Having once, for a few months, had a literary column in a newspaper, I
have come to admire those authors who place at the beginning of their
books a "word" in which the whole thing is given away. The time that
those words saved me in writing my reviews--time which otherwise would
have been lost in reading the books--enabled me to write this book; a
consummation which may have, in its heart, a significant kernel, and
which certainly shows how funny the world is, after all.
Now, as to this book and what it is all about, I frankly am at a loss.
That's the difficulty of being too near it. Whether it is realism,
naturalism, or merely restrained romanticism, I simply do not know. It
is awkward not knowing, for in the battle of the schools now raging I
should like to take sides. I should like either to charge with the
romantics, or defend with the realists. It must be good fun being pushed
and shoved around, with someone's elbow in your eye and someone else's
hatpin in your ear, and everyone crying, in the words of a recent
heroine, "I want to be outraged." But, for the present at least, I must
be content, like little Oliver Twist, to look hungrily on.
The story which trickles through the book starts out bravely enough. Of
this much, at least, I can be moderately sure. For a short time it looks
as though something might come of it; but nothing really does. It is all
so terribly obvious. There are no obstacles such as one finds in real
fiction; there is no love spasm in Chapter XXV. There is no Chapter XXV
at all! And so it must be perfectly clear that those who insist upon
having their love spasms will be bored to death by _Tutors' Lane_ and
should on no account be allowed to look at it. There is love, of course,
in an academic community; one frequently sees evidences of it; but it is
love under control, properly subordinated to the all important business
of uniting youth and learning--and to snatching time for an occasional
rejuvenating flutter in the sacred fount itself.
So the syllabus is little more than a nervous shake of the hand and a
timid statement of a few negative "points"--a disheartening, if not
positively dangerous, affair. That there are lurking beauties, however,
peeping shyly out like johnny-jump-ups and wild raspberry blossoms,
there appears to be some evidence on the jacket. Meanwhile, the course
is open, the bell is ringing to class, and the instructor, turning over
the text to Chapter I, is prepared to meet whatever scholars God, in his
greater wisdom, has been pleased to set before him.
I
Tom Reynolds, Instructor in English in Woodbridge College, walked along
Tutors' Lane in the gathering dusk of a March afternoon. Persons whose
knowledge of collegiate dons is limited to the poverty-stricken,
butterfly-chasing genus created by humorous scenario writers would be
surprised to learn that our hero--for such he is to be--was young, sound
of wind and limb, and at the present moment comfortably clothed in a
coon-skin coat. The latter touch might be accounted for by such persons
on the basis of an eccentric city cousin generously disposed to casting
off his garments when only half worn, but the other two points must
convince them of the faithlessness of the whole account, and their
acquaintance with the young man will accordingly end with the first
paragraph.
Woodbridge College, as a matter of fact, has never been without a few
young men of this type in its Faculty. Situated in southern New England,
it has roots which extend well back into the Eighteenth Century, and its
traditions, keeping pace with its growth, rival in dignity and
picturesqueness those of its larger neighbours. Whereas they have
expanded from Colleges to Universities, Woodbridge has been content to
restrict its enrolment to six hundred; and instead of making entrance
easier it has, if anything, made it harder. Accordingly, the College
holds its head high, not unconscious that the quality of its instruction
and of its graduates is unsurpassed.
The Founders of the College placed their first building on the crest of
a smallish plateau which commands a view of the Blackmoor Valley.
Succeeding generations have scattered its buildings haphazardly about,
but, thanks to the generosity of a Woodbridge son, the meadow land which
slopes away from the crest down to the Lebanon River, sixty acres in
all, was bought and given to the College; and upon this land the future
College is to rise. There is a good deal of rather vague talk about this
new college--of the quadrangle which is to solve all dormitory and
recitation problems, and which is to shine with beauty. But at present
the meadow is sacred to athletics, and the elaborate new boat house,
completed last spring, seems to make the quadrangle less of a
probability than ever.
Tutors' Lane is the main artery of the place. It passes through the
college green and on down the hill through a row of faculty houses until
it reaches the village of Woodbridge Center, or, as it is usually
called, Center. It is a famous street--famous for its elms, which
supply, as it has not infrequently been pointed out, the dignity of a
nave; famous for the doorways and windows of its colonial houses; and
famous for the distinction and propriety of its inhabitants.
It is one of the Woodbridge traditions that these houses are inviolate.
Assistant Professors' wives, upon taking up residence in Tutors' Lane,
are tactfully warned that it is not the thing to alter them. There may
be an occasional painting, yes; but innovations in the way of building
are not to be thought of. People who have to build are advised to do it
elsewhere; certain streets are provided for the purpose--High Street,
for example--and though of course they are not Tutors' Lane, doubtless
they are livable enough. In fact, High Street is distinctly coming into
its own, thanks, of course, to the High Street Cemetery. For a mortal
existence in Tutors' Lane is followed by an immortal one in the High
Street Cemetery, and though perhaps those who spend mortality in the
Street can hardly expect to enjoy immortality in the Cemetery,
nevertheless, no one can take from them the satisfaction of being the
neighbours of the oldest families who are doing so. Property is steadily
rising in High Street, accordingly, and now Assistant Professors and
their wives do well indeed to settle there.
Tutors' Lane is not particularly wide for such an important
thoroughfare. Two vehicles can pass without difficulty, but it is well
for them not to rush by. If they are in a hurry, they had better take
either Meadow Street, which skirts the athletic field, or High Street,
which is wide and oiled and designed for heavy traffic. Tutors' Lane is
not oiled, and heaven forfend that it ever should be, for its
foundations go far back into the past, farther perhaps than any one
dreams. No less a person than old Mrs. Baxter is authority for the
statement that it follows the course of an old Roman road. It is
incredible, of course, and opens up a vista of pre-Columbian discovery
more astonishing than any to be found in the Book of Mormon, but Mrs.
Baxter was a noted controversialist in her day and, true or false, she
succeeded in handing down the story to the present generation.
People who think of an ordinary row of city houses have no conception of
Faculty Row. For one thing, the lots are of widely different sizes.
Some, like the one owned by the Misses Forbes, daughters of the
geologist, are modest affairs with forty-foot fronts. Others, like Dean
Norris's, cover two acres. Those built before 1800 have their
birth-years painted carefully over their doorways, and it is an
unwritten law that younger houses may not claim this privilege. Many are
sheltered by box hedges, and none but has its garden--in which flowers
other than hollyhocks, mignonette, larkspur, stock, and bachelor's
buttons are considered slightly _nouveaux venus_.
As to the occupants of these houses, volumes many times the size of this
one might be written. Suffice it for the present, however, that they are
quite superior to the general indifference of the outside world, and
that, like the dwellers in Cranford, though some may be poor, all are
aristocratic.
To Tom Reynolds, walking along Tutors' Lane in the dusk of a March
afternoon, the scene was considerably different from the verdant one
just sketched. Instead of peeping out behind their holly hocks and
vines, the houses were still defensively wrapped up against the ice
which besieged their walls. Storm doors could not yet be dispensed with,
and here and there some practical soul--doubtless connected with the
Physics Department--had by means of a railing insured himself against
the painful mortification of an icy step. Walking is never good in
Tutors' Lane during the winter. Cement walks are not laid, and temporary
boards smack a little too much of a makeshift. Arctics are the
invariable rule, but even so the going is not easy, and it is
particularly bad at this time of year, for now it is that arctics, which
never seem able to last through a winter, suddenly give out at the heel
and fill with mud and slush.
Tom walked on until he came to the Dean's driveway, and then he turned
into it. During his college days he had spent a considerable amount of
time at the Dean's house, and now, in the first year of his
Instructorship, he was there more than ever. His own home in Ephesus,
New York, being at the present time occupied by a stepmother for whom he
had no particular affection and a father whose interests were in the
drygoods rather than the scholastic line, he scarcely thought of himself
as having a home other than that made for him by the Dean's wife. It was
true that there was an older sister whose husband was a lawyer in
Omaha, but she had never approved of his bringing up, and, since she was
convinced that he had been spoiled beyond repair, their separation was
merciful. At Christmas the family exchanged cheques, and Tom dutifully
sent what the Telegraph Company called a "Yule Tide Message," tastefully
decorated free of charge. But there family ties ended.
They had really ended sixteen years ago when the nine-year-old Tom had
been led up to take a terrified look at his mother's dead face and had
then been allowed to escape to the rear of the house for a season of
uncontrollable weeping. From that time on until five years later when he
came in contact with Mr. Hilton, Instructor in English at the High
School, he had led the life of a "queer" boy. Devoted to reading and
content, in default of other youth who interested him, to stay by
himself, he was a hopeless enigma to his father, whose memories of
youth, strengthened by contemporary examination of his "cash boys," were
of a radically different sort. But with the attainment of High School
and Mr. Hilton the world changed. For the first time since his mother's
death Tom met a congenial spirit. Mr. Hilton was gay, he was humorous,
he noticed important things which other people were too stupid to notice
or to appreciate. He was forever having amusing misadventures; and
before long he took Tom off with him for week-end walks, and they had
amusing misadventures together. No one else existed for Tom, and
anything he suggested became law. In this way Tom came to play baseball
sufficiently well to be allowed in his senior year the privilege of
standing in the right field of the School team.
Mr. Hilton was a Woodbridge man, and, after earnest discussion with Mr.
Reynolds, he obtained permission for Tom to go to Woodbridge. The
financial problem was a simple one, for Tom had awaiting him in trust a
comfortable income from his mother's estate, and having him away would
be cheaper for Mr. Reynolds. Beginning with Sophomore year, therefore,
the previously dull curriculum took on a romantic hue, since by means of
it Ephesus could be left behind forever. Studying became a "stunt," and
he swept through examination after examination as though they were
novels or ball games, until at length he found himself at Woodbridge.
Tom's college life after the first year had been as pleasant as college
life ever is. At the start, his career was like that of most boys
entering Woodbridge from a high school. His "funny" clothes and mildly
awkward manners indicated that, as yet, he hardly spoke the same
language as his more fortunate classmates who had been privately
prepared for their higher education. He had heard something, of course,
as everyone has, of the celebrated democratic tendency that obtains at
Woodbridge. It was disconcerting, therefore, to be eyed by these young
men as though he were a too strange bird who had somehow wandered into
the zoo proper instead of staying, where he belonged, in the aviary. He
had been possessed, however, with the desire to "make good," and so
avoided the little group of cynics that, in every class, leave their
alma mater with gall and bitterness in their hearts. As it was, he came
to admire the happy, well-dressed majority. There was an easiness of
manner about them that charmed him. They were reserved and did not dull
their palms with entertainment of each new-hatch'd comrade, but when
they did accept one it appeared to be a thoroughgoing performance. They
were the _jeunesse doree_; but Tom frankly hoped that he might qualify
for something as fine.
Tom had, as a matter of fact, qualified, and in the spring of his Junior
year he had been awarded the outward and visible sign of a successful
Woodbridge career--an election to Star, one of the two Senior Clubs.
This is not the place for a discussion of these two Clubs. Furthermore,
they who know anything at all about Woodbridge know about them. They
know well enough, without any reminder here, that an election to either
is the first prize in the college social life, and they know,
furthermore, that their influence extends over into graduate life,
colouring it pleasantly to the end of one's days. The reticence which
the members of the Clubs feel in regard to them--a reticence found
highly amusing by outsiders--extends to the Woodbridge community, and
there is, accordingly, a somewhat formidable atmosphere about them which
is vaguely felt by all. But here we must let the affair rest. They are
not to play any other part in our story than to shed their benign
influence over the hero, and we may dismiss them except for an
occasional inevitable reference, with a brief statement. When, in his
Sophomore year, he had made the baseball team, it had been conceded that
Tom's chances of "coming across" were good, and when, later, it was
discovered that he read books not prescribed in the college courses, he
was "sure." The baseball, however, had come first, for it is true at
Woodbridge, as well as in Ephesus, that baseball adds lustre to letters.
Why he had chosen Star rather than Grave--for the choice had been given
him--is a matter so intimately connected with the outstanding
characteristics of the two Clubs that an explanation would promptly lead
to the discussion above declined. Let it suffice, therefore, that he
"went" Star because of good and sufficient reasons, and we shall have
done with this delicate business.
Then the war had come; and now, after two years of service and a year in
a graduate school, Tom was back, an infant member of the Faculty.
* * * * *
Tom loitered up the walk to the Dean's house to make the pleasure of his
arrival the greater. The Norris house, a somewhat solemn brown-stone
structure built in the 'thirties, fascinated him. He found it impossible
to stay away for long; and now, as he rang the bell, his pulse quickened
with the thought of the rooms about to be opened to him.