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."