Gossip raged, of course. Far from being disturbed, we used it, so to

speak, as a handle for our love-making, which was carried on in an

inferential rather than a direct fashion. Were they saying that we were

lovers? Delightful! We laughed at one another in the sunshine.... At

last we achieved the great adventure of a clandestine meeting and went

for a walk in the afternoon, avoiding the houses of our friends. I've

forgotten which of us had the boldness to propose it. The crocuses and

tulips had broken the black mould, the flower beds in the front yards

were beginning to blaze with scarlet and yellow, the lawns had turned a

living green. What did we talk about? The substance has vanished, only

the flavour remains.

One awoke of a morning to the twittering of birds, to walk to school

amidst delicate, lace-like shadows of great trees acloud with old gold:

the buds lay curled like tiny feathers on the pavements. Suddenly the

shade was dense, the sunlight white and glaring, the odour of lilacs

heavy in the air, spring in all its fulness had come,--spring and Nancy.

Just so subtly, yet with the same seeming suddenness had budded and come

to leaf and flower a perfect understanding, which nevertheless

remained undefined. This, I had no doubt, was my fault, and due to the

incomprehensible shyness her presence continued to inspire. Although we

did not altogether abandon our secret trysts, we began to meet in more

natural ways; there were garden parties and picnics where we strayed

together through the woods and fields, pausing to tear off, one by

one, the petals of a daisy, “She loves me, she loves me not.” I never

ventured to kiss her; I always thought afterwards I might have done so,

she had seemed so willing, her eyes had shone so expectantly as I sat

beside her on the grass; nor can I tell why I desired to kiss her save

that this was the traditional thing to do to the lady one loved. To be

sure, the very touch of her hand was galvanic. Paradoxically, I saw the

human side of her, the yielding gentleness that always amazed me, yet I

never overcame my awe of the divine; she was a being sacrosanct. Whether

this idealism were innate or the result of such romances as I had read

I cannot say.... I got, indeed, an avowal of a sort. The weekly dancing

classes having begun again, on one occasion when she had waltzed twice

with Gene Hollister I protested.

“Don't be silly, Hugh,” she whispered. “Of course I like you better than

anyone else--you ought to know that.”

We never got to the word “love,” but we knew the feeling.

One cloud alone flung its shadow across these idyllic days. Before I

was fully aware of it I had drawn very near to the first great

junction-point of my life, my graduation from Densmore Academy. We were

to “change cars,” in the language of Principal Haime. Well enough for

the fortunate ones who were to continue the academic journey, which

implied a postponement of the serious business of life; but month after

month of the last term had passed without a hint from my father that I

was to change cars. Again and again I almost succeeded in screwing up

my courage to the point of mentioning college to him,--never quite; his

manner, though kind and calm, somehow strengthened my suspicion that

I had been judged and found wanting, and doomed to “business”: galley

slavery, I deemed it, humdrum, prosaic, degrading! When I thought of it

at night I experienced almost a frenzy of self-pity. My father couldn't

intend to do that, just because my monthly reports hadn't always been

what he thought they ought to be! Gene Hollister's were no better, if as

good, and he was going to Princeton. Was I, Hugh Paret, to be denied

the distinction of being a college man, the delights of university

existence, cruelly separated and set apart from my friends whom I loved!

held up to the world and especially to Nancy Willett as good for nothing

else! The thought was unbearable. Characteristically, I hoped against

hope.

I have mentioned garden parties. One of our annual institutions was Mrs.

Willett's children's party in May; for the Willett house had a garden

that covered almost a quarter of a block. Mrs. Willett loved children,

the greatest regret of her life being that providence had denied her a

large family. As far back as my memory goes she had been something of

an invalid; she had a sweet, sad face, and delicate hands so thin as to

seem almost transparent; and she always sat in a chair under the great

tree on the lawn, smiling at us as we soared to dizzy heights in the

swing, or played croquet, or scurried through the paths, and in and out

of the latticed summer-house with shrieks of laughter and terror. It all

ended with a feast at a long table made of sawhorses and boards covered

with a white cloth, and when the cake was cut there was wild excitement

as to who would get the ring and who the thimble.

We were more decorous, or rather more awkward now, and the party began

with a formal period when the boys gathered in a group and pretended

indifference to the girls. The girls were cleverer at it, and actually

achieved the impression that they were indifferent. We kept an eye on

them, uneasily, while we talked. To be in Nancy's presence and not alone

with Nancy was agonizing, and I wondered at a sang-froid beyond my power

to achieve, accused her of coldness, my sufferings being the greater

because she seemed more beautiful, daintier, more irreproachable than

I had ever seen her. Even at that early age she gave evidence of the

social gift, and it was due to her efforts that we forgot our best

clothes and our newly born self-consciousness. When I begged her to slip

away with me among the currant bushes she whispered:--“I can't, Hugh.

I'm the hostess, you know.”

I had gone there in a flutter of anticipation, but nothing went right

that day. There was dancing in the big rooms that looked out on the

garden; the only girl with whom I cared to dance was Nancy, and she was

busy finding partners for the backward members of both sexes; though she

was my partner, to be sure, when it all wound up with a Virginia reel on

the lawn. Then, at supper, to cap the climax of untoward incidents, an

animated discussion was begun as to the relative merits of the various

colleges, the girls, too, taking sides. Mac Willett, Nancy's cousin, was

going to Yale, Gene Hollister to Princeton, the Ewan boys to our State

University, while Perry Blackwood and Ralph Hambleton and Ham Durrett

were destined for Harvard; Tom Peters, also, though he was not to

graduate from the Academy for another year. I might have known that

Ralph would have suspected my misery. He sat triumphantly next to Nancy

herself, while I had been told off to entertain the faithful Sophy.

Noticing my silence, he demanded wickedly:--“Where are you going, Hugh?”

“Harvard, I think,” I answered with as bold a front as I could muster.

“I haven't talked it over with my father yet.” It was intolerable to

admit that I of them all was to be left behind.

Nancy looked at me in surprise. She was always downright.

“Oh, Hugh, doesn't your father mean to put you in business?” she

exclaimed.

A hot flush spread over my face. Even to her I had not betrayed my

apprehensions on this painful subject. Perhaps it was because of this

very reason, knowing me as she did, that she had divined my fate. Could

my father have spoken of it to anyone?

“Not that I know of,” I said angrily. I wondered if she knew how deeply

she had hurt me. The others laughed. The colour rose in Nancy's cheeks,

and she gave me an appealing, almost tearful look, but my heart had

hardened. As soon as supper was over I left the table to wander, nursing

my wrongs, in a far corner of the garden, gay shouts and laughter still

echoing in my ears. I was negligible, even my pathetic subterfuge had

been detected and cruelly ridiculed by these friends whom I had

always loved and sought out, and who now were so absorbed in their own

prospects and happiness that they cared nothing for mine. And Nancy!

I had been betrayed by Nancy!... Twilight was coming on. I remember

glancing down miserably at the new blue suit I had put on so hopefully

for the first time that afternoon.

Separating the garden from the street was a high, smooth board fence

with a little gate in it, and I had my hand on the latch when I heard

the sound of hurrying steps on the gravel path and a familiar voice

calling my name.

“Hugh! Hugh!”

I turned. Nancy stood before me.

“Hugh, you're not going!”

“Yes, I am.”

“Why?”

“If you don't know, there's no use telling you.”

“Just because I said your father intended to put you in business!

Oh, Hugh, why are you so foolish and so proud? Do you suppose that

anyone--that I--think any the worse of you?”

Yes, she had read me, she alone had entered into the source of that

prevarication, the complex feelings from which it sprang. But at

that moment I could not forgive her for humiliating me. I hugged my

grievance.

“It was true, what I said,” I declared hotly. “My father has not spoken.

It is true that I'm going to college, because I'll make it true. I may

not go this year.”

She stood staring in sheer surprise at sight of my sudden, quivering

passion. I think the very intensity of it frightened her. And then,

without more ado, I opened the gate and was gone....

That night, though I did not realize it, my journey into a Far Country

was begun.

The misery that followed this incident had one compensating factor.

Although too late to electrify Densmore and Principal Haime with my

scholarship, I was determined to go to college now, somehow, sometime.

I would show my father, these companions of mine, and above all Nancy

herself the stuff of which I was made, compel them sooner or later

to admit that they had misjudged me. I had been possessed by similar

resolutions before, though none so strong, and they had a way of sinking

below the surface of my consciousness, only to rise again and again

until by sheer pressure they achieved realization.

Yet I might have returned to Nancy if something had not occurred which

I would have thought unbelievable: she began to show a marked preference

for Ralph Hambleton. At first I regarded this affair as the most obvious

of retaliations. She, likewise, had pride. Gradually, however, a feeling

of uneasiness crept over me: as pretence, her performance was altogether

too realistic; she threw her whole soul into it, danced with Ralph as

often as she had ever danced with me, took walks with him, deferred

to his opinions until, in spite of myself, I became convinced that the

preference was genuine. I was a curious mixture of self-confidence and

self-depreciation, and never had his superiority seemed more patent than

now. His air of satisfaction was maddening.

How well I remember his triumph on that hot, June morning of our

graduation from Densmore, a triumph he had apparently achieved without

labour, and which he seemed to despise. A fitful breeze blew through the

chapel at the top of the building; we, the graduates, sat in two rows

next to the platform, and behind us the wooden benches nicked by many

knives--were filled with sisters and mothers and fathers, some anxious,

some proud and some sad. So brief a span, like that summer's day, and

youth was gone! Would the time come when we, too, should sit by the

waters of Babylon and sigh for it? The world was upside down.

We read the one hundred and third psalm. Then Principal Haime, in

his long “Prince Albert” and a ridiculously inadequate collar that

emphasized his scrawny neck, reminded us of the sacred associations we

had formed, of the peculiar responsibilities that rested on us, who

were the privileged of the city. “We had crossed to-day,” he said,

“an invisible threshold. Some were to go on to higher institutions of

learning. Others...” I gulped. Quoting the Scriptures, he complimented

those who had made the most of their opportunities. And it was then

that he called out, impressively, the name of Ralph Forrester Hambleton.

Summa cum laude! Suddenly I was seized with passionate, vehement regrets

at the sound of the applause. I might have been the prize scholar,

instead of Ralph, if I had only worked, if I had only realized what

this focussing day of graduation meant! I might have been a marked

individual, with people murmuring words of admiration, of speculation

concerning the brilliancy of my future!... When at last my name

was called and I rose to receive my diploma it seemed as though my

incompetency had been proclaimed to the world...

That evening I stood in the narrow gallery of the flag-decked gymnasium

and watched Nancy dancing with Ralph.

I let her go without protest or reproach. A mysterious lesion seemed to

have taken place, I felt astonished and relieved, yet I was heavy with

sadness. My emancipation had been bought at a price. Something hitherto

spontaneous, warm and living was withering within me.

V.

It was true to my father's character that he should have waited until

the day after graduation to discuss my future, if discussion be the

proper word. The next evening at supper he informed me that he wished

to talk to me in the sitting-room, whither I followed him with a sinking

heart. He seated himself at his desk, and sat for a moment gazing at me

with a curious and benumbing expression, and then the blow fell.

“Hugh, I have spoken to your Cousin Robert Breck about you, and he has

kindly consented to give you a trial.”

“To give me a trial, sir!” I exclaimed.

“To employ you at a small but reasonable salary.”

I could find no words to express my dismay. My dreams had come to this,

that I was to be made a clerk in a grocery store! The fact that it was a

wholesale grocery store was little consolation.

“But father,” I faltered, “I don't want to go into business.”

“Ah!” The sharpness of the exclamation might have betrayed to me the

pain in which he was, but he recovered himself instantly. And I could

see nothing but an inexorable justice closing in on me mechanically;

a blind justice, in its inability to read my soul. “The time to have

decided that,” he declared, “was some years ago, my son. I have given

you the best schooling a boy can have, and you have not shown the least

appreciation of your advantages. I do not enjoy saying this, Hugh,

but in spite of all my efforts and of those of your mother, you have

remained undeveloped and irresponsible. My hope, as you know, was to

have made you a professional man, a lawyer, and to take you into my

office. My father and grandfather were professional men before me. But

you are wholly lacking in ambition.”

And I had burned with it all my life!

“I have ambition,” I cried, the tears forcing themselves to my eyes.

“Ambition--for what, my son?”

I hesitated. How could I tell him that my longings to do something,

to be somebody in the world were never more keen than at that moment?

Matthew Arnold had not then written his definition of God as the stream

of tendency by which we fulfil the laws of our being; and my father,

at any rate, would not have acquiesced in the definition. Dimly but

passionately I felt then, as I had always felt, that I had a mission to

perform, a service to do which ultimately would be revealed to me. But

the hopelessness of explaining this took on, now, the proportions of a

tragedy. And I could only gaze at him.

“What kind of ambition, Hugh?” he repeated sadly.

“I--I have sometimes thought I could write, sir, if I had a chance. I

like it better than anything else. I--I have tried it. And if I could

only go to college--”

“Literature!” There was in his voice a scandalized note.

“Why not, father?” I asked weakly.

And now it was he who, for the first time, seemed to be at a loss to

express himself. He turned in his chair, and with a sweep of the hand

indicated the long rows of musty-backed volumes. “Here,” he said, “you

have had at your disposal as well-assorted a small library as the city

contains, and you have not availed yourself of it. Yet you talk to me

of literature as a profession. I am afraid, Hugh, that this is merely

another indication of your desire to shun hard work, and I must tell

you frankly that I fail to see in you the least qualification for such

a career. You have not even inherited my taste for books. I venture

to say, for instance, that you have never even read a paragraph of

Plutarch, and yet when I was your age I was completely familiar with the

Lives. You will not read Scott or Dickens.”

The impeachment was not to be denied, for the classics were hateful to

me. Naturally I was afraid to make such a damning admission. My father

had succeeded in presenting my ambition as the height of absurdity and

presumption, and with something of the despair of a shipwrecked mariner

my eyes rested on the green expanses of those book-backs, Bohn's

Standard Library! Nor did it occur to him or to me that one might be

great in literature without having read so much as a gritty page of

them....

He finished his argument by reminding me that worthless persons sought

to enter the arts in the search for a fool's paradise, and in order

to satisfy a reprehensible craving for notoriety. The implication was

clear, that imaginative production could not be classed as hard work.

And he assured me that literature was a profession in which no one could

afford to be second class. A Longfellow, a Harriet Beecher Stowe, or

nothing. This was a practical age and a practical country. We had indeed

produced Irvings and Hawthornes, but the future of American letters was,

to say the least, problematical. We were a utilitarian people who would

never create a great literature, and he reminded me that the days of the

romantic and the picturesque had passed. He gathered that I desired to

be a novelist. Well, novelists, with certain exceptions, were fantastic

fellows who blew iridescent soap-bubbles and who had no morals. In the

face of such a philosophy as his I was mute. The world appeared a dreary

place of musty offices and smoky steel-works, of coal dust, of labour

without a spark of inspiration. And that other, the world of my dreams,

simply did not exist.

Incidentally my father had condemned Cousin Robert's wholesale grocery

business as a refuge of the lesser of intellect that could not achieve

the professions,--an inference not calculated to stir my ambition and

liking for it at the start.

I began my business career on the following Monday morning. At

breakfast, held earlier than usual on my account, my mother's sympathy

was the more eloquent for being unspoken, while my father wore an air of

unwonted cheerfulness; charging me, when I departed, to give his kindest

remembrances to my Cousin Robert Breck. With a sense of martyrdom

somehow deepened by this attitude of my parents I boarded a horse-car

and went down town. Early though it was, the narrow streets of the

wholesale district reverberated with the rattle of trucks and echoed

with the shouts of drivers. The day promised to be scorching. At

the door of the warehouse of Breck and Company I was greeted by the

ineffable smell of groceries in which the suggestion of parched coffee

prevailed. This is the sharpest remembrance of all, and even to-day

that odour affects me somewhat in the manner that the interior of a

ship affects a person prone to seasickness. My Cousin Robert, in his

well-worn alpaca coat, was already seated at his desk behind the clouded

glass partition next the alley at the back of the store, and as I

entered he gazed at me over his steel-rimmed spectacles with that same

disturbing look of clairvoyance I have already mentioned as one of his

characteristics. The grey eyes were quizzical, and yet seemed to express

a little commiseration.

“Well, Hugh, you've decided to honour us, have you?” he asked.

“I'm much obliged for giving me the place, Cousin Robert,” I replied.

But he had no use for that sort of politeness, and he saw through me, as

always.

“So you're not too tony for the grocery business, eh?”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“It was good enough for old Benjamin Breck,” he said. “Well, I'll give

you a fair trial, my boy, and no favouritism on account of relationship,

any more than to Willie.”

His strong voice resounded through the store, and presently my cousin

Willie appeared in answer to his summons, the same Willie who used to

lead me, on mischief bent, through the barns and woods and fields of

Claremore. He was barefoot no longer, though freckled still, grown lanky

and tall; he wore a coarse blue apron that fell below his knees, and a

pencil was stuck behind his ear.

“Get an apron for Hugh,” said his father.

Willie's grin grew wider.

“I'll fit him out,” he said.

“Start him in the shipping department,” directed Cousin Robert, and

turned to his letters.

I was forthwith provided with an apron, and introduced to the slim and

anaemic but cheerful Johnny Hedges, the shipping clerk, hard at work in

the alley. Secretly I looked down on my fellow-clerks, as one destined

for a higher mission, made out of better stuff,--finer stuff. Despite

my attempt to hide this sense of superiority they were swift to discover

it; and perhaps it is to my credit as well as theirs that they did not

resent it. Curiously enough, they seemed to acknowledge it. Before the

week was out I had earned the nickname of Beau Brummel.

“Say, Beau,” Johnny Hedges would ask, when I appeared of a morning,

“what happened in the great world last night?”

I had an affection for them, these fellow-clerks, and I often

wondered at their contentment with the drab lives they led, at their

self-congratulation for “having a job” at Breck and Company's.

“You don't mean to say you like this kind of work?” I exclaimed one day

to Johnny Hedges, as we sat on barrels of XXXX flour looking out at the

hot sunlight in the alley.

“It ain't a question of liking it, Beau,” he rebuked me. “It's all very

well for you to talk, since your father's a millionaire” (a fiction so

firmly embedded in their heads that no amount of denial affected it),

“but what do you think would happen to me if I was fired? I couldn't

go home and take it easy--you bet not. I just want to shake hands with

myself when I think that I've got a home, and a job like this. I know

a feller--a hard worker he was, too who walked the pavements for three

months when the Colvers failed, and couldn't get nothing, and took to

drink, and the last I heard of him he was sleeping in police stations

and walking the ties, and his wife's a waitress at a cheap hotel. Don't

you think it's easy to get a job.”

I was momentarily sobered by the earnestness with which he brought home

to me the relentlessness of our civilization. It seemed incredible. I

should have learned a lesson in that store. Barring a few discordant

days when the orders came in too fast or when we were short handed

because of sickness, it was a veritable hive of happiness; morning after

morning clerks and porters arrived, pale, yet smiling, and laboured with

cheerfulness from eight o'clock until six, and departed as cheerfully

for modest homes in obscure neighbourhoods that seemed to me areas of

exile. They were troubled with no visions of better things. When

the travelling men came in from the “road” there was great hilarity.

Important personages, these, looked up to by the city clerks; jolly,

reckless, Elizabethan-like rovers, who had tasted of the wine of

liberty--and of other wines with the ineradicable lust for the road in

their blood. No more routine for Jimmy Bowles, who was king of them all.

I shudder to think how much of my knowledge of life I owe to this Jimmy,

whose stories would have filled a quarto volume, but could on no account

have been published; for a self-respecting post-office would not have

allowed them to pass through the mails. As it was, Jimmy gave them

circulation enough. I can still see his round face, with the nose just

indicated, his wicked, twinkling little eyes, and I can hear his husky

voice fall to a whisper when “the boss” passed through the store. Jimmy,

when visiting us, always had a group around him. His audacity with women

amazed me, for he never passed one of the “lady clerks” without some

form of caress, which they resented but invariably laughed at. One day

he imparted to me his code of morality: he never made love to another

man's wife, so he assured me, if he knew the man! The secret of life he

had discovered in laughter, and by laughter he sold quantities of Cousin

Robert's groceries.

Mr. Bowles boasted of a catholic acquaintance in all the cities of his

district, but before venturing forth to conquer these he had learned his

own city by heart. My Cousin Robert was not aware of the fact that Mr.

Bowles “showed” the town to certain customers. He even desired to show

it to me, but an epicurean strain in my nature held me back. Johnny

Hedges went with him occasionally, and Henry Schneider, the bill clerk,

and I listened eagerly to their experiences, afterwards confiding them

to Tom....

There were times when, driven by an overwhelming curiosity, I ventured

into certain strange streets, alone, shivering with cold and excitement,

gripped by a fascination I did not comprehend, my eyes now averted, now

irresistibly raised toward the white streaks of light that outlined the

windows of dark houses....

One winter evening as I was going home, I encountered at the mail-box

a young woman who shot at me a queer, twisted smile. I stood still, as

though stunned, looking after her, and when halfway across the slushy

street she turned and smiled again. Prodigiously excited, I followed

her, fearful that I might be seen by someone who knew me, nor was it

until she reached an unfamiliar street that I ventured to overtake her.

She confounded me by facing me.

“Get out!” she cried fiercely.

I halted in my tracks, overwhelmed with shame. But she continued to

regard me by the light of the street lamp.

“You didn't want to be seen with me on Second Street, did you? You're

one of those sneaking swells.”

The shock of this sudden onslaught was tremendous. I stood frozen to the

spot, trembling, convicted, for I knew that her accusation was just; I

had wounded her, and I had a desire to make amends.

“I'm sorry,” I faltered. “I didn't mean--to offend you. And you

smiled--” I got no farther. She began to laugh, and so loudly that I

glanced anxiously about. I would have fled, but something still held me,

something that belied the harshness of her laugh.

“You're just a kid,” she told me. “Say, you get along home, and tell

your mamma I sent you.”

Whereupon I departed in a state of humiliation and self-reproach I had

never before known, wandering about aimlessly for a long time. When at

length I arrived at home, late for supper, my mother's solicitude only

served to deepen my pain. She went to the kitchen herself to see if my

mince-pie were hot, and served me with her own hands. My father remained

at his place at the head of the table while I tried to eat, smiling

indulgently at her ministrations.

“Oh, a little hard work won't hurt him, Sarah,” he said. “When I was his

age I often worked until eleven o'clock and never felt the worse for it.

Business must be pretty good, eh, Hugh?”

I had never seen him in a more relaxing mood, a more approving one.

My mother sat down beside me.... Words seem useless to express the

complicated nature of my suffering at that moment,--my remorse, my

sense of deception, of hypocrisy,--yes, and my terror. I tried to talk

naturally, to answer my father's questions about affairs at the store,

while all the time my eyes rested upon the objects of the room, familiar

since childhood. Here were warmth, love, and safety. Why could I not be

content with them, thankful for them? What was it in me that drove me

from these sheltering walls out into the dark places? I glanced at my

father. Had he ever known these wild, destroying desires? Oh, if I only

could have confided in him! The very idea of it was preposterous. Such

placidity as theirs would never understand the nature of my temptations,

and I pictured to myself their horror and despair at my revelation. In

imagination I beheld their figures receding while I drifted out to sea,

alone. Would the tide--which was somehow within me--carry me out and

out, in spite of all I could do?

“Give me that man

That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him

In my heart's core....”

I did not shirk my tasks at the store, although I never got over the

feeling that a fine instrument was being employed where a coarser one

would have done equally well. There were moments when I was almost

overcome by surges of self-commiseration and of impotent anger: for

instance, I was once driven out of a shop by an incensed German grocer

whom I had asked to settle a long-standing account. Yet the days passed,

the daily grind absorbed my energies, and when I was not collecting, or

tediously going over the stock in the dim recesses of the store, I was

running errands in the wholesale district, treading the burning brick of

the pavements, dodging heavy trucks and drays and perspiring clerks who

flew about with memorandum pads in their hands, or awaiting the pleasure

of bank tellers. Save Harvey, the venerable porter, I was the last to

leave the store in the evening, and I always came away with the taste on

my palate of Breck and Company's mail, it being my final duty to “lick”

the whole of it and deposit it in the box at the corner. The gum on the

envelopes tasted of winter-green.

My Cousin Robert was somewhat astonished at my application.

“We'll make a man of you yet, Hugh,” he said to me once, when I had

performed a commission with unexpected despatch....

Business was his all-in-all, and he had an undisguised contempt for

higher education. To send a boy to college was, in his opinion, to run

no inconsiderable risk of ruining him. What did they amount to when they

came home, strutting like peacocks, full of fads and fancies, and much

too good to associate with decent, hard-working citizens? Nevertheless

when autumn came and my friends departed with eclat for the East, I was

desperate indeed! Even the contemplation of Robert Breck did not console

me, and yet here, in truth, was a life which might have served me as a

model. His store was his castle; and his reputation for integrity and

square dealing as wide as the city. Often I used to watch him with a

certain envy as he stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets,

and greeted fellow-merchant and banker with his genuine and dignified

directness. This man was his own master. They all called him “Robert,”

and they made it clear by their manner that they knew they were

addressing one who fulfilled his obligations and asked no favours.

Crusty old Nathaniel Durrett once declared that when you bought a bill

of goods from Robert Breck you did not have to check up the invoice or

employ a chemist. Here was a character to mould upon. If my ambition

could but have been bounded by Breck and Company, I, too, might have

come to stand in that doorway content with a tribute that was greater

than Caesar's.

I had been dreading the Christmas holidays, which were indeed to be no

holidays for me. And when at length they arrived they brought with them

from the East certain heroes fashionably clad, citizens now of a larger

world than mine. These former companions had become superior beings,

they could not help showing it, and their presence destroyed the Balance

of Things. For alas, I had not wholly abjured the feminine sex after

all! And from being a somewhat important factor in the lives of Ruth

Hollister and other young women I suddenly became of no account. New

interests, new rivalries and loyalties had arisen in which I had no

share; I must perforce busy myself with invoices of flour and coffee and

canned fruits while sleigh rides and coasting and skating expeditions

to Blackstone Lake followed one another day after day,--for the irony of

circumstances had decreed a winter uncommonly cold. There were evening

parties, too, where I felt like an alien, though my friends were guilty

of no conscious neglect; and had I been able to accept the situation

simply, I should not have suffered.

The principal event of those holidays was a play given in the old

Hambleton house (which later became the Boyne Club), under the direction

of the lively and talented Mrs. Watling. I was invited, indeed, to

participate; but even if I had had the desire I could not have done

so, since the rehearsals were carried on in the daytime. Nancy was the

leading lady. I have neglected to mention that she too had been away

almost continuously since our misunderstanding, for the summer in the

mountains,--a sojourn recommended for her mother's health; and in the

autumn she had somewhat abruptly decided to go East to boarding-school

at Farmington. During the brief months of her absence she had

marvellously acquired maturity and aplomb, a worldliness of manner and a

certain frivolity that seemed to put those who surrounded her on a lower

plane. She was only seventeen, yet she seemed the woman of thirty whose

role she played. First there were murmurs, then sustained applause. I

scarcely recognized her: she had taken wings and soared far above me,

suggesting a sphere of power and luxury hitherto unimagined and beyond

the scope of the world to which I belonged.

Her triumph was genuine. When the play was over she was immediately

surrounded by enthusiastic admirers eager to congratulate her, to dance

with her. I too would have gone forward, but a sense of inadequacy, of

unimportance, of an inability to cope with her, held me back, and from a

corner I watched her sweeping around the room, holding up her train, and

leaning on the arm of Bob Lansing, a classmate whom Ralph had brought

home from Harvard. Then it was Ralph's turn: that affair seemed still

to be going on. My feelings were a strange medley of despondency and

stimulation....

Our eyes met. Her partner now was Ham Durrett. Capriciously releasing

him, she stood before me,

“Hugh, you haven't asked me to dance, or even told me what you thought

of the play.”

“I thought it was splendid,” I said lamely.

Because she refrained from replying I was farther than ever from

understanding her. How was I to divine what she felt? or whether any

longer she felt at all? Here, in this costume of a woman of the world,

with the string of pearls at her neck to give her the final touch of

brilliancy, was a strange, new creature who baffled and silenced me....

We had not gone halfway across the room when she halted abruptly.

“I'm tired,” she exclaimed. “I don't feel like dancing just now,” and

led the way to the big, rose punch-bowl, one of the Durretts' most

cherished possessions. Glancing up at me over the glass of lemonade I

had given her she went on: “Why haven't you been to see me since I came

home? I've wanted to talk to you, to hear how you are getting along.”

Was she trying to make amends, or reminding me in this subtle way of

the cause of our quarrel? What I was aware of as I looked at her was

an attitude, a vantage point apparently gained by contact with that

mysterious outer world which thus vicariously had laid its spell on me;

I was tremendously struck by the thought that to achieve this attitude

meant emancipation, invulnerability against the aches and pains which

otherwise our fellow-beings had the power to give us; mastery over

life,--the ability to choose calmly, as from a height, what were best

for one's self, untroubled by loves and hates. Untroubled by loves and

hates! At that very moment, paradoxically, I loved her madly, but with a

love not of the old quality, a love that demanded a vantage point of its

own. Even though she had made an advance--and some elusiveness in her

manner led me to doubt it I could not go to her now. I must go as a

conqueror,--a conqueror in the lists she herself had chosen, where the

prize is power.

“Oh, I'm getting along pretty well,” I said. “At any rate, they don't

complain of me.”

“Somehow,” she ventured, “somehow it's hard to think of you as a

business man.”

I took this for a reference to the boast I had made that I would go to

college.

“Business isn't so bad as it might be,” I assured her.

“I think a man ought to go away to college,” she declared, in what

seemed another tone. “He makes friends, learns certain things,--it gives

him finish. We are very provincial here.”

Provincial! I did not stop to reflect how recently she must have

acquired the word; it summed up precisely the self-estimate at which I

had arrived. The sting went deep. Before I could think of an effective

reply Nancy was being carried off by the young man from the East, who

was clearly infatuated. He was not provincial. She smiled back at

me brightly over his shoulder.... In that instant were fused in one

resolution all the discordant elements within me of aspiration and

discontent. It was not so much that I would show Nancy what I intended

to do--I would show myself; and I felt a sudden elation, and accession

of power that enabled me momentarily to despise the puppets with whom

she danced.... From this mood I was awakened with a start to feel a hand

on my shoulder, and I turned to confront her father, McAlery Willett;

a gregarious, easygoing, pleasure-loving gentleman who made only a

pretence of business, having inherited an ample fortune from his father,

unique among his generation in our city in that he paid some attention

to fashion in his dress; good living was already beginning to affect his

figure. His mellow voice had a way of breaking an octave.

“Don't worry, my boy,” he said. “You stick to business. These college

fellows are cocks of the walk just now, but some day you'll be able to

snap your fingers at all of 'em.”

The next day was dark, overcast, smoky, damp-the soft, unwholesome

dampness that follows a spell of hard frost. I spent the morning and

afternoon on the gloomy third floor of Breck and Company, making a list

of the stock. I remember the place as though I had just stepped out

of it, the freight elevator at the back, the dusty, iron columns,

the continuous piles of cases and bags and barrels with narrow aisles

between them; the dirty windows, spotted and soot-streaked, that looked

down on Second Street. I was determined now to escape from all this, and

I had my plan in mind.

No sooner had I swallowed my supper that evening than I set out at a

swift pace for a modest residence district ten blocks away, coming to a

little frame house set back in a yard,--one of those houses in which

the ringing of the front door-bell produces the greatest commotion;

children's voices were excitedly raised and then hushed. After a brief

silence the door was opened by a pleasant-faced, brown-bearded man, who

stood staring at me in surprise. His hair was rumpled, he wore an old

house coat with a hole in the elbow, and with one finger he kept his

place in the book which he held in his hand.

“Hugh Paret!” he exclaimed.

He ushered me into a little parlour lighted by two lamps, that bore

every evidence of having been recently vacated. Its features somehow

bespoke a struggle for existence; as though its occupants had

worried much and loved much. It was a room best described by the word

“home”--home made more precious by a certain precariousness. Toys and

school-books strewed the floor, a sewing-bag and apron lay across the

sofa, and in one corner was a roll-topped desk of varnished oak. The

seats of the chairs were comfortably depressed.

So this was where Mr. Wood lived! Mr. Wood, instructor in Latin and

Greek at Densmore Academy. It was now borne in on me for the first time

that he did live and have his ties like any other human being, instead

of just appearing magically from nowhere on a platform in a chalky room

at nine every morning, to vanish again in the afternoon. I had formerly

stood in awe of his presence. But now I was suddenly possessed by an

embarrassment, and (shall I say it?) by a commiseration bordering on

contempt for a man who would consent to live thus for the sake of being

a schoolteacher. How strange that civilization should set such a high

value on education and treat its functionaries with such neglect!

Mr. Wood's surprise at seeing me was genuine. For I had never shown

a particular interest in him, nor in the knowledge which he strove to

impart.

“I thought you had forgotten me, Hugh,” he said, and added whimsically:

“most boys do, when they graduate.”

I felt the reproach, which made it the more difficult for me to state my

errand.

“I knew you sometimes took pupils in the evening, Mr. Wood.”

“Pupils,--yes,” he replied, still eyeing me. Suddenly his eyes twinkled.

He had indeed no reason to suspect me of thirsting for learning. “But I

was under the impression that you had gone into business, Hugh.”

“The fact is, sir,” I explained somewhat painfully, “that I am not

satisfied with business. I feel--as if I ought to know more. And I came

to see if you would give me lessons about three nights a week, because I

want to take the Harvard examinations next summer.”

Thus I made it appear, and so persuaded myself, that my ambition had

been prompted by a craving for knowledge. As soon as he could recover

himself he reminded me that he had on many occasions declared I had a

brain.

“Your father must be very happy over this decision of yours,” he said.

That was the point, I told him. It was to be a surprise for my father; I

was to take the examinations first, and inform him afterwards.

To my intense relief, Mr. Wood found the scheme wholly laudable, and

entered into it with zest. He produced examinations of preceding

years from a pigeonhole in his desk, and inside of half an hour the

arrangement was made, the price of the lessons settled. They were well

within my salary, which recently had been raised....

When I went down town, or collecting bills for Breck and Company, I took

a text-book along with me in the street-cars. Now at last I had behind

my studies a driving force. Algebra, Latin, Greek and history became

worth while, means to an end. I astonished Mr. Wood; and sometimes he

would tilt back his chair, take off his spectacles and pull his beard.

“Why in the name of all the sages,” he would demand, “couldn't you have

done this well at school? You might have led your class, instead of

Ralph Hambleton.”

I grew very fond of Mr. Wood, and even of his thin little wife, who

occasionally flitted into the room after we had finished. I fully

intended to keep up with them in after life, but I never did. I forgot

them completely....

My parents were not wholly easy in their minds concerning me; they were

bewildered by the new aspect I presented. For my lately acquired motive

was strong enough to compel me to restrict myself socially, and the

evenings I spent at home were given to study, usually in my own room.

Once I was caught with a Latin grammar: I was just “looking over it,” I

said. My mother sighed. I knew what was in her mind; she had always

been secretly disappointed that I had not been sent to college. And

presently, when my father went out to attend a trustee's meeting, the

impulse to confide in her almost overcame me; I loved her with that

affection which goes out to those whom we feel understand us, but I was

learning to restrain my feelings. She looked at me wistfully.... I knew

that she would insist on telling my father, and thus possibly frustrate

my plans. That I was not discovered was due to a certain quixotic twist

in my father's character. I was working now, and though not actually

earning my own living, he no longer felt justified in prying into my

affairs.

When June arrived, however, my tutor began to show signs that his

conscience was troubling him, and one night he delivered his ultimatum.

The joke had gone far enough, he implied. My intentions, indeed, he

found praiseworthy, but in his opinion it was high time that my father

were informed of them; he was determined to call at my father's office.

The next morning was blue with the presage of showers; blue, too,

with the presage of fate. An interminable morning. My tasks had become

utterly distasteful. And in the afternoon, so when I sat down to make

out invoices, I wrote automatically the names of the familiar customers,

my mind now exalted by hope, now depressed by anxiety. The result of

an interview perhaps even now going on would determine whether or no I

should be immediately released from a slavery I detested. Would Mr.

Wood persuade my father? If not, I was prepared to take more desperate

measures; remain in the grocery business I would not. In the evening,

as I hurried homeward from the corner where the Boyne Street car had

dropped me, I halted suddenly in front of the Peters house, absorbing

the scene where my childhood had been spent: each of these spreading

maples was an old friend, and in these yards I had played and dreamed.

An unaccountable sadness passed over me as I walked on toward our

gate; I entered it, gained the doorway of the house and went upstairs,

glancing into the sitting room. My mother sat by the window, sewing. She

looked up at me with an ineffable expression, in which I read a trace of

tears.

“Hugh!” she exclaimed.

I felt very uncomfortable, and stood looking down at her.

“Why didn't you tell us, my son?” In her voice was in truth reproach;

yet mingled with that was another note, which I think was pride.

“What has father said?” I asked.

“Oh, my dear, he will tell you himself. I--I don't know--he will talk to

you.”

Suddenly she seized my hands and drew me down to her, and then held

me away, gazing into my face with a passionate questioning, her

lips smiling, her eyes wet. What did she see? Was there a subtler

relationship between our natures than I guessed? Did she understand by

some instinctive power the riddle within me? divine through love the

force that was driving me on she knew not whither, nor I? At the sound

of my father's step in the hall she released me. He came in as though

nothing had happened.

“Well, Hugh, are you home?” he said....

Never had I been more impressed, more bewildered by his self-command

than at that time. Save for the fact that my mother talked less than

usual, supper passed as though nothing had happened. Whether I had

shaken him, disappointed him, or gained his reluctant approval I

could not tell. Gradually his outward calmness turned my suspense to

irritation....

But when at length we were alone together, I gained a certain

reassurance. His manner was not severe. He hesitated a little before

beginning.

“I must confess, Hugh; that I scarcely know what to say about this

proceeding of yours. The thing that strikes me most forcibly is that you

might have confided in your mother and myself.”

Hope flashed up within me, like an explosion.

“I--I wanted to surprise you, father. And then, you see, I thought it

would be wiser to find out first how well I was likely to do at the

examinations.”

My father looked at me. Unfortunately he possessed neither a sense of

humour nor a sense of tragedy sufficient to meet such a situation. For

the first time in my life I beheld him at a disadvantage; for I had,

somehow, managed at length to force him out of position, and he was

puzzled. I was quick to play my trump card.

“I have been thinking it over carefully,” I told him, “and I have made

up my mind that I want to go into the law.”

“The law!” he exclaimed sharply.

“Why, yes, sir. I know that you were disappointed because I did not do

sufficiently well at school to go to college and study for the bar.”

I felt indeed a momentary pang, but I remembered that I was fighting for

my freedom.

“You seemed satisfied where you were,” he said in a puzzled voice, “and

your Cousin Robert gives a good account of you.”

“I've tried to do the work as well as I could, sir,” I replied. “But I

don't like the grocery business, or any other business. I have a feeling

that I'm not made for it.”

“And you think, now, that you are made for the law?” he asked, with the

faint hint of a smile.

“Yes, sir, I believe I could succeed at it. I'd like to try,” I replied

modestly.

“You've given up the idiotic notion of wishing to be an author?”

I implied that he himself had convinced me of the futility of such a

wish. I listened to his next words as in a dream.

“I must confess to you, Hugh, that there are times when I fail to

understand you. I hope it is as you say, that you have arrived at a

settled conviction as to your future, and that this is not another of

those caprices to which you have been subject, nor a desire to shirk

honest work. Mr. Wood has made out a strong case for you, and I have

therefore determined to give you a trial. If you pass the examinations

with credit, you may go to college, but if at any time you fail to

make good progress, you come home, and go into business again. Is that

thoroughly understood?”

I said it was, and thanked him effusively.... I had escaped,--the prison

doors had flown open. But it is written that every happiness has

its sting; and my joy, intense though it was, had in it a core of

remorse....

I went downstairs to my mother, who was sitting in the hall by the open

door.

“Father says I may go!” I said.

She got up and took me in her arms.

“My dear, I am so glad, although we shall miss you dreadfully.... Hugh?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Oh, Hugh, I so want you to be a good man!”

Her cry was a little incoherent, but fraught with a meaning that came

home to me, in spite of myself....

A while later I ran over to announce to the amazed Tom Peters that I

was actually going to Harvard with him. He stood in the half-lighted

hallway, his hands in his pockets, blinking at me.

“Hugh, you're a wonder!” he cried. “How in Jehoshaphat did you work

it?”...

I lay long awake that night thinking over the momentous change so soon

to come into my life, wondering exultantly what Nancy Willett would say

now. I was not one, at any rate, to be despised or neglected.

VI.

The following September Tom Peters and I went East together. In the

early morning Boston broke on us like a Mecca as we rolled out of the

old Albany station, joint lords of a “herdic.” How sharply the smell of

the salt-laden east wind and its penetrating coolness come back to me! I

seek in vain for words to express the exhilarating effect of that briny

coolness on my imagination, and of the visions it summoned up of the

newer, larger life into which I had marvellously been transported. We

alighted at the Parker House, full-fledged men of the world, and tried

to act as though the breakfast of which we partook were merely an

incident, not an Event; as though we were Seniors, and not freshmen,

assuming an indifference to the beings by whom we were surrounded and

who were breakfasting, too,--although the nice-looking ones with fresh

faces and trim clothes were all undoubtedly Olympians. The better

to proclaim our nonchalance, we seated ourselves on a lounge of the

marble-paved lobby and smoked cigarettes. This was liberty indeed! At

length we departed for Cambridge, in another herdic.

Boston! Could it be possible? Everything was so different here as to

give the place the aspect of a dream: the Bulfinch State House, the

decorous shops, the still more decorous dwellings with the purple-paned

windows facing the Common; Back Bay, still boarded up, ivy-spread,

suggestive of a mysterious and delectable existence. We crossed the

Charles River, blue-grey and still that morning; traversed a nondescript

district, and at last found ourselves gazing out of the windows at the

mellowed, plum-coloured bricks of the University buildings.... All

at once our exhilaration evaporated as the herdic rumbled into a

side street and backed up before the door of a not-too-inviting,

three-storied house with a queer extension on top. Its steps and

vestibule were, however, immaculate. The bell was answered by a plainly

overworked servant girl, of whom we inquired for Mrs. Bolton, our

landlady. There followed a period of waiting in a parlour from which the

light had been almost wholly banished, with slippery horsehair furniture

and a marble-topped table; and Mrs. Bolton, when she appeared, dressed

in rusty black, harmonized perfectly with the funereal gloom. She was a

tall, rawboned, severe lady with a peculiar red-mottled complexion that

somehow reminded one of the outcropping rocks of her native New England

soil.

“You want to see your rooms, I suppose,” she remarked impassively when

we had introduced ourselves, and as we mounted the stairs behind her

Tom, in a whisper, nicknamed her “Granite Face.” Presently she left us.

“Hospitable soul!” said Tom, who, with his hands in his pockets, was

gazing at the bare walls of our sitting-room. “We'll have to go into

the house-furnishing business, Hughie. I vote we don't linger here

to-day--we'll get melancholia.”

Outside, however, the sun was shining brightly, and we departed

immediately to explore Cambridge and announce our important presences

to the proper authorities.... We went into Boston to dine.... It was

not until nine o'clock in the evening that we returned and the bottom

suddenly dropped out of things. He who has tasted that first, acute

homesickness of college will know what I mean. It usually comes at the

opening of one's trunk. The sight of the top tray gave me a pang I shall

never forget. I would not have believed that I loved my mother so much!

These articles had been packed by her hands; and in one corner, among

the underclothes on which she had neatly sewed my initials, lay the new

Bible she had bought. “Hugh Moreton Paret, from his Mother. September,

1881.” I took it up (Tom was not looking) and tried to read a passage,

but my eyes were blurred. What was it within me that pressed and pressed

until I thought I could bear the pain of it no longer? I pictured the

sitting-room at home, and my father and mother there, thinking of me.

Yes, I must acknowledge it; in the bitterness of that moment I longed

to be back once more in the railed-off space on the floor of Breck and

Company, writing invoices....

Presently, as we went on silently with our unpacking, we became aware of

someone in the doorway.

“Hello, you fellows!” he cried. “We're classmates, I guess.”

We turned to behold an ungainly young man in an ill-fitting blue suit.

His face was pimply, his eyes a Teutonic blue, his yellow hair rumpled,

his naturally large mouth was made larger by a friendly grin.

“I'm Hermann Krebs,” he announced simply. “Who are you?”

We replied, I regret to say, with a distinct coolness that did not seem

to bother him in the least. He advanced into the room, holding out a

large, red, and serviceable hand, evidently it had never dawned on him

that there was such a thing in the world as snobbery. But Tom and I

had been “coached” by Ralph Hambleton and Perry Blackwood, warned to be

careful of our friendships. There was a Reason! In any case Mr. Krebs

would not have appealed to us. In answer to a second question he was

informed what city we hailed from, and he proclaimed himself likewise a

native of our state.

“Why, I'm from Elkington!” he exclaimed, as though the fact sealed

our future relationships. He seated himself on Tom's trunk and added:

“Welcome to old Harvard!”

We felt that he was scarcely qualified to speak for “old Harvard,” but

we did not say so.

“You look as if you'd been pall-bearers for somebody,” was his next

observation.

To this there seemed no possible reply.

“You fellows are pretty well fixed here,” he went on, undismayed, gazing

about a room which had seemed to us the abomination of desolation. “Your

folks must be rich. I'm up under the skylight.”

Even this failed to touch us. His father--he told us with undiminished

candour--had been a German emigrant who had come over in '49, after the

cause of liberty had been lost in the old country, and made eye-glasses

and opera glasses. There hadn't been a fortune in it. He, Hermann,

had worked at various occupations in the summer time, from peddling to

farming, until he had saved enough to start him at Harvard. Tom, who had

been bending over his bureau drawer, straightened up.

“What did you want to come here for?” he demanded.

“Say, what did you?” Mr. Krebs retorted genially. “To get an education,

of course.”

“An education!” echoed Tom.

“Isn't Harvard the oldest and best seat of learning in America?” There

was an exaltation in Krebs's voice that arrested my attention, and made

me look at him again. A troubled chord had been struck within me.

“Sure,” said Tom.

“What did you come for?” Mr. Krebs persisted.

“To sow my wild oats,” said Tom. “I expect to have something of a crop,

too.”

For some reason I could not fathom, it suddenly seemed to dawn on Mr.

Krebs, as a result of this statement, that he wasn't wanted.

“Well, so long,” he said, with a new dignity that curiously belied the

informality of his farewell.

An interval of silence followed his departure.

“Well, he's got a crust!” said Tom, at last.

My own feeling about Mr. Krebs had become more complicated; but I took

my cue from Tom, who dealt with situations simply.

“He'll come in for a few knockouts,” he declared. “Here's to old

Harvard, the greatest institution of learning in America! Oh, gee!”

Our visitor, at least, made us temporarily forget our homesickness, but

it returned with redoubled intensity when we had put out the lights and

gone to bed.

Before we had left home it had been mildly hinted to us by Ralph and

Perry Blackwood that scholarly eminence was not absolutely necessary

to one's welfare and happiness at Cambridge. The hint had been somewhat

superfluous; but the question remained, what was necessary? With a view

of getting some light on this delicate subject we paid a visit the next

evening to our former friends and schoolmates, whose advice was conveyed

with a masterly circumlocution that impressed us both. There are some

things that may not be discussed directly, and the conduct of life at

a modern university--which is a reflection of life in the greater

world--is one of these. Perry Blackwood and Ham did most of the talking,

while Ralph, characteristically, lay at full length on the window-seat,

interrupting with an occasional terse and cynical remark very much to

the point. As a sophomore, he in particular seemed lifted immeasurably

above us, for he was--as might have been expected already a marked

man in his class. The rooms which he shared with his cousin made a

tremendous impression on Tom and me, and seemed palatial in comparison

to our quarters at Mrs. Bolton's, eloquent of the freedom and luxury

of undergraduate existence; their note, perhaps, was struck by the

profusion of gay sofa pillows, then something of an innovation. The

heavy, expensive furniture was of a pattern new to me; and on the mantel

were three or four photographs of ladies in the alluring costume of the

musical stage, in which Tom evinced a particular interest.

“Did grandfather send 'em?” he inquired.

“They're Ham's,” said Ralph, and he contrived somehow to get into those

two words an epitome of his cousin's character. Ham was stouter, and his

clothes were more striking, more obviously expensive than ever.... On

our way homeward, after we had walked a block or two in silence, Tom

exclaimed:--“Don't make friends with the friendless!--eh, Hughie? We

knew enough to begin all right, didn't we?”...

Have I made us out a pair of deliberate, calculating snobs? Well,

after all it must be remembered that our bringing up had not been of

sufficient liberality to include the Krebses of this world. We did not,

indeed, spend much time in choosing and weighing those whom we should

know and those whom we should avoid; and before the first term of that

Freshman year was over Tom had become a favourite. He had the gift of

making men feel that he delighted in their society, that he wished for

nothing better than to sit for hours in their company, content to listen

to the arguments that raged about him. Once in a while he would make a

droll observation that was greeted with fits of laughter. He was always

referred to as “old Tom,” or “good old Tom”; presently, when he began to

pick out chords on the banjo, it was discovered that he had a good tenor

voice, though he could not always be induced to sing.... Somewhat to the

jeopardy of the academic standard that my father expected me to sustain,

our rooms became a rendezvous for many clubable souls whose maudlin,

midnight attempts at harmony often set the cocks crowing.

“Free from care and despair,

What care we?

'Tis wine, 'tis wine

That makes the jollity.”

As a matter of truth, on these occasions it was more often beer; beer

transported thither in Tom's new valise,--given him by his mother,--and

stuffed with snow to keep the bottles cold. Sometimes Granite Face,

adorned in a sky-blue wrapper, would suddenly appear in the doorway to

declare that we were a disgrace to her respectable house: the university

authorities should be informed, etc., etc. Poor woman, we were

outrageously inconsiderate of her.... One evening as we came through

the hall we caught a glimpse in the dimly lighted parlour of a young

man holding a shy and pale little girl on his lap, Annie, Mrs. Bolton's

daughter: on the face of our landlady was an expression I had never seen

there, like a light. I should scarcely have known her. Tom and I paused

at the foot of the stairs. He clutched my arm.

“Darned if it wasn't our friend Krebs!” he whispered.

While I was by no means so popular as Tom, I got along fairly well.

I had escaped from provincialism, from the obscure purgatory of the

wholesale grocery business; new vistas, exciting and stimulating, had

been opened up; nor did I offend the sensibilities and prejudices of

the new friends I made, but gave a hearty consent to a code I found

congenial. I recognized in the social system of undergraduate life at

Harvard a reflection of that of a greater world where I hoped some

day to shine; yet my ambition did not prey upon me. Mere conformity,

however, would not have taken me very far in a sphere from which I, in

common with many others, desired not to be excluded.... One day, in an

idle but inspired moment, I paraphrased a song from “Pinafore,” applying

it to a college embroglio, and the brief and lively vogue it enjoyed was

sufficient to indicate a future usefulness. I had “found myself.” This

was in the last part of the freshman year, and later on I became a sort

of amateur, class poet-laureate. Many were the skits I composed, and Tom

sang them....

During that freshman year we often encountered Hermann Krebs, whistling

merrily, on the stairs.

“Got your themes done?” he would inquire cheerfully.

And Tom would always mutter, when he was out of earshot: “He has got a

crust!”

When I thought about Krebs at all,--and this was seldom indeed,--his

manifest happiness puzzled me. Our cool politeness did not seem to

bother him in the least; on the contrary, I got the impression that

it amused him. He seemed to have made no friends. And after that first

evening, memorable for its homesickness, he never ventured to repeat his

visit to us.

One windy November day I spied his somewhat ludicrous figure striding

ahead of me, his trousers above his ankles. I was bundled up in a new

ulster,--of which I was secretly quite proud,--but he wore no overcoat

at all.

“Well, how are you getting along?” I asked, as I overtook him.

He made clear, as he turned, his surprise that I should have addressed

him at all, but immediately recovered himself.

“Oh, fine,” he responded. “I've had better luck than I expected. I'm

correspondent for two or three newspapers. I began by washing windows,

and doing odd jobs for the professors' wives.” He laughed. “I guess that

doesn't strike you as good luck.”

He showed no resentment at my patronage, but a self-sufficiency that

made my sympathy seem superfluous, giving the impression of an inner

harmony and content that surprised me.

“I needn't ask how you're getting along,” he said....

At the end of the freshman year we abandoned Mrs. Bolton's for more

desirable quarters.

I shall not go deeply into my college career, recalling only such

incidents as, seen in the retrospect, appear to have had significance. I

have mentioned my knack for song-writing; but it was not, I think, until

my junior year there was startlingly renewed in me my youthful desire to

write, to create something worth while, that had so long been dormant.

The inspiration came from Alonzo Cheyne, instructor in English; a

remarkable teacher, in spite of the finicky mannerisms which Tom

imitated. And when, in reading aloud certain magnificent passages, he

forgot his affectations, he managed to arouse cravings I thought to have

deserted me forever. Was it possible, after all, that I had been right

and my father wrong? that I might yet be great in literature?

A mere hint from Alonzo Cheyne was more highly prized by the grinds

than fulsome praise from another teacher. And to his credit it should

be recorded that the grinds were the only ones he treated with any

seriousness; he took pains to answer their questions; but towards the

rest of us, the Chosen, he showed a thinly veiled contempt. None so

quick as he to detect a simulated interest, or a wily effort to make him

ridiculous; and few tried this a second time, for he had a rapier-like

gift of repartee that transfixed the offender like a moth on a pin. He

had a way of eyeing me at times, his glasses in his hand, a queer smile

on his lips, as much as to imply that there was one at least among the

lost who was made for better things. Not that my work was poor, but I

knew that it might have been better. Out of his classes, however, beyond

the immediate, disturbing influence of his personality I would relapse

into indifference....

Returning one evening to our quarters, which were now in the “Yard,”

I found Tom seated with a blank sheet before him, thrusting his hand

through his hair and biting the end of his penholder to a pulp. In his

muttering, which was mixed with the curious, stingless profanity of

which he was master, I caught the name of Cheyne, and I knew that he

was facing the crisis of a fortnightly theme. The subject assigned was a

narrative of some personal experience, and it was to be handed in on the

morrow. My own theme was already, written.

“I've been holding down this chair for an hour, and I can't seem to

think of a thing.” He rose to fling himself down on the lounge. “I wish

I was in Canada.”

“Why Canada?”

“Trout fishing with Uncle Jake at that club of his where he took me last

summer.” Tom gazed dreamily at the ceiling. “Whenever I have some darned

foolish theme like this to write I want to go fishing, and I want to go

like the devil. I'll get Uncle Jake to take you, too, next summer.”

“I wish you would.”

“Say, that's living all right, Hughie, up there among the tamaracks and

balsams!” And he began, for something like the thirtieth time, to relate

the adventures of the trip.

As he talked, the idea presented itself to me with sudden fascination

to use this incident as the subject of Tom's theme; to write it for him,

from his point of view, imitating the droll style he would have had if

he had been able to write; for, when he was interested in any matter,

his oral narrative did not lack vividness. I began to ask him questions:

what were the trees like, for instance? How did the French-Canadian

guides talk? He had the gift of mimicry: aided by a partial knowledge of

French I wrote down a few sentences as they sounded. The canoe had upset

and he had come near drowning. I made him describe his sensations.

“I'll write your theme for you,” I exclaimed, when he had finished.

“Gee, not about that!”

“Why not? It's a personal experience.”

His gratitude was pathetic.... By this time I was so full of the subject

that it fairly clamoured for expression, and as I wrote the hours flew.

Once in a while I paused to ask him a question as he sat with his chair

tilted back and his feet on the table, reading a detective story. I

sketched in the scene with bold strokes; the desolate bois brule on the

mountain side, the polished crystal surface of the pool broken here

and there with the circles left by rising fish; I pictured Armand,

the guide, his pipe between his teeth, holding the canoe against the

current; and I seemed to smell the sharp tang of the balsams, to hear

the roar of the rapids below. Then came the sudden hooking of the big

trout, habitant oaths from Armand, bouleversement, wetness, darkness,

confusion; a half-strangled feeling, a brief glimpse of green things and

sunlight, and then strangulation, or what seemed like it; strangulation,

the sense of being picked up and hurled by a terrific force whither? a

blinding whiteness, in which it was impossible to breathe, one sharp,

almost unbearable pain, then another, then oblivion.... Finally,

awakening, to be confronted by a much worried Uncle Jake.

By this time the detective story had fallen to the floor, and Tom was

huddled up in his chair, asleep. He arose obediently and wrapped a wet

towel around his head, and began to write. Once he paused long enough to

mutter:--“Yes, that's about it,--that's the way I felt!” and set to work

again, mechanically,--all the praise I got for what I deemed a literary

achievement of the highest order! At three o'clock, a.m., he finished,

pulled off his clothes automatically and tumbled into bed. I had no

desire for sleep. My brain was racing madly, like an engine without a

governor. I could write! I could write! I repeated the words over and

over to myself. All the complexities of my present life were blotted

out, and I beheld only the long, sweet vista of the career for which

I was now convinced that nature had intended me. My immediate fortunes

became unimportant, immaterial. No juice of the grape I had ever

tasted made me half so drunk.... With the morning, of course, came the

reaction, and I suffered the after sensations of an orgie, awaking to a

world of necessity, cold and grey and slushy, and necessity alone made

me rise from my bed. My experience of the night before might have taught

me that happiness lies in the trick of transforming necessity, but it

did not. The vision had faded,--temporarily, at least; and such was the

distraction of the succeeding days that the subject of the theme passed

from my mind....

One morning Tom was later than usual in getting home. I was writing a

letter when he came in, and did not notice him, yet I was vaguely aware

of his standing over me. When at last I looked up I gathered from his

expression that something serious had happened, so mournful was his

face, and yet so utterly ludicrous.

“Say, Hugh, I'm in the deuce of a mess,” he announced.

“What's the matter?” I inquired.

He sank down on the table with a groan.

“It's Alonzo,” he said.

Then I remembered the theme.

“What--what's he done?” I demanded.

“He says I must become a writer. Think of it, me a writer! He says I'm a

young Shakespeare, that I've been lazy and hid my light under a bushel!

He says he knows now what I can do, and if I don't keep up the quality,

he'll know the reason why, and write a personal letter to my father. Oh,

hell!”

In spite of his evident anguish, I was seized with a convulsive

laughter. Tom stood staring at me moodily.

“You think it's funny,--don't you? I guess it is, but what's going to

become of me? That's what I want to know. I've been in trouble before,

but never in any like this. And who got me into it? You!”

Here was gratitude!

“You've got to go on writing 'em, now.” His voice became desperately

pleading. “Say, Hugh, old man, you can temper 'em down--temper 'em

down gradually. And by the end of the year, let's say, they'll be about

normal again.”

He seemed actually shivering.

“The end of the year!” I cried, the predicament striking me for the

first time in its fulness. “Say, you've got a crust!”

“You'll do it, if I have to hold a gun over you,” he announced grimly.

Mingled with my anxiety, which was real, was an exultation that

would not down. Nevertheless, the idea of developing Tom into a

Shakespeare,--Tom, who had not the slightest desire to be one I was

appalling, besides having in it an element of useless self-sacrifice

from which I recoiled. On the other hand, if Alonzo should discover that

I had written his theme, there were penalties I did not care to dwell

upon.... With such a cloud hanging over me I passed a restless night.

As luck would have it the very next evening in the level light under the

elms of the Square I beheld sauntering towards me a dapper figure which

I recognized as that of Mr. Cheyne himself. As I saluted him he gave me

an amused and most disconcerting glance; and when I was congratulating

myself that he had passed me he stopped.

“Fine weather for March, Paret,” he observed.

“Yes, sir,” I agreed in a strange voice.

“By the way,” he remarked, contemplating the bare branches above our

heads, “that was an excellent theme your roommate handed in. I had no

idea that he possessed such--such genius. Did you, by any chance, happen

to read it?”

“Yes, sir,--I read it.”

“Weren't you surprised?” inquired Mr. Cheyne.

“Well, yes, sir--that is--I mean to say he talks just like that,

sometimes--that is, when it's anything he cares about.”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Cheyne. “That's interesting, most interesting. In

all my experience, I do not remember a case in which a gift has been

developed so rapidly. I don't want to give the impression--ah that there

is no room for improvement, but the thing was very well done, for

an undergraduate. I must confess I never should have suspected it in

Peters, and it's most interesting what you say about his cleverness

in conversation.” He twirled the head of his stick, apparently lost in

reflection. “I may be wrong,” he went on presently, “I have an idea

it is you--” I must literally have jumped away from him. He paused a

moment, without apparently noticing my panic, “that it is you who have

influenced Peters.”

“Sir?”

“I am wrong, then. Or is this merely commendable modesty on your part?”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“Then my hypothesis falls to the ground. I had greatly hoped,” he added

meaningly, “that you might be able to throw some light on this mystery.”

I was dumb.

“Paret,” he asked, “have you time to come over to my rooms for a few

minutes this evening?”

“Certainly, sir.”

He gave me his number in Brattle Street....

Like one running in a nightmare and making no progress I made my way

home, only to learn from Hallam,--who lived on the same floor,--that

Tom had inconsiderately gone to Boston for the evening, with four other

weary spirits in search of relaxation! Avoiding our club table, I took

what little nourishment I could at a modest restaurant, and restlessly

paced the moonlit streets until eight o'clock, when I found myself

in front of one of those low-gabled colonial houses which, on less

soul-shaking occasions, had exercised a great charm on my imagination.

My hand hung for an instant over the bell.... I must have rung it

violently, for there appeared almost immediately an old lady in a lace

cap, who greeted me with gentle courtesy, and knocked at a little door

with glistening panels. The latch was lifted by Mr. Cheyne himself.

“Come in, Paret,” he said, in a tone that was unexpectedly hospitable.

I have rarely seen a more inviting room. A wood fire burned brightly

on the brass andirons, flinging its glare on the big, white beam that

crossed the ceiling, and reddening the square panes of the windows in

their panelled recesses. Between these were rows of books,--attractive

books in chased bindings, red and blue; books that appealed to be taken

down and read. There was a table covered with reviews and magazines in

neat piles, and a lamp so shaded as to throw its light only on the white

blotter of the pad. Two easy chairs, covered with flowered chintz, were

ranged before the fire, in one of which I sank, much bewildered, upon

being urged to do so.

I utterly failed to recognize “Alonzo” in this new atmosphere. And

he had, moreover, dropped the subtly sarcastic manner I was wont to

associate with him.

“Jolly old house, isn't it?” he observed, as though I had casually

dropped in on him for a chat; and he stood, with his hands behind him

stretched to the blaze, looking down at me. “It was built by a certain

Colonel Draper, who fought at Louisburg, and afterwards fled to England

at the time of the Revolution. He couldn't stand the patriots, I'm not

so sure that I blame him, either. Are you interested in colonial things,

Mr. Paret?”

I said I was. If the question had concerned Aztec relics my answer would

undoubtedly have been the same. And I watched him, dazedly, while he

took down a silver porringer from the shallow mantel shelf.

“It's not a Revere,” he said, in a slightly apologetic tone as though to

forestall a comment, “but it's rather good, I think. I picked it up at

a sale in Dorchester. But I have never been able to identify the coat of

arms.”

He showed me a ladle, with the names of “Patience and William Simpson”

engraved quaintly thereon, and took down other articles in which I

managed to feign an interest. Finally he seated himself in the chair

opposite, crossed his feet, putting the tips of his fingers together and

gazing into the fire.

“So you thought you could fool me,” he said, at length.

I became aware of the ticking of a great clock in the corner. My mouth

was dry.

“I am going to forgive you,” he went on, more gravely, “for several

reasons. I don't flatter, as you know. It's because you carried out the

thing so perfectly that I am led to think you have a gift that may be

cultivated, Paret. You wrote that theme in the way Peters would

have written it if he had not been--what shall I say?--scripturally

inarticulate. And I trust it may do you some good if I say it was

something of a literary achievement, if not a moral one.”

“Thank you, sir,” I faltered.

“Have you ever,” he inquired, lapsing a little into his lecture-room

manner, “seriously thought of literature as a career? Have you ever

thought of any career seriously?”

“I once wished to be a writer, sir,” I replied tremulously, but

refrained from telling him of my father's opinion of the profession.

Ambition--a purer ambition than I had known for years--leaped within me

at his words. He, Alonzo Cheyne, had detected in me the Promethean fire!

I sat there until ten o'clock talking to the real Mr. Cheyne, a human

Mr. Cheyne unknown in the lecture-room. Nor had I suspected one in

whom cynicism and distrust of undergraduates (of my sort) seemed so

ingrained, of such idealism. He did not pour it out in preaching;

delicately, unobtrusively and on the whole rather humorously he managed

to present to me in a most disillusionizing light that conception of the

university held by me and my intimate associates. After I had left him

I walked the quiet streets to behold as through dissolving mists another

Harvard, and there trembled in my soul like the birth-struggle of a

flame something of the vision later to be immortalized by St. Gaudens,

the spirit of Harvard responding to the spirit of the Republic--to the

call of Lincoln, who voiced it. The place of that bronze at the corner

of Boston Common was as yet empty, but I have since stood before it to

gaze in wonder at the light shining in darkness on mute, uplifted faces,

black faces! at Harvard's son leading them on that the light might live

and prevail.

I, too, longed for a Cause into which I might fling myself, in which

I might lose myself... I halted on the sidewalk to find myself staring

from the opposite side of the street at a familiar house, my old

landlady's, Mrs. Bolton's, and summoned up before me was the tired,

smiling face of Hermann Krebs. Was it because when he had once spoken so

crudely of the University I had seen the reflection of her spirit in his

eyes? A light still burned in the extension roof--Krebs's light; another

shone dimly through the ground glass of the front door. Obeying a sudden

impulse, I crossed the street.

Mrs. Bolton, in the sky-blue wrapper, and looking more forbidding

than ever, answered the bell. Life had taught her to be indifferent to

surprises, and it was I who became abruptly embarrassed.

“Oh, it's you, Mr. Paret,” she said, as though I had been a frequent

caller. I had never once darkened her threshold since I had left her

house.

“Yes,” I answered, and hesitated.... “Is Mr. Krebs in?”

“Well,” she replied in a lifeless tone, which nevertheless had in it a

touch of bitterness, “I guess there's no reason why you and your friends

should have known he was sick.”

“Sick!” I repeated. “Is he very sick?”

“I calculate he'll pull through,” she said. “Sunday the doctor gave him

up. And no wonder! He hasn't had any proper food since he's be'n here!”

She paused, eyeing me. “If you'll excuse me, Mr. Paret, I was just going

up to him when you rang.”

“Certainly,” I replied awkwardly. “Would you be so kind as to tell

him--when he's well enough--that I came to see him, and that I'm sorry?”

There was another pause, and she stood with a hand defensively clutching

the knob.

“Yes, I'll tell him,” she said.

With a sense of having been baffled, I turned away.

Walking back toward the Yard my attention was attracted by a slowly

approaching cab whose occupants were disturbing the quiet of the night

with song.

“Shollity--'tis wine, 'tis wine, that makesh--shollity.”

The vehicle drew up in front of a new and commodious building,--I

believe the first of those designed to house undergraduates who were

willing to pay for private bathrooms and other modern luxuries; out

of one window of the cab protruded a pair of shoeless feet, out of the

other a hatless head I recognized as belonging to Tom Peters; hence I

surmised that the feet were his also. The driver got down from the

box, and a lively argument was begun inside--for there were other

occupants--as to how Mr. Peters was to be disembarked; and I gathered

from his frequent references to the “Shgyptian obelisk” that the

engineering problem presented struck him as similar to the unloading of

Cleopatra's Needle.

“Careful, careful!” he cautioned, as certain expelling movements began

from within, “Easy, Ham, you jam-fool, keep the door shut, y'll break

me.”

“Now, Jerry, all heave sh'gether!” exclaimed a voice from the blackness

of the interior.

“Will ye wait a minute, Mr. Durrett, sir?” implored the cabdriver.

“You'll be after ruining me cab entirely.” (Loud roars and vigorous

resistance from the obelisk, the cab rocking violently.) “This

gintleman” (meaning me) “will have him by the head, and I'll get hold of

his feet, sir.” Which he did, after a severe kick in the stomach.

“Head'sh all right, Martin.”

“To be sure it is, Mr. Peters. Now will ye rest aisy awhile, sir?”

“I'm axphyxiated,” cried another voice from the darkness, the mined

voice of Jerome Kyme, our classmate.

“Get the tackles under him!” came forth in commanding tones from

Conybear.

In the meantime many windows had been raised and much gratuitous

advice was being given. The three occupants of the cab's seat who

had previously clamoured for Mr. Peters' removal, now inconsistently

resisted it; suddenly he came out with a jerk, and we had him fairly

upright on the pavement minus a collar and tie and the buttons of his

evening waistcoat. Those who remained in the cab engaged in a riotous

game of hunt the slipper, while Tom peered into the dark interior,

observing gravely the progress of the sport. First flew out an overcoat

and a much-battered hat, finally the pumps, all of which in due time

were adjusted to his person, and I started home with him, with much

parting counsel from the other three.

“Whereinell were you, Hughie?” he inquired. “Hunted all over for you.

Had a sousin' good time. Went to Babcock's--had champagne--then to see

Babesh in--th'--Woods. Ham knows one of the Babesh had supper with four

of 'em. Nice Babesh!”

“For heaven's sake don't step on me again!” I cried.

“Sh'poloshize, old man. But y'know I'm William Shakespheare. C'n do

what I damplease.” He halted in the middle of the street and recited

dramatically:--

“'Not marble, nor th' gilded monuments

Of prinches sh'll outlive m' powerful rhyme.'”

“How's that, Alonzho, b'gosh?”

“Where did you learn it?” I demanded, momentarily forgetting his

condition.

“Fr'm Ralph,” he replied, “says I wrote it. Can't remember....”

After I had got him to bed,--a service I had learned to perform with

more or less proficiency,--I sat down to consider the events of the

evening, to attempt to get a proportional view. The intensity of my

disgust was not hypocritical as I gazed through the open door into the

bedroom and recalled the times when I, too, had been in that condition.

Tom Peters drunk, and sleeping it off, was deplorable, without doubt;

but Hugh Paret drunk was detestable, and had no excuse whatever. Nor

did I mean by this to set myself on a higher ethical plane, for I

felt nothing but despair and humility. In my state of clairvoyance

I perceived that he was a better man, than I, and that his lapses

proceeded from a love of liquor and the transcendent sense of

good-fellowship that liquor brings.

VII.

The crisis through which I passed at Cambridge, inaugurated by the

events I have just related, I find very difficult to portray. It was a

religious crisis, of course, and my most pathetic memory concerning it

is of the vain attempts to connect my yearnings and discontents with

the theology I had been taught; I began in secret to read my Bible, yet

nothing I hit upon seemed to point a way out of my present predicament,

to give any definite clew to the solution of my life. I was not mature

enough to reflect that orthodoxy was a Sunday religion unrelated to a

world whose wheels were turned by the motives of self-interest; that it

consisted of ideals not deemed practical, since no attempt was made

to put them into practice in the only logical manner,--by reorganizing

civilization to conform with them. The implication was that the

Christ who had preached these ideals was not practical.... There were

undoubtedly men in the faculty of the University who might have helped

me had I known of them; who might have given me, even at that time,

a clew to the modern, logical explanation of the Bible as an immortal

record of the thoughts and acts of men who had sought to do just what

I was seeking to do,--connect the religious impulse to life and make

it fruitful in life: an explanation, by the way, a thousand-fold more

spiritual than the old. But I was hopelessly entangled in the meshes

of the mystic, the miraculous and supernatural. If I had analyzed my

yearnings, I might have realized that I wanted to renounce the life I

had been leading, not because it was sinful, but because it was aimless.

I had not learned that the Greek word for sin is “a missing of the

mark.” Just aimlessness! I had been stirred with the desire to perform

some service for which the world would be grateful: to write great

literature, perchance. But it had never been suggested to me that such

swellings of the soul are religious, that religion is that kind of

feeling, of motive power that drives the writer and the scientist, the

statesman and the sculptor as well as the priest and the Prophet to

serve mankind for the joy of serving: that religion is creative, or

it is nothing: not mechanical, not a force imposed from without, but a

driving power within. The “religion” I had learned was salvation from

sin by miracle: sin a deliberate rebellion, not a pathetic missing of

the mark of life; useful service of man, not the wandering of untutored

souls who had not been shown the way. I felt religious. I wanted to go

to church, I wanted to maintain, when it was on me, that exaltation I

dimly felt as communion with a higher power, with God, and which also

was identical with my desire to write, to create....

I bought books, sets of Wordsworth and Keats, of Milton and Shelley

and Shakespeare, and hid them away in my bureau drawers lest Tom and my

friends should see them. These too I read secretly, making excuses for

not joining in the usual amusements. Once I walked to Mrs. Bolton's and

inquired rather shamefacedly for Hermann Krebs, only to be informed that

he had gone out.... There were lapses, of course, when I went off on

the old excursions,--for the most part the usual undergraduate follies,

though some were of a more serious nature; on these I do not care to

dwell. Sex was still a mystery.... Always I awoke afterwards to bitter

self-hatred and despair.... But my work in English improved, and I

earned the commendation and friendship of Mr. Cheyne. With a wisdom

for which I was grateful he was careful not to give much sign of it

in classes, but the fact that he was “getting soft on me” was evident

enough to be regarded with suspicion. Indeed the state into which I had

fallen became a matter of increasing concern to my companions, who tried

every means from ridicule to sympathy, to discover its cause and shake

me out of it. The theory most accepted was that I was in love.

“Come on now, Hughie--tell me who she is. I won't give you away,” Tom

would beg. Once or twice, indeed, I had imagined I was in love with the

sisters of Boston classmates whose dances I attended; to these parties

Tom, not having overcome his diffidence in respect to what he called

“social life,” never could be induced to go.

It was Ralph who detected the true cause of my discontent. Typical as no

other man I can recall of the code to which we had dedicated ourselves,

the code that moulded the important part of the undergraduate world

and defied authority, he regarded any defection from it in the light of

treason. An instructor, in a fit of impatience, had once referred to

him as the Mephistopheles of his class; he had fatal attractions, and a

remarkable influence. His favourite pastime was the capricious exercise

of his will on weaker characters, such as his cousin, Ham Durrett; if

they “swore off,” Ralph made it his business to get them drunk again,

and having accomplished this would proceed himself to administer a new

oath and see that it was kept. Alcohol seemed to have no effect whatever

on him. Though he was in the class above me, I met him frequently at a

club to which I had the honour to belong, then a suite of rooms over a

shop furnished with a pool and a billiard table, easy-chairs and a bar.

It has since achieved the dignity of a house of its own.

We were having, one evening, a “religious” argument, Cinibar, Laurens

and myself and some others. I can't recall how it began; I think

Cinibar had attacked the institution of compulsory chapel, which nobody

defended; there was something inherently wrong, he maintained, with a

religion to which men had to be driven against their wills. Somewhat to

my surprise I found myself defending a Christianity out of which I had

been able to extract but little comfort and solace. Neither Laurens

nor Conybear, however, were for annihilating it: although they took

the other side of the discussion of a subject of which none of us knew

anything, their attacks were but half-hearted; like me, they were still

under the spell exerted by a youthful training.

We were all of us aware of Ralph, who sat at some distance looking over

the pages of an English sporting weekly. Presently he flung it down.

“Haven't you found out yet that man created God, Hughie?” he inquired.

“And even if there were a personal God, what reason have you to think

that man would be his especial concern, or any concern of his whatever?

The discovery of evolution has knocked your Christianity into a cocked

hat.”

I don't remember how I answered him. In spite of the superficiality

of his own arguments, which I was not learned enough to detect, I was

ingloriously routed. Darwin had kicked over the bucket, and that was all

there was to it.... After we had left the club both Conybear and Laurens

admitted they were somewhat disturbed, declaring that Ralph had gone too

far. I spent a miserable night, recalling the naturalistic assertions

he had made so glibly, asking myself again and again how it was that the

religion to which I so vainly clung had no greater effect on my actions

and on my will, had not prevented me from lapses into degradation. And

I hated myself for having argued upon a subject that was still sacred.

I believed in Christ, which is to say that I believed that in some

inscrutable manner he existed, continued to dominate the world and had

suffered on my account.

To whom should I go now for a confirmation of my wavering beliefs? One

of the results--it will be remembered of religion as I was taught it

was a pernicious shyness, and even though I had found a mentor and

confessor, I might have hesitated to unburden myself. This would be

different from arguing with Ralph Hambleton. In my predicament, as I was

wandering through the yard, I came across a notice of an evening talk

to students in Holder Chapel, by a clergyman named Phillips Brooks. This

was before the time, let me say in passing, when his sermons at Harvard

were attended by crowds of undergraduates. Well, I stood staring at the

notice, debating whether I should go, trying to screw up my courage; for

I recognized clearly that such a step, if it were to be of any value,

must mean a distinct departure from my present mode of life; and I

recall thinking with a certain revulsion that I should have to “turn

good.” My presence at the meeting would be known the next day to all my

friends, for the idea of attending a religious gathering when one was

not forced to do so by the authorities was unheard of in our set. I

should be classed with the despised “pious ones” who did such things

regularly. I shrank from the ridicule. I had, however, heard of Mr.

Brooks from Ned Symonds, who was by no means of the pious type, and

whose parents attended Mr. Brooks's church in Boston.... I left my

decision in abeyance. But when evening came I stole away from the club

table, on the plea of an engagement, and made my way rapidly toward

Holder Chapel. I had almost reached it--when I caught a glimpse of

Symonds and of some others approaching,--and I went on, to turn again.

By this time the meeting, which was in a room on the second floor, had

already begun. Palpitating, I climbed the steps; the door of the

room was slightly ajar; I looked in; I recall a distinct sensation of

surprise,--the atmosphere of that meeting was so different from what

I had expected. Not a “pious” atmosphere at all! I saw a very tall

and heavy gentleman, dressed in black, who sat, wholly at ease, on the

table! One hand was in his pocket, one foot swung clear of the ground;

and he was not preaching, but talking in an easy, conversational tone to

some forty young men who sat intent on his words. I was too excited to

listen to what he was saying, I was making a vain attempt to classify

him. But I remember the thought, for it struck me with force,--that

if Christianity were so thoroughly discredited by evolution, as Ralph

Hambleton and other agnostics would have one believe, why should this

remarkably sane and able-looking person be standing up for it as though

it were still an established and incontrovertible fact?