I
Lawrence, Ninety Blank, wearily knocked four under-classmen off the
walk on the way from the railway station to West College. Then,
feeling better, he dragged himself up the entry stairs, threw his
suit-case at the bedroom portière with a sigh of relief and himself on
the divan with a sense of having done his duty.
The Glee, Banjo, and Mandolin Clubs had just returned from their
Christmas holiday tour through the South. The trip had been a success
both in the money and the fine impression the clubs had made, which
latter would advertise the college. And that is the object of this
enterprise and is too valuable for the trustees to abolish.
They had travelled in a special train of private cars lent by the
parents of some of the members. They had had a very good time, because
a Glee club trip is always bound to have that, and because Southern
people know how to help young men in this respect about as well as
any people in the world. Lawrence was glad it was over.
He had not intended to go on the trip this year. He had been on the
club since he was a freshman. He knew all there was to know about it,
and there could be little novelty in this sort of thing for him. But
that was not the reason.
Of course it was not. Harry Lawrence enjoyed travelling about the
country with a rollicking lot of congenial fellows, and being made
much of by old grads., and admired before the glare of foot-lights by
millions of attractive girls, and dancing with them afterwards until
three o'clock in the morning, like any other normal, healthy young
man. It was not because he was _blasé_. He wasn't that sort of fool.
In the first place Lawrence had suddenly gone home, early in December,
with something pronounced by a little, short doctor with mild blue
eyes which saw everything to be a form of neurasthenia. This was
brought on by overwork and worry and other causes. He had held a
position of considerable responsibility during the football season. He
had worried over it a good deal.
Although, when he reached home, he braced up with astonishing
rapidity, he conceived a notion that instead of flying over the United
States at the rate of ever so many miles an hour, he would like very
well to sit still and yawn by the fireplace at home with slippers on.
His mother opened up the old place on Long Island for a part of every
winter, and he thought he could put in a very comfortable
old-fashioned vacation out there with her. He had an idea that it
would do him good to take some long tramps over the meadows with a gun
and a dog, and to spend whole afternoons on a horse with pure country
air whistling in his ears. Perhaps, if he felt right cocky, he might
borrow some pinks of his brother-in-law and ride to the hounds with
his Ass-cousins on New Year's Day. And the evenings would pass
pleasantly enough in fighting with Helen, his married sister, across
the table, and in guying his kid brother Dick, the prep.; and then he
meant to have many long after-dinner smoke-talks with his father, with
whom he had recently become acquainted. It was on this last account,
as much as any, that he wanted to stay at home.
But one of the second basses had the grip and another a dead
grandmother, and that side of the stage was weak anyway. So Doc.
Devereaux, the leader of the club, followed his two letters and three
telegrams out to Compton on the Sound, and grabbed Lawrence by the
coat-collar. He had brought with him a reprieve from the little
blue-eyed doctor, stating that Lawrence could go if he would promise
to keep on with the hot and cold baths, and to eat tremendously.
Devereaux begged and pleaded, and put it on grounds of personal
friendship. When he shed tears, almost, and said, "For the honor of
old Nassau won't you, Harry?" Lawrence looked bored and said he would
think about it. But only upon condition that Doc would stay for dinner
and spend the night at Compton, which he did.
When Colonel Lawrence came out from town and had comfortably finished
his dinner, and in his stately fashion had taken out a long black
cigar, Harry, who had been waiting, said, "Now then, father," and told
him why Devereaux was there, and asked him what to do about it.
Lawrence, Fifty Blank, knocked the ashes off, looked at Lawrence,
Ninety Blank, and took three puffs of smoke. "Well, Harry," he said,
"if the college needs you, there is but one way of looking at it."
Lawrence, the younger, said "Yes, sir," and packed his suit-case.
Having decided to do his duty, he made up his mind that while he was
about it he would enter into the spirit of the thing and have a good
time. Of course this was not as satisfactory to himself as wearing a
long face and telling himself what a martyr he was, but it was
pleasanter for his friends.
These trips are not only good fun, they are part of one's education.
They are very broadening. Lawrence wanted to be broad-minded. The only
times he had travelled in his own country were with the Glee Club, and
he thought every young man ought to know something of his fatherland.
He held that most New Yorkers were narrow-minded in this respect, and
he did not intend to be. New York ways of doing things were good
enough for him, because they were the best, but he wanted to see how
other Americans looked at things; and this showed a generous spirit.
On a previous trip he had visited a portion of the Western section of
his country, and had brought back several new ideas. For instance, he
was pleasantly surprised to meet girls with the same innate ideas that
he had supposed were the exclusive possession of his friends at home.
That was broadening. Also he had it impressed upon him that young
women living in little towns he had never heard of before had
characteristics, not necessarily innate, which were calculated to make
very young men realize that even members of college dance committees
have a thing or two to learn. Which was still more broadening.
And now he was in Virginia, surrounded by much dazzling full-pulsed
Southern loveliness. He was meeting people that had been brought up to
consider themselves the aristocracy of the American side of the world,
and they had been cherishing this idea for generations before New York
was more than a trading-post of miserly, Indian-cheating Dutchmen.
They had never heard of the Lawrences of New York and were rather
sorry for anyone that had to live there. And this was broadening. This
was not to be about the Glee Club trip, nor about what Lawrence would
have done if he had not gone, but what happened afterward, and if you
read this story you may skip to here: Lawrence lay on the divan.
He put his hands back of his head and tried to tell himself how sick
he was of teas and club receptions and convivial old grads. and
applause and dances and chicken-salad and girls. Cinders were in his
hair. What he wanted most in all the world was, first, someone to
carry him to a Turkish bath, second, someone to dress him in his
campus clothes, and third, Billy Nolan to put an arm around and call
names.
But this reactional feeling he knew was inevitable, and he took it, as
he did his sensation of dirtiness and indigestion, as part of the
game. There was something else to make him fidget and frown on the
divan.
Lawrence had come back to the slushy old sunshiny campus a very
different fellow from the one that used to climb the stone steps from
the station, but he had had a month in which to become accustomed to
it. Besides, that was nothing to be sour about. He was very well
pleased with being a different sort of a fellow, and had made up his
mind to remain so. In fact, all during the trip he had been thinking
that he could put in a peaceful, comfortable time now for the rest of
his life, if it were not for one thing.
And as he started across the campus with a roll of corduroys under his
arm, and the intention of taking a bath at the club, the very first
thing he saw was that One Thing.
There was a "Hunt's Discourse" under his arm, and he was running to
reach his seat before the bell stopped ringing, like any other
freshman. But he was different from every other freshman in the world,
to Lawrence.
This boy, like some of every freshman class that ever cheered itself
hoarse, was beginning to do things his father had not sent him to
college for. And the senior had an idea that his own example was what
had started the boy; and this, when you stop to think of it, was
extremely conceited in him. He thought he could make the freshman
stop, and this, when you stop to think of it, was a hasty conclusion.
He thought about it during the time occupied in splashing and
spluttering at the club, and most of the time that he was shivering
and whistling and putting on his ugliest sweater and oldest corduroys
and most disreputable slouch hat, and his brown shooting-coat with
quail blood on it. He even thought of it several times while his hands
were deep down in his pockets and his shoulders were slouched forward
and a pipe was in his mouth and an arm was around Jim Linton and they
were floating about the campus calling hello to everybody that was
back.
The first thing undertaken by Lawrence, the entirely different, was
the purchasing of some fine large text-books. For his foremost duty
was of course toward himself.
He had never bought any books since freshman year, but he knew where
they were to be found, and a poler named Stacy gave him a list of the
ones he required.
They were all nice new copies, with the book-store smell about them.
He did not like second-handed ones, and then, too, he was going to
pole very hard and he might wear them out. Besides, his book bill had
never been large--except in his letters--and he thought he could
afford the extravagance in his senior year.
He took great pleasure in writing his full name on the fly-leaf with a
blotty pen, Henry Laurence Lawrence, Jr., in a flourishless hand like
his father's. They made quite an imposing pile on the table, and he
felt proud of it. He showed them to the fellows that dropped in that
evening to say, "Glad to see you back," and ask him what he thought of
Southern girls. This took until 2 A.M. So he could not attend to that
other matter until the next day.
He set the alarm-clock before going to bed and said, "Now, then,
to-morrow I fix my freshman."
He jumped out with only six hours' sleep, though he had just finished
a long journey and his nerves required more rest, all to make chapel
and see his freshman. He saw him.
Although he said only, "How do you do?" in a serious tone, he knew
that he was doing his duty, and felt so pleased with himself that he
went to town that afternoon and took a Turkish bath at his place in
Twenty-eighth Street--this was the only way to get the cinders
out--and stole some clean linen from his brother-in-law's top bureau
drawer, and dined with the family at home. Then, because he had not
been with them during Christmas, and because he was to be a poler for
the rest of his college course and would have few such chances, he
stayed over Sunday and was given a pensum for too many unexcused
absences when he came back.
On Monday, however, he saw his freshman again. It was on Nassau
Street. This time Lawrence said, "Hello there!" He saw him once more
on Tuesday, coming out of Whig Hall, and said, "How are you, Darnell?"
and smiled a little. He saluted the freshman in various ways every day
but one for a week.
This delighted the freshman very much, but somehow had no effect upon
his morals. Lawrence felt like a man wasting breath, and he did not
believe in wasting breath on under-classmen. This young Darnell was
decidedly unappreciative. Besides it was unwarrantably fresh in him
to give all this trouble to a senior, and Lawrence made up his mind to
some day tell him so.
If it had been a good hard jumping-on that were needed, Lawrence
thought he could have managed, but this thing required tact and
delicacy, which he hadn't. Some fellows, like Jim Linton, would not
have minded a queer, unconventional situation of this sort. Lawrence
was not that kind. He knew as little about telling a fellow that he
was on the verge of making a fool of himself as he did about informing
people that they had souls, or that they should study hard. It made
him blush to think of it.
Besides, what force would this sort of thing have coming from
Lawrence, Ninety Blank? That was the disadvantage of having a
reputation like his. Nor could he very well halt the freshman on the
campus and say, "See here. Stop this. I am a good boy now. You also
must be a good boy." Ugh!
The mid-year examinations would be on in a week or two, or three, and
for the present he was simply obliged to leave off reforming the
freshman--especially as he had decided that it would look nice this
time for his report to go home without any conditions on it. It was
his duty to pole.
Study, after all, is what one comes to college for. It would doubtless
have displeased his parents if they knew that he was wasting valuable
opportunities, which come but once, over a little freshman who was no
relative of the Lawrences.
He poled very hard and was conditioned in nothing. So hard did he
work, indeed, that when the long, nervous strain was over there was
very little stuff left in him. At the senior dance, which came on the
evening after the last examination, he ran three girls' cards, and
tried to make each think that she was the only reason he had come.
This has been tried before. The next day he felt a slight touch of the
old trouble.
He became alarmed about himself, felt his pulse, and decided that he
needed a rest. He spent three days and ten of his new term cuts at
Lakewood. The One of the three girls was there spending Lent.
When he came back to the campus he bumped against that freshman by the
lamp-post in front of South Reunion. He was walking with a sportive
young class-mate named Thompson, who was a typical little fool, and
Darnell said "Hello, Lawrence!" in a tone which just missed being
fresh, and seemed to mean "See, I'm not such a poler as you thought."
For five minutes Lawrence forgot there was a place called Lakewood,
where tall pines murmur.
That evening he heard things about his freshman that he did not want
to hear. They were not very bad, but quite enough so to make Lawrence
look up his address in the catalogue. He didn't know how to talk to
freshmen. They nearly all looked alike. But he rang the door-bell.
It was Saturday evening and Darnell was not in. Lawrence frowned and
held that freshmen had no business leaving their studies at night. He
shook his head and went back to Jim Linton's room. The freshman had
not returned when he called again at eleven.
Lawrence now thought that he had a right to be indignant. He had left
a comfortable room, a game of whist, and three class-mates, who gave
him many abusive epithets for it, all to talk to this freshman. And
see how he was treated! Besides, it wasn't as if Lawrence wanted
anything of him. What pleasure was it to him to talk to a little ass
freshman? But he was doing his duty anyway.
It did not discourage him. He was not that sort of a fellow. He only
shook his head and arose early the next morning, which was Sunday. He
hurried through breakfast without stopping to read the papers, and
marched straight to the freshman's room on the way to morning service.
Darnell was in bed with a throbbing brow and a slight attack of
remorse. Lawrence sat down on a trunk which would have held the
freshman's clothes if he had taken them off, and cut a good sermon by
the dean in order to give himself the chance of preaching one himself.
"Of course it is not strictly any of my business, but I think you are
making a big mistake.
"You must know that it is no great pleasure for me to go out of my way
to call a man a fool. But you see I have been through all this myself
and I know very nearly all there is to know about it. I have been a
great fool in college, and if I can do anything that will prevent
another from making the mistakes I made, I ought to go ahead and risk
hurting his feelings. Oughtn't I? There's nothing hypocritical in
that. Is there?
"This thing of wild oats, Darnell, is all wrong, all nonsense, all
Tommy-rot. You know that as well as I do. Of course many people say--
But those that say such things are either brutes with no finer
sensibilities, or else they are liars, or else they never had any wild
oats. They don't know what they're talking about.
"Now, of course, I'm only a very young man, after all. Older men, many
of them, would laugh and call me a young prig, I suppose. But I know
what I'm talking about as regards myself, Darnell. I know the things I
have to think about and cannot forget. I know the things that come up
and stare me in the face and make me ache. I know-- But never mind all
that.
"This is what I want to ask of you: Tell me--you've had your little
taste of it now, the glamour is rubbed off, you find there is not
quite so much in it as you thought--tell me honestly, my boy, do you
believe it pays? Don't you think that one morning like this, with a
head such as you have now, and the thoughts inside of it, with a sight
of those photographs over there on the bureau, is enough to
counterbalance all the fun there is in a month of last nights?"
To this long speech the freshman made no reply, because Lawrence did
not say a word of it aloud. In fact most of those grand-stand remarks
were not thought out until late that night in bed, while rolling over
trying to get to sleep. He would not have voiced them to the freshman
anyway. Of course not.
It certainly was "not strictly his business" to walk into the room of
a nodding acquaintance and call him a fool in long sentences. Lawrence
knew that. And it would have been even worse taste to open up his own
bosom and drag out his own private worries and dangle them before the
eyes of another. It is only in certain short stories that such
absurdities are performed by reserved young men. Lawrence was not that
kind of a fool.
The Sunday morning conversation ran something like this, while
Lawrence tied and untied the freshman's four-in-hand neck-tie about
the foot-post of the bed:
"The Fifty-seventh Street Harrisons? Yes, very well. Were they down
there?... Is that so?--to Clint Van Brunt? But I don't like her so
well as her sister. Grace is a smooth dancer though.... At Sherry's
last winter...." And similar nonsense until the conversation swung
round to the prospects of the baseball team, which had recently begun
practice in the cage. Then they both woke up and said something.
And throughout it all the freshman was wondering why the mighty senior
honored him with a visit, and longing for a drink of very cold water.
Lawrence told himself that this call was merely to break the ice. You
couldn't expect him to talk about such serious things when they were
hardly acquainted. Could you?
He went again within a few days. He thought he ought to strike while
the iron was hot. It was in the evening this time, and the freshman
was brighter and better looking. Lawrence liked him more than ever,
only he wished that he would not be quite so deferential toward him.
Also he greatly wished that he would not consider it necessary to tack
those superfluous words to his remarks. It bothered him. They seemed
to come out of the refined mouth side wise. Sometimes they stuck, as
it were, and hung there while Lawrence shivered. And the more obvious
Lawrence made it that he did not consider such emphasis essential to
his own observations, the more frequently did Darnell drag it in. This
was to show the senior that he need not refrain on his account.
This time Lawrence remained until midnight. They did not once mention
the people they both knew in town. They talked about tramping in the
Harz Mountains.
It was evident on his third visit that the freshman considered
Lawrence's frequent coming due to approval of his development. He
stuck it on worse than ever. Lawrence was discouraged and looked it.
The freshman, wondering why his senior friend was so silent, suddenly
lifted his big brown eyes. Lawrence was gazing mournfully at him.
Naturally this made him feel queer. He became rattled and blushed.
Lawrence became rattled and nearly did; and then arose, left abruptly,
and kicked himself all the way up Nassau Street, and all along the
stone walk past the dean's house, by Old North, in front of Reunion,
and into West, where he sneaked up to bed. He did not call again for a
month.
Meanwhile the freshman was doubtless running as fast as his legs could
carry him, with Thompson and others of that ilk, to the devil. And H.
L. Lawrence, Ninety Blank, who by wicked example had started him
going, was doing nothing to stop him. Which was the very best thing he
could have done.
For this is a sort of a disease, and if it's there it's bound to
manifest itself, like other things that break out at about this age.
Any fatherly, well-meaning interference, such as a fellow like
Lawrence might offer, would have had directly the opposite of the
desired effect. If you do not believe this, it clearly indicates that
you do not understand it.
Lawrence did not. He, poor devil, skulked off and tried to forget
about the freshman, like a rejected lover, and, again like one, he
could not, even though he went across the street to avoid meeting
those big eyes.
Once more he took a long breath and sneaked off to the freshman's room
with a brave lot of kind, smiling advice which he practised saying on
the way over. In a moment he came running back to the campus, shouting
for joy. The freshman was not at home.
He yelled "Yea" with all his might and danced three times about the
cannon, all alone, like a man back on the campus in midsummer. Then
because it was Princeton someone else yelled "Yea-a!" from over by
Clio Hall. Then Jack Stehman raised his window and yelled "Cork up!"
because he felt like it. Someone in East yeaed back in a shrill voice.
Tommy Tucker stepped out upon his balcony in Reunion and echoed it
mightily. Someone blew a horn, a big Thanksgiving game horn. Others
took it up. Windows were thrown open all over the campus. Many voices
sounded the ancient cry of "Fresh fire! Heads out!" Shotguns banged.
Fire-crackers exploded. Bugles sounded. Distant Dod took up the echo.
Witherspoon Hall was already doing its part.
Within two minutes Lawrence was joined by a score of fellows who
danced with him about the cannon, yelled "Fresh fier-r-r! Heads out!"
until they had brought everyone out they could, then called "Leg pull.
All over!" and ran back to their rooms again, feeling that they had
done their duty. Windows slammed shut again. A voice from down in
Edwards Hall answered "All over!" Every one went on where he left off.
All felt refreshed and strengthened for their duties, and Lawrence
leaned alone against the cannon. But he too felt better.
He decided that this was a species of Providential interposition, a
sort of vision as it were, the interpretation of which was that any
man who would allow a little fool freshman to destroy the happiness of
the culminating year of the best period of life in the dearest spot on
earth would be an unmitigated ass.
He now fell to distracting his mind with work and other things, and
realized the beauty of existence, as all undergraduates should.
Besides the beauty of existence there were others that he was in the
habit of dwelling upon during sunset rambles through the woods down
toward the canal; pretty little foolish thoughts which young men who
are still students and have yet to choose an occupation have no
business in thinking. But the way her hair swept back from that brow
of hers on either side of the chaste part and then swirled-- But that
will do. Lawrence and his affairs already occupy too much space.
And as suddenly as they were interrupted in that paragraph were his
walking-time thoughts cut short whenever that confounded freshman
loomed up with an arm about the Thompson boy, followed by a brindle
bull-dog and a trail of cigarette-smoke.