longer a josh where he himself was concerned. The realization of this
quite stunned him, the afternoon it came to him. They were sitting below
the Sphinx, at the back of the Mausoleum, and the quail were calling
among the pines. Katharine was reading to him from one of his
text-books. He heard very little of what she read. To him the book kept
repeating that she had the most attractive mouth and chin he had ever
noticed; that the low-drawn hair on her forehead was made to be smoothed
back, very gently, from her clear skin. The consciousness that he could
not give up these study-afternoons came over him with a stab, and told
him that he had not been listening at all well lately; that this was why
he could not remember the stuff in recitation and why he had not dared
to tell her his recent marks. She trusted him so thoroughly now that she
did not stop him so often when he talked, instead of working. If she had
guessed the real reason of his laziness, she would have been honestly
disappointed in him. This was the tragedy of it. He could never let her
suspect that he was not still fooling the Rho house. She was a girl
entirely without sentimentality--this was what he liked in her at first,
and now it was his overthrow. If she should so much as dream that his
feeling toward her was anything more than the friendship he had outlined
in the beginning, she would shut her book with a slap and declare the
compact at an end. He must keep on acting, only his audience had changed
and the people he had been joking with were now behind the scenes,
though they didn't know it. So he would put his chin in his hand and
gaze at her as though the peculiarities of the Renaissance Poets were
his greatest concern. He laughed, too, about the joke itself, finding a
sort of painful relief in _double entendre_. Sometimes his mind
wandered, and when Katharine failed to reprove him, as in the earlier
days of the compact, he felt as though he had betrayed a confidence.
Once they had forgotten all about football practice, and it frightened
him; but she seemed not to have realized the gravity of the thing, and
he laughed the alarming incident away. During lectures, he tried to
reason himself out of the predicament. It was entirely possible that
this feeling toward her was but another instance of habit, a natural
affection for a chum, with some subtle influence of sex combining to
frighten him into thinking it more serious. But he was not entirely
comforted.
Crises occur properly at the end of a semester. On the evening of
Friday, the closing day, Roble gave an impromptu dance. Katharine made
Pellams come; it would be final evidence in their joke, since he was
known to dislike dances. He agreed to attend, adding his own emphasis to
the reason as stated. Katharine filled out his card for him, allowing
him three dances with herself. The evening began in misery for the
woman-hater, and ended in perturbation of spirit. There were girls,
oceans of them, and not one of them had any sense. Katharine was
different. These girls didn't know when they were joshed, and they
couldn't josh back. They were an uninteresting lot. She had filled his
card with them and he had to hunt them up and dredge his head for
conversation. It was an awful bore. Katharine was the only girl whom he
had ever seemed able to talk with easily, and he had only three little
dances with her. He was savage.
During the third dance, he was floundering through an absent-minded
conversation with a Freshman girl, whose eyelashes were pale pink, when
Cap Smith glided past him, waltzing with Katharine. They looked as
though they were having a very good time. Pellams felt that Cap, fine
fellow as he was, generally grew too familiar with girls. He noticed
with disapproval the man Katharine drew for the fourth dance, and she
had Cap again for the fifth. He went over after that dance and asked for
her program. Cap was down for two more dances. Pellams gave her back her
card. He laughed a joking sentence on another subject, then he slipped
down stairs and blundered out into the rainy night in a towering rage
at Katharine, at Smith, most of all at himself for being a certain
Thing.
Jimmy Mason had not attended the Roble dance. Instead, he sat at his
table in the Knockery, going over his accounts as laundry agent. He was
deep in these end-of-semester figures when Pellams burst in at the
window, like a storm-driven creature. People never stand on ceremony at
the Knockery. It is the corner room on the ground floor. The place has
always been the Knockery ever since Mason roomed there, just as the big
room over the old dining-hall will be the "Bull-pen" forever. It is the
universal avenue after the lights are out, and the doors locked. You
open the window as gently as you can and slide in. If the tenants are in
bed, you get through into the hall on tiptoe, if possible; if awake, you
stop and chat a bit by the way of courtesy; no one ever has to study in
this enchanted bower. Moreover, if you do not live in the Hall, if you
are an Alumnus visitor from town, if there are girls at your frat-house,
or if you dwell off the campus and are belated, there are extra blankets
under the lounge in the corner. Make up your own bed and turn in,
without waking the sleepers. You are not crowding anybody. Once a whole
baseball team, with the help of two extra mattresses, slept comfortably
in the Knockery--but that is history.
When Pellams slammed in and flopped disconsolately into a chair, Mason
looked up, knowing that there was trouble somewhere.
"What is it?" he asked. No answer. Jimmy rose, locked the door and
closed the ventilator. Then he disposed himself on the lounge.
"Tell your dad. Is it the girl?"
Pellams's affirmative was put in language unrepeatable in a book for
young persons.
"Something gone wrong?"
"Yes," _etc._
Jimmy wished to offer consolation. "Can I do anything?"
"Yes," growled the man in a dress suit. "You can give me a sweater and
take me to Mayfield!"
Now Jimmy was a true friend. He would have gone anywhere for Pellams.
When the dance music at Roble had ceased, and the quiet of the December
night was broken by only the patter of raindrops and the sound of
singing in the Mayfield distance, punctuated by sharp whoops, Jimmy had
got Pellams back to the Knockery pretty well consoled. It might not have
made much difference just then, even if the lover could have known that
over in darkened Roble, Katharine Graham, who did not approve of love
affairs, lay crying herself to sleep.
Pellams rose late next day, and ate his lunch mournfully at the House.
He was in an exaggerated state of repentance and resolve. After
luncheon he made a sorrowful pilgrimage to the Quad. Here he learned
that he had lost five hours and that the Glee Club would tour the South
without him.
Chastened in spirit, he asked for Katharine at Roble. She had gone to
Mrs. Stillwell's on the Row. He went again at night, calling late that
she might have her packing finished for the morning steamer.
By diplomacy, arranged beforehand with the door-girl, he got her
downstairs. There was only a trace of reserve in her manner when she
told him that she had all her packing yet to do, and that she couldn't
walk about the Quad even once; there was more than a trace of
embarrassment about him when he pleaded something very important.
"Perhaps I know what it is," said she.
"More than likely you don't," he persisted; "anyhow, I deserve a chance
to explain."
Katharine went down the steps with him.
"Well?" she said, on the walk outside.
"What do you think I want to say?" He was not so brave now.
"The same thing that I have in my mind, that our little arrangement
would better end. I have got my very first condition through wasting
time on a foolish josh, and I don't believe you've been doing good work
lately."
"They gave me two of 'em."
"Indeed? Then Florence Meiggs was right, wasn't she?"
"Dead right."
Silence for awhile, then she said: "But you mustn't blame me. I did my
best, and if we both failed it's proof positive that it has to end."
Another pause, with the whirr of distant machinery breaking the
stillness. No speech on either side until Pellams felt that he must say
something or the blood in his throat would choke him.
"Do--don't you really know what I wanted you out here for?"
"Perhaps to insult me further. Pellams!" impetuously, "why did you do
it?"
"What? flunk?"
"No. Cut those dances."
"You ought to know!"
"Yes; I _do_ know, and your wanting to go to Mayfield was a good,
gentlemanly excuse, and I ought to accept it, I suppose. Of course, it
shouldn't make any difference to me; you have humiliated me enough
already, but you might have considered the other girls."
"Yes, and you are blaming me for cutting down there when you and Cap
Smith were floating around----"
"You will please leave Mr. Smith out of the conversation;" she turned
toward the Hall. "I have to go in, the shades are down already."
Pellams' courage came up with a flash. By blind instinct, he reached out
and caught her hand. She did not struggle, though the moment he released
his pressure she drew her hand away, and quickened her pace. He followed
close, and she turned upon him.
"This is what I might have expected when I cheapened myself with you!
Will you let me go in?"
"Not until I have said what I came to say; Katharine, can't you--can't
you guess it? Oh, I know--Kathie, you _must_ have seen it--you know why
I cut the dance--you know"--and again words failed him and he reached
for her hand.
But she put him off this time. "I am sorry to spoil such a beautiful
piece of acting; but our arrangement is going to end, and this is a
worn-out joke."
They had come by now to the corner of Roble, where it is indiscreet to
talk over private affairs, and neither said anything until they reached
and mounted the steps into the shadow of the porch. Then she said:
"After all, since it is over, I won't be unkind. Good-bye. We've had a
pleasant semester, haven't we?" and this time she gave him her hand.
A girl raised one of the hallway curtains just then. The sudden flash of
light came upon Katharine where she stood with her hand in Pellams'.
She had meant that look, that softening of the eyes, that little quiver
of the mouth, for darkness and concealment, and he caught it all before
she could blot it out with a smile.
And, having argued to a conclusion, it mattered not to either that Miss
Meiggs stood looking out at them with supreme contempt.
AN ALUMNI DINNER.
An Alumni Dinner.
"And it's we who have to rustle
In the cold, cold world!"
Dr. Williamson's landlady would not listen any further. She stood on the
threshold of her lodger's combination of bedroom and office and said,
with an offensively clear enunciation:
"You haven't any patients, and no more have I any longer, and I want
that money to-morrow or I rent the room."
The door closed.
Williamson listened to her footsteps, as hard and uncompromising as her
voice, and when they had ceased he got up from his chair, a despairing
soul. After all, this was the rope's end. He would have to own up to a
failure.
If Williamson had been a man of more force he would not have
acknowledged so much, perhaps; but he had been conscientious and
faithful to the limit of his understanding, patient to the verge of
philosophy, and the result discouraged him.
He drew out his last clean collar and put it on, with the vague idea of
going somewhere and doing something--what, he could not have told. His
eyes fell on a framed document hanging near his mirror, a small but
ornate instrument, setting forth that the Faculty and Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University, by virtue of the authority in them
vested, etc., conferred the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry on
Philip Howard Williamson.
His thoughts turned back toward a morning over four years gone, when he
walked down the platform bearing that "last of his childhood's toys,"
and in imagination P.H. Williamson, M. D., held conversation with Philip
Howard Williamson, A. B.
Williamson, A. B., standing just the other side of the mirror, spoke and
said:
"It looks as though you were up against it."
Williamson, M. D., arranging his tie so as to hide his soiled shirt,
answered:
"I am up against it. And it's your fault."
Williamson, A. B., did not seem to see it. But he was a conceited
creature, anyway.
"It's more than half your fault," went on the man on the real side of
the mirror. "You dug and worked, and you thought that if you only kept
ahead of your class in Physiology you had a clean card to success. How
many fellows did you know in college?"
"Some. I never went in for being popular. There were Trueman, and
Miller, and Rodney--"
"And how many of them were of the sort to help you? Trueman, without
family or brains, and Miller, who lived in the East, and little Rod--"
"They were the best I could meet. They were the only ones who understood
that I really wanted people. No one understood how I loved the college
and wanted to be in things. I wasn't good at telling; and besides, I had
my work to do. They knew the way I used to look across the campus on
Spring nights--"
Williamson, M. D., checked him at this point. That impractical creature
thought that they were talking of friendship, when it was only a
question of Pull. He conveyed that point to the Bachelor.
"Why didn't you find some friends who would be of use to Me?" he asked,
savagely. "While you were following out sutures and involuntary
reactions, what was Marshall doing? Running for class president and
making the Mandolin Club and getting acquainted with people of some use
to him. He isn't one-two-six with me for ability and never was; but he
has patients to give away, and I--"
Williamson, A. B., came to bat.
"You do mightily well to reproach me with all this. How have _you_ done
in making friends? Did you work up any connections at Columbia those
three years? Have you tried to find anyone here in town? What friends
have you except Stanford men? What have you done for yourself, anyway?"
The other weakly quoted what the Head Demonstrator had said of his
surgery.
Williamson, A. B., held him to the point: "I also was called the keenest
student of my time," said he; "but it isn't bringing you patients."
The M. D. broke sullenly away, leaving the A. B. frowning back of the
mirror. These dead selves are so crude! He ended the interview by
slamming out of the house.
For the twentieth time that week he cast up accounts with himself, as
the electric car sped toward civilization. Assets, one dollar and five
cents, just reduced by a grinding monopoly from a dollar-ten;
liabilities, a laundry bill and six weeks' rent. Truly, a squalid
failure. If he could only hold out a little longer! There was in sight a
situation as consulting physician to a lodge in his father's Order,
which would mean a living at least. He had the promise of it in a
month's time. A loan of twenty-five dollars now would save him, but no
good angel occurred to him, think as he might, and he had nothing he
could afford to pawn.
Troubled in spirit, he sauntered listlessly up Post street from Kearny.
The mid-day rain had not yet dried from the pavements, and the air was
clear and fresh. Against the last of a January sunset, the tops of the
city were growing indistinct. The personnel of the crowd on the streets
had changed; the promenaders and the cocktail-route procession had
dwindled to a few stragglers. There was less of a press now, and most of
the people were of the class that work until six, belated bookkeepers
and girls from shops and sewing rooms. He watched these toilers with a
vague feeling of envy; he dragged the feeling to the light and found
that he was coveting the day's work just passed. What would not he have
given to be tired at the end of a day of profitable toil? It was the
hour when comfortable people sit down to dinner.
In front of an art store he saw Lincoln, the _Chronicle_ man, idly
studying the pictures. Williamson had known him as well as he had known
any man at Palo Alto, but he walked by without a word, feeling in no
mood for companionship. A few steps further he turned, and went back and
stood behind his friend.
"Hello, Phil!" said Lincoln, in cheery surprise. "Well, you are a
stranger! Been keeping pretty close to your office, haven't you?"
"Yes," answered Williamson, without going into particulars.
"I haven't happened to get a detail out in your direction and my health
has been unfortunately good, so I haven't seen you for moons, not since
the night at the Zink, last Thanksgiving."
"You newspaper men see more of the fellows than a man in my profession
can hope to do," said the physician. "It isn't ethics for me to hunt
them up, you know."
"How is the practice, so far?"
"Well," answered Williamson, hiding the bitterness of it with a laugh;
"the practice is about all I have got out of it."
"Not so bad as that, I'll bet," protested Lincoln. "Are you going down
for Commencement, or the Ball, or anything?"
"No, I shan't be able to get down," answered the other, turning in his
fingers the lonely dollar in his pocket. "That's the worst of the
medical profession," he added, equivocally.
His thoughts came fast as they stood there in the fading daylight before
the picture-shop. It was entirely probable that Lincoln would lend him
the money he needed, and would lend it gladly. Their college friendship
had been sincere, and a few years do not change a thing like that. He
knew that the man had a good position on the _Chronicle_ and that he
saved a large portion of his money--he had been economical at the
University. Fortune could never smile upon Lincoln sufficiently to work
any material change in his dress; he had always looked like a pauper;
to-day, poverty showed in the journalist rather than in the
carefully-dressed physician.
Williamson's heart grew lighter. This Stanford man, rising before him in
his hour of desperation, should tide him over his temporary trouble. Of
all the men at the University there had been none who had spoken so
often and so sincerely of the Stanford spirit as Lincoln. Here was a
chance to put it to a test. He knew his man. Williamson felt himself
filled with a faith in Divine Providence.
But it was not easy to ask the loan. To suggest such a thing is less
difficult to some people than to others. To Williamson it was anything
but a simple thing. He could never broach the subject there on the
sidewalk. The matter must be led up to in some way; to brace in cold
blood was impossible. He moved his fingers in nervous irresolution, and
the dollar touched them significantly.
"Say, Lew, let's not stand here all night; come to dinner with me, can't
you? We'll have a good Alumni chat; we don't bump into each other very
often."
He felt horribly hypocritical, yet this was the only way.
"You haven't had dinner, have you?" he went on, when Lincoln hesitated a
bit.
"No. I'll be glad to, thank you, Phil. Where do you go?"
"Let's try Sanguinetti's for the fun of the thing. We can talk down
there, and it won't break us, either."
They found a corner table in the restaurant. The room wore the quiet
look of Monday evening, the calm that follows the storm of Sunday, when
the place rocks with post-picnic revelry. A squat negro, perched on the
edge of a serving-table by the wall, sang vociferously to a resonant
banjo. Now and then a party of swarthy Latins joined in mildly when the
selections incurred their favor.
The two college men found it easy chatting. Williamson's dollar had
brought a very good dinner, particularly the chicken and the tortillas;
the claret was abundant and not half bad when jollied with seltzer. He
was trusting to Lincoln for tobacco.
Still the physician could not bring himself to the point toward which
the dinner was intended to smooth the road. The "Dago red" had mellowed
them both and they talked merrily of the days at Palo Alto, bringing up
one good memory after another, drifting gradually to an exchange of
Alumni personals of which the newspaper man furnished the larger part.
They talked of the men their young University had sent into the distant
parts of the world, youngsters running mines in the Antipodes, with fat
salaries to keep up their courage; of the little Stanford colony in
Western Australia and the Pioneers in China. There were a good many for
so new a college. Then there were the commonplaces who were doing well
at home. The thought of bringing the serious side of his own case into
this chat gave Williamson a chill. It was a foolish bit of pride, but it
was getting harder every minute to down it. He deftly turned the subject
his way.
"It isn't all prosperity, though. I've noticed that some of them seem to
be up against it lately--just hard luck stories, I suppose. There's
Rawdon, for example."
Lincoln leaned back comfortably in his chair.
"Let me tell you a case that has come under my notice lately and see
what you think of it," he said. "I won't mention names, but it's about a
man we both knew at College. He had a place on the paper, the
_Chronicle_, and during the political season did very well; after that
there came a slump and the city editor let him out; the other papers had
no room for him, of course--they were dropping men--and he couldn't get
a thing of any sort to do, though he rustled hard. You know Coles and
Harrison, the boys call them the Stanford Employment Bureau, they have
found quite a number of places for the fellows; but this particular man
was evidently up against it, and there wasn't the smallest symptom of a
job. He managed to get something in the Sunday supps, but barely enough
to keep him alive, and nothing certain. Meanwhile he pawned his things
gradually and grew pretty well discouraged. I remember I heard him say
once, and his laugh covered more than I guessed at the time, that Jewish
holidays ought to be prohibited by state law, since closed doors under
the three balls meant some Stanford man's going hungry. He got down to
bedrock and finally reached the point where he had gone without three
successive meals. Pretty rough, wasn't it?"
"I should say so," answered Williamson. His own distress was trivial
beside a trouble like this.
Lincoln fed the alcohol flame burning around the omelet just brought
them.
"It seems to me," he went on, "that there is a case in which a man is
justified in asking help; he ought to ask it long before he gets to such
a pass as that; if he lets his pride prevent him it's his own fault. We
certainly have carried away from the University something of the spirit
we learned there. I know for my part that such a man has a claim on
whatever help I can give him, and as a Stanford man he has a right to
seek it. Don't you agree with me?"
Williamson had been waiting through the course of the dinner for a
chance to advance an identical theory. He could not have hoped for a
better opening.
"Indeed I do," he said. "You have the old Stanford spirit as strong as
ever, haven't you, Lew? Now I want to tell _you_ a story."
At a table near them a woman who looked as though she had a history, one
that dated far back at that, began to sing--one of those ballads about
home and the wandering boy. The two men tipped back in their chairs and
listened to the song. Williamson was planning what he should say as soon
as it was ended. It would be better to tell the whole thing.
During the applause that followed, Lincoln dropped his cigarette into
his coffee cup and started to speak. Williamson, unwilling that another
subject should follow the last words they had exchanged, interrupted
him.
"I have a story, too, Lew, and it's about myself. I don't doubt this is
rather a surprise to you," he went on, noticing the look on the other's
face, "although you know the way of the young physician is hard. The
fact is, I have got to the point where I must get a little temporary
lift or give up the struggle for a while, and I can't bear the thought
of that."
Then he went on swiftly, ignoring his friend's attempts at interruption,
until he had told the whole story of his uphill work and his defeat.
"You asked me just now, Lew, if I didn't think one Stanford man should
help another who really needed help, if he could. I put up my last coin
for an opportunity to ask you the same question, but with a different
purpose."
Lincoln's eyes were moist as he reached across the table and grasped
Williamson's hand.
"I think you know me well enough, old man, to know my answer to that
question. But you did not let me finish my story. You see, I--er--I'm
the man I was telling you about."
BOGGS' ELECTION FEED.
Boggs' Election Feed.
"Oh think what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots and their last fatal periods!"
ADDISON.
It would never have happened if Boggs hadn't dropped in on Jimmy Mason
and Pellams when they were cramming for an examination, for, although
Pellams had long "kept an axe" for Boggs, he needed the inspiration of
the moment to swing it like this. It was always so with Pellams' best
things.