After the Thanksgiving game, a great peace, a lying-fallow time, a
period of unconscious adjustment and assimilation of all that mass of
experience.
Neale moved back to the Frat. house, rooming with Harry Gregg, a
classmate of his and a fine fellow, thought Neale, even though not
athletic. He and Gregg had chanced to take much the same courses and
were in the same class-rooms in several subjects. After a preliminary
stagger or two, like a man coming indoors after living in the open, who
cannot walk across the room without tripping over the furniture, Neale's
mind settled down to his studies. He found them rather more interesting
than he had expected. A course in general European history especially
held him, and he gave much more time to the outside reading prescribed
than he would have confessed to any member of his Frat. except Gregg,
who took it as a matter of course. He encountered some personalities
there who held him and about whom he often thought, big figures who
dwarfed the life around him when they stood up beside his study table.
Cromwell was one and Garibaldi another. But they were not all soldiers.
Wise old scouts like Sully, Oxenstierna and Plombal who did the real
work and let the cloth-of-gold opera-tenor kings and potentates prance
around in the lime-light, they took Neale's fancy too. They were the
boys for him! He used to sit back and laugh to himself to think how much
more they must have enjoyed the real exercise of their own strength than
the silly sovereigns could have enjoyed their silly lime-light. As for
Henry IV and _his_ lady-loves, he reminded Neale so forcibly of Mike and
his lady-loves that he could never take that white-plumed monarch
seriously. Henry of Navarre made him laugh at Mike and Mike made him
laugh at Henry of Navarre, and over both those hilarities Neale drew
the decent veil of his calm, pipe-smoking stolidity.
One day browsing around in the Library, he saw the title of one of the
books Miss Austin had spoken of the summer before, one of the books
Neale had pretended to know and had never heard of. He drew it out (it
was "Richard Feveral"), and read it, entranced, until early the next
morning. After that he looked up, one by one, all the books she had
mentioned, and read them, some with delight, some with blank
incomprehensiveness, some with scorn.
He killed a lot of time discussing things in general with Gregg, reading
Gregg's books. He fell especially hard for a worn volume of Poems and
Ballads. For six weeks he was convinced that Swinburne had said the last
word, a blighting word, on ethical values. Then one day he noticed that
his favorite credo, "From too much love of living, from hope and fear
set free" could be sung to the tune of the well-known, extremely coarse
and very unpoetical song called, "Some die of drinking whiskey, some die
of drinking beer," and it occurred to him suddenly that when you thought
about it, both expressed the same philosophy. It was disgusting! It
wasn't argument--but just the same it somehow put a crimp in Swinburne!
He went back to his history and economics. But you couldn't stew over
your books all day long; he drifted more or less with Billy Peters'
innocuous, evening-dress, dancing-fussing set.
Outwardly he passed as a good fellow, a passable mixer though rather
silent. Inwardly he had given up his pose of Horatian calm. It didn't
work--not for him. He found himself very much alone and friendless. The
other men on the football squad--well, they had been his blood-brothers
during the season, but after the season they were mostly illiterate
young rakes without a single mental spark even when they were drunk. As
for Pete Hilliard's crowd and their small-town, back-alley ways of
amusing themselves--hell! Neale felt for them the amused scorn of the
native-born great-city dweller for the uneasy provincial who thinks he
can hide his provincialism best by assuming a boisterous nastiness.
For the first time Neale began to wonder about himself, to wonder what
sort of a human being he was anyway, that he didn't seem to fit in
really, with any crowd. There was always so much of himself left over,
shut out from companionship, left in the dark, alone and silent, while
with a little corner of himself he danced and talked to girls, and drank
and played poker, and talked to Gregg; for there was an immense lot of
which he never spoke even to Gregg. For instance they never talked about
girls, and Neale was thinking a good deal about girls. When he read
love-poems his breath came and went fast, he felt tingling all over. He
longed to put out his hand and open the door into the wonders and
marvels that lay beyond it. He drew back from the fear of failure, of
making a fool of himself at an unfamiliar game. But he never feared that
there was nothing beyond the door.
At dances, sometimes he stood aloof, trying to look Byronic to save
himself from looking wistful, sometimes he danced steadily, always with
a calm exterior, beneath which weltered a confused mass of bewildered
uncertainties and longings that rose choking to his very throat: and yet
not a word of it could he ever get out.
What was it he was missing? Moody, out of humor with the bright, warm
May sunshine, he put the question to himself as he sauntered aimlessly
down the Library steps. Why, he was missing everything that made life
worth while! Was he always to live alone with most of him hidden and
silent? Would he never find his crowd, or at least one other person, to
meet whom he could go forth, all of him, light and free, without the
ball and chain of his endless reticences? Other fellows seemed to find
something satisfying in life. Why not he? Was it his fault, or life's,
that he walked in inner blackness? He was framing a sweeping indictment
of life as he passed the gate to South Field.
Somebody ran out and grabbed him by the neck, a tall Senior. "King's
Crown playing the Deutscher Verein," he explained. "Speed up and get in,
Crit. Get your coat off. Never mind your togs. You've got to catch next
inning. Purdy can't hold the ball if I put a hop on it, and the
Dutchies are swatting my slow curve. There you go, that's the third
out. Get busy. Give me one finger for a fast one; two for an out; and
the closed fist for the drop."
The pessimistic philosopher, exiled to eternal solitude, shed coat and
collar, put on mask and mitt. A ball, a strike, a high foul. As he
sprinted behind the back-stop to get under it, Neale sloughed off the
parched skin of introspection. From that time on, he forgot everything
but the game. He rattled off encouragement to the pitcher, "Keep
workin', old man _that_-a-boy, make him hit it! Got him swinging wild!"
He improvised wild flights of kidding to get the goat of one batter
after another.
After the game when he and his pitcher were shaking hands and grinning
at each other, he became aware of Berkley and Berkley's girl. What was
her name? He'd met her at the Junior Ball--oh, yes, Miss Wentworth. They
stopped to congratulate him. Neale was conscious, wretchedly,
unphilosophically conscious of a very dirty face, a more than dirty
shirt--and torn trousers. But Miss Wentworth didn't seem to notice.
Perhaps she was a good sport. It was conceivable that a girl might be.
She made a sensible comment on the double play which had saved the game
in the eighth. Why, she was intelligent as well as good-looking. Neale
fell into step, forgetting his disheveled looks, and walked along to the
drug-store at 120th Street, where they all had sodas.
He met her again that spring, in the waiting-room of the 125th Street
station, of all prosaic places! He had stopped in for a time-table to
see about getting up to West Adams and she was evidently waiting for a
train. He touched his cap. She smiled. He stopped to pass the time of
day, "Vacation's almost here," he said.
"What are you going to do with it?" she inquired.
He hesitated. She wouldn't understand. But he was never very good on
quick bluffs, and so said briefly, "I've got to learn to kick this
summer--to kick a football, I mean. I--I play football a little."
She threw back her head and laughed, "Oh, you needn't explain. I know
you play. I'm a regular fan. I haven't missed a home game in three
years, and I read the athletic news. McAlpine graduates, so does
Johnstone. There's nobody left at Columbia who can punt. So you're to
learn! More power to you. I'll come and root for you next autumn."
He took, with him to West Adams a mental picture of a strong, capable
body in a shirt-waist and golf-skirt, fluffy yellow hair, smiling lips,
laughing, honest, blue eyes.
He carried also what was more tangible and important in his summer
plans, a worn brown football, the center of many an afternoon's battle
between scrub and Varsity. As soon as he was installed at West Adams he
went to work. The spare, thin grass on the upper meadow had been cut.
There, a good mile Neale jogged every day, and there, all the morning,
he practised punting: booting the ball high and far, racing down, trying
to get to it while it was still bounding; then kicking it back again,
experimenting with different ways of holding it. He always kicked at
some target. "I'll drop that on the stone pile," he would say to
himself, and before he kicked again, he would try to analyze success and
failures. He no longer needed an Atkins to spur him to use his brains.
By eleven o'clock, pretty well fagged-out, he would jog down again, take
a plunge in the inlet above the mill pond, where no one could see him
for the thick growth of alders, and come in to luncheon at noon, cool
and ravenous.
In the afternoon he worked at the mill, or lay round and read. He had
brought a lot of books up from college in his trunk, but nothing seemed
to fit his present serious regime as well as Emerson. After much running
after false prophets the clear, brutal sanity of the Essays was as
refreshing and tonic as the plunge into the icy, clear water of the
inlet. He found in them too, what had escaped him at the first reading,
an austere sonority in the best passages. "Let those fear who will. The
soul is in her native realm, and it is wider than space, older than
time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses
with a beautiful scorn. They are not for her who putteth on her
coronation robe and goeth out through universal love to universal
power." He rolled it under his tongue. It beat about his ears like the
low, dignified threat of distant thunder.
One Saturday in August, a little before his twentieth birthday,
something happened which cast a long ray of light back on Neale's life.
It began by the great surprise of seeing Father and Mother drive up to
the house in a buggy from the village livery-stable.
It was perfectly evident from the moment they set foot in the house that
there was something in the air, but being a Crittenden, Neale's father
was in no haste to say what it was, and waited to explode his bomb-shell
till dessert time, as they were eating the peaches and fruit-cake which
Grandmother served to honor their arrival. Then it came out.
"We've been doing a pretty big business in cabinet woods lately," Father
began, looking at no one in particular. "Cocobolo, rosewood, lignum
vitae, mahogany. The selling end is all right but it's a job to get the
stuff delivered. The firm has made up its mind that it will pay to send
a man through the West Indies and Central America to look the production
end over, get options, sign contracts for regular yearly delivery.
There's a big territory to cover, the field goes as far south as
Brazil--it'll take a couple of years at least, maybe three or four. I'm
telling you all this because they've offered the job to me, and Mother
and I have about decided to accept."
Mother looked hard at Neale as Father announced this, and they both
waited to see what he would say. Neale was so astonished at the idea of
his stationary father and mother being anywhere but in the house on
Union Hill, that he found nothing to say for a moment, staring at them.
Then he said (it was the first thing that came into his head), "But what
will you do with the house? All those things?"
Mother said eagerly, "Oh, we could rent it furnished. We already have a
good offer for it."
"Well, what do you think about that!" exclaimed Neale in a stupid
astonishment at the idea that somebody else could live in their house.
He went on eating his peaches and thinking about it in silence since he
saw no reason why his opinion on the subject was of any interest to
anybody. It did not dawn on him till afterwards, when he and Father took
a stroll along the mill-brook that Father and Mother wanted to _know_
how he felt about it, and would not do it if he very much disliked the
idea of having no home nearby. This astonishing fact became apparent to
him along with another matter even more astonishing, that apparently the
Union Hill house had been arranged largely for his benefit, so that he
could have the stability of a home atmosphere.
"We always wanted to roam, rather," explained his father casually, "we
were pretty young when we married. Your mother was only twenty and I was
twenty-four. We had talked a good deal of cutting loose and seeing the
world. But--well, you were born the first year afterwards, and we
thought probably there would be other children. It seemed better to put
it off, settle down till we had raised our family--though you turned out
to be the only one."
In the twilight of the maples, Neale was doing some thinking. Mother had
been _married_ when she was his age; with all her life before her, and
she'd never had a bit of it till now; only Union Hill and more Union
Hill. And Father, too.... He murmured something muffled and
inarticulate, which made no particular sense to the ear, but which
Father understood, and answered with some vehemence, "No, Great Scott,
_no_, Neale! Don't think that! Heavens, no! I didn't mean we'd
sacrificed anything for you--we just got into a rut, the way people do,
and stayed there so long we began to think we couldn't get out and now
when this opportunity comes, your mother wanted to make _sure_ it's all
right with you, that's all! Your mother and I, you've been a great
comfort to us. We don't want...."
He was almost as muffled and inarticulate as Neale, but Neale understood
him, and reaching for his hand, gave it a hard grip. He did not try to
say anything now. The two men, silent under the old maples that had
sheltered their childhood, exchanged a quick glance of understanding and
affection, nearer to each other now, at the moment of parting than ever
before.
Then they went back to the house, silent as Iroquois, and Neale went in
to where his mother was playing dreamily on the old piano, to tell her
bluntly that he would not in the least mind their leaving Union Hill,
since he could be at home very little in any case during his Senior
year.
She turned around on the piano stool to listen to his sober statement,
and to look at the great fellow, towering up over her.
"Yes, you're grown up now, Neale, aren't you?" she said faintly, putting
a hand out towards him and he knew he had hurt her by his bluntness. And
yet it was the truth he told her, and also what she wanted to hear. He
could not take it back. But he did stoop to her and take her in his big
arms for a little-boy hug.
Father came in then and they lighted the lamp and tried to talk a little
about what Neale was going to do to earn his living when he graduated.
They had often tried to talk of that. But they never got very far, and
no farther this time than any other. Neale had no ideas on the subject,
and being Neale, he would not imaginatively play up to what was expected
of him, and say he had. No, he did not feel that he would like to be a
doctor. No, certainly not a lawyer! He wouldn't mind engineering, but
the old grads in his Frat. who were engineers seemed to have a way of
turning up, out of a job every once in so often. He didn't think much of
a profession where you were so entirely at the mercy of people with
money. It was too much like being a turtle that had to wait for somebody
to turn it over before it could go on its way. Father looked at him
rather queerly and remarked that he'd find it difficult to get any work
in the modern world, where he wouldn't be at the mercy of people with
money.
Neale said, he thought very pertinently, "Grandfather never has been."
Father looked as though he considered this mere arguing for the sake of
arguing, and said something drily, looking around at the plain, old
countrified room, about Neale's not being willing to live as his
grandfather had, two generations ago.
The upshot of the talk was, as it always was, that they agreed once
more to let things run on and perhaps something would turn up.
The next morning Father and Mother went back to New York, to finish the
preparations for their adventure. Mother cried a little when she kissed
Neale good-by, but Grandmother kissed her son without a quiver, though
she clung to Grandfather's arm. She and Grandfather and Neale and old Si
and Jennie stood in the front yard looking after the carriage. It was
almost like seeing a newly married pair go off after the wedding.
Neale's mother kept turning to look back at them, her April face like a
bride's, colored through tears by excitement and anticipation. Neale
stood up, taller than his tall old grandfather now, broad, massive, his
tanned face like a man's. But, to his amazement, there awoke in his
heart for the last time, a little boy, a little boy who was frightened
and grieved at being left alone.
Half-way down the hill, the carriage stopped and they saw Neale's mother
spring out and run back up the hill, beckoning to Neale.
"Forgot something," conjectured Grandfather.
Neale bounded down towards her. They met half-way between the carriage
and the house. Mother's face was still wet with her tears but she was
not crying now. A glory was on her tremulous face. Neale never forgot
how she looked at that moment.
There was something she was trying to tell him and although all she
could bring out, as she took his big hands in hers was, "Neale, dear,
dear Neale," she knew by the look on his face that she had told him.
The little boy in Neale's heart, appeased, consoled, comforted, melted
away forever, without bitterness, without regrets. The over-grown young
man looked down at his mother, with an absolute trust in her love, and a
robust confidence in himself. "I'll be all right, Mother dear," he told
her heartily, meaning a great deal more than he said.
Then she went back to her husband, and Neale went back to his punting.
As he ran furiously after the ball, reeking with sweat under the brazen
August sun, it came to him suddenly, so that he stopped short for an
instant to think of it, wonderingly, that he had never seen his father
and mother look at each other, except with affection. And besides this
old, old knowledge which had hung there so long he had never seen it
before, there was a new picture ... the animation and excitement on
their faces, as they talked of their setting off together for distant
travels, the gaiety of Mother's laugh, as they told of the fun they were
having to make ready for the unknown, to get the right clothes, to learn
Spanish.... "I've been on the point of buying a mantilla," she had said.
"Don't you think I would look well in a mantilla, Neale?"
Mother had never seemed half as young to Neale as now. She must have
been an awfully nice girl, he thought, going soberly to recover his
ball.