For several days Hugh was tortured by doubt and indecision: there were
times when he thought that he loved Cynthia, times when he was sure that
he didn't; when he had just about made up his mind that he hated her, he
found himself planning to follow her to New Rochelle; he tried to
persuade himself that his conduct was no more reprehensible than that of
his comrades, but shame invariably overwhelmed his arguments; there were
hours when he ached for Cynthia, and hours when he loathed her for
smashing something that had been beautiful. Most of all, he wanted
comfort, advice, but he knew no one to whom he was willing to give his
confidence. Somehow, he couldn't admit his drunkenness to any one whose
advice he valued. He called on Professor Henley twice, intending to make
a clean breast of his transgressions. Henley, he knew, would not lecture
him, but when he found himself facing him, he could not bring himself to
confession; he was afraid of losing Henley's respect.
Finally, in desperation, he talked to Norry, not because he thought
Norry could help him but because he had to talk to somebody and Norry
already knew the worst. They went walking far out into the country, idly
discussing campus gossip or pausing to revel in the beauty of the night,
the clear, clean sky, the pale moon, the fireflies sparkling suddenly
over the meadows or even to the tree-tops. Weary from their long walk,
they sat down on a stump, and Hugh let the dam of his emotion break.
"Norry," he began intensely, "I'm in hell--in hell. It's a week since
Prom, and I haven't had a line from Cynthia. I haven't dared write to
her."
"Why not?"
"She--she--oh, damn it!--she told me before she left that everything was
all off. That's why she left early. She said that we didn't love each
other, that all we felt was sex attraction. I don't know whether she's
right or not, but I miss her like the devil. I--I feel empty, sort of
hollow inside, as if everything had suddenly been poured out of me--and
there's nothing to take its place. I was full of Cynthia, you see, and
now there's no Cynthia. There's nothing left but--oh, God, Norry, I'm
ashamed of myself. I feel--dirty." The last word was hardly audible.
Norry touched his arm. "I know, Hugh, and I'm awfully sorry. I think,
though, that Cynthia was right. I know her better than you do. She's an
awfully good kid but not your kind at all; I think I feel as badly
almost as you do about it." He paused a moment and then said simply, "I
was so proud of you, Hugh."
"Don't!" Hugh exclaimed. "I want to kill myself when you say things like
that."
"You don't understand. I know that you don't understand. I've been doing
a lot of thinking since Prom, too. I've thought over a lot of things
that you've said to me--about me, I mean. Why, Hugh, you think I'm not
human. I don't believe you think I have passions like the rest of you.
Well, I do, and sometimes it's--it's awful. I'm telling you that so
you'll understand that I know how you feel. But love's beautiful to me,
Hugh, the most wonderful thing in the world. I was in love with a girl
once--and I know. She didn't give a hang for me; she thought I was a
baby. I suffered awfully; but I know that my love was beautiful, as
beautiful as--" He looked around for a simile--"as to-night. I think
it's because of that that I hate mugging and petting and that sort of
thing. I don't want beauty debased. I want to fight when orchestras jazz
famous arias. Well, petting is jazzing love; and I hate it. Do you see
what I mean?"
Hugh looked at him wonderingly. He didn't know this Norry at all. "Yes,"
he said slowly; "yes, I see what you mean; I think I do, anyway. But
what has it to do with me?"
"Well, I know most of the fellows pet and all that sort of thing, and
they don't think anything about it. But you're different; you love
beautiful things as much as I do. You told me yourself that Jimmie
Henley said last year that you were gifted. You can write and sing and
run, but I've just realized that you aren't proud of those things at
all; you just take them for granted. And you're ashamed that you write
poetry. Some of your poems are good, but you haven't sent any of them to
the poetry magazine. You don't want anybody to know that you write
poetry. You're trying to make yourself like fellows that are inferior to
you." Norry was piteously in earnest. His hero had crumbled into clay
before his eyes, and he was trying to patch him together again
preparatory to boosting him back upon his pedestal.
"Oh, cripes, Norry," Hugh said a little impatiently, "you exaggerate all
my virtues; you always have. I'm not half the fellow you think I am. I
do love beautiful things, but I don't believe my poetry is any good." He
paused a moment and then confessed mournfully: "I'll admit, though, that
I have been going downhill. I'm going to do better from now on. You
watch me."
They talked for hours, Norry embarrassing Hugh with the frankness of
his admiration. Norry's hero-worship had always embarrassed him, but he
didn't like it when the worshiper began to criticize. He admitted the
justness of the criticism, but it hurt him just the same. Perching on a
pedestal had been uncomfortable but a little thrilling; sitting on the
ground and gazing up at his perch was rather humiliating. The fall had
bruised him; and Norry, with the best intentions in the world, was
kicking the bruises.
Nevertheless, he felt better after the talk, determined to win back
Norry's esteem and his own. He swore off smoking and drinking and stuck
to his oath. He told Vinton that if he brought any more liquor to their
room one of them was going to be carried out, and that he had a hunch
that it would be Vinton. Vinton gazed at him with round eyes and
believed him. After that he did his drinking elsewhere, confiding to his
cronies that Carver was on the wagon and that he had got as religious as
holy hell. "He won't let me drink in my own room," he wailed dolorously.
And then with a sudden burst of clairvoyance, he added, "I guess his
girl has given him the gate."
For weeks the campus buzzed with talk about the Prom. A dozen men who
had been detected _flagrante delicto_ were summarily expelled. Many
others who had been equally guilty were in a constant state of mental
goose-flesh. Would the next mail bring a summons from the dean?
President Culver spoke sternly in chapel and hinted that there would be
no Prom the coming year. Most of the men said that the Prom had been an
"awful brawl," but there were some who insisted that it was no worse
than the Proms held at other colleges, and recited startling tales in
support of their argument.
Leonard Gates finally settled the whole matter for Hugh. There had been
many discussions in the Nu Delta living-room about the Prom, and in one
of them Gates ended the argument with a sane and thoughtful statement.
"The Prom was a brawl," he said seriously, "a drunken brawl. We all
admit that. The fact that Proms at other colleges are brawls, too,
doesn't make ours any more respectable. If a Yale man happens to commit
murder and gets away with it, that is no reason that a Harvard man or a
Sanford man should commit murder, too. Some of you are arguing like
babies. But some of you are going to the other extreme.
"You talk as if everybody at the Prom was lit. Well, I wasn't lit, and
as a matter of fact most of them weren't lit. Just use a little common
sense. There were three hundred and fifty couples at the Prom. Now, not
half of them even had a drink. Say that half did. That makes one hundred
and seventy-five fellows. If fifty of those fellows were really soused,
I'll eat my hat, but we'll say that there were fifty. Fifty were quite
enough to make the whole Prom look like a longshoreman's ball. You've
got to take the music into consideration, too. That orchestra could
certainly play jazz; it could play it too damn well. Why, that music was
enough to make a saint shed his halo and shake a shimmy.
"What I'm getting to is this: there are over a thousand fellows in
college, and out of that thousand not more than fifty were really soused
at the Prom, and not more than a hundred and seventy-five were even a
little teed. To go around saying that Sanford men are a lot of muckers
just because a small fraction of them acted like gutter-pups is sheer
bunk. The Prom was a drunken brawl, but all Sanford men aren't
drunkards--not by a damn sight."
Hugh had to admit the force of Gates's reasoning, and he found comfort
in it. He had been just about ready to believe that all college men and
Sanford men in particular were hardly better than common muckers. But in
the end the comfort that he got was small: he realized bitterly that he
was one of the minority that had disgraced his college; he was one of
the gutter-pups. The recognition of that undeniable fact cut deep.
He was determined to redeem himself; he _had_ to, somehow. Living a life
of perfect rectitude was not enough; he had to do something that would
win back his own respect and the respect of his fellows, which he
thought, quite absurdly, that he had forfeited. So far as he could see,
there was only one way that he could justify his existence at Sanford;
that was to win one of the dashes in the Sanford-Raleigh meet. He clung
to that idea with the tenacity of a fanatic.
He had nearly a month in which to train, and train he did as he never
had before. His diet became a matter of the utmost importance; a
rub-down was a holy rite, and the words of Jansen, the coach, divine
gospel. He placed in both of the preliminary meets, but he knew that he
could do better; he wasn't yet in condition.
When the day for the Raleigh-Sanford meet finally came, he did not feel
any of the nervousness that had spelled defeat for him in his freshman
year. He was stonily calm, silently determined. He was going to place in
the hundred and win the two-twenty or die in the attempt. No golden
dreams of breaking records excited him. Calvert of Raleigh was running
the hundred consistently in ten seconds and had been credited with
better time. Hugh had no hopes of defeating him in the hundred, but
there was a chance in the two-twenty. Calvert was a short-distance man,
the shorter the better. Two hundred and twenty yards was a little too
far for him.
Calvert did not look like a runner. He was a good two inches shorter
than Hugh, who lacked nearly that much of six feet. Calvert was heavily
built--a dark, brawny chap, both quick and powerful. Hugh looked at him
and for a moment hated him. Although he did not phrase it so--in fact,
he did not phrase it at all--Calvert was his obstacle in his race for
redemption.
Calvert won the hundred-yard dash in ten seconds flat, breaking the
Sanford-Raleigh record. Hugh, running faster than he ever had in his
life, barely managed to come in second ahead of his team-mate Murphy.
The Sanford men cheered him lustily, but he hardly listened. He _had_ to
win the two-twenty.
At last the runners were called to the starting-line. They danced up and
down the track flexing their muscles. Hugh was tense but more determined
than nervous. Calvert pranced around easily; he seemed entirely
recovered from his great effort in the hundred. Finally the starter
called them to their marks. They tried their spikes in the
starting-holes, scraped them out a bit more, made a few trial dashes,
and finally knelt in line at the command of the starter.
Hugh expected Calvert to lead for the first hundred yards; but the last
hundred, that was where Calvert would weaken. Calvert was sure to be
ahead at the beginning--but after that!
"On your marks.
"Set."
The pistol cracked. The start was perfect; the five men leaped forward
almost exactly together. For once Calvert had not beaten the others off
the mark, but he immediately drew ahead. He was running powerfully, his
legs rising and falling in exact rhythm, his spikes tearing into the
cinder path. But Hugh and Murphy were pressing him close. At the end of
the first hundred Calvert led by a yard. Hugh pounded on, Murphy falling
behind him. The others were hopelessly outclassed. Hugh did not think;
he did not hear a thousand men shouting hysterically, "Carver! Carver!"
He saw nothing but Calvert a yard ahead of him. He knew nothing but that
he had to make up that yard. Down the track they sped, their breath
bursting from them, their hands clenched, their faces grotesquely
distorted, their legs driving them splendidly on.
Hugh was gaining; that yard was closing. He sensed it rather than saw
it. He saw nothing now, not even Calvert. Blinded with effort, his lungs
aching, his heart pounding terribly, he fought on, mechanically keeping
between the two white lines. Ten yards from the tape he was almost
abreast of Calvert. He saw the tape through a red haze; he made a final
valiant leap for it--but he never touched it: Calvert's chest had
broken it a tiny fraction of a second before.
Hugh almost collapsed after the race. Two men caught him and carried
him, despite his protests, to the dressing-room. At first he was aware
only of his overwhelming weariness. Something very important had
happened. It was over, and he was tired, infinitely tired. A rub-down
refreshed his muscles, but his spirit remained weary. For a month he had
thought of nothing but that race--even Cynthia had become strangely
insignificant in comparison with it--and now that the race had been run
and lost, his whole spirit sagged and drooped.
He was pounded on the back; his hand was grasped and shaken until it
ached; he was cheered to an echo by the thrilled Sanford men; but still
his depression remained. He had won his letter, he had run a magnificent
race, all Sanford sang his praise--Norry Parker had actually cried with
excitement and delight--but he felt that he had failed; he had not
justified himself.
A few days later he entered Henley's office, intending to make only a
brief visit. Henley congratulated him. "You were wonderful, Hugh," he
said enthusiastically. "The way that you crawled up on him the last
hundred yards was thrilling. I shouted until I was hoarse. I never saw
any one fight more gamely. He's a faster man than you are, but you
almost beat him. I congratulate you--excuse the word, please--on your
guts."
Somehow Hugh couldn't stand Henley's enthusiasm. Suddenly he blurted out
the whole story, his drunkenness at the Prom, his split with Cynthia--he
did not mention the visit to Norry's room--his determination to redeem
himself, his feeling that if he had won that race he would at least have
justified his existence at the college, and, finally, his sense of
failure.
Henley listened sympathetically, amused and touched by the boy's naive
philosophy. He did not tell him that the race was relatively
unimportant--he was sure that Hugh would find that out for himself--but
he did bring him comfort.
"You did not fail, Hugh," he said gently; "you succeeded magnificently.
As for serving your college, you can always serve it best by being
yourself, being true to yourself, I mean, and that means being the very
fine gentleman that you are." He paused a minute, aware that he must be
less personal; Hugh was red to the hair and gazing unhappily at the
floor.
"You must read Browning," he went on, "and learn about his
success-in-failure philosophy. He maintains that it is better to strive
for a million and miss it than to strive for a hundred and get it. 'A
man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?' He says it
in a dozen different ways. It's the man who tries bravely for something
beyond his power that gets somewhere, the man who really succeeds. Well,
you tried for something beyond your power--to beat Calvert, a really
great runner. You tried to your utmost; therefore, you succeeded. I
admire your sense of failure; it means that you recognize an ideal. But
I think that you succeeded. You may not have quite justified yourself to
yourself, but you have proved capable of enduring a hard test bravely.
You have no reason to be depressed, no reason to be ashamed."
They talked for a long time, and finally Henley confessed that he
thought Cynthia had been wise in taking herself out of Hugh's life.
"I can see," he said, "that you aren't telling me quite all the story. I
don't want you to, either. I judge, however, from what you have said
that you went somewhere with her and that only complete drunkenness
saved you from disgracing both yourself and her. You need no lecture, I
am sure; you are sufficiently contrite. I have a feeling that she was
right about sexual attraction being paramount; and I think that she is a
very brave girl. I like the way she went home, and I like the way she
has kept silent. Not many girls could or would do that. It takes
courage. From what you have said, however, I imagine that she is not
your kind; at least, that she isn't the kind that is good for you. You
have suffered and are suffering, I know, but I am sure that some day you
are going to be very grateful to that girl--for a good many reasons."
Hugh felt better after that talk, and the end of the term brought him a
surprise that wiped out his depression and his sense of failure. He
found, too, that his pain was growing less; the wound was healing.
Perversely, he hated it for healing, and he poked it viciously to feel
it throb. Agony had become sweet. It made life more intense, less
beautiful, perhaps, but more wonderful, more real. Romantically, too, he
felt that he must be true both to his love and to his sorrow, and his
love was fading into a memory that was plaintively gray but shot with
scarlet thrills--and his sorrow was bowing before the relentless
excitement of his daily life.
The surprise that rehabilitated him in his own respect was his election
to the Boule, the senior council and governing board of the student
body. It was the greatest honor that an undergraduate could receive, and
Hugh had in no way expected it. When Nu Delta had first suggested to him
that he be a candidate, he had demurred, saying that there were other
men in his delegation better fitted to serve and with better chances of
election. Leonard Gates, however, felt otherwise; and before Hugh knew
what had happened he was a candidate along with thirty other juniors,
only twelve of whom could be elected.
He took no part in the campaigning, attended none of the caucuses, was
hardly interested in the fraternity "combine" that promised to elect
him. He did not believe that he could be elected; he saw no reason why
he should be. As a matter of fact, as Gates and others well knew, his
chances were more than good. Hugh was popular in his own right, and his
great race in the Sanford-Raleigh meet had made him something of a hero
for the time being. Furthermore, he was a member of both the Glee and
Banjo Clubs, he had led his class in the spring sings for three years,
and he had a respectable record in his studies.
The tapping took place in chapel the last week of classes. After the
first hymn, the retiring members of the Boule rose and marched down the
aisle to where the juniors were sitting. The new members were tapped in
the order of the number of votes that they had received, and the first
man tapped, having received the largest number of votes, automatically
became president of the Boule for the coming year.
Hugh's interest naturally picked up the day of the election, and he
began to have faint hopes that he would be the tenth or eleventh man. To
his enormous surprise he was tapped third, and he marched down the
aisle to the front seat reserved for the new members with the applause
of his fellows sweet in his ears. It didn't seem possible; he was one of
the most popular and most respected men in his class. He could not
understand it, but he didn't particularly care to understand it; the
honor was enough.
Nu Delta tried to heap further honors on him, but he declined them. As a
member of Boule he was naturally nominated for the presidency of the
chapter. Quite properly, he felt that he was not fitted for such a
position; and he retired in favor of John Lawrence, the only man in his
delegation really capable of controlling the brothers. Lawrence was a
man like Gates. He would, Hugh knew, carry on the constructive work that
Gates had so splendidly started. Nu Delta was in the throes of one of
those changes so characteristic of fraternities.