CHAPTER XXII

WHAT Stover in his fuddled consciousness had said to little Wookey on that last wild night returned to him with doubled force in the white of the day. He had given his opponents the right to destroy all he had stood for by pointing to his own example. He had been a deserter from the cause, but the sound of the enemy's bugle had recalled him to the battle.

He took the first occasion to stop Le Baron, for he wanted the latter to make no mistake about him.

"Hugh, I was rude as the devil to you the other night," he said directly. "I was drunk ---more than you had any idea. What I want you to know is this. You put the question right up to me. You've forced me to take my stand, and I've done it. You're all wrong on the argument, but I don't blame you. Only after this you'll never have the chance to fling that at me again. You and I'll never agree on things here, we're bound to be enemies, but I want to thank you for opening my eyes, putting it squarely up to me."

He left without waiting for an answer, having said what he wished to. For several days he kept by himself, taking long walks, disciplining the ship that had sailed so long in mutiny. Then he turned up in Regan's room, and holding out his hand, said:

"Well, Tom, it's over. How in blazes did you keep from telling me what you thought about me all this time?"

Regan, unruffled and undemonstrative, said through the cloud of his pipe:

"Well, I've seen men go through it before. You never were very bad."

"What?" said Stover, who felt rather annoyed at this tame estimate.

"It's not a bad thing when you've licked the devil four ways to election," said Regan. "You know what you can do, and that's something."

"Ever been through it?" said Stover, still a little piqued.

"Ye-es."

"Really, Tom?" said Dink amazed.

"Ran about six months," said Regan, crossing his legs and dreaming. "I wasn't nice and polite like you ---used to clean up the place --- rather ugly time, but I pulled out."

"You've never told me about yourself," said Stover, tentatively.

Regan rose, reaching for the tobacco. "No, I never have," he said. "My story is one of those stories that isn't told. Come on over to Brocky's; he's got a debating scheme you'll be interested in."

"You damned unemotional cuss," said Stover, looking at him a little defiantly.

"Are you coming with me this summer to see a little real life---get a little real education?" said Regan irrelevantly.

"If you'll take me."

"Good boy."

He rested his hand on Stover's shoulder a moment, and gave him a little tap, and the touch brought a genuine thrill of happiness to Dink.

"Lord, what a leader he'd make," he thought. "Why is it, and what's the story the old rhinoceros can't tell, I wonder?"

The old crowd was at Brocky's, the crowd which had first stirred his imagination. His return produced quite a sensation. Nothing was said, but the grip in the handshakes was different, and the diffident, hesitant little expressions of relieved good-will that came to him touched him more than he would have believed.

Brockhurst began to expound his scheme, speaking nervously, in compressed sentences, as he always did in the beginning of an argument.

"Here's what I'm trying to say. We've all been sitting round and criticizing --- I mean I have ---things up here. Now why not really suggest something --- worth while?" He frowned, and becoming angry at his own difficulty in expressing himself, gradually became more fluent. "We all feel the need of getting together and having real discussions, and we all agree that debating here has died out, become merely perfunctory. The clebates take place in a class-room, and everything is cold, stiff, mechanical. Now that all is unnecessary. What we want is something spontaneous, informal and with the incentive of a contest. This is my scheme. To take a certain number---say twenty---of the men in the class who really have ideas, and believe in expressing them; form a club to meet one night a week in some room over a restaurant where we can sit about tables, smoke, have beer and lemonade, a bit to eat if you want, everything natural, informal. Divide the club up equally into two camps, each camp to have a leader for each debate, who opens the discussion and sums it up ---the only formal, perfunctory speeches. Every one else speaks as he feels, like it, right from his table. Have in an outside judge, and keep a record. At the end of the year the side that loses sets the other up to a banquet."

Stover was interested at once. He saw an instrument at hand for which he had been looking --- something to bring the class together.

"Look here, it's bigger than that, Brocky," he said earnestly. "I'm not criticizing --- I like the idea, the whole thing, you know. But here's what we can do. Make the club, say, forty, and get into it all the representative elements of the class---make it a real meeting place. Get the fellows who are going to be managers and captains. They've all got to speak---the fellows on papers, the real debaters---and you'll have something that'll bring the class together."

"What would you debate?" said Swazey, while the others considered Stover's suggestion.

"College subjects every one has an opinion about at first," said Regan. "And then get into red-hot politics."

"Of course Stover's idea is a social one --- democratic if you will," said Brockhurst perplexed. "My idea was for a more intimate crowd, all alike, trying to discuss real things."

"Brocky, I don't believe you can do it," said Stover. "My experience is that the big discussions, the ones worth while, always are informal, just as they've been in this crowd, and the crowd mustn't be too large." Several nodded assent. "The other thing is something we need in the class. We've been torn to pieces, all at loggerheads, and I believe, outside of the debating, this, is the first step to getting together. Moreover, I think you'll find all crowds will jump at the chance. Let me talk it around."

"I think Dink's got the practical idea, Brocky," said Regan. "And, moreover, he's the man to work it."

As they went out together they were met with the sensation of the campus --- the sophomore societies had been abolished!

Stover stopped McNab, who was hurrying past.

"I say, Dopey, is it true?"

"Sure thing."

"How'd it happen?"

"Don't know."

Gimbel came up with the full news.

"The President gave them a certain time, you remember, to submit a plan of reform. They reported they couldn't agree, so he called the committee together and said:

"'Well, gentlemen, I gave you the opportunity to conform to public sentiment, you haven't been able to do it, you are now abolished.'"

"Who'd have thought it!"

"You don't say so!"

"Abolished!"

"I know you're glad, Dink, old man," said Gimbel, shaking his hand with a confidential look. "We all know how you stood."

"It's for the best," said Stover slowly; then he added:

"But Gimbel, the fight's over; the big thing now is for the class to get together --- be careful how you fellows take it."

Strangely enough, in the hour of defeat the instinct of caste came back to him --- he was again the sophomore society man. He walked over to his rooms with a curious feeling of resentment at the rejoicing on the campus, where the news was being shouted from window to window. Bob Story, leaving the fence, came over and took him by the arm.

"Dink, old fellow, I've been waiting to see you."

"I've just heard the news," said Stover, when they reached his room.

"That's not what I came about," said Story, "though it fits in all the better. Dink, you won't mind our clearing up a little past history?"

"I wish you would, Bob," said Stover earnestly. "I know you never saw things my way."

"No, I didn't. I don't say you were wrong. It was a question of different temperaments. You did a braver thing than I would have done---"

"Oh, I say---"

"Yes, I mean it. Of course I think it was all a rotten mistake, and that if you'd talked the matter out as you've done with me, Le Baron and Reynolds would have seen your side."

"Perhaps so."

"I felt that Reynolds had acted like an ass, and you very naturally had lost your temper --- the result being to put the society in the position as a society of dictating a man's friendships. I don't believe that was justified."

"Indirectly, Bob, it worked out that way."

"There I believe you're right, Dink," said Story openly. "I've come to see it, and I admit it now. I'm glad the system has gone. I'm for the best here. Now, Dink,"--- he hesitated a moment -" I know you've been through a rotten time; you've felt every one was against you unjustly. I know all that, and I know you've got hold of yourself again."

"That's true."

"What I want to talk over with you now is this. Don't let what has passed keep you away from any one in the class."

"But, Bob," said Dink, amazed, "how can I help it? The soph crowd must be down on me ---particularly now."

"Rats, they all know pretty well the circumstances, and they all respect your nerve, that's honest. We like a good fighter up here. Now, Dink, more than ever, we need a real leader here to bring us together again. Don't leave the field to Bain and Hunter---they're all right in their way, but they can't see things in a big way. Go right out where you've always gone, twice the man you used to be, and make us all follow you. Don't make apologies for what you did ---go out as though you were proud of it, and the whole bunch will rise up and follow you.',

"I get what you mean," said Stover solemnly. "That's horse sense, Bob you've always got that. I wish you'd said it before."

"I wish I had."

Stover looked at him wondering, but not daring to ask if some one else had prompted him to the act.

"It's strange you came just now, Bob," he said. "You've put words in my mouth that were already there. I've just been talking over a scheme that I think's a big idea. It's Brockhurst's."

He detailed the plan and his own suggestion. Story was enthusiastic. They talked at length, drawing up a list of possible members, with the enthusiasm of pioneers.

"I say, Dink, there's one thing more," said Bob, as he started to go. "I've been thinking a lot lately about things here, and what I want for the next two years --this is about ended. I'd like to propose something to you."

Propose it."

"What do you say to you and me, Joe Hungerford, and Tom Regan, all rooming together another year?"

"Tom?" said Stover, surprised a moment. "The very thing if he'd do it."

"The four of us are all different enough to make just the combination we need. I'm tired of bunking alone. I want to rub up against some one else."

"There's nothing I could have thought of better, Bob."

"You're right, we four ought to be friends----real friends--- and stand together. Here's my hand on it."

"Bully. I've spoken to Joe, and he's going to see Regan. I say, Dink, drop in soon."

"Sure thing."

"I mean at the house."

"Oh, yes." A little constraint came to him, and then a flush of boyish hope. "I'm coming round."

"Because --- the family have been wondering."

When Bob had gone, Stover stood a long while gazing at the excited groups about the fence, retailing the allimportant news.

"By George, I'll do it," he said at last. "I'll not leave it to Tommy Bain or Jim Hunter. It may be a fight, but I'm going out to lead because I can do it, and because I believe in the right things." Then he thought over all the incidents of Bob's visit, and he fell into a musing state with sudden wild jumps of the imagination. "I wonder --- did he come of his own accord --- I wonder if she knew!"

With one of his old-time sudden resolves, he went that very night to the Storys'. The struggle he had come through in victory showed in a new, abrupt self-confidence. He felt older by a year than at his last visit.

Jean Story was at the piano, Jim Hunter on the wide seat beside her, turning over the leaves of her music. He saw it from the hail in the first glance.

The judge, surprised, came to him, delighted.

"Well, if here isn't Dink in the flesh. How are you? Thought you'd eloped somewhere. Glad to see you; tarnation if I'm not glad to shake your hand."

Hungerford, Bain, Bob Story, and Stone were present; a little difference in their several greetings.

"Well, we're holding a sort of wake here," said the judge cheerily. "Bain seems the most afflicted."

"It's a hard moment," said Stover calmly, knowing that any expression of opinion from him would be resisted in certain quarters. "I felt quite upset myself to-day when I heard the news, despite the stand I've taken."

Hunter looked up and then down, but said nothing.

"It's for the best," said Hungerford, not wishing him to stand alone. "Best for the college as a whole."

"That remains to be seen," said Bain. "I passed Gimbel coming over, and his crowd. It wasn't very pleasant."

"Well, it's over," said Dink in a matter-of-fact tone. No post-mortem! The great thing now is to recognize what exists. The class to-day is shot to pieces. We want to get together again. One half our time's up, and, wherever the fault, we've done nothing but scrap and get apart."

"I've been telling them a little about your scheme, yours and Brockhurst's," said Story.

Stover launched into an enthusiastic argument in its support. Bain and Hunter followed, instinctive in their opposition, each perceiving all the superiority that would derive to Stover from its success.

"May I ask," said Hunter finally, in a tone of icy criticism, "What is the difference between knocking down the sophomore society and putting up this organization?"

"Very glad to tell you, Jim," said Stover, assuming an attitude of careful good-will. "The difference is that this is an open organization, drawing from every element of the class, to meet for the sole purpose of doing a little thinking and getting to know other crowds. The sophomore society was an organization drawn from one element of the class, consciously or unconsciously for the purpose of advancing the social ambitions of its members at the expense of others. One is natural and democratic, and the other's founded on selfishness and exclusiveness."

The judge, fearing the results of a controversy, broke in, switching the conversation to safer channels.

"By the way, Jim," said Stover, in an interlude, "we're counting on you and Tommy Bain to go into this thing and make it a success. Is that right?"

Despite their reluctance at so prompt an espousal, Hunter and Bain were too far-seeing to set themselves in opposition. But the acceptance was given without enthusiasm, and, not relishing this sudden renewal of authority in one whom they naturally held at fault, they soon broke up the party.

Hungerford and Bob went into the billiard room for a game, and presently the judge disappeared upstairs to run over some routine work.

Stover took the seat vacated by Hunter, with perhaps a little malicious pleasure, saying:

"Aren't you going on playing?"

The young girl hesitated a moment, turning the leaves aimlessly.

"I don't know," she said. "Do you want me to very much?"

"I'd much rather talk."

She closed the music, turning to him with a little reproachful seriousness.

"You've been away a long while."

"Yes." He admitted the implied accusation with a moment's silence. "A crazy spell of mine. Bob was over this afternoon and we had a long talk." He said it point blank, watching her face for some indication he hoped to find there of her complicity. "Did he tell you?"

"He was speaking of it at the dinner table," she said quietly.

"Did you blame me," he said impulsively, "for what I did about getting out of my society?"

"No."

"Bob did, at least for a while," he said, looking eagerly into her eyes.

"I did not agree with him there."

She rose.

"If we are going to talk, let's find more comfortable chairs."

He followed her, a little irritated at the sudden closing on this delightful prospect. They took chairs by the window. Through the vista of open rooms could be seen the glare of the brilliant lights, and the figures of the two young fellows moving at their game.

Suddenly, with a return of the old-time feeling of camaraderie between them, he burst out:

"You know I've got into such a serious point of view! I don't quite know how it happened. Sometimes it seems to me I'm missing all the fun of college life."

He made a gesture toward the billiard room. "Even fellows like McNab, good for nothing, jovial little loafers, according to Yale standards, do seem to be getting something wonderful out of these years. I don't. It's been all work or fighting."

"That's because they are going different ways in life than you are," she said quickly. "Tell me more about this new organization. It seems a big idea. Whom will you take in?" She added suddenly: "Take charge yourself, do it all yourself. It's just what you should do."

He was too much interested in the expounding of the idea to notice the solicitude she showed him. After a while the conversation drifted to other topics. He spoke of the summer.

"Joe wants me to go on a cruise, and Bob wants me to run up to your camp for a visit, but I've about decided to do neither."

She looked up.

"Why not?"

"I am going with Regan for the summer --- slumming it, I suppose some would call it; Tom calls it getting real education. We're going down to work among men who work, to know something of what they think and want --- and what they think of us. It appeals to me tremendously. I want to have an all-around point of view. There are so many opportunities coming now, and I want to grasp them all --- learn all I can. What do you think?"

"It is a splendid idea, just the thing for you now. It will broaden you," she said, with a determined bob of her head. "Why doesn't Bob ever bring Regan around? He sounds interesting."

"Don't know ---he sticks by himself. You can't move him. Bob's told you about the four of us rooming together?"

"Yes."

"I wonder---"

"What?" she asked as he stopped.

"Did you suggest to Bob what he said to me this afternoon?',' he said point blank.

She looked at him troubled and undecided, and he suddenly guessed the reason.

"Oh, won't you trust me enough to tell me," he said boyishly, "if you did?"

She looked into his eyes a moment longer.

"He was afraid you wouldn't like it," she said simply. "Yes, I told him to go."

A dozen things rushed to his lips, and he said nothing. Perhaps she liked his silence better than anything he could have said, for she added:

"You will do the big things now, won't you? You see, I want to see you at your biggest."

When he went home that night, he seemed to walk on air. He had taken no advantage of her friendship, tempted almost beyond his powers as he had been by the kindness in her voice and her direct appeal. He had to tell some one, not of the interest he felt she had shown him, but of his own complete adoration and supreme consecration. So he hauled Hungerford up to his room, who received the information as to Stover's state of mind with gratifying surprise, as though it were the most incredible, mystifying, and incomprehensible bit of news.

 

CHAPTER XXIII

WHEN Stover returned to college as a junior, he showed the results of his summer with Regan. He had gone into construction gangs, and learned to obey and to command. He had had a glimpse of what the struggle for existence meant in the stirring masses; and he had known the keenness of a little joy and the reality of sorrow to those for whom everything in life was real.

He had long ago surrendered the idea of entering Skull and Bones over the enmity of Reynolds and Le Baron, and this relinquishing somehow robbed him of all the awe that he had once felt. He had returned a man, tempered by knowledge of the world, distinguishing between the incidental in college life and the vital opportunity within his grasp.

The new debating club, launched in the previous spring, had been an instant success, and its composition, carefully representative, had become the nucleus of a new comradeship in the class. With the one idea of proving his fitness to lead in this new harmonizing development, Stover made his room a true meeting-place of the class, and, loyally aided by Hungerford and Story, sought to restore all the old-time zest and good-will to the gatherings about the sophomore fence. His efforts were met by a latent opposition from Hunter and Bain, on one side, who never outgrew their wounded resentment, and from Gimbel on the other, who, though enthusiastically seconding him in the open, felt secretly that he was being supplanted.

But, as Story had foreseen, Stover had the magnetism and the energy to carry through what no other leader would have accomplished. Once resolved on the accomplishment, upheld by a strong sentimental devotion, Stover went at his task with a blunt directness that disdains all objections.

Each Saturday night was given over to a rally of the class en masse at the Tontine. Certain groups held off at first, but soon came into the fold when Stover, who was no respecter of persons, would find occasion to say publicly:

"Hello there, what happened to you last night? Get out of that silk-lined atmosphere of yours! Wake up! You're not too good for us, are you?"

"Well, why weren't you there? It's no orgy ---you can get lemonade or milk if you want. There are bad men present, but we keep 'em from biting."

"I say, forget your poker game for one night. We all know you're dead game sports. That's why we want you --- to give us an atmosphere of real life."

The remarks were made half in jest, half in earnest, but they seldom failed of their object. At the Saturday night rallies it was the same. Stover was everywhere, saying with his good-humored, impudent smile what no one else dared to say, sometimes startling them with his boldness:

"Here now, fellows, no grouping around here. We want to see a sport and a gospel shark sitting arm in arm. Come on, Schley, your --- social position's all right --there's only one crowd here to-night. No one here is going to boost you into a senior society. Percolate, fellows, percolate. We've scrapped like Sam Hill, now we're tired of it. No more biting, scratching, or gouging. Don't forget this is a love feast, and they're going to be lovelier. Now let's try over that song for the Princeton game. Bob Story perpetrated it --- pretty rotten, I think, but let's hit it up all the same."

The rallies jumped into popularity. The class gasped, then laughed at Stover's abrupt reference to the late unpleasantness, and with the laugh all constraint went. The class found itself, as a regiment returns to its pride again. It went to the games in a body, it healed its differences, and packed the long room at the Tontine each Saturday night, shouting out the chorus which Buck Waters, McNab, Stone, and the talent led.

Many, undoubtedly, marvelling at the ease with which 5tover had inspired the gathering, admired him for what they believed was a clever bid for society honors. But the truth was that he succeeded because he had no underlying motive, because he had achieved in himself absolute independence and fearlessness of any outer criticism, and his strength with the crowd was just the consciousness of his own liberty.

By the fall of junior year, he was the undisputed leader of the class, a force that had brought to it a community of interest and friendly understanding. Unknown to him, his classmates began to regard him, despite his old defiance, as one whom a senior society could not overlook. Stover had no such feeling. He believed that the hatred in what remained of the sophomore society organization was, and would continue, unrelenting, and this conviction had determined him in a course of action to which he was impelled by other reasons.

He went through the football season as he had gone through the previous season, with a record for distinguished brilliancy, acclaimed by all as the best end in years, the probable captain of the next year. He wanted the position, as he had desired it on his first arrival at Yale, and yet he surrendered it. Hunter had developed into a tackle and made the team. In the class below were two men of the defunct sophomore societies. Stover had vividly before him the record of Dana, his captain of freshman year, and the memory of the ordeal after the game, when he had stood up and acknowledged his lack of leadership.

That this still resentful society element in the eleven would follow him with distaste and reluctance, despite all traditional loyality, he knew too well. Moreover, sure that he was destined to be passed over on Tap Day, he felt perhaps too keenly the handicap of such a rejection. Then, at the bottom, reluctantly, he knew in his heart that Regan was the born leader of men, and what once he had rebelled against he finally acknowledged.

So when at the end of a victorious season the members of the eleven gathered for the election of the next year's captain, he stood up immediately and stated his views. It was a difficult announcement to make, both on the score of seeming sentimentality, and from the danger of seeming to refuse what might not be offered him.

But during the tests of the last year the self-consciousness which would have prevented Brockhurst's expressing himself had completely gone. Determined on one course of action; to be his own master, to do what he wanted to do, and to say what he wanted to say, in absolute fearlessness, he spoke with a frankness that amazed his comrades, still under the fetish of upper-class supremacy.

"Before we begin," he said, "I've a few words I want to say. I suppose I. am a candidate here. I don't say I shouldn't be crazy to have the captaincy. I would---any one would. What I say is that I have thought it over and I withdraw my name. Even if you hadn't in Tom Regan here the best type of leader you could get, it would be very unfortunate for our chances next year if I were chosen. I'm quite aware that in a certain element of the team, due to the open stand I felt forced to take in the question of the sophomore society, there is a great deal of resentment against me. I can understand that; it is natural. But there should be no such division in a Yale team. We've got a tough fight next year, and we need a captain about whom are no enmities, who'll command every bit of the loyalty of the team---" he paused a moment---" and every bit of help he can get from the college. I move that Tom Regan be unanimously elected captain."

There was quite an outcry at the end of his declaration, especially from Regan, who was utterly surprised. But Stover held firm, and perceived, not without a little secret resentment, that the outcome came with relief not only to the team but to the coaches.

When they returned, and Regan was still protesting, Stover said frankly:

"Look here, Tom, we don't split hairs with one another. If I had thought it was right for me to stand for it I would have. I wanted it ---like hell. You remember Dana? I do. It's an awful thing to lead a team into defeat, and say I was responsible. I don't care to do it. Besides, you are the better man---and I'm of such a low, skulking nature I hate to admit it. So shut up and buy me a rabbit at Mory's. I'm hungry as a pirate."

He had said nothing of his determination to any one. He had been tempted to talk it over with Jean Story, but he had refrained, feeling instinctively that in her ambition for him, and in her inability to judge the depth of certain antagonisms towards him, she would oppose his determination.

The four friends had gone to Lyceum together ---Swazey and Pike were in the same building. There was a certain flavor of the simplicity and ruggedness of old Yale in the building that gave to the meetings in their rooms a character of old-time spontaneity.

By the opening of the winter term, Stover, the enthusiast, had begun to see the weakness of movements that must depend on organization. The debating club, which had started with a zest, soon showed its limitations. Once the edge of novelty had worn off, there were too many diverting interests to throng in and deplete the ranks.

When, following Regan's suggestion, they had attempted a new division on the lines of the political parties, the result was decidedly disappointing. There was no natural interest to draw upon, and the political discussions, instead of fanning the club into a storm of partizanship, lapsed into the hands of perfunctory debaters.

Regan himself took his disillusionment much to heart. They discussed the reasons of the failure one stormy afternoon at one of their informal discussions, to which they had returned with longing.

"What the devil is the matter?" said the big fellow savagely. "Why, where I come from, the people I see, every mother's son of them, feed on politics, talk nothing else ---they love it! And here if you ask a man if he's a Republican or a Democrat, he writes home and asks his father. A condition like this doesn't exist anywhere else on the face of the globe. And this is America. Why?"

When he had propounded the question, there was a busy, unresponsive puffing of pipes, and then Pike added:

"That's what hits me, too. Just look at the questions that are coming up; popular election of senators, income tax, direct primaries; it's like building over the government again, and no one here cares or knows what's doing. I say, why?"

"There may be fifty-two reasons for it," said Brockburst, in his staccato, biting way. "One is, our colleges are all turning into social clearing houses, and every one is too absorbed in that engrossing process to know what happens outside; second is the fact that our universities are admirably organized instruments for the prevention of learning!"

"Good old Brocky," said Swazey with a chuckle. "Just what I like; stormy outside, warm inside, and Brocky at the bat. Serve 'em up."

Brockhurst, who was used to this reception of his pointed generalizations, paid no heed. He, too, had grown in mental stature and in control. A certain diffidence was over him, and always would be; but when a subject came up that interested him, he forgot himself, and rushed into the argument with a zeal that never failed to arouse his listeners.

Brockhurst turned on Swazey with the license that was always permissible.

"Well, what do you know? You've been here going on three years. You are supposed to be more than half educated. And you're. not a fair example either, because you really are seeking to know something."

"Well, go on," said Swazey, thoroughly aroused.

"What do you know about the Barbizon school, and the logical reasons for the revolt of the impressionists?"

Instantly there was an outcry:

"Not fair."

"Oh, I say."

"That's no test."

"Finishing your third year, gentlemen," said Brockhurst triumphantly, "age over twenty; the art of painting is of course known to the aborigines only in its cruder forms. Well, does any one know at least who, Manet is, or what he's painted?"

There was an accusing silence.

"Of course you've an idea of the Barbizon school ---one or two of you. You remember something about a Man with a Hoe or the Angelus --- that's Sunday supplement education. Now let me try you. Please raise hands, little boys, when you know the answer to these questions, but don't bluff teacher. I'm not contending you should have a detailed knowledge of the world in your eager, studious minds. I am saying that you haven't the slightest general information. I'll make my questions fair.

"First, music: I won't ask you the tendencies and theories of the modern schools---you won't know that such a thing as a theory in music exists. You know the opera of Carmen -good old Toreadore song. Do you know the name of the composer? One hand --- Bob Story. Do you know the history of its reception? Do you know the sources of it? Do you know what Bach's influence was in the development of music? Did you ever hear of Leoncavallo, Verdi, or that there is such a thing as a Russian composer? Absolute silence. You have a hazy knowledge of Wagner, and you know that Chopin wrote a funeral march. That is your foothold in music; there you balance, surrounded by howling waters of ignorance.

"Take up architecture. Do you know who built the Vatican? Do you know the great buildings of the world ---or a single thing about Greek, Roman and Renaissance architecture? Do you know what the modern French movement is based upon? Nothing.

"Take up religion. Do you know anything about Confucius, Shintoism, or Swedenborg, beyond the names? Of course you would not know that under Louis XVI a determined movement was made to reunite the Catholic and Protestant branches, which almost succeeded. That's unfair, because of course it is the forerunner of the great religious movement to-day. Do you know the history of the external symbols of the Christian religion, and what is historically new? Darkness denser and denser.

"Take literature. You have excavated a certain amount of Shakespeare, and grubbed among Elizabethans, and cursed Spenser. Who has read Taine's History of English Literature, or known in fact who Taine is? Only Bob Story. And yet there is the greatest book on the whole subject; you could abolish the English department and substitute it. Beside Story, who else has had even a fair reading knowledge of any other literature --- Russian, Norwegian, German, French, Italian? Who knows enough about any one of these writers to look wise and nod; Renan, Turgeniev, Daudet, Björnson, Hauptman, Suderman, Strindberg? Do you know anything about Goethe as a critic, or the influence of Poe upon French literature? What do you know? I'll tell you. You know Les Misérables and The Three Musketeers in French literature. You know Goethe wrote Faust. You're beginning to know Ibsen as a name, and one may have read Tolstoi, and all know that he's a very old man with a long white beard, who lives among his peasants, has some queer ideas, and has started to die three or four times. The papers have told you that.

"Take another field, of simple curiosity on what is doing in a world in which by opportunity you are supposed to be of the leading class. What do you know about the strength and spread of socialism in Germany, France and England? In the first place no one of you here probably has any idea of what socialism is; you've been told it's anarchy, and, as that only means dynamite to you, you are against socialism, and will never take the trouble to investigate it. What do you know about the new political experiments in New Zealand? --- nothing.. What do you know about the labor pension system in Germany, or the separation of the church and state in France?---all subjects dealing with the vital development of the race of bipeds on this earth of which you happen to be members.

"Now here is a catch question ---all candidates for the dunce-cap will take a guess. The Botticelli story is such a chestnut now that you all know that it isn't a cheese or a wine-credit that to ridicule. I'm going to give you a few names from all the professions, and let's see who can tag them. What was Spinoza, Holmari Hunt, Dostoiefski, Ambrose Thomas, Savonarola (if you've read the novel you'd know that), Bastien Le Page, Zorn, Bizet, Bossuet! Unfair?---not at all. These things are just as necessary to know to a man of education and culture as it is to a man of good manners too realize that peas are not introduced into the mouth by being balanced on a knife."

"Help!" cried Hungerford, as Brockhurst went rushing on. "Great Scott, what do we know?"

"You know absolutely nothing," said Brockhurst savagely. "Here you are; look at yourselves --- four years when you ought to learn something, some informing knowledge of all that has developed during the four thousand years the human race has fought its way toward the light, four years to be filled with the marvel and splendor of it all, and you don't know a thing.

"You don't know the big men in music; you don't know the pioneers and the leaders in any art; you don't know the great literatures of the world, and what they represent; you don't know how other races are working out their social destinies; you've never even stopped to examine yourselves, to analyze your own society, to see the difference between, a civilization founded on the unit of the individual, and a civilization, like the Latin, on the indestructible advance of the family. You have no general knowledge, no intellectual interests, you haven't even opinions, and at the end of four years of education you will march up and be handed a degree --- Bachelor of Arts! Magnificent! And we Americans have a sense of humor! Do you wonder why I repeat that our colleges are splendidly organized institutions for the prevention of learning? No, sir, we are business colleges, and the business of our machines is to stamp out so many business men a year, running at full speed and in competition with the latest devices in Cambridge and Princeton!

"Brocky, you are terrific," said Swazey in admiration. There was too much truth in the attack, violent as it was, not to have called forth serious attention.

"I feel a good deal the way you do," said Bob Story, and Stover nodded, "only it seems to me, Brocky, a good deal of what you're arguing for must come from outside - in just such informal talks as this."

"That's true," said Brockhurst. "If the stimulus in the college life itself were toward education all our meetings would be educational. It's true abroad, it isn't here. You know my views. You think I'm extreme. I'm getting an education because I didn't accept any such flap-doodle as, 'What am I going to do for Yale?' but instead asked, 'What has Yale got to offer me?' I'm getting it, too."

Stover suddenly remembered the conversation they had together the year before, and looking now at Brockhurst, revealed in a new strength, he began to understand what had then so repelled him.

"The great fault," continued Brockhurst, "lies, however, with the colleges. The whole theory is wrong, archaic and ridiculous ---the theory of education by schedule. All education can do is to instil the love of knowledge. You get that, you catch the fire of it ---you educate yourself. All education does to-day is to develop the memory at the expense of the imagination. It says: 'Here are so many pounds of Greek, Latin, mathematics, history, literature. In four years our problem is to pass them through the heads of these hundreds of young barbarians so that they will come out with a lip knowledge.'"

"But come, we do learn something," said Hungerford

"No, you don't, Joe," said Brockhurst. "You've translated the Iliad---you've never known it. You've recited in Horace - --you have no love for him. You've excavated the plays of Shakespeare, a couple of acts at a time; you don't know what Hamlet means or Lear, the beauty of it all has escaped you. You've recited in Logic and. Philosophy, but you don't understand what you're repeating. You're only repeating all the time. Your memory is trained to hold a little knowledge a little time --- that's all. You don't enjoy it, you're rather apologetic --- or others are."

"Well, what other system is there?" said Regan.

"There is the preceptorial system of England," said Brockhurst, "where a small group of men are in personal contact with the instructor. In French universities, education is a serious thing because failure to pass an examination for a profession means two extra years of army service. Men don't risk over there, or divide up their time heeling the News or making a team. In Germany a man is given a certain number of years to get a degree, and I believe has to do a certain amount of original work.

"But of course the main trouble here is, and there is no blinking the fact, that the colleges have surrendered unconsciously a great deal of their power to the growing influence of the social organization. In a period when we have no society in America, families are sending their sons to colleges to place themselves socially. Some of them carry it to an extreme, even directly avow their hope that they will make certain clubs at Princeton or Harvard, or a senior society here. It probably is very hard to control, but it's going to turn our colleges more and more, as I say, into social clearing houses. At present here at Yale we keep down the question of wealth pretty well; fellows like Joe Hungerford here come in and live on our basis. That's the best feature about Yale to-day --- how it will be in the future I don't know, for it depends on the wisdom of the parents."

"Social clearing house is well coined," said Hungerford. "I think it's truer though of Harvard."

"That's perhaps because you see the mote in your neighbors' eyes," said Brocky rising. "Well, discussion isn't going to change it. Who's always talking about school for character ---Pike or Brown? We might as well stand for that --- but it would not be very wise to announce it to the American nation, would it --- we might be dubbed a reformatory. Fathers, send your sons to college --- reform their characters, straighten out the crooks. At the end give 'em a degree of ---of, say G.B."

"What's that, Brocky?" said Swazey, grinning with the rest.

"Good Boy," said Brockhurst, who departed, as he liked, on the echoes of the laugh which he had inspired

"Whew!" said Hungerford, with a comical rubbing of his head. "What struck me?"

"And I expect to make Phi Beta Kappa," said Swazey, with an apologetic laugh.

"What a dreadfully disconcerting person," said Bob Story.

"By George, it takes the conceit out of you," said Stover ruthfully. "Shall we all start in and learn something? What's the answer?"

At this moment a familiar slogan was heard below, increasing in riotous, pagan violence with the approach of boisterous feet.

"Oh, father and mother
Pay all the bills,
And we have all the fun.
Hooray!
That's the way we do in college life---
In college life."

The room burst into a roar of laughter.

"There's one answer," said Regan rising.

The door slammed open, and McNab and Buck Waters reeled in arm in arm.

"I say, fellows, we've cornered the sleigh market," said Dopey uproariously; "We're all going to beat it the Cheshire Inn, a bottle of champagne to the first, to arrive. Are you on?"

Half an hour later, Stover at the reins was whirling madly along the crusty roads, in imminent danger of collision with three other rollicking parties, who packed the sleighs and cheered on the galloping horses, singing joyfully the battle hymn of the pagans:

"Oh, father and mother
Pay all the bills,
And we have all the fun.
Hooray!
That's the way we do-
In college life."
"

 

CHAPTER XXIV

ONCE Stover had reconciled himself to the loss of a senior society election, he found ample compensation in the absolute liberty of action that came to him. It was not that he condemned this parent system; he believed in it as an honest attempt to reward the best in the college life, a sort of academic legion of honor, formed not on social cleavage, but given as a reward of merit. In his own case, he believed his own personal offending in the matter of Le Baron and Reynolds had been so extreme that nothing could counteract it.

So he gave himself up to the free and untrammelled delights of living his own life. His fierce stand for absolute democracy made of his rooms the ante-room of the class, through which all crowds seemed to pass, men of his own kind, socially calculating, glad to be known as the friends of Regan, Hungerford and Story, all rated sure men, and Stover, about whom they began to wonder more and more, as a unique and rebellious personality, which, contrary to precedent, had come to bear down all opposition. Gimbel and Hicks, elected managers for the coining year, came often, willing to conciliate the element they had fought, in the hopes of a favorable outcome on Tap Day. Men who worked their way dropped in often on Regan; Ricketts, with his drawling Yankee astuteness, always laughing up his sleeve; twenty odd, lonely characters, glad to sink into a quiet corner and listen to the furious discussions that raged about Brockhurst, Story and Regan.

It was seldom that Stover talked. He learned more by listening, by careful weighing of others' opinions, than in the attempt to classify his own thoughts through the medium of debate. At times when the discussion wandered from vital sources, he would ask a question, and these sharp, direct remarks had a pertinency and a searching trenchancy that sometimes upset an elaborate argument.

Regan brought him to the romance of commonplace things, to a genuine interest and study of political conditions; Brockhurst irritated and dissatisfied him, and, so stimulated him to reading and self-analysis; Story, with his seriousness and fairness, recalled him always to a judicial point of view and an understanding of others; Hungerford, with his big, effusive nature, always dissatisfied and eager for realities, was akin to his own. nature, and they grew into a confidential intimacy. In a community of splendid barbarians, their circle was exceptional, due to the pronounced individuality of their several rebellious minds.

Despite the abolition of the sophomore societies, other groups still maintained their exclusiveness, and kept alive the old antagonism, as the approach of Tap Day intensified the struggle for election and the natural campaigning of friend for friend.

As Brockhurst had prophesied, the chairmanship of the Lit Board went to Wiggin, a conscientious, thorough little plodder, who had never failed to hand in to each number his numerically correct quota of essays, two stories, a hammered-out poem and two painful portfolios.

On the night of the election, Stover heard from his room in Lyceum the familiar:

"Oh, you Dink Stover ---stick out your head."

"Hello there, Brocky; come up," he said anxiously. Who got it?"

"Wiggin, of course. Come on down, I want a ramble."

It was the first time that Brockhurst had shown a longing for companionship. Stover returned into the room, announcing:

"Poor old chap. Wiggin got it. Isn't it the devil?"

"Wiggin --- oh, Lord!" said Regan.

"Why, he's not fit to tie Brocky's shoe-strings," said Hungerford, who fired a volley of soul-relieving oaths.

"I'm going down to bum around a bit with him," said Stover, slipping on his coat, "cheer the old boy up."

"Well, he knew it."

"Lots of difference that makes!"

Below Brocky, muffled to the ears, brim down, was whistling in unmusical enthusiasm.

"'Tis a jolly life we lead,                    
Care and sorrow we defy---"

"Hello that you, Dink?" he said, breaking off. "Come on for a tramp."

At that age, being inexperienced, the undergraduate in questions of sympathy wisely returns to the instincts of the canine. Stover, without speaking, fell into his stride, and they swung off towards West Rock.

"Wiggin is the type of man," said Brockhurst, meditatively puffing his pipe, "that is the glorification of the commonplace. He is a sort of sublime earthworm, plodding along and claiming acquaintance with the rose because he travels around the roots. He is really by instinct a bricklayer, and the danger is that he may continue either in literature or some profession where the cry is for imagination."

"You could have beaten him out," said Stover, as a solace.

"And become an earthworm?" said Brockhurst.

"The luck of it is, he made up his mind to heel the Lit. With his ideas he would have made leader of the glee club, president of the Phi Beta Kappa, chairman of the News, or what not."

"Still, give him credit," said Stover, smiling to himself, for he felt that he saw for the first time the human side of Brockhurst.

"I did; it was quite an amusing time."

"What happened?"

"Why, the little grubber came up to me and said, 'Brocky, old man, you ought to have had it.’"

"Why, that was rather decent," said Stover.

"Rubbish. All form," said Brockhurst impatiently. "Showed the calibre of his mind,--- the obvious; nothing but the obvious. He thought it the thing to say, that's all."

"Well, what did you answer?" said Stover wondering.

"I said, 'Well, why didn't you vote for me then?'"

Stover burst out laughing, and Brockhurst, who had lost a coveted honor, was a little mollified by the tribute.

"Of course he stammered and looked annoyed ---naturally; situation his imagination couldn't meet, so I said:

"Come, Wiggin, no stuff and nonsense. You didn't think I ought to have it, and I know damn well, now that you've won out, you'll get a Skull and Bones to, wear, pose in the middle of the photograph for the Banner, and be thoroughly satisfied at our board meeting to sit back and listen while I do the talking.'"

Stover broke into a laugh.

"Brocky, you scandalized him."

"Not at all. He thought I was joking ---the last thing that occurs to the grubber is that wit is only a polite way of calling a man an ass."

"Brocky, you're at your best, don't stop."

Brockhurst smiled. It was turning a defeat into a victory. He continued:

"After all, Wiggy is interesting. I'll be revenged. I'll put him in a book some day. He represents a type ---the mathematical mind, quantity not quality. He set out for the chairmanship as a man trains for a long-distance run. Do you know the truth? He rose every morning and took a cold shower, fifty swings to the left with the dumb-bell, fifty to the right, ate nothing heavy or starchy for his meals, walked the same distance each afternoon, and worked his two hours each night, hammering out divine literature."

"Oh, I say!" said Dink, a little in doubt.

Brockhurst began to laugh.

"He may have for all I know. Now I’ll bury him. He will be eminently successful --- I like that word eminently. You see he has no sense of humor, and especially no imagination to hinder him." Brockhurst, in one of his quixotic moods, began to gesture to the stars as he abandoned himself to the delights of his conceit. "Oh, that's a wonderful thing, to have no imagination ----the saving of commonplace minds. If Wiggin had an imagination he would never have written a line, he would have perceived the immense distances that separated him from the Olympians. Instead he read Stevenson, Dumas, Kipling, and, unafraid, wrote little Stevenson echoes of Dumas, capsule Kiplings. He'll go out in the world, nothing will frighten him. He will rebel against nothing, for he hasn't an idea. He will choose the woman he needs for his needs, persuade himself that he's in love, and then persuade her. And he'll believe that's a virtuous marriage. He'll belong to the conservative party, the conservative church, and will, be a distinguished subordinate, who will stand for tradition, institutions, and will be said to resemble some great man. Then he'll die, and will be pointed to as a great example. Requiescat in pace."

"Off with his head," said Stover appreciatively.

"Now he's finished, own up, Brocky, that you are furious that you did not buckle down and beat him out."

"Of course I am --- damn it," said Brockhurst. "I know I did right, but no one else will ever know it. And the strange thing is, Dink, the best thing for me is to have missed out."

"Why, in Heaven's name?"

"If I had made the chairmanship, I should probably be tapped for Bones --- one of the successful. I might have become satisfied. Do you know that that is the great danger of this whole senior business?"

"What?"

"The fellow who wears his honors like a halo. He's made Bones or Keys, he's a success in life. Nothing more awaits him. 'I was it.'"

"Still, you would have liked it."

"Sure; I'm inconsistent," said Brocky, with a laugh. "It's only when I don't get what I want that my beautiful reason shows me I shouldn't have had it."

"Well, there's no danger of either of us disappearing under the halos," said Stover shortly.

"I'm not so sure about you," said Brockhurst.

The casual doubt aroused strange emotions in Stover. "I thought you didn't believe in them," he said slowly.

"I don't. I don't believe in organizations, institutions, traditions --- that's my point of view," said Brockhurst. "But then I'm in the world to be in revolt."

"You once spoke of the society system ---the whole thing as it exists in America ---" said Stover, "as a sort of idol worship. I never quite understood your meaning."

"Why, I think it's quite obvious," said Brockhurst surprised. "What was idol worship? A large body of privileged charlatans, calling themselves priests, impressed the masses with all the flummery of mysterious ceremonies, convenient voices issuing from caves or stone idols. What was an idol? An ordinary chunk of marble, let us say, issuing from the sculptor's' chisel. When did it become sacred and awe-inspiring? When it had been placed in an inner shrine of shrines, removed from the public, veiled in shadows, obscured by incense, guarded by solicitous guards; the stone is still a stone but the populace is convinced. Look into a well in daylight ---commonplace; look into it at night --- a great mystery; black is never empty, the imagination fills it."

"How does this apply?" said Stover, impatiently.

"Cases are parallel. A group of us come together for the purpose of debate and discussion; no one notices it beyond a casual thought. Suddenly we surround ourselves with mystery, appear on the campus with a sensational pin stuck in our cravats, a bat's head or a gallows, and when, marvellously enough, some one asks us what the dickens we are wearing, we turn away; instantly it becomes known that something so deadly secret has begun that we have sworn to shed our heart's blood before we allow the holy, sacred name of Bat's Head or Gallow's Bird to pass our lips!"

"It's a little foolish, but what's the harm?"

"The harm is that this mumbo-jumbo, fee-fi-fo-fum, high cockalorum business is taken seriously. It's the effect on the young imagination that comes here that is harmful. Dink, I tell you, and I mean it solemnly, that when a boy comes here to Yale, or any other American college, and gets the flummery in his system, believes in it --- surrenders to it --- so that he trembles in the shadow of a tomblike building, doesn't dare to look at a pin that stares him in the face, is afraid to pronounce the holy, sacred names; when he's got to that point he has ceased to think, and no amount of college life is going to revive him. That's the worst thing about it all, this mental subjection which the average man undergoes here when he comes up against all this rigmarole of Tap Day, gloomy society halls, marching home at night, et cetera --- et ceteray. By George, it is a return of the old idol-worship idea-thinking men in this twentieth century being impressed by the same methods that kept nations in servitude to charlatans three thousand years before. It's wrong, fundamentally wrong ---it's a crime against the whole moving spirit of university history---the history of a struggle for the liberation of the human mind."

"But, Brocky, what would you have them do --- run as open clubs?"

"Not at all," said Brockhurst. "I would strip them of all nonsense; in fact that is their weakness, not their strength, and it is all unnecessary. This is what I'd do: drop the secrecy --- this extraordinary muffled breathless guarding of an empty can --- retain the privilege any club has of excluding outsiders, stop this childishness of getting up and leaving the room if some old lady happens to ask are you a Bones man or a Keys man. Instead, when a Bones man goes to see a freshman whom he wants to befriend, have him say openly as he passes the chapter house:

"'That's my society --- Skull and Bones. It stands as a reward of merit here. Hope you'll do something to deserve it.'"

"Which is the better of the two ideas, the saner, the manlier and the more natural? What would they lose by eliminating the objectionable, unnecessary features --all of which you may be sure were started as horse play, and have curiously enough come to be taken in deadly earnestness?"

"I think you exaggerate a little," said Stover, unwilling to accept this arraignment.

"No, I don't," said Brockhurst stubbornly. "The thing is a fetish; it gets you; it's meant to get you. It gets me, and if you're honest you'll admit it gets you. Now own up."

"Yes, I suppose it does."

"Now, Dink, you're fighting for one thing up here, the freedom of your mind and your will."

"Why, yes," Stover said, surprised at Brockhurst's knowledge of his inner conflicts. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm fighting out."

"Well, my boy, you'll never get what you're after until you see this thing as it is---the unreasoning harm done, the poppycock that has been thrown around a good central idea ---if you admit such things are necessary, which of course I don't."

"You see," said Stover stubbornly, "you're against all organization."

"I certainly am --- inherited organizations," said Brockhurst immediately, "organizations that are imposed on you. The only organization necessary is the natural, spontaneous coming together of congenial elements."

They had returned to the campus, and Brockhurst, by intent leading the way, stopped before the lugubrious bulk of Skull and Bones.

"There you are," he said, with a laugh. "Look at it. It's built of the same stone as other buildings, it has in it what secret? Go up, young Egyptian, to its mystery in awe and reverence, young idol worshiper of thirty centuries ago."

"Damn it, Brocky, it does get me," said Stover with a short laugh.

"Curious," said Brockhurst, turning away. "The architecture of these sacred tombs is almost invariably the suggestion of the dungeon ---the prison of the human mind."

Stover's conversation with Brockhurst did not at first trouble him much. Curiously enough the one idea he retained was that Brockhurst had spoken of him as a possibility for Tap Day.

"What nonsense," he said to himself angrily. "Here, I know better!"

But the next afternoon, the thought returning to him with pleasure, all at once, following a boyish whim, he passed into his old entry at Lawrence, and, going down a little guiltily into the region of the bath-tubs, came to the wall on which was inscribed the lists of his class.

On the Bones list, third from the top, the name Stover had been replaced and heavily underlined.

It gave him quite a thrill; something seemed to leap up inside of him, and he went out hastily. Then all at once he became angry. It was like opening up again a fight that had been fought and lost.

"What an ass I am," he said furiously. "The deuce of a chance I have to go Bones --- with Reynolds and Le Baron. Can the leopard change his spots? About as much chance as a ki-yi has to go through a sausage machine and come out with a bark."

But, as he went towards Jean Story's home, thinking of her and what she would want, the force of what Brockhurst had said began to weaken.

"Brocky is impractical," he said artfully. "We must deal with things as they are, make the best of them. He exaggerates the effect on the imagination. At any rate, no one can accuse me of not taking a stand."

He saw the old colonial home, white and distinguished under the elms, and he said to himself, hoping against hope:

"If I were tapped ---it would mean a good deal to her. I'll be darned if I'll let Brocky work me up. I'm not going up against anything more! I've done enough here."

He said it defiantly, for the courage of a man has two factors, his courage and the courage of the woman he loves.


Chapter Twenty-Five

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