HOMEGOING
At ten o'clock the next morning Rudy had his belongings stacked in
the middle of a denuded room. The walls were bare, the window seat
had been shorn of its pillows, and the study table looked strange and
forlorn minus its customary cargo of books and papers.
So this was the end of his college life! A far less spectacular
departure than he had imagined. Those old dreams came back
momentarily to haunt him--the Rudy Bronson he had pictured before
entering the University, leaving in a blaze of glory on the shoulders
of admiring classmates. Bells ringing, whistles shrilling,
cheer-leaders leaping about with writhing arms as they cried: "Three
big ones for the greatest hero the school has ever known. All right
now--Bronson! Bronson! Bronson!"
He sighed. Quite different, this. With a last glance about the bare
walls, he loaded himself with his meager possessions and went out the
door and down the stairs.
The landlord appeared from his subterranean retreat as he was dumping
his bags in the back of his flivver. "Sorry to see you go, Mr.
Bronson. Heaven knows you've been a lot better tenant than most of
the boys I get here. You've been quiet, and haven't broken a thing."
Rudy's mouth bent in a small smile. "Pretty model sort, eh? And yet
the University says I better get out and stay out."
"You wouldn't have flunked if you had paid more attention to your
studies and less to that saxophone," the old man told him. "Land
sakes, the way you went at that thing a body would think you intended
to take it up professionally."
"And that," Rudy answered coolly, "is just what I intend to do."
"But I thought you couldn't even make the school band!"
"That's true. But that was because I wasn't ready yet. I'm taking a
course of lessons from Ted Grant, the greatest saxophonist in the
world, and--" his hands clenched--"some time I'll show all these guys
here that I'm a real musician! I haven't got very far along in my
course yet--but when I've finished it, I bet there isn't an orchestra
in the country but will be glad to have me in it!"
The landlord shook his head rather dolefully. "Well, ambition is a
good thing, I guess. But never let it run away with you, says I.
That's a rule I've always followed."
"Apparently," Rudy answered with a smile. He climbed beneath the
wheel and tramped on the starter. "Good-by, Mr. Justin. Watch for
my name in the papers."
The old man moved back into his house without a reply. But it was
apparent what he was thinking.
Spinning in the direction of Sport O'Malley's fraternity house,
Rudy's face was grim. Why was it that none of them were willing to
credit him with any skill? Had he been so rotten that they thought
he never could be any better? But he'd show them! He'd stick at his
practise until one and all would be forced to admit they had been
wrong about his natural ability. He would make good if he had to
blow his heart out to do so!
Sport was, strangely enough, ready to leave when Rudy pulled up
before the colonial front of his fraternity home. He came down the
walk with two bulging suit cases. These he dropped unceremoniously
in the tonneau with Rudy's things. "Waterville next stop," he said
briefly.
Rudy pressed down the clutch and with a roar of ancient mechanism the
little car put off in the direction of the small Connecticut town
which the two boys called home.
"Like to stop at Bland's before we hit the highway?" Rudy asked.
Sport shook his head. "I said good-by on the telephone," he said.
"Thanks to you, the old man's got a pretty good opinion of me now.
If I went over there I might get sentimental, saying fond farewells
to Molly, and get tossed out on my ear."
He spoke with his usual lightness, but there was a troubled and
unhappy note in his voice which told Rudy that his casualness was
mere pretense. "You'll be back next semester, Sport," he said
comfortingly. "Don't take it so hard. You look as if you'd been
drawn through a knot-hole."
Sport grinned. "Oh, I hate to leave all right. But that's only part
of the reason I look tough. It's those examinations. I let
everything go until the last minute, and then tried to crowd all my
studying into a few nights. Gee! cramming like that is enough to
sour you on the whole of college. And then you're not sure until the
last minute whether or not you sopped up enough facts to get you
through."
They rode for a few minutes in silence. Then Rudy suddenly asked.
"Do you really think college is worth while, Sport?"
Sport shrugged. "Who can tell?"
"You can, of course!"
Sport did not answer for a time. "Really," he said at length, "I
can't say. I like it, that's true enough. But if I should quit and
go to work, whether I'd eventually be a better business man or barber
or something else--well, that's something else. And as I see it
that's not the important thing. College doesn't seem to me to fit
you for the particular thing you want to do, but to, well, grease you
so that you'll slip a little more readily through all of life."
"But what has it done for you thus far, Sport? Here you've been
dashing about for two years, making whoopee, having a good time. And
you'll probably do the same for two more, unless Molly takes you in
hand. What if you'd stop now--or get stopped, like I did. Don't you
think that you'd get a two years earlier start?"
"I guess that would be so if you're meaning the ordinary business
routine, with the automatic method of advancing employees--one goes
out and one goes up. But even if I did want to enter that kind of a
business--which I don't!--what if some other industrious lad had
hopped onto the adding machine sooner than I? Ye gods, you only work
eight hours out of the twenty-four--what about the rest of the time?"
Rudy thought of his saxophone. "He might know that he was missing
something, and study all the harder in his spare time."
But Sport's mind was fixed firmly on a different type of livelihood
than that in Rudy's. "Maybe," he admitted, "but the chances are that
while the boy who went to work was associating with his fellow clerks
and salesmen, the one who didn't would be associating with people who
happily didn't know an invoice from a bank messenger. On the other
hand, they do know, perhaps, a great deal concerning the art of
living."
"But are those people real? And is what they have to teach of any
real value to you?"
Sport moved his shoulders negligently. "Outside of one or two or
three, it will make little difference--either to them or to me--if
our paths never cross again. But here's the point: we did learn from
each other. Forbes and Morton and I, for instance, have traded
contacts. If we never see each other again in all our lives, we will
have gained that. We've taught each other to sharpen our social
senses. And believe you me, that's no little thing!"
Rudy looked down the road. "That's pretty unsentimental talk from a
fellow who has just walked out of his fraternity house."
"You're a nice kid, Rudy," Sport laughed, "but you take things too
seriously. This fraternity brotherhood chatter is a lot of bunk.
We're in fraternities because that's the nicest way to live while
we're in college. But we don't join them because of any great and
over-powering desire to become banded with a lot of men who, a week
before we enter the University, we've never seen!"
"Maybe you'll think differently when September rolls around. But
about this summer. Are you going to hit the ball? I should think
you'd be a little tired of resting."
"Resting my eye! A fine lot of resting I've done in this past year!
I don't know where all my time went--but I don't recall that much of
it was spent in resting. Or studying or meditating or exercising,
either, so far as that goes."
"Still, you're not sorry you went through it."
"Not in the least. There's plenty of time for me to do the things I
should do. Maybe I'll do them next year." He stretched expansively.
"College is a little bit of all right, Rudy. I'll be back next year,
you can bet."
"Surely you will," Rudy agreed. "Everybody does--who can. A college
career is sort of a modern need, like food. But I've been doing a
lot of thinking since I rolled out. And I'm not so sorry as I was
that I'm going to get started on my life's work sooner than I would
have otherwise. Just think, Sport--can you put your finger on any
actual good that you've gained during these past two years?"
"One of the James boys," Sport said, squinting at the sun, "I think
it was William, cracked wise to the effect that college teaches you
to know a good man when you see one. I think it did that for me; I
think I can tell one. I think I can see through the sham and
hocus-pocus of most characters pretty well now. Maybe I would have
gained that anyway. I don't know. But somehow, somewhere during
these two years at the University, I've gained an idea of what the
word 'genuine' means. I sensed it in Molly Bland."
He hesitated momentarily. "And I might add, Rudy, my boy, that said
qualification was the one which caused me to be attracted to you."
Immediately, however, as if fearful lest he be open to that most
dreaded charge, sentiment, he burst into a shout of laugher. "But
you wanted something definite, concrete, that I've gained. Very
well! I'll tell you the one definite thing I've learned, my
cross-examining friend! And the only thing of importance that I can
admit having gained without seeming a rummy. And that is this--that
youth is a time to be lived, and life a time to be loved! And with
that the sage of Waterville craves to cease talking generalities and
get down to the more actual business of wondering if the old home
town has enough good musicians to form a first rate band?"
Rudy frowned--but not because he was worried over any lack on the
part of Waterville in regard to prospective members of Sport's
orchestra. To the contrary, he knew that the summer before, during
the time Sport had spent in session at the University, there had been
organized a small but very good jazz orchestra which had failed to
continue only because of poor management.
Sport would not be long in learning of this defunct organization and
reassembling it. Under his dynamic leadership there was little
question of its success, and chance of attracting other good
musicians. Musicians so good, in fact, that there would be no place
in its personnel for Rudy Bronson.
But even with this knowledge, his sense of honesty compelled him to
impart the information to Sport. This he did, hesitantly, but as
fully as he was able.
Sport whistled gleefully. "Holy cow, the makings of a band all set
up and ready to go! Can you imagine a break like that? But who are
some of the boys, Rudy?"
"Oh, Sam McMahon, Swiftie Clarke, Al Monroe, Pete Heflin. They'll be
able to tell you the others. They were strangers to me."
"But you forgot one who isn't a stranger to you."
"I did?" Rudy asked. "Who's that?"
"None other than Rudy Bronson."
"Sport! Do you mean--do you mean you'll give me a chance with your
outfit?"
"Sure as my name is O'Malley," Sport informed him, "the first
saxophonist who goes down on the list is thyself. Of course," he
said more slowly, "whether or not you stay there depends on you.
But----"
"That's all I want!" Rudy interrupted hastily. "Give me a break--and
I'll show you that when Ted Grant teaches them, they stay taught!"
"Well, now that that's settled, how about the rest of the gang. I
remember that Sam and Al and Pete used to be pretty clever when we
were kids. But I don't remember any of them being able to sing for
sour apples. And nowadays that's just about as important as the rest
of the orchestra combined."
"Don't you remember that I used to sing in the choir?" Rudy asked.
"I've been studying singing with syncopated music in sort of a new
way. And I think it's pretty good."
Sport laughed. "Gee, Rudy, I don't know whether I should be afraid
of you in that band or not. If you turn out to be as good as you
seem to think you are, it's liable to be your band before long!"
"That," said Rudy sagely, "is the risk any orchestra leader takes
when he hires a first-class performer."
"Bull's-eye!" Sport cried. "Let's go!"