CHAPTER VI
My life was now a double struggle; a struggle for health and a struggle for knowledge. I was always miserable and very often ill. The joy of being alive was a thing I never knew for many years. Naturally my progress in education was not great. Probably, on the whole, I put as much energy into my work as most boys; for I was not strong enough to take part in the athletic college life, and had no inclination toward the pleasures of the fast crowd.
My days passed in fits of tremendous energy lasting a very little while, followed by long periods of listlessness, when everything was an effort. I worked nearly to the limit of my strength, and fully expected to pass my first year examinations. I was still quite confident after having written my examination papers. The beautiful spring days between the last examination day and convocation, when the reading out of the results was given, I passed complacently wandering on country roads, afoot or on horseback. I was still satisfied that I had passed when I sat in the big hall among relations, friends and college companions. This egregious confidence made the blow all the harder. I was plucked; ignominiously plucked. I had failed in three subjects. It was too much; I could not bear it, and could not bear either to look any of my friends in the face. I felt disgraced; and ran away accordingly.
I decided to be a tramp, a free vagabond, wandering “hither and thither,” living as best I might. Perhaps my health would benefit by the outdoor life? If not, I would die far away somewhere in a strange land, alone and unwept, and it would perhaps be better so, for I had unfortunate elements in me which could lead to no real good.
It was early in spring, but warm; and the roads were not bad. I walked till sundown. The direction did not matter; but I liked the river, so followed it. I could not have wandered very far in the few hours between three o’clock and seven; but by that time I was tired, so stepped into a little country hotel which I found near by. I ate a little and went to bed. Although I was very unhappy, I fell asleep almost immediately. In brooding over my own affairs, I quite lost sight of the anxiety my absence might cause my parents. Self-centred people never feel for others.
After breakfast in the morning I paid my little bill. It took nearly every cent I had. So much the better; tramps never had money; they begged and stole, and I was a tramp.
Again I followed the river, sometimes on the road, and sometimes on the shore. I really got along very well. Farm houses were plentiful and people were kind. All I had to do was to present myself, and I was fed, both by French and English. The people I met were mostly French.
After roaming thus for two days and a half, my feet became very sore, particularly my right foot, which had accumulated a beautiful blister on the side of my heel as large as a half-dollar. I had no idea my feet were so tender and that a mere blister on the heelcould make itself so keenly felt. I began to be suspicious that one needed training to be a tramp.
It was the morning of the fourth day of vagrancy. I had slept in a barn on the outskirts of a small village. I rose and limped to the village, and sitting down in a tiny railroad station, took off my right boot, and nursed my poor foot in my lap. While I sat thus a kind-faced young chap came in and noticing me looked me over very deliberately. I must have looked very miserable and woe-begone. After a short scrutiny he went away, but returned in a few minutes and sat down near me. He smoked his pipe in silence for a while.
Then he said, “Sore foot?”
I nodded my head. He smoked two minutes, then turned again to me with, “Hungry?”
I was shocked. Had I really come to look hungry and like a creature in want already? Evidently I had. I admitted that I could eat. The kindly-looking young man was the station agent I learned later. He lived in the station with a young wife and one child. When he learned that I was hungry he went to that half of the building which was his home, and in a little while his child brought me nice bread and butter and a small jug of milk. This offering deeply touched me. The delicate thoughtfulness of the station agent is something I shall never forget. After I had eaten he appeared again and sat down smoking silently. He was a man of understanding, but not talkative.
“Been out on a spree?” he asked.
“Well,” I replied, “I suppose you could call it one kind of a spree.”
“Going home?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“Come from Montreal, I suppose,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied.
Whereupon he left me once more to return nearly immediately and hand me a small object. It was a first-class ticket to Montreal.
“Go on home now,” he said. “Train will be along in twenty-five minutes.” He would have left me again without waiting for my thanks, but I stopped him and insisted on his listening to my very simple experience and accepting my card. He was mightily amused at a tramp having a visiting-card. He certainly was an understanding young man, only a few years older than I was, but he knew the world, and understood many things that were to cost me much in the learning.
The price of my railroad ticket was eighty-five cents. I had been a tramp for nearly four days, and had only walked a distance equal to eighty-five cents in railroad travel, and thereby had acquired a foot not fit to bear my weight without excruciating pain. I concluded that I was not cut out for a tramp. I was cured, and had forgotten the pain of being plucked. My friend, the station agent, knew me quite well before my train came.
When I arrived home, lame, tired and dirty, I was surprised to discover that the anxious one had been my father. He had had detectives searching for me in every place where I was not.
“I knew you were not far off and would come back soon,” said my mother.
“John, I’m afraid you are a damned fool,” said my father, and he kissed me affectionately.
I understood later the full significance of this adventure—I had tried to run away from myself—the onlyfellow from whom you cannot run. No word was said of my having been plucked.
The summer passed as summers will to those at an age when they do not realise how short a man’s time really is. I read a good deal and studied in a half-hearted way; rode, fished, and spent some weeks in the woods. The fall soon came and I went back to M’Gill to take my first year for the second time.
I believe that second “first year” was of more real value to me than any other. I think I was the only chap who took the first year twice, except one, Bury, who was a chronic freshman. He had already been a freshman for several years and never was anything else. But he is to-day general passenger agent of one of the largest railroads in the world, while I am an automaton.
Taking a survey of all the college men I know, and have known, I cannot be sure that the addition of a college education makes much difference in the end. The man who succeeds with a college degree would have succeeded without it. It is personality that counts. Character rules the world, be it educated at college or in the gutter.
I passed into my second year in the following spring, and then in turn from sophomore to third year without distinction, without disgrace or notable incident. I learned to smoke and began to shave, and believed myself to be a thoroughly sophisticated youth.
I loved many girls during my college years; how many it is impossible to state. I always loved a girl for some special feature; because she had red hair, or for her eyes, or her nose, or her mouth. I loved one because she limped a little and I was sorry for her, and liked the brave way she pretended to be unaware ofher deformity. I loved a woman much older than myself, for several days, just because she smelled so good. In imagination I can still smell that sachet powder. I never loved a woman altogether, faults and all, just because she appealed to me in every sense, but always for some special feature or peculiarity. I was fickle, for of course one must soon weary of loving a woman because of a single detail.
My first love, after “Little Blockhead,” was red haired. I met her at a masquerade during my second freshman year. She was masked, but I saw her hair; that was enough; I was gone. I was presented to her. When she unmasked, she discovered a very ordinary countenance, and she had a distinct cast in one eye. These things made no difference to me; I worshipped her hair, and loved her devotedly for at least six weeks.
In the winter of my sophomore year I was trapped for all time—caught to my undoing in one way, and to my making in a hundred ways.
Paul de la Croix talked beautifully of love in two languages—French and English. He was a past-master in the æsthetic realisation and description of love, although I do not believe he ever really loved any one but himself. He was very artistic, and uncommon looking, for which reasons the women loved him, and his family adored him. Music was his chosen career; an easy career for the pampered son of a wealthy, common, luxury-loving father. All his love affairs were confided to me. Most of them were interesting enough, but not striking, except the last one I was ever called upon to listen to.
For about the hundred and first time he was loved: this time, he declared, by the most wonderful creature, the belle of the city’shaut ton; the beautiful,witty and accomplished daughter of Montreal’s most celebrated physician. I had seen the doctor often, but had never met the daughter. I was not one of her set. I had no taste in the direction of teas, dances, box-parties, or other social functions. Society in my youth drew the line a little more strictly than it is drawn now. Fathers like Doctor Joseph, and mothers like Mrs. Joseph, wanted to know something about every one with whom their sons and daughters associated. Professional gentlemen of the law and medicine held themselves a peg above mere business men, or brokers in a small way. In a world now gone crazy with commerce, medicine, law, even the Church, have become so commercialised that they have come down a bit socially, and “all-important” Business has moved up the social scale, and now rubs shoulders with those of the most exclusive circles. The man of business, who regards money as his sole aim, is much more one-sided and undeveloped than he whose end is knowledge of a science or art, for every science and every art is more or less connected with everything. Consequently, the business man cannot be veneered with the veneer of society, but he can be very decently varnished. There is a huge difference between veneer and varnish.
I had never been within the charmed orbit of Miss Muriel Joseph’s soaring. Paul was different. He had large means, he was a singer, a dancer, a ladies’ man with an irreproachable veneer bought for him by a poorly varnished father. He was loved by Muriel Joseph; and he raved to me about her hair, her cheek, her hand, the mole upon her lip, her skin, which was pale and clear, and eyes which were large, full, liquid and inquiring like those of a deer.
I listened and listened to weeks of this stuff. He did it very well. I was told the things she said and had described to me the way she said them till Paul had me half in love with her before I had seen her. Paul was eloquent and I was impressionable; but I did not disclose to him what was in my mind. In fact, I was not very clear as to what was in my mind at the time. All these things I retailed to John, who did not like Paul, and had seldom met him. It was arranged that I should meet Paul’s love.
“Ah, but she will be delighted to meet my chum,” said Paul; “I have talked to her so often of you. If you will call with me there on Sunday, you will be invited to her birthday dance.”
I was somewhat disconcerted, for I could not dance, and I abominated ceremonious calls. Now I regretted the opportunities I had thrown away, when driven weekly to the dancing-class of the dandy Italian signor who polished the young of that time. At the dancing-class I had balked and sulked, and never learned a step. It followed that I was awkward and clumsy on a waxed floor; felt out of place in pumps; and hated taking a girl in my arms before every one. How I wished now that I could dance! I was tall, slim and graceful enough while walking, riding, skating or driving. But dancing was beyond me, although John, who was a beautiful dancer, had often urged me to learn the art. Numberless evenings I had played on the piano alone, or as accompanist for flute or violin, for others to dance, and I had enjoyed it so far without any ambition to take part in it. Lovely young things had tormented me to let them teach me; it was all of no use. Behind all the mixed feelings it excited, I really believe there lurked a strong desire to dance andbe frivolous; but some want, mental or physical, withheld me.
Anyhow, here I was to meet a woman whom I was prepared to love before seeing her. I was to meet her and be invited to her dance, and I could not dance, and would be forced to admit it as if I had been brought up on a farm. It was galling.