The time was approaching for Claude to go back to the struggling
denominational college on the outskirts of the state capital,
where he had already spent two dreary and unprofitable winters.
"Mother," he said one morning when he had an opportunity to speak
to her alone, "I wish you would let me quit the Temple, and go to
the State University."
She looked up from the mass of dough she was kneading.
"But why, Claude?"
"Well, I could learn more, for one thing. The professors at the
Temple aren't much good. Most of them are just preachers who
couldn't make a living at preaching."
The look of pain that always disarmed Claude came instantly into
his mother's face. "Son, don't say such things. I can't believe
but teachers are more interested in their students when they are
concerned for their spiritual development, as well as the mental.
Brother Weldon said many of the professors at the State
University are not Christian men; they even boast of it, in some
cases."
"Oh, I guess most of them are good men, all right; at any rate
they know their subjects. These little pin-headed preachers like
Weldon do a lot of harm, running about the country talking. He's
sent around to pull in students for his own school. If he didn't
get them he'd lose his job. I wish he'd never got me. Most of the
fellows who flunk out at the State come to us, just as he did."
"But how can there be any serious study where they give so much
time to athletics and frivolity? They pay their football coach a
larger salary than their President. And those fraternity houses
are places where boys learn all sorts of evil. I've heard that
dreadful things go on in them sometimes. Besides, it would take
more money, and you couldn't live as cheaply as you do at the
Chapins'."
Claude made no reply. He stood before her frowning and pulling at
a calloused spot on the inside of his palm. Mrs. Wheeler looked
at him wistfully. "I'm sure you must be able to study better in a
quiet, serious atmosphere," she said.
He sighed and turned away. If his mother had been the least bit
unctuous, like Brother Weldon, he could have told her many
enlightening facts. But she was so trusting and childlike, so
faithful by nature and so ignorant of life as he knew it, that it
was hopeless to argue with her. He could shock her and make her
fear the world even more than she did, but he could never make
her understand.
His mother was old-fashioned. She thought dancing and
card-playing dangerous pastimes--only rough people did such
things when she was a girl in Vermont--and "worldliness" only
another word for wickedness. According to her conception of
education, one should learn, not think; and above all, one must
not enquire. The history of the human race, as it lay behind one,
was already explained; and so was its destiny, which lay before.
The mind should remain obediently within the theological concept
of history.
Nat Wheeler didn't care where his son went to school, but he,
too, took it for granted that the religious institution was
cheaper than the State University; and that because the students
there looked shabbier they were less likely to become too
knowing, and to be offensively intelligent at home. However, he
referred the matter to Bayliss one day when he was in town.
"Claude's got some notion he wants to go to the State University
this winter."
Bayliss at once assumed that wise,
better-be-prepared-for-the-worst expression which had made him
seem shrewd and seasoned from boyhood. "I don't see any point in
changing unless he's got good reasons."
"Well, he thinks that bunch of parsons at the Temple don't make
first-rate teachers."
"I expect they can teach Claude quite a bit yet. If he gets in
with that fast football crowd at the State, there'll be no
holding him." For some reason Bayliss detested football. "This
athletic business is a good deal over-done. If Claude wants
exercise, he might put in the fall wheat."
That night Mr. Wheeler brought the subject up at supper,
questioned Claude, and tried to get at the cause of his
discontent. His manner was jocular, as usual, and Claude hated
any public discussion of his personal affairs. He was afraid of
his father's humour when it got too near him.
Claude might have enjoyed the large and somewhat gross cartoons
with which Mr. Wheeler enlivened daily life, had they been of any
other authorship. But he unreasonably wanted his father to be the
most dignified, as he was certainly the handsomest and most
intelligent, man in the community. Moreover, Claude couldn't bear
ridicule very well. He squirmed before he was hit; saw it coming,
invited it. Mr. Wheeler had observed this trait in him when he
was a little chap, called it false pride, and often purposely
outraged his feelings to harden him, as he had hardened Claude's
mother, who was afraid of everything but schoolbooks and
prayer-meetings when he first married her. She was still more or
less bewildered, but she had long ago got over any fear of him
and any dread of living with him. She accepted everything about
her husband as part of his rugged masculinity, and of that she
was proud, in her quiet way.
Claude had never quite forgiven his father for some of his
practical jokes. One warm spring day, when he was a boisterous
little boy of five, playing in and out of the house, he heard his
mother entreating Mr. Wheeler to go down to the orchard and pick
the cherries from a tree that hung loaded. Claude remembered that
she persisted rather complainingly, saying that the cherries were
too high for her to reach, and that even if she had a ladder it
would hurt her back. Mr. Wheeler was always annoyed if his wife
referred to any physical weakness, especially if she complained
about her back. He got up and went out. After a while he
returned. "All right now, Evangeline," he called cheerily as he
passed through the kitchen. "Cherries won't give you any trouble.
You and Claude can run along and pick 'em as easy as can be."
Mrs. Wheeler trustfully put on her sunbonnet, gave Claude a
little pail and took a big one herself, and they went down the
pasture hill to the orchard, fenced in on the low land by the
creek. The ground had been ploughed that spring to make it hold
moisture, and Claude was running happily along in one of the
furrows, when he looked up and beheld a sight he could never
forget. The beautiful, round-topped cherry tree, full of green
leaves and red fruit,--his father had sawed it through! It lay on
the ground beside its bleeding stump. With one scream Claude
became a little demon. He threw away his tin pail, jumped about
howling and kicking the loose earth with his copper-toed shoes,
until his mother was much more concerned for him than for the
tree.
"Son, son," she cried, "it's your father's tree. He has a perfect
right to cut it down if he wants to. He's often said the trees
were too thick in here. Maybe it will be better for the others."
"'Tain't so! He's a damn fool, damn fool!" Claude bellowed, still
hopping and kicking, almost choking with rage and hate.
His mother dropped on her knees beside him. "Claude, stop! I'd
rather have the whole orchard cut down than hear you say such
things."
After she got him quieted they picked the cherries and went back
to the house. Claude had promised her that he would say nothing,
but his father must have noticed the little boy's angry eyes
fixed upon him all through dinner, and his expression of scorn.
Even then his flexible lips were only too well adapted to hold
the picture of that feeling. For days afterward Claude went down
to the orchard and watched the tree grow sicker, wilt and wither
away. God would surely punish a man who could do that, he
thought.
A violent temper and physical restlessness were the most
conspicuous things about Claude when he was a little boy. Ralph
was docile, and had a precocious sagacity for keeping out of
trouble. Quiet in manner, he was fertile in devising mischief,
and easily persuaded his older brother, who was always looking
for something to do, to execute his plans. It was usually Claude
who was caught red-handed. Sitting mild and contemplative on his
quilt on the floor, Ralph would whisper to Claude that it might
be amusing to climb up and take the clock from the shelf, or to
operate the sewing-machine. When they were older, and played out
of doors, he had only to insinuate that Claude was afraid, to
make him try a frosted axe with his tongue, or jump from the shed
roof.
The usual hardships of country boyhood were not enough for
Claude; he imposed physical tests and penances upon himself.
Whenever he burned his finger, he followed Mahailey's advice and
held his hand close to the stove to "draw out the fire." One year
he went to school all winter in his jacket, to make himself
tough. His mother would button him up in his overcoat and put his
dinner-pail in his hand and start him off. As soon as he got out
of sight of the house, he pulled off his coat, rolled it under
his arm, and scudded along the edge of the frozen fields,
arriving at the frame schoolhouse panting and shivering, but very
well pleased with himself.
V
Claude waited for his elders to change their mind about where he
should go to school; but no one seemed much concerned, not even
his mother.
Two years ago, the young man whom Mrs. Wheeler called "Brother
Weldon" had come out from Lincoln, preaching in little towns and
country churches, and recruiting students for the institution at
which he taught in the winter. He had convinced Mrs. Wheeler that
his college was the safest possible place for a boy who was
leaving home for the first time.
Claude's mother was not discriminating about preachers. She
believed them all chosen and sanctified, and was never happier
than when she had one in the house to cook for and wait upon. She
made young Mr. Weldon so comfortable that he remained under her
roof for several weeks, occupying the spare room, where he spent
the mornings in study and meditation. He appeared regularly at
mealtime to ask a blessing upon the food and to sit with devout,
downcast eyes while the chicken was being dismembered. His
top-shaped head hung a little to one side, the thin hair was
parted precisely over his high forehead and brushed in little
ripples. He was soft spoken and apologetic in manner and took up
as little room as possible. His meekness amused Mr. Wheeler, who
liked to ply him with food and never failed to ask him gravely
"what part of the chicken he would prefer," in order to hear him
murmur, "A little of the white meat, if you please," while he
drew his elbows close, as if he were adroitly sliding over a
dangerous place. In the afternoon Brother Weldon usually put on
a fresh lawn necktie and a hard, glistening straw hat which left a
red streak across his forehead, tucked his Bible under his arm,
and went out to make calls. If he went far, Ralph took him in the
automobile.
Claude disliked this young man from the moment he first met him,
and could scarcely answer him civilly. Mrs. Wheeler, always
absent-minded, and now absorbed in her cherishing care of the
visitor, did not notice Claude's scornful silences until
Mahailey, whom such things never escaped, whispered to her over
the stove one day: "Mr. Claude, he don't like the preacher. He
just ain't got no use fur him, but don't you let on."
As a result of Brother Weldon's sojourn at the farm, Claude was
sent to the Temple College. Claude had come to believe that the
things and people he most disliked were the ones that were to
shape his destiny.
When the second week of September came round, he threw a few
clothes and books into his trunk and said good-bye to his mother
and Mahailey. Ralph took him into Frankfort to catch the train
for Lincoln. After settling himself in the dirty day-coach,
Claude fell to meditating upon his prospects. There was a Pullman
car on the train, but to take a Pullman for a daylight journey
was one of the things a Wheeler did not do.
Claude knew that he was going back to the wrong school, that he
was wasting both time and money. He sneered at himself for his
lack of spirit. If he had to do with strangers, he told himself,
he could take up his case and fight for it. He could not assert
himself against his father or mother, but he could be bold enough
with the rest of the world. Yet, if this were true, why did he
continue to live with the tiresome Chapins? The Chapin household
consisted of a brother and sister. Edward Chapin was a man of
twenty-six, with an old, wasted face,--and he was still going to
school, studying for the ministry. His sister Annabelle kept
house for him; that is to say, she did whatever housework was
done. The brother supported himself and his sister by getting odd
jobs from churches and religious societies; he "supplied" the
pulpit when a minister was ill, did secretarial work for the
college and the Young Men's Christian Association. Claude's
weekly payment for room and board, though a small sum, was very
necessary to their comfort.
Chapin had been going to the Temple College for four years, and
it would probably take him two years more to complete the course.
He conned his book on trolley-cars, or while he waited by the
track on windy corners, and studied far into the night. His
natural stupidity must have been something quite out of the
ordinary; after years of reverential study, he could not read the
Greek Testament without a lexicon and grammar at his elbow. He
gave a great deal of time to the practice of elocution and
oratory. At certain hours their frail domicile--it had been
thinly built for the academic poor and sat upon concrete blocks
in lieu of a foundation--re-echoed with his hoarse, overstrained
voice, declaiming his own orations or those of Wendell Phillips.
Annabelle Chapin was one of Claude's classmates. She was not as
dull as her brother; she could learn a conjugation and recognize
the forms when she met with them again. But she was a gushing,
silly girl, who found almost everything in their grubby life too
good to be true; and she was, unfortunately, sentimental about
Claude. Annabelle chanted her lessons over and over to herself
while she cooked and scrubbed. She was one of those people who
can make the finest things seem tame and flat merely by alluding
to them. Last winter she had recited the odes of Horace about the
house--it was exactly her notion of the student-like thing to
do--until Claude feared he would always associate that poet with
the heaviness of hurriedly prepared luncheons.
Mrs. Wheeler liked to feel that Claude was assisting this worthy
pair in their struggle for an education; but he had long ago
decided that since neither of the Chapins got anything out of
their efforts but a kind of messy inefficiency, the struggle
might better have been relinquished in the beginning. He took
care of his own room; kept it bare and habitable, free from
Annabelle's attentions and decorations. But the flimsy pretences
of light-housekeeping were very distasteful to him. He was born
with a love of order, just as he was born with red hair. It was a
personal attribute.
The boy felt bitterly about the way in which he had been brought
up, and about his hair and his freckles and his awkwardness. When
he went to the theatre in Lincoln, he took a seat in the gallery,
because he knew that he looked like a green country boy. His
clothes were never right. He bought collars that were too high
and neckties that were too bright, and hid them away in his
trunk. His one experiment with a tailor was unsuccessful. The
tailor saw at once that his stammering client didn't know what he
wanted, so he persuaded him that as the season was spring he
needed light checked trousers and a blue serge coat and vest.
When Claude wore his new clothes to St. Paul's church on Sunday
morning, the eyes of every one he met followed his smart legs
down the street. For the next week he observed the legs of old
men and young, and decided there wasn't another pair of checked
pants in Lincoln. He hung his new clothes up in his closet and
never put them on again, though Annabelle Chapin watched for them
wistfully. Nevertheless, Claude thought he could recognize a
well-dressed man when he saw one. He even thought he could
recognize a well-dressed woman. If an attractive woman got into
the street car when he was on his way to or from Temple Place, he
was distracted between the desire to look at her and the wish to
seem indifferent.
Claude is on his way back to Lincoln, with a fairly liberal
allowance which does not contribute much to his comfort or
pleasure. He has no friends or instructors whom he can regard
with admiration, though the need to admire is just now uppermost
in his nature. He is convinced that the people who might mean
something to him will always misjudge him and pass him by. He is
not so much afraid of loneliness as he is of accepting cheap
substitutes; of making excuses to himself for a teacher who
flatters him, of waking up some morning to find himself admiring
a girl merely because she is accessible. He has a dread of easy
compromises, and he is terribly afraid of being fooled.