Hugh spent his last college vacation at home, working on the farm,
reading, occasionally dancing at Corley Lake, and thinking a great deal.
He saw Janet Harton, now Janet Moffitt, several times at the lake and
wondered how he could ever have adored her. She was still childlike,
still dainty and pretty, but to Hugh she was merely a talking doll, and
he felt a little sorry for her burly, rather stupid husband who lumbered
about after her like a protecting watch-dog.
He met plenty of pretty girls at the lake, but, as he said, he was "off
women for good." He was afraid of them; he had been severely burnt, and
while the fire still fascinated him, it frightened him, too. Women, he
was sure, were shallow creatures, dangerous to a man's peace of mind and
self-respect. They were all right to dance with and pet a bit; but that
was all, absolutely all.
He thought a lot about girls that summer and even more about his life
after graduation from college. What was he going to do? Life stretched
ahead of him for one year like a smooth, flowered plain--and then the
abyss. He felt prepared to do nothing at all, and he was not swept by an
overpowering desire to do anything in particular. Writing had the
greatest appeal for him, but he doubted his ability. Teach? Perhaps. But
teaching meant graduate work. Well, he would see what the next year at
college would show. He was going to take a course in composition with
Professor Henley, and if Henley thought his gifts warranted it, he would
ask his father for a year or two of graduate work at Harvard.
College was pleasant that last year. It was pleasant to wear a blue
sweater with an orange S on it; it was pleasant, too, to wear a small
white hat that had a blue B on the crown, the insignia of the Boule and
a sign that he was a person to be respected and obeyed; it was pleasant
to be spoken to by the professors as one who had reached something
approaching manhood; life generally was pleasant, not so exciting as the
three preceding years but fuller and richer. Early in the first term he
was elected to Helmer, an honor society that possessed a granite "tomb,"
a small windowless building in which the members were supposed to
discuss questions of great importance and practice secret rites of
awe-inspiring wonder. As a matter of fact, the monthly meetings were
nothing but "bull fests," or as one cynical member put it, "We wear a
gold helmet on our sweaters and chew the fat once a month." True
enough, but that gold helmet glittered enticingly in the eyes of every
student who did not possess one.
For the first time Hugh's studies meant more to him than the
undergraduate life. He had chosen his instructors carefully, having
learned from three years of experience that the instructor was far more
important than the title of the course. He had three classes in
literature, one in music--partly because it was a "snap" and partly
because he really wanted to know more about music--and his composition
course with Henley, to him the most important of the lot.
He really studied, and at the end of the first term received three A's
and two B's, a very creditable record. What was more important than his
record, however, was the fact that he was really enjoying his work; he
was intellectually awakened and hungry for learning.
Also, for the first time he really enjoyed the fraternity. Jack Lawrence
was proving an able president, and Nu Delta pledged a freshman
delegation of which Hugh was genuinely proud. There were plenty of men
in the chapter whom he did not like or toward whom he was indifferent,
but he had learned to ignore them and center his interest in those men
whom he found congenial.
The first term was ideal, but the second became a maelstrom of doubt and
trouble in which he whirled madly around trying to find some philosophy
that would solve his difficulties.
When Norry returned to college after the Christmas vacation, he told
Hugh that he had seen Cynthia. Naturally, Hugh was interested, and the
mere mention of Cynthia's name was still enough to quicken his pulse.
"How did she look?" he asked eagerly.
"Awful."
"What! What's the matter? Is she sick?"
Norry shook his head. "No, I don't think she is exactly sick," he said
gravely, "but something is the matter with her. You know, she has been
going an awful pace, tearing around like crazy. I told you that, I know,
when I came back in the fall. Well, she's kept it up, and I guess she's
about all in. I couldn't understand it. Cynthia's always run with a fast
bunch, but she's never had a bad name. She's beginning to get one now."
"No!" Hugh was honestly troubled. "What's the matter, anyway? Didn't you
try to stop her?"
Norry smiled. "Of course not. Can you imagine me stopping Cynthia from
doing anything she wanted to do? But I did have a talk with her. She got
hold of me one night at the country club and pulled me off in a corner.
She wanted to talk about you."
"Me?" Hugh's heart was beginning to pound. "What did she say?"
"She asked questions. She wanted to know everything about you. I guess
she asked me a thousand questions. She wanted to know how you looked,
how you were doing in your courses, where you were during vacation, if
you had a girl--oh, everything; and finally she asked if you ever talked
about her?"
"What did you say?" Hugh demanded breathlessly.
"I told her yes, of course. Gee, Hugh, I thought she was going to cry.
We talked some more, all about you. She's crazy about you, Hugh; I'm
sure of it. And I think that's why she's been hitting the high spots. I
felt sorry as the devil for her. Poor kid...."
"Gee, that's tough; that's damn tough. Did she send me any message?"
"No. I asked her if she wanted to send her love or anything, and she
said she guessed not. I think she's having an awful time, Hugh."
That talk tore Hugh's peace of mind into quivering shreds. Cynthia was
with him every waking minute, and with her a sense of guilt that would
not down. He knew that if he wrote to her he might involve himself in a
very difficult situation, but the temptation was stronger than his
discretion. He wanted to know if Norry was right, and he knew that he
would never have an hour's real comfort until he found out. Cynthia had
told him that she was not in love with him; she had said definitely
that their attraction for each other was merely sexual. Had she lied to
him? Had she gone home in the middle of Prom, week because she thought
she ought to save him from herself? He couldn't decide, and he felt that
he had to know. If Cynthia was unhappy and he was the cause of her
unhappiness, he wanted, he assured himself, to "do the right thing," and
he had very vague notions indeed of what the right thing might be.
Finally he wrote to her. The letter took him hours to write, but he
flattered himself that it was very discreet; it implied nothing and
demanded nothing.
Dear Cynthia:
I had a talk with Norry Parker recently that has
troubled me a great deal. He said that you seemed both
unwell and unhappy, and he felt that I was in some way
responsible for your depression. Of course, we both know
how ingenuous and romantic Norry is; he can find tragedy
in a cut finger. I recognize that fact, but what he told
me has given me no end of worry just the same.
Won't you please write to me just what is wrong--if
anything really is and if I have anything to do with it.
I shall continue to worry until I get your letter.
Most sincerely,
HUGH.
Weeks went by and no answer came. Hugh's confusion increased. He
thought of writing her another letter, but pride and common sense
forbade. Then her letter came, and all of his props were kicked suddenly
from under him.
Oh my dear, my dear [she wrote], I swore that I wouldn't
answer your letter--and here I am doing it. I've fought
and fought, and fought until I can't fight any longer;
I've held out as long as I can. Oh, Hugh my dearest, I
love you. I can't help it--I do, I do. I've tried so
hard not to--and when I found that I couldn't help it I
swore that I would never let you know--because I knew
that you didn't love me and that I am bad for you. I
thought I loved you enough to give you up--and I might
have succeeded if you hadn't written to me.
Oh, Hugh dearest, I nearly fainted when I saw your
letter. I hardly dared open it--I just looked and looked
at your beloved handwriting. I cried when I did read it.
I thought of the letters you used to write to me--and
this one was so different--so cold and impersonal. It
hurt me dreadfully.
I said that I wouldn't answer it--I swore that I
wouldn't. And then I read your old letters--I've kept
every one of them--and looked at your picture--and
to-night you just seemed to be here--I could see your
sweet smile and feel your dear arms around me--and Hugh,
my darling, I had to write--I _had_ to.
My pride is all gone. I can't think any more. You are
all that matters. Oh, Hugh dearest, I love you so damned
hard.
CYNTHIA.
Two hours after the letter arrived it was followed by a telegram:
Don't pay any attention to my letter. I was crazy when I
wrote it.
Hugh had sense enough to pay no attention to the telegram; he tossed it
into the fireplace and reread the letter. What could he do? What
_should_ he do? He was torn by doubt and confusion. He looked at her
picture, and all his old longing for her returned. But he had learned to
distrust that longing. He had got along for a year without her; he had
almost ceased thinking of her when Norry brought her back to his mind.
He had to answer her letter. What could he say? He paced the floor of
his room, ran his hands through his hair, pounded his forehead; but no
solution came. He took a long walk into the country and came back more
confused than ever. He was flattered by her letter, moved by it; he
tried to persuade himself that he loved her as she loved him--and he
could not do it. His passion for her was no longer overpowering, and no
amount of thinking could make it so. In the end he temporized. His
letter was brief.
Dear Cynthia:
There is no need, I guess, to tell you that your letter
swept me clean off my feet. I am still dizzy with
confusion. I don't know what to say, and I have decided
that it is best for me not to say anything until I know
my own mind. I couldn't be fair either to you or myself
otherwise. And I want to be fair; I must be.
Give me time, please. It is because I care so much for
you that I ask it. Don't worry if you don't hear from me
for weeks. My silence won't mean that I have forgotten
you; it will mean that I am thinking of you.
Sincerely,
HUGH.
Her answer came promptly:
Hugh, my dear--
I was a fish to write that letter--and I know that I'll
never forgive myself. But I couldn't help it--I just
couldn't help it. I am glad that you are keeping your
head because I've lost mine entirely. Take all the time
you like. Do you hate me for losing my pride? I do.
Your stupid
CYNTHIA.
Weeks went by, and Hugh found no solution. He damned college with all
his heart and soul. What good had it done him anyway? Here he was with a
serious problem on his hands and he couldn't solve it any better than he
could have when he was a freshman. Four years of studying and lectures
and examinations, and the first time he bucked up against a bit of life
he was licked.
Eventually he wrote to her and told her that he was fonder of her than
he was of any girl that he had ever known but that he didn't know
whether he was in love with her or not. "I have learned to distrust my
own emotions," he wrote, "and my own decisions. The more I think the
more bewildered I become. I am afraid to ask you to marry me for fear
that I'll wreck both our lives, and I'm afraid not to ask you for the
same reason. Do you think that time will solve our problem? I don't
know. I don't know anything."
She replied that she was willing to wait just so long as they continued
to correspond; she said that she could no longer bear not to hear from
him. So they wrote to each other, and the tangle of their relations
became more hopelessly knotted. Cynthia never sent another letter so
unguarded as her first, but she made no pretense of hiding her love.
As Hugh sank deeper and deeper into the bog of confusion and distress,
his contempt for his college "education" increased. One night in May he
expressed that contempt to a small group of seniors.
"College is bunk," said Hugh sternly, "pure bunk. They tell us that we
learn to think. Rot! I haven't learned to think; a child can solve a
simple human problem as well as I can. College has played hell with me.
I came here four years ago a darned nice kid, if I do say so myself. I
was chock-full of ideals and illusions. Well, college has smashed most
of those ideals and knocked the illusions plumb to hell. I thought, for
example, that all college men were gentlemen; well, most of them aren't.
I thought that all of them were intelligent and hard students."
The group broke into loud laughter. "Me, too," said George Winsor when
the noise had abated. "I thought that I was coming to a regular
educational heaven, halls of learning and all that sort of thing. Why,
it's a farce. Here I am sporting a Phi Bete key, an honor student if you
please, and all that I really know as a result of my college 'education'
is the fine points of football and how to play poker. I don't really
know one damn thing about anything."
The other men were Jack Lawrence and Pudge Jamieson. Jack was an earnest
chap, serious and hard working but without a trace of brilliance. He,
too, wore a Phi Beta Kappa key, and so did Pudge. Hugh was the only one
of the group who had not won that honor; the fact that he was the only
one who had won a letter was hardly, he felt, complete justification.
His legs no longer seemed more important than his brains; in fact, when
he had sprained a tendon and been forced to drop track, he had been
genuinely pleased.
Pudge was quite as plump as he had been as a freshman and quite as
jovial, but he did not tell so many smutty stories. He still persisted
in crossing his knees in spite of the difficulties involved. When
Winsor finished speaking, Pudge forced his legs into his favorite
position for them and then twinkled at Winsor through his glasses.
"Right you are, George," he said in his quick way. "I wear a Phi Bete
key, too. We both belong to the world's greatest intellectual
fraternity, but what in hell do we know? We've all majored in English
except Jack, and I'll bet any one of us can give the others an exam
offhand that they can't pass. I'm going to law school. I hope to God
that I learn something there. I certainly don't feel that I know
anything now as a result of my four years of 'higher education.'"
"Well, if you fellows feel that way," said Hugh mournfully, "how do you
suppose I feel? I made my first really good record last term, and that
wasn't any world beater. I've learned how to gamble and smoke and drink
and pet in college, but that's about all that I have learned. I'm not as
fine as I was when I came here. I've been coarsened and cheapened; all
of us have. I take things for granted that shocked me horribly once. I
know that they ought to shock me now, but they don't. I've made some
friends and I've had a wonderful time, but I certainly don't feel that I
have got any other value out of college."
Winsor could not sit still and talk. He filled his pipe viciously,
lighted it, and then jumped up and leaned against the mantel. "I admit
everything that's been said, but I don't believe that it is altogether
our fault." He was intensely in earnest, and so were his listeners.
"Look at the faculty. When I came here I thought that they were all wise
men because they were On the faculty. Well, I've found out otherwise.
Some of them know a lot and can't teach, a few of them know a lot and
can teach, some of them know a little and can't teach, and some of them
don't know anything and can't explain c-a-t. Why, look at Kempton. That
freshman, Larson, showed me a theme the other day that Kempton had
corrected. It was full of errors that weren't marked, and it was nothing
in the world but drip. Even Larson knew that, but he's the foxy kid; he
wrote the theme about Kempton. All right--Kempton gives him a B and
tells him that it is very amusing. Hell of a lot Larson's learning. Look
at Kane in math. I had him when I was a freshman."
"Me, too," Hugh chimed in.
"'Nough said, then. Math's dry enough, God knows, but Kane makes it
dryer. He's a born desiccator. He could make 'Hamlet' as dry as
calculus."
"Right-o," said Pudge. "But Mitchell could make calculus as exciting as
'Hamlet.' It's fifty-fifty."
"And they fired Mitchell." Jack Lawrence spoke for the first time. "I
have that straight. The administration seems afraid of a man that can
teach. They've made Buchanan a full professor, and there isn't a man in
college who can tell what he's talking about. He's written a couple of
books that nobody reads, and that makes him a scholar. I was forced to
take three courses with him. They were agony, and he never taught me a
damn thing."
"Most of them don't teach you a damn thing," Winsor exclaimed, tapping
his pipe on the mantel. "They either tell you something that you can
find more easily in a book, or just confuse you with a lot of ponderous
lectures that put you to sleep or drive you crazy if you try to
understand them."
"There are just about a dozen men in this college worth listening to,"
Hugh put in, "and I've got three of them this term. I'm learning more
than I did in my whole three first years. Let's be fair, though. We're
blaming it all on the profs, and you know damn well that we don't study.
All we try to do is to get by--I don't mean you Phi Betes; I mean all
the rest of us--and if we can put anything over on the profs we are
tickled pink. We're like a lot of little kids in grammar-school. Just
look at the cheating that goes on, the copying of themes, and the
cribbing. It's rotten!"
Winsor started to protest, but Hugh rushed on. "Oh, I know that the
majority of the fellows don't consciously cheat; I'm talking about the
copying of math problems and the using of trots and the paraphrasing of
'Literary Digest' articles for themes and all that sort of thing. If
more than half of the fellows don't do that sort of thing some time or
other in college, I'll eat my hat. And we all know darned well that we
aren't supposed to do it, but the majority of fellows cheat in some way
or other before they graduate!
"We aren't so much. Do you remember, George, what Jimmie Henley said to
us when we were sophomores in English Thirty-six? He laid us out cold,
said that we were as standardized as Fords and that we were ashamed of
anything intellectual. Well, he was right. Do you remember how he ended
by saying that if we were the cream of the earth, he felt sorry for the
skimmed milk--or something like that?"
"Sure, _I_ remember," Winsor replied, running his fingers through his
rusty hair. "He certainly pulled a heavy line that day. He was right,
too."
"I'll tell you what," exclaimed Pudge suddenly, so suddenly that his
crossed legs parted company and his foot fell heavily to the floor.
"Let's put it up to Henley in class to-morrow. Let's ask him straight
out if he thinks college is worth while."
"He'll hedge," objected Lawrence. "All the profs do if you ask them
anything like that." Winsor laughed. "You don't know Jimmie Henley. He
won't hedge. You've never had a class with him, but Hugh and Pudge and
I are all in English Fifty-three, and we'll put it up to him. He'll tell
us what he thinks all right, and I hope to God that he says it is worth
while. I'd like to have somebody convince me that I've got something out
of these four years beside lower ideals. Hell, sometimes I think that
we're all damn fools. We worship athletics--no offense, Hugh--above
everything else; we gamble and drink and talk like bums; and about every
so often some fellow has to go home because a lovely lady has left him
with bitter, bitter memories. I'm with Henley. If we're the cream of the
earth--well, thank the Lord, we're not."
"Who is," Lawrence asked earnestly.
"God knows."