West Adams and Grandfather's house looked queer and countrified and
old-fashioned. It was a long, long way from a Frat. house on 113th
Street to that plain bedroom so full of his little-boy and prep-school
personality that Neale felt ill at ease and restless there. How could
you live up to your ideal of Horatian calm and sophisticated tolerance
towards human life in the presence of people who had known you when you
were in short trousers, who only a few years before had been giving you
hot lemonade for a cold and tucking you up in bed? No, West Adams was
impossible! He looked inside the Emerson one day, remembering what an
impression it had made on him, and found it like West Adams, very dull.
"The man is so terribly in earnest!" he told himself and was enchanted
at the superior, Oscar Wilde tone of his dictum.
The next day he thought of Billy Peters and knew that he was saved.
Billy was the most amusing of his Frat. brothers, the one now nearest to
him, for he remembered that Billy spent the summers in the Berkshires.
He wrote to Billy asking him to come up for a couple of weeks and go
camping with him, somewhere up the Deerfield. Neale would meet him at
whatever station Billy could make and they would start at once. He
didn't invite Billy to Grandfather's, not because he was ashamed of
Grandfather's--not at all--he just didn't think it would interest Billy
there. In due time Billy's answer came, asking Neale to cut out the
wilderness project and come down to make him a visit in the Berkshires.
Neale considered, he liked Billy; and West Adams was deadly dull. Why
not? There was no good reason why not; he packed his suit-case and went.
Billy met him and drove him to the Peters' cottage, a remodeled
farm-house several miles from town. Mrs. Peters was cordially polite,
Billy's little high-school kid sister turned blue, admiring eyes on her
big brother's friend, who was presented as a most prodigious athlete.
After supper, at Billy's suggestion they walked over to the hotel, two
remodeled farm-houses with shingled sides joined by mission-furnitured
piazzas. Billy introduced him to the "finest little girl ever" and Neale
was only half-surprised (knowing Billy fairly well) to find she wasn't
the same as the "finest little girl" of the winter before. But that was
nothing to Neale; there were plenty of other girls, all delighted to
buzz around him, to have him dance or play ping-pong, to make fudge, or
walk in the moonlight. Some were pretty and some were not, some were
bright and some just boisterous. And it was all the same to Neale. The
Horatian pose was a great success. He was delighted with himself.
At the end of a week he prepared to leave. But Billy couldn't see it
that way. It was true that Polly was going to have a couple of girl
friends at the house next week, and would want Neale's room, but then
they'd want Bill's room too. If Billy was to be exiled to a tent, why
couldn't Crit keep him company? They'd move the tent up into the Glen,
and really camp out, cook their own grub and everything. Crit had said
he wanted to camp out! Why not? After all there wasn't any real reason
why he should go...! Next week there was the coaching parade, and all
sorts of fun, decorating the hotel three-seater, with ferns and daisies.
Then there was a boating excursion to Long Pond where Sarah Davis fell
overboard and Neale pulled her out.
Then there was a fateful straw-ride in the August full moon, very near
to Neale's nineteenth birthday, and there he met Miss Austin, a new
arrival at the hotel. She was almost as tall as Neale, which was very
tall indeed for a girl, and she looked to Neale as though she might have
stepped right out of a Gibson illustration. This utterly superlative
impression of beauty and good form was not lessened even in broad
daylight the next morning, when he saw her again on the tennis-court,
where she said good-morning with a special look for him in her very fine
gray eyes. She did not play tennis, she sat on a bench at the side,
under a purple silk parasol, her long, full, white skirts frilling out
in a plaited cone, her pretty, fluffy, brown hair arranged in a high
pompadour, which stayed impeccable as the tennis-playing girls grew hot
and red, their hair straggling in straight wisps across their shining
wet foreheads.
Had Neale ever thought he scorned girls who sat cool and dressed-up on a
bench while others played tennis? As soon as the set was over, he went
to sit beside her. She glanced at him out of her gray eyes and looked
away again. Neale's pulse beat more quickly and he looked hard at the
curve of her cheek. Then they began to talk. Before she went in to
lunch, she had told him with a wistful note in her voice, that she was
glad she'd met him, because most of the people at the hotel bored her
so. Neale answered (the truth striking him for the first time), that
_most_ of the people bored him too.
If other people were what bored them, they certainly must have been free
from ennui for the next few days, for they saw little of any one but
each other. Neale's days and evenings were good or bad, according to the
extent of his success in monopolizing Miss Austin. On the whole the
evenings were the best, the evenings when they sat in a far corner of
the hotel piazza and compared notes about their views on life and
literature. Miss Austin paid Neale the compliment he most appreciated.
She affected to consider him as well-read as she was--what did he think
of Meredith, and Ibsen? She discussed Bernard Shaw and "The Second Mrs.
Tanqueray." Neale had to trust to copious bluffing: to confide heavily
in his taciturnity, letting her run on, till she expressed opinions
tangible enough for him to agree with her.
The climax of the season was the fancy dress dance at the Prospect
House. Everybody went; Billy in a blanket, woodchuck skins and turkey
feathers considered himself a passable Uncas. Neale who had caught the
early morning train up to West Adams and the milk train back, wore his
football suit, with his white sweater like a cloak, the arms tied under
his chin--hot but very becoming.
With Billy he started conscientiously to dance in rotation with all the
girls from their hotel. His second dance was with Miss Austin. She was
in black with a black lace mantilla, and pinned in her hair was one of
the roses Neale had ransacked Pittsfield to buy--he forgot the
others--forgot everything but the rhythm of their steps together--they
danced, sat out on the verandah--danced again.
It was pointed, shameless--the chaperon, whose daughter was sitting a
disconsolate wall-flower, glared at them--and they danced on. Had this
red-blooded young blade, giving himself up wholly to the glamor of the
moment, had he ever taken the cold, dry, heartless doctrine of Horace as
a guide to life? He danced on--had he said he only danced when he was
caught and had to?--he danced on, thrilling to the rhythm, like the
swinging beat of hearts in young bodies. At last, the piano, violin and
cornet (the "orchestra" imported from the city of North Adams), broke
into "Home, Sweet Home," and the last waltz began; slow, languorous, the
climax of the wonderful evening for Neale.
Then Miss Austin staged her dramatic effect. As the party broke up, she
said, putting out one hand to Neale and resting the other on her
mother's arm, "Good-night, Mr. Crittenden, and ..." she looked down at
the roses he had given her, "and good-by. Mother and I are leaving on
the morning train. I only waited to have that last dance." She waited an
instant to let this have its effect, and added in a lower tone, "Thank
you--thank you for--for making my stay here so pleasant."
Now there was, under Neale's skin, neither a calm Horatian philosopher
nor a dashing red-blooded young blade. There was only a shy, awkward boy
of nineteen, taken entirely unawares, struck dumb by the surge of
emotion within him. Helpless and inarticulate, except for a muttered
"good-by" he shook Miss Austin's hand and walked away with apparent
steadiness.
But afterwards...! When Billy was snoring inside the tent, Neale sat on
the platform outside, and wrestled with Destiny. What a stiff, frozen
lump he had been, not to have been able to speak out what was in his
heart. She was _going_! And he had no photograph of her...! What an
idiot never to have thought to ask for one! Not a keepsake! Not even a
kiss! It was too hideous. No man with any virility would let Destiny
ride rough-shod over him like that. He would be masterful. He would take
the same train with her in the morning, he would be reckless, follow her
up.... Great Caesar's ghost! But it was cold out there! The night
dampness pierced through even his thick sweater. He staggered to his
cot, rolled up in the blankets and fell instantly asleep.
* * * * *
He half-wakened once at dawn with the first rays of sunlight, rolled
over, looked out into the breathless, pure beauty of the new day
dropping slowly in a rain of golden light through the great trees,
thought hazily that he was timber-cruising in the Green Mountains again,
and fell asleep more profoundly than ever. He was really very tired and
his old faculty for prodigious sleeping reasserted itself.
When he finally awoke, the day was ripe, and the light had a late look.
Sure enough, his watch said a quarter past eleven. He sat up and
stretched, and rubbed his hands back and forth through his frowsy hair.
Billy had eaten his breakfast and gone. But he must have brought up the
mail and left it for Neale to find; for a letter now fell off Neale's
cot to the floor.
The letter was typed, brief and direct like the writer.
"Dear Crittenden:
"We have a hard schedule ahead of us this season. I want all last
year's squad to report at the football house for practice on
September 1st. I can count on you not to be late.
"R. McAlpine, Capt."
Neale read it over and over, stupidly at first and then with growing
excitement. Alone in the tent, he allowed a broad, childish,
unrestrained smile of pure pleasure and pride to shine all over his
face.
Then the date struck his eye. He was to report on September first and
this was August twenty-fourth. Gosh! Less than a week to get into
condition! Not a single minute to lose. His chance might depend on his
being in condition.
_His chance...!_ He tossed the blankets off and sprang up, making plans
rapidly. The coffee-pot left by Billy was still warm in the banked
ashes, but Neale put it aside. No coffee! After his breakfast of oatmeal
and toast, he looked longingly at his pipe, but did not light it. No
tobacco! He remembered that this was about the time for Miss Austin's
train, but he did not change his clothes to go down to see her off. No
girls!
Still in his football togs, just as he had danced the last waltz, he set
off for the first of his training, a two-mile jog-trot over the hills.