The Plastic Age Part 32

Hugh could never pa.s.s Surrey Hall without feeling something deeper than sentimentality. He always thought of Carl Peters, from whom he had not heard for more than a year. He understood Carl better now, his desire to be a gentleman and his despair at ever succeeding. Surrey Hall held drama for Hugh, not all of it pleasant, but he had a deeper affection for the ivy-covered dormitory then he would ever have for the Nu Delta House. He wondered what had become of Morse, the homesick freshman.

Poor Morse.... And the bull sessions he had sat in in old Surrey. He had learned a lot from them, a whole lot....

The chapel where he had slept and surrept.i.tiously eaten doughnuts and read "The Sanford News" suddenly became a holy building, the building that housed the soul of Sanford.... He knew that he was sentimental, that he was investing buildings with a greater significance than they had in their own right, but he continued to dream over the last four years and to find a melancholy beauty in his own sentimentality. If it hadn't been for Cynthia, he would have been perfectly happy.

Soon the examinations were over, and the undercla.s.smen began to depart. Good-by to all his friends who were not seniors. Good-by to Norry Parker. "Thanks for the congratulations, old man. Sorry I can't visit you this summer. Can't you spend a month with me on the farm...?"

Good-by to his fraternity brothers except the few left in his own delegation. "Good-by, old man, good-by.... Sure, I'll see you next year at the reunion." Good-by.... Good-by....

Sad, this business of saying good-by, d.a.m.n sad. Gee, how a fellow would miss all the good old eggs he had walked with and drunk with and bulled with these past years. Good eggs, all of them--d.a.m.n good eggs.... G.o.d!

a fellow couldn't appreciate college until he was about to leave it.

Oh, for a chance to live those four years over again. "Would I live them differently? I'll say I would."

Good-by, boyhood.... Commencement was coming. Hugh hadn't thought before of what that word meant. Commencement! The beginning. What was he going to do with this commencement of his into life? Old Pudge was going to law school and so was Jack Lawrence. George Winsor was going to medical school. But what was he going to do? He felt so pathetically unprepared. And then there was Cynthia.... What was he going to do about her? She rarely left his mind. How could he tackle life when he couldn't solve the problem she presented? It was like trying to run a hundred against fast men when a fellow had only begun to train.

Henley had advised him to take a year or so at Harvard if his father proved willing, and his father was more than willing, even eager. He guessed that he'd take at least a year in Cambridge. Perhaps he could find himself in that year. Maybe he could learn to write. He hoped to G.o.d he could.

Just before commencement his relations with Cynthia came to a climax.

They had been constantly becoming more complicated. She was demanding nothing of him, but her letters were tinged with despair. He felt at last that he must see her. Then he would know whether he loved her or not. A year before she had said that he didn't. How did she know? She had said that all he felt for her was s.e.x attraction. How did she know that? Why, she had said that was all that she felt for him. And he had heard plenty of fellows argue that love was nothing but s.e.xual attraction anyway, and that all the stuff the poets wrote was pure bunk.

Freud said something like that, he thought, and Freud knew a d.a.m.n sight more about it than the poets.

Yet, the doubt remained. Whether love was merely s.e.xual attraction or not, he wanted something more than that; his every instinct demanded something more. He had noticed another thing: the fellows that weren't engaged said that love was only s.e.xual attraction; those who were engaged vehemently denied it, and Hugh knew that some of the engaged men had led gay lives in college. He could not reach any decision; at times he was sure that what he felt for Cynthia was love; at other times he was sure that it wasn't.

At last in desperation he telegraphed to her that he was coming to New York and that she should meet him at Grand Central at three o'clock the next day. He knew that he oughtn't to go. He would be able to stay in New York only a little more than two hours because his father and mother would arrive in Haydensville the day following, and he felt that he had to be there to greet them. He d.a.m.ned himself for his impetuousness all during the long trip, and a dozen times he wished he were back safe in the Nu Delta house. What in h.e.l.l would he say to Cynthia, anyway? What would he do when he saw her? Kiss her? "I won't have a d.a.m.ned bit of sense left if I do."

She was waiting for him as he came through the gate. Quite without thinking, he put down his bag and kissed her. Her touch had its old power; his blood leaped. With a tremendous effort of will he controlled himself. That afternoon was all-important; he must keep his head.

"It's sweet of you to come," Cynthia whispered, clinging to him, "so d.a.m.ned sweet."

"It's d.a.m.ned good to see you," he replied gruffly. "Come on while I check this bag. I've only got a little over two hours, Cynthia; I've got to get the five-ten back. My folks will be in Haydensville to-morrow morning, and I've got to get back to meet them."

Her face clouded for an instant, but she tucked her arm gaily in his and marched with him across the rotunda to the checking counter. When Hugh had disposed of his bag, he suggested that they go to a little tea room on Fifty-seventh Street. She agreed without argument. Once they were in a taxi, she wanted to snuggle down into his arm, but she restrained herself; she felt that she had to play fair.

Hugh said nothing. He was trying to think, and his thoughts whirled around in a mad, drunken dance. He believed that he would be married before he took the train back, at least engaged, and what would all that mean? Did he want to get married? G.o.d! he didn't know.

When at last they were settled in a corner of the empty tea-room and had given their order, they talked in an embarra.s.sed fas.h.i.+on about their recent letters, both of them carefully quiet and restrained. Finally Hugh shoved his plate and cup aside and looked straight at her for the first time. She was thin, much thinner than she had been a year ago, but there was something sweeter about her, too; she seemed so quiet, so gentle.

"We aren't going to get anywhere this way, Cynthia," he said desperately. "We're both evading. I haven't any sense left, but what I say from now on I am going to say straight out. I swore on the train that I wouldn't kiss you. I knew that I wouldn't be able to think if I did--and I can't; all I know is that I want to kiss you again." He looked at her sitting across the little table from him, so slender and still--a different Cynthia but d.a.m.nably desirable. "Cynthia," he added hoa.r.s.ely, "if you took my hand, you could lead me to h.e.l.l."

She in turn looked at him. He was much older than he had been a year before. Then he had been a boy; now he seemed a man. He had not changed particularly; he was as blond and young and clean as ever, but there was something about his mouth and eyes, something more serious and more stern, that made him seem years older.

"I don't want to lead you to h.e.l.l, honey," she replied softly. "I left Prom last year so that I wouldn't do that. I told you then that I wasn't good for you--but I'm different now."

"I can see that. I don't know what it is, but you're different, awfully different." He leaned forward suddenly. "Cynthia, shall we go over to Jersey and get married? I understand that one can there right away.

We're both of age--"

"Wait, Hugh; wait." Cynthia's hands were tightly clasped in her lap.

"Are you sure that you want to? I've been thinking a lot since I got your telegram. Are you sure you love me?"

He slumped back into his chair. "I don't know what love is," he confessed miserably. "I can't find out." Cynthia's hands tightened in her lap. "I've tried to think this business out, and I can't. I haven't any right to ask you to marry me. I haven't any money, not a bit, and I'm not prepared to do anything, either. As I wrote you, my folks want me to go to Harvard next year." The mention of his poverty and of his inability to support a wife brought him back to something approaching normal again. "I suppose I'm just a kid, Cynthia," he added more quietly, "but sometimes I feel a thousand years old. I do right now."

"What were your plans for next year and after that until you saw me?"

Her eyes searched his.

"Oh, I thought I'd go to Harvard a year or two and then try to write or perhaps teach. Writing is slow business, I understand, and teaching doesn't pay anything. I don't want to ask my father to support us, and I won't let your folks. I lost my head when I suggested that we get married. It would be foolish. I haven't the right."

"No," she agreed slowly; "no, neither of us has the right. I thought before you came if you asked me to marry you--I was sure somehow that you would--I would run right off and do it, but now I know that I won't." She continued to gaze at him, her eyes troubled and confused.

What made him seem so much older, so different?

"Do you think we can ever forget Prom?" She waited for his reply. So much depended on it.

"Of course," he answered impatiently. "I've forgotten that already. We were crazy kids, that's all--youngsters trying to act smart and wild."

"Oh!" The e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n was soft, but it vibrated with pain. "You mean that--that you wouldn't--well, you wouldn't get drunk like that again?"

"Of course not, especially at a dance. I'm not a child any longer, Cynthia. I have sense enough now not to forfeit my self-respect again. I hope so, anyway. I haven't been drunk in the last year. A drunkard is a beastly sight, rotten. If I have learned anything in college, it is that a man has to respect himself, and I can't respect any one any longer who deliberately reduces himself to a beast. I was a beast with you a year ago. I treated you like a woman of the streets, and I abused Norry Parker's hospitality shamefully. If I can help it, I'll never act like a rotter again, I hate a prig, Cynthia, like the devil, but I hate a rotter even more. I hope I can learn to be neither."

As he spoke, Cynthia clenched her hands so tightly that the finger-nails were bruising her tender palms, but her eyes remained dry and her lips did not tremble. If he could have seen _her_ on some parties this last year....

"You have changed a lot." Her words were barely audible. "You have changed an awful lot."

He smiled. "I hope so. There are times now when I hate myself, but I never hate myself so much as when I think of Prom. I've learned a lot in the last year, and I hope I've learned enough to treat a decent girl decently. I have never apologized to you the way I think I ought to."

"Don't!" she cried, her voice vibrant with pain. "Don't! I was more to blame than you were. Let's not talk about that."

"All right. I'm more than willing to forget it." He paused and then continued very seriously, "I can't ask you to marry me now, Cynthia--but--but are you willing to wait for me? It may take time, but I promise I'll work hard."

Cynthia's hands clenched convulsively. "No, Hugh honey," she whispered; "I'll never marry you. I--I don't love you."

"What?" he demanded, his senses swimming in hopeless confusion. "What?"

She did not say that she knew that he did not love her; she did not tell him how much his quixotic chivalry moved her. Nor did she tell him that she knew only too well that she could lead him to h.e.l.l, as he said, but that that was the only place that she could lead him. These things she felt positive of, but to mention them meant an argument--and an argument would have been unendurable.

"No," she repeated, "I don't love you. You see, you're so different from what I remembered. You've grown up and you've changed. Why, Hugh, we're strangers. I've realized that while you've been talking. We don't know each other, not a bit. We only saw each other for a week summer before last and for two days last spring. Now we're two altogether different people; and we don't know each other at all."

She prayed that he would deny her statements, that he would say they knew each other by instinct--anything, so long as he did not agree.

"I certainly don't know you the way you're talking now," he said almost roughly, his pride hurt and his mind in a turmoil. "I know that we don't know each other, but I never thought that you thought that mattered."

Her hands clenched more tightly for an instant--and then lay open and limp in her lap.

Her lips were trembling; so she smiled. "I didn't think it mattered until you asked me to marry you. Then I knew it did. It was game of you to offer to take a chance, but I'm not that game. I couldn't marry a strange man. I like that man a lot, but I don't love him--and you don't want me to marry you if I don't love you, do you, Hugh?"

"Of course not." He looked down in earnest thought and then said softly, his eyes on the table, "I'm glad that you feel that way, Cynthia." She bit her lip and trembled slightly. "I'll confess now that I don't think that I love you, either. You sweep me clean off my feet when I'm with you, but when I'm away from you I don't feel that way. I think love must be something more than we feel for each other." He looked up and smiled boyishly. "We'll go on being friends anyhow, won't we?"

Somehow she managed to smile back at him. "Of course," she whispered, and then after a brief pause added: "We had better go now. Your train will be leaving pretty soon."

Hugh pulled out his watch. "By jingo, so it will."