The Plastic Age Part 5

Morse sat down. "You don't understand. I'm not lonely. It isn't that. I could talk to fellows all day long if I wanted to. I don't want to talk to 'em. I can't. There's just one person that I want to talk to, and that's my mother." He shot the word "mother" out defiantly and glared at Hugh, silently daring him to laugh, which Hugh had sense enough not to do, although he wanted to strongly. The great big baby, wanting his mother! Why, he wanted his mother, too, but he didn't cry about it.

"That's all right," he said rea.s.suringly; "you'll see her Christmas vacation, and that isn't very long off."

"I want to see her now!" Morse jumped to his feet and raised his clenched hands above his head. "Now!" he roared. "Now! I've got to. I'm going home on the midnight." He whirled about to his desk and began to pull open the drawers, piling their contents on the top.

"Here!" Hugh rushed to him and clutched his arms. "Don't do that." Morse struggled, angry at the restraining hands, ready to strike them off.

Hugh had a flash of inspiration. "Think how disappointed your mother will be," he cried, hanging on to Morse's arms; "think of her."

Morse ceased struggling. "She will be disappointed," he admitted miserably. "What can I do?" There was a world of despair in his question.

Hugh pushed him into the desk-chair and seated himself on the edge of the desk. "I'll tell you," he said. He talked for half an hour, cheering Morse, a.s.suring him that his homesickness would pa.s.s away, offering to study with him. At first Morse paid little attention, but finally he quit sniffing and looked up, real interest in his face. When Hugh got a weak smile out of him, he felt that his work had been done. He jumped off the desk, leaned over to slap Morse on the back, and told him that he was a good egg but a d.a.m.n fool.

Morse grinned. "You're a good egg yourself," he said gratefully. "You've saved my life."

Hugh was pleased and blushed. "You're full of bull.... Remember, we do Latin at ten to-morrow." He opened the door. "Good night."

"Good night." And Hugh heard as he closed the door. "Thanks a lot."

When he opened his own door, he found Carl sitting before a blazing log fire. There was no other light in the room. Carl had written his nightly letter to the "old lady," and he was a little homesick himself--softened into a tender and pensive mood. He did not move as Hugh sat down in a big chair on the other side of the hearth and said softly, "Thinking?"

"Un-huh. Where you been?"

"Across the hall in Morse's room." Then as Carl looked up in surprise, he told him of his experience with their red-headed neighbor. "He'll get over it," he concluded confidently. "He's just been lonely."

Carl puffed contemplatively at his pipe for a few minutes before replying. Hugh waited, watching the slender boy stretched out in a big chair before the fire, his ankles crossed, his face gentle and boyish in the ruddy, flickering light. The shadows, heavy and wavering, played magic with the room; it was vast, mysterious.

"No," said Carl, pausing again to puff his pipe; "no, he won't get over it. He'll go home."

"Aw, shucks. A big guy like that isn't going to stay a baby all his life." Hugh was frankly derisive. "Soon as he gets to know a lot of fellows, he'll forget home and mother."

Carl smiled vaguely, his eyes dreamy as he gazed into the hypnotizing flames. The mask of sophistication had slipped off his face; he was pleasantly in the control of a gentle mood, a mood that erased the last vestige of protective coloring.

He shook his head slowly. "You don't understand, Hugh. Morse is sick, _sick_--not lonesome. He's got something worse than flu. n.o.body can stand what he's got."

Hugh looked at him in bewilderment. This was a new Carl, some one he hadn't met before. Gone was the slang flippancy, the hard roughness.

Even his voice was softened.

Carl knocked his pipe empty on the k.n.o.b of an andiron, sank deeper into his chair, and began to speak slowly.

"I think I'm going to tell you a thing or two about myself. We've got to room together, and I--well, I like you. You're a good egg, but you don't get me at all. I guess you've never run up against anybody like me before." He paused. Hugh said nothing, afraid to break into Carl's mood.

He was intensely curious. He leaned forward and watched Carl, who was staring dreamily into the fire.

"I told you once, I think," he continued, "that my old man had left us a lot of jack. That's true. We're rich, awfully rich. I have my own account and can spend as much as I like. The sky's the limit. What I didn't tell you is that we're _nouveau riche_--no cla.s.s at all. My old man made all his money the first year of the war. He was a commission-merchant, a middleman. Money just rolled in, I guess. He bought stocks with it, and they boomed; and he had sense enough to sell them when they were at the top. Six years ago we didn't have hardly anything. Now we're rich."

"My old man was a good scout, but he didn't have much education; neither has the old lady. Both of 'em went through grammar-school; that's all."

"Well, they knew they weren't real folks, not regular people, and they wanted me to be. See? That's why they sent me to Kane. Well, Kane isn't strong for _nouveau riche_ kids, not by a d.a.m.n sight. At first old Simmonds--he's the head master--wouldn't take me, said that he didn't have room; but my old man begged and begged, so finally Simmonds said all right."

Again he paused, and Hugh waited. Carl was speaking so softly that he had trouble in hearing him, but somehow he didn't dare to ask him to speak louder.

"I sha'n't forget the day," Carl went on, "that the old man left me at Kane. I was scared, and I didn't want to stay. But he made me; he said that Kane would make a gentleman out of me. I was homesick, homesick as h.e.l.l. I know how Morse feels. I tried to run away three times, but they caught me and brought me back. Cry? I bawled all the time when I was alone. I couldn't sleep for weeks; I just laid in bed and bawled. G.o.d!

it was awful. The worst of it was the meals. I didn't know how to eat right, you see, and the master who sat at the table with our form would correct me. I used to want to die, and sometimes I would say that I was sick and didn't want any food so that I wouldn't have to go to meals.

The fellows razzed the life out of me; some of 'em called me Paddy. The reason I came here to Sanford was that no Kane fellows come here. They go mostly to Williams, but some of 'em go to Yale or Princeton.

"Well, I had four years of that, and I was homesick the whole four years. Oh, I don't mean that they kept after me all the time--that was just the first few months--but they never really accepted me. I never felt at home. Even when I was with a bunch of them, I felt lonesome....

And they never made a gentleman out of me, though my old lady thinks they did."

"You're crazy," Hugh interrupted indignantly. "You're as much a gentleman as anybody in college."

Carl smiled and shook his head. "No, you don't understand. You're a gentleman, but I'm not. Oh, I know all the tricks, the parlor stunts.

Four years at Kane taught me those, but they're just tricks to me. I don't know just how to explain it--but I know that you're a gentleman and I'm not."

"You're just plain bug-house. You make me feel like a fish. Why, I'm just from a country high school. I'm not in your cla.s.s." Hugh sat up and leaned eagerly toward Carl, gesticulating excitedly.

"As if that made any difference," Carl replied, his voice sharp with scorn. "You see, I'm a bad egg. I drink and gamble and pet. I haven't gone the limit yet on--on account of my old lady--but I will."

Hugh was relieved. He had wondered more than once during the past week "just how far Carl had gone." Several times Carl had suggested by sly innuendos that there wasn't anything that he hadn't done, and Hugh had felt a slight disapproval--and considerable envy. His own standards were very high, very strict, but he was ashamed to reveal them.

"I've never gone the limit either," he confessed shyly.

Carl threw back his head and laughed. "You poor fish; don't you suppose I know that?" he exclaimed.

"How did you know?" Hugh demanded indignantly. "I might've. Why, I was out with a girl just before I left home and--"

"You kissed her," Carl concluded for him. "I don't know how I knew, but I did. You're just kinda pure; that's all. I'm not pure at all; I'm just a little afraid--and I keep thinkin' of my old lady. I've started to several times, but I've always thought of her and quit."

He sat silent for a minute or two and then continued more gently. "My old lady never came to Kane. She never will come here, either. She wants to give me a real chance. See? She knows she isn't a lady--but--but, oh, G.o.d, Hugh, she's white, white as h.e.l.l. I guess I think more of her than all the rest of the world put together. That's why I write to her every night. She writes to me every day, too. The letters have mistakes in them, but--but they keep me straight. That is, they have so far. I know, though, that some night I'll be out with a bag and get too much liquor in me--and then good-by, virginity."

"You're crazy, Carl. You know you won't." Carl rose from the chair and stretched hugely. "You're a good egg, Hugh," he said in the midst of a yawn, "but you're a d.a.m.n fool."

Hugh started. That was just what he had said to Morse.

He never caught Carl in a confidential mood again. The next morning he was his old flippant self, swearing because he had to study his Latin, which wasn't "of any d.a.m.ned use to anybody."

In the following weeks Hugh religiously clung to Morse, helped him with his work, went to the movies with him, inveigled him into going on several long walks. Morse was more cheerful and almost pathetically grateful. One day, however, Hugh found an unstamped letter on the floor. He opened it wonderingly.

Dear Hugh [he read]. You've been awfully good to me but I can't stand it. I'm going home to-day. Give my regards to Peters. Thanks for all you've done for me.

BERT MORSE.

CHAPTER VII