The Courage of the Commonplace Part 3

Each place is the best. And in some mystical manner all the doubt and unhappiness which had been gone over in labored volumes of thoughts by each alone, melted to nothing, at two or three broken sentences. There seemed to be nothing to say, for everything was said in a wordless, clear mode of understanding, which lovers and saints know. There was little plot to it, yet there was no lack of interest. In fact so light-footed were the swift moments in the rose-scented dark garden that Johnny McLean forgot, as others have forgotten before him, that time was. He forgot that magnificent lot of fellows, his cla.s.smates; there was not a circ.u.mstance outside of the shadowy garden which he did not whole-heartedly forget. Till a shock brought him to.

The town was alive with bands and cheers and shouts and marching; the distinct noises rose and fell and fused and separated, but kept their distance. When one body of sound, which unnoticed by the lovers had been growing less vague, more compact, broke all at once into loud proximity--men marching, men shouting, men singing.

The two, hand tight in hand, started, looked at each other, listened--and then a name came in a dozen sonorous voices, as they used to shout it in college days, across the Berkeley Oval.

"McLean! McLean!" they called.

"Oh, Johnny McLean!" and "Come out there, oh, Johnny McLean!"

That was Baby Thomas.

"By Jove, they've trapped me," he said, smiling in the dark and holding the hand tighter as the swinging steps stopped in front of the house of the garden. "Brant must have told."

"They've certainly found you," the girl said. Her arms, lifted slowly, went about his neck swiftly. "You're mine-- but you're theirs to-night. I haven't a right to so much of you even. You're theirs. Go." And she held him. But in a second she had pushed him away. "Go," she said. "You're theirs, bless every one of them."

She was standing alone in the dark, sweet garden and there was a roar in the street which meant that he had opened the door and they had seen him. And with that there were shouts of "Put him up"--"Carry him"--"Carry the boy," and laughter and shouting and then again the measured tread of many men retreating down the street, and men's voices singing together. The girl in the dark garden stood laughing, crying, and listened.

"Mother of men!"--

the deep voices sang--

"Mother of men grown strong in giving-- Honor to him thy light have led; Rich in the toil of thousands living, Proud of the deeds of thousands dead!

We who have felt thy power, and known thee, We in whose lives thy lights avail, High, in our hearts enshrined, enthrone thee, Mother of men, old Yale!"