window, down in his own room; it was reaching out, still driven before a
lazy wind. Indistinctly the singing of the Glee Club, rolling home from
practice in the Quad, came through the damp twilight. Jimmie had been
with them on the Christmas trip, tasting a social life he had known
nothing of till then. Now they were going to run him for leader next
year. He sat on his window ledge listening. The side of the Hall
stretched away from him, four tiers of light where the fellows were at
work or were bumming away the week-night. Through the opened windows
came the low tone of many conversations, stirred now and then by a
"rough-house" note. A coyote barked somewhere among the hills, a
reminder of the nearness of our higher life to the life universal.
Jimmie took a long, deep breath of the moist air, as though he would
draw it all, all unto himself. This was his life, he had made it for
himself, and he loved it, he loved it! He had no part any longer with
what had come before it. All these were in shadow, the people and things
of his bitter childhood. The fellows up there in the lighted rooms had
homes somewhere; there was a feed-box being opened even then, perhaps,
at some study table; they were thinking of vacation, most of them, and
of other places. But this was home to Mason, this wide, soft campus,
with the sandstone arching over it and bounded by shaggy hills, the only
place he could call his own. Most of the laughing people who lived here
with him were in a dream from which some Commencement Day would wake
them. To Mason it was reality. Yes, Frank Lyman was right. Jimmie was
glad he had asked him. The idea of going away had been a thoughtless
impulse, an immature judgment. He would stay--for the two years.
He took off his coat and opened a book under the lamp; but a face came
and settled between him and the page, a bloated face with irresolute
lips that would not move from the black and white before him, but
flickered there and mocked him, until finally he closed the book, and,
without looking out again on the campus, turned into bed.
II.
It was a quiet night outside. The last spring rain was over; the dry,
deadening California summer had begun its advance on the land. Already,
the green of the hills had faded into a lighter hue, a forerunner of a
yellow June and a brown July. The campus was astir with the movement of
a Friday night. Shadowy figures, in couples, came and passed down the
fairy-land vistas of the Quadrangle; the 'busses deposited the elite of
Palo Alto at the door of the Alpha Nus who had said that they would be
at home; noises of all kinds, from not unmusical singing to plainly
unmusical whoops, exhaled from every pore of the Hall. The piano on the
lobby was groaning out a waltz from its few attuned keys and the little
space between the big rug and the rail overlooking the dining-room was
packed with forms in various conditions of negligee, dancing earnestly
and painfully.
Only one room, and that generally the center of disturbance, "sported
the oak." Jimmie Mason sat in the knockery, with a book cocked up in
front of him, and made a pretense of studying, but his thoughts
wandered. Finally he threw his work aside altogether, and looked at the
little patches of starlight visible between the branches of the tree
outside. It was so plain, the thing he ought to do, in justice to
himself, that he had thought the dream of the other thing a fancy that
had passed and had been put away with the notions of his prep-days. And
yet he had found no peace in his new decision. His plans for next year,
his work in class, his new success with certain ventures which after two
years of the hardest, closest pinching, had put within his reach the
means to gratify a few little whims, to indulge in a few things his
poverty had hitherto forbidden him--a few common things the men around
him enjoyed, and the lack of which he had ever concealed even from
himself--all these were made footless by the ache in the bottom of his
soul. And, as he sat and pondered on it, a hard, dull resentment which
he had hitherto kept down by sheer will power rose above his other
thoughts and claimed admission as a reality. His father had no right to
do this thing to him. He was an old man; his chance was past, given up
for a few barrels, more or less, of distilled spirits. It was for this
that the something inside was asking him to forfeit the chance he had
made for himself. The University was his home. His father had done
nothing toward this. The laundry agency had provided a living, and the
broad democracy of the college had done the rest for him. He was one of
the "prominent men" now, a somebody, as he had never been and never
could be in the travesty of home that had been his father's giving. Upon
his life here rested the possibilities of the future toward which he
looked dreamingly sometimes when his notes were written up, and the
laundry accounts checked. Assuredly, his father had no claim on this; to
admit it would be an injustice to himself, to his ambition, and to his
work. And yet this face which had come between him and his book the
first night the fight had been on must haunt him always in the hour when
his tide was turning.
A thump on the window which opened on the front piazza recalled him from
his reverie. A dozen feet were shuffling on the stones outside, and a
ruddy face glowed over the sash.
"Go away, Pellams. Got to plug," said Jimmie, hastily resuming his book.
"Relate your predicaments to a constable," said Pellams. "There's going
to be a Thirsting Bee at the----"
"Can't go. Got to work on my thesis."
"Relate _that_ to your Uncle Adderclaws. Tumble out, now."
Jimmie only shook his head. There was a conference outside in whispers;
then the gang withdrew with suspicious alacrity. Two minutes later, the
lock grated with the cautious insertion of a key, and the mob rushed in;
Jimmie had forgotten the passkey, for whose possession Pellams had held
up the Jap.
"Ah, say, get out of here, you fellows. I'm digging."
"I know it. And you're going to stop. Gentlemen adventurers"--here
Pellams mounted a chair--"James Mason, our small but thirsty friend, has
sourball. Now, I ask you, gentlemen, what is the universal cure for his
affliction?"
"Beer!" The unanimity of the response would have done credit to a Roman
mob.
"Quite right ye are, my merry retainers. And will ye, in loving kindness
to him, apply that remedy?"
"We will! We will!"
"Well said, me liegemen. Jimmie, move along!" and Pellams fell to
strolling around the room and criticizing its collection of stolen signs
with the air of one who has discharged his business and stands at ease.
The rest threw themselves on the man with sourball and were for tearing
off his outer garments and forcing on his sweater, but Lyman by some
occult means of his own got the boy aside. One never knew how Frank
managed the gang; it was always that way; his methods never obtruded
themselves, all one saw was results.
"I wouldn't if I were you," said he; "they won't understand it, and it
doesn't do you any good--this sort of thing. Better jolly up."
The Sophomore did not speak; he only shook his head.
"I know what you're holding back for," went on the other; "but going
down there isn't the same sort of thing; really, it isn't."
Jimmie started a little, inside, as he realized for the first time the
base of his aversion to dragging himself out on the trip. He turned,
half-mechanically, and began tugging at his collar. That Phantom should
never come between him and one single thing he wanted to do. It might
embitter it all, but it could never prevent him from the outward act. He
threw his tie over a chair and took off his coat with unnecessary
emphasis in the movement. Ten minutes later he was treading the primrose
path of dalliance with an arm around "Nosey" Marion.
There was a cool breeze off the bay, bringing the scent of salt water
along with the odor of spruce-trees. A voice from the upper regions of
the Hall called out to the cavalcade, crawling through the half-darkness
along the road:
"He-ea, you! Bring some back for me!"
A dozen windows slammed open at that, and twenty throats took up the
noise. Pellams was for answering, but Lyman discreetly checked him.
Presently they swung out into the traveled road, until the noises of the
Hall were only a composite buzz. The squad was lounging in twos and
three, talking athletics or humming under the breath march-songs from
the Orpheum. "Peg" Langdon stopped at the white gate, and took off his
hat to the cool air.
"This road down is the best thing about Mayfield!"
"Drop the Sequoia!" cried Pellams. "Here, you fellows, hold him! We'll
have that in a rondeau or something, next week, if you don't hobble the
muse!"
The editor laughed. It is better to be joked about your own special
forte than not to have it mentioned, so he was not displeased.
"That's what the bard gets," said he, "for secreting the noxious fluid
known as the 'Sequoia' verse. But you can't stop the secretion. Some
day, I am going to write a Ballad of the Road to Mayfield--just to be
original."
"And you'll kill the traffic."
"Chain the poet!"
"If you don't choke him, he'll get reminiscent."
These from half-a-dozen voices at once.
"Certainly I shall!" declared Langdon. "A reminiscent mood is the proper
one for the road to Mayfield--just as you have to have an argumentative
one on the road back."
"Did you ever notice," observed Dick, "that every Mayfield time has a
sort of motif? You have a central idea, and you expand on it, like
writing paragraphs for English Eight."
"It's up to you, Mr. Langdon. Give us a motif and we'll do the
expanding," said Marion, shying a pebble at a gate where there was a dog
he knew.
"How would Jimmie's sore-head do?"
Pellams took it up at once. "Death to the sore-head! _A bas_ Mason!" And
then, being safely away from the Hall, he caught up the old nonsense air
that has split student throats this century long,
"To drive dull care away!"
And Jimmie, a chum beating him on either side to exorcise the demon, was
singing as lustily as the best of them when they swung through the town
of buried ambitions and into the shrine of Bacchus.
"Gentlemen, remember the motif!" cried Pellams, when they had made their
way through the barroom loafers, playing with dingy cards at the dingier
tables. The expedition was safely stowed in the back room around the
rough table with its carved patch-work of initials, Greek letters, and
nicknames, significant or obsolete, according to a man's perspective.
Pellams assumed instant control.
"We will now turn our attention to the serious business of the evening.
Get your places. Hands on your bottles! Open--_corks_! And away we go."
The party drank in silence.
"Do you begin to improve, James? There is a trace of a smile in the
left-hand corner of the patient's mouth. Ruffle up his hair and give him
another while we have him going!"
Someone started a song, and they had another drink to punctuate the
pause between verses. A ruddier shade was creeping towards the roots of
Pellams' hair; Lyman, who smiled but seldom, was grinning across the
table at a Sophomore trying to flip cracker crumbs into his mouth.
"This is a tryout," said Pellams. "The first man that balks at his beer
will drink raspberry chasers for a month. Hey! look at 'Nosey' Marion
trying to shirk!"
Sure enough, Marion, who tried to keep up a reputation for capacity with
a naturally slim endowment, was slyly pouring his last potion into an
empty beer-case behind him. They fell upon the offender forthwith,
whipped him into the ranks again, and resumed their seats, laughing and
panting.
"And now that our erring brother is punished and forgiven--that's as
good a phrase as I ever saw--punished and forgiven--stick that in the
Sequoia, Pegasus"--Pellams rambled on, "we've got to have the motif. I
move from the chair that the guest of the evening gives us 'My Old
Kentucky Home!' Punish your glass and tune up, Jimmie!"
The cry went on until Jimmie had to respond. He began with the intention
of singing it quite carelessly, because there was much in his soul that
night that he dared not show before them all; but Jimmie had the gift of
song in his heart as in his voice, and he threw himself into the music
before the first stanza was half done. Only once before had he sung the
song as he did to-night; it was at last Commencement, when he sang it
for the Seniors going out on their adventures, and when he was done they
had all been still and quiet like men who have seen ghosts--as perhaps
they had, that night, the phantoms of men and times haunting certain
low, arched buildings they were to see no more.
"Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!"
Jimmie's tender baritone floated up from the table wistfully sweet, and
shaken a little with feeling, for the trouble of the week just past was
sweeping into it. Lyman, listening, knew of what place the boy was
singing, and mentally noted that he had better be thoughtful of the
youngster during the rest of the term.
The fellows were quiet for a moment after they had droned out the
chorus, each one putting his own meaning into that sweet old song of
farewell, and then, to break the charm, a small voice with a Spanish
roll in it, piped "Tamales!" at the crack in the door.
"Hey!--Lupe!--make him sing!"
They raided the stock first, and rendered happy with the jingle of
silver the quaint little remnant of the race who named their valley for
the blessed Santa Clara. Then, when he had counted it and put it safely
away with the officious assistance of Pellams Rex, they set him on the
table in his blue overalls and over-sized hat and made him sing for them
in his pathetic treble, "La Paloma," and for encore, "Two Leetle Girl
een Bloo." Pellams removed him after that, claiming that Langdon was
about to tell the story of his life, which could not be published in the
Sequoia.
Jimmie Mason had sat there all this time, taking it in and drinking with
the others, but there was never a cloud on his brain nor a waver in his
movements. The rest of them wandered from the motif; each was composing
a fugue of his own, according to the mould of his nature. Scraps of
their conversation floated in on him between songs--"Got him just below
the knees--now!"--"and the difference between me and a tank is in the
inferior receptivity--ain't that a peach?--of the receptacle"--"Now, the
fallacy of the original proposition, as Herbert Spencer hath it, lies in
the expression of the component particulars"--this was Langdon--"that
proves that if I had a board Pellams would be summarily chastised"--"Put
it down and order up another, here's good drink going stale"--"Whoa,
Pegasus, old hoss, that's my tamale you have designs on"--"and cut his
name there"--"sing it down! This is to break training for the third
time"--"What's the matter with ----ty-eight?"--All this came in on him,
as he watched them grow from geniality to hilarity and then on toward
enthusiasm. They had forgotten him; only now and then someone shied a
cracker at his head and told him to "jolly up."
Another drink, and the patriotic stage was upon them. The King ordered a
glass, standing, to the Team, and one with a foot on the table to the
Captain, and one with both feet on the table and glasses to the ceiling
to the Victory next fall. Someone started the yell; it went round the
table. Then they joined in on "Here's to Stanford College," with a verse
for every class and its yell at the end, and before they were done there
were three howling factions, each trying to cry the others down.
Frank Lyman, he of the steady head, who was quiet or hilarious as he
willed, but was never beyond the point where he willed to be, sat
watching good-humoredly from his corner, and noted that Jimmie Mason's
voice had risen the loudest, and that he, too, had forgotten the motif.
Pellams had wandered into the outer room "to bust the proprietor's
blamed old nickel-machine and get even," leaving the disturbance to
subside of its own weight. Coming back suddenly to the door, he cried:
"Hey, I've got 'em! The raw material and the finished product! Let's
have a temperance lecture from Lyman."
It was a queer group at the door. The half-gone Pellams, with his face
flushed and his hair dishevelled, in one of his hands little Lupe,
hanging to an empty pail and between laughter and tears; the other hand
tight on the collar of as dirty, as unkempt, and as drunken an old
loafer as ever hung over a Mayfield bar. Pellams swung the ruin in.
"Now, tell us how you got that fine, large tee!" said the tormentor.
"Orate to us, General Jackson!"
The old man braced himself, with drunken dignity, against the door.
"You young fellows c'n make fools o' yourselves," he said, "but you
can't make fool o' me."
"That's all right, pardner--Nature saved us the trouble in your case,"
said Pellams, the thoughtless.
The clear head in the room--Lyman's always--took it all in; Frank made a
step to come between the Junior and his victim. Then he turned,
half-unconsciously, toward Mason. Jimmie was standing with his hands on
the table, looking straight before him, and in that look Frank read the
certainty that the case was out of his control. For the Face was rising
before Jimmie Mason once more; it had twisted itself in with the
relaxed, foolish features before him, until he saw his father there, a
mock and a shame. It was not his father, of course--he passed his hand
before his eyes as though to clear them--but suppose that somewhere else
a crowd had his father--and he not there to----
The Angel of Pity, or the Universal Conscience, or whatever it is that
you and I have learned from our books and our teachers to put as our
symbol of the belief in the higher things, wrote upon his records that
night that a prayer had gone up, for the first time, from the dingy back
room of the Hotel Mayfield.
Pellams had the old man singing now, in a cracked, maudlin voice, and
his keeper was beating time with a billiard cue. Then the amateur
conductor had one of his inspirations.
"Hey, a trio! The event of the evening! General Hardshell Jackson,
Senor Lupe de Tamale, and the renowned lyric barytone, James Russell
Lowell Mason, will combine in a grand farewell concert. Ascend the
platform, Senor!" he cried to the Mexican lad, who stood, wide-eyed, in
a corner. Then he gestured wildly toward the door.
"Hey, Jimmie, come back here," he called; "don't let him out, boys!"
Jimmie had reached the door when Lyman caught his sleeve.
"Where are you going?"
"Home."
"You mean the Hall?"
Jimmie pulled free of the Senior's hand.
"No!" he said. "Home."
A SONG CYCLE AND A PUNCTURE.
A Song Cycle and a Puncture.
"And I learned about women from 'er!"
KIPLING.
Six Madonnas, from their places on the Chapel walls, gazed at the
spectacle of a student with long hair and energetic manner drilling a
chorus of young men and women from behind the preacher's desk. There was
no visible sign of agitation on the part of the six Madonnas, though an
operatic rehearsal in Chapel might be considered reason enough. To be
sure, one of them, with her feet upon a crescent moon, kept her eyes
fixed religiously on the ceiling, but this had become a habit. The
Madonnas were not surprised.
The early years of the University, when there was no assembly hall and
the temporary chapel was used for everything that did not demand the
superior accommodations of the men's gymnasium, had prepared them for
anything. They had looked calmly down upon student farces and Wednesday
evening prayer meetings, professional impersonations and baccalaureate
sermons. Once, there had been a German farce under the protection of
the Germanic Language department, by a company from town, a boisterous
play with a gigantic comedienne in a short skirt. Beside this
performance, Lillian Arnold's singing a love duet with Jack Smith was
nothing very shocking.
Connor, the man who was getting up the opera for the benefit of the
Junior Annual, waved his baton gracefully and looked pleased. The
rehearsal had gone well that afternoon, and now Cap Smith was singing
with creditable expression the love song in the last act. The experience
of Connor told him that this song would make even the bleachers at the
back of the gymnasium keep a respectful silence, which was saying a good
deal. Smith had a very pretty tenor, redeeming its lack of volume by a
sympathetic quality that was decidedly pleasant. In a song like this,
his voice came out well. There was a high note at the end to be taken
pianissimo with something else that signified "as though you meant it."
Smith could make it sound so, at any rate. One girl at the back of the
chorus always said, "Ah," under her breath when the song was ended at
rehearsal.
Lillian Arnold, who played opposite Smith in the opera, did not conceal
from herself the pleasure she took in the part. Long before rehearsals
began, she had spent her smiles upon Connor with a view to that very
role. Miss Arnold was a young person who knew the things she wanted;
one of them was Smith. 'Varsity end, champion pole-vaulter, Glee Club
tenor and Sophomore president, which means principally leading the
cotillion, he was well worth a girl's trouble. There was the more glory
in the winning of this capital prize because he was not very
enthusiastic about Roble. There was somebody up in town who took a great
deal of his blue fraternity-paper. Lillian Arnold knew about the girl in
town, so she accepted gracefully what the gods gave and was outwardly
content.
The gift of the gods was Ted Perkins, whose vest was decorated like
Cap's and who had no entanglements. When the approach of the Sophomore
cotillion set Roble agog with a pleasant but hardly strong-minded
excitement, he "asked her." Peace of mind comes naturally after such an
invitation is given and accepted; on rare occasions this does not last.
The first thing that occurred to ruffle Miss Arnold's complacency was a
chance remark dropped one noon by Perkins as they were strolling home
obliquely from the Quad.
"Cap isn't going to lead with Miss Martin, after all," said he.
"Indeed!" exclaimed Lillian. For some remote feminine reason the
announcement was interesting.
"Her family has gone South suddenly, a death or something. Cap is all
broken up about it. He was going to show her off in style that night."
"I wonder whom he will ask, now," she said, as though it didn't matter
the least bit in the world.
Down somewhere in a girl's heart lies the gambler's instinct. Lillian
would have thrown away then and there the certainty of Ned Perkins'
timely invitation for the torturing suspense, the alluring chance, that
attended the Sophomore president's second choice. Perkins, in his simple
masculine dullness, never guessed this.
"I don't believe he knows yet; he wouldn't tell over at the house if he
did. Another plum for unengaged Roble."
Perkins would have been less at ease over the condition of engaged Roble
could he have looked into the little east music-room where Lillian
played accompaniments, and Cap Smith, leaning over a wicker chair, went
through the music of his part. These cozy rehearsals in the quiet
afternoons had resulted in Smith's asking himself, during a cut home
through the Quad, why he had never noticed Lillian Arnold in particular.
Connor, the director, had a keener eye, evidently. She was pretty,
dashing and real good fun. Perkins was entitled to respect for his
selection. Lillian was "all right;" this is a masculine term which may
mean anything from mild approval to the rapture of "just one girl." The
mild interpretation, of course, is to be put upon Smith's use of the
term, even after he had been to Roble two evenings. Their talk was about
the opera, nothing further, and when he had taken his high note with
just the proper emotional slur, they both laughed. To be honest, there
had been one chat on the moonlit steps of the Museum, but all of this
went down on the blue fraternity-paper among other confidences.
One afternoon, in the middle of a Spring-time walk, Smith gave utterance
to a decision concerning which he had already written, dutifully, to an
interested party in the South. They had passed the willow-fringed bank
of Lagunita, the red boathouse, the double avenue of young pines, and,
crossing into the back road, strolled down to the low gate opposite the
Farm; this they climbed and came into a little hollow where knowing
people find yellow violets. He had just given her a frank compliment.
"You are the best fence-taker I ever saw for a girl."