The boy was adolescent, sentimental, and lonely. Mere human
companionship, such as that which Honey gave him, was no longer enough
for him. He was seeing visions and dreaming dreams. He began to wish
he had some one with whom to share his unformulated hopes, his crude
and burning opinions. He looked at fellows who were friends going two
and two, pouring out their foolish young hearts to each other, and
envied them. The lads of his own age liked him well enough. Now and
then one of them would approach him with shy or awkward signals, making
for closer acquaintance; but when they learned that he lived in Grove
Street with a stevedore they drew away. None of them ever transcended
the law of caste, to stand by him in spite of his humble conditions.
Boys whose families were down wanted nothing to hamper them in climbing
up. Boys whose families were up wanted nothing that might loosen their
position and pull them down. The sense of social insecurity which was
the atmosphere of homes reacted on well-meaning striplings of fifteen,
sixteen, and seventeen, turning them into snobs and cads before they
had outgrown callowness.
But during the winter of the year in which he became sixteen there were
two, you might have said three, who broke in upon this solitude.
In walking to the Latin School from Grove Street he was in the habit of
going through Louisburg Square. If you know Boston you know Louisburg
Square as that quaint red-brick rectangle, like many in the more
Georgian parts of London, which commemorates the gallant dash of the
New England colonists on the French fortress of Louisburg in Cape
Breton. It is the heart of that conservative old Boston, which is now
shrinking in size and importance before the onset of the foreigner till
it has become like a small beleaguered citadel. Here the descendants
of the Puritans barricade themselves behind their financial walls, as
their ancestors within their stockades, while their city is handed
over to the Irishman and the Italian as an undefended town. The Boston
of tradition is a Boston of tradition only. Like the survivors of
Noah's deluge clinging to the top of a rock, they to whom the Boston
of tradition was bequeathed are driven back on Beacon Hill as a final
refuge from the billows rising round them. A high-bred, cultivated,
sympathetic people, they have so given away their heritage as to be
but a negligible factor in the State, in the country, of which their
fathers and grandfathers may be said once to have kept the conscience.
But to Tom Whitelaw Louisburg Square meant only the dignified fronts
and portals behind which lived the rich people who had no point of
contact with himself. They couldn't have ignored him more completely
than he ignored them. He thought of them as little as the lion cub in a
circus parade thinks of the people of the city through which he passes
in processions. Then, one day, one of these strangers spoke to him.
It was a youth of about his own age. More than once, as Tom went by,
and the stout boy stood on the sidewalk in front of his own house, they
had looked each other up and down with unabashed mutual appraisal.
Tom saw a lad too short for his width, and unhealthily flabby. He had
puffy hands, and puffy cheeks, with eyes seeming smaller than they were
because the puffy eyelids covered them. The mouth had those appealing
curves comically troubled in repose, but fulfilling their purpose in
giggling. On the first occasion when Tom passed by the lips were set
to the serious task of inspection. They said nothing; they betrayed
nothing. Tom himself thought nothing, except that the boy was fat.
They had looked at each other some two or three times a week, for
perhaps a month, when one day the fat boy said, "Hullo!" Tom also said,
"Hullo!" continuing on his way. A day or two later they repeated these
salutations, though neither forsook his attitude of reserve. The fat
boy did this first, speaking when they had hullo'ed each other for the
third or fourth time. His voice was high and girlish, and yet with a
male crack in it.
"What school do you go to?"