him. The Baillys and the Alstons pushed close to George and Goodhue, who were in Lambert's path, pressed there and held by the anxious people.
At sight of Betty, Lambert paused and stretched out his hand. She was, George thought, whiter than ever.
"You'll say hello even to an Eli?"
She gave her hand quickly, the colour invading her pallor. For an instant George thought Lambert was going to draw her closer, saw his lips twitch, heard him say:
"Don't hold it against me, Betty."
Certainly something was understood between these two, or Lambert, at least, believed so.
Betty freed her hand and caught at George's arm.
"Look at him," she said clearly, indicating Planter. "You're going to take care of him next fall. You're not going to let him laugh at us again."
George managed a smile.
"I'll take care of him, Miss Alston."
Lambert's dirty face expanded.
"These are threats! And it's—George. Then we're to have a return bout next fall. I'll look forward to it. Hello, Dick. Good-bye, Betty. Till next fall—George."
He passed on, leaving an impression of confidence and conquest.
"Why," Betty said, impulsively, in George's ear, "does he speak to you that way? Why does he call you George like that?"
For a moment he looked at her steadily, appealingly.
"It's partly my own fault," he said at last, "but it hurts."
Her voice was softer than before.
"That's wrong. You mustn't let little things hurt, George."
For the first time in his memory he felt a stinging at his eyes, the desire for tears. He didn't misunderstand. Her use of his first name was not a precedent. It had been balm applied to a wound that she had only been able to see was painful. Yet, as he walked away with Goodhue, he felt as if he had been baptized again.
Wandel, quite undisturbed, joined them.
"You and Dicky," the little man said, "look as if you had come out of a bad wreck. What's up? It's only a game."
"Of course you're right," George answered, "but you have to play some games desperately hard if you want to win."
"Now what are you driving at, great man?" Wandel wanted to know.
"Come on, Spike," Goodhue said, irritably. "You're always looking for double meanings."
George walked on with them, desolately aware of many factors of his life gone awry. The game; Lambert's noticeable mockery, all the more unbearable because of its unaffectedness; Dalrymple's adjacence to Sylvia—these remembrances stung, the last most of all.
"Come on up, you two," Goodhue suggested as they approached the building in which he lived, "I believe Dolly's giving tea to Sylvia Planter and her mother."
George wanted to see if the photograph was still there, but he couldn't risk it. He shook his head.
"Not into the camp of the enemy?" Wandel laughed.
Of course, George told himself as he walked off, Wandel's words couldn't possibly have held any double meaning.
He fought it out that night, sleeping scarcely at all. In the rush of his progress here he had failed to realize how little he had really advanced toward his ultimate goal. Lambert had offhand, perhaps unintentionally, shown him that afternoon how wide the intervening space still stretched. Was it because of moral cowardice that he shrank from challenging a crossing? The answer to such a challenge might easily mean the destruction of all he had built up, the heavy conditioning of his future which now promised so abundantly.
He faced her picture with his eyes resolute, his jaw thrust out.
"I'll do it," he told the lifeless print. "I'll make you know me. I'll teach your brother not to treat me as a servant who has forgotten his place."
The last, in any case, couldn't be safely put off. Lambert's manner had already aroused Betty's interest. Had she known its cause she might not have resented it so sweetly for George. There was no point in fretting any more. His mind was made up to challenge at the earliest possible moment.
In furtherance of his resolution he visited his tailor the next day, and during the evening called at the Baillys'. He came straight to the point.
"I want some dancing lessons," he said. "Do you know anybody?"
Bailly limped up, put his hands on George's shoulder, and studied him.
"Is this traceable to Wandel?"
"No. To what I told you last summer."
"He's going to Betty Alston's dance," Mrs. Bailly cried.
"If I'm asked," George admitted, "but as a general principle——"
Mrs. Bailly interrupted, assuming control.
"Move that table and the chairs," she directed the two men. "You'll keep my husband's secret—tinkling music hidden away between grand opera records. It will come in handy now."
George protested, but she had her own way. Bailly sat by, puffing at his pipe, at first scornful.
"I hate to see a football player pirouetting like a clown."
But in a little while he was up, awkwardly illustrating steps, his cheeks flushed, his cold pipe dangling from his lips.
"You dance very well as it is," Mrs. Bailly told George. "You do need a little quieting. You must learn to remember that the ballroom isn't a gridiron and your partner the ball."
And at the end of a fortnight she told him he was tamed and ready for the soft and perfumed exercise of the dance floor.
He was afraid Betty wouldn't remember. Her invitation had been informal, his response almost a refusal.
On free afternoons Goodhue and he often ran together, trying to keep in condition, already feeling that the outcome of next year's big games would depend on them. They trotted openly through the Alston place, hoping for a glimpse of Betty as a break in their grind. When she saw them from the house she would come out and chat for a time, her yellow hair straying in the wind, her cheeks flushed from the cold. During these brief conferences it was made clear that she had not forgotten, and that George would go up with Goodhue and be a guest at his home the night of the dance.
George was grateful for that quality of remoteness in Goodhue which at first had irritated him. Now he was well within Goodhue's vision, and acceptably so; but the young man had not shown the slightest interest in his past or his lack of the right friends before coming to Princeton. At any moment he might.
The Goodhue house was uptown between Fifth and Madison avenues. It was as unexpected to George as Wandel's green study had been. The size of its halls and rooms, the tasteful extravagance of its decorations, the quiet, liveried servants took his breath. It was difficult not to say something, to withhold from his glance his admiration and his lack of habit.
There he was at last, handing his hat and coat to one who bent obsequiously. He felt a great contempt. He told himself he was unjust, as unjust as Sylvia, but the contempt persisted.
There were details here more compelling than anything he had seen or fancied at Oakmont. The entire household seemed to move according to a feudal pattern. Goodhue's father and mother welcomed George, because their son had brought him, with a quiet assurance. Mrs. Goodhue, George felt, might even appreciate what he was doing. That was the outstanding, the feudal, quality of both. They had an air of unprejudiced judgment, of removal from any selfish struggle, of being placed beyond question.
Goodhue and George dined at a club that night. They saw Wandel and Dalrymple, the latter flushed and talking louder than he should have done in an affected voice. They went to the theatre, and afterward drove up Fifth Avenue to Betty's party. George was dazzled, and every moment conscious of the effort to prevent Goodhue's noticing it. His excitement increased as he came to the famous establishment in the large ballroom of which Betty was waiting, and, perhaps, already, Sylvia. To an extent the approaching culmination of his own campaign put him at ease; lifted him, as it were, above details; left him free to face the moment of his challenge.
The lower halls were brilliant with pretty, eager faces, noisy with chatter and laughter, a trifle heady from an infiltration of perfumes.
Wandel joined them upstairs and took George's card, returning it after a time nearly filled.
"When you see anybody you particularly want to dance with," he advised secretly, "just cut in without formality. The mere fact of your presence ought to be introduction enough. You see everybody here knows, or thinks he knows, everybody else."
George wondered why Wandel went out of his way, and in that particular direction. Did the little man suspect? The succeeding moments brushed the question aside.
Betty was radiant, lovelier in her white-and-yellow fashion than George had ever seen her. He shrank a little from their first contact, all the more startling to him because he was so little accustomed to the ritual familiarity of dancing. With his arm around her, with her hand in his, with her golden hair brushing his cheek, with her lips and eyes smiling up at him, he felt like one who steals. Why not? Didn't people win their most prized possessions through theft of one kind or another? It was because those pliant fingers were always at his mind that he wanted to release them, wanted to run away from Betty since she always made him desire to tell her the truth.
"I'm glad you could come. It isn't as bad as football, is it? Have we any more? If I show signs of distress do cut in if you're not too busy."
He overcame his fear of collisions, avoiding other couples smoothly and rhythmically. Dalrymple, he observed, was less successful, apologizing in a high, excited voice. As in a haze George watched a procession of elderly women, young girls, and men of every age, with his own tall figure and slightly anxious face greeting him now and then from a mirror. This repeated and often-unexpected recognition encouraged him. He was bigger and better looking than most; in the glasses, at least, he appeared as well-dressed. More than once he heard girls say:
"Who is that big chap with Betty Alston?"
With all his heart he wanted to ask Betty why she had been so kind to him from the beginning, why she was so kind now. He longed to tell her how it had affected him. She glanced up curiously. Without realizing it his grasp had tightened. He relaxed it, wondering what had been in his mind. It was this odd proximity to a beautiful girl who had been kind to him that had for a moment swung him from his real purpose in coming here, the only purpose he had. He resumed his inspection of the crowding faces. He didn't see Lambert or Sylvia. Had he been wrong? It was incredible they shouldn't appear.
The music stopped.
"Thanks," he said. "Three after this."
His voice was wistful.
"I did like that."
He desired to tell her that he didn't care to dance with any one else, except Sylvia, of course.
"I enjoyed it, too. Will you take me back?"
But her partner met them on the way, and he commenced to trail his.
It was halfway through the next number that he knew he had not planned futilely. It was like Sylvia to arrive in that fashion—a distracting element in a settled picture, or as one beyond the general run for whom a special welcome was a matter of course. To George's ears the orchestra played louder, as if to call attention to her. To his eyes the dancers slackened their pace. The chatter certainly diminished, and nearly everyone glanced toward the door where she stood a little in advance of her mother and two men.
George was able to judge reasonably. In dress and appearance she was the most striking woman in the room. Her dark colouring sprang at one, demanding attention. George saw Dalrymple unevenly force a path in her direction. He caught his breath. The dance resumed its former rhythm. In its intricacies Sylvia was for a time lost.
Sometime later Lambert drifted in. George saw him dancing with Betty. He also found Sylvia. He managed to direct his partner close to her a number of times. She must have seen him, but her eyes did not waver or her colour heighten. He wouldn't ask for an introduction. There was no point. His imagination pictured a number of probable disasters. If he should ask her to dance would she recognize him, and laugh, and demand, so that people could hear, how he had forced a way into this place?
George relinquished his partner to a man who cut in. From a harbour close to the wall he watched Sylvia, willing himself to the point of action.
"I will make her know me before I leave this dance," he said to himself.
Dalrymple had her now. His weak face was too flushed. He was more than ever in people's way. George caught the distress in Sylvia's manner. He remembered Wandel's advice, what Betty had asked him to do for her. He dodged, without further reflection, across the floor, and held out his hand.
"If I may——"
Without looking at him she accepted his hand, and they glided off, while Dalrymple stared angrily. George scarcely noticed. There was room in his mind for no more than this amazing and intoxicating experience. She was so close that he could have bent his head and placed his lips on her dark hair—closer than she had been that unforgettable day. The experience was worthless unless she knew who he was.
"She must know," he thought.
If she did, why did she hide her knowledge behind an unfathomable masquerade?
"That was kind of you," he heard her say. "Poor Dolly!"
She glanced up. Interrogation entered her eyes.
"I can't seem to remember——"
"I came from Princeton with Dick Goodhue," he explained. "It seemed such a simple thing. Shouldn't I have cut in?"
He looked straight at her now. His heart seemed to stop. She had to be made to remember.
"My name is George Morton."
She smiled.
"I've heard Betty talk of you. You're a great football player. It was very kind. Of course it's all right."
But it wasn't. The touch of her hand became unbearable to George because she didn't remember. He had to make her remember.
They were near the entrance. He paused and drew her apart from the circling dancers.
"Would you mind losing a little of this?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. "It may seem queer, but I have something to tell you that you ought to know."
She studied him, surprised and curious.
"I can't imagine——" she began. "What is it?"
It was only a step through the door and to an alcove with a red plush bench. The light was soft there. No one was close enough to hear. She sat down, laughing.
"Don't keep me in suspense."
He, too, sat down. He spoke deliberately.
"The last two times I've seen you you wouldn't remember me. Even now, when I've told you my name, you won't."
Her surprise increased.
"It's about you! But I said Betty had——Who are you?"
He bent closer.
"If I didn't tell you you might remember later. Anyway, I wouldn't want to fight a person whose eyes were closed."
Her lips half parted. She appeared a trifle frightened. She made a movement as if to rise.
"Just a minute," he said, harshly.
He called on the hatred that had increased during the hours of his mental and physical slavery, a hatred to be appeased only through his complete mastery of her.
"It won't take much to remind you," he hurried on. "Although you talk to me as if I were a man now, last summer I was a beast because I had the nerve to touch you when you were thrown from your horse."
She stood up quickly, reaching out for the alcove curtain. Her contralto voice was uneven.
"Stop! You shouldn't have said that. You shouldn't have told me."
All at once she straightened, her cheeks flaming. She started for the ballroom. He sprang after her, whispering over her shoulder:
"Now we can start fair."
She turned and faced him.
"I don't know how you got here, but you ask for a fight, Mr. Morton——"
He smiled.
"I am Mr. Morton now. I'm getting on."
Then he knew again that sickening sensation of treacherous ground eager to swallow him.
"Are you going to run and tell them," he asked, softly, "as you did your father last summer?"
She crossed the threshold of the ballroom. He watched her while she hesitated for a moment, seeking feverishly someone in the brilliant, complacent crowd.
George watched Sylvia, fighting his instinct to call out a command that she should keep secret forever what he had told her. It was intolerable to stand helpless, to realize that on her sudden decision his future depended. Did she seek her mother, or Lambert, who would understand everything at the first word? Nevertheless, he preferred she should go to Lambert, because he could forecast too easily the alternative—Mrs. Planter's emotionless summoning of Betty and her mother; perhaps of Goodhue or Wandel or Dalrymple; the brutal advertisement of just what he was to all the people he knew, to all the people he wanted to know. That might mean the close of Betty's friendliness, the destruction of the fine confidence that had developed between him and Goodhue, a violent reorganization of all his plans. He gathered strength from a warm realization that with Squibs and Mrs. Squibs Sylvia couldn't possibly hurt him.
He became ashamed of his misgivings, aware that for nothing in the world, even if he had the power, would he rearrange the last five minutes.
He saw her brilliant figure start forward and take an uneven course around the edge of the room until a man caught her and swung her out among the dancers. George turned away. He was sorry it was Wandel who had interfered, but that would give her time to reflect; and even if she blurted it out to Wandel, the little man might be decent enough to advise her to keep quiet.
George wandered restlessly across the hall to the smoking-room. How long would the music lilt on, imprisoning Sylvia in the grasp of Wandel or another man?
He asked for a glass of water, and took it to a lounge in front of the fire. Here he sat, listening to the rollicking music, to the softer harmonies of feminine voices that seemed to define for him compelling and pleasurable vistas down which he might no longer glance. When the silence came Sylvia would go to her mother or Lambert.
"My very dear—George."
Lambert himself bent over the back of the lounge. George guessed the other had seen him enter and had followed. All the better, even if he had come to attack. George had things to say to Lambert, too; so he glanced about the room and was grateful that, except for the servants, it held only some elderly men he had never seen before, who sat at a distance, gossiping and laughing.
"Where," Lambert asked, "will I run into you next?"
"Anywhere," George said. "Whenever we're both invited to the same place. I didn't come without being asked, so my being here isn't funny."
Lambert walked around and sat down. All the irony had left his face. He had an air of doubtful disapproval.
"Maybe not funny," he said, "but—odd."
George stirred. How long would the music and the laughter continue to drift in?
"Why?"
"You've travelled a long way," Lambert mused. "I wonder if in football clothes men don't look too much of a pattern. I wonder if you haven't let yourself be carried a little too far."
"Why?" George asked again.
"Princeton and football," Lambert went on, "are well enough in their way; but when you come to a place like this and dance with those girls who don't know, it seems scarcely fair. Of course, if they knew, and wanted you still—that's the whole point."
"They wouldn't," George admitted, "but why should they matter if the people that count know?"
Lambert glanced at him. Was the music's quicker measure prophetic of the end?
"What do you mean?" Lambert asked.
"What you said last fall has worried me," George answered. "That's the reason I came here—so that your sister would know me from Adam. She does, and she can do what she pleases about it. It's in her hands now."
Lambert reddened.
"You've the nerve of the devil," he said, angrily. "You had no business to speak to my sister. The whole thing had been forgotten."
George shook his head.
"You hadn't forgotten it. She told me that day that I shouldn't forget. I hadn't forgotten it. I never will."
"I can't talk about it," Lambert said.
He looked squarely at George.
"Here's what puts your being here out of shape: You're ashamed of what you were. Aren't you?"
"I've always thought," George said, "you were man enough to realize it's only what I am and may become that counts. I wouldn't say ashamed. I'm sorry, because it makes what I'm doing just that much harder; because you, for instance, know about it, and might cause trouble."
Lambert made no difficulty about the implied question.
"I don't want to risk causing trouble for any one unjustly. It's up to you not to make me. But don't bother my sister again."
"Let me get far enough," George said, "and you won't be able to make trouble—you, or your sister, or your father."
Lambert grinned, the doubt leaving his face as if he had reached a decision.
"I wouldn't bank on father. I'd keep out of his sight."
The advice placed him, for the present, on the safe side. Sylvia's decision remained, and just then the music crashed into a silence, broken by exigent applause. George got up, thrusting his hands in his pockets. The orchestra surrendered to the applause, but was Sylvia dancing now?
Voices drifted in from the hall, one high and obdurate; others better controlled, but persistent in argument. Lambert grimaced. George sneered.
"But that's all right, because he didn't have to work for his living."
"If you don't come a cropper," Lambert said, "you'll get fed up with that sort of thinking. Dolly's young."
Dalrymple was the first in the room, flushed, a trifle uneven in his movements. Goodhue and Wandel followed. Goodhue smiled in a pained, surprised way. Wandel's precise features expressed nothing.
"Why not dancing, Lambert, old Eli?" Dalrymple called jovially. "Haul these gospel sharks off——Waiter! I say, waiter! Something bubbly, dry, and nineteen hundred, if they're doing us that well."
The others didn't protest. They seemed to arrange themselves as a friendly screen between Dalrymple and the elderly men. George didn't care to talk to Dalrymple in that condition—there was too much that Dalrymple had always wanted to say and hadn't. He started for the door, but Wandel caught his arm.
"Wait around, very strong person," he whispered. "Dolly doesn't know it, but he's leaving in a minute."
George shook his head, and started on. Dalrymple glanced up.
"Morton!" he said.
Goodhue took the glass from the waiter, but Dalrymple, grinning a shamed sort of triumph and comprehension, reached out for it and sipped.
"Not bad. Great dancer, Morton. Around the end, and through the centre, and all that——"
"Keep quiet," Goodhue warned him.
George knew that the other wouldn't. He shrank from the breaking of the sullen truce between them. Dalrymple glanced at his cuffs, spilling a little of the wine.
"Damned sight more useful to stick to your laundry—it's none too good."
Quite distinctly George caught Lambert's startled change of countenance and his quick movement forward, Goodhue's angry flush, Wandel's apparent unconcern. In that moment he measured his advance, understood all he had got from Squibs and books, from Betty, from Goodhue, from Princeton; but, although he easily conquered his first impulse to strike, his rage glowed the hotter because it was confined. As he passed close he heard Lambert whisper:
"Good man!"
But even then Wandel wouldn't let him go, and the music had stopped again, and only the undefinable shadows of women's voices reached him. He tried to shake off Wandel who had followed him to the hall. He couldn't wait. He had to enter that moving, chattering crowd to find out what Sylvia had decided.
"Go downstairs, great man," Wandel was whispering, "get a cab, and wait in it at the door, so that you will be handy when I bring the infant Bacchus out."
"I'd rather not," George said, impatiently. "Someone else will do."
"By no means. Expediency, my dear friend, and the general welfare. Hercules for little Bacchus."
He couldn't refuse. Wandel and Goodhue, and, for that matter all of Dalrymple's friends, those girls in there, depended on him; yet he knew it was a bad business for him and for Dalrymple; and he wanted above all other things to pass for a moment through that brilliant screen that moved perpetually between him and Sylvia.
He waited in the shadows of the cab until Dalrymple and Wandel left the building. Wandel motioned the other into the cab. Dalrymple obeyed, willingly enough, swinging his stick, and humming off the key. Probably Wandel's diplomacy. Wandel jumped in, called an address to the driver, and slammed the door.
"Where are you taking him?" George asked.
For the first time Dalrymple seemed to realize who the silent man in the shadows was.
"I'm not going on any party with Morton," he said, sullenly.
"You can go to the devil," Wandel said, pleasantly, "as long as you keep away from decent people until you're decent yourself."
"No," George said. "He's going home or I have nothing more to do with it."
"Perhaps you're right," Wandel agreed, "but you can fancy I had to offer him something better than that to get him out."
He tapped on the pane and gave the driver the new address. Dalrymple started to rise.
"Won't go home—you keep your dirty hands off me, Morton. You——"
"Hercules!" softly from Wandel.
George grasped Dalrymple's arms, pulled him down, held him as in a vise. Dalrymple raved. Wandel laughed pleasantly.
"Dirty hands," flashed through George's brain. Did Dalrymple know anything, or was it an instinctive suspicion, or merely the explosion of helpless temper and dislike?
The ride was brief, and the block in which Dalrymple lived was, fortunately, at that moment free of pedestrians. Wandel descended and rang the bell. When the door was opened George relaxed his grasp. Dalrymple tried to spring from the opposite side of the cab. George caught him, lifted him, carried him like a child across the sidewalk, and set him down in the twilight of a hall where a flunky gaped.
"There's your precious friend," he accused Wandel.
He returned to the cab, rubbing his hands as if they needed cleansing.
"There's no one like you, great man," Wandel said when he had come back to the cab. "You've done Dolly and everyone he would have seen to-night a good turn."
But George felt he had done himself a bad one. During the rest of his time at Princeton, and afterward in New York, he would have a dangerous enemy. Dirty hands! Trust Dalrymple to do his best to give that qualification its real meaning. And these people! You could trust them, too, to stand by Dalrymple against the man who had done them a good turn. It had been rotten of Wandel to ask it, to take him away at that vital moment. Anyway, it was done. He forgot Dalrymple in his present anxiety. The ride seemed endless. The ascent in the elevator was a unique torture. The cloak-room attendants had an air of utter indifference. When he could, George plunged into the ballroom, escaping Wandel, threading the hurrying maze to the other end of the room where earlier in the evening he had seen Sylvia's mother sitting with Mrs. Alston. George passed close, every muscle taut. Mrs. Planter gave no sign. Mrs. Alston reached over and tapped his arm with her fan. He paused, holding his breath.
"Betty asked me to look for you," she said. "Where have you been? She was afraid you had found her party tiresome. You haven't been dancing much."
He answered her politely, and walked on. He braced himself against the wall, the strain completely broken. She hadn't told. She hadn't demanded that her mother take her home. She hadn't said: "Betty, what kind of men do you ask to your dances?" Why hadn't she? Again he saw his big, well-clothed figure in a glass, and he smiled. Was it because he was already transformed?
Here she came, dancing with Goodhue, and Goodhue seemed trying to lead her close. George didn't understand at first that he silently asked for news of Dalrymple. His own eyes studied Sylvia. Her face held too much colour. She gave him back his challenge, but the contempt in her eyes broadened his smile. He managed a reassuring nod to Goodhue, but Dalrymple, for the time, was of no importance. Sylvia was going to fight, and not like a spoiled child. He must have impressed her as being worthy of a real fight.
He faced the rest of the evening with new confidence. He forgot to be over-careful with these people whose actions were unstudied. He dodged across the floor and took Betty from Lambert Planter while Lambert raised his eyebrows, relinquished her with pronounced reluctance, and watched George guide her swiftly away. Maybe Lambert was right, and he ought to tell Betty, but not now. To-night, against all his expectations, he found himself having a good time, enjoying more than anything else this intimate and exhilarating progress with Betty. Always he hated to give her up, but he danced with other girls, and found they liked to dance with him because he was big, and danced well, and was Dicky Goodhue's friend and Betty's, and played football; but, since he couldn't very well ask Sylvia, he only really cared to dance with Betty.
He was at Betty's table for supper. He didn't like to hear these pretty girls laughing about Dalrymple, but then with them Dalrymple must have exercised a good deal of restraint. It ought to be possible to make them see the ugly side, to bare the man's instinct to go from this party to another. Then they wouldn't laugh.
Lambert sat down for awhile.
"Where's Sylvia?" Betty asked.
Lambert shrugged his shoulders.
"It's hard enough to keep track of you, Betty. Sylvia's a sister."
George gathered that Sylvia's absence from that table had impressed them both. He knew very well where she was, across the room, focus for as large a gathering as Betty's, chiefly of young men, eager for her brilliancy. Lambert went on, glancing at George his questions of the smoking-room.
It wasn't long before the dawn when George said polite things with Goodhue and Wandel, and after their pattern. In the lower hall he noticed that all these pleasure seekers, a while ago flushed and happy, had undergone a devastating change. Faces were white. Gowns looked rumpled and old. The laughter and chatter were no longer impulsive.
"The way one feels after a hard game," he thought.
Goodhue offered to take Wandel in and drop him. The little man alone seemed as fresh and neat as at the start of the evening.
"Had a good time, great person?" he asked as they drove off. "But then why shouldn't great men always have good times?"
Wandel's manner suggested that he had seen to George's good time. What he had actually done was to involve him in an open hostility with Dalrymple. The others didn't mention that youth. Was there a tactful thought for him in their restraint?
They left Wandel at an expensive bachelor apartment house overlooking the park. George gathered from Goodhue, as they drove on, that Wandel's attitude toward his family was that of an old and confidential friend.
"You see Driggs always has to be his own master," he said.
Because of the restless contrast of that trip George brought back to Princeton a new appreciation; yet beneath the outer beauty there, he knew, a man's desires and ambitions lost none of their ugliness. He stared at Sylvia's portrait, but it made him want the living body that he had touched, that was going to give him a decent fight. Already he planned for other opportunities to meet her, although with her attitude what it was he didn't see how he could use them to advance his cause; and always there was the possibility of her resenting his persistence to the point of changing her mind about telling.
He had decided to avoid Dalrymple as far as possible, but that first night, as he drowsed over a book, he heard a knock at his door, not loud, and suggestive of reluctance and indecision. He hid the photograph and the riding crop, and called:
"Come in!"
The door opened slowly. Dalrymple stood on the threshold, his weak face white and perverse. George waited, watching him conquer a bitter disinclination. He knew what was coming and how much worse it would make matters between them.
"It seems," the tortured man said, "that I was beastly rude to you last night. I've come to say I didn't mean it and am sorry."
"You've come," George said, quietly, "because Goodhue and Wandel have made you, through threats, I daresay. If you hadn't meant it you wouldn't have been rude in just that way. I'm grateful to Goodhue and Wandel, but I won't have your apologies, because they don't mean a damn thing."
Dalrymple's face became evil. He started to back out.
"Wait a minute," George commanded. "You don't like me because I'm working my way through college. That's what you shot at me last night when you'd drunk enough to give you the nerve, but it's been in your mind all along. I'd pound a little common-sense and decency into you, only I wouldn't feel clean after doing it."
That, to an extent, broke down his severity. It sounded queer, from him. If Lambert Planter could have heard him say that!
"Let the others think they've done us a good turn," he went on. "We have to live in the same class without clawing each other's faces every time we meet, but you can't pull the wool over my eyes, and I won't try to pull it over yours. Now get out, and don't come here alone again."
He felt better and cleaner after that. When Dalrymple had gone he finished his chapter and tumbled into bed.
George was glad of the laundry, indeed, as the holidays approached. It gave him a sound excuse for not dashing joyously from Princeton with the rest, but it didn't cure the depression with which he saw the college empty. He wandered about a campus as deserted as a city swept by pestilence, asking himself what he would have done if his father and mother hadn't exiled him as thoroughly as Old Planter had. There was no point thinking about that; it wasn't even a question. He took long walks or stayed in his room, reading, and once or twice answering regretfully invitations that had sprung from encounters at Betty's party. It was nice to have them, but of course he couldn't go to such affairs alone just yet. Besides, he didn't have the money.
Squibs Bailly limped all the way up his stairs one day, scolding him for sulking in his tent.
"I only heard last night that you were in town. I'm not psychic. Why haven't you been around?"
"I didn't want to bother——"
Bailly interrupted him.
"I'm afraid I didn't appreciate you went quite so much alone."
"Altogether alone," George said. "But I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me because of that. It has some advantages."
"You're too young to say such things," Bailly said.
He made George go to the Dickinson Street house for Christmas dinner. There was no other guest. The rooms were bright with holly, and a very small but dazzling Christmas tree stood in a corner, bearing a gift for him. Mrs. Bailly, as he entered, touched his cheek with her lips and welcomed him by his first name. She created for him an illusion that made him choke a trifle. She made him feel as if he had come home.
"And," he thought, "Squibs and she know."
He wondered if it was that knowledge that made Squibs go into his social views one evening when he sat with him in the study. It was then that George realized he had no such views apart from his own case. Vaguely he knew that somewhere outside of Princeton strikes multiplied these days, that poor people complained of the cost of food and housing, that communistic propaganda was talked with an increasing freedom, that now and then a bomb burst, destroying more often than not the people it was designed to help. He saw that Squibs sought to interest him, and he gave a close attention while the tutor elaborated his slight knowledge of the growing unrest.
"But it's all so far away, sir," he said. "I've so much of more importance to me to bother about right here."
Bailly relighted his pipe.
"The happy, limited vision of youth!" he sighed. "You'll be through your a, b, c's before you know it. Are you going to face such big issues without any forethought?"
He smoked for a few moments, then commenced to speak doubtfully.
"And in another sense it isn't as far away as you think. It all goes onin petto, right here in undergraduate Princeton. The views a man takes away from college should be applicable to the conditions he meets outside."
"I don't quite see what you mean, sir."
Why was Bailly going at it so carefully?
"I mean," Bailly said, "that here you have your poor men, your earnest men, and your lords of the land. I mean there is no real community of interest here. I mean you've made friends because you're bigger and better looking than most, and play football like a demon. You haven't made any friends simply because you are poor and earnest. And the poor students suffer from the cost of things, and the rich men don't know and don't care. And the poor men, and the men without family or a good school behind them, who haven't football or some outstanding usefulness, are as submerged as the workers in a mine. Prospect Street is Fifth Avenue or Park Lane, and the men who can't get in the clubs, because of poverty or lack of prominence, remind me of the ragged ones who cling to the railings, peering through at plenty with evil in their hearts."
"You're advocating communism, sir?"
Bailly shook his head.
"I'm advocating nothing. I'm trying to find out what you advocate."
"I can't help feeling," George said, stubbornly, "that a man has to look after himself."
And as he walked home he confessed freely enough in his own mind:
"I'm advocating George Morton. How can Squibs expect me to bother with any one else when I have so far to go?"
He thrust Squibs' uncomfortable prods from his brain. He applied himself to his books—useful books. Education and culture were more important to him than the physical reactions of overworked labour or the mental processes of men who advocated violence. Such distracting questions, however, were uncomfortably in the air. Allen, one of the poor men against whom the careful Rogers had warned him long ago, called on him one cold night. The manner of his address made George wonder if Squibs had been talking to him, too.
"Would like a few minutes' chat, Morton. No one worth while's in Princeton. It won't queer you to have me in your room."
No, George decided. That was an opening one might expect from Allen. The man projected an appreciable power from his big, bony figure; his angular face. George had heard vaguely that he had worked in a factory, preparing himself for college. He knew from his own observation that Allen wasn't above waiting at commons, and he had seen the lesser men turn to him as a leader.
"Sit down," George said, "and don't talk like an ass. You can't queer me. What do you want me to do—offer to walk to classes with my arm over your shoulder? There's too much of that sensitive talk going around."
"You're a plain speaker," Allen said. "So am I. You'll admit you've seen a lot more of the pretty crowd than you have of me and my friends. I thought it might be useful to ask you why."
"Because," George answered, "I'm in college to get everything I can. You and your crowd don't happen to have the stuff I want."
Allen fingered a book nervously.
"I came," he said, "to see if I couldn't persuade you that we have."
"I'm listening," George said, indifferently.
"Right on the table!" Allen answered, quickly. "You're the biggest poor man in the class. You're logically the poor men's Moses. They admire you. You've always been talked of in terms of the varsity. Everybody knows you're Princeton's best football player. The poor men would do anything for you. What will you do for them?"
"I won't have you split the class that way," George cried.
"Every class," Allen said, "is split along that line, only this class is going to let the split be seen. You work your way through college, but you run with a rich crowd, led by the hand of Driggs Wandel."
So even Allen had noticed that and had become curious.
"Wandel," Allen went on, "will use you to hurt us—the poor men; and when he's had what he wants of you he'll send you back to the muck heap."
George shook his head, smiling.
"No, because you've said yourself that whatever power I have comes from football and not from an empty pocket-book."
"Use all the power you have," Allen urged. "Come in with us. Help the poor men, and we'll know how to reward you."
"You're already thinking of Sophomore elections?" George asked. "I don't care particularly for office."
Allen's face reddened with anger.
"I'm thinking of the clubs first. What I said when I came in is true. The selfish men intriguing for Prospect Street don't dare be friendly with the poor men; afraid it might hurt their chances to be seen with a poler. By God, that's vicious! It denies us the companionship we've come to college to find. We want all the help we can get here. The clubs are a hideous hindrance. Promise me you'll keep away from the clubs."
George laughed.
"I haven't made up my mind about the clubs," he said. "They have bad features, but there's good in them. The club Goodhue joins will be the best club of our time in college. Suppose you knew you could get an election to that; would you turn it down?"
The angular face became momentarily distorted.
"I won't consider an impossible situation. Anyway, I couldn't afford it. That's another bad feature. If you want, I'll say no, a thousand times no."
"I wouldn't trust you," George laughed, "but you know you haven't a chance. So you want to smash the thing you can't get in. I callthatvicious. And let me tell you, Allen. You may reform things out of existence, but you can't destroy them with a bomb. Squibs Bailly will tell you that."
"You think you'll make a good club," Allen said.
"I'll tell you what I think," George answered, quite unruffled, "when I make up my mind to stand for or against the clubs. Squibs says half the evils in the world come from precipitancy. You're precipitate. Thrash it out carefully, as I'm doing."
He wondered if he had convinced Allen, knowing very well that his own attitude would be determined by the outcome of the chance he had to enter Goodhue's club.
"We've got to make up our minds now," Allen said. "Promise me that you'll keep out of the clubs and I'll make you the leader of the class. You're in a position to bring the poor men to the top for once."
George didn't want to break with Allen. The man did control a large section of the class, so he sent him away amicably enough, merely repeating that he hadn't made up his mind; and ending with:
"But I won't be controlled by any faction."
Allen left, threatening to talk with him again.
George didn't sleep well that night. Squibs and Allen had made him uncomfortable. Finally he cleared his mind with the reflection that his private attitude was determined. No matter whom it hurt he was going to be one of the fortunates with a whip in his hand; but he, above most people, could understand the impulses of men like Allen, and the restless ones in the world, who didn't hold a whip, and so desired feverishly to spring.