A REVELATION OF CHARACTER
There was no danger of lack of quorum at the election of the Laurel
Leaf. Every faithful wheelhorse, every indifferent who had joined “to
please the folks at home,” every intermittently interested member
hastened to the society rooms with ballot in his hand and zeal in his
heart. The tide set hard against the champion of democracy. Underwood
was elected by a vote representing two-thirds of the society.
Greatly chagrined and deeply sympathizing with his defeated friend, Sam
took Mulcahy home to 7 Hale to console him. Peck, who happened to be
in, greeted them coldly, and withdrew in such marked haste that Sam,
fearful lest Mulcahy should resent the intended slight, hastily pushed
his best chair forward and invited his guest cordially to sit down.
Mulcahy, however, showed himself in no wise sensitive. He settled into
the comfortable chair and composedly lit a cigarette, less like a
young reformer who had suffered a great disappointment, than a shrewd
old philosopher to whom a single defeat was but one of the little
annoyances of life, to be smiled over and forgotten.
“When are you going to begin to smoke?” he asked, as Sam drew his chair
to the fireplace beside him.
“Not for a long time,” answered Sam, “perhaps never.”
“Why not?”
“My family don’t want me to, for one thing. Then I want to keep myself
in good condition.”
“Most fellows wouldn’t care much for either of those reasons,” said
Mulcahy. “You’re expected to do what the rest do.”
Sam did not reply to this; he was thinking how hard it often was to
resist doing the things which the rest did.
“People at home don’t know anything about what is necessary in a school
like this,” continued Mulcahy. “If you want to get on, you mustn’t go
against the crowd.”
“I don’t care anything about getting on,” said Sam. “I’m not ambitious.”
“You’d like to be popular, wouldn’t you?”
“No!” Sam answered decidedly. “I shouldn’t want to be disliked, but
holding office and that kind of thing doesn’t interest me. There’s too
much hard feeling and disappointment.”
Mulcahy laughed. “You don’t know anything about it. Now, I got beaten
to-night. Do you suppose I’m discouraged? Not a bit. I’ll lie low
for a while and work my game and wait. By and by things will come my
way. If you just hang on to a thing long enough, don’t make mistakes
and don’t get mad, you wear away the opposition after a time. There’s
another election this year, and there’s another year after this. I’ll
be president of the Laurel Leaf before I leave this place. See if I
don’t.”
Again a silence. Sam believed in Mulcahy’s prophecy, but the tone of it
grated on him.
It was not Mulcahy’s habit to take people into his confidence. But
to-night, as he lolled in Archer’s comfortable easy-chair, flattered
by the attentions and admiration of this boy of superior strain, he
relaxed his caution and gave a glimpse of his real self.
“Do you know what I do summers?” he asked.
“Work, don’t you?”
“At what?”
Sam shook his head. “You’ve never told me.”
“I sell books. I can go into a factory--when they’ll let me in--and
sell books right through from floor to floor, to men and women both.
I’ve sold books bound in morocco for six dollars to women who didn’t
earn that a week. I used to be so successful that when I came to
deliver the books, they’d pretend I’d used unfair means to get their
signatures. Yet it was all done by holding on and not taking offence,
and flattering and agreeing with people.”
“I don’t think much of getting poor women to pay a week’s wages for a
book when they need every cent they can earn for food and clothes,”
said Sam, bluntly.
“Oh, perhaps they earned more than six dollars. It don’t matter.
They’re bound to throw away about so much anyway.”
“How old are you?” asked Sam.
“I’ll be twenty-one next July.”
“You’re only three years older than I am, but I couldn’t do that kind
of thing if I were fifty.” Sam did not say exactly what he meant, which
was that he couldn’t do that kind of thing under any circumstances.
“I just mentioned it to show what hanging on will do. I don’t really
care anything about this Laurel Leaf office except as a help to
something else.”
“What is that?”
Mulcahy looked at his host doubtfully under the rising twists of smoke.
“You won’t speak of it to any one?”
“Certainly not, if you don’t want me to.”
“You know what the Yale Cup is?” he asked.
“Never heard of it.”
“The Yale Club of Boston gives a cup every year in three or four
big schools to the senior who ‘combines the greatest excellence in
athletics with good standing in his studies.’ That’s the way it reads
in the catalogue. It’s awarded at Commencement, with a whole batch of
other prizes. In June of our senior year I want that cup. The greatest
difficulty is about the athletics. I’m going to try hard for the
football team next fall, and I’ll do something with the pole vault this
year. With the ‘Seatonian’ and the presidency of the Laurel Leaf, and
good rank in studies, and the favor of several influential profs, which
I’m working for, I ought to have a good show.”
“Do you apply for it?” asked simple Sam.
“No, foolish! The faculty picks out the man.”
Mulcahy threw the stub of his fourth cigarette into the fireplace and
lighted another. “That’s a prize worth having,” he went on, “for it
means that the winner is a superior, all-round man. I’m going in for
the Merrill compositions too, and perhaps for the speaking. They’re
cash prizes, you know; but as honors they aren’t in it with the Yale
Cup.”
“Did Owen get it last year?”
“No, he wasn’t a good enough scholar. He did well enough in athletics,
but he was only about a C man in his studies.”
“That would be a perfectly bully thing to take home with you, wouldn’t
it?” broke forth Sam, in honest enthusiasm. “Your father and mother
would be tickled to death with the scholarship part of it, and the
honor of the athletics would make you feel like a prince. I’d rather
get a thing like that than have an auto of my own.”
Mulcahy smiled complacently. “I really don’t care much about athletics.
I only go in for them because it’s at present the thing to do.”
A light step was heard in the entry, followed immediately by a knock
at the door. Mulcahy put his cigarette on the edge of the table, and
shoved his chair away; Sam turned his half round. “Come in!” he cried.
The door opened to admit Mr. Alsop. “Good evening,” he began, as both
students rose, and Mulcahy retreated still farther from the table. “I
came to inquire the result of your election.”
“I was badly beaten,” said Mulcahy, with charming frankness. “They
wouldn’t have me. Underwood was the honored man.”
“I’m glad to see that you take it so well,” said Mr. Alsop. “That’s the
spirit I like in school politics.” He stopped short, suddenly aware of
the thick atmosphere of smoke and the pungent, penetrating odor of
cigarettes. “Why, Archer!” he exclaimed, turning sternly on Sam, “you
told me the other day that you did not smoke at all!”
Sam flushed to the roots of his hair; his look glanced from the
reproving countenance of the teacher to the calm face of Mulcahy. He
did not answer.
“He doesn’t smoke much, I can assure you,” Mulcahy broke in quickly.
“I think he was tempted to try a cigarette to-night to comfort himself
over our defeat.”
Mr. Alsop sniffed the air. “There’s more than one cigarette in the
atmosphere of this room.”
Sam raised his eyes sullenly to the teacher’s, shot a swift,
significant glance at Mulcahy, and looked out across the table at the
red banner upon the wall. He said nothing, for there was nothing that
he could say.
“There’s a great difference between not smoking at all and smoking a
little,” the teacher continued in a severe lecture tone. “As I have
explained, we do not forbid smoking, except to scholarship men; we try
to discourage it all we can, because we consider it harmful. You told
me that you did not smoke. I find you smoking. You have not been honest
with me.”
Mr. Alsop paused to give Archer an opportunity to reply. Sam racked his
brain for some non-committal form of words, and found none. “Yes, sir,”
he said desperately.
“He probably thought, sir, that he smoked so little that it was
practically none at all,” interposed Mulcahy. “I’ve never seen him
smoking before to-night.”
“He should have said so, then,” declared Mr. Alsop, addressing Mulcahy.
“My question was a friendly one and should have been frankly answered.”
He faced the culprit again, who, with angry red cheeks and hostile,
defiant eyes, now looked squarely at him. “I want to be helpful to you,
Archer, but I can’t be that unless you trust me. If you had been honest
with me, I shouldn’t have said anything different to you then from what
I am saying now, but it would have been pleasanter for you to hear. Any
smoking at all is bad for a boy of your age. The habit will grow on
you, if once you get it, in spite of you. It will interfere with your
physical and mental growth, and unfit you to do your best in studies
or in athletics.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sam, whose indignation over the unfair treatment
which he was enduring did not prevent his recognizing the truth of the
instructor’s words.
“Good night!”
With this abrupt salutation, Mr. Alsop went his way downstairs, wholly
satisfied with his own conduct, but confessing serious disappointment
with certain of the boys under his care. If only Archer were as
straightforward, and Fowle as orderly, as John Fish, the well would
be less a source of uneasiness to him and less damaging to his pride.
Archer evidently needed watching; and Fowle--well, Fowle would
certainly have to go before the end of another term. That boy’s
perpetual disregard of rules and apparent contempt for authority were
unendurable!