“Twenty dollars. I’m sure, because we both put our allowances in the
bank that morning. Billy kept twenty.”
Now Haydock, who had met a great number of Billys and Dillys in his
short life, knew that this particular Billy was not living anywhere on
the modest sum of five dollars a day. So, after a little more drumming,
he said,--
“Run over to the Charles River Bank, and ask them in just what
metropolis of the United States or Europe, William is signing cheques at
the present moment.”
When John returned, breathless, a few minutes later, he threw himself
into a chair, and groaned,--
“They’re in Providence.”
Haydock gave up a dinner at his club that night, and a dance in town. He
went, instead, to Providence. Late the next evening he deposited
Billy--too much of a wreck to be either resentful or flippant--in 86
Matthews. The next day the Office put Billy “on probation.”
And the midyears were coming.
One night, after the examination period was well under way, Haydock went
up to his room to study. Although the month was February, the night was
heavy and depressing. The senior had much to accomplish before morning.
He was nervous--almost irritable. His curtains floated like ghostly,
beckoning sleeves in and out of the open windows, until he jumped up
and tied them viciously into hard knots. His student lamp radiated the
heat of hell and the unnumbered suns; he found himself waiting, in
nervous suspense, for the periodic bubbling of its rudimentary bowels.
The sound diverted his attention from his book, and wasted the limited
time left him in which to commit to memory several hundred lines of
Paradise Lost. The verse,--
“And, sweet reluctant amourous delay,”
--he came across it in the feverish scramble of learning five lines a
minute by the watch,--suddenly put the situation in a light in which he
had not until then been able to see it. He leaned back in his chair and
laughed aloud. And as he laughed, he heard a light footstep in the hall,
then a knock on his door.
“I heard you laughing and knew you couldn’t be working, so I just
knocked,” said Dilford Bancroft, innocently ignoring the very unusual
fact that Haydock had on neither coat nor waistcoat, that a shaded
student lamp was the only light in the room, and that several open
books and some scattered notes lay on the table. “What’s the joke?” he
asked. Then without waiting for an answer, “Hasn’t Billy come yet?”
“Is Billy coming?” said Haydock, with an interest that sprang solely
from alarm.
“Oh, yes--he’ll be here,” answered Dilly, reassuring any foolish doubts
on that question. He had opened the piano and was striking careful
discords in the bass, “I was sure you were talking to him when I came
in; he said he’d bring round his system.”
“His _what_?”
“Why, his system--the ‘Rhyming Road,’ he calls it. You’re going to give
us a seminar, you know--the exam comes to-morrow; and he’s going to
bring round his notes and the ‘Rhyming Road’ to help out.”
Haydock was hearing of this little arrangement for the first time. He
hadn’t seen Billy since the return from Providence.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” he began; “I have no end of work
myself and--”
“Yes, yes, I know,” broke in Dilly, a trifle impatiently, without
turning from the piano; “you see we never thought about it ourselves
until this afternoon, when we found out that the exam comes to-morrow.
We were sure you’d do it,” he wheeled slowly about until he faced
Haydock; “because neither of us know anything, and if you don’t--we’ll
fail.”
Haydock met this plaint with the worried silence of one who dimly
foresees his own end. Dilly couldn’t have made a more persuasive appeal
if he had tried. Its strength lay in the fact that Dilly hadn’t tried;
he had simply laid bare, with an apparently childlike trust in Haydock’s
wisdom, his own and Billy’s hopeless inconsequence. It was rather late
in the day to discuss the matter.
“We were counting on you,” Dilly sighed, and looked at the floor. He
ventured this statement in the hope of keeping the subject alive;
somehow it had seemed to languish.
“I confess I don’t understand you two,” Haydock burst out. Every one who
had the pleasure of knowing Billy and Dilly took refuge in this
exclamation at one time or another. “How the devil have you managed to
hang on here for four months? And why on earth did you come to college
at all?” he shook the boy by the shoulders.
Dilly’s apologia might have been interesting. He had on occasions
attempted--by request--to defend the fact of his being at Harvard; but
as he had always prefaced his few remarks with, “To begin with, I am of
a taciturn disposition,” and as no one was quite willing to believe that
he had a glimmer of the meaning of “taciturn,” he had never been allowed
to proceed from that point. To-night the appearance of Billy with an
armful of note-books made explanation impossible.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re not working,” said Billy, sweetly, all the
note-books--there were six of them--fell to the floor when he sat down;
“because we couldn’t have disturbed you, and I don’t know what we’d have
done--Dilford’s told you?”
“Yes, Dilford has told me,” answered Haydock. He knew that then was the
time to escort these young gentlemen to the hall, and lock the door in
their faces. But he allowed it to slip by, and it never returned.
“Well, then--I don’t see why we shouldn’t dash right along. What do you
think?” Billy looked from Haydock to Dilford and back again.
“What is it you want--and what are all those books doing?” Haydock asked
wearily.
“Oh, these?” Billy allowed his feet to ramble among the volumes on the
floor. “Oh, they’re just notes--History and French and things; there
were no matches in my room, and I was in a hurry, so I had to bring them
all. The Literature ones are there too; but they’re rather--rather--what
shall I say?” He refrained delicately from saying what was the simple
truth,--that his notes on all subjects were an illegible muddle,
beginning nowhere--arriving nowhere. “Things come to me at such odd
times,” he went on, “I just jot them down. Anyhow you won’t need notes;
we merely want you to give us some idea to go by,” he fluttered his
slender hand comprehensively, “an idea of literature.”
“Yes,” put in Dilly, stirred by the practical common sense of the
suggestion, “the examination, I think, is about literature.”
“You _think_--good God, child, don’t you _know_?” Haydock mopped his
forehead on the back of his arm, and stared at the two incredulously.
“Oh, he’ll catch on all right,” said Billy, easily. “You see the course
only came once a week, and Darnell lectures so fast that, sitting away
in the back of the room as we do--”
“You prefer, on the whole, to stay away entirely, or make the hour pass
as rapidly as possible. Yes, yes, I understand,” interrupted Haydock,
drily. He picked up one of Billy’s books marked “English 28,” and opened
it at random, to a page devoted to the diagrams and scores of the
“Harvard University Tit Tat Too and Cent Matching Association.
Originators and Sole Proprietors, William Prescott Ware and Dilford
Bancroft. Honorary member: President Eliot.” On the page following was a
fragmentary list of the writers whose lives and achievements had been
taken up in the course. After the name of Jane Austen, came the
announcement, in parentheses, that “this woman was a man.” The
startling bit of literary gossip was annotated by: “I was mistaken--it
was George Eliot who was a woman.”
“That almost flunked me at the hour exam,” explained Billy, diffidently.
“They’re so fussy about things here.” He was looking over Haydock’s
shoulder. “It would have, I think, if I hadn’t thrown a new light on the
temperament of Swift.”
“I’ll warrant you did,” said Haydock. “What on earth is this?” The list
was followed by page after page of scrappy-looking verse.
“Oh, that’s the Rhyming Road,” exclaimed Billy, not without pride. “It
sums everything up and helps the memory. See now--I never can forget
about that old Eliot woman as long as I live.” Haydock followed Billy’s
guiding finger, and read a stanza that began:--
“Oh, heavens, oh, heavens,
Miss Mary Ann Evans,
Why did you change your name?
But I’m on to you, Mary,
You wary old fairy--”
“And this one on Matthew Arnold,” continued Billy, “gives the whole man
away at once--”
“Matthew Arnold--he’s all right,
Full of sweetness, full of light.”
“And Richardson--”
“‘Pamela, Pamela, what have you done?’
‘I’ve been shooting the chutes with Sir Charles Grandison.’”
“Do you see? It goes on like that, only I haven’t had time yet to make
the thing complete. Now let’s begin; it’s late.”
Haydock closed the book thoughtfully and went over to the window. He
stood a moment looking out at the thick fog, and wondering what he
should do. He hadn’t the slightest intention any longer of spending the
rest of the night in a futile effort to scrape Billy through an
examination. The child had already cut two, and failed in one, John had
said. But the senior was in doubt as to whether his concern in the mess
young Ware had made of his first few months of college, ought to end
there, with a bland “good-night,” or whether he ought to see the thing
out, in--say, the manner in which he would engineer the calamity, had
Billy happened to be his young brother. A senior feels toward a
freshman, older than he will ever feel toward anything again--older,
probably, than he will feel even when called on to give advice to his
own offspring. Haydock realised so well what was going to happen to
Billy--Billy, whose progress in college from the first, had been the
progress of a flimsy butterfly in a stiff breeze. He knew to an inch the
quantity of perfectly necessary but distressing red tape that would have
to be measured before Mrs. Ware and the college Office could come to
anything like a common understanding. And even then Mrs. Ware wouldn’t
understand much of anything. It always seemed to Haydock that men and
women in becoming parents somehow or other managed to forfeit a great
deal of intelligence. He intended some day to ask a psychologist with
children, if this was a provision or a perversion of nature. Mrs. Ware
was the sort of woman who would take an hour and a half to inform the
Dean that William was a “good boy at heart,”--that his cheerfulness had
always been “a ray of sunshine” in her life; the Dean, all the while,
knowing that the twenty-five young men he had summoned to appear before
him that morning, were waiting apprehensively in the outer office to
“have it over with.” Since there was no question in Haydock’s mind just
then of how to keep Billy in college, he asked himself if it wouldn’t be
less painful to every one concerned to get him out with decency and
despatch.
“It’s late,” repeated Dilly, listlessly.
“Yes, that’s the trouble,” said Haydock, turning away from the window.
He said it kindly, regretfully, but with a seriousness that rather
alarmed Dilford, and could not be ignored by Billy. “It’s too late.
There’s no use in being tiresome and melo-dramatic about the thing, but
that’s the simple fact; you’ve come to the end of your string, and
you’ve got to let go before they slap your hands and take it away from
you. If you don’t know what it means,--probation, and cutting two exams,
and flunking a third--”
“John told you that,” broke in Billy, angrily.
“And flunking again to-morrow, I’m sorry.” He was sorry, very, very
sorry. “Because it prolongs the agony for everybody, your mother in
particular.”
Dilford was sidling about the room, nearing the door by furtive stages.
When Haydock glanced up, he was no longer there.
“I’m the last person in the world to advise running away as long as
there’s any music to face. But there isn’t any more for you just now.
The thing is played out, and you simply have to leave.” Haydock himself
didn’t quite know what he meant by this tuneful figure of speech; but he
thought it sounded rather well, and would impress Billy. “You know
yourself that a smash of some kind is coming--you’ve known it for
weeks.” The senior didn’t attempt to understand the mind in which a keen
knowledge of approaching, but easily averted doom ran in a never
converging parallel with an insatiable lust for the present. He merely
knew that such minds could be, and that Billy’s, if left unmolested, was
one of them. He undertook now to lead these lines to a point. He didn’t
say very much, and his remarks weren’t in the least spiritual; as a
matter of fact they were decidedly worldly. He didn’t remind Billy that
his wickedness might eventually keep him out of the kingdom of Heaven,
but told him,--which is of far more importance to a Harvard
freshman--that if he went on making an ass of himself he would ruin his
chances for the “Dickey.” Haydock played some variations on this
seemingly simple theme, threw in a few merciless truths he had learned
from John, an original reflection or two, and an unanswerable prediction
of a general and depressing character.
“You must get out and go home, and think about it,” he ended.
Billy had probably already begun to act on the last of these
suggestions, for in a minute or two he stuffed his head into the
sofa-cushions and began to cry. Haydock returned to his Milton, and
learned several pages to an accompaniment of smothered sobs, until Billy
at length became quiet.
“Now we’ll go down and have a cool swim in the tank,” said Haydock,
rousing him gently. They undressed in silence. Billy was pathetic and
absurd in a long blanket wrapper, his face still wet with tears,
pattering after Haydock through the halls to the bath.
“Maybe you had better see your ‘adviser,’” Haydock suggested, when they
were back again in his room. Billy hadn’t spoken in the interval.
“I can’t--he hates me!” gulped Billy, turning away. Ordinarily he would
have said that the man was “_affreux_.”
He went to bed and cried some more on the cool pillows. Haydock wrote
out a respectful form of resignation from the college for him to copy in
the morning, composed a letter to Mrs. Ware, tenderly adapted in all
respects to that lady’s intellectual needs, and returned, when the fog
at his windows was white with the morning, to Paradise Lost.
A DEAD ISSUE
Marcus Thorn, instructor in Harvard University, was thirty-two years old
on the twentieth of June. He looked thirty-five, and felt about a
hundred. When he got out of bed on his birthday morning, and pattered
into the vestibule for his mail, the date at the top of the Crimson
recalled the first of these unpleasant truths to him. His mirror--it was
one of those detestable folding mirrors in three sections--enabled him
to examine his bald spot with pitiless ease, reproduced his profile some
forty-five times in quick succession, and made it possible for him to
see all the way round himself several times at once. It was this
devilish invention that revealed fact number two to Mr. Thorn, while he
was brushing his hair and tying his necktie. One plus two equalled
three, as usual, and Thorn felt old and unhappy. But he didn’t linger
over his dressing to philosophise on the evanescence of youth; he
didn’t even murmur,--
“Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
The loves that from his hand proud youth lets fall,
Even as the beads of a told rosary.”
He could do that sort of thing very well; he had been doing it
steadily for five months. But this morning, the reality of the
situation--impressed upon him by the date of his birth--led him to adopt
more practical measures. What he actually did, was to disarrange his
hair a little on top,--fluff it up to make it look more,--and press it
down toward his temples to remove the appearance of having too much
complexion for the size of his head. Then he went out to breakfast.
Thorn’s birthday had fallen, ironically, on one of those rainwashed,
blue-and-gold days when “all nature rejoices.” The whitest of clouds
were drifting across the bluest of skies when the instructor walked out
into the Yard; the elms rustled gently in the delicate June haze, and
the robins hopped across the yellow paths, freshly sanded, and screamed
in the sparkling grass. All nature rejoiced, and in so doing got very
much on Thorn’s nerves. When he reached his club, he was a most
excellent person not to breakfast with.
It was early--half-past eight--and no one except Prescott, a sophomore,
and Wynne, a junior, had dropped in as yet. Wynne, with his spectacles
on, was sitting in the chair he always sat in at that hour, reading the
morning paper. Thorn knew that he would read it through from beginning
to end, carefully put his spectacles back in their case, and then go to
the piano and play the “Blue Danube.” By that time his eggs and coffee
would be served. Wynne did this every morning, and the instructor, who
at the beginning of the year had regarded the boy’s methodical habits at
the club as “quaint,”--suggestive, somehow, of the first chapter of
“Pendennis,”--felt this morning that the “Blue Danube” before breakfast
would be in the nature of a last straw. Prescott, looking as fresh and
clean as the morning, was laughing over an illustrated funny paper. He
merely nodded to Thorn, although the instructor hadn’t breakfasted there
for many months, and called him across to enjoy something. Thorn
glanced at the paper and smiled feebly.
“I don’t see how you can do it at this hour,” he said; “I would as soon
drink flat champagne.” Prescott understood but vaguely what the man was
talking about, yet he didn’t appear disturbed or anxious for
enlightenment.
“I’ll have my breakfast on the piazza,” Thorn said to the steward who
answered his ring. Then he walked nervously out of the room.
From the piazza he could look over a tangled barrier of lilac bushes and
trellised grapevines into an old-fashioned garden. A slim lady in a
white dress and a broad brimmed hat that hid her face was cutting
nasturtiums and humming placidly to herself. Thorn thought she was a
young girl, until she turned and revealed the fact that she was not a
young girl--that she was about his own age. This seemed to annoy him in
much the same way that the robins and Wynne and the funny paper had, for
he threw himself into a low steamer-chair where he wouldn’t have to look
at the woman, and gave himself up to a sort of luxurious melancholy.
In October, nine months before, Thorn had appeared one evening in the
doorway of the club dining-room after a more or less continuous absence
of eight years from Cambridge. It was the night before college opened,
and the dining-room was crowded. For an instant there was an uproar of
confused greetings; then Haydock and Ellis and Sears Wolcott and
Wynne--the only ones Thorn knew--pushed back from the table and went
forward to shake hands with him. Of the nine or ten boys still left at
the table by this proceeding, those whose backs were turned to the new
arrival stopped eating and waited without looking around, to be
introduced to the owner of the unfamiliar voice. Their companions
opposite paused too; some of them laid their napkins on the table. They,
however, could glance up and see that the newcomer was a dark man of
thirty years or more. They supposed, correctly, that he was an “old
graduate” and a member of the club.
“You don’t know any of these people, do you?” said Haydock, taking him
by the arm; “what a devil of a time you’ve been away from this place.”
“I know that that’s a Prescott,” laughed the graduate. In his quick
survey of the table, while the others had been welcoming him back, his
eyes had rested a moment on a big fellow with light hair. Everybody
laughed, because it really was a Prescott and all Prescotts were simply
more or less happy replicas of all other Prescotts. “I know your
brothers,” said the graduate, shaking hands with the boy, who had risen.
“It’s Mr. Thorn.” Haydock made this announcement loud enough to be heard
by the crowd. He introduced every one, prefixing “Mr.” to the names of
the first few, but changing to given and even nicknames before
completing the circuit of the table. The humour of some of these
last,--“Dink,” “Pink,” and “Mary,” for instance,--lost sight of in long
established usage, suggested itself anew; and the fellows laughed again
as they made a place for Thorn at the crowded table.
“It’s six years, isn’t it?” Haydock asked politely. The others had begun
to babble cheerfully again of their own affairs.
“Six! I wish it were; it’s eight,” answered Thorn. “Eight since I left
college. But of course I’ve been here two or three times since,--just
long enough to make me unhappy at having to go back to Europe again.”
“And now you’re a great, haughty Ph. D. person, an ‘Officer of
Instruction and Government,’ announced in the prospectus to teach in two
courses,” mused Ellis, admiringly. “How do you like the idea?”
“It’s very good to be back,” said Thorn. He looked about the familiar
room with a contented smile, while the steward bustled in and out to
supply him with the apparatus of dining.
It was, indeed, good to be back. The satisfaction deepened and broadened
with every moment. It was good to be again in the town, the house, the
room that, during his life abroad, he had grown to look upon more as
“home” than any place in the world; good to come back and find that the
place had changed so little; good, for instance, when he ordered a
bottle of beer, to have it brought to him in his own mug, with his name
and class cut in the pewter,--just as if he had never been away at all.
This was but one of innumerable little things that made Thorn feel that
at last he was where he belonged; that he had stepped into his old
background; that it still fitted. The fellows, of course, were recent
acquisitions--all of them. Even his four acquaintances had entered
college long since his own time. But the crowd, except that it seemed to
him a gathering decidedly younger than his contemporaries had been at
the same age, was in no way strange to him. There were the same general
types of young men up and down the table, and at both ends, that he had
known in his day. They were discussing the same topics, in the same
tones and inflections, that had made the dinner-table lively in the
eighties,--which was not surprising when he considered that certain
families belong to certain clubs at Harvard almost as a matter of
course, and that some of the boys at the table were the brothers and
cousins of his own classmates. He realised, with a glow of sentiment,
that he had returned to his own people after years of absence in foreign
lands; a performance whose emotional value was not decreased for Thorn
by the conviction, just then, that his own people were better bred, and
better looking, and better dressed than any he had met elsewhere. As he
looked about at his civilised surroundings, and took in, from the
general chatter, fragments of talk,--breezy and cosmopolitan with
incidents of the vacation just ended,--he considered his gratification
worth the time he had been spending among the fuzzy young gentlemen of a
German university.