I was not long at McGraw University before I had attained my ambition to
be like Boller of '89. I draped my legs in wide folds of shepherd's
plaid; the corners of a purple silk handkerchief protruded from my top
pocket; and as long as the "smoky city" was the proper form I crowned
myself with one of them, and as promptly discarded it for the newer
tourist's helmet, and that in turn for a yachting cap. Must I confess
it?--before Boller left McGraw I had quite surpassed him as a model of
fashion. But my ambition did not end here. The very conceit which had
made me such an insufferable youth in my last days at home was the spur
which drove me to win every honor that could come to an undergraduate.
As Boller stepped out of offices I stepped into them--in presidencies and
secretaryships almost innumerable, into editorships, and even
captaincies. Physically timid, I endured much pain in winning these last
honors. The stretch of rolling turf which we called the foot-ball field
became the arena in which I suffered martyrdom daily. I hated the game.
When I donned my padded toggery it was with the secret spirit I should
have felt in preparing for the rack, yet I played recklessly for the
_éclat_ it gave me. To-day I have an occasional reminder of those
struggles in a weak knee, which has a way of twisting unexpectedly and
causing excruciating pain, but I consider that these twinges are fair
payment for the pleasure with which I contemplated my picture years ago
in the Harlansburg _Sentinel_, showing me in my foot-ball clothes, poised
on a photographer's fence. The subject, the _Sentinel_ explained, was
Captain Malcolm of McGraw, who had made the winning touch-down in the
Thanksgiving-Day game with the Northern University of Pennsylvania. The
photographer's fence, you might think, was the summit of my career at
McGraw, reached as it was in my last year there. To the admiring eyes of
my fellows it was, but the McLaurins of Tuckapo and the Malcolms of Windy
Valley were above all a practical people and to them I am indebted for a
little common-sense, which told me that I could not play foot-ball all my
life, nor would the heavy bass voice, so effective in the glee club,
support a family, and deep in my heart I admitted the possibilities of a
family. I might strive to keep that thought in the background, but it
would rise when I dreamed of a home. That home was not a plain stone
farm-house, hidden among giant trees. My view had broadened. I dreamed
of a Queen Anne cottage, with many gables, and a flat clipped lawn, with
a cement walk leading over it to an iron gate. I looked back with
affectionate contempt to the art I had known in my youth, to the Rogers
group, Lady Washington's ball, Lincoln and his cabinet, the lambrequin
and the worsted motto. On my walls there would be a Colosseum,
Rembrandt's portrait of himself, a smattering of Madonnas, a Winged
Victory, and a Venus de Milo. To preside with me over such a house, to
sit at the piano of an evening and play accompaniments while I sang
sentimental songs, to fly with me over the country in a side-bar buggy,
behind a fleet trotter, I thought only of Gladys Todd. She was
accomplished, highly trained, it seemed to me, in all the finer arts of
life. In our valley the women never rose above their petty household
problems. They could talk, but only of recipes and church affairs, and
if they left this narrow environment at all it was to fare far--to India
and China, the foreign mission field. My view had broadened. Gladys
Todd had her being in higher airs. She painted. Pastels of flowers and
plaques adorned with ideal heads covered the walls of the Todd parlor.
She wrote. Doctor Todd assured me, speaking without prejudice, that his
daughter's essay on "The Immortality of the Soul," which she had written
out of pure love of the labor, equalled, if it did not surpass, the best
work of the senior class. She sang. Perhaps I see her now in the same
wizard lights of distance that glorified the mountains in my boyhood, but
I always recall her as a charming old-fashioned picture, sitting at her
piano and babbling her little songs in French and German. Of the quality
of her French and German I had no means of judging, but that she could
use them at all was to me surpassingly enchanting.
So Gladys Todd had her part in completing the wreck of my worthy
ambition. What Boller had begun, she unconsciously finished. Yesterday
I had planned to make self-sacrifice the key-note of my life. To-day I
could not picture her contented to move in the narrow sphere of a Mrs.
Pound, cramping her talents in the little circle of the Sunday-school and
the Ladies' Aid. Her influence for good must be a subtler one than this.
To wield it, she must have her being in higher airs, in an atmosphere of
Colosseums, of Rembrandts, and Madonnas. Remember, she was no longer the
shy girl whom I had met on the first night of my university life. Then
she was only in her fifteenth year. I was a junior when she produced her
lauded essay on "The Immortality of the Soul," and it revealed to me the
profundity of her mind. To match her, I must sit many a night driving my
way through difficult pages of the classics, and often when my heart was
in some smoky den with a few choice spirits, my body bent over my table
and my brain wearied itself with abstruse equations.
If Gladys Todd unconsciously wrecked my early scheme of life, she
unconsciously spurred me to the hard task of learning. I flattered
myself that in the new calling which I had chosen I should be able to be
even a greater power for good than in the old. Having attained to
Boller's perfection, as I had abandoned Mr. Pound for him, I now
abandoned him for ex-Judge Bundy. As Harlansburg was far above
Malcolmville, so ex-Judge Bundy was above Mr. Pound. He was not the
creator of Harlansburg, but he was its providence. He owned the bank and
the nail works, he was a patron of its churches, the leading figure at
the bar, and a man of wonderful eloquence. Every year he delivered the
graduation address at the university, and mentally I modelled my future
appearance on the rostrum from his benign demeanor, his forceful
gestures, his rolling periods. Yet deep as was my admiration, he held
views on which I differed with him. I felt that I had gone deeper than
he into the logic of things. To him, for example, the high tariff was
the source of all good, of life, health, food, clothes, and even morals.
My view was broader. I brushed aside the beneficent local effect of any
system and went on to study its relation to all mankind. He was prone to
forget mankind, and yet his faults were those of his generation and he
remained a heroic figure in my eyes, and it seemed to me that in setting
myself to reach the mark he had made I was aiming very high indeed.
Perhaps I should have gone on, striving to attain to the Bundian
perfection had not the ex-judge himself been the instrument by which I
was awakened and shaken out of my self-complacence. Among the
benefactions which had brought him such high esteem in our college
community was "the Richardson Bundy course of lectures on the activities
of life." He paid for the services of orators whom Doctor Todd delighted
to call "leaders in every branch of human endeavor." In my last year at
McGraw we heard the Fourth Assistant Secretary of the Treasury on
"Finance," the art critic of a Philadelphia paper on "Raphael," and as a
fitting climax to the course we were to listen to the famous Armenian
scholar and philosopher, the Reverend Valerian Harassan in a discourse on
"Life." The adjective is not mine. I had never heard of the famous
Armenian until Doctor Todd in chapel announced his coming, and made it
clear that it was a special privilege to listen to the eloquent preacher,
and that we owed a tremendous debt to our friend and benefactor, Judge
Bundy.
The picture of the Reverend Valerian Harassan, which was posted on the
bulletin-board, gave promise of a realization of the hopes which the good
doctor had raised. It showed a man in evening clothes, impressively
massive, with a clean-shaven face and Roman features, a broad, low
forehead from which the hair rolled back in glistening black folds,
curling around his ears to the line of his collar. The deep-set eyes
seemed to look out from a mind packed with knowledge, and the firmly set
mouth to hold in check a voice of marvellous power for eloquence.
In high spirits I went one evening to hear this eastern philosopher. It
was cold and raining, but in those days the worst of weather could cast
no shadow over me. It was a pleasure even to battle with the elements
with no other weapon than an umbrella, and multiplied a hundred-fold was
that pleasure when with that weapon I was battling also for Gladys Todd.
Though as yet I had said nothing to her of my cherished hope, I know that
when we stepped out together into the night, we both believed that we
should face many another storm under the same umbrella. I was conscious
that she clung more closely than usual to my arm, and, with spirits keyed
high with the sense of protecting her, my feet hardly touched the
dripping pavement which led from the doctor's house to the college
building and the chapel. We said little on the way. We had long since
passed the point where idle chatter is needed in communing. I remember
that I did ruminate pleasantly on my good fortune in having found this
sympathetic spirit to share with me the intellectual pleasure of a
scholarly discourse, whose heart could beat quicker in time with mine at
the inspiration of some fine thought. I remember that she broke the
current of these meditations to ask if I had decided to make Harlansburg
my home after my approaching graduation. She asked it with a tone of
deep personal interest. At that moment I should have proposed to Gladys
Todd had not the wind been tugging at the umbrella, and had we not come
from the shadow of the trees into the glare of the college lights. So I
answered affirmatively. Of course I should remain in Harlansburg. At
that moment my resolution was fixed unalterably, if only for the sake of
Gladys Todd; and if I had settled in my mind that I should walk in the
way of Judge Bundy till, like him, I dominated the town and the county
and my name was known in the farthest corners of the State, that, too,
would be for the sake of this gentle, clinging girl whose nearness to me
made my umbrella seem like the sheltering roof of home. But in this
calculation I left out of my equation one important element--the throat
of the Reverend Valerian Harassan.
The source of the Armenian's flowing eloquence would have seemed as far
from affecting my life as the source and flow of the sacred Ganges, and
yet it was some trivial irritation of it that kept us from hearing his
philosophy that night, and, more important to me, that sent another to
expound ideas far different than could ever have come from the famous
thinker. All the college, all in Harlansburg who were well-to-do and
wise, watched for his coming expectantly; but when the door on the chapel
platform opened and Judge Bundy stepped forth, he had on his arm, not the
monumental preacher of the clean-shaven face and rolling black hair, but
a man who in no line met the hopes raised by the impressive picture. A
murmur of disappointment ran through the hall. Doctor Todd, following
the great men in the humble capacity of beadle, stilled it with a raised
hand.
To Judge Bundy's mind, as he expressed it to us, there was no cause for
disappointment. While the Reverend Valerian Harassan's bronchial
affection was unfortunate for us and for him, yet for us it was in a way,
too, a blessing, for he had sent in his place to speak to us on "Life" no
other than the famous journalist and traveller Andrew Henderson. The
judge paused to give time for a play of our imaginations, and such a play
was needed. I do not think that a soul in the audience had ever heard of
the famous journalist and traveller, but we should not have admitted it,
and set ourselves to looking as though his name were a household word.
It was enough that Judge Bundy declared him to be famous. It was
decreed, and for Harlansburg, at least, he became a celebrity. Having
given us time to imagine the deeds which had won fame for the lecturer,
Judge Bundy saw no need to trouble himself with specifications. The
rolling periods of his speech would have been rudely halted by facts, so
he spoke in general terms of the inspiration it would give to the young
men before him to see such a man face to face--a man who knew life, a man
who had lived life, who had ideas on life. It seemed as though the judge
himself was about to deliver the lecture on "Life," but he paused, out of
breath, and Andrew Henderson, mistaking the moment of rest for the end of
the introduction, rose from the chair about which he had been shifting
uneasily and came to the rostrum's edge.
He came with a shambling gait. The tall, thin, loose-jointed man,
resting with one hand on the pulpit at his side, in every way belied the
pompous tribute which had just been paid him.
I watched him. I studied the face masked in a close-cropped gray beard.
I studied the angles of the loosely hung limbs and the swinging body clad
in unobtrusive brown. For a moment I doubted. Then he spoke. I heard
his voice, and it seemed as though it were threaded with a sharp, shrill
note of bitterness. His eyes were not turned to us. Gladys Todd must
have thought them fixed on a spot in the ceiling, but to me they were
watching a flake of cloud hovering just above the tall pine across the
clearing. Gladys Todd must have thought me beside her, sitting upright
on the very edge of my seat, but I was back in the mountains; I could
feel Penelope's brown hand in mine and I could see her proud smile as she
looked up at me and said: "That's father; he's studying"; I could see her
father as he leaned on his hoe, beaten in his fight with the
ever-charging weeds; I could see him in the murky light of the cabin, a
trembling hazy figure in the gun smoke; and again, with the devils of
retribution at his heels, flying for the bush. Now the worthless,
shiftless man, after long years, stood before me, a professor in truth, a
professor of life, and perhaps he would give belated expression to what
was in his mind that day as he studied the flake of cloud.
Unrolling a portentous manuscript on the pulpit, the lecturer began to
read in a mechanical voice. The restless shuffling of feet and a volley
of dry coughs soon spoke the hostile attitude of the audience, a longing
for the coming of Valerian Harassan. The Professor did not heed them.
He read on, pompous phrases such as might have come from the lips of Mr.
Pound. He was unconscious of the increasing hostility of his hearers.
When he stopped suddenly, it was not because the feet in the rear of the
hall were shuffling a rising chorus of protest, despite the frantic
signals of Judge Bundy and Doctor Todd's upraised hand. What he saw in
his own manuscript checked him, for stepping back from the desk, he
frowned at it. The corners of his mouth twitched in a passing smile, and
pouncing upon his handiwork, he held it at arm's length, dangling before
the astonished eyes of the company.
"What rot!" he cried. "What utter rot!"
A shout from the rear of the room evidenced the approval of his younger
hearers. The elders glowered at what they thought a trick to catch their
attention. But trick or not, he did catch their attention, and he held
it; he ceased to be the utterer of pompous platitudes; dropping his paper
to show that he had done with it, he leaned across the pulpit and brought
his long arms into action. He became the caustic iconoclast of the
valley.
"We all agree that what I have been reading is nonsense," he said in a
sharp-edged voice. "But I am here in the place of Valerian Harassan, and
it seemed to me that I must give you what you were paying him for. I
have been trying to say the kind of things he would have said. If you
had been able to stand it a little longer, I should have told you that
all the world's a stage and men and women but the players. I might even
have attacked your risibles by anecdotes about my little boy at home and
the southern colonel. Of course, I should have given you some inspiring
thoughts, convinced you that life was a wonderful gift, something to be
treasured and joyously lived, that work was a pleasure, that happiness
came from accomplishing a set task. It's all here in this paper. I
wrote it--and it was easy enough to do--because that is the kind of stuff
you pay for. But it is one thing to write what you don't believe; quite
another to speak it face to face. And yet if I am to speak the truth as
I see it on such a simple little subject as life, I guess I am here on a
fool's errand."
Doctor Todd and Judge Bundy seemed to be of the same mind, for they were
whispering together; debating, I suspected, whether it were better to let
him go on and try to talk fifty dollars' worth or to break abruptly into
his discourse and end it. For so harsh a measure as the last they lacked
courage, and the Professor hurled on, unconscious of the hostile stares
with which they were stabbing him in the back.
Now, optimism was the foundation on which McGraw strove to build up
character. Optimism permeated every part of our life there. From a
narrow environment we looked out hopefully into broadening distances.
Every year some confident youth told us from the college rostrum in
rounded sentences that life was worth living; that sickness, poverty,
disappointment, the countless evils which dog our footsteps, were nothing
in the scale against the boon of opportunity. Every morning in chapel
the doctor voiced our gratitude for the privilege of living and working.
And now over heads that moved in such charged airs the Professor cast his
pall of pessimism. He took his text from Solomon, and found that all was
vanity. It mattered little whether or not what he said was true. He
believed it to be true, and for the moment at least his incisive voice
and long forefinger carried with them conviction. He railed at the old
dictum that man was God's noblest work. The ordinary dog, he declared,
was more pleasing to the eye than the ordinary man, and the life of the
ordinary dog more to be envied than that of the ordinary man. Knowledge
only lifted us above the animal to be more buffeted by a complexity of
desires. The greatest thing in the world was self, and even the roots of
our goodness burrowed down into the depths where the ego was considering
its own comfort either in this world or the next. The proud man for whom
the universe was made was nothing but a fragile thread of memories
wrapped in soft tissue, packed away in a casket of bone, and made easily
portable by a pair of levers called legs. After countless ages spent on
earth seeking the true source of happiness men were still countless ages
from agreement. One half sought by goodness to attain happiness in
immortality; the other in Nirvana. One half found the shadow of
happiness in inertia, in stupefaction, a mere satisfying of physical
needs; the other in motion, joining in the mad procession which we call
so boastfully Progress. By accident of birth we were of the progressive
half and we paraded around and around, puffed up with pride of our little
accomplishment, until we fell exhausted and another took our place.
Judge Bundy nudged Doctor Todd again. Doctor Todd shook his head and
looked at the ceiling, as if to show that he found more of interest there
than in the speaker's words, and he held them there defiantly as the
Professor went on to controvert the optimistic philosophy which had been
taught at McGraw for so many years. That knowledge was the greatest
source of unhappiness was a bold dictum to hurl at a company of seekers
after it, but Henderson Blight had little respect for mere persons. The
ignorant animal did not exist, he argued; it was with knowledge that the
plague of ignorance came to man. A draught of knowledge was like a cup
of salt-water to the thirst, and the more we learned the less value we
could place on the things for which we labored. A man worked a lifetime
to obtain a peach-blow, and it crumbled to dust in his hands. What,
then, should we strive for?
At this question Doctor Todd brought his eyes down from the ceiling and
Judge Bundy lifted his from the red rug of the platform. The judge was
our great authority on striving. He had qualified himself by years of
successful labor. To us he was a living example of the rewards which
come to endeavor, and so it was with evident self-consciousness that he
now sat very erect, thinking, perhaps, that he would hear some views akin
to his own.
"I was born in a narrow valley," the Professor pursued, "and perhaps I
might have dozed there like the dogs, but I learned that beyond the
mountains there was another valley, broader and richer. I longed to live
there. One day I crossed the mountains to it and I found it all that I
had heard. But it, too, had its wall of mountains and my eyes followed
them, and I learned that beyond them was still another valley, broader
and richer. And I went on. So it will be with you. There is a big nail
factory down by the river--I saw it as I came in, and I am sure that to
some of us to own that factory might be a life's ambition. How fine it
would be when our work was ended to fold our hands peacefully and say: 'I
have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have made a million
kegs of nails!'"
Judge Bundy half rose from his chair. Through the hall sounded a
smothered murmur of applause, for it is always satisfying to hear a truth
which hits another. Judge Bundy would have wholly risen from his chair,
but he was checked by a hundred covert smiles and Doctor Todd laid a hand
upon his quivering, indignant knee. All unconscious of the cause of this
stifled mirth, and fired by it as in the old days he was fired when Stacy
Shunk leered beneath the shadow of his hat, the Professor leaned far over
the desk with both hands outstretched.
"I have failed utterly in my own living," he cried. "I have loafed and
lagged. At times I have worked hard until I wearied myself chasing
shadows. But in my failure I have learned a few things. We may live and
doze in our little valley, but still we shall long for the broader and
richer valley across the mountains. The yearning for that something
better is born in us all. Shall we call it simply something more; shall
we measure our service in kegs of nails or shall we seek for something
really better? If we listen we can hear in the depths of our souls the
divine drumbeat, and it is strange what cowards we are when we come to
march to it. But we can march to it. We may not know why we go, nor
where, but we can go straight. The country we travel may seem waste, but
we cross it under God's sealed orders, given to us when we opened our
eyes on life, and only when our eyes are closed again will they be opened
to us."
So it was that the Professor carried me again from my little valley! The
great Judge Bundy standing at the platform's edge, brusquely dismissing
us, had dwindled to pygmy height. He was a mere maker of nails. Life a
moment since had been very simple, very concrete, a mere game in which
the stake was food and clothes, a Queen Anne house, a clipped lawn and
trotting horses. Now it was a mysterious expedition into the unknown.
With the Professor's last word I rose, ready to march, not knowing
whither, but sure that it would not be to a conquest measured in kegs of
nails. In this exalted mood Gladys Todd could have no part, for I knew
that I could go faster and farther in light marching order, unhampered by
impedimenta of any kind. Gladys Todd suddenly took her place with
impedimenta. Her first act was to confirm this judgment of her, for as I
was forcing my way down the crowded aisle, intent on reaching my old
friend, she kept tugging at my sleeve and entreating me not to hurry.
Her remonstrances aroused my antagonism. Inwardly I was calling down
maledictions on her head, for I saw the Professor's tall form receding
through the door. I would have rushed after him; there were a thousand
things I wanted to know, a thousand questions I had to ask him. But I
was checked. I could not abandon Gladys Todd; nor had I the courage to
present myself to him after so many years in the light of a youth given
to sentimental dalliance. He would remember the boy who had come to him,
cold and wet, from the depths of a mountain stream, the boy who had run
miles in the early morning to warn him of the approach of the terrible
Lukens, the boy whom he had called his only friend. He would see me
dignified by a tail coat and beautified by a mauve tie, a white waistcoat
and gleaming patent-leather shoes. He would remember me as I stood by
the cabin door, a strong, rugged lad. He would see me a devotee of
fashion, a dawdler after a pretty face. So it was with a feeling of
relief that I saw the study door close after my friend. I intended to
find him, but not until I was as free as on that day when I first came
upon him in the clearing.
Gladys Todd was inclined to lag. There were a dozen persons to whom she
wished to speak, but with rude insistence I hurried her away. Outside
the rain fell heavily. I held my umbrella at arm's length now and
abandoned my fine feathers to the storm. She feigned not to notice my
changed demeanor and tried to talk pleasantly, but I answered only in
monosyllables, and brusquely, I fear. The interminable journey ended.
From the steps of the president's house, with all the graciousness she
could command, she asked me not to hurry away when we had so many things
to talk over. My answer was a quick "good-night," and I ran as I had run
years before to the mountains, with my heart in every stride.
When I entered the doctor's study I found him alone. Mr. Henderson, he
explained, had gone to Judge Bundy's. Judge Bundy always entertained the
lecturer, and he was too generous a man to make an exception even in this
case. In speaking of the lecturer the doctor made a wry face. He could
not understand how a man of Valerian Harassan's reputation ever allowed
such a mountebank to take his place. At McGraw we believed in life; we
believed in ambition, and it was terrible--terrible, sir, to have to sit
in silence and hear our dearest traditions assailed by one who admitted
that he was a failure. Did Mr. Malcolm hear the brutal cut at Judge
Bundy? Judge Bundy, sir, was----
I did not stop to hear the eulogy, nor did I consider how I might be
prejudicing myself with the president by so rudely breaking from him.
But the Professor had come back to me. I cleared the college steps with
a bound, and ran over the campus and down the hill into the town. I ran
with all a boy's reckless waste of strength, so that when I had covered
my half-mile course I had to lean for support against the iron fence
which guarded the Bundy home. The great stone pile, with many turrets
and a dominating cupola, with wide-spreading verandas and marble lions on
the lawn, in the daylight comported itself with dignified aloofness, and
now, when night exaggerated its size and a single lonely light flickered
in all its vast front, it was forbidding. With something of that forced
boldness with which years before I had braved the dark mountains, I made
the gate ring a proper notice of my approach and groped my way about the
door until I found the bell. The answer came from over my head.
Stepping back and looking up, I saw framed in a lighted window a white
figure, coatless and collarless, not the distinguished jurist, but a
portly man who had been interrupted in the act of preparing for bed.
Clothes go a long way toward making a man, and the lack of them brought
the judge down to hailing distance.
"What do you want?" he demanded of me, addressing me as any disrobed
plebeian might have done.
"I'm Malcolm, sir, David Malcolm," I returned apologetically. "I wish to
see Mr. Henderson."
"Henderson, eh?" The judge leaned over the window-sill, and he spoke less
sharply. "You'll find him at the station waiting for the night train
out. I tried to persuade him to stay, but he wouldn't. How in the
world, Mr. Malcolm, could Harassan have sent such a fool in his place?
Did you ever hear such utter nonsense? I forgive him about the
nails--that was inadvertent, but that stuff about ambition----"
I did not wait to hear the judge controvert my friend's pessimistic
philosophy, but with a brusque "good-night" hurried away. The window
banged behind me, a sharp commentary on my rudeness. The iron gate
clanged again, and I was off down the hill, running toward the lower town.
A shrill whistle stopped me. Looking into the valley I saw a chain of
lights weaving their way along the river. They wound through the gap in
the mountain, and I saw them no longer. I heard the whistle again, far
off now, and it seemed to mock me.