Chapter II: Part II: Princeton (1)

I

"Young man, you've two years' work to enter."

"Just when," George asked, "does college open?"

"If the world continues undisturbed, in about two months."

"Very well. Then I'll do two years' work in two months."

"You've only one pair of eyes, my boy; only one brain."

George couldn't afford to surrender. He had arrived in Princeton the evening before, a few hours after leaving Oakmont. It had been like a crossing between two planets. Breathlessly he had sought and found a cheap room in a students' lodging house, and afterward, guided by the moonlight, he had wandered, spellbound, about the campus.

Certainly this could not be George Morton, yesterday definitely divided from what Old Planter had described as human beings. His exaltation grew. For a long time he walked in an amicable companionship of broader spaces and more arresting architecture than even Oakmont could boast; and it occurred to him, if he should enter college, he would have as much share in all this as the richest student; at Princeton he would live in the Great House.

His mood altered as he returned to his small, scantily furnished room whose very unloveliness outlined the difficulties that lay ahead.

He unpacked his suitcase and came upon Sylvia's photograph and her broken riding crop. In the centre of the table, where he would work, he placed the photograph with a piece of the crop on either side. Whenever he was alone in the room those objects would be there, perpetual lashes to ambition; whenever he went out he would lock them away.

How lovely and desirable she was! How hateful! How remote! Had ever a man such a goal to strain for? He wanted only to start.

Immediately after breakfast the next morning he set forth. He had never seen a town so curiously empty. There were no students, since it was the long vacation, except a few backward men and doubtful candidates for admission. He stared by daylight at the numerous buildings which were more imposing now, more suggestive of learning, wealth, and breeding. They seemed to say they had something for him if only he would fight hard enough to receive it.

First of all, he had to find someone who knew the ropes. There must be professors here, many men connected with this gigantic plant. On Nassau Street he encountered a youth, a little younger than himself, who, with a bored air, carried three books under his arm. George stopped him.

"I beg your pardon. Are you going here?"

The other looked him over as if suspecting a joke.

"Going where?" he asked, faintly.

George appraised the fine quality of the young man's clothing. He was almost sorry he had spoken. The first thing he had to do was to overcome a reluctance to speak to people who obviously already had much that he was after.

"I mean," he explained, "are you going to this college?"

"The Lord," the young man answered, "and Squibs Bailly alone know. I'm told I'm not very bright in the head."

George smiled.

"Then I guess you can help me out. I'm not either. I want to enter in the fall, and I need a professor or something like that to teach me. I'll pay."

The other nodded.

"You need a coach. Bailly's a good one. I'm going there now to be told for two hours I'm an utter ass. Maybe I am, but what's the use rubbing it in? I don't know that he's got any open time, but you might come along and see."

George, his excitement increasing, walked beside his new acquaintance.

"What's your name?" the bored youth asked all at once.

"Morton. George Morton."

"I'm Godfrey Rogers. Lawrenceville. What prep are you?"

"What what?"

"I mean, what school you come from?"

George experienced a sharp discomfort, facing the first of his unforeseen embarrassments. Evidently his simple will to crush the past wouldn't be sufficient.

"I went to a public school off and on," he muttered.

Rogers' eyes widened. George had a feeling that the boy had receded. It wasn't until later, when he had learned the customs of the place, that he could give that alteration its logical value. It made no difference. He had a guide. Straightway he would find a man who could help him get in; but he noticed that Rogers abandoned personalities, chatting only of the difficulties of entrance papers, and the apparent mad desire of certain professors to keep good men from matriculating.

They came to a small frame house on Dickinson Street. Rogers left George in the hall while he entered the study. The door did not quite close, and phrases slipped out in Rogers' glib voice, and, more frequently, in a shrill, querulous one.

"Don't know a thing about him. Just met him on the street looking for a coach. No prep."

"Haven't the time. I've enough blockheads as it is. He'd better go to Corse's school."

"You won't see him?"

"Oh, send him in," George heard Bailly say irritably. "You, Rogers, would sacrifice me or the entire universe to spare your brain five minutes' useful work. I'll find out what he knows, and pack him off to Corse. Wait in the hall."

Rogers came out, shaking his head.

"Guess there's nothing doing, but he'll pump you."

George entered and closed the door. Behind a table desk lounged a long, painfully thin figure. The head was nearly bald, but the face carried a luxuriant, carelessly trimmed Van Dyke beard. Above it cheeks and forehead were intricately wrinkled, and the tweed suit, apparently, strove to put itself in harmony. It was difficult to guess how old Squibs Bailly was; probably very ancient, yet in his eyes George caught a flashing spirit of youth.

The room was forcefully out of key with its occupant. The desk, extremely neat with papers, blotters, and pens, was arranged according to a careful pattern. On books and shelves no speck of dust showed, and so far the place was scholarly. Then George was a trifle surprised to notice, next to a sepia print of the Parthenon, a photograph of a football team. That, moreover, was the arrangement around the four walls--classic ruins flanked by modern athletes. On a table in the window, occupying what one might call the position of honour, stood a large framed likeness of a young man in football togs.

Before George had really closed the door the high voice had opened its attack.

"I haven't any more time for dunces."

"I'm not a dunce," George said, trying to hold his temper.

Bailly didn't go on right away. The youthful glance absorbed each detail of George's face and build.

"Anyhow," he said after a moment, less querulously, "let's see what you lack of the infantile requirements needful for entrance in an American university."

He probed George's rapid acquaintance with mathematics, history, English, and the classics. With modern languages there was none. Then the verdict came. Two years' work.

"I've got to make my eyes and brain do," George said. "I've got to enter college this fall or never. I tell you, Mr. Bailly, I am going to do it. I know you can help me, if you will. I'll pay."

Bailly shook his head.

"Even if I had the time my charges are high."

George showed his whole hand.

"I have about five hundred dollars."

"For this condensed acquisition of a kindergarten knowledge, or--or----"

"For everything. But only let me get in and I'll work my way through."

Again Bailly shook his head.

"You can't get in this fall, and it's not so simple to work your way through."

"Then," George said, "you refuse to do anything for me?"

The youthful eyes squinted. George had an odd impression that they sought beyond his body to learn just what manner of man he was. The querulous voice possessed more life.

"How tall are you?"

"A little over six feet."

"What's your weight?"

George hesitated, unable to see how such questions could affect his entering college. He decided it was better to answer.

"A hundred and eighty-five."

"Good build!" Bailly mused. "Wish I'd had a build like that. If your mind is as well proportioned----Take your coat off. Roll up your sleeves."

"What for?" George asked.

Bailly arose and circled the desk. George saw that the skeleton man limped.

"Because I'd like to see if the atrophying of your brain has furnished any compensations."

George grinned. The portrait in the window seemed friendly. He obeyed.

Bailly ran his hand over George's muscles. His young eyes widened.

"Ever play football?"

George shook his head doubtfully.

"Not what you would call really playing. Why? Would football help?"

"Provided one's the right stuff otherwise, would being a god help one climb Olympus?" Bailly wanted to know.

He indicated the framed likeness in the window.

"That's Bill Gregory."

"Seems to me I've seen his name in the papers," George said.

Bailly stared.

"Without doubt, if you read the public prints at all. He exerted much useful cunning and strength in the Harvard and Yale games last fall. He was on everybody's All-American eleven. I got him into college and man-handled him through. Hence this scanty hair, these premature furrows; for although he had plenty of good common-sense, and was one of the finest boys I've ever known, he didn't possess, speaking relatively, when it came to iron-bound text-books, the brains of a dinosaur; but he had the brute force of one."

"Why did you do it?" George asked. "Because he was rich?"

"Young man," Bailly answered, "I am a product of this seat of learning. With all its faults--and you may learn their number for yourself some day--its success is pleasing to me, particularly at football. I am very fond of football, perhaps because it approximates in our puling, modern fashion, the classic public games of ruddier days. In other words, I was actuated by a formless emotion called Princeton spirit. Don't ask me what that is. I don't know. One receives it according to one's concept. But when I saw in Bill something finer and more determined than most men possess, I made up my mind Princeton was going to be proud of him, on the campus, on the football field, and afterward out in the world."

The hollow, wrinkled face flushed.

"When Bill made a run I could think of it as my run. When he made a touchdown I could say, 'there's one score that wouldn't have been made if I hadn't booted Bill into college, and kept him from flunking out by sheer brute mentality!' Pardon me, Mr. Morton. I love the silly game."

George smiled, sensing his way, if only he could make this fellow feel he would be the right kind of Princeton man!

"I was going to say," he offered, "that while I had never had a chance to play on a regular team I used to mix it up at school, but I was stronger than most of the boys. There were one or two accidents. They thought I'd better quit."

Bailly laughed.

"That's the kind of material we want. You do look as if you could bruise a blue or a crimson jersey. Know where the field house is? Ask anybody. Do no harm for the trainer to look you over. Be there at three o'clock."

"But my work? Will you help me?"

"Give me," Bailly pled, "until afternoon to decide if I'll take another ten years from my life. That's all. Send that fellow Rogers in. Be at the field house at three o'clock."

And as George passed out he heard him reviling the candidate.

"Don't see why you come to college. No chance to make the team or a Phi Beta Kappa. One ought to be a requisite."

The shrill voice went lower. George barely caught the words certainly not intended for him.

"You know I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that fellow you brought me, if he had a chance, might do both."

II

George, since he had nothing else to do, walked home. Bailly could get him in if he would. Did it really depend in part on the inspection he would have to undergo that afternoon? It was hard there was nothing he could do to prepare himself. He went to the yard, to which the landlady had condemned Sylvia's bulldog, and, to kill time, played with the friendly animal until luncheon. Afterward he sat in his room before Sylvia's portrait impressing on himself the necessity of strength for the coming ordeal.

His landlady directed him glibly enough to the field house. As he crossed the practice gridiron, not yet chalked out, he saw Bailly on the verandah; and, appearing very small and sturdy beside him, a gray-haired, pleasant-faced man whose small eyes were relentless.

"This is the prospect, Green," George heard Bailly say.

The trainer studied George for some time before he nodded his head.

"A build to hurt and not get hurt," he said at last; "but, Mr. Bailly, it's hard to supply experience. Boys come here who have played all their lives, and they know less than nothing. Bone seems to grow naturally in the football cranium."

He shifted back to George.

"How fast are you?"

"I've never timed myself, but I'm hard to catch."

"Get out there," the trainer directed.

"In those clothes?" Bailly asked.

"Why not? The ground's dry. A man wouldn't run any faster with moleskins and cleats. Now you run as far as the end of that stand. Halt there for a minute, then turn and come back."

He drew out a stop watch.

"All set? Then--git!"

George streaked down the field.

"It's an even hundred yards," the trainer explained to Bailly.

As George paused at the end of the stand the trainer snapped his watch, whistling.

"There are lots with running shoes and drawers wouldn't do any better. Let's have him back."

He waved his arm. George tore up and leant against the railing, breathing hard, but not uncomfortably.

"You were a full second slower coming back," the trainer said with a twinkle.

"I'm sorry," George cried. "Let me try it again."

Green shook his head.

"I'd rather see you make a tackle, but I've no one to spare."

He grinned invitation at Bailly.

"My spirit, Green," the tutor said, "is less fragile than my corpus, but it has some common-sense. I prefer others should perish at the hands of my discoveries."

"You've scrubbed around," the trainer said, appraising George's long, muscular legs. "Ever kick a football?"

"A little."

Green entered the field house, reappearing after a moment with a football tucked under his arm.

"Do you mind stepping down the field, Mr. Bailly, to catch what he punts? I wouldn't go too far."

Bailly nodded and walked a short distance away. The trainer gave George the football and told him to kick it to Bailly. George stepped on the grass and swung his leg. If the ball had travelled horizontally as far as it did toward heaven it would have been a good kick. For half an hour the trainer coached interestedly, teaching George the fundamentals of kicking form. Some of the later punts, indeed, boomed down the field for considerable distances, but in George's mind the high light of that unexpected experience remained the lanky, awkward figure in wrinkled tweeds, limping about the field, sometimes catching the ball, sometimes looking hurt when it bounded from his grasp, sometimes missing it altogether, and never once losing the flashing pleasure from his eyes or the excitement out of his furrowed face.

"Enough," the trainer said at last.

George heard him confide to the puffing tutor:

"Possibilities. Heaven knows we'll need them a year from this fall, especially in the kicking line. I believe this fellow can be taught."

Bailly, his hands shaking from his recent exercise, lighted a pipe. He assumed a martyr's air. His voice sounded as though someone had done him an irreparable wrong.

"Then I'll have to try, but it's hard on me, Green, you'll admit."

George hid his excitement. He knew he had passed his first examination. He was sure he would enter college. Already he felt the confidence most men placed in Squibs Bailly.

"Wouldn't you have taken him on anyway, Mr. Bailly?" the trainer laughed. "Anyway, a lot of my players are first-group men. I depend on you to turn him over in the fall for the Freshman eleven. Going to town?"

"Come on, Morton," Bailly said, remorsefully.

Side by side the three walked through to Nassau Street and past the campus. George said nothing, drinking in the scarcely comprehensible talk of the others about team prospects and the appalling number of powerful and nimble young men who would graduate the following June.

Near University Place he noticed Rogers loafing in front of a restaurant with several other youths who wore black caps. He wondered why Rogers started and stared at him, then turned, speaking quickly to the others.

Green went down University Place. George paced on with Bailly. In front of the Nassau Club the tutor paused.

"I'm going in here," he said, "but you can come to my house at eight-thirty. We'll work until ten-thirty. We'll do that every night until your brain wrinkles a trifle. You may not have been taught that twenty-four hours are allotted to each day. Eight for sleep. Two with me. Two for meals. Two at the field. Two for a run in the country. That leaves eight for study, and you'll need every minute of them. I'll give you your schedule to-night. If you break it once I'll drop you, for you've got to have a brain beyond the ordinary to make it wrinkle enough."

"Thanks, Mr. Bailly. If you don't mind, what will it cost?"

Bailly considered.

"I'll have to charge you," he said at last, "twenty-five dollars, but I can lend you most of the books."

George understood, but his pride was not hurt.

"I'll pay you in other ways."

Bailly looked at him, his emaciated face smiling all over.

"I think you will," he said with a little nod. "All right. At eight-thirty."

He limped along the narrow cement walk and entered the club. George started back. The group, he noticed, still loitered in front of the restaurant. Rogers detached himself and strolled across. He was no longer suspicious.

"You been down at the field with Mr. Green?"

"Yes."

"What for?"

"Running a little, kicking a football around."

"Trust Bailly to guess you played. What did Green say?"

"If I get in," George, answered simply, "I think he'll give me a show."

"I guess so," Rogers said, thoughtfully, "or he wouldn't be wasting his time on you now. Come on over and meet these would-be Freshmen. We'll all be in the same class unless we get brain-fever. Mostly Lawrenceville."

George crossed and submitted to elaborate introductions and warm greetings.

"Green's grooming him already for the Freshman eleven," Rogers explained.

George accepted the open admiration cautiously, not forgetting what he had been yesterday, what Sylvia had said. Why was Rogers so friendly all at once?

"What prep?" "Where'd you play?" "Line or backfield?"

The rapidity of the questions lessened his discomfort. How was he to avoid such moments? He must make his future exceptionally full so that it might submerge the past of which he couldn't speak without embarrassment. In this instance Rogers helped him out.

"Morton's bummed around. Never went to any school for long."

George pondered this kind act and its fashion as he excused himself and walked on to his lodging. There was actually something to hide, and Rogers admitted it, and was willing to lend a cloak. He could guess why. Because Green was bothering with him, had condescended to be seen on the street with him. George's vision broadened.

He locked himself in his room and sat before his souvenirs. Sylvia's provocative features seemed clearer. For a long time he stared hungrily. He had an absurd impression that he had already advanced toward her. Perhaps he had in view of what had happened that afternoon.

His determination as well as his strength had clearly attracted Bailly; yet that strength, its possible application to football, had practically assured him he would enter college, had made an ally of the careful Rogers, had aroused the admiration of such sub-Freshmen as were in town. It became clear that if he should be successful at football he would achieve a position of prominence from which he could choose friends useful here and even in the vital future after college.

His planning grew more practical. If football, a game of which he knew almost nothing, could do that, what might he not draw from one he thoroughly knew--anything concerning horses, for instance, hunting, polo? The men interested in horses would be the rich, the best--he choked a trifle over the qualification--the financial and social leaders of the class. He would have that card up his sleeve. He would play it when it would impress most. Skill at games, he hazarded, would make it easier than he had thought to work his way through.

Whatever distaste such cold calculation brought he destroyed by staring at Sylvia's remote beauty. If he was to reach such a goal he would have to use every possible short cut, no matter how unlovely.

He found that evening a radical alteration in Squibs Bailly's study. The blotter was spattered with ink. Papers littered the desk and drifted about the floor. Everything within reach of the tutor's hands was disarranged and disreputably untidy. Bailly appeared incomparably more comfortable.

The course opened with a small lecture, delivered while the attenuated man limped up and down the cluttered room.

"Don't fancy," he began, "that you have found in football a key to the scholastic labyrinth."

His wrinkled face assumed a violent disapproval. His youthful eyes flashed resentfully.

"Mr. Morton, if I suffered the divine Delphic frenzy and went to the Dean and assured him you were destined to be one of our very best undergraduates and at the same time would make fifteen touchdowns against Yale, and roughly an equal number against Harvard, do you know what he would reply?"

George gathered that an answer wasn't necessary.

"You might think," the tutor resumed, limping faster than ever, "that he would run his fingers through his hair, if he had sufficient; would figuratively flame with pleasure; would say: 'Miraculous, Mr. Bailly. You are a great benefactor. We must get this extraordinary youth in the university even if he can't parse "the cat caught the rat."'"

Bailly paused. He clashed his hands together.

"Now I'll tell you what he'd actually reply. 'Interesting if true, Mr. Bailly. But what are his scholastic attainments? Can he solve a quadratic equation in his head? Has he committed to memory my favourite passages of the "Iliad" of Homer and the "Aeneid" of Virgil? Can he name the architect of the Parthenon or the sculptor of the Aegean pediments? No? Horrible! Then off with his head!'"

Bailly draped himself across his chair.

"Therefore it behooves us to get to work."

III

That was the first of sixty-odd toilsome, torturing evenings, for Bailly failed to honour the Sabbath; and, after that first lecture, drab business alone coloured those hours. The multiplicity of subjects was confusing; but, although Bailly seldom told him so, George progressed rapidly, and Bailly knew just where to stress for the examinations.

If it had ended there it would have been bad enough. When he studied the schedule Bailly gave him that first night he had a despairing feeling that either he or it must break down. Everything was accounted for even to the food he was to eat. That last, in fact, created a little difficulty with the landlady, who seemed to have no manner of appreciation of the world-moving importance of football. Rogers wanted to help out there, too. He had found George's lodging. It was when Green's interest was popular knowledge, when from the Nassau Club had slipped the belief that Squibs Bailly had turned his eyes on another star. George made it dispassionately clear to Rogers that Bailly had not allowed in his schedule for calls. Rogers was visibly disappointed.

"Where do you eat, then?"

"Here--with Mrs. Michin."

"Now look, Morton. That's no way. Half a dozen of us are eating at Joe's restaurant. They're the best of the sub-Freshmen that are here. Come along with us."

The manner of the invitation didn't make George at all reluctant to tell the truth.

"I can't afford to be eating around in restaurants."

"That needn't figure," Rogers said, quickly. "Green's probably only letting you eat certain things. I'll guarantee Joe'll take you on for just what you're paying Mrs. Michin."

George thought rapidly. He could see through Rogers now. The boy wanted, even as he did, to run with the best, but for a vastly different cause. That was why his manner had altered that first morning when he had sized George up as the unfinished product of a public school, why it had altered again when he had sensed in him a football star. George's heart warmed, but not to Rogers. Because he rioted around for a period each afternoon in an odorous football suit he was already, in the careful Rogers' eyes, one of the most prominent of the students in town. For the same reason he was in a position to wait and make sure that Rogers himself was the useful sort. George possessed no standard by which to judge, and it would be a mistake to knot ropes that he might want to break later; nor did he care for that sort of charity, no matter how well disguised, so he shook his head.

"Green and Squibs wouldn't put up with it."

He wheedled his landlady, instead, into a better humour, paying her reluctantly a little more.

The problem of expenses was still troublesome, but it became evident that there, too, Bailly would be a useful guide.

"I have actually bearded the dean about you," he said one evening. "There are a few scholarships not yet disposed of. If I can prove to him that you live by syntax alone you may get one. As for the rest, there's the commons. Impecunious students profitably wait on table there."

George's flush was not pretty.

"I'll not be a servant," he snapped.

"It's no disgrace," Bailly said, mildly.

"It is--for me."

He didn't like Bailly's long, slightly pained scrutiny. There was no use keeping things from him anyway.

"I can trust you, Mr. Bailly," he said, quickly, and in a very low voice, as if the walls might hear: "I know you won't give me away. I--I was too much like a servant until the day I came to Princeton. I've sworn I'd never be again. I can't touch that job. I tell you I'd rather starve."

"To do so," Bailly remarked, drily, "would be a senseless suicide. You'll appreciate some day, young man, that the world lives by service."

George wondered why he glanced at the untidy table with a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm also sorry to learn your ambition is not altogether unselfish, or altogether worthy."

George longed to make Bailly understand.

"It was forced on me," he said. "I worked in my father's livery business until he failed. Then I had to go to a rich man's stable. I was treated like dirt. Nobody would have anything to do with me. They won't here, probably, if they find out."

"Never mind," Bailly sighed. "We will seek other means. Let us get on with our primers."

Once or twice, when some knotty problem took George to the house during the early morning, he found the spic-and-span neatness he had observed at his first visit. In Bailly's service clearly someone laboured with a love of labour, without shame or discouragement.

One evening in August the maid who customarily opened the door was replaced by a short, plump-looking woman well over thirty. She greeted George with kindly eyes.

"I daresay you're Mr. Morton. I've heard a great deal about you."

George had never seen a face more unaffected, more friendly, more competent. His voice was respectful.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And I am Mrs. Bailly. We expect much of you."

There rushed over George a feeling that, his own ambition aside, he had to give them a great deal. No wonder Squibs felt as he did if his ideas of service had emerged from such a source.

That portion of his crowded schedule George grew eventually to like. It brought him either unrestrained scolding or else a tempered praise; and he enjoyed his cross-country runs. Sylvia's bulldog usually accompanied him, unleashed, for he could control the animal. With surprised eyes he saw estates as extravagant as Oakmont, and frequently in better taste. Little by little he picked up the names of the families that owned them. He told himself that some day he would enter those places as a guest, bowed to by such servants as he had been. It was possible, he promised himself bravely, if only he could win a Yale or a Harvard game.

He enjoyed, too, the hours he spent at the field. He could measure his progress there as well as in Bailly's study. Green was slow with either praise or blame, but sometimes Rogers and his clan would come down, and, sitting in the otherwise empty stands, would audibly marvel at the graceful trajectory of his punts. He soiled himself daily at the tackling dummy. He sprawled after an elusive ball, falling on it or picking it up on the run. Meantime, he had absorbed the elements of the rules. He found them rather more complicated than the classics.

The head coach came from the city one day. Like Green, he said nothing in praise or blame, merely criticising pleasantly; but George felt that he was impressed. The great man even tossed the ball about with him for a while, teaching him to throw at a definite mark. After that Rogers and his cronies wanted to be more in evidence than ever, but George had no time for them, or for anything outside his work.

His will to survive the crushing grind never really faltered, but he resented its necessity, sometimes wistfully, sometimes with turbulence. He despised himself for regretting certain pleasanter phases of his serfdom at Oakmont. The hot, stuffy room on the top floor of the frame house; the difficult books; the papers streaked with intricate and reluctant figures, contrived frequently to swing his mind to pastoral corners of the Planter estate. He might have held title to them, they had been so much his own. He had used them during his free time for the reading of novels, and latterly, he remembered, for formless dreams of Sylvia's beauty. At least his mind had not been put to the torture there. He had had time to listen to a bird's song, to ingratiate himself with a venturesome squirrel, to run his hands through the long grass, to lie half asleep, brain quite empty save for a temporal content.

Now, running or walking in the country, he found no time for the happier aspects of woods or fields. He had to drive himself physically in order that his mind could respond to Bailly's urgencies. And sometimes, as has been suggested, his revolt was more violent. He paced his room angrily. Why did he do it? Why did he submit? Eventually his eyes would turn to her photograph, and he would go back to his table.

He was grateful for the chance that had let him pick up that picture. Without its constant supervision he might not have been able to keep up the struggle. During the worst moments, when some solution mocked him, he would stare at the likeness while his brain fought, while, with a sort of self-hypnosis induced by that pictured face, he willed himself to keep on.

One night, when he had suffered over an elusive equation beyond his scheduled bedtime, he found his eyes, as he stared at the picture, blurring strangely; then the thing was done, the answer proved; but after what an effort! Why did his eyes blur? Because of the intensity of some emotion whose significance he failed all at once to grasp. He continued to stare at Sylvia's beauty, informed even here with a sincere intolerance; at those lips which had released the contempt that had delivered him to this other slavery. Abruptly the emotion, that had seemed to leap upon him from the books and the complicated figures, defined itself with stark, unavoidable brutality. He reached out and with both hands grasped the photograph. He wanted to snatch his hands apart, ripping the paper, destroying the tranquil, arrogant features. He replaced the picture, leant back, and continued hypnotically to study it. His hands grasped the table's edge while the blurring of his eyes increased. He spoke aloud in a clear and sullen voice:

"I hate you," he said. "With all my heart and soul and body I hate you."

IV

About this time one partial break in the schedule came like a strong tonic. Bailly at the close of an evening's session spoke, George fancied, with a little embarrassment.

"My wife wants to speak to you before you go."

He raised his voice.

"Martha! The battle's over for to-night."

She came quietly in and perched herself on the arm of a chair.

"I'm having a few people for dinner to-morrow," she explained. "There's one young girl, so I want a young man. Won't you help me out?"

George's elation was shot with doubt of an unexplored territory. This promised an advance if he could find the way. He glanced inquiringly at Bailly.

"Women," the tutor said, "lack a sense of values. I shall be chained anyway to my wife's ill-conceived hospitality, so you might as well come. But we'll dine early so we won't destroy an entire evening."

"Then at seven-thirty, Mr. Morton," Mrs. Bailly said.

"Thank you," George answered. "I shall be very happy to come."

As a matter of fact, he was there before seven-thirty, over-anxious to be socially adequate. He had worried a good deal about the invitation. Could it be traced to his confession to Bailly? Was it, in any sense, a test? At least it bristled with perplexities. His ordinary suit of clothing, even after an extended pressing and brushing, was, he felt, out of place. It warned him that of the ritual of a mixed dinner he was blankly ignorant. He established two cardinal principles. He would watch and imitate the others. He wouldn't open his mouth unless he had to.

Bailly, with tact, wore the disgraceful tweeds, but there were two other men, a professor and a resident, George gathered in the rapidity of the introduction which slurred names. These wore evening clothes. Of the two elderly women who accompanied them one was quite dazzling, displaying much jewellery, and projecting an air truly imperial. Side by side with her Mrs. Bailly appeared more than ever a priestess of service; yet to George her serene self-satisfaction seemed ornament enough.

Where, George wondered, was the girl for whom he had been asked?

Mrs. Bailly drew him from these multiple introductions. He turned and saw the girl standing in the doorway, a dazzling portrait in a dingy frame. As he faced her George was aware of a tightening of all his defences. Her clothing, her attitude, proclaimed her as of Sylvia's sort. He ventured to raise his eyes to her face. It was there, too, the habit of the beautiful, the obvious unfamiliarity with life's grayer tones. Yet she did not resemble Sylvia. Her skin was nearly white. Her hair glinted with gold; but she, too, was lovely. George asked himself if she would have lifted the crop, if all these fortunates reacted to a precise and depressing formula. Somehow he couldn't imagine this girl striking to hurt.

Mrs. Bailly presented him. Her name was Alston, Betty

Alston, it developed during the succeeding general conversation. He fixed the stouter of the men in evening clothes as her father and the imperial woman as her mother. He understood then that they were, indeed, of Sylvia's sort, for during his cross-country work he had frequently passed their home, an immense Tudor house in the midst of pleasant acres.

It was because of the girl that the pitfalls of dinner were bridged. In the technique of accepting Mrs. Bailly's excellent courses he was always a trifle behind her. She made conversation, moreover, surprisingly easy. After the first few moments, during which no one troubled to probe his past, the older people left them to themselves. She didn't ask what his prep was, or where he lived, or any other thing to make him stammer.

"You look like a football player," she said, frankly.

They talked of his work. He said he had admired her home during his runs. She responded naturally:

"When we are really back you must come and see it more intimately."

The invitation to enter the gates!

He fell silent. Would it be fair to go without giving her an opportunity to treat him as Sylvia had done? Why should she inspire such a question? Hadn't he willed his past to oblivion? Hadn't he determined to take every short cut? Of course he would go, as George Morton, undergraduate, football player, magician with horses. The rest was none of her business.

They were in Princeton, she explained, only for a few days from time to time, but would be definitely back when college opened. She, too, was going to be introduced to society that winter. He wanted to ask her how it was done. He pictured a vast apartment, dense with unpleasant people, and a man who cried out with a brazen voice: "Ladies and gentlemen! This is Miss Sylvia Planter. This is Miss Betty Alston." Quite like an auction.

"It must be wonderful to play football," she was saying. "I should have preferred to be a man. What can a girl do? Bad tennis, rotten golf, something with horses."

He smiled. He could impress Betty Alston, but there was no point in that, because she was a girl, and he could think of only one girl.

Yet he carried home an impression of unexpected interest and kindness. Her proximity, the rustling of her gown, the barely detectable perfume from her tawny hair, furnished souvenirs intangible but very warm in his memory. They made the portrait and the broken crop seem lifeless and unimpressive.

He forced himself to stare at Sylvia's likeness until the old hypnotic sense returned.

V

He saw Betty Alston once more before college opened, unexpectedly, briefly, and disturbingly; but with all that he carried again to his lodging an impression of a distracting contact.

He was out for a morning run, wearing some ancient flannels Bailly had loaned him, and a sweater, for autumn's first exhilaration sharpened the air. Sylvia's bulldog barked joyously about him as he trotted through a lane not far from the Alston place. He often went that way, perhaps because its gates were already half open. As he turned the corner of a hedge he came face to face with Betty. In a short skirt and knitted jacket she was even more striking than she had been at the Bailly's. The unexpected encounter had brought colour to her rather pale face. The bulldog sprang for her. George halted him with a sharp command.

"I am not afraid of him," she laughed. "Come here, savage beast."

The dog crawled to her and licked her fingers. George saw her examining the animal curiously.

"I hope he didn't frighten you," he said, his cap in his hand.

She glanced up, and at her voice George straightened, and turned quickly away so that she couldn't see the response to her amazing question. Was it, he asked himself, traceable to Old Planter's threats. Were they going to try to smash him at the start and keep him out of Princeton?

"Do you happen," Betty had said, frowning, "to know Sylvia Planter, or, perhaps, her brother, Lambert?"

George didn't care to lie; nor was it, his instinct told him, safe to lie to Betty. She knew the Planters, then. But how could Old Planter drive him out except through his parents? He wasn't going to be driven out. He turned back slowly. In Betty's face he read only a slight bewilderment.

"That's a queer thing to ask," he managed.

"The dog," she said, caressing the ugly snout, "is the image of one Sylvia Planter was very fond of. Sylvia and I were at school together last year. I've just been visiting her the last few days. She said she had given her dog away."

She drew the dog closer and read the name on the collar.

"Roland! What was the name of her dog?"

George relaxed.

"That dog," he said, harshly, "belongs to me."

She glanced at him, surprised, releasing the dog and standing up. It wasn't Old Planter then, and his parents were probably safe enough; but had Sylvia, he asked himself angrily, made a story for her guest out of his unwary declaration and his abrupt vanishing from Oakmont? Did this friendly creature know anything? If she did she would cease to be amiable. His anger diminished as he saw the curiosity leave her face.

"An odd resemblance! Do you know, Mr. Morton, I rather think you're bound to meet Lambert Planter anyway. I believe he's a very important young man at Yale. You'll have to play football a little better than he does. His sister and he are going to visit me for a few days before he goes back to New Haven. Perhaps you'll see him then."

George resented the prospect. He got himself away.

"Squibs," he told her, "sees everything. If I loiter he finds out and scolds."

He had an impression that she looked after him until he was out of sight. Or was it the dog that still puzzled her? Something of her, at least, accompanied him longer than that--her kindness, her tact in the matter of the Planters. He would take very good care that he didn't meet Lambert; the prospect of Sylvia's adjacence, however, filled him with a disturbing excitement. He wanted to see her, but he felt it wouldn't be safe to have her see him yet.

Her picture increased his excitement, filled him with a craving for her physical presence. He desired to look at her, as he had looked at the photograph, to see if he could tell himself under those conditions that he hated her. Whether that was true or not, he was more determined than ever to make his boasts good.

VI

The day of the immediate test approached and he found himself no longer afraid of it. Even Bailly one early September evening abandoned cynicism.

"You've every chance, Morton," he said, puffing at his pipe, "to enter creditably. You may have a condition in French, but what of that? We'll have it off by the divisionals. I'll admit you're far from a dunce. During the next ten days we'll concentrate on the examination idiosyncrasies of my revered colleagues."

The scholarship had, in fact, been won for George, but the necessary work, removed from any suspicion of the servatorial, had not yet been found. Bailly, although he plainly worried himself, told George not to be impatient; then, just before the entrance examinations, the head coach arrived and settled himself in Princeton. Self-assured young men drifted to the field now every afternoon--"varsity men," the Rogers clan whispered with awe. And there were last year's substitutes, and faithful slaves of the scrub, over-anxious, pouring out to early practice, grasping at one more chance. So far no Freshmen candidates had been called, but the head coach was heard to whisper to Green:

"We'd better work this fellow Morton with the squad until the cubs start. He'll stand a lot of practice. Give him all the football he'll hold. He's outkicking his ends now. Jack him up without cutting down his distance. I'd like to see him make a tackle. He looks good at the dummy, but you never can tell. He may be an ear-puller."

The magic words slipped through the town. George caught arriving Freshmen pointing him out. He overheard glowing prophecies.

"Green says he'll outkick Dewitt."

It didn't turn his head. To be the greatest player the game had ever known wouldn't have turned his head, for that would have been only one small step toward the summit from which Sylvia looked down on him with contemptuous, inimical eyes.

The head coach one afternoon gave the ball to a young man of no pronounced value, and instructed him to elude George if he could.

"You, Morton," the head coach instructed, "see that he doesn't get past you. Remember what you've done to the dummy."

George nodded, realizing that this was a real test to be passed with a hundred per cent. That man with the ball had the power and the desire to make a miserable failure of him. For the moment he seemed more than a man, deadly, to be conquered at any cost. Schooled by his rough-and-tumble combats at school and in the stables, George kept his glance on the other's eyes; knew, therefore, when he was going to side-step, and in which direction; lunged at exactly the right moment; clipped the runner about the knees; lifted him; brought him crashing to the ground. The ball rolled to one side. George released his man, sprawled, and gathered the ball in his arms. A great silence descended on the field. Out of it, as George got up, slipped the uncertain voice of his victim.

"Did anything break off, Green? That wasn't a tackle. It was a bad accident. How could I tell he was a bull when he didn't wear horns?"

George helped the man to his feet.

"Hope I didn't hurt you."

"Oh, no. I'll be all right again in a couple of months."

He limped about his work, muttering:

"Maybe mother was right when she didn't want me to play this game."

The coach wasn't through. He gave the ball to George and signalled one of the biggest of the varsity men.

"Let me see you get past that fellow, Morton."

George didn't get past, although, with the tackler's vise-like grip about his legs, he struggled with knees and elbows, and kept his feet until the coach called to let him go.

"I'm sorry," George began.

"Yes," Green said, severely, "you've got to learn to get past tacklers. If you learn to do that consistently I'll guarantee you a place on the team, provided Mr. Stringham's willing."

"I'm willing," the head coach said with apparent reluctance.

Everyone within hearing laughed, but George couldn't laugh, although he knew it was expected.

"Mr. Stringham," he said, "I will learn to get past them unless they come too thick."

The coach patted his shoulder. His voice was satisfied.

"Run along to the showers now."

There may have been something in the sequence of these events, for that very night Squibs Bailly's face twitched with satisfaction.

"You have a share," he said, "in the agency of the laundry most generally patronized by our young men. It will pay you enough unless you long for automobiles and gaiety."

"No," George said, "but, Mr. Bailly, I need clothes. I can afford to buy some now. Where shall I go? What shall I get?"

Bailly limped about thoughtfully. He named a tailor of the town. He prescribed an outing suit and a dinner suit.

"Because," he said, "if you're asked about, you want to be able to go, and a dinner suit will pass for a Freshman nearly anywhere."

"If," George asked himself defiantly as he walked home, "Squibs thinks my ambition unworthy, why does he go out of his way to boost it? Anyway, I'm going to do my best to make touchdowns for him and Mrs. Squibs. Is that Princeton spirit, or Bailly spirit, or am I fooling myself, and am I going to make touchdowns just for myself and Sylvia Planter?"

VII

The meeting he had desired above all things to avoid took place when he was, for a moment, off his guard. He was on his way to Dickinson Hall for his first examination. Perhaps that was why he was too absorbed to notice the automobile drawn up at the curb just ahead, and facing him. He had no warning. He nearly collided with Lambert Planter, who walked out of a shop. George stopped, drew back, and thought of dodging behind the procession of worried, sombrely clothed Freshmen; but there wasn't time. Lambert's face showed bewilderment and recognition.

"Certainly it is Mr. Morton," he said in his old mocking fashion.

George glanced at the surprised features which, in a masculine fashion, were reminiscent of Sylvia; and beyond he saw, in the rear seat of the automobile, Sylvia herself, lovelier, more removed than ever. Betty Alston sat at her side. Evidently neither had observed the encounter, for they laughed and chatted, probably about the terror-stricken Freshmen.

George swallowed hard.

"I heard you were going to be here. I wanted to keep out of your way."

"But why?" Lambert laughed. "You have a scholastic appearance. You never mean----"

"I am taking my entrance examinations," George said. "I want to make good here."

He looked straight into Lambert's eyes. His voice became incisive, threatening.

"I will make good. Don't try giving me away. Don't you tell Miss Alston where I came from----"

"Yeh. The big fellow! Morton! Stringham and Green say he's going to be a wonder."

It drifted to them from the passing youths.

Lambert whistled. The mockery left his voice.

"Go as far as you can," he said.

And followed it with:

"Don't be a self-conscious ass."

He smiled whimsically.

"Glad to have run into you--George."

The driver had noticed Lambert. The automobile glided nearer.

"I--I've got to get away," George said, hastily. "I don't want your sister to see me."

Lambert turned. His voice, in turn, was a trifle threatening.

"That's all nonsense. She's forgotten all about you; she wouldn't know you from Adam."

George couldn't help staring. What a contrast the two young women offered! He wanted to realize that he actually looked at Sylvia Planter, Sylvia of the flesh, Sylvia who had expressed for him an endless contempt. But he couldn't help seeing also the golden hair and the soft colouring of Betty Alston.

Lambert sprang into the car. Sylvia and Betty both glanced at the man he had left. George waited. What would happen now? Sylvia's colour did not heighten. Her eyes did not falter. Betty smiled and waved her hand. George took off his cap, still expectant. Sylvia's lifeless stare continued until the car had rolled away. George sighed, relaxed, and went on.

Had Lambert been right? He didn't want to believe that. It hurt too much.

"She saw me," he muttered. "She stared, not as if she saw an unknown man, but as if she wanted to make me think she saw nothing. She saw me."

But he couldn't be sure. It seemed to him then that he wanted more than anything in the world to be sure.

And he had not taken advantage of his chance. Instead of looking at her and fixing the stark fact of hatred in his mind, he had only thought with an angry, craving desire:

"You are the loveliest thing in the world. The next time you'll know me. By God, the next time I'll _make_ you know me."

VIII

In the examination hall George called upon his will to drive from his mind the details of that encounter. Lambert might be dependable, but if Sylvia had actually recognized him what might she not say to Betty Alston? He didn't want to see the kindness vanish from Betty's eyes, nor the friendliness from her manner. Lambert's assurance, moreover, that Sylvia had forgotten him lingered irritatingly.

"I will not think of it," George told himself. "I will think of nothing but this paper. I will pass it."

This ability to discipline his mind had increased steadily during his hours before Sylvia's portrait. The simple command "I will," was a necessity his brain met with a decreasing reluctance. For two hours now it excluded everything except his work. At the end of that time he signed his paper, sat back, and examined the anxious young men crowded about him in the long room. From these he must sooner or later detach the ones of value to himself. That first quick appraisal disclosed little; they were clothed too much to a pattern, wearing black jerseys, more often than not, black clothes, with black caps hanging from the supports of their chairs. In their faces, however, were visible differences that made him uneasy. Even from a uniform, then, men, to an extent, projected discrepancies of birth, or training, or habit. He sighed and turned in his paper.

At the foot of the stairs groups collected, discussing the ordeal pessimistically. As he started to walk through, several spoke to George.

"How did _you_ hit it, Morton?"

Already he was well spotted. He paused and joined the apprehensive chatter.

"It's a toss-up with me," Rogers admitted. "Don't tell me any answers. If ignorance is bliss, I want to stay dumb."

He caught George's arm.

"Have you met Dicky Goodhue? Hello, Goodhue!"

Goodhue gave the impression of not having met Rogers to any extent. He was a sturdy young man with handsome, finely formed features. George looked at him closely, because this young man alone of the Freshmen he had met remained unmoved by his fame.