The football season lasted from the first of October to the latter part of November, and during those weeks little was talked about, or even thought about, on the campus but football. There were undergraduates who knew the personnel of virtually every football team in the country, the teams that had played against each other, their relative merits, the various scores, the outstanding players of each position. Half the students at Sanford regularly made out "All American" teams, and each man was more than willing to debate the quality of his team against that of any other. Night after night the students gathered in groups in dormitory rooms and fraternity houses, discussing football, football, football; even religion and sex, the favorite topics for "bull sessions," could not compete with football, especially when some one mentioned Raleigh College. Raleigh was Sanford's ancient rival; to defeat her was of cosmic importance.
There was a game every Saturday. About half the time the team played at home; the other games were played on the rivals' fields. No matter how far away the team traveled, the college traveled with it. The men who had the necessary money went by train; a few owned automobiles: but most of the undergraduates had neither an automobile nor money for train fare. They "bummed" their way. Some of them emulated professional tramps, and "rode the beams," but most of them started out walking, trusting that kind-hearted motorists would pick them up and carry them at least part way to their destination. Although the distances were sometimes great, and although many motorists are not kind, there is no record of any man who ever started for a game not arriving in time for the referee's first whistle. Somehow, by hook or by crook—and it was often by crook—the boys got there, and, what is more astonishing, they got back. On Monday morning at 8:45 they were in chapel, usually worn and tired, it is true, ready to bluff their way through the day's assignments, and damning any instructor who was heartless enough to give them a quiz. Some of them were worn out from really harsh traveling experiences; some of them had more exciting adventures to relate behind closed doors to selected groups of confidants.
Football! Nothing else mattered. And as the weeks passed, the excitement grew, especially as the day drew near for the Raleigh game, which this year was to be played on the Sanford field. What were Sanford's chances? Would Harry Slade, Sanford's great half-back, make All American? "Damn it to hell, he ought to. It'll be a stinkin' shame if he don't." Would Raleigh's line be able to stop Slade's end runs? Slade! Slade! He was the team, the hope and adoration of the whole college.
Three days before the "big game" the alumni began to pour into town, most of them fairly recent graduates, but many of them gray-haired men who boasted that they hadn't missed a Sanford-Raleigh game in thirty years. Hundreds of alumni arrived, filling the two hotels to capacity and overrunning the fraternity houses, the students doubling up or seeking hospitality from a friend in a dormitory.
In the little room in the rear of the Sanford Pool and Billiard Parlors there was almost continual excitement. Jim McCarty, the proprietor, a big, jovial, red-faced man whom all the students called Mac, was the official stake-holder for the college. Bets for any amount could be placed with him. Money from Raleigh flowed into his pudgy hands, and he placed it at the odds offered with eager Sanford takers. By the day of the game his safe held thousands of dollars, most of it wagered at five to three, Raleigh offering odds. There was hardly an alumnus who did not prove his loyalty to Sanford by visiting Mac's back room and putting down a few greenbacks, at least. Some were more loyal than others; the most loyal placed a thousand dollars—at five to two.
There was rain for two days before the game, but on Friday night the clouds broke. A full moon seemed to shine them away, and the whole campus rejoiced with great enthusiasm. Most of the alumni got drunk to show their deep appreciation to the moon, and many of the undergraduates followed the example set by their elders.
All Friday afternoon girls had been arriving, dozens of them, to attend the fraternity dances. One dormitory had been set aside for them, the normal residents seeking shelter in other dormitories. No man ever objected to resigning his room to a girl. He never could tell what he would find when he returned to it Monday morning. Some of the girls left strange mementos....
No one except a few notorious grinds studied that night. Some of the students were, of course, at the fraternity dances; some of them sat in dormitory rooms and discussed the coming game from every possible angle; and groups of them wandered around the campus, peering into the fraternity houses, commenting on the girls, wandering on humming a song that an orchestra had been playing, occasionally pausing to give a "regular cheer" for the moon.
Hugh was too much excited to stay in a room; so with several other freshmen he traveled the campus. He passionately envied the dancers in the fraternity houses but consoled himself with the thought, "Maybe I'll be dancing at the Nu Delt house next year." Then he had a spasm of fright. Perhaps the Nu Delts—perhaps no fraternity would bid him. The moon lost its brilliance; for a moment even the Sanford-Raleigh game was forgotten.
The boys were standing before a fraternity house, and as the music ceased, Jack Collings suggested: "Let's serenade them. You lead, Hugh."
Hugh had a sweet, light tenor voice. It was not at all remarkable, just clear and true; but he had easily made the Glee Club and had an excellent chance to be chosen freshman song-leader.
Collings had brought a guitar with him. He handed it to Hugh, who, like most musical undergraduates, could play both a guitar and a banjo. "Sing that 'I arise from dreams of thee' thing that you were singing the other night. We'll hum."
Hugh slipped the cord around his neck, tuned the guitar, and then thrummed a few opening chords. His heart was beating at double time; he was very happy: he was serenading girls at a fraternity dance. Couples were strolling out upon the veranda, the girls throwing warm wraps over their shoulders, the men lighting cigarettes and tossing the burnt matches on the lawn. Their white shirt-fronts gleamed eerily in the pale light cast by the Japanese lanterns with which the veranda was hung.
Hugh began to sing Shelley's passionate lyric, set so well to music by Tod B. Galloway. His mother had taught him the song, and he loved it.
"I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me—who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, Sweet!"
Two of the boys, who had heard Hugh sing the song before, hummed a soft accompaniment. When he began the second verse several more began to hum; they had caught the melody. The couples on the veranda moved quietly to the porch railing, their chatter silent, their attention focused on a group of dim figures standing in the shadow of an elm. Hugh was singing well, better than he ever had before. Neither he nor his audience knew that the lyric was immortal, but its tender, passionate beauty caught and held them.
"The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream—
The champak odors fail
Like sweet-thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine
O beloved as thou art!
"Oh lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my cheeks and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
Oh! press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last."
There was silence for a moment after Hugh finished. The shadows, the moonlight, the boy's soft young voice had moved them all. Suddenly a girl on the veranda cried, "Bring him up!" Instantly half a dozen others turned to their escorts, insisting shrilly: "Bring him up. We want to see him."
Hugh jerked the guitar cord from around his neck, banded the instrument to Collings, and tried to run. A burst of laughter went up from the freshmen. They caught him and held him fast until the Tuxedo-clad upper-classmen rushed down from the veranda and had him by the arms. They pulled him, protesting and struggling, upon the veranda and into the living-room.
The girls gathered around him, praising, demanding more. He flushed scarlet when one enthusiastic maiden forced her way through the ring, looked hard at him, and then announced positively, "I think he's sweet." He was intensely embarrassed, in an agony of confusion—but very happy. The girls liked his clean blondness, his blushes, his startled smile. How long they would have held him there in the center of the ring while they admired and teased him, there is no telling; but suddenly the orchestra brought relief by striking up a fox-trot.
"He's mine!" cried a pretty black-eyed girl with a cloud of bobbed hair and flaming cheeks. Her slender shoulders were bare; her round white arms waved in excited, graceful gestures; her corn-colored frock was a gauzy mist. She clutched Hugh's arm. "He's mine," she repeated shrilly. "He's going to dance with me."
Hugh's cheeks burned a deeper scarlet. "My clothes," he muttered, hesitating.
"Your clothes! My dear, you look sweet. Take off your cap and dance with me."
Hugh snatched off his cap, his mind reeling with shame, but he had no time to think. The girl pulled him through the crowd to a clear floor. Almost mechanically, Hugh put his arm around her and began to dance. Hecoulddance, and the girl had sense enough not to talk. She floated in his arm, her slender body close to his. When the music ceased, she clapped her little hands excitedly and told Hugh that he danced "won-der-ful-ly." After the third encore she led him to a dark corner in the hall.
"You're sweet, honey," she said softly. She turned her small, glowing face up to his. "Kiss me," she commanded.
Dazed, Hugh gathered her into his arms and kissed her little red mouth. She clung to him for a minute and then pushed him gently away.
"Good night, honey," she whispered.
"Good night." Hugh's voice broke huskily. He turned and walked rapidly down the hall, upon the veranda, and down the steps. His classmates were waiting for him. They rushed up to him, demanding that he tell them what had happened.
He told them most of it, especially about the dance; but he neglected to mention the kiss. Shyness overcame any desire that he had to strut. Besides, there was something about that kiss that made it impossible for him to tell any one, even Carl. When he went to bed that night, he did not think once about the coming football game. Before his eyes floated the girl in the corn-colored frock. He wished he knew her name.... Closer and closer she came to him. He could feel her cool arms around his neck. "What a wonderful, wonderful girl! Sweeter than Helen—lots sweeter.... She's like the night—and moonlight.... Like moonlight and—" The music of the "Indian Serenade" began to thrill through his mind:
"I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night....
Oh, she's sweet, sweet—like music and moonlight...." He fell asleep, repeating "music and moonlight" over and over again—"music and moonlight...."
The morning of the "big game" proved ideal, crisp and cold, crystal clear. Indian summer was near its close, but there was still something of its dreamy wonder in the air, and the hills still flamed with glorious autumn foliage. The purples, the mauves, the scarlets, the burnt oranges were a little dimmed, a little less brilliant—the leaves were rustling dryly now—but there was beauty in dying autumn, its splendor slowly fading, as there was in its first startling burst of color.
Classes that Saturday morning were a farce, but they were held; the administration, which the boys damned heartily, insisted upon it. Some of the instructors merely took the roll and dismissed their classes, feeling that honor had been satisfied; but others held their classes through the hour, lecturing the disgusted students on their lack of interest, warning them that examinations weren't as far off as the millennium.
Hugh felt that he was lucky; he had only one class—it was with Alling in Latin—and it had been promptly dismissed. "When the day comes," said Alling, "that Latin can compete with football, I'll—well, I'll probably get a living wage. You had better go before I get to talking about a living wage. It is one of my favorite topics." He waved his hand toward the door; the boys roared with delight and rushed out of the room, shoving each other and laughing. They ran out of the building; all of them were too excited to walk.
By half-past one the stands were filled. Most of the girls wore fur coats, as did many of the alumni, but the students sported no such luxuries; nine tenths of them wore "baa-baa coats," gray jackets lined with sheep's wool. Except for an occasional banner, usually carried by a girl, and the bright hats of the women, there was little color to the scene. The air was sharp, and the spectators huddled down into their warm coats.
The rival cheering sections, seated on opposite sides of the field, alternated in cheering and singing, each applauding the other's efforts. The cheering wasn't very good, and the singing was worse; but there was a great deal of noise, and that was about all that mattered to either side.
A few minutes before two, the Raleigh team ran upon the field. The Raleigh cheering section promptly went mad. When the Sanford team appeared a minute later, the Sanford cheering section tried its best to go madder, the boys whistling and yelling like possessed demons. Wayne Gifford brought them to attention by holding his hands above his head. He called for the usual regular cheer for the team and then for a short cheer for each member of it, starting with the captain, Sherman Walford, and ending with the great half-back, Harry Slade.
Suddenly there was silence. The toss-up had been completed; the teams were in position on the field. Slade had finished building a slender pyramid of mud, on which he had balanced the ball. The referee held up his hand. "Are you ready, Sanford?" Walford signaled his readiness. "Are you ready, Raleigh?"
The shrill blast of the referee's whistle—and the game was on. The first half was a see-saw up and down the field. Near the end of the half Raleigh was within twenty yards of the Sanford line. Shouts of "Score! Score! Score!" went up from the Raleigh rooters, rhythmic, insistent. "Hold 'em! Hold 'em! Fight! Fight! Fight!" the Sanford cheering section pleaded, almost sobbing the words. A forward pass skilfully completed netted Raleigh sixteen yards. "Fight! Fight! Fight!"
The timekeeper tooted his little horn; the half was over. For a moment the Sanford boys leaned back exhausted; then they leaped to their feet and yelled madly, while the Raleigh boys leaned back or against each other and swore fervently. Within two minutes the tension had departed. The rival cheering sections alternated in singing songs, applauded each other vigorously, whistled at a frightened dog that tried to cross the field and nearly lost its mind entirely when called by a thousand masters, waited breathlessly when the cheer-leaders announced the results from other football games that had been telegraphed to the field, applauded if Harvard was losing, groaned if it wasn't, sang some more, relaxed and felt consummately happy.
Sanford immediately took the offensive in the second half. Slade was consistently carrying the ball. Twice he brought it within Raleigh's twenty-five-yard line. The first time Raleigh held firm, but the second time Slade stepped back for a drop-kick. The spectators sat silent, breathless. The angle was difficult. Could he make it? Would the line hold?
Quite calmly Slade waited. The center passed the ball neatly. Slade turned it in his hands, paid not the slightest attention to the mad struggle going on a few feet in front of him, dropped the ball—and kicked. The ball rose in a graceful arc and passed safely between the goal-posts.
Every one, men and women alike, the Raleigh adherents excepted, promptly turned into extraordinarily active lunatics. The women waved their banners and shrieked, or if they had no banners, they waved their arms and shrieked; the men danced up and down, yelled, pounded each other on the back, sometimes wildly embraced—many a woman was kissed by a man she had never seen before and never would again, nor did she object—Wayne Gifford was turning handsprings, and many of the students were feebly fluttering their hands, voiceless, spent with cheering, weak from excitement.
Early in the fourth quarter, however, Raleigh got its revenge, carrying the ball to a touch-down after a series of line rushes. Sanford tried desperately to score again, but its best efforts were useless against the Raleigh defense.
The final whistle blew; and Sanford had lost. Cheering wildly, tossing their hats into the air, the Raleigh students piled down from the grand stand upon the field. With the cheer-leaders at the head, waving their megaphones, the boys rapidly formed into a long line in uneven groups, holding arms, dancing, shouting, winding in and out around the field, between the goal-posts, tossing their hats over the bars, waving their hands at the Sanford men standing despondently in their places—in and out, in and out, in the triumphant serpentine. Finally they paused, took off their hats, cheered first their own team, then the Sanford team, and then sang their hymn while the Sanford men respectfully uncovered, silent and despairing.
When the hymn was over, the Sanford men quietly left the grand stand, quietly formed into a long line in groups of fours, quietly marched to the college flagpole in the center of the campus. A Sanford banner was flying from the pole, a blue banner with an orange S. Wayne Gifford loosened the ropes. Down fluttered the banner, and the boys reverently took off their hats. Gifford caught the banner before it touched the ground and gathered it into his arms. The song-leader stepped beside him. He lifted his hand, sang a note, and then the boys sang with him, huskily, sadly, some of them with tears streaming down their cheeks:
"Sanford, Sanford, mother of men,
Love us, guard us, hold us true.
Let thy arms enfold us;
Let thy truth uphold us.
Queen of colleges, mother of men—
Alma mater, Sanford—hail!
Alma mater—Hail!—Hail!"
Slowly the circle broke into small groups that straggled wearily across the campus. Hugh, with two or three others, was walking behind two young professors—one of them, Alling, the other, Jones of the economics department. Hugh was almost literally broken-hearted; the defeat lay on him like an awful sorrow that never could be lifted. Every inch of him ached, but his despair was greater than his physical pain. The sharp, clear voice of Jones broke into his half-deadened consciousness.
"I can't understand all this emotional excitement," said Jones crisply. "A football game is a football game, not a national calamity. I enjoy the game myself, but why weep over it? I don't think I ever saw anything more absurd than those boys singing with tears running into their mouths."
Shocked, the boys looked at each other. They started to make angry remarks but paused as Alling spoke.
"Of course, what you say, Jones, is quite right," he remarked calmly, "quite right. But, do you know, I pity you."
"Alling's a good guy," Hugh told Carl later; "he's human."
After the Sanford-Raleigh game, the college seemed to be slowly dying. The boys held countless post-mortems over the game, explaining to each other just how it had been lost or how it could have been won. They watched the newspapers eagerly as the sport writers announced their choice for the so-called All American team. If Slade was on the team, the writer was conceded to "know his dope"; if Slade wasn't, the writer was a "dumbbell." But all this pseudo-excitement was merely picking at the covers; there was no real heart in it. Gradually the football talk died down; freshmen ceased to write themes about Sanford's great fighting spirit; sex and religion once more became predominant at the "bull sessions."
Studies, too, began to find a place in the sun. Hour examinations were coming, and most of the boys knew that they were miserably prepared. Lights were burning in fraternity houses and dormitories until late at night, and mighty little of their glow was shed on poker parties and crap games. The college had begun to study.
When Hugh finally calmed down and took stock, he was horrified and frightened to discover how far he was behind in all his work. He had done his lessons sketchily from day to day, but he really knew nothing about them, and he knew that he didn't. Since Morse's departure, he had loafed, trusting to luck and the knowledge he had gained in high school. So far he had escaped a summons from the dean, but he daily expected one, and the mere thought of hour examinations made him shiver. He studied hard for a week, succeeding only in getting gloriously confused and more frightened. The examinations proved to be easier than he had expected; he didn't fail in any of them, but he did not get a grade above a C.
The examination flurry passed, and the college was left cold. Nothing seemed to happen. The boys went to the movies every night, had a peanut fight, talked to the shadowy actors; they played cards, pool, and billiards, or shot craps; Saturday nights many of them went to a dance at Hastings, a small town five miles away; they held bull sessions and discussed everything under the sun and some things beyond it; they attended a performance of Shaw's "Candida" given by the Dramatic Society and voted it a "wet" show; and, incidentally, some of them studied. But, all in all, life was rather tepid, and most of the boys were merely marking time and waiting for Christmas vacation.
For Hugh the vacation came and went with a rush. It was glorious to get home again, glorious to see his father and mother, and, at first, glorious to see Helen Simpson. But Helen had begun to pall; her kisses hardly compensated for her conversation. She gave him a little feeling of guilt, too, which he tried to argue away. "Kissing isn't really wrong. Everybody pets; at least, Carl says they do. Helen likes it but...." Always that "but" intruded itself. "But it doesn't seem quite right when—I don't really love her." When he kissed her for the last time before returning to college, he had a distinct feeling of relief: well, that would be off his mind for a while, anyway.
It was a sober, quiet crowd of students—for the first time they were students—that returned to their desks after the vacation. The final examinations were ahead of them, less than a month away; and those examinations hung over their heads like the relentless, glittering blade of a guillotine. The boys studied. "College life" ceased; there was a brief period of education.
Of course, they did not desert the movies, and the snow and ice claimed them. Part of Indian Lake was scraped free of snow, and every clear afternoon hundreds of boys skated happily, explaining afterward that they had to have some exercise if they were going to be able to study. On those afternoons the lake was a pretty sight, zestful, alive with color. Many of the men wore blue sweaters, some of them brightly colored Mackinaws, all of them knitted toques. As soon as the cold weather arrived, the freshmen had been permitted to substitute blue toques with orange tassels for their "baby bonnets." The blue and orange stood out vividly against the white snow-covered hills, and the skates rang sharply as they cut the glare ice.
There was snow-shoeing, skiing, and sliding "to keep a fellow fit so that he could do good work in his exams," but much as the boys enjoyed the winter sports, a black pall hung over the college as the examination period drew nearer and nearer. The library, which had been virtually deserted all term, suddenly became crowded. Every afternoon and evening its big tables were filled with serious-faced lads earnestly bending over books, making notes, running their fingers through their hair, occasionally looking up with dazed eyes, or twisting about miserably.
The tension grew greater and greater. The upper-classmen were quiet and businesslike, but most of the freshmen were frankly terrified. A few of them packed their trunks and slunk away, and a few more openly scorned the examinations and their frightened classmates; but they were the exceptions. All the buoyancy seemed gone out of the college; nothing was left but an intense strain. The dormitories were strangely quiet at night. There was no playing of golf in the hallways, no rolling of bats down the stairs, no shouting, no laughter; a man who made any noise was in danger of a serious beating. Even the greetings as the men passed each other on the campus were quiet and abstracted. They ceased to cut classes. Everybody attended, and everybody paid close attention even to the most tiresome instructors.
Studious seniors began to reap a harvest out of tutoring sections. The meetings were a dollar "a throw," and for another dollar a student could get a mimeographed outline of a course. But the tutoring sections were only for the "plutes" or the athletes, many of whom were subsidized by fraternities or alumni. Most of the students had to learn their own lessons; so they often banded together in small groups to make the task less arduous, finding some relief in sociability.
The study groups, quite properly called seminars, would have shocked many a worthy professor had he been able to attend one; but they were truly educative, and to many students inspiring. The professor had planted the seed of wisdom with them; it was at the seminars that they tried honestly, if somewhat hysterically and irreverently, to make it grow.
Hugh did most of his studying alone, fearing that the seminars would degenerate into bull sessions, as many of them did; but Carl insisted that he join one group that was going "to wipe up that goddamned English course to-night."
There were only five men at the seminar, which met in Surrey 19, because Pudge Jamieson, who was "rating" an A in the course and was therefore an authority, said that he wouldn't come if there were any more. Pudge, as his nickname suggests, was plump. He was a round-faced, jovial youngster who learned everything with consummate ease, wrote with great fluency and sometimes real beauty, peered through his horn-rimmed spectacles amusedly at the world, and read every "smut" book that he could lay his hands on. His library of erotica was already famous throughout the college, his volumes of Balzac's "Droll Stories," Rabelais complete, "Mlle. de Maupin," Burton's "Arabian Nights," and the "Decameron" being in constant demand. He could tell literally hundreds of dirty stories, always having a new one on tap, always looking when he told it like a complacent cherub.
There were two other men in the seminar. Freddy Dickson, an earnest, anemic youth, seemed to be always striving for greater acceleration and never gaining it; or as Pudge put it, "The trouble with Freddy is that he's always shifting gears." Larry Stillwell, the last man, was a dark, handsome youth with exceedingly regular features, pomaded hair parted in the center and shining sleekly, fine teeth, and rich coloring: a "smooth" boy who prided himself on his conquests and the fact that he never got a grade above a C in his courses. There was no man in the freshman class with a finer mind, but he declined to study, declaring firmly that he could not waste his time acquiring impractical tastes for useless arts.
"Now everybody shut up," said Pudge, seating himself in a big chair and laboriously crossing one leg over the other. "Put some more wood on the fire, Hugh, will you?"
Hugh stirred up the fire, piled on a log or so, and then returned to his chair, hoping against belief that something really would be accomplished in the seminar. All the boys, he excepted, were smoking, and all of them were lolling back in dangerously comfortable attitudes.
"We've got to get going," Pudge continued, "and we aren't going to get anything done if we just sit around and bull. I'm the prof, and I'm going to ask questions. Now, don't bull. If you don't know, just say, 'No soap,' and if you do know, shoot your dope." He grinned. "How's that for a rime?"
"Atta boy!" Carl exclaimed enthusiastically.
"Shut up! Now, the stuff we want to get at to-night is the poetry. No use spending any time on the composition. My prof said that we would have to write themes in the exam, but we can't do anything about that here. You're all getting by on your themes, anyway, aren't you?"
"Yeah," the listening quartet answered in unison, Larry Stillwell adding dubiously, "Well, I'm getting C's."
"Larry," said Carl in cold contempt, "you're a goddamn liar. I saw a B on one of your themes the other day and an A on another. What are you always pulling that low-brow stuff for?"
Larry had the grace to blush. "Aw," he explained in some confusion, "my prof's full of hooey. He doesn't know a C theme from an A one. He makes me sick. He—"
"Aw, shut up!" Freddy Dickson shouted. "Let's get going; let's get going. We gotta learn this poetry. Damn! I don't know anything about it. I didn't crack the book till two days ago."
Pudge took charge again. "Close your gabs, everybody," he commanded sternly. "There's no sense in going over the prose lit. You can do that better by yourselves. God knows I'm not going to waste my time telling you bone-heads what Carlyle means by a hero. If you don't know Odin from Mohammed by this time, you can roast in Dante's hell for all of me. Now listen; the prof said that they were going to make us place lines, and, of course, they'll expect us to know what the poems are about. Hell! how some of the boys are going to fox 'em." He paused to laugh. "Jim Hicks told me this afternoon that 'Philomela' was by Shakspere." The other boys did not understand the joke, but they all laughed heartily.
"Now," he went on, "I'll give you the name of a poem, and then you tell me what it's about and who wrote it."
He leafed rapidly through an anthology. "Carl, who wrote 'Kubla Khan'?"
Carl puffed his pipe meditatively. "I'm going to fox you, Pudge," he said, frankly triumphant; "I know. Coleridge wrote it. It seems to be about a Jew who built a swell joint for a wild woman or something like that. I can't make much out of the damn thing."
"That's enough. Smack for Carl," said Pudge approvingly. "Smack" meant that the answer was satisfactory. "Freddy, who wrote 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'?"
Freddy twisted in his chair, thumped his head with his knuckles, and finally announced with a groan of despair, "No soap."
"Hugh?"
"No soap."
"Larry?"
"Well," drawled Larry, "I think Jawn Keats wrote it. It's one of those bedtime stories with a kick. A knight gets picked up by a jane. He puts her on his prancing steed and beats it for the tall timber. Keats isn't very plain about what happened there, but I suspect the worst. Anyhow, the knight woke up the next morning with an awful rotten taste in his mouth."
"Smack for Larry. Your turn, Carl. Who wrote 'The West Wind'?"
"You can't get me on that boy Masefield, Pudge. I know all his stuff. There isn't any story; it's just about the west wind, but it's a goddamn good poem. It's the cat's pajamas."
"You said it, Carl," Hugh chimed in, "but I like 'Sea Fever' better.
"I must go down to the seas again,
To the lonely sea and the sky....
Gosh! that's hot stuff. 'August, 1914' 's a peach, too."
"Yeah," agreed Larry languidly; "I got a great kick when the prof read that in class. Masefield's all right. I wish we had more of his stuff and less of Milton. Lord Almighty, how I hate Milton! What th' hell do they have to give us that tripe for?"
"Oh, let's get going," Freddy pleaded, running a nervous hand through his mouse-colored hair. "Shoot a question, Pudge."
"All right, Freddy." Pudge tried to smile wickedly but succeeded only in looking like a beaming cherub. "Tell us who wrote the 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.' Cripes! what a title!"
Freddy groaned. "I know that Wadsworth wrote it, but that is all that I do know about it."
"Wordsworth, Freddy," Carl corrected him. "Wordsworth. Henry W. Wordsworth."
"Gee, Carl, thanks. I thought it was William."
There was a burst of laughter, and then Pudge explained. "It is William, Freddy. Don't let Peters razz you. Just for that, Carl, you tell what it's about."
"No soap," said Carl decisively.
"I know," Hugh announced, excited and pleased.
"Shoot!"
"Well, it's this reincarnation business. Wordsworth thought you lived before you came on to this earth, and everything was fine when you were a baby but it got worse when you got older. That's about all. It's kinda bugs, but I like some of it."
"It isn't bugs," Pudge contradicted flatly; "it's got sense. You do lose something as you grow older, but you gain something, too. Wordsworth admits that. It's a wonderful poem, and you're dumbbells if you can't see it." He was very serious as he turned the pages of the book and laid his pipe on the table at his elbow. "Now listen. This stanza has the dope for the whole poem." He read the famous stanza simply and effectively:
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."
There was a moment's silence when he finished, and then Hugh said reverently: "That is beautiful. Read the last stanza, will you, Pudge?"
So Pudge read the last stanza, and then the boys got into an argument over the possible truth of the thesis of the poem. Freddy finally brought them back to the task in hand with his plaintive plea, "We've gotta get going." It was two o'clock in the morning when the seminar broke up, Hugh admitting to Carl after their visitors departed that he had not only learned a lot but that he had enjoyed the evening heartily.
The college grew quieter and quieter as the day for the examinations approached. There were seminars on everything, even on the best way to prepare cribs. Certain students with low grades and less honor would somehow gravitate together and discuss plans for "foxing the profs." Opinions differed. One man usually insisted that notes in the palm of the left hand were safe from detection, only to be met by the objection that they had to be written in ink, and if one's hand perspired, "and it was sure as hell to," nothing was left but an inky smear. Another held that a fellow could fasten a rubber band on his forearm and attach the notes to those, pulling them down when needed and then letting them snap back out of sight into safety. "But," one of the conspirators was sure to object, "what th' hell are you going to do if the band breaks?" Some of them insisted that notes placed in the inside of one's goloshes—all the students wore them but took them off in the examination-room—could be easily read. "Yeah, but the proctors are wise to that stunt." And soad infinitum. Eventually all the "stunts" were used and many more. Not that all the students cheated. Everything considered, the percentage of cheaters was not great, but those who did cheat usually spent enough time evolving ingenious methods of preparing cribs and in preparing them to have learned their lessons honestly and well.
The night before the first examinations the campus was utterly quiet. Suddenly bedlam broke loose. Somehow every dormitory that contained freshmen became a madhouse at the same time. Hugh and Carl were in Surrey 19 earnestly studying. Freddy Dickson flung the door open and shouted hysterically, "The general science exam's out!"
Hugh and Carl whirled around in their desk-chairs.
"What?" They shouted together.
"Yeah! One of the fellows saw it. A girl that works at the press copied down the exam and gave it to him."
"What fellow? Where's the exam?"
"I don't know who the guy is, but Hubert Manning saw the exam."
Hugh and Carl were out of their chairs in an instant, and the three boys rushed out of Surrey in search of Manning. They found him in his room telling a mob of excited classmates that he hadn't seen the exam but that Harry Smithson had. Away went the crowd in search of Smithson, Carl and Hugh and Freddy in the midst of the excited, chattering lads. Smithson hadn't seen the exam, but he had heard that Puddy McCumber had a copy.... Freshmen were running up and down stairs in the dormitories, shouting, "Have you seen the exam?" No, nobody had seen the exam, but some of the boys had been told definitely what the questions were going to be. No two seemed to agree on the questions, but everybody copied them down and then rushed on to search for abona fidecopy. They hurried from dormitory to dormitory, constantly shouting the same question, "Have you seen the exam?" There were men in every dormitory with a new list of questions, which were hastily scratched into note-books by the eager seekers. Until midnight the excitement raged; then the campus quieted down as the freshmen began to study the long lists of questions.
"God!" said Carl as he scanned his list hopelessly, "these damn questions cover everything in the course and some things that I know damn well weren't in it. What a lot of nuts we were. Let's go to bed."
"Carl," Hugh wailed despondently, "I'm going to flunk that exam. I can't answer a tenth of these questions. I can't go to bed; I've got to study. Oh, Lord!"
"Don't be a triple-plated jackass. Come on to bed. You'll just get woozy if you stay up any longer."
"All right," Hugh agreed wearily. He went to bed, but many of the boys stayed up and studied, some of them all night.
The examinations were held in the gymnasium. Hundreds of class-room chairs were set in even rows. Nothing else was there, not even the gymnasium apparatus. A few years earlier a wily student had sneaked into the gymnasium the night before an examination and written his notes on a dumbbell hanging on the wall. The next day he calmly chose the seat in front of the dumbbell—and proceeded to write a perfect examination. The annotated dumbbell was found later, and after that the walls were stripped clean of apparatus before the examinations began.
At a few minutes before nine the entire freshman class was grouped before the doors of the gymnasium, nervously talking, some of them glancing through their notes, others smoking—some of them so rapidly that the cigarettes seemed to melt, others walking up and down, muttering and mumbling; all of them so excited, so tense that they hardly knew what they were doing. Hugh was trying to think of a dozen answers to questions that popped into his head, and he couldn't think of anything.
Suddenly the doors were thrown open. Yelling, shoving each other about, fairly dancing in their eagerness and excitement, the freshmen rushed into the gymnasium. Hugh broke from the mob as quickly as possible, hurried to a chair, and snatched up a copy of the examination that was lying on its broad arm. At the first glance he thought that he could answer all the questions; a second glance revealed four that meant nothing to him. For a moment he was dizzy with hope and despair, and then, all at once, he felt quite calm. He pulled off his goloshes and prepared to go to work.
Within three minutes the noise had subsided. There was a rustling as the boys took off their baa-baa coats and goloshes, but after that there was no sound save the slow steps of the proctors pacing up and down the aisle. Once Hugh looked up, thinking desperately, almost seizing an idea that floated nebulous and necessary before him. A proctor that he knew caught his eye and smiled fatuously. Hugh did not smile back. He could have cried in his fury. The idea was gone forever.
Some of the students began to write immediately; some of them leaned back and stared at the ceiling; some of them chewed their pencils nervously; some of them leaned forward mercilessly pounding a knee; some of them kept running one or both hands through their hair; some of them wrote a little and then paused to gaze blankly before them or to tap their teeth with a pen or pencil: all of them were concentrating with an intensity that made the silence electric.
That proctor's idiotic smile had thrown Hugh's thoughts into what seemed hopeless confusion, but a small incident almost immediately brought order and relief. The gymnasium cat was wandering around the rear of the gymnasium. It attracted the attention of several of the students—and of a proctor. Being very careful not to make any noise, he picked up the cat and started for the door. Almost instantly every student looked up; and then the stamping began. Four hundred freshmen stamped in rhythm to the proctor's steps. He Hushed violently, tried vainly to look unconcerned, and finally disappeared through the door with the cat. Hugh had stamped lustily and laughed in great glee at the proctor's confusion; then he returned to his work, completely at ease, his nervousness gone.
One hour passed, two hours. Still the freshmen wrote; still the proctors paced up and down. Suddenly a proctor paused, stared intently at a youth who was leaning forward in his chair, walked quickly to him, and picked up one of his goloshes. The next instant he had a piece of paper in his hand and was, walking down the gymnasium after beckoning to the boy to follow him. The boy shoved his feet into his goloshes, pulled on his baa-baa coat, and, his face white and strained, marched down the aisle. The proctor spoke a few words to him at the door. He nodded, opened the door, left the gymnasium—and five hours later the college.
Thus the college for ten days: the better students moderately calm, the others cramming information into aching heads, drinking unbelievable quantities of coffee, sitting up, many of them, all night, attending seminars or tutoring sessions, working for long hours in the library, finally taking the examination, only to start a new nerve-racking grind in preparation for the next one.
If a student failed in a course, he received a "flunk notice" from the registrar's office within four days after the examination, so that four days after the last examination every student knew whether he had passed his courses or not. All those who failed to pass three courses were, as the students put it, "flunked out," or as the registrar put it, "their connection with the college was severed." Some of the flunkees took the news very casually, packed their trunks, sold their furniture, and departed; others frankly wept or hastened to their instructors to plead vainly that their grades be raised: all of them were required to leave Haydensville at once.
Hugh passed all of his courses but without distinction. His B in trigonometry did not give him great satisfaction inasmuch as he had received an A in exactly the same course in high school; nor was he particularly proud of his B in English, since he knew that with a little effort he could have "pulled" an A. The remainder of his grades were C's and D's, mostly D's. He felt almost as much ashamed as Freddy Dickson, who somehow hadn't "got going" and had been flunked out. Carl received nothing less than a C, and his record made Hugh more ashamed of his own. Carl never seemed to study, but he hadn't disgraced himself.
Hugh spent many bitter hours thinking about his record. What would his folks think? Worse, what would theysay? Finally he wrote to them:
Dear Mother and Dad:I have just found out my grades. I think that they will be sent to you later. Well, I didn't flunk out but my record isn't so hot. Only two of my grades are any good. I got a B in English and Math but the others are all C's and D's. I know that you will be ashamed of me and I'm awfully sorry. I've thought of lots of excuses to write to you, but I guess I won't write them. I know that I didn't study hard enough. I had too much fun.I promise you that I'll do better next time. I know that I can. Please don't scold me.Lots of love,HUGH
All that his mother wrote in reply was, "Of course, you will do better next time." The kindness hurt dreadfully. Hugh wished that she had scolded him.