The Plastic Age Part 14

After each cla.s.s had sung three or four songs, the boys gathered in the center of the lawn, sang the college hymn, gave a cheer, and the sing was over.

On such nights, however, the singing really continued for hours. The Glee Club often sang from the Union steps; groups of boys wandered arm in arm around the campus singing; on every fraternity steps there were youths strumming banjos and others "harmonizing": here, there, everywhere young voices were lifted in song--not joyous nor jazzy but plaintive and sentimental. Adeline's sweetness was extolled by unsure barytones and "whisky" tenors; and the charms of Rosie O'Grady were chanted in "close harmony" in every corner of the campus:

"Sweet Rosie O'Grady, She's my pretty rose; She's my pretty lady, As every one knows.

And when we are married, Oh, how happy we'll be, For I love sweet Rosie O'Grady And Rosie O'Grady loves me."

Hugh loved those nights: the shadows of the elms, the soft spring moonlight, the tw.a.n.ging banjos, the happy singing. He would never, so long as he lived, hear "Rosie O'Grady" without surrendering to a tender, sentimental mood; that song would always mean the campus and singing youth.

Suddenly examinations threw their baleful influence over the campus again. Once more the excitement, but not so great this time, the cramming, the rumors of examinations "getting out," the seminars, the tutoring sections, the nervousness, the fear.

Hugh, however, was surer of himself than he had been the first term, and although he had no reason to be proud of the grades he received, he was not particularly ashamed of them.

He and Carl left the same day but by different trains. They had agreed to room together again in Surrey 19; so they didn't feel that the parting for the summer was very important.

"You'll write, won't you, old man?"

"Sure, Hugh--surest thing you know. Say, it don't seem possible that our freshman year's over already. Why, h.e.l.l, Hugh, we're soph.o.m.ores."

"So we are! What do you know about that?" Hugh's eyes shone. "Gos.h.!.+"

Carl looked at his watch. "h.e.l.l, I've got to beat it." He picked up his suit-case, dropped it, shook hands vigorously with Hugh, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his suit-case, and was off with a final, "Good-by, Hugh, old boy," sounding behind him.

Hugh settled back into a chair. He had half an hour to wait.

"A soph.o.m.ore.... Gos.h.!.+"

CHAPTER XIV

Hugh spent the summer at home, working on the farm, reading a little, and occasionally visiting a lake summer resort a few miles away. Helen had left Merrytown to attend a secretarial school in a neighboring city, and Hugh was genuinely glad to find her gone when he returned from college. Helen was becoming not only a bore but a problem. Besides, he met a girl at Corley Lake, the summer resort, whom he found much more fascinating. For a month or two he thought that he was in love with Janet Harton. Night after night he drove to Corley Lake in his father's car, sometimes dancing with Janet in the pavilion, sometimes canoeing with her on the lake, sometimes taking her for long rides in the car, but often merely wandering through the pines with her or sitting on the sh.o.r.e of the lake and staring at the rippling water.

Janet was small and delicate; she seemed almost fragile. She did everything daintily--like a little girl playing tea-party. Her hands and feet were exquisitely small, her features childlike and indefinite, except her little coral mouth, which was as clearly outlined with color as a doll's and as mobile as a fluttering leaf. She had wide blue eyes and hair that was truly golden. Strangely, she had not bobbed it but wore it bound into a s.h.i.+ning coil around her head.

Hugh wrote a poem to her. It began thus:

Maiden with the clear blue eyes, Lady with the golden hair, Exquisite child, serenely wise, Sweetly tender, morning fair.

He wasn't sure that it was a very good poem; there was something reminiscent about the first line, and he was dubious about "morning fair." He had, however, studied German for a year in high school, and he guessed that if _morgenschon_ was all right in German it was all right in English, too.

They rarely talked. Hugh was content to sit for hours with the delicate child nestling in his arm, her hand lying pa.s.sive and cool in his. She made him feel very strong and protective. Nights, he dreamed of doing brave deeds for her, of saving her from terrible dangers. At first her vague, fleeting kisses thrilled him, but as the weeks went by and his pa.s.sion grew, he found them strangely unsatisfying.

When she cuddled her lovely head in the hollow of his shoulder, he would lean forward and whisper: "Kiss me, Janet. Kiss me." Obediently she would turn her face upward, her little mouth pursed into a coral bud, but if he held her too tightly or prolonged the kiss, she pushed him away or turned her face. Then he felt repelled, chilled. She kissed him much as she kissed her mother every night, and he wanted--well he didn't quite know what he did want except that he didn't want to be kissed _that_ way.

Finally he protested. "What's the matter, Janet?" he asked gently.

"Don't you love me?"

"Of course," she answered calmly in her small flute-like voice; "of course I love you, but you are so rough. You mustn't kiss me hard like that; it isn't nice."

Nice! Hugh felt as if she had slapped his face. Then he knew that she didn't understand at all. He tried to excuse her by telling himself that she was just a child--she was within a year of his own age--and that she would love him the way he did her when she grew older; but down in his heart he sensed the fact that she wasn't capable of love, that she merely wanted to be petted and caressed as a child did. The shadows and the moonlight did not move her as they did him, and she thought that he was silly when he said that he could hear a song in the night breeze.

She had said that his poem was very pretty. That was all. Well, maybe it wasn't a very good poem, but it had--well, it had--it had something in it that wasn't just pretty.

He began to visit the lake less often and to wish that September and the opening of college would arrive. When the day finally came to return, he was almost as much excited as he had been the year before. Gos.h.!.+ it would be good to see Carl again. The b.u.m had written only once. Yeah, and Pudge Jamieson, too, and Larry Stillwell, and Bill Freeman, and--yes, by golly! Merton Billings. He'd be glad to see old Fat Billings. He wondered if Merton was as fat as ever and as pure. And all the brothers at the Nu Delta house. He'd been too busy to get really acquainted with them last year; but this year, by gosh, he'd get to know all of them. It certainly would be great to be back and be a soph.o.m.ore and make the little frosh stand around.

He didn't carry his suit-case up the hill this time; he checked it and sent a freshman for it later. When he arrived at Surrey 19 Carl was already there--and he was kneeling before a trunk when Hugh walked into the room. Both of them instantly remembered the identical scene of the year before.

Carl jumped to his feet. "Hullo--who are you?" he demanded, his face beaming.

Hugh pretended to be frightened and shy. "I'm Hugh Carver. I--I guess I'm going to room with you."

"You sure are!" yelled Carl, jumping over the trunk and landing on Hugh.

"G.o.d! I'm glad to see you. Put it there." They shook hands and stared at each other with s.h.i.+ning eyes.

Then they began to talk, interrupting each other, gesticulating, occasionally slapping each other violently on the back or knee, shouting with laughter as one of them told of a summer experience that struck them as funny. They were both so glad to get back to college, so glad to see each other, that they were almost hysterical. And when they left Surrey 19 arm in arm on their way to the Nu Delta house "to see the brothers," their cup of bliss was full to the brim and running over.

"Criminy, the ol' campus sure does look good," said Hugh ecstatically.

"Watch the frosh work." He was suddenly reminded of something. "Hey, freshman!" he yelled at a big, red-faced youngster who was to be full-back on the football team a year hence.

The freshman came on a run. "Yes--yes, sir?"

"Here's a check. Take it down to the station and get my suit-case. Take it up to Surrey Nineteen and put it in the room. The door's open. Hurry up now; I'm going to want it pretty soon."

"Yes, sir. I'll hurry." And the freshman was off running.

Hugh and Carl grinned at each other, linked arms again, and continued their way across the campus. When they entered the Nu Delta house a shout went up. "Hi, Carl! Hi, Hugh! Glad to see you back. Didya have a good summer? Put it there, ol' kid"--and they shook hands, gripping each other's forearm at the same time.

Hugh tried hard to become a typical soph.o.m.ore and failed rather badly.

He retained much of the shyness and diffidence that gives the freshman his charm, and he did not succeed very well in acquiring the swagger, the c.o.c.ky, patronizing manner, the raucous self-a.s.surance that characterize the true soph.o.m.ore.

He found, too, that he couldn't lord it over the freshmen very well, and at times he was nothing less than a renegade to his cla.s.s. He was constantly giving freshmen correct information about their problems, and during the dormitory initiations he more than once publicly objected to some "stunt" that seemed to him needlessly insulting to the initiates.

Because he was an athlete, his opinion was respected, and quite unintentionally he won several good friends among the freshmen. His objections had all been spontaneous, and he was rather sorry about them afterward. He felt that he must be soft, that he ought to be able to stand anything that anybody else could. Further, he felt that there must be something wrong with his sense of humor; things that struck lots of his cla.s.smates as funny seemed merely disgusting to him.

He wanted very much to tell Carl about Janet, but for several weeks the opportunity did not present itself. There was too much excitement about the campus; the mood of the place was all wrong, and Hugh, although he didn't know it, was very sensitive to moods and atmosphere.

Finally one night in October he and Carl were seated in their big chairs before the fire. They had been walking that afternoon, and Hugh had been swept outside of himself by the brilliance of the autumn foliage. He was emotionally and physically tired, feeling that vague, melancholy happiness that comes after an intense but pleasant experience. Carl leaned back to the center-table and switched off the study light.

"Pleasanter with just the firelight," he said quietly. He, too, had something that he wanted to tell, and the less light the better.

Hugh sighed and relaxed comfortably into his chair. The shadows were thick and mysterious behind them; the flames leaped merrily in the fireplace. Both boys sat silent, staring into the fire.