CHAPTER VIARCADIA AND YANKEEDOMWe have given a more or less detailed account of the misunderstanding just described because of the fact that the mental relation it inaugurated was responsible, more than any one other thing, for the separation of Harry and James Wimbourne for a period of nearly seven years.No one, not even Lady Fletcher herself, had any idea that this would come to pass at the time Harry left the country. One thing led on to another; Harry was put in a preparatory school for two or three terms soon after his arrival in England; he was so happy there and the climate and the school life agreed with him so well that it seemed the most natural thing, a year or so later, to send him up to Harrow with some of his youthful contemporaries, with whom he had formed some close friendships. This was done, be it understood, in accordance with Harry's own wish. There was an atmosphere, a quality, a historical feeling about the English schools that after a short time exerted a strong influence on Harry's adolescent imagination, and made St. Barnabas seem flat and unprofitable in comparison. It would not have been so with many boys, but it was with Harry.Of course James was a strong magnet in the other direction, but not quite strong enough to pull him against all the forces contending on the English side. There was a distinct heart-interest there; within a year after Harry's arrival in the country, the majority of his friends were English boys. How many vice-Jameses were needed to offset the pull of one James we don't know, but we do know that there were enough. James at first objected strenuously to the change in plans, but Harry countered the objection with the proposal that James should leave St. Barnabas and go up to Harrow with his brother. This was considered on the American side as such an inexplicable attitude that further argument was abandoned and the matter of Harry's schooling given up as a bad job.The one valid objection to Harrow was that if Harry wasto become an American citizen, the place to educate him was in America. Sir Giles saw this, and gave the objection its full value."If I were to consult my own inclination alone," he said to Harry when they were talking the matter over, "I should undoubtedly want to make an Englishman out of you. I think you would make a pretty good Englishman, Harry. You could go to Oxford, and then make your career here. Parliament, you know, or the diplomatic. But there seems to be some feeling against such a course. They want you to be an American. They seem to think that your having been born and bred an American makes some difference. Fancy!""Fancy!" echoed Harry, as capable as any one of falling in with the spirit of what Lady Fletcher called Sir Giles' "arising-out-of-that-reply" manner."And I won't say they are wholly wrong. The question is, can we make a good American of you over here in England? By the time you have gone through Harrow, won't you be an Englishman of the most confirmed type? Won't you disappoint everybody and slip from there into Oxford, as it were, automatically?""I am of the opinion," replied Harry judicially, "that the honorable member's fears on that score are ungrounded. You see, Uncle G.," he went on, dropping his parliamentary manner, "I shall go back to America to go to college, anyway. I couldn't possibly go anywhere except to Yale. We've gone to Yale, you see, for three generations already.""I thought, when you came over here, that you couldn't possibly go to school anywhere except at St. Barnabas. It seems to me I remember something of that kind.""This is quite different," said Harry firmly, "quite different. I was brought up in Yale, practically. I'm sure I could never be happy anywhere but there. Besides, I don't want to become an Englishman. That's all rot.""Well," said his uncle, "if that's the case, we'll risk it. And—" he unconsciously quoted his wife on a former occasion—"there are always the vacations."But that is just where the honorable member proved himself mistaken. The vacations weren't there, after all. And that was where the mutual misunderstanding between the two ladies came in.We don't mean to say that this was wholly responsible for the uninterrupted separation. Other things came into it; coincidence, mere fortuitous circumstances. Plans were made, on both sides of the Atlantic, but they were always interrupted, for some reason or another. James and Cecilia would write cheerfully about coming over next summer and bringing young James and one or two of their own children with them. That would be from about October to January. Then, along in the winter, it would appear that their plans for the summer were not settled, after all. Ruth was not well enough to travel this year, or James could not leave his work and Cecilia could not leave him. Or, on the other hand, Aunt Miriam would talk breezily at times of taking Giles over and showing him the country—Giles had never been to America except to marry his wife—and taking Harry too, of course; or she would casually suggest running over with him for a fortnight at Christmas. But Harry's summer vacation was so short, only eight weeks, and there were Visits to be made in September; the kind of visits that implied enormous shooting parties and full particulars in theMorning Post. And when Christmas drew near either Giles or Miriam would develop a bad bronchial cough and have to be packed off to Sicily. It is odd how things like that will crop up when two women are fully determined to have nothing to do with each other.And the boys themselves, could they not go over alone and stay with their relations, at least as soon as they were old enough to make the voyage unaccompanied? James wanted to do something of that kind very much at times; wanted to far more than Harry, who thought that he would have enough of America later on and was meanwhile anxious to get as much out of the continent of Europe as possible. One reason why James never did anything of the sort was that he was afraid; actually a little afraid to go over, unsupported, and find out what they had made of Harry. James' thoughts were apt to run in fixed channels; after he had been a year or two at St. Barnabas, the idea that there was another school in the country, fit for Harry to attend, or in any other country, never entered his head. Harry's decision in favor of Harrow, and particularly Harry's lighthearted suggestion that he should come over and go to Harrow with him, filled his soul with consternation. He, James, leave St. Barnabas for Harrow!...And to the receptive mind the mere fact that Aunt Cecilia was at this time his closest friend and confidante will explain much. She never made derogatory remarks to him about his Aunt Miriam, nor did she reveal to him, any more than to any one else, the antagonism of feeling that existed between them; but in some subtle, unfelt way she imparted her own attitude to him, which was, in a word, Keep Away. She herself would have said, if any one asked her point blank, that she had Given Harry Up. She never approved of his staying over to be educated; she would have had him back, away from Miriam and Europe (Aunt Cecilia wasted no love on that Continent) inside two months, if she could have had her own way. But her opinion was worth nothing; she was not the boy's guardian!There was a time, two or three years after his arrival in England, when Harry was consumed by a desire to see his brother again, if only for a few weeks. He told his Uncle Giles about it—he soon fell into the habit of confiding in him sooner than in his aunt—and Uncle Giles sympathized readily with his wish, and promised to run over to America with him the next summer. But when, a few days before the date of their sailing, Harry came home from school, his uncle met him in the library with a grave face and told him that he had been called upon to stand for his party in a by-election early in September, and could not possibly leave the country before that. Afterward there would be no time."It is quite a compliment to me," explained Sir Giles; "they want me to go in for them at West Bolton because it is a doubtful and important borough, and they think I can win it over to the Conservatives if any one can. Whereas Blackmoor is sure, no matter who runs. It pleases me in a way, of course, but I hate it for breaking up our trip.""Oh, dear, I did want to see James," said Harry, leaning his elbows on the mantelpiece, and burying his face in his hands to hide his tears of disappointment."Poor boy, it is hard on you," said Sir Giles, and impulsively drew Harry to him and clasped him against his broad bosom. "Do you remember the man in the play, that always voted at his party's call and never thought of thinking for himself at all? That's me, and it makes me feel foolish at times, I can tell you. But if you want so much to see James, why can't he be brought over here?""I don't know," said Harry, "I wish he would come, butI'm sure he won't. I don't know what's the matter, but I'm certain that if I am to see him, it will have to be I that makes the journey. I've felt that for some time.""Well, what about your going over alone? I could see you off at Liverpool, and they would meet you at New York."But that would not do, either. Harry had counted so much on having his uncle with him and showing him all the interesting things in America that his uncle's defalcation took all the zest out of the trip for him. So he remained in England and helped Sir Giles win the by-election, which interested him very much.Lady Fletcher was right when she prophesied that Sir Giles would become fond of Harry. He was just such a boy as Sir Giles would have given his Parliamentary career, his K. C. B., and his whole fortune to have for his own son. The two got on famously together. Sir Giles liked to have Harry with him during all his vacations, and visits during summer holidays—visits, that is, on which Harry could not be included—were almost completely given up, as far as Sir Giles was concerned. They spent blissful days with each other on the golf links, or fishing in a Scotch stream, or exploring the filthiest and most fascinating corners of some Continental town, while Aunt Miriam, gently satirical, though secretly delighted, went her own smart and fashionable way, joining them at intervals.No one was prouder or more pleased than Harry when—a year or two after he came into the Rumbold property, curiously enough—Sir Giles was given a G. C. B. and a baronetcy by his grateful party; or when, in the Conservative landslide that followed the Boer War, he rose to real live ministerial rank, and had to go through a second election by his borough and became a "Right Honorable." The fly in the ointment was that he saw less of his uncle than formerly. The Fletchers moved from their smart but restricted quarters in Mayfair to an enormous place in Belgrave Square, "so as to be near the House," as Aunt Miriam plausibly but rather unconvincingly put it, and Sir Giles seemed to be always either at the House or the Colonial office—have we said that he became Secretary for the Colonies? However, Harry was treated as though he were a son of the house, and was givencarte blanchein the matter of asking school friends to stay with him when he came home.This permission also applied to Rumbold Abbey, the estate in Herefordshire that formed the chief part of the aforementioned property. There was no abbey, but there was a late Stuart house of huge proportions; also parks and woods and streams that offered unlimited opportunities for the destruction of innocent fauna, of which Harry and a number of his contemporary Harrovians soon learned to take advantage.On the whole, Harry led an extremely joyous and entertaining life during the days of his exile. At school he fared no less well than at home; he was never a leader among his fellows, but he was good enough at sports to win their respect and attractive enough in his personality to make many friends. The natural flexibility of his temperament enabled him to fit in fairly easily with the hard-and-fast ways of English school life. He accepted all its conventions and convictions, and never realized, as long as he remained in England, that they were in any way different from those of the schools of his own country. He soon got to dress and to talk like an Englishman, though he never went to extremes in what he loved to irritate his schoolfellows by calling the "English accent." While not exactly handsome, he became, as he reached man's estate, extremely agreeable to look upon. He had a clear pink complexion and dark hair, always a striking and pleasing combination, and he was tall and slim and moved with the stiff gracefulness that is the special characteristic of the British male aristocracy. In general, people liked him, and he liked other people.His vacations, as has been said, were usually spent with Sir Giles either in the British Isles or on the Continent, but there was one Easter holiday—the second he spent in England—when he was, to quote a phrase of Aunt Miriam's, thrown on the parish. The Fletchers were booked to spend the holiday in a Mediterranean cruise on the yacht of a nautical duke, who was so nautical and so much of a duke that to be asked to cruise with him was not merely an Engagement; it was an Experience. In any case, there could be no question of taking Harry, and Lady Fletcher was in perplexity about what to do with him till Sir Giles suggested, "Why don't we send him to Mildred?" So to Mildred Harry went, and spent an important, if not a wildly exciting, month.Mildred was Sir Giles' only sister, Lady Archibald Carson. She lived in a little house in the Surrey hills, andthough the land that went with it was restricted, it was fertile and its mistress went in as heavily as her means would allow for herbaceous borders and rock gardens and Japanese effects. Her two children, both girls, lived there with her. Her husband, Lord Archibald, was also, in a sense, living with her, but the verdant domesticity of the Surrey hills had no charm for him and he spent practically all of his time in London and other busy haunts of men, or even more busy haunts of women. He was a younger son of a long line of marquises who for their combination of breeding and profligacy probably had no match in the British peerage. Within five years of his marriage he had with the greatest casualness in the world run through his own patrimony and all he could lay his hands on of his wife's. Having bullied and wheedled all that he could out of her he now consistently let her alone and depended for his income on what he could bully and wheedle out of his brother, the eleventh marquis, who was known as a greater rake than Lord Archibald merely because he had greater facilities for rakishness at his command.Lady Archibald was a tall, light-haired, pale-eyed woman with a tired face and a gentle manner. She had no interests in life beyond her children and her garden, but she had a kind heart and welcomed Harry cordially on his arrival at the little house in Surrey. He had seen her once before at the Fletchers' in London, but he had never seen her children. It was, therefore, with a rather keen sense of curiosity that he walked through the house into the garden, where he was told that Beatrice and Jane were to be found. He saw them across the croquet lawn immediately, and he underwent a mild shock of disappointment on seeing, as he could, at a glance, that they were just as long of limb, just as straight of hair and just as angular in build as most English girls of their age.The elder girl rose from her seat and sauntered slowly across the lawn, followed by her sister. She stared coolly at Harry as she walked toward him, but said nothing, even when she was quite near. He met her gaze with perfect self-possession, and suddenly realized that she was waiting to see if he would make the first move. He instantly determined not to do so, it being her place, after all, to speak first; so he stood still and stared calmly back at her for a few seconds, till finally the girl, with a sudden fleeting smile, held out her hand and greeted him."You're Harry Wimbourne, aren't you?" she said, cordially enough. "This is my sister Jane. We are very glad to see you; we've heard such a lot about you. Come over here and tell us about America."In that meeting, in her rather rude little aggression and Harry's reception of it, was started a friendship. She deliberately tested Harry and found that he came up to the mark. He did not fidget, he did not blush, he did not stammer; he simply returned her stare, waiting for her to find her manners. Nothing he could have done would have pleased her better; she decided she would like him, then and there.Harry on his side found her conversation, even in the first hour of their acquaintance, stimulating and agreeable, and like nothing that he had experienced before in any young girl of thirteen, English or American."You needn't be afraid that we shall ask foolish questions about America," Beatrice went on. "We know the Indians don't run wild in the streets of New York, and all that sort of thing. We even know what part of the country New Haven is in; we looked it up on the map. It's quite near New York, isn't it?""Yes," said Harry, "you're quite right; it is. But how do you pronounce the name of the state it is in? Can you tell me that?""Connecticut," replied the girl, readily enough; but she sounded the secondc, after the manner of most English people. Harry explained her mistake to her, and she took the correction smiling, quite without pique or resentment."Now go on and tell us something about the country. Something really important, you know; something we don't know already.""Well," said Harry, "there seems to be more room there; that's about the most important difference. Except in the largest cities, and there there seems to be less, and that's why they make the buildings so high. And nearly all the houses, except in the middle of the towns, are made of wood."He went on at some length, the two girls listening attentively.At last Beatrice interrupted with the question:"Which do you think you like best, on the whole, England or America?""Oh, America of course; but only because it's my own country. I can imagine liking England best, if one happened to be born here. Some things are nicer here, and some are nicer there.""What do you like best in England?""Well, the old things. Cathedrals and castles. Also afternoon tea, which we don't bother about much over there. And the gardens.""And what do you like best about America?""Trolley cars, and soda water fountains, and such things. And the climate. And the way people act. There's so much less—less formality over there; less bothering about little things, you know.""Yes, yes, I know exactly. Silly little things, that don't matter one way or the other. I know I should like that about America.""I think you would like America, anyway," said Harry, looking judicially at his interlocutrix. "You seem to be a free and easy sort of person.""Well, I wouldn't like trolley cars," interrupted Jane with firmness, "They go too fast. I don't like to go fast. It musses my hair, and the dust gets into my eyes.""Shut up, silly," said her sister; "you've never ridden in one.""No, but I know what it is to go fast, and I don't like it. I don't think I should care much for America.""Well," said Harry, laughing, "we won't make you go there. Or if you do go there, we won't make you ride on the trolley cars. You can ride in hacks all the time; they go slow enough for any one."Beatrice's first impression of Harry underwent no disillusionment as the days went on. She seemed to find in him a companion after her own heart. He had plenty of ideas of his own, and he was entirely willing to act on hers; he never affected to despise them as a girl's notions, nor did he ever object to her sharing in his amusements because of her misfortune of sex. They climbed trees and crawled through the underbrush on their stomachs together with as much zest andabandonas if there were no such things as frocks and stockings in the world. Harry had never known this kind of companionship with a girl before, and was delighted with her."Oh, dash, there goes my garter," she exclaimed oneday as they were walking through a country lane together. She had got rather to make a point of such matters, to over-emphasize their possible embarrassment, simply in order to see how beautifully he acted."Well, tie it up or something," said he, sauntering on a few steps.Beatrice did what was necessary and ran on and caught up with him."I never could see why a garter shouldn't be as freely talked about as any other article of clothing," said she. "All that sort of modesty is such rot; people have legs, and legs have to have stockings to cover them, and stockings have to have garters to keep them up. And women have legs, just as much as men; there's not a doubt of that. Perhaps that's news to you, though?""No, I knew that.""You really, honestly aren't shocked at what I'm saying?" asked the girl, scanning his face intently."Not in the least; why should I be? You're not telling me anything shocking."Beatrice drew a long breath of pure enjoyment."Itisa comfort to meet a person like you once in a while," she said. "Tell me, are women such fools about their legs in America as they are here?""Yes, quite," said Harry fervently; "if not actually worse. That's one thing that we don't seem to have learned any better about. It always makes me tired."The two saw each other, infrequently but fairly regularly, throughout Harry's stay in England. They never corresponded, both admitting that they were bad letter writers, but when they met they were always able to pick up their friendship exactly where they had left it.When Sir Giles came into the Rumbold property there was naturally a corresponding change in the circumstances of Lady Archibald and her daughters. Every penny of the property, which came to Sir Giles through the death of a maternal uncle, was entailed and inalienable from his possession; but he was able to alleviate her condition by giving her a large yearly allowance out of his income; and it was pointed out that such an arrangement would have the advantage of keeping the money safe from her husband. Lady Archibald took a small house in South Street andspent the winter and spring months there, and in the due course of time Beatrice was brought out into society.Her undoubted beauty, which was of the dark and haughty type, and her excellent dancing were enough to make her a social success. This was a tremendous comfort to her mother, who was never obliged to worry about her at dances or scheme for invitations at desirable houses, and could confine her maternal anxiety to merely hoping that Beatrice would make a better match than she herself had. But Beatrice hated the whole proceeding, heartily and unaffectedly."The dancing men all bore me," she once said to Harry; "and I bore all the others. Almost all men are dull; at any rate, they appear at their dullest and worst in society, and the few interesting ones don't want to be bored by a chit like me, and I can't say that I blame them. As for the women—when they get into London society they cease to be women at all; they become fiends incarnate.""I hope that success is not embittering your youthful heart," said Harry, smiling."Not success, but just being in what they are pleased to call society; that will make me bitter if I have much more of it. I don't know why it is; people are nice naturally—most of them, that is. Of course some people are born brutes, like—well, like my father; but most of them are nice at bottom. But somehow London makes beasts of them all. If I am ever Prime Minister—""Which, after all, is improbable.""Well, if I am, the first thing I shall do will be simply to abolish London. We shall have just the same population, but it will be all rural. We shall all live in Arcadian simplicity, and while we may not be perfect, at least we shan't all be the scheming, selfish, merciless brutes that London makes of us.""And pending the passage of that bill you want to live in Arcadian simplicity alone. I see. I quite like the idea myself. I should love to found Arcadia with you somewhere in rural England, when I have time. Where shall we have it? I should say Devonshire, shouldn't you? Clotted cream, you know, and country lanes. It will be like Marie Antoinette's hamlet at Versailles, only not nearly so silly. We will pay other people to milk the cows andmake the butter, and do all the dirty work, and just sit around ourselves and be perfectly charming. No one will be admitted without passing a rigid examination in character, and that will be the only necessary qualification. Arcadia, Limited, we'll call it; it sounds like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, doesn't it?""Whom shall we have in it? Uncle Giles—he could pass all right, couldn't he?""Oh, Heavens, yes,Magna cum. And Aunt Miriam—perhaps. She would need some cramming before she went up. What about your mother?""I'm afraid Mama could never get in," answered Beatrice, smiling rather sadly. "I've talked to her before about such things and she never answers, but just looks at me with that sad tolerant smile of hers that seems to say 'Arcadian simplicity is all very well, but you'll find the best way to get it is through a husband with ten thousand a year or so.' And the dreadful part of it is that she's right, to a certain extent."Although in matter of years Beatrice was a few weeks Harry's junior, she was at this time twice as old as he, for all practical purposes. She was an honored guest at Lady Fletcher's big dinners—almost the only ones that did not bore her to death—into which Harry would be smuggled at the last minute to fill up a vacant place, or else calmly omitted from altogether. Nevertheless, he was her greatest comfort all through her first season; nothing but his jovial optimism, which saw the worst but found it no more than amusing, kept the iron from entering into her soul. Such an occasional conversation as the above-quoted would put sanity into her world and fortify her for days against the commonplaces of dancing men and the jealous looks of less attractive maidens. And how she would pine for him during the intervals! How she would long for the arrival of the next vacation or mid-term exeat that would bring him up to town! There was a freshness, a wholesomeness about his way of looking at things that was soothing to her as a breath of country air.It is not surprising, then, that Beatrice began to dread the nearing date of Harry's departure for America and college more than any one else, even Sir Giles himself, to whom Harry had become by this time almost as dear as a son. Poor Uncle Giles, though he wanted Harry to stay in thecountry more than any other earthly thing, made it a point of honor never to dissuade the boy from his original project of returning to his own country when he was ready to go to college and becoming an American again. Beatrice, however, was bound by no such restriction and complained bitterly of his desertion."What is the point of your going back to some silly American college?" she would ask. "It isn't as if you didn't have the best universities in the world right here, under your very nose. Why aren't Oxford and Cambridge good enough for you, I should like to know? They were good enough for Milton and Thackeray and Isaac Newton and a few other more or less prominent people.""Very true," replied Harry with perfect good-humor. "The only thing is, those people didn't happen to be Yankees. I am, you know. It's been a habit in our family for two hundred years or more, and it doesn't do to break up old family traditions. Must be a Yankee, whatever happens.""But that doesn't mean that you have to go to a Yankee college, necessarily," argued Beatrice. "You won't learn nearly as much there as you would at Oxford. You are as far along in your studies now as the second year men at Yale; I heard Uncle Giles say so himself.""Yes, I know, that's very true. I can't argue about it; you've got all the arguments on your side. I just know that there's only one possible place on earth where I can go to college, and that is Yale. Better not talk about it any more, if it makes you peevish.""Well, we won't. I'll tell you one thing, though; we have got to start a correspondence. You can spare a few ideas from your Yankees, I hope. I shall simply die on the wooden pavements if I can't at least hear from you occasionally.""Certainly; I should like nothing better. I'll even go so far as to be the first to write, if you like, and that's a perfectly tremendous concession, as I'm the worst letter writer that ever lived."So there the matter was left. Harry left Harrow for good at Easter, and spent one last golden month in London, seeing Beatrice almost every day and being an unalloyed joy and comfort to his uncle and aunt. In May he took a short trip through Spain with Sir Giles; it was a countryneither of them had visited before, and they had planned a trip there for years. Uncle Giles worked double time for a fortnight in order to be able to leave with a clear conscience, but he found the reward well worth the labor.They parted at Madrid, the plan being for Harry to sail for New York from Gibraltar, arriving in time to take his final examinations in New Haven in June.There were tears in Sir Giles' kind blue eyes as he bade Harry good-by, and Harry saw them and knew why they were there. Suddenly he felt his own fill."I don't want to go very much, Uncle Giles," he said in a low voice. "Now that it comes to the point, I don't like it much. You've all been so wonderful to me.... It's not a question of what I want to do, though. It's just what's got to be done.""Yes," said his uncle; "I know. You're quite right about it. It's the only thing to do. But perhaps you won't mind my saying I'm glad, in a way, that you find it hard?""Thank you; that helps, too. There's more that comes into it, though; more than what we have talked over together so often.... I mean—""James?""Yes," said Harry, "that's it."They clasped hands again and went their separate ways; Sir Giles to the train that was to take him north to Paris and home, and Harry to the train that was to take him south to Gibraltar and home.CHAPTER VIIOMNE IGNOTUM"Bless us, how the boy has grown!" cried Aunt Cecilia, and kissed him all over again."You'll find your aunt very much changed, I expect," said Uncle James, clasping his hand and smiling, quite in his old style."Not a particle, thank Heaven," said Harry, understanding perfectly; "nor you either. Nor the U. S. Customs service, either. Can't I just make them a present of all my luggage and run along? Except that I have some Toledo work and stuff for you and Aunt C.""Hush, don't say that out loud; they'll charge you extra duty for it," replied Uncle James."Oh, was there e'er a Yankee breast which did not feel the moral beauty of making worldly interest subordinate to sense of duty?" misquoted Harry. "Bother the duty. Tell me how you all are. How are Ruth and Oswald and Lucy and Jack and Timothy and the baby? All about eight feet high, I suppose? And James, where is he?""James is in New Haven," said Aunt Cecilia; "he has an examination early to-morrow morning and could not get away till after that. He'll be here to-morrow in time for lunch."It was all very easy and cordial. Harry was in high spirits over returning to his native land, and was genuinely pleased that both his uncle and aunt should take the trouble to come down to the dock to meet his steamer. They, on their side, were most agreeably impressed by him; agreeably disappointed with him, we almost said. It was a relief, as well as a pleasure, to find him, so unchanged and unaffected at heart, though he looked and talked like an Englishman. Mrs. James sat on a packing case and watched him with unadulterated pleasure as he tended to the examination of his luggage. The art of his Bond Street tailor served to accentuate rather than hide the slim, sinewy, businesslike beauty of his limbs, brought into play as he bent down to lift a trunk tray or tug at a strap. Though all that wasnothing, of course, to the joy of the discovery that he was unspoiled in character."It's turned out all right," she thought and smiled to herself. "I don't know whether it's chiefly to his credit or theirs, but it has come out all right, anyway. I wish the boat had not arrived in the evening, so that I could have brought the children to see him, the first thing. They'll have plenty of time, though; and how they'll love him! And how pleased James will be!"She meant young James, who was now putting the finishing touches on his sophomore year at Yale. James was never very far from her mind when her thoughts ran to her own children—which was most of the time. She always thought of him now more as her own eldest child than as her husband's nephew.And Harry's thoughts, beneath all his chatter to his uncle and aunt and his transactions with the Customs officials, were also on James. All the way across the Atlantic, on the long dull voyage from Gibraltar—there are not many passengers traveling westward in June—they continually ran on that one subject—James, James, James. What would he be like now? would he be the old James, or changed, somehow—strangely, disappointingly, unacceptably? Harry hoped not; hoped it with his whole heart, in which there was nothing but humility and affection when he thought of what his brother had been to him in the old days. He was so little able to speak what he felt about James that he was embarrassed and over-silent about him. That was why he was so debonair with the Customs officials; that was why he asked after each of his young cousins by name before he mentioned his brother."Every single article of clothing I own was bought abroad," he was telling the Customs inspector; "so you can just go ahead and do your worst—That suit cost eight guineas—yes, I know it's too much; I told them so at the time, but they wouldn't listen.... No, that thing with the feathers is not a woman's hat; it's a Tyrolean hat, that the men climb mountains in. I'm going to give it to my Uncle James—that man there sitting on the woman's trunk that she wants to get into—to wear to his office, which is on the thirty-fifth floor.... Yes, I have worn it myself, but don't tell him.... That gold cigarette case is for my brother, who smokes when he's not playing football, and itcost six pound fifteen, which is dirt cheap, I say. I'd keep it myself, except that it's so cheap that I can't afford not to give it away...."And James, what was he feeling, if he was feeling anything, in regard to his brother at this time, and why have we said nothing about him during these seven years? The truth is, his life had been chiefly distinguished by the blessed uneventfulness that comes of outward happiness and a good understanding with the world. If you can draw a mental picture for yourself of a boy of perfect physique and untarnished mind, gradually attaining the physical and mental development of manhood in comradeship with a hundred or more others in a like position, dedicating the use of each gift as it came to him not to his own aggrandizement but to the glory of God and the service of other men, recognizing his superiority in certain fields with the same humility with which he beheld his inferiority in others, equally willing to give help where he was strong and take help where he was weak, and possessed by the fundamental conviction that other people were just as good as he if not a little bit better, you may get some idea of James during the years of his brother's absence. He was not brilliant, he was not handsome, but there was a splendid normality about him, both in appearance and in character, that inspired confidence and affection among his teachers, his relatives, and friends of his own age."He has a good mind and body, and there is no nonsense about him," was the substance of the opinion of the first-named group. "He is a good boy and a nice boy, and I'm glad he is one of the family," said the second. "He is captain of the football team," said the third group, and to one who knows anything about American boarding schools this last will tell everything.If any one is inclined to blame James for his allowing the Atlantic Ocean to separate him and brother so completely for those seven years it may interest him to know that James was quite of the same opinion. As he sat in the train that took him from New Haven to New York on the morning after Harry's landing, he wondered how the long separation could have come about. On the whole, after a careful review of the business, he was inclined to blame himself; not over-severely, but definitely, nevertheless. He had been timid, indifferent and, above all, lazy. Looking back overhis attitude of the last seven years, he was inclined to be scornful and a little amused. What had he to fear about Harry? Weren't Uncle Giles and Aunt Miriam good people, who could be trusted to bring him up right? What was there to fear, even, in his becoming an Englishman? And anyway, even if he had feared the worst, ought he not to have taken the trouble to go over and see with his own eyes? It had probably turned out all right, for Harry had returned at last with every intention of living in America for the rest of his life; but if he had been spoiled or altered for the worse in any way, he, James, must take his share of the blame for it. There could be no doubt of that.The root of the matter was, we suspect, that James had been somewhat lacking in initiative. Thoroughly normal people customarily are; it is at once their strength and their weakness. A splendid normality, such as we have described James as enjoying, is a serviceable thing in life, but it is apt to degenerate, if not sufficiently stimulated by misfortune and opposition, into commonplaceness and sterile conservatism. But let us do James justice; he at least saw his fault and blamed himself for it.He was devoured with curiosity to see what Harry was like; almost as much so as Harry in regard to him. James had plenty of friends, but only one brother, when all was said and done. As the train rushed nearer the consummation of his curiosity, he felt the old feeling of timidity and suspicion sweep over him; but that, as he shook it off, only increased his curiosity; gave it edge.Omne ignotum pro magnifico est; every one knows that, even if he never heard of Virgil, and it is especially true of such natures as James'. Each little wave of fear and suspicion that swept over him made him a little more restless and unhappy, though he smiled at himself for feeling so. It was a relief when the train pulled into the Grand Central Station and he could grip his bag and start on the short walk to the house of his uncle, which was situated in the refined and expensive confines of Murray Hill.Any one who knows anything about the world will be able to guess pretty closely the nature of the brothers' meeting. Harry was sitting in the front room upstairs when his cousin Ruth, who was at the window, announced: "Here he comes, Harry." In a perfect frenzy of pleasure, embarrassment,affection and curiosity, the boy made a dash for the stairs and greeted his brother at the front door with the demonstrative words:"Hello, James!"To which James, who for the last few minutes had been obliged to restrain himself from throwing his bag into the gutter and breaking into a run, replied:"Well, Harry, how's the boy?"Then they walked upstairs together and began talking rather fast about the voyage, examinations, Aunt Miriam, Spain, the Yale baseball team,—anything but what was in their hearts."Well, you came back without being made an earl, after all, it seems," said James a little later at lunch."No, but I came back a sub-freshman, which is the next best thing. There's no telling what I might have been if I'd stayed, though. Everybody was so frightfully keen on my staying over there and going to Oxford, especially Beatrice—Beatrice Carson, you know; I've written you about her? She would have made me an earl in a minute, if she could, to make me stay. None of it did any good, though. I would be a Yankee.""How do you think you'll like being a Yankee again?" asked James. "You certainly don't look much like one at present.""No? That'll come, I dare say. My heart's in the right place. Though that doesn't prevent the Americans from seeming strange, at first. Did you notice that woman in the chemist's shop this morning, Aunt C.? She was chewing gum all the time she waited on you, and she never said 'Thank you' or 'Ma'am' once.""They all are that way," said Aunt Cecilia with a gentle sigh. "I don't expect anything else.""Oh, the bloated aristocrat!" said James. "It is an earl, after all. Only don't blame the poor girl for not calling you 'My lord.' She couldn't be expected to know; they don't have many of them over here.""I don't mean that she was rude," said Harry; "she didn't give that impression, somehow. It was just the way she did things; a sort of casualness. The Americans are a funny people!""Oh, Lord!" groaned James; "hear the prominent foreigner talk. What do you think of America, my lord?How do you like New York? What do you think of our climate? To think that that's the thing I used to spank when he was naughty!""That's all very well," retorted Harry, with warmth; "wait till you get out of this blessed country for a while yourself, and see how other people act, and then perhaps you'll see that there are differences. You may even be able to see that they are not all in our favor. And as for smacking—spanking, if you feel inclined to renew that quaint old custom now, I'm ready for you. Any time you want!""Oh, very well," growled James; "after lunch.""Yes, and in Central Park, please," observed Uncle James; "not in the house; I can't afford it. You are right, though, Harry, about the Americans being a funny people. If you enter the legal profession, or if you go into public life, you'll be more and more struck by the fact as time goes on. But there's one thing to remember; it doesn't do to tell them so. They can't bear to hear it. We have proof of that immediately before us; you announce your opinion here,coram familia, as it were, and what is the result? Contempt and loathing on the part of the great American public, represented by James, and a duel to follow—in Central Park, remember; in Central Park.""I wonder if that milk of magnesia has come yet," murmured Aunt Cecilia, who had not gone beyond the beginning of the conversation; and further hostilities—friendly ones, even—were forgotten in the general laugh that followed.Of course James, who conformed to the American type of college boy as closely as any one could and retain his individuality, was greatly struck during the first few days by his brother's Anglicisms, which showed themselves at that time rather in his appearance and speech than in his point of view. For example, James was indulging one day in a lengthy plaint against the hardness of one of his instructors, as the result of which he would probably, to use his own expression, "drop an hour"; that is, lose an hour's work for the year and be put back one-sixtieth of his work for his degree. Harry listened attentively enough to the narrative, but his sole comment when James finished was the single word "Tiresome." The word was ill chosen for James' peace of mind. If such expressions were the result of English training he could not but think the less of English training.The summer passed off pleasantly enough, the boys living with their uncle and aunt at Bar Harbor. Harry saw much less of James than he had expected, for he was away much of the time, visiting classmates and school friends whom Harry did not know. He was obliged, too, to return to Yale soon after the first of September for football practise. Harry spent most of his time playing fairly happily about with his young cousins and other people of his own age. The most interesting feature of the summer to him was a visit to Aunt Selina at her summer place in Vermont. This was the ancestral, ante-Revolution farm of the Wimbournes, much rebuilt and enlarged and presented to Miss Wimbourne for her life on the death of her late father. Here Aunt Selina was wont to gather during the summer months a heterogeneous crowd of friends, and it was a source of wonder and admiration to the other members of the family that she was able to attract such a large number of what she referred to as "amusing people." With these Harry was quite at ease, his English training having accustomed him to associating with older and cleverer people than himself, and it gave Aunt Selina quite a thrill of pleasure to see a boy of eighteen partaking in the staid amusements of his elders and meeting them on their own ground, and to think that the boy was her own nephew. She became at length so much taken with him that a bright idea occurred to her."Harry," said she one day; "what do you think of my going to live in New Haven?""I think it's a fine idea," said Harry. "But where?""Why, in the old house, of course. That is, if you and James, or your guardians, are willing to rent it to me. It has stood empty ever since you left it, and I presume there is no immediate prospect of your occupying it yourselves for some time.""As half owner of the establishment," said Harry courteously, "I offer you the full use of it for as long a time as you wish, free of charge.""That's sweet of you, but it's not business. I should insist on paying rent.""Well, Aunt Selina, you're used to having your own way, so I presume you will. But what makes you want to come and live in New Haven, all of a sudden? I thought you could never bear the place.""I had a great many friends there in the old days, andshould like to see something of them again. Besides, it will be nice to be in the same town with you and James."Like most people, she put the real reason last. If Harry failed to realize from its position that it was the real reason, he learned it unmistakably enough from what followed. The conversation wandered to a discussion of changes in the town since Aunt Selina had lived there. She supposed that everybody had dinner at night there now, though she remembered the time when it was impossible to reconcile servants to the custom. She herself would have it late, except on Sundays. Sunday never did seem like Sunday to her without dinner in the middle of the day and supper in the evening."Well," said Harry, "I hope you'll ask James and me to a Sunday dinner occasionally.""Good gracious, yes! Every Sunday, and supper too. That will be a regular custom; and I want you both to feel at liberty to come up for a meal at any time. Any time, without even telephoning beforehand. And bring your friends; there will always be enough to eat. How stupid of me to forget that. Of course I want you, as often as you'll come.""We accept," said Harry, "unconditionally. We shall be glad enough to have a decent meal once in a while, after the food we shall get in college. James says he even gets tired of the training table, which is a great admission, for he loves everything connected with football. Even when we were kids, I remember, he used to love to drink barley water with his meals; nasty stuff—they used to make me drink it in England."Harry rattled on purposely about the first thing that came into his head, for he noticed his aunt seemed slightly embarrassed. She was going to New Haven to take care of James and himself, and naturally she did not care to divulge the real reason to him. Well, she was a dear old thing, certainly; he remembered how she had acted on his mother's death. He was suddenly sorry that he had seen nothing of her for the last seven years, and sorry that he had written her so irregularly during his absence. It was pleasant to think that he would have a chance to make up for it in the future.CHAPTER VIIILIVY AND VICTOR HUGOOn a certain Wednesday evening late in September Harry stood on a certain street-corner in the city of New Haven. Surging about him were a thousand or so youths of his own age or a little older, most of them engaged in making noises expressive of the pleasures of reunion. It was a merry and turbulent scene. Tall, important-looking seniors, wearing white sweaters with large blue Y's on their chests, moved through the crowd with a worried air, apparently trying to organize something that had no idea whatever of being organized. They were ineffectual, but oh, so splendid! Harry, who had almost no friends of his own there to talk to, watched them with undisguised admiration. He reflected that James would be one of their number a year hence, and wondered if by any chance he himself would be one three years from now.Just as he dismissed the probability as negligible, a sort of order became felt among those who stood immediately about him. Men stopped talking and appeared to be listening to something which Harry could not hear. Then they all began shouting a strange, unmeaning succession of syllables in concert; Harry recognized this as a cheer and lustily joined in with it. At the end came a number; repeated three times; a number which no one present had ever before heard bellowed forth from three or four hundred brazen young throats; a number that had a strange and unfamiliar sound, even to those who shouted it, and caused the upperclassmen to break into a derisive jeer.A new class had officially started its career, and Harry was part of it. No one flushed more hotly than he at the jeer of the upperclassmen; no one jeered back with greater spirit when the sophomores cheered for their own class. No one took part more joyfully in the long and varied program of events that filled out the rest of the evening. The parade through the streets of the town was to him a joyous bacchanal, and the wrestling matches on the Campusa splendid orgy. After these were over even more enjoyable things happened, for James, with two or three fellow-juniors—magnificent, Olympian beings!—took him in tow and escorted him safe and unmolested through the turbulent region of York Street, where freshmen, who had nothing save honor to fight for, were pressed into organized hostility against sophomores, who didn't even have that."Well, what did you think of it all?" asked James later."Oh, ripping," said Harry, "I never thought it would be anything like this. We never really saw anything of the real life of the college when we lived in town here, did we?""Not much. It all seems pretty strange to you now, I suppose, but you'll soon get onto the ropes and feel at home. What sort of a schedule did you get?""Oh, fairly rotten. They all seem to be eight-thirties. Here, you can see," producing a paper."That's not so bad," pronounced James, approvingly. "Nothing on Wednesday or Saturday afternoons, so that you can get to ball games and things, and nothing any afternoon till five, so that you'll have plenty of time for track work.""Oh, yes, track work; I'd forgotten that.""Well, you don't want to forget it; you want to go right out and hire a locker and get to work, to-morrow, if possible. If track's the best thing for you to go out for, that is, and I guess it is, all right. You're too light for football, and you don't know anything about baseball, and you haven't got a crew build.""What is a crew build?" asked Harry."Well, if you put it that way, I don't know that I can tell you. It's a mysterious thing; I've been trying to find out myself for several years. I don't see why I haven't got a fairly good crew build myself, but they always tell me I haven't, when I suggest going out for it. However, you haven't got one, that's easy. So you'll just have to stick to track.""Yes," said Harry soberly, "I suppose I shall."Harry was what is commonly known as a good mixer, and made acquaintances among his classmates rapidly enough to suit even the nice taste of James. In general, however, they remained acquaintances and never became friends. It was not that they were not nice, most of them; "ripping fellows,all of them," Harry described them to his brother. They were, in fact, too nice; those who lived near him were all of the best preparatory school type, the kind that invariably leads the class during freshman year. Harry found them conventional, quite as much so as the English type, though in a different way. Intercourse with them failed to give him stimulus; he found himself always more or less talking down to them, and intellectual stimulus was what Harry needed above all things among his friends.There were exceptions, however. The most brilliant was that of Jack Trotwood, probably the last man with whom Harry might have been expected to strike up a friendship. Harry first saw him in a Latin class, one of the first of the term. Trotwood sat in the same row as Harry, two or three seats away from him—the acquaintance was not even of the type that alphabetical propinquity is responsible for. On the day in question he dropped a fountain pen, and spent some moments in burrowing ineffectually under seats in search of it. The fugitive chattel at length turned up directly under Harry's chair, and as he leaned over to restore it to its owner he noticed something about his face that appealed to him at once. He never could tell what it was; the flush that bending over had brought to it, the embarrassment, the dismay at having made a fuss in public, the smile, containing just the right mixture of cordiality and formality, yet undeniably sweet withal, with which he thanked him; perhaps it was any or all of these things. At any rate after class, on his way back toward York Street, Harry found himself hurrying to catch up with Trotwood, who was walking a few paces ahead of him. Trotwood turned as he came up, and smiled again."That was sort of a stinking lesson, wasn't it?" he asked."Yes," said Harry, "wasn't it, though?""I should say! Boned for two hours on it last night before I could make anything out of it. Gee, but this Livy's dull, isn't he?""Yes, awfully dull. Do you use a trot?""No, I haven't yet, but I'm going to, after last night. I can't put so much time on one lesson. Do you?""Well, yes. That is, I shall. Do you like Latin?""Lord, no, not when it's like this stuff. I only took it because it comes easier to me than most other things. Do you like it?""Not much. Not much good at it, either.... Well, I live here—""Oh, do you? so do I. Where are you?""Fourth floor, back. Come up, some time.""Thanks, I will. So long.""So long."So started a friendship, one of the sincerest and firmest that either ever enjoyed. And yet, as Harry pointed out afterward, it was founded on insincerity and falsehood. Harry's whole part in this first conversation was no more than a tissue of lies. He was extremely fond of Latin, and was so good at it that his entire preparation for his recitations consisted in looking up a few unfamiliar words beforehand; he could always fit the sentences together when he was called upon to construe. It had never occurred to him to use a translation. He was rather fond of Livy, whose flowing and complicated style appealed to him. He gave a false answer to every question merely for the pleasure of agreeing with Trotwood, whom he liked already without knowing why.The two got into the habit of doing their Latin lesson together regularly, three times a week. Trotwood did not buy a trot, after all; he found Harry quite as good."My, but you're a shark," he said in undisguised admiration one evening, as Harry brought order and clarity into a difficult passage. "You certainly didn't learn to do that in this country. You're English, anyway, aren't you?""Lord, no; Yankee. Born in New Haven. I have lived over there for some years, though.""Go to school there?""Yes; Harrow.""Gosh." Trotwood stared at him for a few moments in dazed silence. He stood on the brink of a world that he knew no more of than Balboa did of the Pacific. "What sort of a place is it?""Oh, wonderful.""You played cricket, I suppose, and—and those things?""Rugby football, yes," said Harry, smiling."And you liked it, didn't you?""Oh, rather! Only—""Only what?""Oh, nothing. I did like it. It's a wonderful place.""Only it's different from what you're doing now?" said Trotwood, with a burst of insight. "Is that what you mean?""Yes.""I see; I see," said Trotwood, and then he kept still. There was something so comforting, so sympathetic and understanding about his silence that Harry was inspired to confide in him."The truth is, I'm beginning to doubt whether I ought to have gone to an English school. I'm not sure but what it would have been better for me to go to school and college in the same country, whatever it was. You see, after spending five or six years in learning to value certain things, it's rather a wrench to come here and find the values all distorted.""I see," said Trotwood again. He wasn't sure that he did see at all, but he felt that unquestioning sympathy was his cue."It's not merely the different kinds of games," went on Harry; "it's not that they make so much more of athletics, or rather of the public side of athletics, than they do over there, though that comes into it a lot. It's what people do and think about and talk about and—and are, in short. Last year, I remember, the men I went with, the sixth formers, used to read the papers a lot and follow the debates in Parliament and talk about such things a lot, even among themselves. Some of them used to write Greek and Latin verse just for fun—wonderfully good, too, some of it. And here—well, how many men in our class, how many men in the whole college do you suppose could write ten lines of Greek or Latin verse without making a mess of it?""Not too many, I'm afraid.""Then there's debating. We used to have pretty good house debates ourselves at school. I used to look forward to them, I remember, from month to month, as one of the most interesting things that happened. But of course they were nothing to a thing like the Oxford Union. You've heard of that, I suppose? Lord, I wish some of these people here could see one of those meetings! It would be an eye-opener.""But we have debating here," said Trotwood, doubtfully."Yes, but what kind of debating? A few grinds gettingup and talking about the Interstate Commerce Commission, or some rotten, technical, dry subject, because they think it will give them good practise in public speaking. Everybody hates it like poison, and they're right, too, for it's all dull, dead; started on the wrong idea. The best men in the class won't go out for it. I wouldn't myself, now that I know what it's like; but I thought of doing it in the summer, and spoke to my brother about it. He didn't say anything against it, because he didn't dare; people are always writing to theNewsand saying what a fine thing debating is. But he let me see pretty clearly that he didn't think much of debating and didn't want me to go out for it, because it didn't get you anywhere in college;simply wasn't done. He'd rather see me take a third place in one track meet and never do another thing in college than to be the captain of the debating team.""Did he tell you that?""Lord, no; he wouldn't dare. No one would; technically, debating is supposed to be a fine thing. But it doesn't get you anywhere near a senior society, so there's an end to it.... But perhaps I'd better not get started on that.""No, I should think not! Heavens, a junior fraternity is about the height of my ambition!"Harry smiled at his friend and went on: "You see it's this way, Trotty; you are a sensible person, and look at them in the right way. You play about with your mandolin clubs and various other little things because you like them, like a good dutiful boy. When the time comes, you'll be very glad to take a senior society, if it's offered you. If it isn't, you won't care.""But I will, though. I don't believe I have much chance, but I know I shall be disappointed if I don't make one, just the same.""For about twenty-four hours, yes. Don't interrupt me, Trotty; this isn't flattery, it's argument. You are a sensible person, as I have said; and don't let such considerations worry you. There are lots of other sensible persons in the class, too. Josh Traill, for one, and Manxome, and John Fisher and Shep McGee; they're all sensible people, and don't worry or think much about senior societies, though I suppose they all have a good chance to make one eventually, if any one has. But that isn't true of all the class. There is a large and importantsection of it that now, in the first term of freshman year, is thinking and talking nothing except about who will go to a junior fraternity next year, or a senior society two years hence. It's the one subject of conversation that seriously competes with professional baseball and college football, which is all you hear otherwise.""Oh, no, Harry, you're hard on us. There's automobiles. And guns. And theaters. But why should you mind if a lot of geesers do talk about societies?""Well, it makes me sick, that's all. And when I say sick, I use the word in its British, or most vivid sense. It makes me sick, after England and after Harrow, to see a lot of what ought to be the best fellows in the class spending their waking hours in wondering about such rubbishy things.—Do you happen to be aware of an ornament of our class called Junius Neville LeGrand?""Golden locks and blue eyes? Yes, I know him. Acts rather well, they say.""Yes; he's the kind I mean. At any rate, I seem to be in his good graces just at present. All sweetness and light; can't be too particular about telling me how good I am at French, and that sort of thing. In fact, he went so far to-day as to suggest that we might go over the French lesson together, and he's coming here presently to do it.""But what's the matter with poor Junius? I thought he was as decent as such a painfully good-looking person could be.""I'm not denying he's attractive. But if you'll stay for the French lesson I think I can show you what I'm talking about.""But I don't take French.""No, dear boy; you won't have to know French to see what I'm going to show you. Your rôle will consist of lying on the window-seat and being occupied with day before yesterday'sNews. Now listen; I have an idea that the beautiful Junius has recently made the discovery that I am the brother of James Wimbourne, of the junior class, pillar of the Yale football team and more than likely to go Bones, or anything he wants, next May. Hence this access of cordiality to poor little me, the obscure Freshman. I'm going to find out that, first.""But there's no need of finding out that," said Trotwood naïvely. "I told him so myself, the other day.""A week ago Tuesday, to be exact," said Harry reflectively. "I remember he slobbered all over me at the French class Wednesday, though he didn't have anything to say to me on Monday. Wasn't that about it?""Yes," admitted Trotwood."Well, it proves what I was saying, but I'm sorry you did it, for it spoils my little game with the beautiful Junius. The French lesson will be a dull one, I fear. I rather think I shall have to end by being rude to Junius, to keep him. from making an infernal little pest of himself."But the French lesson was not as dull as Harry feared, for the ingratiating Junius played into Harry's hands and incidentally proved himself not so good an actor off the stage as on. His behavior for the first ten or fifteen minutes was all that could be desired; he sat in Harry's Morris chair and waved a cigarette and put his host and Trotwood at their ease with the grace and charm of a George IV. At length he and Harry settled down to their "Notre Dame de Paris," and for a while all went well. Then of a sudden Junius became strangely silent and preoccupied."'Then they made him sit down on—' oh, Lord, what's abrancard bariolé?" said Harry. "You look upbrancard, Junius, and I'll look up the other.... Oh, yes; speckled. No; motley—that's probably nearer; it depends on whatbrancardmeans. What does it mean, anyway? Come on, Junius, do you mean to say you haven't found it yet? What's the matter?""I was looking upasseoir," said Junius, who had been staring straight in front of him."Sit, of course; you knew that. I translated that, anyway. I'll look upbrancard." Harry's glance, as he turned again to his dictionary, fell upon a letter lying on his desk, waiting to be mailed. It was addressed in Harry's own legible hand toLieut.-Gen. Sir Giles Fletcher, M. P. etc.,204 Belgrave Square,London, S. W.,England.It immediately occurred to him that this was the probable cause of his classmate's preoccupation, and the joy of the chase burned anew in his breast."Whatareyou staring at, Junius?" he asked a minute later, with, well simulated unconsciousness."Nothing," replied Junius, returning to his book and blushing. That was bad already, as Harry pointed out later; it would have been so easy, for a person who really knew, to pass it off with some such remark as "I was overcome by the address on that letter. My, but what swells you do correspond with," etc. But the unfortunate Junius could not even be consistent to the rôle of affected ignorance that he had assumed."I see you know Sir Giles Fletcher," he said after a while. "I saw that envelope on the table; I couldn't help seeing the address. Is he a friend of yours?""Yes," said Harry; "my uncle.""Oh. Well, I heard a good deal about him last summer from some relations of his ... connections, anyway; the Marquis of Moville ... and his family. We had a shooting-lodge in Scotland, and he had a moor near ours. He came over and shot with us once, and said ours was the best moor in Perthshire. His brother came too; Lord Archibald Carson. He's the one that's connected with your uncle, isn't he?""Yes. Married his sister.""The Marquis is rather a decent fellow," continued Junius languidly. "Do you know him?""No," said Harry calmly; "no decent person does. Nor Lord Archibald, either. They're the worst pair of rounders in England. My uncle doesn't even speak to them in the street.""Oh." Junius' face was a study, but Harry was sitting so that he could not see it, and had to be contented with Trotwood's subsequent account of it. There was silence for a few moments, during which Harry waited with perfect certainty for Junius' next remark."Well, of course we didn't know themwell, at all. They just came and shot with us once. That's nothing, in Scotland."Victor Hugo was resumed after this and the translation finished without further incident. The beautiful Junius, however, needed no urging to "stick around" afterward, and sat for an hour or more smoking cigarettes and chatting pleasantly about his acquaintance, carefully culled from the New York social register and the British peerage."Well, Trotty," said Harry after the incubus had departed, dropping a perfect shower of invitations to New York, Newport, Palm Beach, the Adirondacks and the Scottish moors; "what about it? Is the beautiful Junius, friend of dukes and scion of Crusaders, an obnoxious, unhealthy little vermin, or isn't he?""I suppose he is. My, but he was fun, though! But he's going to make the Dramatic Association after Christmas, for all that.""Oh, yes. He'll make whatever he sets out to make, straight through. Nobody here will ever see through him. He doesn't often give himself away as he did to-night, of course. He talks up to each person on what he thinks they'll like; to Josh Traill, for instance, he'll talk about football, and to an æsthetic type, like Morton Miniver, on Japanese prints and Maeterlinck's plays; and to you on the Glee and Mandolin Clubs.... He has already, hasn't he? Don't attempt to deny it; your blush betrays you! That's the way his type gets on here; talk to the right people, and don't talk to any one else, and in addition do a little acting or whatever you can, and it'll go hard if you don't make a senior society before you're through.... He's clever, too; he'll make it, all right. You see, he only gave himself away to me because he talked on a subject where breeding counts, as well as knowledge.... It was rash of him to try the duke and duchess stuff; he'd much better have stuck to track, or something safe.""See here, Harry," said Trotwood, rising to go, "I grant you that Junius has given himself away and that he's a repulsive little beast, and all the rest of it, but don't you think that you are taking the incident just a little too seriously? It's an obnoxious type, all right, but it's a common one. There are bound to be a few Juniuses in every bunch of three or four hundred fellows wherever you take them; Oxford, or anywhere else. Why bother about them? Let them blather on; they won't hurt you, as long as you know them for what they are. And if Junius, or one of his kind, gets too aggressive and unpleasant, all you have to do is reach out your foot and stamp on him. But don't let him worry you!"
ARCADIA AND YANKEEDOM
We have given a more or less detailed account of the misunderstanding just described because of the fact that the mental relation it inaugurated was responsible, more than any one other thing, for the separation of Harry and James Wimbourne for a period of nearly seven years.
No one, not even Lady Fletcher herself, had any idea that this would come to pass at the time Harry left the country. One thing led on to another; Harry was put in a preparatory school for two or three terms soon after his arrival in England; he was so happy there and the climate and the school life agreed with him so well that it seemed the most natural thing, a year or so later, to send him up to Harrow with some of his youthful contemporaries, with whom he had formed some close friendships. This was done, be it understood, in accordance with Harry's own wish. There was an atmosphere, a quality, a historical feeling about the English schools that after a short time exerted a strong influence on Harry's adolescent imagination, and made St. Barnabas seem flat and unprofitable in comparison. It would not have been so with many boys, but it was with Harry.
Of course James was a strong magnet in the other direction, but not quite strong enough to pull him against all the forces contending on the English side. There was a distinct heart-interest there; within a year after Harry's arrival in the country, the majority of his friends were English boys. How many vice-Jameses were needed to offset the pull of one James we don't know, but we do know that there were enough. James at first objected strenuously to the change in plans, but Harry countered the objection with the proposal that James should leave St. Barnabas and go up to Harrow with his brother. This was considered on the American side as such an inexplicable attitude that further argument was abandoned and the matter of Harry's schooling given up as a bad job.
The one valid objection to Harrow was that if Harry wasto become an American citizen, the place to educate him was in America. Sir Giles saw this, and gave the objection its full value.
"If I were to consult my own inclination alone," he said to Harry when they were talking the matter over, "I should undoubtedly want to make an Englishman out of you. I think you would make a pretty good Englishman, Harry. You could go to Oxford, and then make your career here. Parliament, you know, or the diplomatic. But there seems to be some feeling against such a course. They want you to be an American. They seem to think that your having been born and bred an American makes some difference. Fancy!"
"Fancy!" echoed Harry, as capable as any one of falling in with the spirit of what Lady Fletcher called Sir Giles' "arising-out-of-that-reply" manner.
"And I won't say they are wholly wrong. The question is, can we make a good American of you over here in England? By the time you have gone through Harrow, won't you be an Englishman of the most confirmed type? Won't you disappoint everybody and slip from there into Oxford, as it were, automatically?"
"I am of the opinion," replied Harry judicially, "that the honorable member's fears on that score are ungrounded. You see, Uncle G.," he went on, dropping his parliamentary manner, "I shall go back to America to go to college, anyway. I couldn't possibly go anywhere except to Yale. We've gone to Yale, you see, for three generations already."
"I thought, when you came over here, that you couldn't possibly go to school anywhere except at St. Barnabas. It seems to me I remember something of that kind."
"This is quite different," said Harry firmly, "quite different. I was brought up in Yale, practically. I'm sure I could never be happy anywhere but there. Besides, I don't want to become an Englishman. That's all rot."
"Well," said his uncle, "if that's the case, we'll risk it. And—" he unconsciously quoted his wife on a former occasion—"there are always the vacations."
But that is just where the honorable member proved himself mistaken. The vacations weren't there, after all. And that was where the mutual misunderstanding between the two ladies came in.
We don't mean to say that this was wholly responsible for the uninterrupted separation. Other things came into it; coincidence, mere fortuitous circumstances. Plans were made, on both sides of the Atlantic, but they were always interrupted, for some reason or another. James and Cecilia would write cheerfully about coming over next summer and bringing young James and one or two of their own children with them. That would be from about October to January. Then, along in the winter, it would appear that their plans for the summer were not settled, after all. Ruth was not well enough to travel this year, or James could not leave his work and Cecilia could not leave him. Or, on the other hand, Aunt Miriam would talk breezily at times of taking Giles over and showing him the country—Giles had never been to America except to marry his wife—and taking Harry too, of course; or she would casually suggest running over with him for a fortnight at Christmas. But Harry's summer vacation was so short, only eight weeks, and there were Visits to be made in September; the kind of visits that implied enormous shooting parties and full particulars in theMorning Post. And when Christmas drew near either Giles or Miriam would develop a bad bronchial cough and have to be packed off to Sicily. It is odd how things like that will crop up when two women are fully determined to have nothing to do with each other.
And the boys themselves, could they not go over alone and stay with their relations, at least as soon as they were old enough to make the voyage unaccompanied? James wanted to do something of that kind very much at times; wanted to far more than Harry, who thought that he would have enough of America later on and was meanwhile anxious to get as much out of the continent of Europe as possible. One reason why James never did anything of the sort was that he was afraid; actually a little afraid to go over, unsupported, and find out what they had made of Harry. James' thoughts were apt to run in fixed channels; after he had been a year or two at St. Barnabas, the idea that there was another school in the country, fit for Harry to attend, or in any other country, never entered his head. Harry's decision in favor of Harrow, and particularly Harry's lighthearted suggestion that he should come over and go to Harrow with him, filled his soul with consternation. He, James, leave St. Barnabas for Harrow!...
And to the receptive mind the mere fact that Aunt Cecilia was at this time his closest friend and confidante will explain much. She never made derogatory remarks to him about his Aunt Miriam, nor did she reveal to him, any more than to any one else, the antagonism of feeling that existed between them; but in some subtle, unfelt way she imparted her own attitude to him, which was, in a word, Keep Away. She herself would have said, if any one asked her point blank, that she had Given Harry Up. She never approved of his staying over to be educated; she would have had him back, away from Miriam and Europe (Aunt Cecilia wasted no love on that Continent) inside two months, if she could have had her own way. But her opinion was worth nothing; she was not the boy's guardian!
There was a time, two or three years after his arrival in England, when Harry was consumed by a desire to see his brother again, if only for a few weeks. He told his Uncle Giles about it—he soon fell into the habit of confiding in him sooner than in his aunt—and Uncle Giles sympathized readily with his wish, and promised to run over to America with him the next summer. But when, a few days before the date of their sailing, Harry came home from school, his uncle met him in the library with a grave face and told him that he had been called upon to stand for his party in a by-election early in September, and could not possibly leave the country before that. Afterward there would be no time.
"It is quite a compliment to me," explained Sir Giles; "they want me to go in for them at West Bolton because it is a doubtful and important borough, and they think I can win it over to the Conservatives if any one can. Whereas Blackmoor is sure, no matter who runs. It pleases me in a way, of course, but I hate it for breaking up our trip."
"Oh, dear, I did want to see James," said Harry, leaning his elbows on the mantelpiece, and burying his face in his hands to hide his tears of disappointment.
"Poor boy, it is hard on you," said Sir Giles, and impulsively drew Harry to him and clasped him against his broad bosom. "Do you remember the man in the play, that always voted at his party's call and never thought of thinking for himself at all? That's me, and it makes me feel foolish at times, I can tell you. But if you want so much to see James, why can't he be brought over here?"
"I don't know," said Harry, "I wish he would come, butI'm sure he won't. I don't know what's the matter, but I'm certain that if I am to see him, it will have to be I that makes the journey. I've felt that for some time."
"Well, what about your going over alone? I could see you off at Liverpool, and they would meet you at New York."
But that would not do, either. Harry had counted so much on having his uncle with him and showing him all the interesting things in America that his uncle's defalcation took all the zest out of the trip for him. So he remained in England and helped Sir Giles win the by-election, which interested him very much.
Lady Fletcher was right when she prophesied that Sir Giles would become fond of Harry. He was just such a boy as Sir Giles would have given his Parliamentary career, his K. C. B., and his whole fortune to have for his own son. The two got on famously together. Sir Giles liked to have Harry with him during all his vacations, and visits during summer holidays—visits, that is, on which Harry could not be included—were almost completely given up, as far as Sir Giles was concerned. They spent blissful days with each other on the golf links, or fishing in a Scotch stream, or exploring the filthiest and most fascinating corners of some Continental town, while Aunt Miriam, gently satirical, though secretly delighted, went her own smart and fashionable way, joining them at intervals.
No one was prouder or more pleased than Harry when—a year or two after he came into the Rumbold property, curiously enough—Sir Giles was given a G. C. B. and a baronetcy by his grateful party; or when, in the Conservative landslide that followed the Boer War, he rose to real live ministerial rank, and had to go through a second election by his borough and became a "Right Honorable." The fly in the ointment was that he saw less of his uncle than formerly. The Fletchers moved from their smart but restricted quarters in Mayfair to an enormous place in Belgrave Square, "so as to be near the House," as Aunt Miriam plausibly but rather unconvincingly put it, and Sir Giles seemed to be always either at the House or the Colonial office—have we said that he became Secretary for the Colonies? However, Harry was treated as though he were a son of the house, and was givencarte blanchein the matter of asking school friends to stay with him when he came home.This permission also applied to Rumbold Abbey, the estate in Herefordshire that formed the chief part of the aforementioned property. There was no abbey, but there was a late Stuart house of huge proportions; also parks and woods and streams that offered unlimited opportunities for the destruction of innocent fauna, of which Harry and a number of his contemporary Harrovians soon learned to take advantage.
On the whole, Harry led an extremely joyous and entertaining life during the days of his exile. At school he fared no less well than at home; he was never a leader among his fellows, but he was good enough at sports to win their respect and attractive enough in his personality to make many friends. The natural flexibility of his temperament enabled him to fit in fairly easily with the hard-and-fast ways of English school life. He accepted all its conventions and convictions, and never realized, as long as he remained in England, that they were in any way different from those of the schools of his own country. He soon got to dress and to talk like an Englishman, though he never went to extremes in what he loved to irritate his schoolfellows by calling the "English accent." While not exactly handsome, he became, as he reached man's estate, extremely agreeable to look upon. He had a clear pink complexion and dark hair, always a striking and pleasing combination, and he was tall and slim and moved with the stiff gracefulness that is the special characteristic of the British male aristocracy. In general, people liked him, and he liked other people.
His vacations, as has been said, were usually spent with Sir Giles either in the British Isles or on the Continent, but there was one Easter holiday—the second he spent in England—when he was, to quote a phrase of Aunt Miriam's, thrown on the parish. The Fletchers were booked to spend the holiday in a Mediterranean cruise on the yacht of a nautical duke, who was so nautical and so much of a duke that to be asked to cruise with him was not merely an Engagement; it was an Experience. In any case, there could be no question of taking Harry, and Lady Fletcher was in perplexity about what to do with him till Sir Giles suggested, "Why don't we send him to Mildred?" So to Mildred Harry went, and spent an important, if not a wildly exciting, month.
Mildred was Sir Giles' only sister, Lady Archibald Carson. She lived in a little house in the Surrey hills, andthough the land that went with it was restricted, it was fertile and its mistress went in as heavily as her means would allow for herbaceous borders and rock gardens and Japanese effects. Her two children, both girls, lived there with her. Her husband, Lord Archibald, was also, in a sense, living with her, but the verdant domesticity of the Surrey hills had no charm for him and he spent practically all of his time in London and other busy haunts of men, or even more busy haunts of women. He was a younger son of a long line of marquises who for their combination of breeding and profligacy probably had no match in the British peerage. Within five years of his marriage he had with the greatest casualness in the world run through his own patrimony and all he could lay his hands on of his wife's. Having bullied and wheedled all that he could out of her he now consistently let her alone and depended for his income on what he could bully and wheedle out of his brother, the eleventh marquis, who was known as a greater rake than Lord Archibald merely because he had greater facilities for rakishness at his command.
Lady Archibald was a tall, light-haired, pale-eyed woman with a tired face and a gentle manner. She had no interests in life beyond her children and her garden, but she had a kind heart and welcomed Harry cordially on his arrival at the little house in Surrey. He had seen her once before at the Fletchers' in London, but he had never seen her children. It was, therefore, with a rather keen sense of curiosity that he walked through the house into the garden, where he was told that Beatrice and Jane were to be found. He saw them across the croquet lawn immediately, and he underwent a mild shock of disappointment on seeing, as he could, at a glance, that they were just as long of limb, just as straight of hair and just as angular in build as most English girls of their age.
The elder girl rose from her seat and sauntered slowly across the lawn, followed by her sister. She stared coolly at Harry as she walked toward him, but said nothing, even when she was quite near. He met her gaze with perfect self-possession, and suddenly realized that she was waiting to see if he would make the first move. He instantly determined not to do so, it being her place, after all, to speak first; so he stood still and stared calmly back at her for a few seconds, till finally the girl, with a sudden fleeting smile, held out her hand and greeted him.
"You're Harry Wimbourne, aren't you?" she said, cordially enough. "This is my sister Jane. We are very glad to see you; we've heard such a lot about you. Come over here and tell us about America."
In that meeting, in her rather rude little aggression and Harry's reception of it, was started a friendship. She deliberately tested Harry and found that he came up to the mark. He did not fidget, he did not blush, he did not stammer; he simply returned her stare, waiting for her to find her manners. Nothing he could have done would have pleased her better; she decided she would like him, then and there.
Harry on his side found her conversation, even in the first hour of their acquaintance, stimulating and agreeable, and like nothing that he had experienced before in any young girl of thirteen, English or American.
"You needn't be afraid that we shall ask foolish questions about America," Beatrice went on. "We know the Indians don't run wild in the streets of New York, and all that sort of thing. We even know what part of the country New Haven is in; we looked it up on the map. It's quite near New York, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Harry, "you're quite right; it is. But how do you pronounce the name of the state it is in? Can you tell me that?"
"Connecticut," replied the girl, readily enough; but she sounded the secondc, after the manner of most English people. Harry explained her mistake to her, and she took the correction smiling, quite without pique or resentment.
"Now go on and tell us something about the country. Something really important, you know; something we don't know already."
"Well," said Harry, "there seems to be more room there; that's about the most important difference. Except in the largest cities, and there there seems to be less, and that's why they make the buildings so high. And nearly all the houses, except in the middle of the towns, are made of wood."
He went on at some length, the two girls listening attentively.
At last Beatrice interrupted with the question:
"Which do you think you like best, on the whole, England or America?"
"Oh, America of course; but only because it's my own country. I can imagine liking England best, if one happened to be born here. Some things are nicer here, and some are nicer there."
"What do you like best in England?"
"Well, the old things. Cathedrals and castles. Also afternoon tea, which we don't bother about much over there. And the gardens."
"And what do you like best about America?"
"Trolley cars, and soda water fountains, and such things. And the climate. And the way people act. There's so much less—less formality over there; less bothering about little things, you know."
"Yes, yes, I know exactly. Silly little things, that don't matter one way or the other. I know I should like that about America."
"I think you would like America, anyway," said Harry, looking judicially at his interlocutrix. "You seem to be a free and easy sort of person."
"Well, I wouldn't like trolley cars," interrupted Jane with firmness, "They go too fast. I don't like to go fast. It musses my hair, and the dust gets into my eyes."
"Shut up, silly," said her sister; "you've never ridden in one."
"No, but I know what it is to go fast, and I don't like it. I don't think I should care much for America."
"Well," said Harry, laughing, "we won't make you go there. Or if you do go there, we won't make you ride on the trolley cars. You can ride in hacks all the time; they go slow enough for any one."
Beatrice's first impression of Harry underwent no disillusionment as the days went on. She seemed to find in him a companion after her own heart. He had plenty of ideas of his own, and he was entirely willing to act on hers; he never affected to despise them as a girl's notions, nor did he ever object to her sharing in his amusements because of her misfortune of sex. They climbed trees and crawled through the underbrush on their stomachs together with as much zest andabandonas if there were no such things as frocks and stockings in the world. Harry had never known this kind of companionship with a girl before, and was delighted with her.
"Oh, dash, there goes my garter," she exclaimed oneday as they were walking through a country lane together. She had got rather to make a point of such matters, to over-emphasize their possible embarrassment, simply in order to see how beautifully he acted.
"Well, tie it up or something," said he, sauntering on a few steps.
Beatrice did what was necessary and ran on and caught up with him.
"I never could see why a garter shouldn't be as freely talked about as any other article of clothing," said she. "All that sort of modesty is such rot; people have legs, and legs have to have stockings to cover them, and stockings have to have garters to keep them up. And women have legs, just as much as men; there's not a doubt of that. Perhaps that's news to you, though?"
"No, I knew that."
"You really, honestly aren't shocked at what I'm saying?" asked the girl, scanning his face intently.
"Not in the least; why should I be? You're not telling me anything shocking."
Beatrice drew a long breath of pure enjoyment.
"Itisa comfort to meet a person like you once in a while," she said. "Tell me, are women such fools about their legs in America as they are here?"
"Yes, quite," said Harry fervently; "if not actually worse. That's one thing that we don't seem to have learned any better about. It always makes me tired."
The two saw each other, infrequently but fairly regularly, throughout Harry's stay in England. They never corresponded, both admitting that they were bad letter writers, but when they met they were always able to pick up their friendship exactly where they had left it.
When Sir Giles came into the Rumbold property there was naturally a corresponding change in the circumstances of Lady Archibald and her daughters. Every penny of the property, which came to Sir Giles through the death of a maternal uncle, was entailed and inalienable from his possession; but he was able to alleviate her condition by giving her a large yearly allowance out of his income; and it was pointed out that such an arrangement would have the advantage of keeping the money safe from her husband. Lady Archibald took a small house in South Street andspent the winter and spring months there, and in the due course of time Beatrice was brought out into society.
Her undoubted beauty, which was of the dark and haughty type, and her excellent dancing were enough to make her a social success. This was a tremendous comfort to her mother, who was never obliged to worry about her at dances or scheme for invitations at desirable houses, and could confine her maternal anxiety to merely hoping that Beatrice would make a better match than she herself had. But Beatrice hated the whole proceeding, heartily and unaffectedly.
"The dancing men all bore me," she once said to Harry; "and I bore all the others. Almost all men are dull; at any rate, they appear at their dullest and worst in society, and the few interesting ones don't want to be bored by a chit like me, and I can't say that I blame them. As for the women—when they get into London society they cease to be women at all; they become fiends incarnate."
"I hope that success is not embittering your youthful heart," said Harry, smiling.
"Not success, but just being in what they are pleased to call society; that will make me bitter if I have much more of it. I don't know why it is; people are nice naturally—most of them, that is. Of course some people are born brutes, like—well, like my father; but most of them are nice at bottom. But somehow London makes beasts of them all. If I am ever Prime Minister—"
"Which, after all, is improbable."
"Well, if I am, the first thing I shall do will be simply to abolish London. We shall have just the same population, but it will be all rural. We shall all live in Arcadian simplicity, and while we may not be perfect, at least we shan't all be the scheming, selfish, merciless brutes that London makes of us."
"And pending the passage of that bill you want to live in Arcadian simplicity alone. I see. I quite like the idea myself. I should love to found Arcadia with you somewhere in rural England, when I have time. Where shall we have it? I should say Devonshire, shouldn't you? Clotted cream, you know, and country lanes. It will be like Marie Antoinette's hamlet at Versailles, only not nearly so silly. We will pay other people to milk the cows andmake the butter, and do all the dirty work, and just sit around ourselves and be perfectly charming. No one will be admitted without passing a rigid examination in character, and that will be the only necessary qualification. Arcadia, Limited, we'll call it; it sounds like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, doesn't it?"
"Whom shall we have in it? Uncle Giles—he could pass all right, couldn't he?"
"Oh, Heavens, yes,Magna cum. And Aunt Miriam—perhaps. She would need some cramming before she went up. What about your mother?"
"I'm afraid Mama could never get in," answered Beatrice, smiling rather sadly. "I've talked to her before about such things and she never answers, but just looks at me with that sad tolerant smile of hers that seems to say 'Arcadian simplicity is all very well, but you'll find the best way to get it is through a husband with ten thousand a year or so.' And the dreadful part of it is that she's right, to a certain extent."
Although in matter of years Beatrice was a few weeks Harry's junior, she was at this time twice as old as he, for all practical purposes. She was an honored guest at Lady Fletcher's big dinners—almost the only ones that did not bore her to death—into which Harry would be smuggled at the last minute to fill up a vacant place, or else calmly omitted from altogether. Nevertheless, he was her greatest comfort all through her first season; nothing but his jovial optimism, which saw the worst but found it no more than amusing, kept the iron from entering into her soul. Such an occasional conversation as the above-quoted would put sanity into her world and fortify her for days against the commonplaces of dancing men and the jealous looks of less attractive maidens. And how she would pine for him during the intervals! How she would long for the arrival of the next vacation or mid-term exeat that would bring him up to town! There was a freshness, a wholesomeness about his way of looking at things that was soothing to her as a breath of country air.
It is not surprising, then, that Beatrice began to dread the nearing date of Harry's departure for America and college more than any one else, even Sir Giles himself, to whom Harry had become by this time almost as dear as a son. Poor Uncle Giles, though he wanted Harry to stay in thecountry more than any other earthly thing, made it a point of honor never to dissuade the boy from his original project of returning to his own country when he was ready to go to college and becoming an American again. Beatrice, however, was bound by no such restriction and complained bitterly of his desertion.
"What is the point of your going back to some silly American college?" she would ask. "It isn't as if you didn't have the best universities in the world right here, under your very nose. Why aren't Oxford and Cambridge good enough for you, I should like to know? They were good enough for Milton and Thackeray and Isaac Newton and a few other more or less prominent people."
"Very true," replied Harry with perfect good-humor. "The only thing is, those people didn't happen to be Yankees. I am, you know. It's been a habit in our family for two hundred years or more, and it doesn't do to break up old family traditions. Must be a Yankee, whatever happens."
"But that doesn't mean that you have to go to a Yankee college, necessarily," argued Beatrice. "You won't learn nearly as much there as you would at Oxford. You are as far along in your studies now as the second year men at Yale; I heard Uncle Giles say so himself."
"Yes, I know, that's very true. I can't argue about it; you've got all the arguments on your side. I just know that there's only one possible place on earth where I can go to college, and that is Yale. Better not talk about it any more, if it makes you peevish."
"Well, we won't. I'll tell you one thing, though; we have got to start a correspondence. You can spare a few ideas from your Yankees, I hope. I shall simply die on the wooden pavements if I can't at least hear from you occasionally."
"Certainly; I should like nothing better. I'll even go so far as to be the first to write, if you like, and that's a perfectly tremendous concession, as I'm the worst letter writer that ever lived."
So there the matter was left. Harry left Harrow for good at Easter, and spent one last golden month in London, seeing Beatrice almost every day and being an unalloyed joy and comfort to his uncle and aunt. In May he took a short trip through Spain with Sir Giles; it was a countryneither of them had visited before, and they had planned a trip there for years. Uncle Giles worked double time for a fortnight in order to be able to leave with a clear conscience, but he found the reward well worth the labor.
They parted at Madrid, the plan being for Harry to sail for New York from Gibraltar, arriving in time to take his final examinations in New Haven in June.
There were tears in Sir Giles' kind blue eyes as he bade Harry good-by, and Harry saw them and knew why they were there. Suddenly he felt his own fill.
"I don't want to go very much, Uncle Giles," he said in a low voice. "Now that it comes to the point, I don't like it much. You've all been so wonderful to me.... It's not a question of what I want to do, though. It's just what's got to be done."
"Yes," said his uncle; "I know. You're quite right about it. It's the only thing to do. But perhaps you won't mind my saying I'm glad, in a way, that you find it hard?"
"Thank you; that helps, too. There's more that comes into it, though; more than what we have talked over together so often.... I mean—"
"James?"
"Yes," said Harry, "that's it."
They clasped hands again and went their separate ways; Sir Giles to the train that was to take him north to Paris and home, and Harry to the train that was to take him south to Gibraltar and home.
OMNE IGNOTUM
"Bless us, how the boy has grown!" cried Aunt Cecilia, and kissed him all over again.
"You'll find your aunt very much changed, I expect," said Uncle James, clasping his hand and smiling, quite in his old style.
"Not a particle, thank Heaven," said Harry, understanding perfectly; "nor you either. Nor the U. S. Customs service, either. Can't I just make them a present of all my luggage and run along? Except that I have some Toledo work and stuff for you and Aunt C."
"Hush, don't say that out loud; they'll charge you extra duty for it," replied Uncle James.
"Oh, was there e'er a Yankee breast which did not feel the moral beauty of making worldly interest subordinate to sense of duty?" misquoted Harry. "Bother the duty. Tell me how you all are. How are Ruth and Oswald and Lucy and Jack and Timothy and the baby? All about eight feet high, I suppose? And James, where is he?"
"James is in New Haven," said Aunt Cecilia; "he has an examination early to-morrow morning and could not get away till after that. He'll be here to-morrow in time for lunch."
It was all very easy and cordial. Harry was in high spirits over returning to his native land, and was genuinely pleased that both his uncle and aunt should take the trouble to come down to the dock to meet his steamer. They, on their side, were most agreeably impressed by him; agreeably disappointed with him, we almost said. It was a relief, as well as a pleasure, to find him, so unchanged and unaffected at heart, though he looked and talked like an Englishman. Mrs. James sat on a packing case and watched him with unadulterated pleasure as he tended to the examination of his luggage. The art of his Bond Street tailor served to accentuate rather than hide the slim, sinewy, businesslike beauty of his limbs, brought into play as he bent down to lift a trunk tray or tug at a strap. Though all that wasnothing, of course, to the joy of the discovery that he was unspoiled in character.
"It's turned out all right," she thought and smiled to herself. "I don't know whether it's chiefly to his credit or theirs, but it has come out all right, anyway. I wish the boat had not arrived in the evening, so that I could have brought the children to see him, the first thing. They'll have plenty of time, though; and how they'll love him! And how pleased James will be!"
She meant young James, who was now putting the finishing touches on his sophomore year at Yale. James was never very far from her mind when her thoughts ran to her own children—which was most of the time. She always thought of him now more as her own eldest child than as her husband's nephew.
And Harry's thoughts, beneath all his chatter to his uncle and aunt and his transactions with the Customs officials, were also on James. All the way across the Atlantic, on the long dull voyage from Gibraltar—there are not many passengers traveling westward in June—they continually ran on that one subject—James, James, James. What would he be like now? would he be the old James, or changed, somehow—strangely, disappointingly, unacceptably? Harry hoped not; hoped it with his whole heart, in which there was nothing but humility and affection when he thought of what his brother had been to him in the old days. He was so little able to speak what he felt about James that he was embarrassed and over-silent about him. That was why he was so debonair with the Customs officials; that was why he asked after each of his young cousins by name before he mentioned his brother.
"Every single article of clothing I own was bought abroad," he was telling the Customs inspector; "so you can just go ahead and do your worst—That suit cost eight guineas—yes, I know it's too much; I told them so at the time, but they wouldn't listen.... No, that thing with the feathers is not a woman's hat; it's a Tyrolean hat, that the men climb mountains in. I'm going to give it to my Uncle James—that man there sitting on the woman's trunk that she wants to get into—to wear to his office, which is on the thirty-fifth floor.... Yes, I have worn it myself, but don't tell him.... That gold cigarette case is for my brother, who smokes when he's not playing football, and itcost six pound fifteen, which is dirt cheap, I say. I'd keep it myself, except that it's so cheap that I can't afford not to give it away...."
And James, what was he feeling, if he was feeling anything, in regard to his brother at this time, and why have we said nothing about him during these seven years? The truth is, his life had been chiefly distinguished by the blessed uneventfulness that comes of outward happiness and a good understanding with the world. If you can draw a mental picture for yourself of a boy of perfect physique and untarnished mind, gradually attaining the physical and mental development of manhood in comradeship with a hundred or more others in a like position, dedicating the use of each gift as it came to him not to his own aggrandizement but to the glory of God and the service of other men, recognizing his superiority in certain fields with the same humility with which he beheld his inferiority in others, equally willing to give help where he was strong and take help where he was weak, and possessed by the fundamental conviction that other people were just as good as he if not a little bit better, you may get some idea of James during the years of his brother's absence. He was not brilliant, he was not handsome, but there was a splendid normality about him, both in appearance and in character, that inspired confidence and affection among his teachers, his relatives, and friends of his own age.
"He has a good mind and body, and there is no nonsense about him," was the substance of the opinion of the first-named group. "He is a good boy and a nice boy, and I'm glad he is one of the family," said the second. "He is captain of the football team," said the third group, and to one who knows anything about American boarding schools this last will tell everything.
If any one is inclined to blame James for his allowing the Atlantic Ocean to separate him and brother so completely for those seven years it may interest him to know that James was quite of the same opinion. As he sat in the train that took him from New Haven to New York on the morning after Harry's landing, he wondered how the long separation could have come about. On the whole, after a careful review of the business, he was inclined to blame himself; not over-severely, but definitely, nevertheless. He had been timid, indifferent and, above all, lazy. Looking back overhis attitude of the last seven years, he was inclined to be scornful and a little amused. What had he to fear about Harry? Weren't Uncle Giles and Aunt Miriam good people, who could be trusted to bring him up right? What was there to fear, even, in his becoming an Englishman? And anyway, even if he had feared the worst, ought he not to have taken the trouble to go over and see with his own eyes? It had probably turned out all right, for Harry had returned at last with every intention of living in America for the rest of his life; but if he had been spoiled or altered for the worse in any way, he, James, must take his share of the blame for it. There could be no doubt of that.
The root of the matter was, we suspect, that James had been somewhat lacking in initiative. Thoroughly normal people customarily are; it is at once their strength and their weakness. A splendid normality, such as we have described James as enjoying, is a serviceable thing in life, but it is apt to degenerate, if not sufficiently stimulated by misfortune and opposition, into commonplaceness and sterile conservatism. But let us do James justice; he at least saw his fault and blamed himself for it.
He was devoured with curiosity to see what Harry was like; almost as much so as Harry in regard to him. James had plenty of friends, but only one brother, when all was said and done. As the train rushed nearer the consummation of his curiosity, he felt the old feeling of timidity and suspicion sweep over him; but that, as he shook it off, only increased his curiosity; gave it edge.Omne ignotum pro magnifico est; every one knows that, even if he never heard of Virgil, and it is especially true of such natures as James'. Each little wave of fear and suspicion that swept over him made him a little more restless and unhappy, though he smiled at himself for feeling so. It was a relief when the train pulled into the Grand Central Station and he could grip his bag and start on the short walk to the house of his uncle, which was situated in the refined and expensive confines of Murray Hill.
Any one who knows anything about the world will be able to guess pretty closely the nature of the brothers' meeting. Harry was sitting in the front room upstairs when his cousin Ruth, who was at the window, announced: "Here he comes, Harry." In a perfect frenzy of pleasure, embarrassment,affection and curiosity, the boy made a dash for the stairs and greeted his brother at the front door with the demonstrative words:
"Hello, James!"
To which James, who for the last few minutes had been obliged to restrain himself from throwing his bag into the gutter and breaking into a run, replied:
"Well, Harry, how's the boy?"
Then they walked upstairs together and began talking rather fast about the voyage, examinations, Aunt Miriam, Spain, the Yale baseball team,—anything but what was in their hearts.
"Well, you came back without being made an earl, after all, it seems," said James a little later at lunch.
"No, but I came back a sub-freshman, which is the next best thing. There's no telling what I might have been if I'd stayed, though. Everybody was so frightfully keen on my staying over there and going to Oxford, especially Beatrice—Beatrice Carson, you know; I've written you about her? She would have made me an earl in a minute, if she could, to make me stay. None of it did any good, though. I would be a Yankee."
"How do you think you'll like being a Yankee again?" asked James. "You certainly don't look much like one at present."
"No? That'll come, I dare say. My heart's in the right place. Though that doesn't prevent the Americans from seeming strange, at first. Did you notice that woman in the chemist's shop this morning, Aunt C.? She was chewing gum all the time she waited on you, and she never said 'Thank you' or 'Ma'am' once."
"They all are that way," said Aunt Cecilia with a gentle sigh. "I don't expect anything else."
"Oh, the bloated aristocrat!" said James. "It is an earl, after all. Only don't blame the poor girl for not calling you 'My lord.' She couldn't be expected to know; they don't have many of them over here."
"I don't mean that she was rude," said Harry; "she didn't give that impression, somehow. It was just the way she did things; a sort of casualness. The Americans are a funny people!"
"Oh, Lord!" groaned James; "hear the prominent foreigner talk. What do you think of America, my lord?How do you like New York? What do you think of our climate? To think that that's the thing I used to spank when he was naughty!"
"That's all very well," retorted Harry, with warmth; "wait till you get out of this blessed country for a while yourself, and see how other people act, and then perhaps you'll see that there are differences. You may even be able to see that they are not all in our favor. And as for smacking—spanking, if you feel inclined to renew that quaint old custom now, I'm ready for you. Any time you want!"
"Oh, very well," growled James; "after lunch."
"Yes, and in Central Park, please," observed Uncle James; "not in the house; I can't afford it. You are right, though, Harry, about the Americans being a funny people. If you enter the legal profession, or if you go into public life, you'll be more and more struck by the fact as time goes on. But there's one thing to remember; it doesn't do to tell them so. They can't bear to hear it. We have proof of that immediately before us; you announce your opinion here,coram familia, as it were, and what is the result? Contempt and loathing on the part of the great American public, represented by James, and a duel to follow—in Central Park, remember; in Central Park."
"I wonder if that milk of magnesia has come yet," murmured Aunt Cecilia, who had not gone beyond the beginning of the conversation; and further hostilities—friendly ones, even—were forgotten in the general laugh that followed.
Of course James, who conformed to the American type of college boy as closely as any one could and retain his individuality, was greatly struck during the first few days by his brother's Anglicisms, which showed themselves at that time rather in his appearance and speech than in his point of view. For example, James was indulging one day in a lengthy plaint against the hardness of one of his instructors, as the result of which he would probably, to use his own expression, "drop an hour"; that is, lose an hour's work for the year and be put back one-sixtieth of his work for his degree. Harry listened attentively enough to the narrative, but his sole comment when James finished was the single word "Tiresome." The word was ill chosen for James' peace of mind. If such expressions were the result of English training he could not but think the less of English training.
The summer passed off pleasantly enough, the boys living with their uncle and aunt at Bar Harbor. Harry saw much less of James than he had expected, for he was away much of the time, visiting classmates and school friends whom Harry did not know. He was obliged, too, to return to Yale soon after the first of September for football practise. Harry spent most of his time playing fairly happily about with his young cousins and other people of his own age. The most interesting feature of the summer to him was a visit to Aunt Selina at her summer place in Vermont. This was the ancestral, ante-Revolution farm of the Wimbournes, much rebuilt and enlarged and presented to Miss Wimbourne for her life on the death of her late father. Here Aunt Selina was wont to gather during the summer months a heterogeneous crowd of friends, and it was a source of wonder and admiration to the other members of the family that she was able to attract such a large number of what she referred to as "amusing people." With these Harry was quite at ease, his English training having accustomed him to associating with older and cleverer people than himself, and it gave Aunt Selina quite a thrill of pleasure to see a boy of eighteen partaking in the staid amusements of his elders and meeting them on their own ground, and to think that the boy was her own nephew. She became at length so much taken with him that a bright idea occurred to her.
"Harry," said she one day; "what do you think of my going to live in New Haven?"
"I think it's a fine idea," said Harry. "But where?"
"Why, in the old house, of course. That is, if you and James, or your guardians, are willing to rent it to me. It has stood empty ever since you left it, and I presume there is no immediate prospect of your occupying it yourselves for some time."
"As half owner of the establishment," said Harry courteously, "I offer you the full use of it for as long a time as you wish, free of charge."
"That's sweet of you, but it's not business. I should insist on paying rent."
"Well, Aunt Selina, you're used to having your own way, so I presume you will. But what makes you want to come and live in New Haven, all of a sudden? I thought you could never bear the place."
"I had a great many friends there in the old days, andshould like to see something of them again. Besides, it will be nice to be in the same town with you and James."
Like most people, she put the real reason last. If Harry failed to realize from its position that it was the real reason, he learned it unmistakably enough from what followed. The conversation wandered to a discussion of changes in the town since Aunt Selina had lived there. She supposed that everybody had dinner at night there now, though she remembered the time when it was impossible to reconcile servants to the custom. She herself would have it late, except on Sundays. Sunday never did seem like Sunday to her without dinner in the middle of the day and supper in the evening.
"Well," said Harry, "I hope you'll ask James and me to a Sunday dinner occasionally."
"Good gracious, yes! Every Sunday, and supper too. That will be a regular custom; and I want you both to feel at liberty to come up for a meal at any time. Any time, without even telephoning beforehand. And bring your friends; there will always be enough to eat. How stupid of me to forget that. Of course I want you, as often as you'll come."
"We accept," said Harry, "unconditionally. We shall be glad enough to have a decent meal once in a while, after the food we shall get in college. James says he even gets tired of the training table, which is a great admission, for he loves everything connected with football. Even when we were kids, I remember, he used to love to drink barley water with his meals; nasty stuff—they used to make me drink it in England."
Harry rattled on purposely about the first thing that came into his head, for he noticed his aunt seemed slightly embarrassed. She was going to New Haven to take care of James and himself, and naturally she did not care to divulge the real reason to him. Well, she was a dear old thing, certainly; he remembered how she had acted on his mother's death. He was suddenly sorry that he had seen nothing of her for the last seven years, and sorry that he had written her so irregularly during his absence. It was pleasant to think that he would have a chance to make up for it in the future.
LIVY AND VICTOR HUGO
On a certain Wednesday evening late in September Harry stood on a certain street-corner in the city of New Haven. Surging about him were a thousand or so youths of his own age or a little older, most of them engaged in making noises expressive of the pleasures of reunion. It was a merry and turbulent scene. Tall, important-looking seniors, wearing white sweaters with large blue Y's on their chests, moved through the crowd with a worried air, apparently trying to organize something that had no idea whatever of being organized. They were ineffectual, but oh, so splendid! Harry, who had almost no friends of his own there to talk to, watched them with undisguised admiration. He reflected that James would be one of their number a year hence, and wondered if by any chance he himself would be one three years from now.
Just as he dismissed the probability as negligible, a sort of order became felt among those who stood immediately about him. Men stopped talking and appeared to be listening to something which Harry could not hear. Then they all began shouting a strange, unmeaning succession of syllables in concert; Harry recognized this as a cheer and lustily joined in with it. At the end came a number; repeated three times; a number which no one present had ever before heard bellowed forth from three or four hundred brazen young throats; a number that had a strange and unfamiliar sound, even to those who shouted it, and caused the upperclassmen to break into a derisive jeer.
A new class had officially started its career, and Harry was part of it. No one flushed more hotly than he at the jeer of the upperclassmen; no one jeered back with greater spirit when the sophomores cheered for their own class. No one took part more joyfully in the long and varied program of events that filled out the rest of the evening. The parade through the streets of the town was to him a joyous bacchanal, and the wrestling matches on the Campusa splendid orgy. After these were over even more enjoyable things happened, for James, with two or three fellow-juniors—magnificent, Olympian beings!—took him in tow and escorted him safe and unmolested through the turbulent region of York Street, where freshmen, who had nothing save honor to fight for, were pressed into organized hostility against sophomores, who didn't even have that.
"Well, what did you think of it all?" asked James later.
"Oh, ripping," said Harry, "I never thought it would be anything like this. We never really saw anything of the real life of the college when we lived in town here, did we?"
"Not much. It all seems pretty strange to you now, I suppose, but you'll soon get onto the ropes and feel at home. What sort of a schedule did you get?"
"Oh, fairly rotten. They all seem to be eight-thirties. Here, you can see," producing a paper.
"That's not so bad," pronounced James, approvingly. "Nothing on Wednesday or Saturday afternoons, so that you can get to ball games and things, and nothing any afternoon till five, so that you'll have plenty of time for track work."
"Oh, yes, track work; I'd forgotten that."
"Well, you don't want to forget it; you want to go right out and hire a locker and get to work, to-morrow, if possible. If track's the best thing for you to go out for, that is, and I guess it is, all right. You're too light for football, and you don't know anything about baseball, and you haven't got a crew build."
"What is a crew build?" asked Harry.
"Well, if you put it that way, I don't know that I can tell you. It's a mysterious thing; I've been trying to find out myself for several years. I don't see why I haven't got a fairly good crew build myself, but they always tell me I haven't, when I suggest going out for it. However, you haven't got one, that's easy. So you'll just have to stick to track."
"Yes," said Harry soberly, "I suppose I shall."
Harry was what is commonly known as a good mixer, and made acquaintances among his classmates rapidly enough to suit even the nice taste of James. In general, however, they remained acquaintances and never became friends. It was not that they were not nice, most of them; "ripping fellows,all of them," Harry described them to his brother. They were, in fact, too nice; those who lived near him were all of the best preparatory school type, the kind that invariably leads the class during freshman year. Harry found them conventional, quite as much so as the English type, though in a different way. Intercourse with them failed to give him stimulus; he found himself always more or less talking down to them, and intellectual stimulus was what Harry needed above all things among his friends.
There were exceptions, however. The most brilliant was that of Jack Trotwood, probably the last man with whom Harry might have been expected to strike up a friendship. Harry first saw him in a Latin class, one of the first of the term. Trotwood sat in the same row as Harry, two or three seats away from him—the acquaintance was not even of the type that alphabetical propinquity is responsible for. On the day in question he dropped a fountain pen, and spent some moments in burrowing ineffectually under seats in search of it. The fugitive chattel at length turned up directly under Harry's chair, and as he leaned over to restore it to its owner he noticed something about his face that appealed to him at once. He never could tell what it was; the flush that bending over had brought to it, the embarrassment, the dismay at having made a fuss in public, the smile, containing just the right mixture of cordiality and formality, yet undeniably sweet withal, with which he thanked him; perhaps it was any or all of these things. At any rate after class, on his way back toward York Street, Harry found himself hurrying to catch up with Trotwood, who was walking a few paces ahead of him. Trotwood turned as he came up, and smiled again.
"That was sort of a stinking lesson, wasn't it?" he asked.
"Yes," said Harry, "wasn't it, though?"
"I should say! Boned for two hours on it last night before I could make anything out of it. Gee, but this Livy's dull, isn't he?"
"Yes, awfully dull. Do you use a trot?"
"No, I haven't yet, but I'm going to, after last night. I can't put so much time on one lesson. Do you?"
"Well, yes. That is, I shall. Do you like Latin?"
"Lord, no, not when it's like this stuff. I only took it because it comes easier to me than most other things. Do you like it?"
"Not much. Not much good at it, either.... Well, I live here—"
"Oh, do you? so do I. Where are you?"
"Fourth floor, back. Come up, some time."
"Thanks, I will. So long."
"So long."
So started a friendship, one of the sincerest and firmest that either ever enjoyed. And yet, as Harry pointed out afterward, it was founded on insincerity and falsehood. Harry's whole part in this first conversation was no more than a tissue of lies. He was extremely fond of Latin, and was so good at it that his entire preparation for his recitations consisted in looking up a few unfamiliar words beforehand; he could always fit the sentences together when he was called upon to construe. It had never occurred to him to use a translation. He was rather fond of Livy, whose flowing and complicated style appealed to him. He gave a false answer to every question merely for the pleasure of agreeing with Trotwood, whom he liked already without knowing why.
The two got into the habit of doing their Latin lesson together regularly, three times a week. Trotwood did not buy a trot, after all; he found Harry quite as good.
"My, but you're a shark," he said in undisguised admiration one evening, as Harry brought order and clarity into a difficult passage. "You certainly didn't learn to do that in this country. You're English, anyway, aren't you?"
"Lord, no; Yankee. Born in New Haven. I have lived over there for some years, though."
"Go to school there?"
"Yes; Harrow."
"Gosh." Trotwood stared at him for a few moments in dazed silence. He stood on the brink of a world that he knew no more of than Balboa did of the Pacific. "What sort of a place is it?"
"Oh, wonderful."
"You played cricket, I suppose, and—and those things?"
"Rugby football, yes," said Harry, smiling.
"And you liked it, didn't you?"
"Oh, rather! Only—"
"Only what?"
"Oh, nothing. I did like it. It's a wonderful place."
"Only it's different from what you're doing now?" said Trotwood, with a burst of insight. "Is that what you mean?"
"Yes."
"I see; I see," said Trotwood, and then he kept still. There was something so comforting, so sympathetic and understanding about his silence that Harry was inspired to confide in him.
"The truth is, I'm beginning to doubt whether I ought to have gone to an English school. I'm not sure but what it would have been better for me to go to school and college in the same country, whatever it was. You see, after spending five or six years in learning to value certain things, it's rather a wrench to come here and find the values all distorted."
"I see," said Trotwood again. He wasn't sure that he did see at all, but he felt that unquestioning sympathy was his cue.
"It's not merely the different kinds of games," went on Harry; "it's not that they make so much more of athletics, or rather of the public side of athletics, than they do over there, though that comes into it a lot. It's what people do and think about and talk about and—and are, in short. Last year, I remember, the men I went with, the sixth formers, used to read the papers a lot and follow the debates in Parliament and talk about such things a lot, even among themselves. Some of them used to write Greek and Latin verse just for fun—wonderfully good, too, some of it. And here—well, how many men in our class, how many men in the whole college do you suppose could write ten lines of Greek or Latin verse without making a mess of it?"
"Not too many, I'm afraid."
"Then there's debating. We used to have pretty good house debates ourselves at school. I used to look forward to them, I remember, from month to month, as one of the most interesting things that happened. But of course they were nothing to a thing like the Oxford Union. You've heard of that, I suppose? Lord, I wish some of these people here could see one of those meetings! It would be an eye-opener."
"But we have debating here," said Trotwood, doubtfully.
"Yes, but what kind of debating? A few grinds gettingup and talking about the Interstate Commerce Commission, or some rotten, technical, dry subject, because they think it will give them good practise in public speaking. Everybody hates it like poison, and they're right, too, for it's all dull, dead; started on the wrong idea. The best men in the class won't go out for it. I wouldn't myself, now that I know what it's like; but I thought of doing it in the summer, and spoke to my brother about it. He didn't say anything against it, because he didn't dare; people are always writing to theNewsand saying what a fine thing debating is. But he let me see pretty clearly that he didn't think much of debating and didn't want me to go out for it, because it didn't get you anywhere in college;simply wasn't done. He'd rather see me take a third place in one track meet and never do another thing in college than to be the captain of the debating team."
"Did he tell you that?"
"Lord, no; he wouldn't dare. No one would; technically, debating is supposed to be a fine thing. But it doesn't get you anywhere near a senior society, so there's an end to it.... But perhaps I'd better not get started on that."
"No, I should think not! Heavens, a junior fraternity is about the height of my ambition!"
Harry smiled at his friend and went on: "You see it's this way, Trotty; you are a sensible person, and look at them in the right way. You play about with your mandolin clubs and various other little things because you like them, like a good dutiful boy. When the time comes, you'll be very glad to take a senior society, if it's offered you. If it isn't, you won't care."
"But I will, though. I don't believe I have much chance, but I know I shall be disappointed if I don't make one, just the same."
"For about twenty-four hours, yes. Don't interrupt me, Trotty; this isn't flattery, it's argument. You are a sensible person, as I have said; and don't let such considerations worry you. There are lots of other sensible persons in the class, too. Josh Traill, for one, and Manxome, and John Fisher and Shep McGee; they're all sensible people, and don't worry or think much about senior societies, though I suppose they all have a good chance to make one eventually, if any one has. But that isn't true of all the class. There is a large and importantsection of it that now, in the first term of freshman year, is thinking and talking nothing except about who will go to a junior fraternity next year, or a senior society two years hence. It's the one subject of conversation that seriously competes with professional baseball and college football, which is all you hear otherwise."
"Oh, no, Harry, you're hard on us. There's automobiles. And guns. And theaters. But why should you mind if a lot of geesers do talk about societies?"
"Well, it makes me sick, that's all. And when I say sick, I use the word in its British, or most vivid sense. It makes me sick, after England and after Harrow, to see a lot of what ought to be the best fellows in the class spending their waking hours in wondering about such rubbishy things.—Do you happen to be aware of an ornament of our class called Junius Neville LeGrand?"
"Golden locks and blue eyes? Yes, I know him. Acts rather well, they say."
"Yes; he's the kind I mean. At any rate, I seem to be in his good graces just at present. All sweetness and light; can't be too particular about telling me how good I am at French, and that sort of thing. In fact, he went so far to-day as to suggest that we might go over the French lesson together, and he's coming here presently to do it."
"But what's the matter with poor Junius? I thought he was as decent as such a painfully good-looking person could be."
"I'm not denying he's attractive. But if you'll stay for the French lesson I think I can show you what I'm talking about."
"But I don't take French."
"No, dear boy; you won't have to know French to see what I'm going to show you. Your rôle will consist of lying on the window-seat and being occupied with day before yesterday'sNews. Now listen; I have an idea that the beautiful Junius has recently made the discovery that I am the brother of James Wimbourne, of the junior class, pillar of the Yale football team and more than likely to go Bones, or anything he wants, next May. Hence this access of cordiality to poor little me, the obscure Freshman. I'm going to find out that, first."
"But there's no need of finding out that," said Trotwood naïvely. "I told him so myself, the other day."
"A week ago Tuesday, to be exact," said Harry reflectively. "I remember he slobbered all over me at the French class Wednesday, though he didn't have anything to say to me on Monday. Wasn't that about it?"
"Yes," admitted Trotwood.
"Well, it proves what I was saying, but I'm sorry you did it, for it spoils my little game with the beautiful Junius. The French lesson will be a dull one, I fear. I rather think I shall have to end by being rude to Junius, to keep him. from making an infernal little pest of himself."
But the French lesson was not as dull as Harry feared, for the ingratiating Junius played into Harry's hands and incidentally proved himself not so good an actor off the stage as on. His behavior for the first ten or fifteen minutes was all that could be desired; he sat in Harry's Morris chair and waved a cigarette and put his host and Trotwood at their ease with the grace and charm of a George IV. At length he and Harry settled down to their "Notre Dame de Paris," and for a while all went well. Then of a sudden Junius became strangely silent and preoccupied.
"'Then they made him sit down on—' oh, Lord, what's abrancard bariolé?" said Harry. "You look upbrancard, Junius, and I'll look up the other.... Oh, yes; speckled. No; motley—that's probably nearer; it depends on whatbrancardmeans. What does it mean, anyway? Come on, Junius, do you mean to say you haven't found it yet? What's the matter?"
"I was looking upasseoir," said Junius, who had been staring straight in front of him.
"Sit, of course; you knew that. I translated that, anyway. I'll look upbrancard." Harry's glance, as he turned again to his dictionary, fell upon a letter lying on his desk, waiting to be mailed. It was addressed in Harry's own legible hand to
Lieut.-Gen. Sir Giles Fletcher, M. P. etc.,204 Belgrave Square,London, S. W.,England.
It immediately occurred to him that this was the probable cause of his classmate's preoccupation, and the joy of the chase burned anew in his breast.
"Whatareyou staring at, Junius?" he asked a minute later, with, well simulated unconsciousness.
"Nothing," replied Junius, returning to his book and blushing. That was bad already, as Harry pointed out later; it would have been so easy, for a person who really knew, to pass it off with some such remark as "I was overcome by the address on that letter. My, but what swells you do correspond with," etc. But the unfortunate Junius could not even be consistent to the rôle of affected ignorance that he had assumed.
"I see you know Sir Giles Fletcher," he said after a while. "I saw that envelope on the table; I couldn't help seeing the address. Is he a friend of yours?"
"Yes," said Harry; "my uncle."
"Oh. Well, I heard a good deal about him last summer from some relations of his ... connections, anyway; the Marquis of Moville ... and his family. We had a shooting-lodge in Scotland, and he had a moor near ours. He came over and shot with us once, and said ours was the best moor in Perthshire. His brother came too; Lord Archibald Carson. He's the one that's connected with your uncle, isn't he?"
"Yes. Married his sister."
"The Marquis is rather a decent fellow," continued Junius languidly. "Do you know him?"
"No," said Harry calmly; "no decent person does. Nor Lord Archibald, either. They're the worst pair of rounders in England. My uncle doesn't even speak to them in the street."
"Oh." Junius' face was a study, but Harry was sitting so that he could not see it, and had to be contented with Trotwood's subsequent account of it. There was silence for a few moments, during which Harry waited with perfect certainty for Junius' next remark.
"Well, of course we didn't know themwell, at all. They just came and shot with us once. That's nothing, in Scotland."
Victor Hugo was resumed after this and the translation finished without further incident. The beautiful Junius, however, needed no urging to "stick around" afterward, and sat for an hour or more smoking cigarettes and chatting pleasantly about his acquaintance, carefully culled from the New York social register and the British peerage.
"Well, Trotty," said Harry after the incubus had departed, dropping a perfect shower of invitations to New York, Newport, Palm Beach, the Adirondacks and the Scottish moors; "what about it? Is the beautiful Junius, friend of dukes and scion of Crusaders, an obnoxious, unhealthy little vermin, or isn't he?"
"I suppose he is. My, but he was fun, though! But he's going to make the Dramatic Association after Christmas, for all that."
"Oh, yes. He'll make whatever he sets out to make, straight through. Nobody here will ever see through him. He doesn't often give himself away as he did to-night, of course. He talks up to each person on what he thinks they'll like; to Josh Traill, for instance, he'll talk about football, and to an æsthetic type, like Morton Miniver, on Japanese prints and Maeterlinck's plays; and to you on the Glee and Mandolin Clubs.... He has already, hasn't he? Don't attempt to deny it; your blush betrays you! That's the way his type gets on here; talk to the right people, and don't talk to any one else, and in addition do a little acting or whatever you can, and it'll go hard if you don't make a senior society before you're through.... He's clever, too; he'll make it, all right. You see, he only gave himself away to me because he talked on a subject where breeding counts, as well as knowledge.... It was rash of him to try the duke and duchess stuff; he'd much better have stuck to track, or something safe."
"See here, Harry," said Trotwood, rising to go, "I grant you that Junius has given himself away and that he's a repulsive little beast, and all the rest of it, but don't you think that you are taking the incident just a little too seriously? It's an obnoxious type, all right, but it's a common one. There are bound to be a few Juniuses in every bunch of three or four hundred fellows wherever you take them; Oxford, or anywhere else. Why bother about them? Let them blather on; they won't hurt you, as long as you know them for what they are. And if Junius, or one of his kind, gets too aggressive and unpleasant, all you have to do is reach out your foot and stamp on him. But don't let him worry you!"