Chapter III

After one has been out of college long enough to reckon time by a calendar, instead of by the college catalogue, May and June are sprightly preludes to all one’s operas unsung. But when the year counts nine months, instead of twelve, spring is a climax. At Harvard, it comes in a misty veil of young elm leaves and apple blossoms that floats, for a time, with the sweetest deception in the world, between you and every other disagreeable fact. It envelops you, permeates you, seduces you, and makes you drunk; yet, as hour after hour (and lecture after lecture) drifts past your open window, or your canoe, or the sun-flecked lawn under the trees in the Yard, where you lie and watch the industrious robins rip elastic angle-worms from the sod, you believe that you have awakened for the first time,--that the problem has at last solved itself. You are as blind as a poet, and you laugh and wonder why you never saw before. Had not the only verse been written, you would write it: “Come ... sit by my side and let the world slip; we shall ne’er be younger.”

But in spite of all this, these first spring days, that incline one to look upon the immoral sense as a sort of hibernating beast, are not beginnings but the end. A feeling as of many things happening at once comes over you. There is much to do, and no time whatever in which to do it. The College is in a hurry. It crashes along toward the Finals and Class Day, carrying you with it in spite of you. No single activity in which you may engage seems in itself of utmost importance. But the sum total crowds your days and nights with the interests of rowing and base-ball, and the First Ten, and the perennial squabbles of the three clubs in their efforts to pledge the most attractive of the neophytes to join their respective institutions (which, unless the neophytes are very sensible young men, doesn’t tend to make them any more attractive), and the great Spring Dinners, when the graduates come back and meet all the new men and sing songs and drink drinks (or is it the other way?), and forget that they have ever been away from Harvard at all, and the dinners of the college papers,--“The Monthly” (roistering blades), at some modest tavern; and “The Advocate,” at Marliave’s, perhaps, with nothing in particular to eat, but with all that easy indifference to the fragility of crockery by which the artistic temperament makes itself heard; “The Crimson” (typographical remonstrance), enjoying itself somewhere in its strange, reproachful way; and the “Only Successful,” “The Lampoon,” at The Empire or The Tuileries, laughing all night regardless of expense. Then there is Strawberry Night at the Signet, when the First Seven, from the Sophomore Class is taken in,--Haydock and Ellis were on the First Seven,--and the O. K. dinner (Hush-h-h-h-h!), when the First Eight from the Junior Class is initiated, and Strawberry Night at the Pudding, and the “Pop” Concerts, and Riverside, and a thousand other delightful happenings. None of them are of supreme importance, I suppose. But they combine to whirl certain men through May and part of June on a strong, swift current of Harvard life that deposits them, after Class Day and Commencement, somewhere high and dry and--although they may not know it themselves--homesick for Cambridge.

Even the mildest, farthest-meandering eddies of this current do not reach the type of student to which McGaw belonged; McGaw knew nothing of them. He had not gone to college to drift with the stream. He was there, primarily, to acquire information along certain lines laid out in the curriculum, incidentally to fight hunger and cold and darkness. If he could be “sandy” and healthy and lucky enough to stick it out for four years, he would have, at the end, concealed somewhere about his person, that distinction (of many differences),--a college education. “Sand” he had,--an incredible amount of it. But the trait had bid fair to destroy his health before it discovered his luck. For to stay where he was at all, and slave with his mind, often obliged him first to exhaust and stultify himself with the manual labour of a lout. He had taken care of furnace fires, cleaned cellars and backyards, shovelled snow, and cut grass, until these varied avocations, together with the remarkable work he did in his studies, and the farcical meals he cooked himself, broke him down and sent him in a semi-hysterical, wholly pitiful state to the kindly Barrows. And Barrows, convinced that he did not belong to the many “grinds,”--of such admirable purpose and tragic mediocrity,--who made the Secretary’s office one of constant anguish, hit upon an inspiration. Of late, it had seemed positively Heaven-sent. Wolcott had come to him, and said, in a manner that combined a child’s shyness with the omnipotence of a crowned head who believes in the divine right of kings, “I wish you would tell me just what I’m to do for this man you wrote me about.” Barrows was gratified, amused, and, perhaps, a trifle worried. His half hour with Sears, like a good deal of the time spent in The Magnificent One’s company, rather baffled the Secretary. Wolcott’s method of doing charity was in itself extraordinary. Furthermore, as far as Barrows could see,--and he was keen,--there was no particular motive for the act. Compassion was lacking; what little Sears said was impersonal, almost cold. Vanity, smug self-appreciation, there was none; the fellow neither enjoined theatrical conditions of secrecy, nor showed ill-concealed eagerness to shine his light before men. The personal equation was eliminated. Wolcott indicated nothing but a princely willingness to undertake and carry out whatever the situation required. As a matter of temporary convenience, he told Barrows he preferred sending the man a monthly allowance, to giving any particular sum at the start.

“Tell him to spend his money and--and eat things,” was perhaps his most specific suggestion.

Haydock, of course, was deeply interested in his quiet fashion. Sears told him the bald facts in a casual, indifferent way one afternoon when he was changing his clothes to row. The interview with the Secretary, Haydock was forced to reconstruct as best he could.

“Are you going to keep it up right along?” he asked, sceptically.

“Why not?” Sears’s tone implied the usual chip on his shoulder.

“Well, it’s very good of you,” commented the other, with almost imperceptible exaggeration.

“Oh, hell!--now you’re giving me the geehee; I can tell that even if I can’t write anonymous sonnets for the ‘Monthly.’” He gave Haydock one of his athletic tributes of affection. “You know there’s nothing good about it. What difference does it make?”

Yet in spite of Wolcott’s characteristic attitude to his indigent unknown,--it was equivalent, briefly, to a shrug of the shoulders,--the two dropped into the habit of talking together about him. They referred to him after a time as “It,” or “Crœsus,” or “The Bloated Bondholder;” and one of Wolcott’s favourite amusements was to describe in detail, with an idiotic brilliancy of invention that Haydock had never given him credit for, what “It” was doing at that particular moment.

“‘It’ must be dressing for dinner, don’t you think?” Sears would ask, apropos of nothing at all.

“Oh, do you think so,--at six o’clock?” Haydock would take out his watch, and deliberate seriously, “You see he dines at eight, probably, and that gives him just time to get away from the Somerset and take in the last few numbers at the ‘Pop’ Concert.”

“Yes,--he won’t care for long dinners this warm weather,” Sears would add; “some clams, a clear soup, a bird, a truffle or two, salad perhaps; all a man really needs of course, but nothing heavy or elaborate.”

Or again: “‘It’ had better hurry up and put that boat of his into commission if he wants to get to Poughkeepsie for the race.”

“Will he go round with her?” Haydock would consider doubtfully.

“Oh, dear, no; he’ll take his car and meet her there. That sailing master of his is a capital man,--perfectly invaluable he’s been to Crœsus. You remember that spring on the Mediterranean?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course, that time!”

After some such elaborate bit of fooling, Wolcott would roll on the floor in paroxysms of mirth. And all the while McGaw and Wolcott were spending several hours a week in the same room, translating from the same page. Once when Haydock tiptoed in during a seminar to borrow something, Sears glanced up from the Latin Documents and said:

“Crœsus has had a mighty pretty lot of ponies sent up from Virginia,” and Haydock had answered, as he rummaged through the desk:--

“Good work,--I’ll have to look them over.”

Long practice had perfected the technique of their little game; its suggestion of mindless opulence was maddening to McGaw. He had very bitter feelings sometimes. Of late they had all come to an intense sort of focus upon Sears. For in him McGaw was able to detect every human attribute that he especially hated. Sears, on the other hand, though naturally inclined to regard the tutor as a serviceable, if unsightly, machine, became used to his high-strung, underfed personality. He would talk to him now and then, when the effort of concentration became impossible, ask his opinion of certain instructors and their courses,--whether this one was a “snap,” and that one a “stinker,”--what sort of frills he, McGaw, was going to get on his degree, and if he didn’t think the college was “a good deal of a fake, anyhow?” This sort of thing was infinitely more galling to McGaw than a business relation, pure and simple. He remembered that, with other men who interrupted the study hour from time to time, Wolcott talked rowing or horses or--what was even more bewildering--nothing at all, but fooled and laughed with easy intimacy. He resented Sears’s ponderous adaptability to his, the tutor’s, own special topics.

While these two were seeing so much of each other on this uneven basis, May came and went, bringing with it the Class Races and all the other spring novelties. Wolcott’s crew came in second in the race, with seven men in the boat. Some one had broken an oar, or a leg, or an outrigger,--some one always does,--and jumped overboard. So the order in which the four crews splashed over the finish line was, as usual, a tremendous surprise to the black crowd that stretched along the Harvard Bridge, and the sea wall, and the stable roofs back of Beacon Street. Everybody--especially the girls--said the man who jumped was a great, splendid fellow. He was, of course; but the crews and the man himself laughed a good deal when they heard it; they thought that the men who had to stay by a disabled boat and be beaten by half a length showed their sand.

One sweltering day in June, after the examinations had begun, Haydock found Sears in his room, staring helplessly at a small mountain of clothing that reared itself in chaos from his study floor. “What’ll I do?” he asked, mopping his face dejectedly with the tail of a coloured shirt.

“Why, what’s the matter with them?” Haydock turned over a gay straw hat with his foot.

“Oh, everything!” answered Sears; he was warm and cross. “They don’t fit, and they’re hideous, and no good, and in my way, and they make me sick.” He gave the pile a kick that spread it the length of the room.

“Why not let Crœsus have a whack at them?” suggested Haydock, thoughtfully.

“What!” Wolcott looked quizzical, astonished. “Oh, that would never do, Boy! It would be rotten for one college fellow to offer another one clothes.”

“I don’t see much difference between that and money.”

“Well, there is a difference, just the same. The money comes through the Secretary,--a sort of reward offered, and no questions asked. Anyhow, there’s something about money--something--Oh, you know what it is as well as I do! As soon as money belongs to you, it’s just as good as anybody’s.”

“Rather better, I should say.”

“Well, clothes aren’t.”

“Since you press me,” said Haydock, fishing among a heap of crumpled linen, “I feel obliged to possess myself of this extremely pretty necktie.” He smoothed a brilliant strip of crimson silk over his knee.

“Go on, Haystack,--what shall I do with them?”

“How many times does a simple statement have to be repeated to you before it penetrates?” Haydock rapidly began to bring a rough kind of order into the waste of shirts, neckties, odd gloves, and suits of clothes.

“Give them to Crœsus? That’s out of the question, me boy!”

Haydock worked hard a few moments in silence. Then he stood up, hot and dishevelled, but amiable, as he always was, and said, laughing:--

“That light grey suit, these shirts, those neckties, and this hat, in fact the best of this out-fit, is going this afternoon to Barrows, with a note from you. They will subsequently be presented to ‘It, Croœsus, Esquire.’” It amused Wolcott every now and then to have Haydock “boss” him. The clothes went, of course.

Two days later they returned. That is to say, the best of them did,--the grey suit, the coloured shirt, the straw hat, and one of the quieter neckties. Ernest McGaw, unspeakably jaunty, almost handsome, was inside of them.

Even before Wolcott’s bundle had enabled McGaw to blossom, like the season, into fine raiment, his whole appearance had undergone a subtle, indescribable change. Perhaps it was a recently acquired firmness of gait as he swung through the Yard to a lecture, or up the steps of Claverly to Sears’s room. Hitherto he had hated the approach to Claverly; there usually were men going in or coming out, who looked at him as they passed. Once he had found a whole group of them seated on the steps, and had walked twice round the block, rather than brush through to the door. Or it may have been the spiritual radiance that comes of good food and plenty of it, money in your pocket, and peace in your mind. At any rate, McGaw’s expression, whether it walked at you, or looked at you, or smiled at you, had, of late, become the outward and visible sign of a great inward happiness. Almost every minute of his day was dedicated to his work; yet he felt as if he were having for the first time leisure in which to breathe. By no means the least exquisite of his satisfactions was his first purchase of something unnecessary, a luxury, an extravagance; he bought one evening, in a dim musty corner of a Brattle Square bookstall, a second-hand copy of some Latin hymns for twenty cents. The demi-god who had caused such things to be--Barrows had spoken vaguely of “a friend”--had become to McGaw the occasion of the sun’s rising and the stars’ shining; through him, the earth revolved, and the college endured. McGaw was very religious; every night he prayed fervently for the man who was befriending him. To-day, when he left his room to walk down to Claverly, he had the uplifting glow of self-respect and good-will to men whose secret only barbers and tailors seem to know. Perhaps, just at first, he felt even more like a white elephant than one ordinarily does on getting into a fresh suit of grey, after wearing black for many months. But the sensation, coming as it did from the knowledge that he was conspicuously better, rather than worse dressed than most people, was not altogether an unpleasant one to McGaw.

Wolcott’s back was turned when he arrived. This fact made what followed even more unfortunate than it would have been had the somewhat astounding truth burst on Sears at the moment the tutor came into the room. For it enabled Wolcott to say, in his natural, off-hand tones, without looking away from his desk:

“Is that you, McGaw? Just sit down and wait a minute.” When his revolving chair finally did swing round, the transition was something very awful. Sears, in spite of his birth, and his bringing up, and his money, was, at times, to put it kindly, exceedingly “near to nature;” just now he behaved as one might fancy a naked Zulu behaving were an electric car or a steam-roller to dart suddenly across his path in the depths of an African jungle. He jerked back as if somebody had made a lunge at him, and held on to the arms of his chair. Then he looked quickly from side to side, at the door and windows, with his mouth open stupidly. His eyes, round, rounder, helpless, turned again and again to that dapper butterfly in the chair opposite, who got redder and redder until all the blood in his body boiled through his face and away, leaving him white, rigid, terrible. And Sears could make no sound, only a gasping effort, until all at once the entire situation seemed to gather fresh force and smite him anew. He stumbled from his chair, through the door, down the long hall, down the stairs, laughing, shrieking, cursing like a maniac, out into the street.