When Stover returned after the summer vacation to the full glory of a
sophomore, he had changed in many ways. The consciousness of success had
given him certain confidence and authority, which, if it was more of the
manner than real, nevertheless was noticeable. He had aged five or six
years, as one ages at that time under the grave responsibilities of an
exalted leadership.
A great change likewise had come in his plans. During the summer Tough
McCarthy's father had died, and Tough had been forced to forego his
college course and take up at once the seriousness of life. Several
offers had been made Dink to go in with Hungerford, Tommy Bain, and
others of his crowd, but he had decided to room by himself, for a time
at least. The decision had come to him as the result of a growing
feeling of restlessness, an instinctive desire to be by himself and know
again that shy friend Dink Stover, who somehow seemed to have slipped
away from him.
Much to his surprise, this feeling of restlessness dominated all other
emotions on his victorious return to college. He felt strangely alone.
Every one in the class greeted him with rushing enthusiasm, inquired
critically of his weight and condition, and passed on. His progress
across the campus was halted at every moment by acclaiming groups, who
ran to him, pumping his hand, slapping him on the back, exclaiming:
"You, old Dink Stover!"
"Bless your heart."
"Put it there."
"Glad to see you again."
"How are you?"
"You look fit as a fiddle!"
"The All-American this year!"
"Hard luck about McCarthy."
"Ta-ta."
His was the popular welcome, and yet it left him unsatisfied, with a
strange tugging at his heart. They were all acquaintances, nothing more.
He went to his room on the second floor in Lawrence, and, finding his
way over the bare floor and the boxes that encumbered, reached the
window and flung it open.
Below the different fences had disappeared under the joyful, hilarious
groups that swarmed about them. He saw Swazey and Pike, two of the
grinds of his own class, men who "didn't count," go past hugging each
other, and their joy, comical though it was, hurt him. He turned from
the window, saying aloud, sternly, as though commanding himself:
"Come, I must get this hole fixed up. It's gloomy as the devil."
He worked feverishly, ripping apart the covers, ranging the furniture,
laying the rugs. Then he put in order his bedroom, and, whistling
loudly, fished out his bedclothes, laid the bed, and arranged his
bureau-top. That done, he brought forth several photographs he had taken
in the brief visit he had paid the Storys, and placing them in the
position of honor lit his pipe and, camping on a dry-goods box, like
Scipio amid the ruins of Carthage, dreamily considered through the
smoke-wreaths the distant snap-shots of a slender girl in white.
He was comfortably, satisfactorily in love with Jean Story. The emotion
filled a sentimental want in his nature. He had never asked her for her
photograph or to correspond, as he would have lightly asked a hundred
other girls. He knew instinctively that she would have refused. He liked
that in her--her dignity and her reserve. He wanted her regard, as he
always wanted what others found difficult to attain. She was young and
yet with an old head on her shoulders. In the two weeks he had spent in
camp, they had discussed much together of what lay ahead beyond the
confines of college life. He did not always understand her point of
view. He often wondered what was the doubt that lay in her mind about
him. For, though she had given him a measure of her friendship, there
was always a reserve, something held back. It was the same with Bob. It
puzzled him; it irritated him. He was resolved to beat down that
barrier, to shatter it some way and somehow, as he was resolved that Jim
Hunter, whose intentions were clear, should never beat him out in this
race.
He rose, pipe in mouth, and, taking up a photograph, stared at the
laughing face and the quiet, proud tilt of the head.
"At any rate," he said to himself, "Jim Hunter hasn't got any more than
this, and he never will."
He went back to the study, delving into the packing-boxes. From below
came a stentorian halloo he knew well:
"Oh, Dink Stover, stick out your head!"
"Come up, you, Tom Regan, come up on the jump!"
In another moment Regan was in the room, and his great bear clutch
brought Stover a feeling of warmth with its genuineness.
"Bigger than ever, Tom."
"You look fine yourself, you little bantam!"
"Lord, but I'm glad to see you!"
"Same to you."
"How'd the summer go?"
"Wonderful. I've got four hundred tucked away in the bank."
"You don't say so!"
"Fact."
Stover shook hands again eagerly.
"Tell me all about it."
"Sure. Go on with your unpacking; I'll lend a hand. I've had a bully
summer."
"What's that mean?" said Stover, with a quizzical smile. "Working like a
slave?"
"No, no; seeing real people. I tried being a conductor a while, got in a
strike, and switched over to construction work. Got to be foreman of a
gang, night shift."
"You don't mean out all night?"
"Oh, I slept in the day. You get used to it. They're a strange lot, the
fellows who work while the rest of you sleep. They brushed me up a lot,
taught me a lot. Wish you'd been along. You'd have got some education."
"I may do something of the sort with you next summer," said Stover
quietly.
"They tell me Tough McCarthy's not coming back."
"Yes; father died."
"Too bad. Going to room alone?"
"For a while. I want to get away--think things over a bit, read some."
"Good idea," said Regan, with one of his sharp appraising looks. "If a
man's given a thinker, he might just as well use it."
Hungerford and Bob Story joined them, and the four went down to Mory's
to take possession in the name of the sophomore class. Regan, to their
surprise, making one of the party, paid as they paid, with just a touch
of conscious pride.
The good resolves that Dink made to himself, under the influence of the
acute emotions he had felt on his return, gradually faded from his
memory as he felt himself caught up again in the rush of college life.
He found his day marked out for him, his companions assigned to him, his
standards and his opinions inherited from his predecessors. Insensibly
he became a cog in the machine. What with football practise and visiting
the freshman class in the interest of his society, he found he was able
to keep awake long enough to get a smattering of the next day's work and
no more.
The class had scattered and groups with clear tendencies had formed,
Hunter and Tommy Bain the center of little camps serious and ambitious,
while off the campus in a private dormitory another element was pursuing
mannish delights with the least annoyance from the curriculum.
The opposition to the sophomore societies had now grown to a college
issue. Protests from the alumni began to come in; one of the editors of
the _Lit_ made it the subject of his leader, while the college, under
the leadership of rebels like Gimbel, arrayed itself in uncompromising
opposition and voted down every candidate for office that the sophomore
societies placed in the field.
That the situation was serious and working harm to the college Stover
saw, but, as the fight became more bitter, the feeling of loyalty,
coupled with distrust of the motives of the assailants, placed him in
the ranks of the most ardent defenders, where, a little to his surprise,
he found himself rather arrayed with Tommy Bain and Jim Hunter in their
position of unrelenting conservatism, fighting the revolt which was
making head in the society itself, as Bob Story and Joe Hungerford led
the demand for some liberal reform.
However, the conflict did not break out until the close of the season.
The team, under the resolute leadership of Captain Dudley, fought its
way to one of those almost miraculous successes which is not
characteristic of the Yale system as it is the result of the inspiring
guidance of some one extraordinary personality.
Regan went from guard to tackle, and Stover, back at his natural
position of end, developed the promise of freshman year, acclaimed as
the All-American end of the year. Still the possibility of Regan's
challenge for the captaincy returned constantly to his mind, for about
the big tackle was always a feeling of confidence, of rugged, immovable
determination that perhaps in its steadying influence had built up the
team more than his own individual brilliancy. Dink, despite himself,
felt the force of these masterful qualities, acknowledging them even as,
to his displeasure, he felt a rising jealousy; for at the bottom he was
drawn more and more to Regan as he was drawn to no other man.
About a month after the triumphant close of the football season, then,
Stover, in the usual course of a thoroughly uneventful morning, rose as
rebelliously late as usual, bolted his breakfast, and rushed to chapel.
He was humanly elated with what the season had brought, a fame which had
gone the rounds of the press of the country for unflinching courage and
cold head-work, but, more than that, he was pleasantly satisfied with
the difficult modesty with which he bore his honors. For he was modest.
He had sworn to himself he would be, and he was. He had allowed it to
make no difference in his relations with the rest of the class. If
anything, he was more careful to distribute the cordiality of his smile
and the good-natured "How are you?" to all alike without the slightest
distinction.
"How are you, Bill?" he said to Swazey, the strange unknown grind who
sat beside him. He called him by his first name consciously, though he
knew him no more than this slight daily contact, because he wished to
emphasize the comradeship and democracy of Yale, of which he was a
leader. "Feelin' fine this morning, old gazabo?"
"How are you?" said Swazey gratefully.
"Tough lesson they soaked us, didn't they?"
"It was a tough one."
"Suppose that didn't bother you, though, you old valedictorian."
"Oh, yes, it did."
Stover, settling comfortably in his seat, nodded genially to the right
and left.
"I say, Dink."
"Hello, what is it?"
"Drop in on me some night."
"What?" said Stover surprised.
"Come round and have a chat sometime," said Swazey, in a thoroughly
natural way.
"Why, sure; like to," said Stover bluffly, which, of course was the only
thing to say.
"To-night?"
"Sorry; I'm busy to-night," said Stover. Swazey, of course, being a
grind, did not realize the abhorrent, almost sacrilegious, social break
he was making in inviting him on his society evening.
"To-morrow, then?"
"Why, yes; to-morrow."
"I haven't been very sociable in not asking you before," said Swazey,
in magnificent incomprehension, "but I'd really like to have you."
"Why, thankee."
Stover, entrapped, received the invitation with perfect gravity,
although resolved to find some excuse.
But the next day, thinking it over, he said to himself that it really
was his duty, and, reflecting how pleased Swazey would be to receive a
call from one of his importance, he determined to give him that
pleasure. Setting out after supper, he met Bob Story.
"Whither away?" said Story, stopping.
"I'm going to drop in on a fellow called Swazey," said Stover, a little
conscious of the virtue of this act. "I sit next to him in chapel. He's
a good deal of a grind, but he asked me around, and I thought I'd go.
You know--the fellow in our row."
"That's very good of you," said Story, with a smile which he remembered
after.
Stover felt so himself. Still, he had the democracy of Yale to preserve,
and it was his duty. He went swinging on his way with that warm,
glowing, physical delight that, fortunately, the slightest virtuous
action is capable of arousing.
With Nathaniel Pike, a classmate, Swazey roomed in Divinity Hall, where,
attracted by the cheapness of the rooms, a few of the college had been
able to find quarters.
"Queer place," thought Dink to himself, eyeing a few of the divinity
students who went slipping by him. "Wonder what the deuce I can talk to
him about. Oh, well, I won't have to stay long."
Swazey, of course, being outside the current of college heroes, could
have but a limited view. He found the door at the end of the long
corridor and thundered his knock, as a giant announces himself.
"Come in if you're good-looking!" said a piping voice.
Stover entered with strongly accentuated good fellowship, giving his
hand with the politician's cordiality.
"How are you, Nat? How are you, Bill?"
He ensconced himself in the generous arm-chair, which bore the trace of
many masters, accepted a cigar and said, to put his hosts at their ease:
"Bully quarters you've got here. Blame sight more room than I've got."
Pike, cap on, a pad under his arm, apologized for going.
"Awful sorry, Stover; darned inhospitable. This infernal _News_ grind.
Hope y'will be sociable and stay till I get back."
"How are you making out?" said Stover, in an encouraging, generous way.
Pike scratched his ear, a large, loose ear, wrinkling up his long,
pointed nose in a grimace, as he answered:
"Danged if I don't think I'm going to miss out again."
"You were in the first competition?" said Stover, surprised--for one
trial was usually considered equivalent to a thousand years off the
purgatory account.
"Yep, but I was green--didn't know the rules."
"Lord, I should think you'd have had enough!"
"Why, it's rather a sociable time. It is a grind, but I'm going to make
that _News_, if I hit it all sophomore year."
"What, you'd try again?"
"You bet I would!"
There was a matter-of-fact simplicity about Pike, uncouth as was his
dress and wide sombrero, that appealed to Stover. He held out his hand.
"Good luck to you! And say--if I get any news I'll save it for you."
"Obliged, sir--ta-ta!"
"Holy cats!" said Dink, relapsing into the arm-chair as the door banged.
"Any one who'll stick at it like that gets all I can give him."
"He's a wonderful person," said Swazey, drawing up his chair and
elevating his hobnailed shoes. "Never saw anything like his
determination. Wonderful! Green as salad when he first came, ready to
tickle Prexy under the ribs or make himself at home whenever a room
struck his fancy. But, when he got his eyes open, you ought to have seen
him pick up and learn. He's developed wonderfully. He'll succeed in
life."
Stover smiled inwardly at this critical assumption on Swazey's part, but
he began to be interested. There was something real in both men.
"Did you go to school together?" he said.
"Lord, no! Precious little school either of us got. I ran up against him
when I landed here--just bumped together, as it were."
"You don't say so?"
"Fact. It was rather queer. We were both up in the fall trying to
throttle a few pesky conditions and slip in. It was just after Greek
prose composition--cursed be the memory!--when I came out of Alumni
Hall, kicking myself at every step, and found that little rooster
engaged in the same process. Say, he was a sight--looked like a chicken
had been shipped from St. Louis to Chicago--but spunky as you make 'em.
Never had put a collar on his neck--I got him up to that last spring;
but he still balks at a derby. So off we went to grub, and I found he
didn't know a soul. No more did I. So we said, 'Why not?' And we did. We
hunted up these quarters, and we've got on first-rate ever since. No
scratching, gouging, or biting. We've been a good team. I've seen the
world, I've got hard sense, and he's got ideas--quite remarkable ideas.
Danged if I'm not stuck on the little rooster."
Stover reached out for the tobacco to fill a second pipe, all his
curiosity aroused.
"I say, Dink," said Swazey, offering him a match, "this college is a
wonderful thing, isn't it?" He stood reflectively, the sputtering light
of the match illuminating his thoughtful face. "Just think of the
romance in it. Me and Pike coming together from two ends of the country
and striking it up. That's what counts up here--the perfect democracy of
it!"
"Yes, of course," said Stover in a mechanical way. He was wondering what
Swazey would think of the society system, or if he even realized it
existed, so he said curiously:
"You keep rather to yourselves, though."
"Oh, I know pretty much what I want to know about men. I've sized 'em up
and know what sorts to reach out for when I want them. Now I want to
learn something real." He looked at Stover with a sort of rugged
superiority in his glance and said: "I've earned my own way ever since I
was twelve years old, and some of it was pretty rough going. I know
what's outside of this place and what I want to reach. That's what a lot
of you fellows don't worry about just now."
"Swazey, tell me about yourself," said Stover, surprised at his own
eagerness. "By George, I'd like to hear it! Why did you come to
college?"
"It was an idea of the governor's, and he got it pretty well fixed in my
head. Would you like to hear? All right." He touched a match to the
kindling, and, his coat bothering him, cast it off. "The old man was a
pretty rough customer, I guess--he died when I was twelve; don't know
anything about any one else in the family. I don't know just how he
picked up his money; we were always moving; but I fancy he was a good
deal of a rum hound and that carried him off. He always had a liking for
books, and one set idea that I was to be a gentleman, get to college and
get educated; so I always kept that same idea in the back of my head,
and here I am."
"You said you'd earned your living ever since you were twelve," said
Stover, all interest.
"That's so. It's pretty much the usual story. Selling newspapers,
drifting around, living on my wits. Only I had a pretty shrewd head on
my shoulders, and wherever I went I saw what was going on and I salted
it away. I made up my mind I wasn't going to be a fool, but I was going
to sit back, take every chance, and win out big. Lord of mercy, though,
I've seen some queer corners--done some tough jobs! Up to about fifteen
I didn't amount to much. I was a drifter. I've worked my way from
Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, stealing rides and hoofing it with
tramps. I've scrubbed out bar-rooms in Arizona and Oklahoma, and tended
cattle in Kansas City. I sort of got a wandering fit, which is bad
business. But each year I tucked away a little more of the long green
than the year before, and got a little more of the juice of books. About
four years ago, when I was seventeen--I'd saved up a few hundreds--I
said to myself:
"'Hold up, look here, if you're ever going to do anything, it's about
time now to begin.' So I planted my hoof out in Oklahoma City and I
started in to be a useful citizen."
The pipe between Stover's lips had gone out, but he did not heed it. A
new life--life itself--was suddenly revealing itself to him; not the
guarded existences of his own kind, but the earnest romance of the
submerged nine-tenths. As Swazey stopped, he said impulsively, directly:
"By George, Swazey, I envy you!"
"Well, it's taught me to size men up pretty sharply," said Swazey,
continuing. "I've seen them in the raw, I've seen them in all sorts of
tests. I've sort of got a pretty guess what they'll do or not do. Then,
of course, I've had a knack of making money out of what I touch--it's a
gift."
"Are you working your way through here?" said Stover. All feeling of
patronage was gone; he felt as if a torrent had cleared away the dust
and cobwebs of tradition.
"Lord, no," said Swazey, smiling. "Why, boy, I've got a business that's
bringing me in between four and five thousand a year--running itself,
too."
Stover sat up.
"What!"
"I've got an advertising agency, specialties of all sorts, seven men
working under one. I keep in touch every day. Course I could make more
if I was right there. But I know what I'm going to do in this world.
I've got my ideas for what's coming--big ideas. I'm going to make money
hand over fist. That's easy. Now I'm getting an education. Here's the
answer to it all."
He drew out of his pocketbook a photograph and passed it over to Stover.
"That's the best in the world; that's the girl that started me and
that's the girl I'm going to marry."
Dink took the funny little photograph and gazed at it with a certain
reverence. It was the face of a girl pretty enough, with a straight,
proud, reliant look in her eyes that he saw despite the oddity of the
clothes and the artificiality of the pose. He handed back the
photograph.
"I like her," he said.
"Here _we_ are," said Swazey, handing him a tintype.
It was grotesque, as all such pictures are, with its mingled
sentimentality and self-consciousness, but Stover did not smile.
"That's the girl I've been working for ever since," said Swazey. "The
bravest little person I ever struck, and the squarest. She was waiting
in a restaurant when I happened to drop in, standing on her own feet,
asking no favor. She's out of that now, thank God! I've sent her off to
school."
Dink turned to him with a start, amazed at the matter-of-fact way in
which Swazey announced it.
"To school--" he stammered. "_You've_ sent _her_."
"Sure. Up to a convent in Montreal. She'll finish there when I finish
here."
"Why?" said Stover, too amazed to choose his methods of inquiry.
"Because, my boy, I'm going out to succeed, and I want my wife to know
as much as I do and go with me where I go."
The two sat silently, Swazey staring at the tintype with a strange,
proud smile, utterly unconscious of the story he had told, Stover
overwhelmed as if the doors in a great drama had suddenly swung open to
his intruding gaze.
"She's the real student," said Swazey fondly. "She gets it all--all the
romance of the big things that have gone on in the past. By George, the
time'll come when we'll get over to Greece and Egypt and Rome and see
something of it ourselves." He put the photographs in his pocketbook and
rose, standing, legs spread before the fire, talking to himself. "By
George, Dink, money isn't what I'm after. I'm going to have that, but
the big thing is to know something about everything that's real, and to
keep on learning. I've never had anything like these evenings here,
browsing around in the good old books, chatting it over with old
Pike--he's got imagination. Give me history and biography--that inspires
you. Say, I've talked a lot, but you led me on. What's your story?"
"My story?" said Stover solemnly. He thought a moment and then said:
"Nothing. It's a blank and I'm a blank. I say, Swazey, give me your
hand. I'm proud to know you. And, if you'll let me, I'd like to come
over here oftener."
He went from the room, with a sort of empty rage, transformed. Before
him all at once had spread out the vision of the nation, of the
democracy of lives of striving and of hope. He had listened as a child
listens. He went out bewildered and humble. For the first time since he
had come to Yale, he had felt something real. His mind and his
imagination had been stirred, awakened, hungry, rebellious.
He turned back, glancing from the lights on the campus to the room he
had left--a little splotch of mellow meaning on the somber cold walls of
Divinity, and then turned into the emblazoned quadrangle of the campus,
with its tinkling sounds and feverish, childish ambitions.
"Great heavens! and I went there as a favor," he said. "What under the
sky do I know about anything--little conceited ass!"
He went towards his entry and, seeing a light in Bob Story's room,
suddenly hallooed.
"Oh, Bob Story, stick out your head."
"Hello, yourself. Who is it?"
"It's me. Dink."
"Come on up."
"No, not to-night."
"What then?"
"Say, Bob, I just wanted you to know one thing."
"What?"
"I'm just a plain damn fool; do you get that?"
"What the deuce?"
"Just a plain damn fool--good-night!"
And he went to his room, locked the door to all visitors, pulled an
arm-chair before the fire, and sat staring into it, as solemn as the
wide-eyed owls on the casters.