PETER KINDRED 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT NATHAN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DUFFIELD AND COMPANY 
 
 1919 
 
Copyright, 1919, by 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 tt i 
 
"F1BST BOOKS TO OLDEST FRIENDS." 
 
 To My Father and My Mother, for their 
 humor and example, their courage and affeo- 
 tion; and to the Old One and those others of 
 the Beloved Three to whom, those happy win 
 ter evenings, this book was read cliapter by 
 chapter as it was written, while the fire burned 
 in the stove, and the night wind "blew over 
 Hartsdale. 
 
PETER KINDRED 
 
PETER KINDRED 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 pHILLIPS EXETER stands gravely to the sun 
 A along a wide street of mighty and venerable 
 trees. The New Hampshire town of Exeter lies, 
 so to speak, in the shadow of the school, for al 
 though by history the town was there first, it has 
 been so far passed in regard, that to speak of Ex 
 eter to-day, is to speak of the Academy. More 
 over, to the boy of sixteen, Exeter is a name to be 
 proud of, smacking a little of Eton and Rugby, and 
 with almost the same academic flavor as Harvard. 
 There may be I ll not deny it one boy in any 
 hundred to whom the name signifies nothing, but 
 all the other ninety-nine boys will nod their heads 
 if Exeter is mentioned. For there is something 
 of magic in the name; Exeter could be nothing 
 but a school, a very old school, standing gravely 
 among old trees. This magic it divides with 
 Andover, Lawrenceville and Hotchkiss, but ob 
 viously Exeter has the more important and 
 learned ring to it ; it is a more satisfactory name, 
 a more dignified mouthful. 
 
 3 
 
4 PETER KINDRED 
 
 The town, in autumn, rambling in a slight 
 valley among forests, is as lovely a spot as in all 
 New England. It is on the frontier of the north, 
 and lies beneath a deeper sky than even Boston, 
 in a clearer air. Fires of gathered brown leaves 
 tang through October; the air grows colder and 
 and brighter, and vital with sunlight like some 
 delicate and potent vintage. All this the new 
 student notices not at all ; he is engrossed in novel 
 sensations proper. 
 
 From the moment he steps into the dusty train 
 bound for Exeter, in the dark and forever un 
 washed station at Boston, his life becomes def 
 initely enriched. The boy but there, he is a boy 
 no longer; he is a student at Exeter, an Exonian 
 (a name that he will discover later, and probably 
 dislike) and an upper middler. Within a week he 
 will be asked to give the ablative of something, and 
 addressed as Mr. Kindred by the famous, white 
 haired professor. So I shall not call him the boy, 
 either, but the man, Peter Kindred. 
 
 Born in New York at the close of the nineteenth 
 century, he had grown in the usual manner, ac 
 cepting his father s beliefs as he accepted his 
 more gaudy ties, glad, indeed, that there should be 
 such beliefs, and that he should be able to digest 
 them. He lived by rule of fact; questions were 
 asked and answered over his head, and he ac 
 cepted the outcome without more ado. At times 
 he was rebellious, but never as one who fought for 
 the right, rather as one who secretly knew himself 
 
PETER KINDRED 5 
 
 to be wrong, but wished that he were right, and 
 hoped by making a vast deal of pother to create 
 a small atmosphere of Tightness. In all, he was a 
 healthy lad, not overly robust, keenly imaginative, 
 and as for his easy system of ethics I would not 
 have him otherwise, for men who disagree with 
 their fathers before they are sixteen, are great 
 nuisances, unless their fathers are drunkards. 
 But Peter s father was not; he was an over clerk, 
 possessed of a small income, at least, an income 
 small for New York. He labored nine hours a 
 day, had never labored less, and probably never 
 would, but lived contentedly still, and took his 
 joys pleasantly. He held no theory of the leisure 
 class, but understood after a fashion that one 
 might be a gentleman or not, and brought up Peter 
 to be a gentleman. 
 
 That was why at sixteen Peter was sent to 
 Exeter from a New York public school. It was 
 no small sacrifice for Mr. and Mrs. Kindred, and 
 even to Peter s younger sister who remained at 
 home; for Peter s father it meant severe economy 
 and even longer hours of work, it meant the cur 
 tailment of many of his small pleasures, but he had 
 never planned otherwise ; Peter should be a gentle 
 man, although he hardly knew why. It was enough 
 that other men sent their sons to college. As he 
 remarked to his wife, Peter should have a chance, 
 but what he expected of him afterwards I do not 
 know, and neither did he. 
 
 No thrill is comparable to a man s first glimpse 
 
6 PETER KINDRED 
 
 of a real football player. If the man is from New 
 York, where there are no football players of dis 
 tinction, the creature will appear very close to 
 divinity. Peter Kindred spent the two hours of 
 his ride from Boston to Exeter in gaping about 
 the car, picking out football men. There were, in 
 truth, no football men on that train, but there 
 were many who might have been; big, raw-boned 
 westerners with fair hair and ruddy cheeks, of a 
 type entirely novel to Peter. Such men never 
 live in New York. The New York man is small 
 and preoccupied. Later that day Peter did see a 
 real hero, one Buck O Brien, a famous halfback, 
 and the fact that O Brien was short and bunched 
 and dapper lessened no whit the awe born in 
 Peter s mind. 
 
 To Peter, the horde of great blonde huskies in 
 their gray sweaters and dirty canvas togs, 
 mounted above the fretful sons of successful busi 
 ness men and held a short but undisputed reign. 
 Watching O Brien, Peter, thinking of his father 
 and his own sallow acquaintances in New York, 
 was abashed. 
 
 What normal city boy has ever gone to Exeter 
 and failed to accept brawn as a new basis for an 
 estimate of the wo rid f 
 
 To the New Yorker the most significant thing 
 about New England is the odor. It is a fragrance 
 of farm houses and apple orchards, of small rivers 
 and low, rocky hills. It is a land of homespun. 
 Peter will tell you that even today he remembers 
 
PETER KINDRED 7 
 
 the smell of country harness in the cab he hired 
 to take him to the school, the unfriendly cleanli 
 ness of his rooms, and many odors that he cannot 
 very well describe, except to say that there was 
 the breath of wood fires throughout everything, 
 and that the dormitories held an odor at once 
 aloof and aged, with a faint touch of soap and 
 water, and another of tobacco. 
 
 The freedom of having classes scattered througK 
 the day, and being wholly at liberty between them, 
 delighted him, and gave him a fine sense of grow 
 ing up. Watching the team scrimmaging on the 
 practice fields, with the meadows and the dim 
 autumn woods across the river under the sweep of 
 open sky, stirred in Peter a sense of importance, 
 a sense of energy directed at a goal, enthusiasm, 
 a sense of belonging, somehow, to an heroic group. 
 But for the most part the school did much to re 
 press him, and his importance was manifest most 
 ly at home during the holidays. The academic 
 hush of the old school building, the wide chapel in 
 which he met many of the traditions and customs 
 of the school, and felt before their hoary dignity 
 his own exceeding youth, the severe and imper 
 sonal routine of the class room that drove him 
 often miserably to his desk until late at night, and 
 the quiet roads between old houses and old trees, 
 did much to give him over to loneliness and a faint 
 melancholy. 
 
 He made no friends his first year at Exeter. 
 There were chance acquaintanceships from the 
 
8 PETER KINDRED 
 
 dining hall and from the class room, but he had no 
 friend in whose room he could be at home until 
 well into his second year. After the custom of the 
 school he said his "h are ye" to whomsoever he 
 passed in the street, and that was about all. I 
 should not say that it was entirely his fault, nor 
 could I say that it was not. He was too aware of 
 the little he had to offer ; it was not modesty, but 
 a true humility. He thought it quite proper that 
 he should be unnoticed. He grew to recognize 
 faces; they were impersonal faces, belonging to 
 this man who knew the leader of the glee club, and 
 to that man who knew nobody. Of the two, the 
 man who knew the leader of the glee club was 
 the more polite. For the rest, they were equally 
 unfriendly. Peter accepted it philosophically 
 enough; from his corner, above the luxurious 
 coffee of a late breakfast, he watched groups of 
 cold cheeked, hair tossed New Englanders come 
 stamping up the wooden stairs of the old P. E. A., 
 laughing and trampling. Into the post office, 
 warm, snug, murmurous with the sunny, low talk 
 of men he went unobtrusively and shyly; at noon 
 he walked alone on Water Street, and went silently 
 in and out of the musty gloom of Batchelders for 
 his paper. At evening, above his gorgeous but 
 lonely waffles in Billie s, he saw the grave South 
 erners come down the steps into the dusky light 
 and heard them drawl softly together. He envied 
 all these heroes their company, and yet, if they 
 had spoken to him, he would have been painfully 
 
PETER KINDRED 9 
 
 at a loss. However, there was no possibility of 
 their ever noticing the youngster, Peter Kindred, 
 who said nothing and was nobody. 
 
 His family found him sober and reflective, more 
 quiet than he had been, uninterested in old ac 
 quaintances. It worried his mother, who attrib 
 uted it to inferior nourishment, but his father ad 
 vised her that their son was growing beyond non 
 sense, and that was all. She said no more about 
 it, but stuffed Peter unconscionably; he, soothed 
 and lulled by the care she took of him and the vast 
 amount of food she stuffed him with, forgot Exe 
 ter somewhat, the clear, still evenings, the cold 
 wide sky, the austere quiet of New England, and 
 became again a creature of some importance to 
 himself. That was proof positive to Mrs. Kin 
 dred, and she reproached herself bitterly for ever 
 having let him leave her for such a place, where 
 without doubt he was being starved. Yet Peter 
 missed the waffles and he rather missed the coffee, 
 too, sweet, steaming coffee in large, thick mugs; 
 however, he ate all he could, and wisely held his 
 peace. 
 
 The cold silence of the snow, the quiet frost of 
 winter evenings when he turned from the growing 
 dusk of the wide countryside, from the fresh and 
 far travelled wind to the warm solitude of his 
 room, fostered his loneliness and saddened him. 
 It was the sorrow of youth inarticulate, sorrow be 
 cause the earth was beautiful. 
 
 All winter Exeter sparkled with sun, and skates 
 
10 PETER KINDRED 
 
 flashed up and down the river, but Peter kept too 
 often to his room. He took little pleasure in cold. 
 If he skated, his fingers and his toes would hurt 
 him; sometimes he did skate, and bought hot 
 frankfurters and coffee afterwards. Then he felt 
 splendid, but there was nothing for him to do later 
 save read his Latin, and he felt very little like 
 doing it. Yet if he sat alone as comfortably as he 
 could, his feet in warm house slippers, he thought 
 of none but small things. For the most part he 
 dreamed of impossible adventures, and gave him 
 self up to heroic imaginings. Sometimes he 
 walked with an acquaintance until the clear green 
 sky and an evening star betokened supper time. 
 Sometimes he wandered aimlessly about the gym 
 nasium, attempting this and that, but he hadn t 
 the patience to practice at anything. 
 
 Spring with gnarled and broken lines made 
 gaunt New England, and through the bleak days 
 of March and April, Peter found it pleasanter to 
 apply himself closely to his work. He had lived 
 down his fear of the class room, but there had 
 grown in its place a wholesome respect for its 
 logic; he did not find it a difficult matter to do well 
 in his studies; he would gladly have matched his 
 learning at times against that of the professors, 
 but he dreaded the sullen disfavor of the class. 
 What short debates he was party to, he entered 
 fervently, although he was generally wrong, but 
 quick to admit it. He grew to take pleasure in the 
 unravelling of an idea, but he was ashamed to 
 
PETER KINDRED 11 
 
 thrust himself forward. It was like taking an 
 unfair advantage of fame from behind profes 
 sorial skirts. Nor did his instructors take much 
 pleasure in his arguments. 
 
 May found him suddenly and swiftly, and 
 troubled him with lilacs. Which were not all, I 
 tMnk, as he passed the Plimpton fields and heard 
 the voices of girls 1 iii the woods across the river. 
 But there, too, he was diffident ; he did not believe 
 that the pink-cheeked and laughter-loving semi 
 nary girl would be tolerant of him, when she might 
 listen to the ribald court of what hero she would. 
 Again, he would have been hopelessly befuddled if 
 one had smiled on him, and it would have been a 
 miserable youth who, striving vainly to be un 
 concerned, did finally put his arm about her waist. 
 Indeed, a maiden smiled at him once, at least if 
 she did not smile, she looked roguishly at him, and 
 although he had been expecting it, and had pre 
 pared the banter to be exchanged, he could do 
 nothing but run away as fast as his legs would 
 carry him. 
 
 And yet, for all the drifting, for all the inex 
 pressive motion of this first year at Exeter, it was 
 a mighty year for Peter. 
 
 It was the beginning of his true life, and marked 
 his first conscious introduction to himself as a 
 unit of more or less importance among other 
 units. It brought before him another ideal of 
 manhood than the one he had known, and new 
 vistas of work and solitude. Before Exeter there 
 
12 PETER KINDRED 
 
 had been gentle slopes ; it was the sudden swoop 
 over the tobogganed hill, and the falling away into 
 flight, incomparably lovely and tenuous, though 
 how lovely and how tenuous he would not realize 
 until long afterward. 
 
 He returned to school his second year with 
 greater confidence. He had ivo group of iriends 
 to make joyous the tidying of his new quarters, 
 but the school was his friend, the unchanging 
 halls, the majestic trees, and the October wind. 
 Small things made him welcome, the knowledge 
 of places and events, familiar eating houses, the 
 ability to accept old duties lightly, and to direct 
 worried newcomers. He greeted more men than 
 he had known before, and was greeted by them 
 in turn ; his friends of the last year were glad to 
 see him. It seemed to him as though he could 
 boast of some small place in Exeter, and he was 
 comfortably aware that he had not come, but that 
 he had returned. 
 
 Perhaps it was this new dignity that impelled 
 him to ask David to his room, and so into the 
 years before him. He had noticed him wandering 
 a bit forlornly in search of some hall or other, a 
 short, dark fellow, with eager black eyes, and a 
 twinkle at the end of his nose. They found the 
 place together, and later David went back with 
 Peter. 
 
 It was easy for Peter to talk to him; he had a 
 pleasant way of listening, and an expressive way 
 
PETER KINDRED 13 
 
 of speaking. He made remarks significant with 
 his hands, which were rugged, and yet suggestive 
 of delicacy. He admitted his musicianship, and 
 that evening in his own room he played for Peter 
 a raw-boned piano he had rented. He played with 
 a great show of temperament which won Peter at 
 once, and unknown parts of him stirred to tho 
 music. 
 
 David was as much impressed with the stern 
 ness of Peter s mind, admiring the fashion in 
 which Peter marshalled his facts for use. As for 
 David, he was unaccustomed to facts, and had 
 small use for them, but dismissed questions he 
 could not answer lightly. Peter s influence roused 
 him, however, and his more facile but less logical 
 mind pried into corners where Peter did not go. 
 Within a month they had become inseparable 
 companions, and Peter s nature grew and bur 
 geoned. He discovered music, and found that 
 through David his sense of Autumn beauty, of 
 youth and of vague romance could become more or 
 less articulate. 
 
 They talked together of personal things, often 
 of death, but never of life. There was no need to 
 talk of life, it was comprehensible, but death was 
 not. They were in the process of discarding God ; 
 to Peter God had outlived His usefulness. He 
 had been a good God, and had zealously guarded 
 Peter at night, from prayer time to waking. He 
 had been a satisfactory Cause, to Whom it had 
 been an easy matter to attribute effects. But as 
 
14 PETER KINDRED 
 
 the night time grew precious for sleep, prayer 
 time grew irksome, and God was forgotten. And 
 then, as Peter s learning grew, questions arose 
 that were not answerable by the forgotten God. 
 So Peter had accepted life, and wondered dis 
 mally about death, wishing that there were a God, 
 but knowing that there was not. 
 
 Confronted with Peter s insistence upon, at 
 least, a quest, David, too, was unable to accept his 
 childhood faith. 
 
 "I am a Jew," he said. "But it is silly to be 
 lieve that the one God would accept you and not 
 accept me, or the myriad creatures of even 
 stranger faith than mine who live on all the 
 million planets. That would be too erratic." 
 
 Peter sliced the argument keenly. 
 
 "It seems absurd to believe in a God who would 
 pick and choose, but it is even more absurd to 
 reverence a God with no choice at all." 
 
 Peter had accepted the fact that David was a 
 Jew, much as he accepted his friend s pliant wit, 
 his music, the twinkle of his nose. He had never 
 known any other Jew; he did not care for the 
 word. If the word had been Saxon, or Scot, if 
 there had been the broad flavor of the land in it, 
 he would never have thought the Jews an inferior 
 people, nor, indeed, would anyone, but there is an 
 unpleasant sound to the word Jew, and Hebrew is 
 as bad as Hittite. 
 
 Exeter did not share Peter s indifference to 
 David s race, and left the two of them quite alone. 
 
PETER KINDRED 15 
 
 But David was well versed in solitude, and Peter 
 had David, his friend; they had no need of other 
 company. As for the Kindreds, they accepted 
 David, doubtfully at first, but with increasing tol 
 erance, although Mrs. Kindred was somewhat up 
 set for a while that Peter s only friend at Exeter 
 should be a Jew. Among the faculty, however, 
 the two friends were well liked. 
 
 Inevitably with the vanishing of loneliness, the 
 old heroes came slowly to lose their potency to 
 Peter. David admired brawn as Peter did, but he 
 was swifter to make a mock of stupidity, and in 
 deed, with a few famous exceptions, Peter could 
 no longer deny that the brawny were very, very 
 stupid. Yet he was loth to surrender his awe of 
 them, for there seemed to be nothing to take its 
 place. And so, for a while, he clung obstinately to 
 his heroes, but therein, I dare say, he was no dif 
 ferent from any other school boy, for the Ameri 
 can student cares little who earns him his glory, 
 or what, indeed, that glory may be. Certainly 
 Peter paraded down Fifth Avenue on a certain 
 holiday after a victory over Andover, no less 
 proudly, and wore his red carnation no less 
 jauntily because, forsooth, the victory had been 
 won by a lumberjack from Maine whom Peter had 
 never met, and whom, in his heart he thought a 
 boorish fellow. 
 
 Peter accepted his own friendlessness cheer 
 fully, but he could not rid himself of a patient 
 criticism of the school s attitude toward him, to- 
 
16 PETER KINDRED 
 
 ward David, and toward the popular lumberjacks 
 and heirs-apparent. As yet, however, he had noth 
 ing to offer in place of them. It disturbed him a 
 bit and made him more defensive than he would 
 otherwise have been, and more inquisitive about 
 people ; the two friends held long and earnest dis 
 cussions together, to gauge the worth of one man 
 or another. But David was rather inclined to in 
 sist upon sympathy, appreciation, and imagination 
 in a man, whereas Peter was unwilling to insist 
 upon anything. It seemed almost as though he 
 were looking for something behind a man, some 
 enthusiasm or other, some cause, but he could not 
 formulate it in his mind. The splendid youngsters 
 of Exeter lacked immortality; their greatness was 
 too fugitive, and the busy men of his own city 
 were not great at all. 
 
 Winter, with David s room as an auxiliary 
 refuge, was a much different matter from the 
 year before. The sense of a wide country hushed 
 with snow, of scattered villages and lonely houses, 
 the yellow lamps of cottages low across the drifted 
 fields, and the profound sense of isolation that 
 had so preyed upon him now rendered him more 
 warmly aware of his own snug existence, and the 
 insistent beauty of the winter but added to the 
 drowsy quiet of his room. And all this because 
 there was another creature who would at such and 
 such a time come familiarly through his doorway, 
 or whistle to his window. 
 
PETER KINDRED 17 
 
 April went gradually into May, among showers 
 and deepening green, and the school years drew 
 to their close. The track season was over, and 
 resurgent color scattered across the Plimpton 
 fields as the various baseball teams warmed the 
 kinks out of their muscles. Youngsters cavorted 
 on the tennis courts, and village maidens, strolled 
 along the freshening streets, their hair caught in 
 colored ribbons, their trim bodies in white linen. 
 Over the top of the horizon the final examinations 
 poked their fearsome heads, and Peter bent over 
 his desk with determination. 
 
 Exeter was nearly at an end, and with it, Peter s 
 youthful apprenticeship to manhood. The white- 
 haired professor had called him a man, and there 
 fore so had I, but he is still a boy. For where is 
 manhood to be found? In the intolerance of 
 faith? Or in the charity beyond? 
 
 So the finals crawled over the hills from Cam 
 bridge, twisting their horrid necks, and Exeter 
 droned with preparations to meet them. Peter 
 had no fear of them, but an anxiety to be done; 
 at his preliminaries the year before he had found 
 how strongly Exeter had prepared him. But he 
 had found, too, how tired the long examinations 
 made him, and what little enjoyment there was in 
 anything until they were over. 
 
 With David he began to consider Harvard curi 
 ously, as one would consider a plighted woman. 
 There was this that he knew, for instance, and 
 these many things that he did not. He had picked 
 
18 PETER KINDRED 
 
 out a room for himself during the winter; the 
 two had thought it better not to room together. 
 As David pointed out, two rooms meant society, 
 a friend, a place to visit. They were worried 
 about a great many small questions, and David 
 confessed to a fear that something or other would 
 happen without him, so that he would have no 
 place to eat and no classes to attend and no notice 
 taken of him at all, and, in his gloomier moments, 
 probably even no bed to sleep in. Peter felt 
 much the same about it, but fortified himself with 
 the thought that of the many thousands who had 
 entered Harvard in the preceding generations, 
 none to his knowledge had ever experienced in 
 surmountable difficulty in living, and so he, too, 
 would probably manage to live somehow or other, 
 by looking around him very carefully, and letting 
 nothing escape him. There were, besides, some 
 fifty men of his class who were entering Harvard 
 with him, and if they were frightened about it, 
 they certainly concealed it admirably. Where 
 fore he resolutely put his fears behind him, and 
 stuffed his memory with Latin verbs, geometrical 
 triangles, and historic affairs. 
 
 June came, and in the drowsy gymnasium Peter 
 and David, their watches before them, coats off 
 and shirt sleeves rolled up, sped lightly through 
 their finals, while in the noonday sun the old dor 
 mitories nodded and dozed, preparing for their 
 serene summer slumber. Then came days of utter 
 content, of late breakfasts, and long evenings 
 
PETER KINDRED 19 
 
 spent together idly, with no thought of any mor 
 row, while Peter dreamed from the depths of a 
 chair and David ran vagrant melodies across faint 
 harmonies. Days of entire rest they were, when 
 the two friends could find no dispute to rouse 
 them from their pleasant listlessness. And then 
 came mothers and fathers to wake the silent 
 school, sisters and brothers, pretty cousins and 
 portly uncles, and the senior class, donning their 
 caps and gowns for the last time, marched sol 
 emnly and with traditional tread into the crowded 
 chapel, and so out of Exeter. Out of the wide vil 
 lage streets, the shadowed paths and rivered 
 woods, but not out of school ; for many generations 
 whose feet have been long silent in the halls, are 
 Exeter, their songs, their heroes, and their myths, 
 and as each class moves as a graduate across the 
 campus, that class becomes a part of the tradi 
 tion, and becomes one with Exeter. 
 
 Arm in arm, Peter and David walked to Peter s 
 room, arm in arm they climbed the worn, familiar 
 stair, and pushed through the open door. Below 
 them murmured the crowd; doors were opened 
 and shut, calls drifted in lazily through the wide 
 window in the noonday drowse. Exeter was at an 
 end; they had crossed a magic and tremendous 
 mountain ; they were graduates. They sat a long 
 while in silence, staring out at the green branches 
 of trees with the sunlight among the leaves. Be 
 fore them lay the true apprenticeship, the final 
 preparation for what magnificence they did not 
 
20 PETER KINDRED 
 
 know. To the south Harvard lay quietly beneath 
 the blue sky ; from her halls there had lately gone 
 forth men into that unknown, bravely and mar- 
 velously accoutred. The thought grasped Peter 
 about the heart, and he turned gravely to David. 
 
 " David," he said, and stretched his arms above 
 his head, "next year I shall know so much . . . 
 what there is to do, and what there is to be . . ." 
 
 "Peter," David said solemnly, "I wish I knew 
 where to sign up for my meals!" 
 
CHAPTER H 
 
 HOWEVER, it seemed that Harvard Had ex 
 pected their coining, and when Peter regis 
 tered, which he found to be a simple enough 
 matter, no one told him that he had no right to 
 do so, but a weary and patient man handed him a 
 large pink card, and sent him in search of his 
 faculty advisor. He was struck by the great num 
 ber of such pink cards moving aimlessly about. 
 Upper classmen carried different colors, and 
 moved about more purposefully, much as the sec 
 ond year men had done at Exeter. Peter made 
 his way to Warren House, and waited on his ad 
 visor, watching the small group of men about him 
 curiously. There was an unkempt lad from some 
 northern village, powerful, and mother fearing. 
 There was a lean and wan-looking elderly man 
 who clutched a couple of shabby books close to his 
 coat, and asked questions of Peter humbly. There 
 was a keen-faced youth in tweeds, who wore tre 
 mendous rimmed glasses which gave him an af 
 fable and owllike appearance, and an aristocratic- 
 si 
 
22 PETER KINDRED 
 
 looking fellow with a delicately chiselled face, who 
 carried himself delightfully, his shoulders back 
 and his chin high, and whom the professor seemed 
 very glad to see again. Peter thought he was very 
 fine, and wondered who he was ; he wished that he 
 himself made so splendid an appearance, or that 
 David did. 
 
 Men whose lives are given to the contempla 
 tion of letters and sciences, who do not spend 
 their days bickering in the market place, but 
 whose dens are chosen from among the choicest 
 rooms in the house, dens that remain strewn and 
 inviolate for years, attain a quiet and complacent 
 dignity which creates a deeper impression upon 
 the perplexed youth of our land than all the 
 doughtiest and most profound lectures ever given. 
 There is something about a serene and vigorous 
 old age which constitutes a fairer promise of 
 heaven than all the creeds and tenets of belief. 
 
 Peter s advisor was such a man, a stalwart and 
 patriarchal figure, unhurried and resolute. Peter 
 felt that he must know a vast deal, as indeed he 
 did, but Peter did not give sufficient credit to the 
 holy quiet of the man s den, and to the rows upon 
 rows of friendly books between the ceiling and 
 the floor. But, mind you, I would not advocate a 
 den of that sort for any common man; he would 
 do nothing in it at all. 
 
 For all his learning, the professor proved to be 
 amazingly ignorant of the courses Peter had 
 chosen to attend, and since there was therefore 
 
PETER KINDRED 23 
 
 nothing to say one way or another about them, 
 he signed Peter s card and dismissed him. Peter 
 passed the Union with a warming sense of belong 
 ing finally to Harvard, and walked slowly down 
 Massachusetts Avenue toward Harvard Square. 
 
 The street, with its small, well-appointed shops, 
 hummed with the coming and going of students. 
 They passed in groups or singly, alert, cheery, 
 well-groomed men ; and all with the same satisfied 
 look on their faces. For a college is no more than 
 an attitude toward life, and the kindly gentlemen 
 of Oxford are as far removed from the contented 
 moralists of Harvard, as the latter differ from 
 the wistful youths of Yale, and the happy children 
 of Princeton. 
 
 To Peter there was the same romance in the 
 name Harvard as there had been in Exeter, and 
 he was as mightily beguiled by the small but ven 
 erable Yard and the enchanted flavor of the halls, 
 which, like old men before a fireside, seemed in 
 their silence to be forever considering themselves. 
 
 At Holyoke Street he turned down toward 
 Mount Auburn and climbed the creaking steps of 
 No. 26. He had chosen a room in a ramshackle 
 frame house at the edge of the gold coast, opposite 
 the yellow walls of the Institute. 
 
 Below his windows the men passed down the 
 street, through the gate, and into the Institute. 
 Peter watched them with a deal of wonder and 
 a stir of envy at first. For the Institute is the 
 solid basis of Harvard clubdom. It goes through 
 
24 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Harvard with a coarse comb, separating the wheat 
 from the chaff ; all men who are socially possible 
 are Institute men. Among these the exclusive 
 clubs move with finer combs in varying degrees, 
 but, on the whole, a man at Harvard is an Insti 
 tute man, or he is not. 
 
 Peter s room was two dilapidated flights up, but 
 he found, to his surprise, that such a place was 
 considered very fine at Harvard, much more de 
 sirable, indeed, than the new brick houses far re 
 moved from the coast, or the dormitories in the 
 Yard. But that was characteristic of Harvard, 
 to put up splendid draperies in a tumbled down 
 room, and glory in the result. Peter had no splen 
 did draperies, but David envied him his room and 
 his two sunny windows facing the south. David 
 had chosen a modern brick building not far from 
 the Square, where he had his own bath to delight 
 him, but no sun at all. He had installed a grand 
 piano, and was making a desk of a soap box. 
 
 Peter s room, at first in its barrenness, had de 
 pressed that gentleman almost to despair, but as 
 he began to unpack his furniture, he saw some 
 possibility in it, and when at last his rug was 
 down, he haled David over to view it. David was 
 impressed, but left at once for his soap box and 
 some intricate figuring he had been doing, where 
 by he hoped to discover some way of also buying 
 a bed. 
 
 Peter s desk chair had not come, and to ask ad 
 vice, he tapped on his neighbor s door. A voice 
 
PETER KINDRED 25 
 
 roared for the son-of-a-gun to come in, and he 
 stepped into a scene of such boundless confusion 
 that he could do nothing but stare. At first glance 
 it looked as though some truckman had moved 
 the belongings of one room into another, and had 
 dumped them all pell mell on top of each other. 
 Clothes and books competed with sofa cushions 
 and pictures for the seats of chairs, and over 
 flowed onto the floor. Where there were no books, 
 there were shoes, and occasional beer mugs. In 
 the midst of this chaos stood a dark-browed, 
 rugged man, puffing at a long calabash pipe. 
 
 "Oh," he said, "come right in. Excuse me. I 
 thought you were a friend of mine." He swept 
 the vista of the room with his arm. "Find a place 
 to sit down, and make yourself at home. I m not 
 usually so upset, but our amiable goody forgot 
 me to-day." 
 
 He sat down himself and regarded Peter curi 
 ously. Before him, Peter was shy and confused ; 
 he explained the reason for his visit, and asked 
 him if he could suggest anything to do about the 
 chair. The dark-browed man regarded the ceil 
 ing somberly, puffed at his pipe, and shook his 
 head, but suggested at last that the chair would 
 probably turn up some day, and that a desk chair 
 was a small matter at best, and that if Peter 
 needed one, he could let him have several to 
 choose from. Peter thanked him, and somewhat 
 encouraged, asked him how one might unearth 
 the bursar and pay him the fabled ninety dollars. 
 
26 PETER KINDRED 
 
 The man directed him to Dana Hall, and Peter 
 asked him how he would know what to do when he 
 got there. 
 
 " Trust to the Lord," said the big man, and lost 
 himself in reverie. Peter stammered a thanks, and 
 returned to the tidy primness of his own room. 
 The advice, for all its absurdity, was soothing and 
 Peter s troubles fell away. He no longer felt re 
 sponsible for his affair with the bursar. 
 
 That night both he and David went to the 
 freshman reception at Brooks House, hoping for 
 much, but doubting that anything would befall 
 them. They were given little tags on which they 
 wrote their names. These they tied diffidently in 
 their buttonholes, where they dangled unnoticed 
 for the rest of the evening. With a vast mob of 
 shoving and perspiring men they were herded into 
 a large room where they sat on the floor at first, 
 but later stood in a vain effort to hear some part 
 of the speeches. On a low platform tall heroes 
 appeared, bowed, were tremendously applauded, 
 spoke, waved their arms, grinned, bowed, and sat 
 down in the din. Mr. Molmf presented Mr. Smith 
 of the Grmmpump, who in turn presented Mr. 
 Xmymst. Tommy Reilly, captain of the eleven, 
 rose and received an ovation. Amid a dead si 
 lence, he started in. 
 
 "Well, fellows," he said. The applause was 
 interminable. Through it he went on. 
 
 "Well, fellows, Percy Haughtoii here thinks 
 we ve got a pretty good team here this year, and 
 
PETER KINDRED 27 
 
 I guess Yale will think so all right." Cheers, 
 shrieks, whistles, and the prolonged stamping of 
 feet. "Well, fellows, all I want to say is I want 
 you fellows to stand back of the team and give 
 us the right support and get some good, snappy 
 cheering over this year when we go down to New 
 Haven, and I guess we can leave the rest to Percy 
 Haughton here." He bowed awkwardly and 
 sat down, amid a bedlam. Peter and David 
 fought their way to the door and emerged dis 
 heveled. 
 
 They walked back through the Yard together 
 across the Autumn moonlight, under the loom 
 ing, black shadows of the dormitories. Beyond 
 the wall, a car jarred distantly around the curve 
 of the street, and died away toward Boston. Oc 
 casional low voices reached them, and the twang 
 of a mandolin. The sky was calm and luminous 
 with stars, the light breeze redolent of earth. But 
 Peter and David could find no words to gauge 
 their thoughts, wherefore they left each other 
 without discussing the event. 
 
 Again the greater freedom of the college 
 aroused in Peter a sense of transformation, of 
 gathering manhood, and for a while he, too, walked 
 with his shoulders thrown back and his chin held 
 high. Then lectures began, and he forgot every 
 thing in the rush to buy books, and the trouble of 
 their expense. In the large classes he sat un 
 noticed, scribbling notes, and hearing for the first 
 
28 PETER KINDRED 
 
 time new principles in unexplored fields of thought 
 discussed and expounded. To each he reacted 
 with a faint shock of appreciation, believing every 
 thing, his imagination powerfully exercised. 
 David came with the same enthusiasm from his 
 classes, and their discussions grew top heavy with 
 the weight of their learning until they made no 
 headway at all. 
 
 But they were aware at once that they had been 
 made free to enjoy what they would, and they 
 both made all speed to acquire new tastes. It had 
 struck home most of all the day on which the man 
 next door, whom Peter knew as Frank, had asked 
 Peter to drop in on him for tea, and with the 
 most serious manner in the world had actually 
 boiled tea in an old brass pot, and offered it to 
 Peter with an accompaniment of small cakes. 
 The mere idea of a man preparing tea would have 
 afforded Exeter enough mirth for a full season, 
 but at Harvard it was quite a natural function, 
 arousing no comment whatsoever. I should say 
 more of the tea party in that inchoate room, to 
 whose needs no goody could have ministered, how 
 ever conscientious, but for the speed with which 
 Peter bought himself a tea set, relinquishing two 
 books to do it, and in turn invited David formally 
 to tea. David, coming to scoff, remained to pray, 
 and thought it marvelously pleasant and after all 
 not as unmanly as one might imagine. But he 
 could tell Peter nothing about George Moore. 
 
 "He talked of him as though of course I knew 
 
PETER KINDRED 29 
 
 all about him," Peter explained, "and so I nodded 
 my head as wisely as I could. This chap Moore 
 mnst be somebody." 
 
 And then again as the afternoon waned, and it 
 was growing dusk, he spoke out of the depths of 
 his chair. 
 
 " There is an awful lot to learn, David," he 
 said, "but somehow or other I think it will be 
 worth learning. 
 
 Peter and David did nothing very startling, al 
 though they fairly luxuriated in the realization 
 that they might. Peter, it is true, bought an etch 
 ing, and spent the better part of a morning hang 
 ing it in his room, and then, ashamed to face the 
 accusing thought of his father, tried to sell it to 
 David. But David would have none of it, and so 
 Peter was forced to keep it on his wall, and put 
 a brave face on the matter. 
 
 Peter was amazed to hear lean and shabby men 
 dispute and argue in class about minor points; 
 the tenacity with which they clung to their ques 
 tioning, and the tolerant silence in which the class 
 accepted the interruption, made a deep impression 
 on him. He passed such men often in the street, 
 and his instinctive dislike was mixed, neverthe 
 less, with respect for their dogged and real pas 
 sion to learn. Peter, too, was in quest of knowl 
 edge, but more as an amateur; it was not such a 
 tremendous matter as all that to him, and he was 
 willing to take a good part of it on faith ; he did 
 
30 PETER KINDRED 
 
 not donbt bnt that he would live as well for letting 
 certain murky points go by him as he would if he 
 understood everything thoroughly, and when a 
 particularly bored class would at last stamp its 
 displeasure to the floor, he felt that the displeas 
 ure was legitimate and stamped along with it. 
 The professors, almost without exception, took 
 joy in argument, and the more deeply the debate 
 wound down into fine details, the more excited 
 they grew. This recognition of the student mind 
 by members of the faculty contributed to Peter s 
 sense of importance, although it astounded him 
 to hear aired the intricate knowledge, acquired by 
 tremendous reading, of those thin and shabby men 
 who always argued. 
 
 Even Peter essayed a discussion at one time, 
 but was so bewildered at his temerity and his no 
 toriety that words tripped themselves up in his 
 throat and lay there entangled, blocking any exit. 
 So, his return question remaining unanswered, 
 the lecturer went on with his exposition, and Peter 
 sat in a large radius of silence, trying hard to 
 look unaware of anything but his book. 
 
 Peter s neighbor whispered to him, "Did you 
 understand that?" 
 
 Peter shook his head, and the man passed him 
 his notes which were written very neatly, in great, 
 fat letters. Peter smiled gratefully, and after the 
 lecture was over the two men walked down the 
 steps of Sever together and on past the library. 
 
PETER KINDRED 31 
 
 Peter looked at his companion curiously; lie had 
 a delicately modeled face, with a smooth chin; 
 his face might have been patted into shape. His 
 eyes were wide and blue ; he appeared rather gen 
 tle and pleasant. 
 
 "My name is Jill," he said. 
 
 "Mine is Kindred," Peter answered. 
 
 "It s a very good course, I believe," Jill said, 
 "but a little difficult; that is, not hard, you know, 
 but awkward. The man is rather a bore." 
 
 There was nothing in particular to say to that, 
 and the two men parted. 
 
 "Drop up to see me some time," Jill said. 
 "Plympton Street thirty-five, I believe." He 
 waved his hand a bit languidly, and went across 
 the Yard, but Peter turned back to his room with 
 a sense of having met someone. 
 
 Tn Frank s room he found a great blond hero 
 who sat sprawled in a chair, and looked at Peter 
 very much as though he were looking at a friend s 
 child brought out for the occasion. 
 
 "If you take my advice," he said to Peter, 
 "you ll go out for a managership." 
 
 Peter looked at Frank rather frightened at that 
 and Frank burst out laughing. 
 
 "Let him alone," he said. 
 
 "To tell the truth," Peter said, "I rather 
 thought that the best part of Harvard was not 
 having to go out for anything." 
 
 The other man regarded the ceiling in gloomy 
 amazement. 
 
32 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "I thought I might try out for one of the liter- 
 aries," Peter said uncertainly. 
 
 The man stirred himself. For heaven s sake, 
 he said, " don t go in for that silly twaddle. Do 
 something real." 
 
 "What?" Peter asked. 
 
 "Oh, anything. Try out for a team. Try out 
 for a managership. Soccer or lacrosse or some 
 thing. Be somebody. Don t be a runt." 
 
 "Do you think I could make anything?" Peter 
 asked. 
 
 "Oh hell," the man said, "how do I know?" 
 
 And later Frank came into Peter s room for a 
 moment. 
 
 "You know, I wouldn t take that too seriously," 
 he said. "But I d make up my mind to what I 
 wanted of Harvard. If you want the clubs, and 
 all that, you ll have to hop in, of course, and be 
 someone. Personally, I should prefer to be a 
 runt." 
 
 Then, as an afterthought, he added, "But don t 
 let that influence you, either." 
 
 It rather fitted in with Peter s thoughts in the 
 matter, and Frank rather fitted in with them, 
 too. As for him, although a junior, he had taken 
 a vagrant liking to Peter, who seemed almost mi 
 raculously bewildered. So Peter wondered what 
 he wanted of Harvard, for a while, and came to 
 no conclusion. 
 
 Jill, too, gave him counsel. 
 
 Peter came to see him one afternoon, and found 
 
PETER KINDRED 33 
 
 him in a blue and gold dressing gown, smoking 
 an elaborate hookah. His room was heavily hung 
 with silk and cloth and held a faintly pungent odor 
 of joss sticks. Jill blinked at him from the floor, 
 where he was sitting cross-legged, and told him 
 lazily to come in and find a seat. Above the fire 
 place a brass idol stared; the room was curious 
 with little bronze figures and gloomy hangings. 
 
 "I must certainly show this to David," Peter 
 said to himself. He thought it extremely fine and 
 very mature, and felt proud to be there, in that 
 room with Jill, at Harvard. 
 
 "You will find," Jill said, "the literary crowd 
 very unintelligent and brazen; the Monthly * 
 and the * Advocate ill-mannered boors." 
 
 "This chap told me to try out for a manager 
 ship," Peter said. "How do you do that?" 
 
 Jill raised his hands before him. "Heavens," 
 he murmured, "don t do that. There is nothing 
 sillier in all the wide world." 
 
 "But what shall I do?" Peter asked. 
 
 Jill smoked meditatively at his hookah, and the 
 water cleared and clouded. At last he shrugged 
 his shoulders. 
 
 "My dear fellow," he said, "must you rusK 
 sophomorically about? Nonsense. Don t do any 
 thing." 
 
 "Not anything?" Peter asked in some amaze 
 ment. 
 
 "I shouldn t," Jill said, and puffed comfor 
 tably. 
 
34 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Yes," Peter said, "but you re settled, you 
 
 see." 
 
 "Bother," said Jill. "So should you be." 
 
 "No," Peter answered, "I m not sure what I 
 want of things." 
 
 "Honors?" Jill asked. "Clubs, position? 
 Silly rot?" 
 
 "No," Peter said again, and then he added, 
 "Besides, what club would have me?" 
 
 "Any one," Jill answered, "if you gave up 
 thinking and ran around and became some 
 body." 
 
 "Of course," Peter said, "I didn t come to col 
 lege for that." 
 
 "No," Jill said. 
 
 "But I did come to find out something." 
 
 "Kindred," Jill said, "you re too eager. If 
 you sat still a bit, life would come to you. Life is 
 meant to be tasted slowly. You will waste the 
 best part of it trying to find out what it s all 
 about." 
 
 Perhaps, Peter said doggedly. But I shall 
 have to find out what it is." 
 
 "You can find it more exquisitely in a star 
 above Corey Hill at evening, or a child s face," 
 Jill said. 
 
 "No," Peter said, "I ll not find what I want of 
 life in any child s face. And I won t find what 
 I want of Harvard there, either. It isn t clubs, 
 but it s something. Something to do. Not just 
 here, but always." 
 
PETER KINDRED 35 
 
 He talked it over with David that night, after 
 David had been playing idly at his great piano. 
 
 "Do you think I m too eager, David?" he asked. 
 "I suppose I am, a bit. And yet, I couldn t pos 
 sibly sit quietly on the floor and smoke a hookah. 
 But you see, I don t want to rush around and be 
 a manager of something, either. What do I want, 
 David? ... It might be pleasant just to be a 
 runt, don t you think? And yet one ought to do 
 something. 
 
 "Of course," David said. 
 
 Through the early fall weather, Peter did little 
 but look carefully at men about him, yet the more 
 he saw of club men, the less he thought that he, 
 too, might be a club man. For they seemed 
 troubled by nothing. He and David talked over 
 their days together. 
 
 "I love to look at them," Peter said to him, as 
 the sun poured through his ancient windows, and 
 the two friends sat watching the returning groups 
 of men stride from their lectures down Holyoke 
 Street. "But they have had everything settled 
 for them long ago." 
 
 "Do you know," David said, "IVe met a re 
 markable man by the name of Wiener. He s very 
 ugly, and he has classes in the slums." 
 
 "I m not very keen on the slums," Peter said. 
 
 "I know ... I wasn t either. I m not now, of 
 course ..." 
 
 He leaned from the window and pointed to a 
 
36 PETER KINDRED 
 
 dark, little man hurrying down the street, his 
 hands full of books. 
 
 "See," he said, " there he goes. Hello . . ." 
 he called, and waved his hand. The man turned 
 and grinned, and hurried on. But Peter at the 
 window turned away uncomfortably. 
 
 "Bother," he said at last, "let s call for Jill 
 and go to Boston." 
 
 In the evening the three walked through the 
 lamp-lighted Square, and down into the draughty 
 depths of the subway. The dull red train poked 
 its blunt nose around a corner, and crawled to 
 their feet; with them inside it ricochetted off to 
 ward Boston, and with a sudden cessation of 
 clamor, soared beautifully over the bridge. Be 
 fore them lay the Charles, misted in a strangely 
 deep and dull blue, small yellow lights marking 
 the gradual curve of the river bank, reflected in 
 the water, and dividing the monotone of horizon 
 and river. Above the lights along the river bank 
 stretched the low roofs of Boston, in faint tones, 
 while in the clear green sky toward the west a 
 solitary evening star hung midway between earth 
 and the zenith. Farther down the river Harvard 
 Bridge spun a gradual arc of lights from shore to 
 shore, and beyond it Corey Hill was already lost 
 in the dusk. It was a landscape that Peter was 
 never to tire of, in all the years he would pass and 
 repass it, and he sat breathlessly watching it, while 
 David at his side dreamed of a music that might 
 compass and express it. 
 
PETER KINDRED 37 
 
 Boston, with its drift of faces, its narrow, windy 
 and intriguing alleys, the close bustle and sense of 
 gathered pleasance, aroused the three men com 
 ing from the quiet of Cambridge, to a feeling of 
 adventure and carousal. They strode down Tre- 
 mont Street arm in arm, turned sharply at the 
 Touraine, struck down Essex Street, and so ar 
 rived at Charlie Wirth s. 
 
 They pushed through the turning doors, and 
 came at once into a great clatter of dishes, a gar 
 gantuan odor of cooking, and the blue smoke of 
 tobacco. They made their way to the rear of the 
 room, sat down in a corner, and looked about 
 them. A waiter came and smiled at them, and 
 presently reappeared with three seidels of foam 
 ing brown Culmbacher, dark, gold brown, with iri 
 descent gleams in it. This they started to drink 
 manfully ; Jill had rather a delicate way of drink 
 ing his beer, but it was a bit incongruous to see 
 him smack his lips after it. Peter, drinking on an 
 empty and unaccustomed stomach, presently felt 
 dizzy, and found the beer bitter. 
 
 Here," Jill said, "is the life of the student. 
 To work and dream ... to feed the soul 
 richly . . ." 
 
 "A bit barren," David said shortly. 
 
 "It s very fine," Peter said, "but, of course, 
 one ought to do something." 
 
 "Do you believe that, too," Jill asked of David. 
 
 "I certainly do," David answered. "There s 
 nothing in just living along." 
 
38 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Jill sighed, and said: 
 
 "Did you suggest to Kindred that he become 
 the manager of something?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I suggested that he become a gentleman." 
 
 "Hm," said David doubtfully, and then was 
 silent. 
 
 Peter turned to Jill. "Don t you mean by gen 
 tleman, a man who practises a fine morality?" 
 
 "Rather a man with a proper sense of beauty." 
 
 "I m not sure of that," Peter said. "I rather 
 fancy the morality." 
 
 But late that night in the yellow gleam of 
 Peter s room on Holyoke Street, David gave judg 
 ment. 
 
 "Rather an ass, I think," he said. 
 
 "Well," Peter answered, "possibly you re 
 right." 
 
 Within a fortnight Peter found the college and 
 the Boston press considering the Princeton game 
 in gathering excitement, and he himself was 
 aroused at the prospect, and spent a great deal of 
 time discussing the matter pro and con. As for 
 the college, there was nothing else talked of, how 
 Princeton had beaten Vanderbilt more handily 
 than Harvard, that Briggs of Princeton, and Dil 
 lon, were no better backs than Harvard could 
 boast, perhaps, but that Harvard had no man in 
 the backfield to compare with Durenbeck. There 
 was a great deal of talk of Reilly, and a general 
 
PETER KINDRED 39 
 
 cheerful reliance on Haughton. Through it all was 
 a sense of holiday, of women and tea parties, of 
 shiny rooms and mothers and chaperons, of a 
 common weal, and a common hope. Here was the 
 youth of a province extending a guest friendship 
 to the youth of another province, a time of fete, 
 a mingling and rivalry of colors, of songs, of 
 morals and traditions. 
 
 The football men were hidden from the public 
 and from their hiding place came reports of this 
 man and that man. As at school, Peter found 
 himself taking satisfaction and pride in these 
 men who were no more than names to him, much 
 as though he were their chosen companion, as 
 though Devereaux s big shoulders were his own, 
 as though he himself boasted of Armstrong s long 
 spiral punts. In a sort of way he felt himself 
 pitted against Princeton, and became obsessed 
 with the desire to see the sturdy Princeton team 
 thoroughly beaten. To David he was blasphemous 
 in his desire, but David was as stirred as he, and 
 together they invoked untold accidents to blight 
 Dillon and Briggs and that terrible immortal Dur- 
 enbeck. For that matter, the entire Princeton 
 team appeared to Peter in a mysterious and ro 
 mantic light, like warriors of fabled prowess from 
 some distant and unknown land, and the Harvard 
 men who went to meet them, grown suddenly 
 warmly intimate to his life, carried with them his 
 own rivalry and battle lust. 
 
 The day of the game was flawless, in November, 
 
40 PETER KINDRED 
 
 and Peter awoke to the smell of wood fires, cold 
 bright sunlight, and an unwonted sense of some 
 thing about to happen. The Yard, the Square, 
 the clubs along the coast were decked out in huge 
 red banners with the black football H. Men 
 moved through the streets with red flowers in 
 their buttonholes ; big machines with gray-furred 
 women folk, flaunting bits of color, sped up and 
 down Mount Auburn Street in the sun. Mothers 
 and daughters passed below his window, well at 
 tended, carrying rugs and coats. A group of alert 
 Princeton men, with slim, dark faces over big yel 
 low flowers, came swaggering down Holyoke 
 Street, and swung south toward the bridge. A 
 student went by in a noisy racing car, a pert 
 maiden rolled up in a rug at his side, and other 
 cars followed him, some trailing banners of orange 
 and black. David came racing over, excitement 
 shining in his face, and together he and Peter 
 snatched a bite of lunch, and started off for the 
 field. 
 
 Boylston Street to the bridge was full to over 
 flowing with a slow-moving tide of motors and 
 people. Colors caught the sun, and danced, blue, 
 red, yellow and green. Bright-eyed maidens 
 laughed over their furs ; motors crawled by in the 
 surge of folk, making a great clamor of horns. 
 Men of all ages moved forward together, holding 
 the arms of their women, old and young, laughing 
 and quiet, with rugs and waving banners. Far 
 ahead, across the bridge, the tide turned toward 
 
PETER KINDRED 41 
 
 the sprawling Stadinm, into the narrow gate to 
 Soldiers Field, scattered across the grass, and 
 hummed up into the bleached white, circling tiers 
 of seats. David and Peter, finding their places, 
 drew their coats about them and looked curiously 
 around. 
 
 Opposite, across the green gridiron with its reg 
 ular white lines, flared the orange of Nassau. At 
 the base of the stand three cheer leaders in black 
 sweaters waved their arms and sprang into the 
 air, and the Princeton cheer, insurgent and mena 
 cing, snapped back and rolled across the field. A 
 few unhurried figures moved about on the grass 
 below; the stands were nearly full, murmuring 
 and stirring, expectant, and along the whole 
 circle color bobbed and nodded and gleamed 
 through umber shadows and yellow, slanting 
 bands of sunlight. Over it all stretched the wide, 
 deep, and tranquil sky, with white clouds low in 
 the east, far off, above the faint roof tops of Bos 
 ton. The Princeton section rose to its feet with 
 a noise of myriad dry leaves, and after some pre 
 liminary humming, launched into a melody. The 
 sound floated in the bowl of the great Stadium, 
 and died away, hoarse and mellow; there was a 
 prolonged clapping of hands. Across the field a 
 fair-haired man in a black sweater walked down 
 the side lines, looking up at the stands, exhorting 
 them to something. The Harvard team ran across 
 the green below, Reilly at the head, a solid 
 phalanx of black, with trailing and fluttering red 
 
42 PETER KINDRED 
 
 blankets; the stands rose and thundered; and 
 Peter s anxious heart grew warm and big, and he 
 took a deep breath. David gripped his arm, and 
 they stood there, staring down at Harvard to 
 gether, at the embodiment of their own manhood 
 and their own faith. They stood so until the 
 stands had rustled down again, and then they sat 
 down as well, in a tense silence, waiting for the 
 opening whistle. 
 
 But is it all no more than a fierce loyalty to 
 intimate things? And for those older men, whose 
 college days have been a memory a long while, is 
 it no more than a resurgent battle lust? I think 
 it is something greater ; I think it is an expression 
 of faith to the young, an articulation: "This is 
 my faith, these are my people, my ideals, my pur 
 poses; they are worth fighting for." And to the 
 elders, is it not a rejuvenation of belief, a fresh 
 ening of faded dream and old pride, a rising to 
 the ancient and forgotten toast? 
 
 Late that afternoon, when Harvard crept to 
 defeat through the raw dusk, Peter and David 
 sat bowed and chill in their seats, weary and 
 tragic, but undaunted, cheering and singing with 
 hoarse and unrecognizable voices. Silently they 
 made their way at the end across the misty grass, 
 and plodded home through the evening, stretching 
 their cramped and stiffened muscles, silent until 
 they sat at last before the grate fire in David s 
 room, feeling the drowsy warmth obliterate all 
 but an insistent sense of catastrophe. 
 
PETER KINDRED 43 
 
 There followed days of anxiety and puzzlement, 
 of grave consideration of past scores, and uneasy 
 prophesying. Breaking in upon them came the 
 shock of Princeton s defeat of Yale, and after, 
 the stir of final preparation for New Haven. 
 
 Peter and David, having no means of getting 
 there, waited in Boston. They learned of Har 
 vard s victory with a curiously deep satisfaction, 
 as though they themselves had been justified in 
 something, and with a lifting sense of the lordli 
 ness of Boston, of Harvard, and of themselves. 
 They celebrated the evening at Wirth s, and, feel 
 ing in no mood for the deserted streets of Cam 
 bridge, drifted into a movie afterward, jubilant. 
 
 Far to the south Harvard men caroused through 
 the amused restaurants and theaters of New York, 
 busying themselves with their youth and with their 
 victory. 
 
 The next morning lectures swung sharply into 
 stride, and Harvard, sober and forgetful, settled 
 down to work. 
 
 Afterward came the bleak season of the year; 
 the air grew colder and began to rumor of snow, 
 evening crept into afternoon, night at its heels, 
 the sky grayed and the water darkened. Earth 
 grew bare and sharp, November slipped through 
 the profound, chilled quiet of Thanksgiving Day 
 into December, and the Christmas holidays drew 
 close. 
 
 Peter was in high spirits at the thought of home, 
 
44 PETER KINDRED 
 
 as was David, bnt David was the more anxious 
 to be at home, for Peter, after the first day spent 
 with his family, would think only of escape again. 
 
 New York in the early morning smelled re 
 motely of the sea, but there was not the difference 
 to Peter there used to be when he came down from 
 Exeter. In the Boston air there was the sea, but 
 there were also houses and the smoke of trains, 
 and open spaces, and the surrounding farms and 
 countryside. In New York, however, there was 
 the bitter bright smell of stale things, and a wind 
 out of blue shadowed street bottoms. 
 
 The Kindred family was asleep when Peter 
 crept into the flat, but his sister awoke, and slip 
 ping into a kimona stood in her doorway smiling 
 sleepily, her short brown hair in disorder, her face 
 wrinkled with sleep and with the pillow. Peter 
 kissed her and she surveyed him with interest. 
 He went into his room with a stealthy joy, a cast 
 ing aside of burdens and responsibilities, assum 
 ing the easy throne arranged for him. The maid 
 moved through the kitchen, his parents awoke, and 
 the day started. His mother called him in to her, 
 and with his face between her hands, bewailed his 
 thinness, and foretold the immediate washing of 
 his hair, while his father smiled at him from the 
 doorway, eagerly and a bit wistfully, Peter 
 thought. He was indeed welcome home, and it 
 was with a very grateful sense of it that Peter, 
 albeit uneasy at his mother s prophesy, went into 
 the small, warm dining room and ate his break- 
 
PETER KINDRED 45 
 
 fast, pouring a great deal of cream on his oatmeal, 
 and pressing large slices of butter on his toast. 
 
 But by the next day s noon he had wearied of 
 his kingdom, the narrow lamp-lit hall of the flat, 
 the small rooms, the sour and brown* odor of all 
 the other kitchens in the house drifting vaguely 
 about his own demesne, and lying stubbornly in 
 wait outside. The red and soiled gray walls that 
 peered in at his windows made him impatient as 
 they always did, and in the narrow and noisy 
 streets he found no solace, and the insolent roof 
 tops above his head depressed him. He began to 
 think again of his sunny room at college, the 
 movement of feet up and down below his window, 
 the dark river and the barren trees. In that mood 
 he wrote a letter to David. 
 
 "The family/ he wrote, "are so contented and 
 happy, David, that I can hardly understand my 
 own impatience. But sometimes I wonder if it is 
 content, or just a will to make the best of things. 
 Their lives seem to be nothing but a succession of 
 the most trivial happenings, and I think it hurts 
 father that I can t take the interest in such little 
 things that he does. For instance, he wants me 
 to go with him to a lecture on India, somebody s 
 personal travels, I believe, and then he must know 
 about my courses, and your courses, and there is 
 no end of gossip, mostly of bridge parties. They 
 make me feel as though they were getting no 
 where, just growing old. Edith had a tea in my 
 honor, and her friends are no different than ever; 
 
46 PETER KINDRED 
 
 some of them are rather pretty, and they all laugh 
 all the time, and talk about nothing but people. I 
 wonder if a man could fall in love with such a 
 woman. I wonder if I could. It would certainly 
 be an awfully silly thing to do, wouldn t it ? 
 
 David sent back a long letter, but light-hearted. 
 
 "It wouldn t be as silly as you think to fall in 
 love, old anchorite, " he wrote. "And I dare you 
 to kiss one of those laughing girls. But if you do, 
 by all holy things, write me about it at once, and 
 I ll keep your letter as a human document. . . ." 
 
 David s letter lightened the drag of the holiday 
 week, and with the Christmas fragrance of fir 
 trees in New York, Peter roused himself and con 
 sidered kissing someone. But he saw no way of 
 doing it, although he picked out one of his sister s 
 friends as an agreeable choice, and almost imag 
 ined himself falling in love with her. January 
 and college again tore him somewhat rudely from 
 Eros, however, and after he had held the young 
 lady s hand an awkward moment or two over 
 time, and had murmured something inadequate 
 about writing, he started to forget her, and did 
 forget all about her even before his only letter to 
 her had been answered. 
 
 Snow fell over Boston, muffling the sharp lines 
 of the landscape in amazing white, blanketing life 
 in upon itself and huddling the countryside. In 
 the streets, tiny muckers threw snowballs at one 
 another, at students and professors, at white- 
 hooded trolley cars and lumbering coal wagons. 
 
PETER KINDRED 47 
 
 The sun on the snow dazzled, and from the drip 
 ping roofs snow avalanches plumped into the 
 drifts along the gutters, with mock thundering. 
 Over night the earth was whitened until it spar 
 kled and glistened in the sun, and the air was 
 buoyant and snowy. Men tramped through the 
 streets in high goloshes that flapped about their 
 shins and jingled as they walked, and sleighbells 
 chimed on Mount Auburn Street. The college 
 was at once very cheerful, and Peter, returning, 
 went in search of David. 
 
 But Peter found Wiener in David s room, and 
 that chilled him, and gave the wrong flavor to his 
 return. And David, he thought . . . there was 
 something wrong with David. 
 
 "It s the damnable class consciousness of every 
 body, " David said, at one time. 
 
 "I know it s undemocratic," Peter answered, 
 "of course . . . And yet, I find a lot more satis 
 faction in looking out of my window at the tall 
 snobs as they go by, than in waving to a dozen 
 ... a dozen Wieners." 
 
 But David very sensibly thought Peter a snob, 
 and unkind, besides, all of which I dare say he 
 was, and so David would have nothing to do with 
 Peter for a week, an occasion which Peter took 
 sadly, but refused to apologize. Perhaps he was 
 a little jealous of Wiener. . . . 
 
 Again Peter grew lonely, but not as he had been 
 at Exeter, for his loneliness was mixed with im 
 patience, and yet with a sense of development. He 
 
48 PETER KINDRED 
 
 read eagerly. Early in his second term he was 
 introduced to the great Russians, and brought his 
 startled views to Frank. 
 
 "Look here," he said, "these folk are no more 
 satisfied than I am. I thought everyone was satis 
 fied when he grew up. But it doesn t seem as 
 though they ever find an answer to anything. 
 They just poke around." 
 
 He drew his knees up and laced his fingers about 
 his shins. 
 
 "It s a rum sort of uneasiness," he said, 
 "this will to be square with life doing the right 
 thing the big thing. It s easy to get up and 
 howl for the poor, I guess . . . like Wiener," he 
 thought to himself. . . . "Only there s not much 
 sense in that. There s something bigger some 
 where . . . something to get down deep . . . 
 some wise, impersonal thing ... to settle every 
 thing, and keep it settled. Keep it settled defi 
 nitely." 
 
 "Yes," said Frank, "and then I shall sleep like 
 a good one, instead of lying awake at night both 
 ering about things that are none of my bloody 
 business." 
 
 In February Cambridge was pelted with hail in 
 fine, stinging particles, or whipped with the gale, 
 or drenched in sleet, and at last after a long week 
 of gray weather, Peter, fairly lonely and a bit 
 restless, found refuge in the warm oblivion of 
 the Boston movies, where for very little of his 
 
PETER KINDRED 49 
 
 sparse allowance he could bny, in darkness stirred 
 with music, a sort of trance, a cessation of his 
 own breathing, living and moving, and a projec 
 tion into the untroubled if erratic lives of heroes 
 and heroines. David considered it a waste of 
 time, but Frank went with him once, and became 
 so boisterously critical of the sentimental clap 
 trap, and so loud in his undisguised remarks that 
 Peter, embarrassed and notorious, was glad to 
 escape. Thereafter he went alone, and since he 
 had, therefore, no one with him to whom he felt 
 an apology was due for the screen nonsense, he 
 did not mind it at all. 
 
 For the actors before the screen, with very few 
 exceptions, he felt a sort of humorous contempt, 
 mostly by reason of their strange and nai ve views 
 of society. The women, upon the other hand, ap 
 peared to him erotic and romantic. In them he 
 saw beauty and mystery and sex. They disquieted 
 him in a gentle way, and haunted his waking 
 dreams with suggestion. It was not that he fell 
 at all in love with any one, but that he was in 
 trigued by woman, by romance, by kisses and love 
 making, and all the subtle hidden lines of bodies. 
 These women made the streets at evening adven 
 turous for Peter, and all in all, he gave more 
 thought to them than was good for him. But I 
 doubt that he would have played at more than 
 a courtly and melancholy wooing with any of 
 them, a discreet sighing, and quite a sexless pos 
 session. 
 
50 PETER KINDRED 
 
 The winter grew feeble and soiled, full of senile 
 humor, beckoning folk out of doors with beaming 
 sun and cloudless skies, only to freeze them to 
 their marrows, and blow tears into their eyes. At 
 the close of such a day Peter came into Jill s room, 
 and found him in the uncertain firelight that fled 
 about among his hangings and burned and paled 
 across the bronze gods and the brass gods of 
 his room. Jill, by the fire, motioned him ab 
 sently to a chair, and continued to read from 
 a slim book, as though he were quite unaware 
 of Peter. 
 
 " Baudelaire," he said at last, and sighed. 
 
 Peter wondered who Baudelaire might be, and 
 said nothing. Jill held out the book to him. 
 
 "Look," he said, "you can t make it out very 
 well, but it s rather a wonderful binding. I had 
 it done in Edinburgh. The main thing is the color 
 . . . you can t see it in this light. It s a sort of 
 beige, and matches a tie I had and was rather 
 crazy about . . . It s quite lovely." 
 
 Again Peter could find nothing to say. The 
 room was spiced with burning joss, hidden away 
 from Cambridge, in stillness. Jill read in a low 
 whisper, and Peter sat silently listening. 
 
 "Of course it loses in translation," Jill said. 
 
 "It s rather sleepy, isn t it?" Peter said awk 
 wardly. 
 
 Jill stared at him and Peter moved uncomfort 
 ably. 
 
 "Rather wailing, I mean," he said. 
 
PETER KINDRED 51 
 
 "Dear me," Jill remarked, and Peter made 
 haste to justify himself. 
 
 "It s not very real ... as though the man were 
 trying awfully hard to be that sort of thing . . . 
 or the woman. And then when he is ... or she 
 . . . why, he might just as well not be. I mean . . . 
 do you really like it?" 
 
 "I say," Jill drawled slowly, "you are an ig 
 norant little creature, aren t you?" 
 
 He spoke without malice, and went back to his 
 reading, but an embarrassed Peter got up and 
 went out quietly. In the street he took a deep 
 breath, and went home. 
 
 "Frank," he said to him that night, "who was 
 Baudelaire?" 
 
 And later, "Do you think that sort of thing is 
 important, Frank?" 
 
 But to himself he said, "What is important?" 
 
 He could not answer that. Yet it seemed to 
 him very definitely that it was not important to 
 care so much for the cover of a book. He ended 
 by growing fairly angry about it. 
 
CHAPTER HI 
 
 TN JULY the Kindreds went to Europe, taking 
 - Peter with them. It was a dream long cher 
 ished by his mother, one not lightly realized, 
 either, but they had been saving for it many years, 
 and when Peter won a small scholarship, Mr. 
 Kindred asked for and was given his first long 
 vacation. They travelled in the smallest cabins 
 of the first class, ostensibly ashamed of their ex 
 travagance, secretly enthralled. Peter was un 
 interested in Europe, but excited at the planning, 
 the packing, the bustling about and the radiant 
 anticipation of his parents and Edith. The wharf 
 and the high bulking steamer, the solemn leave- 
 taking all around him, the smell of tarred rigging, 
 of the windy decks and the salt sea, the sombre 
 notes of the fog horn sounding high overhead, 
 thrilled him with a sense of adventure, so that he 
 felt fairly sentimental, looking back at the dwin 
 dling wharf, and waved his handkerchief with the 
 rest of them at what of a sudden he felt to be his 
 home-land. 
 
 In the deep center of the ship his family were 
 
PETER KINDRED 53 
 
 unpacking in their tiny cabins, bubbling with 
 laughter and energy, opening gifts of fruits and 
 books, scribbling hurried postals for the pilot to 
 take back with him. Edith awkwardly held a 
 newly opened letter close to what she took to be 
 her heart, and managed to laugh and cry after a 
 maidenly fashion. Peter, leaning against the rail 
 of an upper deck, the wind from the open sea blow 
 ing on his face, watched the patient Statue of Lib 
 erty go by, a dull and forgotten tower on a back 
 ground of barges, ferryboats and distant fac 
 tories. The wind from the Narrows was rumor- 
 ous, the scene about him drab, save for occasional 
 rusty ships, tramps and schooners, lumbering 
 in from the wide sea, or lying sleepily at anchor. 
 Before him was Europe, beyond many horizons. 
 For two weeks he was to be a member of a small 
 community; the thought stirred him to wonder 
 what company the ship might hold, until he found 
 the deck chilly at last, and climbed down the com- 
 panionway. Inside the ship he heard the steady 
 and muffled rhythm of engines, and felt the slight 
 shuddering of the vessel s progress. White- 
 coated stewards padded to and fro along dimly 
 lighted corridors, but for the most part the ship 
 was quiet. Down and still farther down he went, 
 and found his own cabin, and Edith in it, a crum 
 pled letter in her hand, and her eyes wet. He 
 gazed at her with profound displeasure. 
 
 At noon he looked curiously about the dining 
 room, but saw no people to interest him. There 
 
54 PETER KINDRED 
 
 were either such families as his, with younger 
 Ediths and Peters, or older and detached folk in 
 tent upon themselves. Peter, thinking of nothing 
 better to do, ordered a great deal, and ate it with 
 a fine sense of luxury. Then he went indolently 
 to his deck chair with a book, and wrapped a rug 
 about his feet. By tea time he was seasick. 
 
 He was seasick two nights and one day, and his 
 misery might be measured by his sitting wretched 
 and unshaven in his deck chair, a woeful and dis 
 couraging sight, and caring not a fig that the 
 whole world saw him so. But on the morning of 
 the third day he awoke hungry and hollow, and 
 after fortifying himself with strong coffee, strode 
 briskly out of doors and took his place with 
 seamen. 
 
 There was nothing to do but read and lie in the 
 sun ; ocean and sky combined to give him over to 
 dreaming, of nothing in particular, often of noth 
 ing but the warm content of his body. He was sur 
 prised at the interest intelligent-looking men took 
 in his sister, and watched her with them, but could 
 find no new attractiveness about her, and was 
 rather inclined to consider her perfidious, remem 
 bering the unpleasant sight he had witnessed in 
 the cabin. But Peter is not to be blamed, for the 
 growth of a sister is an amazing thing ; for a long 
 while she will be an awkward hoyden, scornful of 
 everything but games, and then all at once, Pouf, 
 she is a grown woman with tastes and hidden 
 cavaliers and long experience in love. 
 
PETER KINDRED 55 
 
 But Peter did not know that such was the way 
 of all sisters, and thought Edith a wretch. He 
 was preparing to lay the case before his mother, 
 and demand a show of maternal authority, when 
 he fell of a sudden in love himself, or very like it, 
 with a slim, tawny-haired woman whom he 
 glimpsed across the dining hall, and who passed 
 his chair with long strides, on solitary walks about 
 the deck. Peter, watching her, was aware of a 
 growing feeling of breathlessness as though where 
 his insides had been there were a flocculent pre 
 cipitate ; thereby he knew that he was in love, and 
 took at last to striding the deck as well, alternately 
 audacious and faint, wondering why no one else 
 hunted her, despairing of ever meeting her. He 
 could not help fearing that his suit was overbold, 
 yet followed her none the less resolutely, until 
 she did speak to him at last, and walked with him, 
 too, for a full morning. 
 
 Then began a wooing, shy and enraptured on 
 Peter s side, half amused and wilful on hers. But 
 that it was a wooing sufficed for Peter. Familiar 
 things blossomed into all manner of significance: 
 the play of dolphins, as the two stood facing the 
 gale singing over the bows, with the sun pour 
 ing down on the sea; the calm windless corners 
 of the ship where they sat close together and 
 spoke in low voices of themselves; the hushed 
 halls and rooms below stairs where he sought for 
 her face among people, with a strange excitement 
 in his body. He swung with her around the cir- 
 
56 PETER KINDRED 
 
 cuit of the decks, arm in arm, and thrilled at the 
 soft press of her coat. An enchantment bewil 
 dered his life, nntil he was hardly conscious of 
 the days and nights, and the ocean below and the 
 sky above were like the background of an orches 
 tra to a pantomime. And the woman! Who shall 
 sayf 
 
 But this much is so, that upon a night of danc 
 ing, with music coming faintly from the prome 
 nade, they climbed together to the hurricane deck, 
 and stood side by side, facing the low golden 
 moon, and the windy sweep of stars over the dark 
 night sky. The water gleamed gold and was lost 
 below them ; and the fragrance of the woman stole 
 through the wind and was one with the night. 
 The ship pulsed on through the darkness, rising 
 and falling in a faint crashing of white foam. 
 And there, upon a peak above the level plain of 
 the world, with only the black rigging sounding 
 above them, Peter kissed the woman, and she 
 clung to him. They stumbled down the compan- 
 ionway at last, in a dream, and in a shadow they 
 kissed each other good night. Until dawn Peter 
 sat gazing across the seas with wide and unseeing 
 eyes, staring at the wonder and the profound 
 beauty of life. At daybreak he crept to his berth 
 above his long slumbering father, and when he 
 awoke late the next morning, the dim-lying coast 
 of Portugal was looming on the horizon, and the 
 ship rising to a running sea. 
 
 The woman he saw again across the vista of 
 
PETER KINDRED 57 
 
 breakfast tables, and his heart leaped at the ap 
 peal in her eyes. And that was all, for she did not 
 come on deck that day, and when they dropped 
 anchor in the qniet bay at Gibraltar, with the dark 
 rock looming sternly through the dusk beyond the 
 fleet of fisher boats, she left the steamer, and Peter 
 never saw her again. 
 
 But it was she who gave Peter a meaning in 
 Europe, filling it for him with the past, with ro 
 mance and chivalry, heroes and troubadours, giv 
 ing life to legends and ballades, haunting the 
 silent Mediterranean, the gaunt and sombre coast 
 of Spain, and all the towns of Italy and France. 
 Peter would not go with his family through the 
 churches and museums, but wandered among the 
 streets, dreaming of the woman, imagining her 
 with him, making of Europe, indeed, little more 
 than a setting for this newly awakened life in 
 him, that bade fair to lull his student life entirely 
 asleep. 
 
 David was quick to sense the change, and wrote 
 him a long letter. 
 
 "I know, Peter," he wrote, "how fair your 
 lady must have been. I have been devoured with 
 the curse of the black god, sitting beneath tall 
 pines and coming nowhere, writing the most un 
 satisfactory music, wondering, wondering, among 
 these mountains, and biting at the very futility 
 of myself, while you go wandering through old 
 cities. But you must certainly include the 
 churches, Peter." 
 
58 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Peter wrote back from Interlaken whimsically. 
 
 "My progress is far from romantic, musician. 
 I rather imagine that your days are more so, in 
 the dark pines. We travel as cheaply as we can, 
 of course, and there s the devil s own bother 
 about it. Father argues a great deal with por 
 ters and guards, and though they never under 
 stand him, it gives him a tremendous satisfaction, 
 and he looks splendid, fairly beaming. Mother 
 takes a sort of pride in him, and settles back com 
 placently when he starts in. But somehow the 
 sandwiches and the oranges, and the bustle and 
 the curiosity spoil the landscapes, although I know 
 I m an ungrateful cub to say it. I should like to 
 go through Europe as the hero of an adventure, 
 to meet the woman at the other end of it, not this 
 way. Father s little battles and victories smack 
 of the tourist. But I m fearfully afraid to let him 
 see that, for it s his one vacation, and God knows 
 he deserves it. Mother is as curious as a child, 
 while I think that Edith peoples Europe with 
 counts and marquises." 
 
 Peter liked best to be alone; he thought to 
 see the tawny woman come down every street 
 to meet him, although she never came, and he 
 knew that she would not. But to be with peo 
 ple broke the spell ; he was no hero, save when he 
 was alone. With his family about him he was a 
 young nobody, but if he stole off by himself, and if 
 it was evening in Italy, or dusk in France, why, 
 he was a very different person, at peace with the 
 
PETER KINDRED 59 
 
 serene country, at one with the people, his heart 
 deep among the loves of the dead nobles, his ears 
 tuned to the footsteps of a wraith, his one love. 
 So he travelled through the mountain towns of 
 Italy, in a sort of melancholy exultation, his body 
 crying out for her, yet resigned to her loss. 
 Through Italy, France, and Switzerland, tranced 
 and saddened, yet well content, as much by him 
 self as he could be, doing nothing, thinking of 
 nothing more. His father and mother thought 
 him ridiculous, as no doubt he was, but his mother, 
 unlike her husband, felt that she did not quite 
 understand Peter, and that it might be best to 
 let him be. But when he flatly refused to climb 
 the Jungfrau with them in a funicular, she very 
 nearly lost her patience. 
 
 As for Peter, the distant huge mountain crowd 
 ing the sky even far as it was, sheer white against 
 the clear blue, mysteriously shadowed and still, 
 he felt would not brook his clumsy interference. 
 To travel upon its face, laughing and impudent, 
 would not only have been ribald, but it would have 
 shattered its glory as well, and Peter was jealous 
 of the glory of Europe, invested as it was with 
 the curiously distant tale of a man, Peter, and a 
 woman, together upon the topmost deck of a ship. 
 
 From Switzerland the Kindreds went directly 
 to Paris and lodged in a small hotel off the 
 Champs Elysees, fragrant with faded things. 
 There was instituted a week spent bravely among 
 the shops, while Peter and his father discovered, 
 
60 PETER KINDRED 
 
 the one, Paris, and the other, the museums, pal 
 aces and galleries. Peter went perforce to Ver 
 sailles, but through no desire to see it. He ex 
 plored the boulevards as he would have explored 
 a new land, adventurously, intent upon the people, 
 sitting now and then at some small round table 
 before a cafe, sipping grenadine or chocolate, 
 rambling aimlessly among the streets, staring into 
 shop windows, and into the faces of women as 
 they passed. He spent some time among the book 
 stalls along the Seine, buying nothing, but watch 
 ing the gray river and the gray city across from 
 him, feeling the undercurrent of kindly life in the 
 voices, the noises, the hushes of the streets. It 
 was a city old with content. At night when the 
 boulevards broke into a foam of light, Paris drew 
 him willy nilly out of his hotel, to the despair and 
 terror of his mother, to wander among crowds, 
 alert and inquisitive. The low laughter of the 
 folk, the passion and the wickedness, nai ve and 
 light-hearted and caressing, unlike the shrill night 
 life of America, aroused in him the desire to be 
 come a part of it, and on such occasions he very 
 nearly forgot his own love, and half hungered to 
 be joyously bad, and to delve into lewd fable. 
 But there was nothing about Peter to attract the 
 women of the streets, for he was brown as any 
 Norman, and had at most only a meager handful 
 of small coins to jingle. Often at night he drove 
 home through a dark, whispering Paris, peering 
 up at the shuttered houses from his fiacre, won- 
 
PETER KINDRED 61 
 
 dering what tales they guarded, of what lovers 
 and husbands and mistresses. There was a spice 
 of leaves and old trees through all Paris, of flow 
 ers growing, and a faint fragrance, as though the 
 city herself were feminine, and the streets were 
 women. 
 
 In the yellow morning sunlight the shadow-dap 
 pled avenues drew Peter out again. For what 
 countess might not run plump into his arms I And 
 even the tawny woman herself might come walk 
 ing to meet him. Yet he fell in with no happening 
 at all, but watched the children roll their hoops 
 in the Bois, and stood in a dream before the pon 
 derous iron gates of palaces that had housed the 
 great nobles. 
 
 For all the dreaming, there was stirring in him 
 the old unrest. Peter had almost had his fill of 
 romance, and his drugged spirit was beginning to 
 assert itself. In his last letter to David before he 
 sailed, he wrote : 
 
 "The memory of the woman is fading a bit, al 
 though I think that it will always be there, an echo 
 of some impossible happening. But I am wonder 
 ing again. Europe is so at peace with itself, so 
 old and serene, so calmly certain, that I almost fell 
 asleep. And here life is more content than any 
 where I have seen it, content with the sun, with 
 love, with the devil knows what. I am unsettled, 
 even more so than last year. Last year? A thou 
 sand years ago. The woman did that, I think, 
 sang to me and worried me. But can there be 
 
62 PETER KINDRED 
 
 something deeper here that I have overlooked? 
 In Switzerland, in the Alps perhaps, something I 
 might have caught if I had been alone, but not in 
 Paris. 
 
 6 Father and mother will never forgive me for 
 leaving them so alone all summer, but we are dif 
 ferent people. The foreign means to them geog 
 raphy and architecture, and all the open expres 
 sion of another people s life. But to me it means 
 the strange fashion of living and thinking and 
 loving, though I m ashamed to say that. David, 
 I ve grown sentimental. . . . Oh, well, I ll talk 
 awhile to Frank, and let you laugh at me, and I ll 
 get over it well enough." 
 
 Back across the ocean memory travelled with 
 Peter, keeping him silent in his chair, and lonely 
 in his promenades. His greeting to the sea was 
 as to a friend of some standing, who shared a 
 great secret with him, but who would be decently 
 quiet about it. 
 
 He returned to America with the same unex 
 pected thrill of patriotism with which he had left 
 it, and found an unusual beauty in his first sight 
 of the flag, the statue, and the towering crags of 
 office buildings between himself and the sun. His 
 family crowded to the rail, along with the whole 
 boat full, as though they were adventurers re 
 turned from the moon, beside themselves with ex 
 citement, waving to their relatives. Tugs whis 
 tled, the ship swung slowly in, high above the 
 wharf, the band played, and Peter descended 
 
PETER KINDRED 63 
 
 grandly to his native land. Then came a fussy 
 waiting to come through the customs, a rushing 
 here and there, lost trunks, packing and unpack 
 ing while people wove in and about him in the 
 dim yellow gas light; the long, labored trip up 
 town in the roaring tunnels underneath the city, 
 and home at last, to rest and rest, to handle fa 
 miliar things, to sit in familiar places, a peaceful 
 sense of finality, of order again and ease, the com 
 fortable rut. 
 
 To the sophomore Harvard gave a benign wel 
 come after he had come across the morning-sunny 
 Charles. The Square, the curve of the Yard wall, 
 slender and iron, heavy with trees and bushes, the 
 small and contented shops, even the level car 
 tracks along Massachusetts Avenue were intimate 
 to him, and so were the shadowed side streets and 
 the little sandwich house on his own street, where 
 he went for breakfast, just as he had often done. 
 Indeed, the thing that gave him the most satis 
 faction of all was that he knew at once where to 
 go for his breakfast, and that he did not eat in a 
 strange place. 
 
 Peter s room looked desolate, as though it had 
 been lonely during the summer. He dropped his, 
 bag and stared about him, drinking in the aroma, 
 of his old life. He walked to his window and. 
 looked out at the street, across at the yellow Insti 
 tute, and, turning back into his room again, idly- 
 arranged a weatherbeaten blotter on his dnstjif 
 
64 PETER KINDRED 
 
 desk. The room smelled of the deserted summer, 
 and faintly through it, the spring and the winter 
 and the fall of the year before, of books and to 
 bacco and his dilapidated morris chair. He could 
 not think of how to begin. He went out to knock 
 at Frank s door, but there was no answer. He 
 hurried down the street to David s room, but it 
 was empty and hollow to his knocking. So he went 
 slowly back to his room, and unpacked his bag, 
 and when his trunk came, unpacked that as well, 
 and wandered upon Massachusetts Avenue, greet 
 ing a few men casually, looking at the shops, and 
 renewing relations with their proprietors, mark 
 ing time with his year. 
 
 But by dusk David had come. Peter, turning 
 into David s house, heard his piano, and raced up 
 the stairs three at a time. David was sitting with 
 his back to him, playing the largest chords his 
 hands could cover, his valises dropped at his feet, 
 his hat and coat still on him. Peter stood in the 
 doorway, laughing with pure happiness, until 
 David, between two mighty chords, heard him and 
 turned, his hands suspended in the air, and 
 jumped to his feet. And there they stood, full to 
 overflowing with their past life together, with 
 more to say to each other than they could possibly 
 tell, deeply and jubilantly touched to be again to 
 gether, wringing each other s hands, patting each 
 other s elbows, and grinning as sheepishly as 
 men do. 
 
 That night they caroused in Boston, arm in arm, 
 
PETER KINDRED 65 
 
 fortifying themselves with beer against the damp 
 night air from the sea, and ending up nobly at 
 the Touraine with music and wine, a Burgundy 
 that David had discovered during the summer, and 
 which he ordered in a very important way. At 
 Cambridge again they sat a long while in Peter s 
 room, sleepy and content, almost expecting to see 
 the ghosts of their younger selves sitting with 
 them, and Peter told David about the woman and 
 about Europe, and about Paris, and about his sum 
 mer and himself, while David, hunched in a corner 
 over a pipe, regarded Peter slumbrously from a 
 great distance, out of an owlish wisdom and a 
 vast experience. 
 
 At eight the next morning the house rocked, 
 and Peter awoke to hear his door slam, to hear a 
 cyclone pass through his room, and to find him 
 self suddenly bereft of his covers, blinking on the 
 floor. A voice boomed above him, and he sprang 
 up with a sleepy cry. Frank had arrived, David 
 was in Cambridge ; college had opened, his sopho 
 more year had swung into full stride. 
 
 It turned out that David had been at his music 
 during the summer, and had written the first 
 movement of a sonata, and three songs. Peter 
 heard them, and was excited at them, not so much, 
 perhaps, for the music, as that David had writ 
 ten them. For Peter was no critic ; he was awed 
 at any sweep of wings. David sent his songs to 
 Schirmer, more from Peter s urging than from a 
 
66 PETER KINDRED 
 
 pride in them, knowing well that he had done no 
 very good work. 
 
 With the opening of the term Peter began to 
 consider his courses, and elected economics as 
 much from a sense of duty as anything else. At 
 first he was dissatisfied with it, and found it hard 
 to follow the abrupt professor. Eventually the 
 disconcerting generalities dwindled away, and 
 with more definite information to work at, Peter 
 grew interested. David, however, would have 
 none of it, but joined Peter in a course of Indie 
 philosophy. 
 
 Once more a pleasant drift of hours claimed 
 Peter, somnolent mornings in the droning class 
 rooms, vagrant afternoons, slanting with sun ; tea, 
 and the gathering chill of late autumn, evening, 
 the quiet blue streets, and clear yellow lights in 
 the Square. He went on frequent walks, most 
 often with David, and sometimes with Frank, 
 through Belmont and Waverly, up and down coun 
 try roads, along old ivy grown and crumbled stone 
 walls. Frank, smoking a heavy briar pipe, walked 
 with long strides, thoughtfully, in a manner as 
 though he were at rest with his environment, sat 
 isfied with the years of Cambridge behind him, 
 and from a decided point of view were facing life 
 steadily. Or, so, at least, it seemed to Peter, 
 trudging along beside him, or sitting below him 
 on a wall, his knees huddled under his chin, his 
 fingers laced about his shins. 
 
 "I ve never found anything very sad about 
 
PETER KINDRED 67 
 
 autumn, Frank," he said at one time, "but it isn t 
 because the leaves are red. The witches must get 
 into me at Hallowe en, for they light unholy fires 
 in me, until I m fairly ashamed of myself." 
 
 "I know," Frank said, "and the devil of it is 
 you never know what it s all about. I used to find 
 autumn sad, my second year. Now it s the spring. 
 Somehow, autumn gives me a push; it s as though 
 the year said, Here, I m not going to look for a 
 while. See what you can do. And then it covers 
 up its head in the blanket and goes to sleep, and 
 there s my work all ready for me, and no one to 
 ask even to see it for four months. Then spring 
 comes along and asks in a sort of drowsy voice, 
 Gosh, is that all you ve done! 
 
 "H-mmmm. And yet, if you could show the 
 spring something " 
 
 "If you could. But even so, I think that spring 
 would belittle it. The gray sky and the bare, 
 brown earth, and the wind and the snow give man 
 an impetus to work. Work seems to be the big 
 thing at that time. But spring . . . well, that s 
 different. It may be because earth grows erotic, 
 and lets the sun seduce her." 
 
 "But what a thought!" 
 
 "Quite seriously. I don t know that we are so 
 far removed from the earth that our bodies 
 shouldn t be affected by the seasons. But it s a 
 good thought anyhow, and it would explain 
 the tradition of June marriages. Shall we 
 go on?" 
 
68 PETER KINDRED 
 
 They climbed down from the wall and walked 
 back toward Cambridge. From a hill they caught 
 a glimpse of the tower of Memorial standing a 
 dull brick above the bare branches of trees, with 
 a glimmer of blue slate, the blue roofs of dormi 
 tories, the gray-white Stadium and the winding 
 Charles gleaming between its banks. Frank took 
 his pipe out of his mouth, and pointed with the 
 wet, black stem. 
 
 "All that," he said, "you ll have next year, 
 when I m gone, and generations will have it after 
 you, when you re gone. But there s nothing in 
 me that will last. I wish I could do one thing that 
 would be me after I have died. I wouldn t mind 
 if I were going somewhere else, because then I d 
 take all that was me wherever I was going. ..." 
 
 Yet, as they went on together through the au 
 tumn afternoon, Peter thought of what Frank had 
 said and the words troubled him. For he, too, 
 would go down in his time, and leave Cambridge 
 behind him, and later, more than Cambridge, all 
 his years ; and Peter, too, had a great longing and 
 a need to build. 
 
 To build what? But that would be an answer. 
 
 David s songs were rejected, and for a while he 
 hid himself in his room, although he had had no 
 faith in them himself. When Peter saw him again, 
 it was at supper across the long table in Memorial, 
 with the lofty and sombre arch of the roof above 
 them, and the subdued clatter and murmur of a 
 
PETER KINDRED 69 
 
 thousand students all about. David was sitting 
 below him, but Peter waited until his friend was 
 done, and then walked down the sounding hall 
 after him, between the long white tables. Com 
 ing down the steps, with the night cold and snowy 
 before them, he took David s arm, and the two 
 men walked together across the Yard again, down 
 Holyoke, and up Peter s old stairs. And David 
 told Peter he had taken a class in the slums, under 
 Wiener. 
 
 "Oh, my music, . . ." he growled to Peter, 
 "my music . . . isn t music. Bother with it. 
 This is real, at any rate. 
 
 "I m not at all sure that it s real," said Peter. 
 
 "It s all very well for you to say so," David 
 cried, "with all Harvard before you. You ll man 
 age something yet, you know, and be an Institute 
 man." 
 
 "In the first place," Peter said calmly, "they 
 have no use for me. I have no honors, I m not 
 here for honors, David, of that sort. I want to 
 know why men work and live, and why they love 
 and fight, and how I had best do all that. I ll 
 not find it, tagging about with settled heroes and 
 falling asleep ... I want to know just what it 
 means to be a gentleman." 
 
 "Wiener says " David began. 
 
 "Ah," Peter broke in quickly, "I won t find it 
 in the slums." 
 
 "Where then?" grumbled David. 
 
 Peter shrugged his shoulders. 
 
70 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "There s a man here from Leland Stanford 
 a chap named Don Mark who thinks I ll find it 
 in Carver." 
 
 "What on earth," asked David, "is Carver?" 
 
 6 1 Why, said Peter, " I don t really know. But 
 as far as I can make out, Carver is a teacher at 
 college, with a sort of message, and a crowd of 
 apostles." 
 
 "Here," cried David, "at Harvard?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I don t believe it," said David. 
 
 "It is queer," said Peter, "isn t it?" 
 
 "Still," he added, "this westerner came all the 
 way from Stanford to study with him. So he can t 
 be a ... a fabulous monster, can he?" 
 
 Sunday in Cambridge is a tone poem in dejec 
 tion. There is in it something of an old beer bot 
 tle, righteously empty, and wise men stay indoors 
 and read the colored supplements. Across the 
 whole countryside are church bells ringing, min 
 isters preaching, chickens roasting, men and 
 women parading in starched ruffles, little children 
 with their ears washed. As a result the sky is 
 sleepy and far away, and wise men, looking out 
 of their windows, wish themselves somewhere else 
 too, at Marblehead, perhaps, along the rocky 
 coast with the gray sea stretched before them, and 
 the fish of the sea, among whom there is no Sun 
 day, nor any church bells either, nor any ears to 
 wash. As Don Mark described it to Peter, on Sun- 
 
PETER KINDRED 71 
 
 day men cease production, and squirm all day 
 under the heavy realization that everyone else has 
 done the same thing, and that the earth, or at any 
 rate, their portion of the earth, is coasting largely 
 through space, with no one doing anything. But 
 Peter thought of the pleasure of going late to 
 bed Saturday night, and lying abed Sunday morn 
 ing beyond the ordinary time, and disagreed 
 strongly with Don Mark s theory. 
 
 " Nonsense," said the westerner. "By three 
 o clock of a Sunday afternoon, the world goes call 
 ing. Do you like that? Does any man? Don t 
 tell me. I ve done it. The world goes calling, 
 and jolly well wishes it were dead." 
 
 Peter and Frank and Don Mark had eaten their 
 Sunday dinner together at the Green Lantern, 
 and after complimenting Mrs. Prentiss upon her 
 maid Susan and the chicken, and Susan upon her 
 mistress Mrs. Prentiss and the chocolate pud 
 ding, Peter and Don had wandered out Brattle 
 Street, and Frank had gone home to dress for a 
 visit to his aunt at the Hotel Puritan. 
 
 Peter was surprised to find the westerner in 
 clined to like him. He was always surprised at 
 friendliness, never expected it, rarely found it, 
 yet always looked for it. When it was offered, he 
 took all of it at once ; he plunged into affection like 
 a child. 
 
 They came back again past Radcliffe. It was 
 Don Mark s first sight of that college, and he was 
 accusing. 
 
72 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "But look here," he said, "it s not a bad place 
 at all." 
 
 Peter shook his head absently. 
 
 "Well, then," Don Mark said, "what s the mat 
 ter with it?" 
 
 Peter considered. To be truthful, he knew of 
 nothing at all the matter with it. 
 
 "Oh," he said finally, "it has no Yard, and the 
 girls wear spectacles and big shoes with low 
 heels." 
 
 The westerner smiled. "I always heard that 
 Radcliffe was well thought of in the east," he 
 said. 
 
 "I guess it is," Peter agreed. 
 
 "High scholarship and all that," Don Mark 
 went on. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You think it lacks something?" 
 
 "The emotional appeal, perhaps." 
 
 "Oh!" and Don Mark began to laugh. 
 
 "To tell you the honest truth," said Peter, "I 
 don t believe I ve ever thought of it in any other 
 way. It s an heritage from Exeter, where Wel- 
 lesley girls used to come to our Andover games, 
 attached to some lucky fellow. They were a bit 
 different from the Radcliffe women you see chew 
 ing their chocolate at the Merle." 
 
 "What a rake you are. With a moon and a 
 woman and water and lanterns and things, 
 wouldn t you make as fearful an ass of yourself 
 as the best of them." 
 
PETER KINDRED 73 
 
 Peter colored and did not answer. Don Mark 
 chuckled. 
 
 "I d rather have a woman chewing her choco 
 late across the breakfast table," he said. "It 
 sounds poor, but it s healthy." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MONDAY morning there was a letter from 
 Peter s father. 
 
 "My dear Peter," he wrote, "I am sorry to say 
 that your mother is not feeling well. The doctor 
 thinks it is nothing serious, so there is no need to 
 worry, but that will explain why she has not writ 
 ten you. . . . 
 
 ""What you say about your books displeases me 
 very much. It is very nice to have a library, I 
 know, but I am not at all a wealthy man, and you 
 have no right to be so extravagant, seeing as how 
 it was a great sacrifice to your mother and to me 
 to send you to college at all, and if you cannot get 
 along on your allowance, you will have to come 
 home. 
 
 "I am very much disappointed in your work, 
 you seem to be stuffing your head full of useless 
 twaddle. I am not working night and day to fill 
 your head full of nonsense. I think it is time that 
 you woke up, and began to look around you a bit. 
 If college is just an excuse for you to buy books 
 and have a good time and spend all you can get 
 out of me, you d better come home right away. 
 
 74 
 
PETER KINDRED 75 
 
 " Edith was at a dance last night and enjoyed 
 herself very much. You will be interested to 
 know that young Smith whom you may remember 
 to have met here, is doing fine work in his uncle s 
 business, and has just been promoted. Your Aunt 
 Hester was here for dinner last night, and we 
 spent an enjoyable evening afterwards at bridge, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Ellensbogle coming in. Tomorrow 
 night we are to hear Alfred Noyes speak, and I 
 am sure it will be both instructive and enter 
 taining. 
 
 "Your mother and sister join me in sending you 
 our love, 
 
 "Yr. affect. 
 
 "Father/ 
 
 To that Peter rose in hot rebellion, and cut his 
 nine o clock class to write an answer. He did not 
 mail it at once, however, and spent the entire day 
 wondering whether to send it at all. When he re 
 read the answer at night, he tore it up. ... It 
 didn t seem to be the right thing. In his father s 
 position he caught a hint of strength, of the some 
 what pathetic power of fact. But it was a pathos 
 and fact that he had little use for then, and, in 
 deed, he hardly understood it. He thought that, 
 his father was very unintelligent, and that it was 
 too bad. A hot-headed youthfulness possessed 
 him, and he said a private bah to the man Smith 
 who had not known so many things, who had not 
 known the austere friendliness of Harvard, the 
 dusty windows of Peter s room, brimmed with 
 
76 PETER KINDRED 
 
 sun, the pride of stout-backed books, the man 
 Smith, who had no belief, and had not heard of 
 Carver. 
 
 For Peter was considering Carverism. It had 
 been vaguely explained to him as the religion of 
 construction, the religion whose immortality lay 
 in no doubtful heaven, but in the life of the race, 
 its children and their children, whose essence was 
 production and production that the race might 
 live, might grow greater and stronger, and still 
 production. * * What are you worth to the group ? 
 said Carver, and Peter rather liked that, and flung 
 it tentatively at the man Smith and at his father. 
 In his impetuous youth it seemed to him that no 
 answer came back. 
 
 For the young are incapable of compromise 
 with defeat, and cannot understand it. Peter lis 
 tened among men for sturdy beliefs heroically set 
 forth, and if men were mute and woebegone, why 
 then they had no beliefs. And men without be 
 liefs were miserable. It was not enough that men 
 with battered faith should build up their faith 
 again and add the compromise and the doubt ex 
 perience had taught and go more grimly and more 
 quietly each down his road. No ... a man s 
 faith must go riding before him, or he had none. 
 
 Carver, at any rate, spoke sturdily. " Labor, " 
 he said, "and build. Produce for the group, for 
 the strength of the group. Or what good are 
 you?" 
 
 So much Peter understood. . . . 
 
PETER KINDRED 7T 
 
 The letter filled Peter with alarm but no thought 
 of action. Indeed, he would not have been able 
 to do other than he was doing, even if he had been 
 confronted with the necessity of immediately pre 
 paring to make his own way; he could have 
 thought of nothing more helpful than a little study 
 in the same divergent fields, walks and discus 
 sions, afternoons in Cambridge, some evenings in 
 Boston. But after all, college ought not to mean 
 much more than that, a place for ripening in the 
 sun ; and it is only in this headstrong America that 
 we expect the college graduate to be completely 
 equipped for the struggle, and it is only in Amer 
 ica that he is not. 
 
 The feeling of dependence upon his father 
 would not let Peter be ; he could not shake it off, 
 and it gave a bitter flavor to his purchases, and 
 destroyed his pride in his belongings. For a while 
 he tried to discover some means of earning money 
 himself, but he had no idea of how to go about it, 
 and he was soon baffled. He could think of noth 
 ing that he could do, and no one else could think 
 of anything for him, either; the business side of 
 Boston was as remote to him as Ethiopia. He 
 made a faint-hearted attempt to procure some 
 tutoring, but since he was only a sophomore, and 
 had no reputation as a scholar, he failed in that, 
 and since his effort did not go as far as to cause 
 him to apply for so honest a job as waiter or fur 
 nace man, there was nothing to do but accept his 
 allowance, study a bit harder, and hope for a 
 
78 PETER KINDRED 
 
 larger scholarship and perhaps a prize in 
 June. 
 
 It was in this state of mind that he came into his 
 room one December night, and found David 
 sprawled in a chair. David s cheeks were red, 
 but otherwise there was nothing unusual about 
 him. 
 
 " Hello, there, " Peter said, "any news?" 
 
 Mmbleumble, " David muttered, and Peter 
 stared at him. David lifted lack-lustre eyes and 
 looked back at Peter. Then he smiled childishly. 
 
 "I got a great piece inf mashun, a great piece 
 inf mashun," he said in a drunken voice. "I got 
 a great piece ... I m drunk, Peter!" he shouted, 
 "I m drunk, Peter, you old hell hound, drunk, 
 Peter, d-w-x-v-r-n-k drunk!" He stopped a mo 
 ment to gather breath, and then burst into loud, 
 hollow laughter, half doubled over in his chair. 
 
 "So I see," said Peter sharply, half thinking it 
 a hoax, uncertain whether to laugh or to be angry, 
 wondering what to believe. 
 
 "Whee!" cried David, staggering to his feet, 
 and lurched across the room to Peter. He put his 
 arms around Peter s neck and let his body sag. 
 
 "Good old Peter," he said several times. "I m 
 drunk, Peter. Then, suddenly changing his tone, 
 he became melancholy and confidential. 
 
 "You ll nev know, Peter, nev know. Poor lil 
 David. Poor lil Peter." 
 
 "Never know what, you confounded ass!" cried 
 Peter. 
 
PETER KINDRED 79 
 
 know, Peter, poor lil David, drunk. 
 Good old Peter. C m on, dance, good old Peter." 
 
 He essayed a clumsy breakdown, but Peter 
 pushed him away, and he went reeling. Ending 
 up somewhere near the door he turned and 
 sprawled out of it, and half fell downstairs, 
 mumbling to himself. With considerable diffi 
 culty he found the doorknob, and charged out into 
 the street, where he went lurching off toward the 
 Square. 
 
 Peter, standing in consternation in the middle 
 of his room, was swept alternately by sheer 
 amazement at such a thing, by anger, by disgust, 
 and finally by laughter. Then he became penitent 
 and ashamed of his own thoughtless part in the 
 business, and worried that David would meet with 
 some trouble on his way home. He hurried down 
 stairs and out into the street. David was not to be 
 seen, nor was he in the Square, but Peter found 
 the windows of his room lighted, so he guessed 
 that David had come safely home, and returned 
 slowly to his own rooms, wondering what it was 
 all about, and resolved to have a very plain talk 
 with David on the morrow. 
 
 But on the morrow that gentleman was disin 
 clined to discuss the matter. He was grumpy and 
 vague, and after admitting that he was sorry, he 
 was anxious to drop the whole thing. Peter came 
 away wondering if things had gone wrong with 
 David, and what might have happened. David, 
 he thought, seemed to be breaking up rather badly, 
 
80 PETER KINDRED 
 
 almost as though he were trying to come to grips 
 with something and couldn t. 
 
 But he had no chance to talk to him about it, for 
 he didn t see him again for several days, and 
 when David did come carelessly into his room 
 again, it was more the David of old, so there was 
 no way of broaching the subject. 
 
 Peter s sunny room commended itself to Don 
 Mark, and so did Peter. There was in both the 
 room and in Peter a quiet acceptance of his pres 
 ence that he found exceedingly pleasant ; it was a 
 spot where his own tempestuous convictions might 
 be aired and listened to with the proper contem 
 plation, and a man ready to listen at any time, 
 incapable of argument, but worth while winning 
 over to a cause, for a certain quaint seriousness 
 about him. He took to dropping in on Peter at 
 odd times, between lectures, or late at night, often 
 to sit silently smoking while Peter worked at his 
 desk. Sometimes Peter, coming home from Bos 
 ton, found him there, and the sight of the fair- 
 haired westerner waiting his return gave him a 
 w r arm and stirring feeling of being well be 
 friended, and then he bustled about hospitably, to 
 Don s half grateful amusement. 
 
 Often Frank stormed in from the welter of his 
 room, and waged philosophical battles with Don, 
 while Peter curled up into a ball on the couch and 
 smoked and dreamed. Then he was half sneak- 
 ingly glad that David was not there; somehow, 
 
PETER KINDRED 81 
 
 David had no place in the scene, David, with his 
 own personal conclusions, was out of place, 
 dwarfed, unimportant among philosophies. David 
 was not an ist or an ite, he was just David, with 
 feelings, illogical, unreflective. Peter probably 
 never reasoned all that out by himself, but half 
 sensed it. He was caught up in admiration for 
 knowledge, for criticism, authoritative and severe, 
 and above all, correct. David would not be cor 
 rect, would not be authoritative, and David, 
 too, would not be content to sit silently lis 
 tening. 
 
 Against the Carverism of Don Mark, Frank ad 
 vanced the tenets of Pragmatism and their good 
 humored but heated discussions reverberated 
 through the house until it shook. Frank would 
 never admit the glory of stamping a man any 
 thing or for any end but himself. 
 
 "Piffle and shucks!" Don cried more than once, 
 "if you make a single man his own end, in a very 
 short time there ll be no men. And there you ve 
 defeated yourself." 
 
 "On the other hand," Frank shouted, "you 
 have no right to hypothecate a will to live at all. 
 If I want more to eat opium than live, why should 
 Hive?" 
 
 "In order to eat opium, if for nothing else!" 
 Don cried. "But if you did eat opium and died, 
 I d still be alive doing what I wanted to. So 
 who d be better off? You wouldn t be eating 
 opium, you know, you d be dead." 
 
82 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Frank laughed with a great show of scorn. 
 "And if I preferred to die?" he asked. 
 
 "Hum. Well . . . Then you d die. And your 
 blooming philosophy would die with you. So 1 
 don t see where ..." 
 
 "You haven t said a thing. Why, it is better to 
 live if you want . . . " 
 
 "You forget one thing . . ." 
 
 "You have to explain to me . . ." 
 
 "... Competition would naturally force . . ." 
 
 ". . . Each man attend to his own . . ." 
 
 "Bosh!" 
 
 "Fiddle sticks!" 
 
 Silence. 
 
 Peter rarely entered into the arguments that 
 raged between Don and Frank, but leaned back 
 in his chair, absorbing the color and the tenor 
 of the discussions, with a contented feeling that 
 they were important, and that he was listening. 
 He heard a great talk of Carver and James and 
 Santayana, not very much that he understood, 
 but a good deal that aroused his curiosity. Yet 
 just what Pragmatism amounted to from a prac 
 tical point of view, no one seemed able to tell him, 
 and he was equally at sea about Carver. He 
 could get no nearer to either than the belief that 
 they were both attitudes toward life, to be slowly 
 digested the one or the other, and then allowed 
 to color things as they would, and to give different 
 meanings to things according to their various 
 states of digestion. Peter guessed shrewdly that 
 
PETER KINDRED 83 
 
 no two Pragmatists were more alike than any two 
 members of the same family were apt to be, and 
 that Carver was the same affair, a digested atti- 
 tnde, affecting various people differently. What 
 Peter did not quite know was that neither the one 
 nor the other could be administered like a large, 
 sudden capsule, but that both needed a gradual 
 nibbling. 
 
 But there was something very satisfying about 
 
 Carver. 
 
 
 
 With the winter Peter began to move in wider 
 social circles, due as much to Frank and Don Mark 
 as to the fact that he was not seen so often with 
 David. Frank spoke of it to Don, as the two stood 
 at a window of Frank s room, watching the morn 
 ing street. Peter and David went by, walking to 
 gether and talking. Frank shook his head and 
 tapped his fingers on the glass impatiently. 
 
 "I wish Kindred would leave that chap alone," 
 he said. 
 
 Don looked reflective. "Why?" he asked. 
 "There s nothing particularly wrong with him?" 
 
 "No. But he s spoiling Harvard for Peter." 
 
 "So?" 
 
 "It hurts Peter to be seen around with him." 
 
 "Because he s a Jew?" 
 
 "Yes, rather. And because he s not a particu 
 larly pleasant fellow. A bit hysterical . . . im 
 patient . . . restless . . . bitter. I always feel 
 that he might burst out quite nastily at any mo- 
 
84 PETER KINDRED 
 
 ment. Oh, I m not down on Jews as a race. 
 There s something ... a rather pathetic and 
 wistful sweetness about Jewish women . . . some 
 Jewish women. And some Jewish men have a lot 
 of fire. But this chap David doesn t seem to have 
 found himself ... a bit volcanic still, and grum 
 bling. Too eager. And then, of course, he s a 
 Jew, and Peter simply can t take him around with 
 him, Don, because the men who might like Peter, 
 don t like Jews. I don t blame them . . . they ve 
 been brought up that way. As for me, I dislike 
 the man. He doesn t seem to want to trust any 
 body. " 
 
 "I do blame those fellows you mentioned," said 
 Don. " There may be a lot of good stuff in David. 
 Why, Peter himself is no intellectual giant, old 
 Frank. " 
 
 "No, but Peter is a dear lad. You must admit 
 that, Don." 
 
 "I wouldn t call anybody a dear lad. Not in a 
 thousand years." 
 
 "I suppose in your silly system you d have 
 numbers to describe a man. For instance, so and 
 so, slightly eggy, series 777, No. 1756. So and so, 
 malty, series X . . ." 
 
 "Well, at any rate I wouldn t have a country 
 full of dope fiends and suicide clubs compet- 
 ing . . ." 
 
 "Yah! You admitted yourself the other night 
 that everybody would die and that there d be no 
 competition." 
 
PETER KINDRED 85 
 
 "But I was thinking of this, Frank. Seriously, 
 don t be absurd. You can t live without competi 
 tion. Why, even the Pragmatists would be com 
 peting among themselves for the chance . . ." 
 
 I do not believe that Peter realized even faintly 
 that his waning intimacy with David was widen 
 ing his social life in college ; if he had, he would 
 probably have haunted David out of pure pride 
 and stubbornness. Nevertheless, he did not miss 
 David very much, and made hardly more than a 
 half-hearted effort to see him. David, in his 
 moodiness, exaggerated Peter s carelessness and 
 made it even harder, as a result, for them to meet 
 as they used to. He felt, unjustly, that Peter 
 was ashamed of him ; he knew that Frank and Don 
 were not glad to see him, and believed that Peter 
 had been influenced by them. Although he would 
 not blame Peter, he adopted a general sense of 
 injury that Peter did not like at all, and could not 
 understand. 
 
 During the Christmas holidays Frank spent a 
 night with Peter in New York, much to the excite 
 ment of Edith and his mother, and to his father s 
 half proud satisfaction, for, poor soul, Frank, at 
 any rate, was a tangible evidence of his sacrifice 
 to give Peter a college education, and a deal more 
 satisfaction than a long bill for books. Peter was 
 half apologetic for his parents, and wholly for his 
 home, but Frank caused him to feel ashamed of 
 himself by enjoying everything hugely, and drop 
 ping his belongings familiarly everywhere. 
 
86 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Cambridge, cold and snowy, blinked with sun 
 at him as he came out of the subway. The Square 
 Avas at the edge of Alaska or Labrador; beyond it 
 stretched the white country, the pines, silence, 
 and the winter sky. Or so it seemed to Peter. 
 He smiled at the Yard and at the gray and red 
 houses across from it, as though it all were home, 
 and he a returning prodigal delighted to see 
 everything where it was when he left. He went in 
 to Jimmie s for breakfast, to Jimmie "s where 
 there were probably the most succulent eggs to be 
 had in all North America, and exchanged greet 
 ings with four men. Only the elite ate at Jim- 
 mie s, and it gave Peter a deal of satisfaction. It 
 was a small place and Jimmie made it his busi 
 ness to know the names of all the worth while 
 customers. I say Jimmie but I really mean Aus 
 tin, for he was the most important man behind 
 the counter; to him you gave your order, and he 
 called it back to a farther angle of the counter 
 where sandwiches were made. It was Austin who 
 boiled your eggs in a machine which slid up and 
 down and ticked, and Austin who prepared your 
 coffee. As I said, he knew the names of all the 
 worth while customers, and if he failed to remem 
 ber you toward the close of your freshman year, 
 you grew tired of Jimmie s. Austin was a bit sus 
 picious of Peter, but bowed to him, and had 
 trusted him once or twice. So Peter patronized 
 Jimmie s and let his eggs tick for three minutes 
 and a half exactly. Heigh-ho . . . 
 
PETER KINDRED 87 
 
 Peter did not find all Harvard patterned after 
 either Frank or Don Mark. Often he came into 
 Frank s room to find it in the possession of men 
 of many clubs, making a great low-hung fog of 
 smoke of their cigarettes. The talk was always 
 lively, and interspersed with laughter, but curi 
 ously personal and slight, made up of happenings 
 and opinions, gossip of Cambridge and Boston, 
 discussion of courses, of motors, stories of various 
 women. They were inclined to accept Peter if 
 he remained unobtrusive and asked no questions, 
 and, indeed, he was only too glad to do that, for 
 they were singularly careless and untroubled 
 men, and to Peter they seemed to be wander 
 ing in a dream, along old paths, almost without 
 effort. 
 
 He went on one party with Frank in the demi 
 monde, and sat at a table silently beside a thin- 
 lipped, bony-nosed woman in a low-cut bodice. 
 He sat nervously fingering his glass of Khine 
 wine and seltzer, and trying to think of what men 
 had spoken of on like parties in the stories he had 
 read. After a certain amount of silence and un 
 interesting conversation the bony-nosed lady di 
 rected her attention to the man at her other side, 
 and indulged in a patter of pleasantry with him, 
 while Peter sat and listened and wondered how it 
 could flow on with so little effort, all about noth 
 ing. Afterwards he left the party and went home, 
 taking a deep gulp of fresh air as he came down 
 the steps of the cafe, and then waited unconscion- 
 
SB PETER KINDRED 
 
 ably for Frank to come home at a wee Hour and 
 delight him with a tale of wickedness. 
 
 After mid years Frank took him to a tea in 
 Boston, and took Don Mark along as well, a tea 
 in the great world. Don made a great fuss about 
 it, and objected as hard as he was able, but Frank 
 overwhelmed him by sheer force of insistence, and 
 Peter was so curious and so anxious for Don to 
 go along, to keep him company if for nothing else, 
 that the westerner gave in at last and went, grum 
 bling loudly. 
 
 To Peter s dismay, Frank led them up the steps 
 of a broad- wind owed brownstone house on Beacon 
 Street, and a butler opened the door. Peter 
 slipped out of his coat, and stood meekly near 
 Don, fingering his chin and his tie, tremendously 
 glad that he wasn t alone. Finally Frank went 
 on up the thickly carpeted stairway, with Don 
 striding defiantly behind him, and Peter bringing 
 up the craven rear. 
 
 There was a certain flutter of introductions in 
 a room patterned idly in deep tones and peoples 9 
 faces, in the colors of women s frocks, warmth, 
 movement, and an odor of delicate perfume, the 
 scent of furs, and flowers, the hum of voices. 
 Peter, moving from the doorway past the outer 
 most circle of it, became absorbed in the pattern 
 of colors and voices. He saw the faces of Har 
 vard men here and there, club men, some of whom 
 he knew, some famous names he had heard of, 
 faces he passed on the coast sometimes. He had 
 
PETER KINDRED 89 
 
 a confused sense of women, fat ones and thin ones. 
 Finally he found himself in a corner with Don 
 Mark, watching the pattern again. A tall, slim, 
 haughty woman passed them, and looked at Peter 
 with dark, heavily lashed eyes. Peter gulped. 
 "Ooh," he said to Don. 
 
 His friend sniffed. "Did vou like that?" he 
 asked. Peter nodded. 
 
 "Well," said Don judicially, "she s no find of 
 yours. Her name is something or other Peawinkle 
 and they say that she s the most beautiful woman 
 in Boston. Frank says so, anyhow." 
 
 Peter nodded, as though to say that he could 
 well understand it. Don shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "What does she do with it!" he asked. 
 
 "With what!" 
 
 "Her good looks, of course. What else has she 
 to do anything with?" 
 
 Peter laughed. "I don t know," he said, "I 
 suppose she plays dolly with it." 
 
 "Well," said Don, "it s . . . it s conspicuous 
 waste. . . . On the other hand, look there. 
 
 Peter s eyes followed the other s across the 
 room, where a woman who had just come in was 
 shaking hands with the hostess. She wore a fur- 
 trimmed turban, and beneath it her eyes were owl- 
 ishly encircled with tortoise-shell spectacles. Her 
 cheeks were pink, as though she had just been 
 walking, and her entire formless body, of me 
 dium build, expressed a vitality and a free swing 
 ing litheness that her loose tweed suit was unable 
 
90 PETER KINDRED 
 
 to conceal. She did not appear to have over much 
 hair; what she had, of a reddish-brown tint, was 
 drawn carefully up under her turban. Her thin 
 ankles went suddenly into large, low-heeled shoes 
 that were planted firmly on the floor, with the 
 toes turned the least bit toward each other. 
 
 "Radcliffe," said Peter deliberately. 
 
 "Very probably. Now there, my dear Peter, is 
 the sort of woman I could talk to." 
 
 They were joined by an acquaintance of Peter s, 
 a man he had met once or twice during his fresh 
 man year, and whom he had since occasionally 
 encountered on the street. In Cambridge the fel 
 low, who was a vague but pleasant young man 
 and an editor of the "Crimson," had often made 
 it a careless point not to recognize Peter, but find 
 ing him in good company in Boston, he strolled 
 over. 
 
 "Hello, Kindred, " he said, "glad to see you 
 around. Come here often?" 
 
 Peter, at a loss for words, said nothing, but 
 colored faintly and smiled. 
 
 "Jolly crowd," murmured the man politely. 
 Peter eagerly agreed, and after another silence 
 introduced Don Mark, whose name for some rea 
 son seemed familiar to the "Crimson" editor. 
 The two men shook hands, and Peter, in his pride 
 in Don, recovered his self-possession. By that 
 time the windows were blue with dusk, and near 
 to them someone lighted a lamp. The pattern 
 grew together again. A few people were leaving. 
 
PETER KINDRED 91 
 
 "Hit your exams all right?" the " Crimson " 
 editor asked. 
 
 "OH, yes," said Peter. "I had a little trouble 
 with Indie Philosophy, but the rest were easy." 
 
 "Battling good course, that Indie business. I 
 had it last year. Silly stuff, isn t it. I wonder if 
 those people believed all that about the egg and 
 the circle and the rest of it. What do you think?" 
 
 "Hm. Well, of course ..." 
 
 They were joined by a bored, dissipated-looking 
 man in a dark cutaway, his long feet encased in 
 gray spats. The editor turned to him. 
 
 "Hi, Babe." 
 
 "0 Ronny." 
 
 "I say . . . the Peawinkle is as cool as ice, with 
 the whole blooming Cambridge police force out 
 hunting for poor old Lem. Perfectly marvelous 
 what?" 
 
 "Oh, very choice, very choice," said Babe. 
 "The silly ass woke me up at three in the morning 
 with his damn howling." 
 
 "Was that the racket I heard along Mount Au 
 burn Street Monday night?" Peter asked. 
 
 "Very likely. The creature tanked himself 
 tremendously in town, and when he couldn t see 
 any more he nearly murdered a policeman, and 
 drove his car all over Cambridge. So I guess you 
 heard him. He woke up weeping in a garbage 
 can." 
 
 "What had Miss Peawinkle to do with it?" 
 Peter asked, and bit his lip an instant too late. 
 
92 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Babe looked at him coldly, and then let his eyes 
 glance over the room. He turned to the other 
 man. 
 
 "If yon can get that little black-eyed vixen yon 
 had out last night, bring her along, and we 11 take 
 in the McGill game Saturday, " he said. 
 
 "Perhaps I can," said the editor. "Whom yon 
 with!" 
 
 "I think I asked that Follies girl once when I 
 was drunk, what s her name? She s jealous of 
 your black-eyed girl. We might have a little fun, 
 you know." 
 
 * Eight ! " The two men moved away. 
 
 "I m looking for McGill money," Babe was say 
 ing, * but you can t find any. I have an idea ..." 
 
 Don and Peter were alone again. Across the 
 room the woman with tortoise-shell glasses and 
 ground-gripping shoes was taking her leave. 
 Frank was moving toward them from a corner, 
 where he had been all afternoon talking very ear 
 nestly to a laughing, blue-eyed woman. Peter 
 was silently munching a cracker, looking at the 
 floor. He was thinking of his own tawny woman, 
 and that made him homesick. 
 
 He thought of Don s insistence that people 
 make something of what they had been given, and 
 smiled. It was rather splendid, and gave him an 
 answer to Babe and Ronny and Jill, and he wanted 
 one. And that was Carver, too. 
 
 Through March Peter was given over to the 
 
PETER KINDRED 93 
 
 digesting of Carver, that is, a Carver already di 
 gested by Don Mark, chewed into a palatable 
 mush, but tasting, nevertheless, of Mark. For 
 that matter, there was no other way to get it at 
 all. Peter was ineligible to any class Carver con 
 ducted, and from the occasional lectures he at 
 tended with Don, he caught only production, pro 
 duction, production, and that needed translation. 
 He captured a certain sense of immortal life and 
 group power, life breeding life and fighting for 
 an immortality of future generations, or at any 
 rate, an immortality as long as the generations 
 lasted. It put his family in a new light, and gave 
 him a passing tolerance and affection for his 
 father. 
 
 This digestion went on at all times, under all 
 circumstances. With Don he plowed through the 
 mud of late March, and rambled with him on fine 
 days around the countryside, well buttoned and 
 muffled to his ears. With Don he swung down 
 Tremont Street at night, watching the drift of 
 faces go by under the white yellow light, sniffing 
 at the air to detect in its moistness an earnest of 
 early spring. In Don s room and in his own, in 
 Frank s room, at Jimmy s where he and Don 
 sometimes ate a late breakfast, at Wirth s, at the 
 Touraine where they sat occasionally late at night, 
 leaning their elbows on the table, watching the 
 people about them, talking desultorily of this and 
 that everywhere and at all times he was taking 
 hold of a philosophy and an attitude that was 
 
94 PETER KINDRED 
 
 neither Carver nor Mark, and yet would be both. 
 Often the intense earnestness of Don, overshoot 
 ing its aim, amused him, sometimes it even pro 
 voked him to a mild asperity. Then the clamor of 
 their discussion made waiters and neighbors un 
 easy until they had gone. 
 
 "No, sir," Don said decisively, " enjoyment for 
 me doesn t sit up somewhere on a pink cloud, or 
 for you either. It s a result; a result of work. 
 I enjoy myself when I m working, because I m 
 pushing somewhere. Do you remember when I 
 asked you what the Peawinkle did with her beauty 
 and you laughed? That was serious. If she does 
 nothing with it, what satisfaction, what real satis 
 faction do you think it gives her?" 
 
 "Is it no satisfaction to be beautiful, and to 
 have a million men flopping around at your feet?" 
 
 "No, no," said Don quickly. "It s not a real 
 satisfaction at all, it s an excitation, an erotic 
 titillation. Satisfaction means effort and accom 
 plishment, production, a pride in something done. 
 There s no satisfaction in love, Peter, no true sat 
 isfaction in it, just the flooding and draining of a 
 nervous reservoir." 
 
 "But what is a woman to do with beauty? She 
 might marry, I suppose, and have a lot of chil 
 dren." 
 
 "Ah," Don said. "Can you think of anything 
 more natural for a woman to do? And then her 
 beauty might be of some use." 
 
 "I suppose that if I were Frank," Peter 
 
PETER KINDRED 95 
 
 laughed, "I d shout but what if she doesn t 
 want a baby? " 
 
 "And if you were Frank," Don cried gaily, 
 "I d show you how in that case she and her beauty 
 would be quite gone some fifty years before my 
 wife s beauty had reached the third generation." 
 
 A waiter came silently with oysters and a 
 lobster, and Don made a great business of swal 
 lowing the oysters, while Peter busied himself 
 with the lobster, chewing it as hard as he could in 
 the hope that it would thereby have less than the 
 usual ill effect on him the next day. 
 
 With the beat of April rain on his dusty win 
 dows, and with the fog of lights at evening 
 through the wet mist, the tawny woman sprang 
 resurgent to his mind, and did battle there with 
 Don Mark, with Carver, and with Peter s father. 
 She it was who drove him again to the screen 
 theaters, with a new unrest and yet with a new 
 satisfaction, quieting his intellectual life with a 
 delicious apathy. She caused him to take delight 
 in screen romances, in heroes and heroines, in the 
 fabulous business of kissing, and the screen pa 
 thos of renunciation. The women stirred him 
 but not as before; they aroused in him a quiet 
 dreaminess of some past happening in his own 
 life, tenuous and sweet. He started to read a 
 story by Chambers, and hid the book covertly 
 away, fearful lest Don Mark should see it. 
 
 David s moodiness increased with the spring. 
 
96 PETER KINDRED 
 
 He did not take kindly to Don Mark, nor to Car 
 ver either, and burst out into frequent expressions 
 of bitterness against Harvard, against the coast, 
 against what he chose to call Peter s growing in 
 tellectual ossification. They had several rather 
 acrid disputes, in which Peter, enthusiastic, but 
 lacking in facts, did not come out the victor, but 
 from which he emerged with a sense of David s 
 emotional stupidity. Now and then David was 
 drunk again; sometimes Peter found him in his 
 room, apologetic after such a dispute, maudlin, 
 hardly able to walk down the stairs. Once he 
 vomited on Peter s rug and Peter s heart was bit 
 ter against David for a long while after that. But 
 there was hardly any chance to come to the root 
 of things ; when Peter tried, he met a wall of re 
 serve, and gave up trying, but he did find out that 
 David had made no progress with his music what 
 soever, and David admitted that he had torn up 
 his sonata. That time David seemed eager to 
 talk, almost pathetically eager, but Peter had a 
 class to attend, and the bell rang. When Peter 
 returned to his room, David was gone. 
 
 Peter wasted little time in missing David, find 
 ing Frank and Don Mark sufficient companion 
 ship. They stimulated in him a new sort of imagi 
 nation, constructive toward life, and above all 
 critical toward haphazard emotion. The life 
 they offered him, the friendship and intimacy, 
 was a cleaner thinking, harder hitting affair, a 
 broader, sunnier point of view. Peter began to 
 
PETER KINDRED 97 
 
 feel as though his life were no longer lonely and 
 unkempt, but travelling in a sort of sweep. His 
 house on Holyoke Street became even more inti 
 mate to him, since he and Frank and Don were 
 so often together in one room or the other. He 
 began to take confidence in himself, since he was 
 no longer Peter Kindred alone, but an integral 
 part of a group of three, composed, besides him 
 self, of two men in whom he felt reason to take 
 pride. He began to reflect a bit of the pride him 
 self, as though he were a deal wiser and gayer 
 and better off after all than the chap Smith, who 
 may have been doing well in business, but who was 
 missing the splendid, careless friendliness of life, 
 and the enthusiasm of fiery convictions, beliefs, 
 and intolerances. 
 
 And so the spring blossomed into lilacs, trans 
 figured with gay companionship and insistent 
 argument, with light-hearted adventure and in 
 tense debates, for Peter with an elated, restless 
 dreaming of the tawny woman, and a sly and 
 stealthy consideration of tabooed romance. Even 
 the tawny woman, upon the background of the 
 house in Holyoke Street and the developing Peter, 
 attained a new, if remote, but rather serene 
 dignity. 
 
 With all this freshening, Peter grew dull to 
 the worry of what might be ahead of him, and how 
 well he might be preparing for it. With the 
 lengthening days, the growing green, the smell of 
 new grass and old, awakening trees, it was hard 
 
98 PETER KINDRED 
 
 to be much troubled with thoughts of his own 
 dependence, hard to do more than accept each day 
 blithely, and feel the muscles of his enthusiasm 
 and his youth, swelling under the driving power 
 of his friends. Light voices floated to him down 
 the street through the soft spring evenings as he 
 leaned out of his window, the faint, sensuous mel 
 ancholy of the season lulled his body, leaving his 
 mind content and fertile. A drowsy beauty took 
 possession of Cambridge, and among voices and 
 trees, among lilacs and the tinkle of half heard 
 tunes, Peter moved through May. 
 
 Toward its end David came into Peter s room 
 at last, and announced fairly calmly that he was 
 through with college, and meant to leave for Eu 
 rope within a week. The very shock of it left 
 Peter without anything to say, and that gave 
 David a chance to explain, which he did hurriedly 
 at first, as though he had rehearsed it to himself 
 beforehand. 
 
 "I m wasting my time at Harvard," he said. 
 He tried to carry it off contemplatively, but finally 
 he could not any longer, and burst out, "It s use 
 less, Peter. To tell you the truth, I m through. 
 I don t think you care a hang, but I have to say it 
 anyhow. I m through, that s all." 
 
 You re wrong, David, Peter said gently. I 
 do care. Why are you through? what do you 
 mean!" 
 
 "I mean this," David cried passionately, "that 
 this place is too much for me. I m kept down. 
 
PETER KINDRED 99 
 
 My race is thrown in my face. You yourself . . . 
 Well, there is no encouragement." 
 
 "Encouragement? I thought . . ." 
 
 "Hang it, Peter, it s simply that I ve come no 
 where. There s nowhere to come to." 
 
 "Why, David!" 
 
 "Last year I was a child, and I knew it, but I 
 said then that this year I d be a man. I m as full 
 of childishness as ever. There s been nothing to 
 grasp, nothing to lay hold of. I ve not grown, not 
 developed. Last year I should have been con 
 tent, saying next year, marking time, thinking 
 of what I d do. But this is next year, and I m no 
 different. All my ambitions have come to noth 
 ing. I have no friends, no place in college, no 
 satisfaction with myself, no new life. But that 
 isn t the important thing." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "It s this. I can t write music. I can t think 
 music. I haven t the force to carry myself 
 through anything. I Ve done nothing all this year, 
 nothing, absolutely nothing. I can t write songs, 
 Peter. The sonata was the most puerile thing you 
 ever heard, all that I ve done so far, and even at 
 that I ve run into a blank wall of sheer incapacity. 
 Deep in me somewhere I feel something big that 
 wants to be heard, and I sit at my desk, and I sit 
 at my piano, and nothing comes, nothing but 
 drivel. It s heartbreaking. And back of it all 
 is weakness. I haven t the technique, the sureness 
 in myself, confidence. I need a man to sav 
 
100 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Lookee here, young fellow, follow me and we ll 
 do big things together. There s no one here like 
 that. No one at all." 
 
 There was a silence, and then Peter spoke. 
 
 "Aren t you, perhaps, too sensitive, David?" 
 
 "No, I m not. You haven t been cut by the men 
 in your own line of work because you re a Jew. 
 You haven t been looking desperately for some 
 big thing to grasp hold of, and then found only 
 little dried-up facts. You haven t been up night 
 after night until dawn racking your brains and 
 your body and every last bit of you for a spark of 
 something real. You haven t been alone as I 
 have. And I wouldn t care, Peter, I wouldn t care 
 for the loneliness, but God in heaven, if I were 
 only getting ahead!" 
 
 "I know. For awhile I ..." 
 
 "No, it s not the same thing. You re not trying 
 to express yourself as I am. But I don t know 
 what there is in me to express. With whom shall 
 I grow here at Harvard? The big men won t have 
 me. At what shall I work? Exercises? I ll 
 never learn what music is and what life is and 
 what the one has to do with the other by writing 
 dum da de dum a dozen different ways on a scrap 
 of paper. 
 
 "I have to get away, Peter. This place is pur 
 poseless. If I stay here, and have luck, some day 
 I may be the music teacher of a boys school in 
 New England. That won t do. I must get where 
 there is a purpose to things, and live with people 
 
PETER KINbRt!fl 101 
 
 who believe, and who can strike fire in me. Then 
 I can fill myself with it, and let it work out in me 
 its own way. But here why, man, they just dod 
 der along at exercises all their lives. They might 
 as well be carpenters." 
 
 "Somewhere in America there is fire, I think." 
 "Flame, but no fire. Men are either hungry, or 
 well fed. If they re well fed, they are satisfied. 
 If they re hungry they howl and fight and rage 
 around until they re fed, and then they rest, and 
 smile, and sleep after dinner, and grow fat." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE summer sun, heating the roof tops of the 
 east, and staring out across the sea from its 
 position directly above the uncomfortable towers 
 of New York, saw David in mid-ocean, and Peter 
 below itself, at home. Of the two I should deem 
 Peter the more uncomfortable, and David the un- 
 happier. It bade fair to be a hot summer ; Peter 
 was never content in New York, and the adven 
 tures of the summer before added definitely to his 
 discontent. He caught himself listening to the 
 fog horns of ships as the sounds drifted from the 
 river and faintly from the bay below, and found 
 himself dreaming idly of the sea, of ships and 
 sails, of women, and of old cities. But his mind 
 was tranced in a different manner than it had been 
 in the spring, for it was an uneasy absent-minded 
 ness, shot with small revolts and occasional futile 
 beatings at the bare walls of the summer. The 
 enforced intimacy with his family was not, per 
 haps, quite as unpleasant to Peter as it was a 
 decided shock both to Peter and his family to dis- 
 
 102 
 
PETER KINDRED 103 
 
 cover each other. The two elder Kindreds had 
 perforce stood still for many years, and, save for 
 a certain stubborn settling process, were much the 
 same as they had been ten years before. Edith, 
 in an impressionable age, had grown with her gen 
 eration, but gradually enough for her parents to 
 accustom themselves to the change. Peter, how 
 ever, shooting off in another direction entirely, 
 presented a startling and sudden metamorphosis, 
 for you must consider that he had not spent any 
 considerable time in intimacy with his family since 
 he had entered college. 
 
 Edith was anxious to make some sort of hero 
 out of Peter at first, but he would fit into no pos 
 sible heroic mould, as she understood heroes, and 
 because of his very cutting scorn of all the heroes 
 she knew and reverenced, she was forced at last 
 to consider him an anarchist and no hero at all. 
 In turn, Peter gave her no serious consideration, 
 thinking that she lived in a fashion not only ob 
 viously thoughtless, but of no use to him whatso 
 ever, either to study or to criticize more than in 
 passing. So the two went their separate roads, 
 with no remarkable good will toward each other, 
 but with growing sarcasm making itself more and 
 more evident toward the end of the summer, a 
 sarcasm, however, without much rancor. 
 
 His father and mother, from his role of depend 
 ent, might not be so lightly regarded. They were 
 prepared to find their son differing somewhat 
 from themselves, in his treatment of certain phe- 
 
104 PETER KINDRED 
 
 nomena of his generation, just as Edith differed 
 from them in her free and more inconsequential 
 attitude toward sex, toward modesty and be 
 havior and the like. But they were not prepared 
 to have sex in general probed very deeply, or 
 modesty, or any questions they considered to have 
 answered themselves for their own generation; 
 they were not prepared to have their own behavior 
 questioned, or their morality, or any ancient and 
 honorable institution they may have supported. 
 Peter, coming from an atmosphere of nihilism, 
 where nothing was sacred unless it was logical 
 and vehement, was a disturbing element, and was 
 in turn disturbed to find it necessary to defend 
 his attitude at all, and baffled at the unreflective 
 but stubborn opposition. It seemed to him al 
 most impossible to discuss any matter clearly 
 with his family, for they were none of them able 
 to see anything impersonally, that is, separate 
 and apart from its effect upon themselves, al 
 though in justice he was forced to confess that his 
 father was not as bad in that respect as his 
 mother and his sister. But what his father gained 
 in logical powers, he lost in being both impatient 
 and unimaginative and cursed with the anathema 
 of the middle class, a hard-worked but full-bellied 
 and unbitten spirit. 
 
 Mrs. Kindred took sides with Edith inconti 
 nently against Peter s outlandish ideas, but his 
 father kept some slight semblance of a judicial 
 spirit, enough, at least, to listen to Peter until his 
 
PETER KINDRED 105 
 
 patience gave out. Then he would bang his fist 
 down on the table, frightening his wife and daugh 
 ter into a temporary quiet, and order Peter to be 
 still. Peter was unwilling to combat his father s 
 authority, somewhat from a habit of obedience 
 that could not be so lightly put aside, and some 
 what, too, from a sense of dependence on him. 
 The dependence irked him sorely, and it bothered 
 him that he was forced to be both dependent and 
 rebellious, but he was not brave enough by half 
 to renounce that dependence and accept the con 
 sequences. He wanted to go back to college in 
 the fall ; he wanted time to think and time to grow, 
 more than he cared for the satisfaction of assert 
 ing himself. To his mother and sister his attitude 
 was unintelligible, but they thought it a passing 
 phase in his growth, quite naturally coincident 
 with what they took to be his wild college years. 
 To his father, however, he was a source of deeper 
 dissatisfaction and puzzlement and disappoint 
 ment, for his father had sent him vaguely to col 
 lege thinking to make him a gentleman, and so 
 far he had come out as his mother said, an anar 
 chist. Once or twice he thought of taking him out 
 of college and putting him to work, but since Peter 
 could graduate in another year by working a bit 
 harder, he decided to go through with it. Once he 
 nearly sent Peter from his table entirely. It was 
 on the occasion of a visit to the Kindreds by a 
 young married couple; the woman was big with 
 child, and no mention was made of her condition, 
 
106 PETER KINDRED 
 
 and no mention of children, the Kindreds trying 
 not to see anything unusual in the woman s ap 
 pearance, and the visitors trying to display no 
 self-consciousness. Peter, from diffidence, did as 
 his family did, but the next day argued the matter 
 at table. 
 
 "Why isn t she to be congratulated? " he asked. 
 "She will be soon, at any rate." 
 
 "That is not table talk," his mother said 
 sharply. 
 
 "Why not? There s nothing immoral about it. 
 Why should a woman be ashamed to have a child? 
 It s rather fine. Carver . . ." 
 
 "You re indelicate, to say the least," Edith 
 said. 
 
 "Oh, why be so fussy about people s feelings?" 
 Peter exclaimed. "They wouldn t have so many 
 feelings if they thought more about them." 
 
 "That will do, Peter," his father said quietly. 
 "You are not qualified to criticize our feelings 
 about things. We understand them better than 
 you do." 
 
 "Yes, sir. But certainly it s no secret that 
 she s to have a child, and she must be pretty glad 
 about it. So why be so secretive?" 
 
 "I think you re perfectly disgusting, Peter!" 
 cried Edith. "You needn t try to be so smart 
 about everything!" 
 
 "Really, dear," his mother added, "you are 
 very silly. Things like that are holy; they simply 
 are not talked about." 
 
PETER KINDRED 107 
 
 "It s just the holy things that ought to be talked 
 about. If I had a child I d give a party as soon as 
 I knew I was going to have it." 
 
 "Peter!" 
 
 Mrs. Kindred turned to her husband. "No," 
 she said, "I can t listen to much more of this. It 
 isn t right. And Edith here . . . If you don t put 
 your foot down pretty soon ..." 
 
 "I pity your poor wife s feelings with you for 
 a husband," said Edith. 
 
 "I ll never marry a woman with feelings!" 
 Petei answered hotly. 
 
 "Be quiet, Peter!" cried his father. "I ve 
 heard enough. If you can t think of anything de 
 cent to talk about, keep still." 
 
 Peter s declaration of belief and faith in the 
 form of his intention to marry no woman with 
 feelings, was more of a surprise to himself than 
 to Edith, who was not paying much attention to 
 what he said, but to what effect her remarks made 
 on him. He had never thought of marrying any 
 one, of any kind, and yet the announcement of the 
 sort of woman he did not intend to marry popped 
 into his mouth as naturally as though it were quite 
 at home there. There were other announcements, 
 loo, that kept jumping to his tongue, surprising 
 himself more than his family, thoughts that were 
 only becoming articulate out of a brew of 
 years. 
 
 His father did not ask him to work during the 
 summer, so he did not, but spent the time in read- 
 
108 PETER KINDRED 
 
 ing, in writing letters, in wandering idly abont, 
 resting, arguing, and rebelling. It was a weary 
 sort of life, with no point in it, and as hot days 
 followed each other across the sky, and the asphalt 
 grew soft and sticky under the sun, the breathless 
 nights almost sleepless, Peter cursed his life and 
 wished that he had done anything, anything other 
 than what he had done, wished that he were in 
 Paris with David, in the West with Don Mark, 
 anywhere save beneath the intolerably close roof 
 of his home. There were nothing but small things 
 to do, and to wait as patiently as possible for the 
 fall. 
 
 In August the Kindreds moved to a seaside re 
 sort for two weeks, and from there Peter wrote to 
 Don Mark. 
 
 "In the surf," he wrote, "grown men and 
 women are like children, making up the silliest 
 games without either beginning or ending, jump 
 ing about with a fearful display of energy, and 
 splashing and doing nothing. An hour afterward 
 they are slick and dignified and full of little im 
 portances. There s a thought in there somewhere 
 that I can t dig out, so I ll send it to you. I can t 
 dig out very much, for the heat we ve been having, 
 and the general home atmosphere have wilted me 
 considerably. One comes suddenly into a world 
 of intensely personal reactions to everything; 
 mother and Edith seem incapable of thinking of 
 anything at all except as it may affect them, and 
 then they have feelings. ... I am tired to death 
 
PETER KINDRED 109 
 
 of feelings. Has everyone in the world feelings, 
 but you and I and Frank? 
 
 "What do you hear from him since he grad 
 uated? He hasn t written me a word. David is 
 happily settled in Paris, in an attic, I believe, in 
 the Quarter, something he has furnished extrava 
 gantly, no doubt. ... I am fairly eaten with long 
 ing to be in Cambridge again, to smell the autumn 
 fires and the leaves on the ground. When will 
 you be there? I ll probably go up a bit early. . . . 
 Think of running up the creaky old stairs to find 
 you sitting there!" 
 
 Later in the summer he read again Carver s 
 Religion WortJi Having and became definitely a 
 Carverian. Unconsciously his family shaped his 
 resolves, his family and its friends. He thought 
 that they had nothing to bind them to life from 
 one day to another excepting either curiosity or 
 sexual excitement. They were individuals with 
 out a religion, easily thrown into small panics, 
 always in a flutter of some emotion or other. 
 Peter decided that his mother lived from one day 
 to another from pure curiosity for gossip, and 
 a horror of nothingness. 
 
 In this welter of helplessness Peter climbed the 
 crag of the Religion Worth Having and perched 
 there in the sun, watching the faithless moving 
 below him, with pity and contempt so marked as 
 to make himself quite intolerable to his family. 
 Edith, in a letter to her very most intimate friend, 
 described him. 
 
110 PETER KINDRED 
 
 " Peter gets sillier and sillier," she wrote, 
 "and, my dear, he s quite impossible to live with. 
 His latest is somebody by the name of Carver, 
 who wrote a book called The Religion Worth 
 Having. Did you ever read it! It s the dryest 
 thing. Peter gave it to me to read, and when I 
 asked him what it meant he looked at me as 
 though he wanted to bite me and began to talk 
 like a regular old owl about how you re alive if 
 you live, and dead if you don t live, and all you 
 have is life anyhow, and so you have to live and 
 that s why there s a state. Isn t it perfectly fool 
 ish? I laughed right in his face, and he was so 
 angry ! 
 
 Peter wrote to Don in a different tone. 
 
 1 1 Life, life ..." he scribbled, "I think I see it. 
 There is no greater good as far as we know, and 
 what persists then in living must be right, and 
 what dies, wrong. That which makes for life 
 must be moral. I get more clearly your point now, 
 that Carver means not the individual life of three 
 score and ten, but generations upon generations 
 of life. And still I do not quite understand the 
 attitude he would have the individual life take to 
 ward the state. Suppose the state demands the 
 individual life to be given up in order that the 
 state may live? What then? It seems to me that 
 he contradicts himself there." 
 
 To which Don wrote back a long letter. 
 
 "I have just come in from a solemn walk, in 
 which I decided the fate of the trades unions, and 
 
PETER KINDRED 111 
 
 the state of my own soul. It was good to hear 
 from you again ; I am answering at once. 
 
 "Carver does mean the individual life, but to 
 my mind, that life as expressed not only in its own 
 self, but in the generations of its descendants, each 
 one of whom expresses some bit of it, and as an 
 expression itself of generations of ancestors. In 
 other words, and you ve heard this before, a man 
 is longer lived, and thereby richer, whose person 
 ality will be carried on a long while after his body 
 is dead, by his children, and their children. After 
 all, we are most intent upon immortality. Even 
 more than we are on life. If I could send a great 
 name into history for thousands of years by dying 
 to-day, do you think I d hesitate? And yet, if 
 my state fell apart, where would be my immor 
 tality? Where are the heroes of Ethiopia? Don t 
 laugh, I m serious. Besides, alive, I can t com 
 pete alone with other groups, but as the member 
 of a strong group I can, and successfully. 
 
 "There are only a handful of us whose names 
 will go down. For the million others, there is 
 still the sure immortality we know of, sons and 
 daughters. But for them to live, just as for us 
 to live, there is need of a strong state, first and 
 foremost, and they must be given a strong posi 
 tion in that state if we can give it them, or at any 
 rate, no handicap. The children of some of us 
 will be great, even if we are not. 
 
 "That, I think, is what Carver means. We 
 must be willing to give our lives to the state, if 
 
112 PETER KINDRED 
 
 our lives will enable the state and our chil 
 dren and their children to live and remember 
 us." 
 
 Peter jealously guarded his thoughts from his 
 parents ; he knew they would consider them ridic 
 ulous, and despaired of being able to prove any 
 thing to them other than what they were able to 
 feel. Yet when he came to analyze the lives of 
 his mother and father, he could put his hand on 
 nothing definitely wrong. His father worked, as 
 any man should work, and cared for his family as 
 any man should. His mother attended to the 
 home economics. What else was there for them 
 to do, even under a stern Carverian system of 
 production? 
 
 "What should I do, Mister Smarty?" asked 
 Edith. "Stay home from dances and parties to 
 read about labor unions and things!" 
 
 "Yes," said Peter. 
 
 "That would be pleasant, wouldn t it!" Edith 
 exclaimed. "I suppose you think that woman yon 
 went with on the ship last summer sat in her 
 cabin and read philosophy all day!" 
 
 "It would be a holy sight better for your chil 
 dren if you did, and you might know some 
 thing more than love stories then, and dance 
 steps." 
 
 "I d never have any children at that rate," 
 Edith said brazenly, and then blushed fiery red 
 and blamed it at once on Peter. "I think you re 
 perfectly horrid!" she cried. 
 
PETER KINDRED 113 
 
 Here then, was an answer strangely in his own 
 coin, and it silenced him. And yet he knew well 
 enough that Edith had no passion for children, 
 and that it was not for a large family of her own 
 that she danced and gallivanted. Yet Carver him 
 self would admit the primary importance of be 
 ing married. 
 
 And here then, again, Peter failed to see 
 through the fog of aimlessness, the slow drifting 
 movement of the people about him, to the little 
 understood desires which actuated that movement, 
 the dim faith, the jumbled belief. And again Peter 
 would admit of no compromise, but saw only a 
 stark right or a dismal wrong. It was not enough 
 that men should work out their lives to produce 
 for their families as best they could, and that 
 women should marry and breed. Folk were either 
 earnest Carverians, or they had feelings, and were 
 nothing. 
 
 "Well," he said to Edith scornfully, "perhaps 
 it would be better if you didn t have any, 
 then." 
 
 But that was wrong, too, of course, and he knew 
 it was. 
 
 It was a resolved Peter who opened wide his 
 arms to his old room in Cambridge again, as 
 firmly resolved as Don Mark, a Peter who was a 
 man, or very nearly one, with true dislikes and the 
 beginning of a morality. The summer had 
 crowded him, and that had hurried his digestion ; 
 
114 PETER KINDRED 
 
 with the taste of thoughtlessness, of drifting, of 
 undetermined living in his memory, he cleaned 
 and swept his mind of all of it, and then opened 
 it eagerly to violent belief again, but with some 
 thing more definite to criticize than he had ever 
 had before. And yet, in the wind of Cambridge, 
 in the familiar mustiness of the house on Holyoke, 
 the gray, level streets, the low frame dwellings, 
 the bars of yellow sunlight on Mount Auburn 
 Street, and in his friend s boisterous welcome and 
 his crushing handshake Peter found that the sum 
 mer had fled him almost before he looked to see 
 it go. 
 
 But Frank, a graduate, was in the north, and 
 David was in Paris, Don Mark had moved to 
 Frank s old room across the hall from Peter; they 
 missed Frank s noisy blasphemy more than they 
 would have thought possible. All Cambridge 
 seemed quieter for lack of it, and the house on 
 Holyoke was unusually still, as though it w r ere 
 listening for an echo of his feet thundering up 
 the stair. Peter missed David, but secretly and 
 occasionally, at times when he felt tired and con 
 tent and would have liked to smoke while David 
 played. 
 
 He enrolled at once with Carver, but in order 
 to effect the proper distribution of his courses, so 
 that he might graduate at the end of the year, he 
 was forced to fill his schedule as full as it would 
 hold with other courses in other departments. It 
 was with a faint chill of apprehension that he set 
 
PETER KINDRED 115 
 
 his alarm for half past six, and made an oath that 
 he would really make that hour his rising time. 
 But Don was up at six, and there was small chance 
 of Peter lying abed much later, for if he tried to, 
 Don came in and dumped him unceremoniously 
 onto the floor, or stole his covers and left him 
 gradually to freeze, which was worse. 
 
 Acting upon a decision they had made in the 
 spring of the year before, the two bought season 
 tickets to the Symphony, Peter surrendering his 
 savings of the summer and mortgaging his fu 
 ture. Before the concerts started the ticket gave 
 Peter a solemn feeling of aristocratic culture, and 
 the shadow of excitement at the thought of the 
 various pleasant things there were for him to 
 taste of, if he wanted to. 
 
 The autumn was given up to a consideration of 
 all that the summer had brought forward, all the 
 ideas, the questions and the decisions, to hard 
 work, and to enthusiasm for Carver. But since 
 Peter had come to the gist of his remarks long 
 before he heard them, the lectures as a whole 
 were a disappointment. He did not have the keen 
 interest in technical and theoretical economics 
 that Don had; he cared for the subject only in a 
 general way, and as it affected himself, but the 
 spirit that actuated the lecturer grew big in Peter, 
 until he even went so far once or twice as to con 
 tradict Don Mark, and at those times he very 
 craftily quoted from his lectures. 
 
 Peter was more curious about women than he 
 
116 PETER KINDRED 
 
 was about trades unions or tariff issues; there 
 was a large part of him that sought earnestly 
 after womankind, and yet was puzzled by them 
 and suspicious of them. The heroine of his imag 
 ining was giving place to another type, that was, 
 however, essentially vague in his mind, a woman 
 embodying beauty, a vacuum where her feelings 
 should have been, possessed of logic, and chosen 
 with an eye to her offspring. He had never en 
 countered any such woman, and his conception 
 of her was purely verbal. His attitude had 
 changed toward the pretty faces that passed him 
 on the street, almost without his realizing it, and 
 he wondered if they were capable of thinking and 
 if they did think, instead of wondering if they 
 were capable of loving and if they did love. The 
 romances that occasionally danced attendance 
 through his mind on some particularly pleasant- 
 looking woman, no longer ended at courtship, but 
 began after marriage, and ended at the ripe old 
 age of ninety or thereabouts, with a golden 
 wedding. 
 
 "I wouldn t much care," Peter said seriously. 
 " After all, it s not so fearfully important if a 
 woman is pretty. It s just a sort of selfishness 
 that makes a man want to own a pretty woman 
 . . . don t you think? I d want one busy with 
 some real work, that would fit in with mine. . . . 
 I wouldn t want to have to be thinking about her 
 face all the time. I d want to be able to discuss 
 things with her, and not have her go off into a fit 
 
PETER KINDRED 117 
 
 right away. Anyhow, she d have to be intelligent 
 enough to bring up her own children." 
 
 "How many children?" asked Don solemnly, 
 blowing a ring of smoke toward the ceiling. 
 
 "Jinks, I don t know," Peter answered ear 
 nestly, and then, catching sight of Don s expres 
 sion, grinned sheepishly. 
 
 "Well, Peter, old philosopher, we ll have to see 
 what we can do for you." Don sighed, and 
 stretched himself. 
 
 "Come to the Waldorf and I ll feed you an egg 
 sandwich, while we think it over a bit." 
 
 They walked up the dark, windy street together 
 toward the lamp light of Massachusetts, their foot 
 steps sounding thin and clear in the frosty night 
 air. 
 
 "No, but seriously, Don," Peter was saying, "I 
 think this business of love is awfully overdone. I 
 mean, it s all very well for a time, but marriage 
 is a different thing; of course I d have to care a 
 good deal about a woman ..." 
 
 "Naturally," Don said. "One wouldn t want 
 to marry a slut, you know ... a marriage should 
 be a contract between two sensible people and the 
 state in which the two people agree to support 
 their children." 
 
 "Of course," Peter said. "The children are 
 everything. I think that women without children 
 are pretty bad . . . that is, if they re married." 
 
 "Well," Don said, "you can t always have chil 
 dren." 
 
118 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Bother," said Peter, "I wouldn t live with a 
 woman if I couldn t." 
 
 " Still," Don argued, "you might be married 
 and poor and want to wait." 
 
 "Then," Peter answered, "I d sleep in another 
 room." 
 
 "You might find it a bit heroic," Don said 
 mildly. 
 
 "Don t be absurd," said Peter. 
 
 They went to their first Symphony concert to 
 gether. At the last moment Peter could not decide 
 how to dress, and was torn between the desire to 
 make a great deal of the evening by wearing a 
 dinner coat, and the feeling that he ought not be 
 so impressed, and should wear whatever he had 
 on. Don, however, taking it as a matter of course, 
 was wearing a soft shirt, and so Peter decided 
 that he was amply dressed, and outshone Don by 
 the shiny margin of a stiff collar. 
 
 At the Square, they climbed into a well-worn 
 trolley that presently set out down Massachusetts 
 for Boston. Don had an air of starting on 
 a lark; Peter felt more like an adventure, his 
 state of mind a mingle of excitement and cul 
 tured solemnity as befitted the occasion. He 
 felt that he was taking a definite step toward a 
 liberal appreciation of things, and stepping well 
 out of his family to do it. He was opening closed 
 chambers in himself, and would presently fill them 
 with a treasure reserved for a few. He started 
 
PETER KINDRED 119 
 
 to think "If the folks were to see me now" with 
 a thrill of satisfaction, but grew immediately sub 
 dued and faintly depressed at the realization that 
 if his folks were to see him on his way to the Sym 
 phony, his father would be furious at his extrava 
 gance. 
 
 The trolley sped past the lighted windows of 
 the shops facing the Yard, ricochetted around a 
 curve, and shrilled into darkness, swaying, its 
 glass windows rattling. Finally it came smoothly 
 into the light of Central Square again, and became 
 filled to the brim with people. Peter tried to pick 
 out men and women whom he thought might be go 
 ing to the Symphony; there were two Harvard 
 men, and several elderly, austere couples. They 
 went on into darkness again, and bumped over 
 cobblestones with a great crashing and rattling 
 of windows, past the looming hulks of quiet freight 
 cars, marked by far-off red and green lights, and 
 so on over the deep blackness of the river, a wide 
 sweep of utter dark below them, caught here and 
 there in the glimmer of starlight, and in the shiv 
 ering pools of drowned copper which were the 
 reflections of the long and regular arcs of lamps 
 that dwindled along the opposite river banks and 
 spun across Kendal Bridge. 
 
 Peter was struck by the lofty severity of the 
 great hall, and then by the type of people about 
 him, in fairly plain dress, old and contented peo 
 ple with sharp New England features, younger 
 men and women preparing to listen intelligently. 
 
120 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Young and old, many seemed to know each other 
 and bowed and smiled and whispered, but evi 
 dently they came to hear the orchestra and their 
 acquaintances were incidental. There was noth 
 ing gorgeous or astounding, save only perhaps the 
 multitude of black-coated musicians in ascending 
 rows upon the stage; there was no flourish of 
 jewelry and bosoms, no fanfare of society, but a 
 fairly quiet gathering of people from their 
 homes and their dinner tables where they had 
 eaten in peace with their families about them, 
 with no worry at all about their appearance, 
 or their friends* appearance, or their daughters 
 either. 
 
 The multitude of musicians, after preliminary 
 discordant tuning, fell silent; a bell tinkled, 
 and Dr. Muck sidled out of a door and 
 crossed to the front of the stage; the audi 
 ence broke into polite applause; the musician, 
 after bowing gravely a moment or so, stepped 
 up on his box and faced the orchestra, tapped 
 his baton on the music stand before him, 
 raised it quietly, and brought it down again. An 
 oboe wailed, and Peter heard his first symphonic 
 music. With the initial crashing ensemble his 
 heart leaped out after the music, and was pres 
 ently distanced and left to run idly after, washed 
 and whelmed in rhythms and harmonies until it 
 grew tired. Then Peter stared about him at the 
 intent faces of the audience, at the graceless Greek 
 statues in their niches above his head, and let his 
 
PETER KINDRED 121 
 
 thoughts run after his heart to bring it back again, 
 which is a fairly unintelligible way of saying that 
 he thought of no more than little personal things 
 about his work, his family, his room, his finances, 
 a collar button he had lost. When he had got his 
 heart back to him again and was growing restless, 
 the first movement came to an end, and he 
 breathed deeply and changed the position of his 
 knees. Don, beside him, did likewise. 
 
 After the Symphony they walked together along 
 the marble corridor at the side of the hall, to 
 the wider entrance at the front. There they 
 found a group of Harvard men, some of whom 
 they knew, dressed variously in dinner coats and 
 soft shirts. The front hall was filled with men 
 smoking; the elderly men discussed the sym 
 phony, and in different groups the Harvard men 
 did likewise; the middle-aged Boston men walked 
 up and down and talked of all manner of things. 
 Peter and Don went back to the side corridor and 
 walked up and down. 
 
 6 Well, well/ said Don suddenly, "look there!" 
 Peter looked up, startled, and saw coming to 
 ward them the slim young woman Don had 
 pointed out to him enviously at the tea party of 
 the year before. It was with a shock of recogni 
 tion that he saw her, much the same as he had seen 
 her then, pink-cheeked and formless, her reddish- 
 brown hair drawn tightly up on her head, her 
 eyes encircled by tortoise-shell glasses, and low- 
 heeled ground-gripping shoes on her feet. He 
 
122 PETER KINDRED 
 
 drew an involuntary breath of surprise; as she 
 passed he caught a glimpse of gray eyes behind 
 the glasses, of a saucy nose, and a firm mouth. 
 With her were two other women, an elderly one 
 who might have been a teacher, and was probably 
 a chaperon, and a younger one of her own 
 age, or thereabouts, with dark hair and eyes, 
 and a plump figure. This friend did not 
 wear low-heeled shoes; Peter looked carefully 
 to see. 
 
 The two groups passed each other again, and 
 Don received a demure glance from the dark- 
 haired woman. The other one looked quite inno 
 cently directly through Peter and out beyond his 
 back, so that he was made to believe that she had 
 not noticed him at all, and indeed, he had not ex 
 pected her to notice him, but the fact that she did 
 not, mortified him. A bell rang, and they hurried 
 to their seats. 
 
 They did not see the two women and their 
 chaperon after the concert, although they looked 
 for them. They walked slowly toward the bridge, 
 against the wind, burrowing into their coats. 
 Peter spoke first. 
 
 "She is sort of interesting, Don," he said. 
 
 "Very likely," Don answered. "I imagine 
 she s Radcliffe, or some finishing school. I hope 
 not a finishing school." 
 
 "Yes, that would be too bad. But she doesn t 
 look very finished. . . . Would you call her 
 pretty?" 
 
PETER KINDRED 123 
 
 Don stared at him in amazement. "Lord," he 
 said, "I m sure I don t know." 
 
 "I thought she wasn t bad looking 1 ," said Peter 
 defiantly. "She has rather lovely eyes. ..." 
 
 "Peter, Peter," cried Don, "you come home! 
 Did you hear the man ! Come home, and I ll make 
 you a lovely cup of coffee, and you can make eyes 
 into it. For the love of heaven, lad." 
 
 They climbed the stairs together to Don s room 
 where, presently, a little coffee percolator bubbled 
 and hummed and sputtered, while a blue flame 
 fluttered beneath it. The room was ill shadow 
 save for two candles, and the wavering flame of 
 the percolator. Peter lay sprawled on the couch 
 and watched it, still hearing faintly and far away 
 the sweeping sound of violins, the blare of horns 
 and drums and basses. 
 
 "I think I m going to try to meet her," he said 
 at last, drowsily. 
 
 Don lit his pipe and waved the burnt match at 
 Peter. "Go to it," he said, and chuckled. 
 
 Peter spent a week wondering if a woman with 
 low heels, small ankles, fairly obtrusive feet, and 
 not overmuch hair were a natural or an unnatural 
 animal, if she appeared as she did for comfort 
 and good reasons, or if it betokened a sarcastic 
 attitude toward men. He hardly bothered with 
 the question of who she might be, for he had no 
 means of answering it until he had solved the 
 riddle of meeting her, and that was so unsolvable 
 
124 PETER KINDRED 
 
 that he spent no time wondering about it at all. 
 He could not help imbuing her with attributes 
 both pleasant and unpleasant, and wondering if 
 they were true of her. From his two glimpses of 
 her he tried to build some estimate of the woman 
 herself, and yet he did not willingly concede her 
 pleasant attributes, but tried to make the least of 
 her in his mind. The result was that at the end 
 of a week she was a fairly unpleasant character 
 to him, cold-blooded, capricious, and headstrong, 
 inhuman to children, and difficult to talk to. This 
 he fashioned out of her gray eyes, her mouth per 
 haps a trifle too firm, and her seemingly careless 
 array. He was stubbornly unwilling that she 
 should be splendid, and the fact that her nose and 
 eyes were good gave him little stabs of jealousy 
 and half of admiration. He did not know his re 
 luctance to think well of her for antagonism, but 
 took it to be both skepticism and experience. Yet 
 how little he knew of either. He was, indeed, an 
 tagonistic to her, to her proud bearing, and dis 
 puted instinctively her right to own a mind and 
 a will and a personality of her own that would be 
 unwilling to cede ground to him. And yet, he 
 could not help envying her acquaintance. 
 
 The background of his family handicapped him ; 
 it took his pride away from under him, and gave 
 him what Don called an inferiority complex, a 
 feeling that his core was not quite as sound as 
 hers was, that her fundamental culture and 
 training were better perhaps; that if he were 
 
PETER KINDRED 125 
 
 gone into deeply enough, something would be 
 found savoring of the uncouth. He thought that 
 Don had no such trouble as that, and compared 
 himself to Harvard and to Harvard men with a 
 touch of resignation for his lack of quiet confi 
 dence and such Tightness and natural dignity as 
 they had, and their fathers had had. His father 
 lacked dignity, it was not born into him, but had 
 been acquired, and he was never quite sure if it 
 were correct. 
 
 He did not see her the next Saturday, at the 
 second symphony. During the week following, he 
 was pressed with work, and spent his time either 
 in the library or at his desk. Don, busy as well, 
 did not disturb him. With his thoughts taken 
 away from him for a time and bent upon an im 
 personal problem, the matters of women and sex 
 were forgotten. He began to think of smiling at 
 the whole matter, and prepared to put it out of 
 his mind with its attendant uneasiness. When he 
 saw her again at the third symphony he watched 
 her impersonally; during the intermission he dis 
 cussed the music with Don, as far as he was able, 
 interested to find that he had not been entirely 
 lost in the music, which was Beethoven, and feel 
 ing pleased at that, and musical. Still, coining 
 home he was silent, and did not answer Don when 
 he hummed a theme from the symphony, but 
 stared gloomily ahead. 
 
 That night he sat a long while in Don s room 
 saying nothing, and went finally into his own room 
 
126 PETER KINDRED 
 
 where he undressed slowly and went resolutely to 
 bed. 
 
 Before he fell asleep he sighed, and smiled, 
 as he dozed, at a picture of himself faultlessly 
 arrayed promenading up and down the marble 
 foyers of the Symphony in grave discussion with 
 the gray-eyed woman. After the discussion was 
 over, he helped her gallantly into his impressive 
 motor, and they started out together, whereat 
 her formless body became monstrously formless 
 and she became all feet. With that he fell 
 asleep. 
 
 He awoke with the rather ecstatic decision to 
 bother no more about her, but to give her free ac 
 cess to his thoughts if she wanted it, and as for 
 meeting her, to trust to the Lord, who had handled 
 his affair with the bursar so carefully. Having 
 decided that irrevocably, he went blithely to his 
 breakfast, and had no thought of her again until 
 shortly before the Christmas holidays. 
 
 He was invited in a roundabout way to be a 
 part of an audience at a performance of the Work 
 shop, which is the testing room of a famous or 
 infamous course in dramatic literature at Har 
 vard, according to your lights and your opinions. 
 He went without much interest, and mostly from 
 a willingness to be sociable. When the curtain 
 wont up on the second short play, the gray-eyed, 
 russet-haired woman was sitting in a rocking chair 
 on the stage, knitting, and his heart commenced 
 to beat in loud, powerful thumps. 
 
PETER KINDRED 127 
 
 During the short play this woman held her audi 
 ence intent upon her, filling the whole stage with 
 her slight presence, and although she was neither 
 beautiful nor eminently artistic, there was a force 
 and a simplicity about her that sounded in her 
 precise voice, and made the audience thoughtful 
 of her whether it would or no. Peter, sitting in 
 his seat with his knees drawn up under his chin 
 and his arms wrapped about them, stared at her 
 with the intentness of his entire body, watching 
 every slightest motion she made, as though from 
 the sight of her on the stage and the sound of her 
 voice he was to gather and understand the whole 
 of her. The curtain went down to a hearty ap 
 plause, and Peter gazed blankly around him at 
 people s faces. 
 
 From the talk of neighbors he gathered that she 
 was a Miss Joan Somebody-or-other, of Boston, 
 Radcliffe, a famous name in her college, a mem 
 ber of the Idler, possessed of an intolerant mind 
 but an indubitable dramatic talent. Peter was 
 shaken by both delight and dismay, and had small 
 stomach for the remainder of the plays, but sat 
 with his chin in his hand, and a dour look on his 
 face, thinking how little he would have to say to 
 her, and how embarrassed he would be saying it to 
 her, yet how essential that he meet her, neverthe 
 less, and say something. To meet her would not 
 be difficult; he had an acquaintance among the 
 players. Yet when this fellow greeted him at the 
 end of the performance, Peter did not ask to meet 
 
128 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Miss Joan Somebody-or-other, but said nothing at 
 all about her, and went home finally in a towering 
 rage at himself. 
 
 The next day, determined, but bitterly self-con 
 scious, he asked his acquaintance of the Workshop 
 to introduce him to her. 
 
 Joan was inclined to be friendly and inter 
 ested, but in quite a decent sort of way, rather as 
 though she were not anyone in particular, and as 
 though, for all she knew, Peter might be. Such 
 an attitude disarmed Peter, and he was, besides, 
 overawed at talking to her finally, and listening 
 to her talking to him ; at being, all of a sudden, ac 
 quainted. He found something to say, and said it 
 even more awkwardly than he had feared he 
 would. Joan, however, overlooked his awkward 
 ness, and yet he felt that for all her simplicity and 
 affability she would criticize him unsparingly once 
 she decided that it was time for him to have set 
 tled this initial embarrassment, and would 9emand 
 from him a close accounting of his intelligence. 
 He liked that, although he champed a little to 
 himself, and felt like crying out for her to bring 
 on her old intelligence and he d show it. 
 
 He was impressed with her direct way of talk 
 ing, her chin a bit in the air, and from the quiet 
 way she said things he fancied that she was not 
 in the habit of being disagreed with. Yet it did 
 not give him the wish to disagree with her, or to 
 oppose her, but he did feel an uncommon longing 
 to say something well, and to interest her eyes, 
 
PETER KINDRED 129 
 
 which were not interested in him, but looked be 
 yond him at some far-away figure, herself, per 
 haps, whom he did not know, or some friend, 
 utterly remote to him. He wanted to know her all 
 at once, and to know her thoughts and the signifi 
 cance of her motions and her expressions. He 
 wanted very much to dare the entire battery of 
 her criticism immediately, and be passed inti 
 mately into her life and her thoughts, or be routed, 
 massacred without further delay. He felt impa 
 tient at her strangeness and unfamiliarness. 
 
 The account Don got of her was confused. 
 Peter, himself dazed at the remarkable fact of 
 really "having met her, could give him no descrip 
 tion of her that did not involve a scrambling of 
 her appearance and his impressions. The result 
 ing omelette was Joan, not quite as pretty as she 
 really was, but rather more intelligent. 
 
 "I haven t the faintest idea what I said to 
 her," he told Don, "but I have a feeling that it 
 was something I shouldn t. She has a way of 
 talking, and looking at you with her chin that 
 makes you feel small and criticized, and makes 
 you want to say something quickly and as pom 
 pously as you can. She does really look at you 
 with her chin, as though it were all ready to 
 sniff . . ." 
 
 "Were her feet very noticeable?" Don asked. 
 
 Peter maintained a dignified silence until Don 
 broke out laughing at him, and then he grew red 
 and finally laughed back. 
 
130 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Do you know," he said, "I never thought of 
 them. They re so natural." 
 
 Peter went moodily into his own room. He was 
 angry that he should be so tormented, and a bit 
 out of sorts with himself for caring about it. The 
 thought of Joan was too busy in his mind, he 
 could not rid himself of it. He did not wish to 
 see her, and yet he did; he had nothing he 
 wished to say to her, and knew that she had noth 
 ing to say to him, but felt, nevertheless, as a 
 man feels who considers that he has come badly 
 out of an encounter where he should have done 
 well, and hesitates to leave his adversary, but 
 dawdles nearby, uneasy, important, always upon 
 the brink of words, but silent. It is probable that 
 if he had done well at his first meeting with Joan, 
 he would have forgotten her more easily, or rather 
 put her further out on the fringe of his mind, but 
 as it was, he expected something of himself and 
 was impatient because he did nothing and because 
 there was nothing to do. 
 
 Two days before the Christmas holidays he met 
 Joan coming out of the Coop. With her was the 
 same dark-haired girl he had seen at the Sym 
 phony. His heart gave a thump, and then he felt 
 cold. He was furious at himself for that, and 
 between the thump and his anger, he was con 
 fused. For an instant Joan looked troubled and 
 hesitated, then nodded her head to him briefly. 
 He bowed, and went toward her rather stupidly, 
 
PETER KINDRED 131 
 
 wishing with all his might, while his feet led him 
 along, that he had gone quietly by. Joan seemed 
 to be a bit dismayed at him. They shook hands 
 in mutual embarrassment, and after they had 
 both said how do you do, there was a moment of 
 silence. Peter, with a flaming face, finally .ex 
 claimed in a dry, unnatural voice, "I ... I was 
 wondering ... if you remembered me." 
 
 At Peter s intense embarrassment Joan smiled, 
 and looked at him calmly. "Oh, yes," she said, 
 "I met you at the Workshop. " She turned to her 
 friend. "Helen, I d like to introduce Mr. . . ." 
 she became slightly confused again but shook her 
 head impatiently. "Mr. ?" she asked, look 
 ing at Peter. 
 
 "Kindred," Peter said, mortified and self-con 
 scious. 
 
 "Of course, Mr. Kindred. This is Miss Helen 
 Graff." 
 
 The black-haired girl smiled pleasantly and 
 shook hands cordially with Peter. 
 
 "Didn t I see you at the Symphony?" she asked, 
 "with a tall, yellow-haired man?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed." Peter felt his blood flow evenly 
 along his veins again with a deal of satisfaction. 
 His heart rode high, like an unburdened ship. 
 The two women started to walk across the Square 
 toward Massachusetts and Peter went with them. 
 Joan looked whimsically at Helen, but luckily 
 for Peter he did not see it, or he would have 
 found some excuse for leaving them at once. 
 
132 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Helen smiled back at Joan, and talked to Peter 
 about the Symphony. He answered her as 
 thoughtfully as he could, and felt that he was not 
 doing badly, at any rate. 
 
 The two women went into one of the shops, and 
 Peter went fairly helplessly along, to their hid 
 den amusement. Then the three walked up 
 Massachusetts until they came upon the Merle, 
 and Peter boyishly and clumsily asked them to 
 take chocolate with him. The very awkwardness 
 of his request made it impossible for them to re 
 fuse, although they were taken aback. If he had 
 had more confidence and had asked them more 
 politely, they wouldn t have gone, but his disin 
 genuous invitation was appealing, and they ac 
 cepted. They sat together at a small, warm table, 
 while the world went by outside. 
 
 "Do you like the French music very much?" 
 asked Joan. "I don t. ... As one man would 
 say, it makes you feel rather lazy ... as though 
 you never wanted to work any more . . . don t 
 you think? 
 
 "Carver, by the Lord!" popped out of Peter s 
 mouth, and he looked in sheer amazement at 
 Joan. 
 
 "Do yon know him?" she asked. 
 
 "No that is, I don t know him but I know of 
 him and his ideas." 
 
 Joan smiled at him agreeably. 
 
 "What do you say to him?" 
 
 Yes, yes. By all means. Do you ? 
 
PETER KINDRED 133 
 
 "Yes, indeed. I don t know that I quite agree 
 with him about everything, though. Do you?" 
 
 "Hmm . . . well ... Oh, I don t know ... I 
 don t believe I ve read enough about it." 
 
 Peter noticed that Helen Graff gave her hot 
 chocolate two quick chews before she swallowed 
 it, but that Joan did not. It pleased him that she 
 did not, although the chocolate at the Merle is so 
 thick it might well be chewed. Joan ate rather 
 daintily, he thought, and then he spilled a drop 
 of chocolate on himself and was ashamed. 
 
 "Do you know," Joan said, and laughed, "when 
 I met you I thought that you were an aesthete. 
 Isn t it odd? You might be, you know. I m glad 
 you re an economist, it s rather jolly." 
 
 She had warmed toward him, and felt at her 
 ease with him. When he was not embarrassed, as 
 he had been at their meeting, there was a frank, 
 impetuous air about him that one either liked at 
 once or found intolerable. 
 
 "I m awfully glad you think so," he said. 
 "I ve never known anyone from Radcliffe. So 
 you are sort of mysterious. To tell the truth, I 
 was fearfully scared at meeting you, and I almost 
 didn t." 
 
 "Why?" Helen asked. 
 
 Peter blushed. "I don t know," he said. But 
 he did know, somewhat. So he fibbed a little. "I 
 was rather afraid that you d be awfully intelli 
 gent, he said. 
 
 "Aren t we?" Joan asked him saucily. 
 
134 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Yes, of course . . . but I meant forbidding 
 and very wise . . . just Radcliff e. 
 
 "Goodness!" cried Helen, "what has the man 
 against Radcliffe?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing," Peter said hastily. "But 
 there s a sort of tradition, you know." Tho 
 phrase low heels nearly popped out, but he shut 
 his mouth on it. "At least, here at Harvard Rad- 
 cliffe women are supposed to be ... a bit 
 haughty, perhaps." 
 
 "Do hear the man!" Helen cried. 
 
 "Why is that?" Joan asked. 
 
 Peter felt uncomfortable, and wished that he 
 had never started talking of Radcliffe. However, 
 he took a breath and looked at Joan defiantly. 
 
 "I suppose it s because most Radcliff e women 
 wo see on the streets look that way. And then, 
 you never do anything but serious things, and 
 you have no college life, and no real college and 
 no Yard." 
 
 "We have a very real college life, Mr. Kin 
 dred," Joan said kindly, "and we are very busy 
 in it. We have also a college, and quite a pleasant 
 little Yard. After vacation you must come up to 
 see me, and I ll show it to you." 
 
 "May I?" said Peter, who had been very much 
 humbled by her tone. They rose to go; on the 
 street outside the Merle, Joan held out her hand. 
 Peter took it, and so said good-bye, although he 
 had not expected to, and after shaking hands with 
 Helen, and promising to call on them both after 
 
PETER KINDRED , 135 
 
 Christmas, he watched them pass along the ave 
 nue, and turned soberly toward his room. 
 
 Don was packing and the sight depressed Peter. 
 There was a cheerless, half -filled trunk in the cen 
 ter of his room, his closets were bare of clothes, 
 books were scattered on the floor. Peter looked 
 through the door and scowled; he swung on his 
 heel and went gloomily into his own room. He 
 felt no elation at going home ; he wanted to stay 
 in Cambridge, but he did not want Cambridge to 
 be deserted. He missed the notes in his spirit 
 which usually responded to the cold, piney stir of 
 Christmas, and he felt as though a festival were 
 passing by him, and he were not interested in it 
 at all, as though he were an abstracted foreigner 
 in Seville during a procession. It was with regret 
 that he thought of meeting his family again and 
 having forced upon him a realization of depend 
 ence, the narrow outlines of his group, submissive- 
 ness. He could not bring the thought of Joan 
 home with him, to that environment, unless he 
 went home frankly contemptuous and openly 
 classing himself with Joan s group, fundamentally 
 opposed to the group his family represented. He 
 was not sure enough of himself for that; he was 
 not sure at all that Joan accepted him, or that he 
 had any real right to consider himself a unit in 
 any group but the one in which he had been born. 
 
 "It makes me feel underhanded about living, " 
 he said to Don. "I m entirely dependent, or prac 
 tically so, because my scholarship amounts to very 
 
136 PETER KINDRED 
 
 little, on a man who can t afford it without a good 
 deal of sacrifice. Yet I haven t any respect for 
 him. He expects me to come out of college and 
 be a pride to him in his own group, but I sha n t." 
 
 "Still, Peter, your dependence on your father 
 is just along with your own philosophy, yon 
 know," Don said gently. 
 
 "Yes, I suppose it is. But it makes me feel 
 uncomfortable. I might be rather fond of father 
 if I weren t dependent on him. It pulls me down 
 toward him, and I want to climb away. It seems 
 sort of dastardly to kick back at him, when after 
 all, it s his own self I m climbing on. But what 
 is there to do?" 
 
 "Well," Don said judiciously, "there s really 
 nothing to do but grow up, and see what happens. 
 Meanwhile, let him have his way; he likes that, 
 and it doesn t hurt." 
 
 "Hmm," Peter muttered, "I suppose so. But 
 it s fairly cowardly." 
 
 Then leave college, and go out and work. 
 
 "Frankly it s the last thing I want to do." 
 
 "Well, then!" 
 
 "I know it. It s silly to bother." 
 
 Peter went home with the decision not to bother, 
 but to be as gentle-spirited as it was possible to 
 be, and to keep his own thoughts strictly to him 
 self. However, he found it impossible; he was 
 too young, and too intent upon being right. He 
 made a gallant attempt of two days; his mother 
 was satisfied, his father content, and then he grew 
 
PETER KINDRED 137 
 
 gloomy and curt and finally gave vent to an ac 
 cumulated and bitter jeer that froze his family 
 into a moment of astounded horror. He was sorry 
 then, but the thing was done ; his mother wept a 
 little by herself, and her husband, noticing it, be 
 came heavy-hearted and almost pathetically silent. 
 Only Edith gave battle to Peter, passionately, and 
 very nearly drowned him with wave after wave 
 of feelings, hers, her parents , her friends , her 
 acquaintances , and finally people s in general. 
 To Edith, Peter turned a cold, sarcastic eye, but 
 underneath it, carefully hidden, was an unhappy 
 sense of shame, as though he had been caught in 
 an hysterical outburst at an indiscreet child. It 
 caused him to feel neither wise nor good, but 
 young and uncontrolled. 
 
 He left his family with a mixture of relief and 
 reproach for himself, as a man leaves an unfortu 
 nate wretch to whom he has just been rightly but 
 uncommonly nasty. His parents were not glad 
 that he went, although they would not have wanted 
 him to stay. They were unhappy at his presence, 
 but more unhappy that he left them for an en 
 vironment that was drawing him more and more 
 away from them. His mother was reluctant to 
 bid him good-bye, and held him close to her for a 
 moment. It touched Peter and caused him to feel 
 guilty toward her; it embarrassed him, and he 
 left a bit rudely; she watched him pass below the 
 street lamp, from her window, and she wanted to 
 cry. Peter, on the street, condemned himself fu- 
 
138 PETER KINDRED 
 
 riously for that rudeness, and was half minded to 
 go back again, but there was no time for it. For 
 a while Peter s father grew bitter toward his 
 work, and morose at home, but that wore off 
 again, and life for the Kindreds flowed on placidly 
 as before, the tide, perhaps, deepened and en- 
 salted with a current of gathering old age, a hint 
 of loneliness and helplessness. Peter wrote his 
 parents long and affectionate letters, and these 
 strained out the tide a little. Edith, finding that 
 her parents did not wish a champion against 
 Peter, was moved to blow out the flame under the 
 kettle of her feelings, and as her indignation sim 
 mered down, so did her memory of the affair, and 
 after she had expressed herself to her friends and 
 cronies on the subject of selfish, smart-Aleck 
 brothers, she forgot all about it, and almost for 
 got that she had any brother at all. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 "DETER lay awake in his berth a long while, 
 * lulled by the swift motion of the train, staring 
 through the black oblong of the window, now at 
 darkness, without motion, now at stars that rose 
 and fell across the windowpane as the car rocked 
 from side to side. He was deeply content at re 
 turning to Boston again, at the thought of Cam 
 bridge before him. He was eager to forget his 
 troubledness with himself, and to come clear of 
 his family into the serene house on Holyoke 
 Street, to leave the tall, gray walls and the sun 
 less streets of New York behind him. He blamed 
 himself for the ftiiserable week he had spent, but 
 he tried not to think of his family; it was a vastly 
 unpleasant business, all of it, and he wanted to get 
 back to his own room again and to forget it, to 
 straighten out his thoughts again, to untangle his 
 spirit and put it out to air. It needed airing, he 
 thought, it was soiled. He fell asleep watching 
 the stars swinging up and down, his head deep 
 among the soft pillows of the berth. 
 
 139 
 
140 PETER KINDRED 
 
 When he awoke the train wag rushing on 
 through grayness. He looked ont the window; 
 dawn was breaking in the east, his window faced 
 the west. The countryside was heavily covered 
 with snow, fallen lately; it looked very cold and 
 blue and still. The sky was gray, faintly lighted 
 by the first flush of the snnrise he could not see. 
 Shadows were deep, in quiet blue and umber, like 
 pools. The train swept past a gronp of still, 
 brown houses, their roofs heavy with snow, their 
 shingled sides dim and misted with frosty blue, a 
 lonely village in the country, hushed with the 
 snow. A gold light burned in the window of a 
 cottage; the train clicked over a crossroads, the 
 bars down, a yellow lantern swinging, a bell 
 tinkling; the empty white road wound lonesomely 
 over a hill and was lost. Past gaunt maples and 
 sombre pines and birches into low, level fields, 
 rocks, a glimpse of brown earth, the impassive 
 countryside, still, snowy, shadowed and mysteri 
 ous. 
 
 No people live here, thought Peter; this is 
 the land, as mighty and as immortal as the sea. 
 He was oppressed with a sense of the desolation 
 of that country, the isolation, the loneliness of 
 life there, the need, in such a country, to huddle 
 about a fire. And yet, he thought, it is not ter 
 rible, save as the sea is, in its tremendous quiet 
 ness and carelessness of us. Man is the wisest of 
 all animals, and the loneliest, the most fearful of 
 silence. He thought of New York ; he said to him- 
 
PETER KINDRED 141 
 
 self that people prefer discomfort to solitude, and 
 he wondered what it was in solitude they feared 
 and hated so. He could not answer it, and 
 thought of the many, many little villages scattered 
 about the country, huddled together from the 
 snow, of the lonely and limited lives implicit in 
 them, the dwarfed desires of men and women, the 
 bound and narrowed horizons. It was a vision of 
 small things, of futile thiners, a vision of men s 
 hands blocked and defeated by the still land, of 
 desires groping for expression, doomed to failure, 
 passion forced to the rut of living, inarticulate 
 life, gaunt and joyless. It was a vision of men 
 and maids, of crude loves growing old, of dreams 
 coming to nothing. Is that why we fear the land, 
 he asked himself, our dreams coming to nothing? 
 In the quiet of the land we can hear them die 
 away. . . . He stared out at the snow. The train 
 swept on toward Boston. 
 
 But Boston was subtly changed. It had been a 
 city of various people, of faces and manners, a 
 city of pleasant tendencies that were manifest in 
 its folk. Now it was inescapably to Peter the city 
 of a person. Joan lived there, and Boston was her 
 setting. He felt as a man feels in a particular 
 woman s house, curious of the rooms in which she 
 moved and talked, the hangings she stirred as she 
 passed through, the shadows she walked among. 
 He could not watch the streets as he had before 
 when he thought that they belonged to Boston, to 
 the shopkeepers, to folk he did not know. They 
 
142 PETER KINDRED 
 
 belonged to Joan now, they were a part of her 
 country. Everything there was an expression of 
 her, of her life and her community. It was a 
 strange sensation to Peter, half friendly because 
 Joan was friendly, and half unfriendly because 
 it took Boston away from him and gave it over to 
 Joan. The very cold of the early morning that 
 bit at his hands as he struggled with his valise 
 from the train to the trolley was her cold; it be 
 longed to her city, in which, somewhere, she was 
 probably asleep in her own maidenly room. He 
 did not feel the same toward Cambridge, however, 
 I think because Harvard was a more lordly affair 
 than Radcliffe and so, of course, a Harvard man 
 would be more important there and more at home 
 than a Radcliffe woman. 
 
 For a day his room, warm, sunny, faintly 
 fragrant with tobacco, spiritually spacious, con 
 tented him. Don, from the west, was late, with a 
 special addition of two days to his vacation. Then 
 evening drew down on Cambridge, blowing the 
 snow to a chillier crunch underfoot, blowing the 
 air to crisper, frostier cold, drifting over the 
 roofs of Cambridge, about the windows, and up 
 and down the streets in palest emerald, adding 
 distance and uncertainty to voices, kindling lamps. 
 The house on Holyoke became very, very still; 
 steps went by down Holyoke Street, and the muf 
 fled sound of cars moving over snow came faintly 
 from Massachusetts. In his room Peter sat alone, 
 more homesick than he had been since his first 
 
PETER KINDRED 143 
 
 year at Exeter, with nothing before him but 
 supper. 
 
 All the next day Cambridge was gaunt and like 
 a skeleton to him. He thought it was because Don 
 was not there. He seemed to be living in an accus 
 tomed but unfamiliarly empty house, and he 
 waited impatiently for Don s arrival. Don did 
 not come until near noon of the third day; his 
 train had been delayed by snow; he was sitting 
 happily in his room when Peter trudged back from 
 a lecture. Peter was jubilant at seeing him again, 
 and threw his loneliness out from him. They 
 spent the whole afternoon and evening together, 
 unpacking, talking, smoking and gossiping, in 
 Cambridge and in Boston, where they wound up 
 appropriately in honor of the occasion. 
 
 It was strange how Peter s room mellowed 
 with Don across the hall, and with what a rush 
 life became friendly and comfortable again. 
 
 "We are a lonely sort of animal," he said to 
 Don reflectively, "and quite at odds with quiet. 
 I thought about it on the way up from New York. 
 I was fearfully lonely here, and hated the stillness. 
 But now that you re back, I like the stillness. We 
 always seem to need one thing, a thought or a 
 person, to put us right with everything. Just 
 thoughts, or people, won t do. The more thoughts, 
 and the more people if that one isn t there the 
 lonelier we get. It s odd, isn t it? 
 
 Yet the day after Don had come there was still 
 something bare and unfilled in his content, and he 
 
144 PETER KINDRED 
 
 came to the conclusion that it had to do with 
 Joan. 
 
 He was restless with the desire to see her again, 
 and kept watching for her on the street. His de 
 sire to see her was mixed somewhat with the 
 thought that he ought to see her, and the thought 
 that if he put it off too long she would probably 
 forget who he was again. He did not want to be 
 forgotten. And yet, he was half afraid of meet 
 ing her, and it would have taken a great deal of 
 urging to have gotten him to go boldly up to her 
 Hall and to ask for her. He kept thinking that he 
 had a long time before him, and that he would 
 doubtless come across her; yet at times he became 
 impatient with himself, and restless, and felt that 
 priceless days were slipping from him, and he was 
 doing nothing. 
 
 He went carelessly to the first Symphony after 
 the holidays, and realized with a start of dismay 
 as he was entering the hall that he was slovenly, 
 in an old suit and a soft shirt, and that Joan 
 might be there. During the music he lost himself 
 in reverie, his body contentedly answering the 
 rhythms and harmonies as far as it was able, so 
 that during the intermission he got up from his 
 seat and started for the foyer with Don, quite 
 thoughtless of himself. At the door he remem 
 bered his array, but hesitated to turn back, and 
 walked with Don to the front smoking hall, where 
 his friend left him to join a group of acquaint 
 ances. Peter, waiting for Don, turned back to- 
 
PETER KINDRED 145 
 
 ward the side foyer, and strolled down its length ; 
 with his hands deep in his pockets, he walked di 
 rectly into Joan and her chaperon. 
 " Hello," she cried, "how are yon?" 
 Peter felt very awkward indeed, but managed 
 somehow to disengage his hands from his pockets 
 in time to shake hands with her. He was then 
 presented to the chaperon, to his great satisfac 
 tion, by name, unhesitatingly. People went by 
 them and crowded them; they were a bit in the 
 way, and Joan and her chaperon started forward 
 a few steps. Peter set ont to follow, not wanting 
 to leave so abruptly, but as he came abreast of 
 them, Joan smiled across at him, and so he con 
 tinued walking with them. Within a dozen steps 
 he was stricken with overwhelming dismay, and 
 his hand flew to his neck, and fluttered confusedly 
 about, trying to hide his collar. He looked at 
 Joan, to find some trace of embarrassment in her 
 face for his presence, but there was none ; he was 
 miserably conscious of himself in the parade of 
 people, but evidently Joan had not noticed his 
 slovenliness, or if she had seen it, she did not 
 mind. It was reassuring, particularly since the 
 chaperon did not seem to mind either, and Peter 
 could find no trace of reproof on the faces of the 
 people as they passed ; gradually he forgot it, too, 
 and strolled up and down with her, talking of 
 music and Carver and college. 
 
 Finally they passed Don, who was looking for 
 Peter, and he stared at them with so comical an 
 
146 PETER KINDRED 
 
 expression on his face that Peter could not help 
 laughing. Joan asked him why he had laughed, 
 and so he told her a little about Don, and Don s 
 remark one afternoon at tea in Boston. It amused 
 Joan tremendously, but Don was amazed and em 
 barrassed to see her turn to look at him. 
 
 "You know, you said I might call on you," 
 Peter said to her, "and I ve wanted to awfully; 
 but, to tell the honest truth, I m afraid that I ve 
 been a little scared. . . . But I do want to!" 
 
 "I wish you would," Joan said. "There s 
 really nothing to be scared of, unless you scare 
 very easily, at anything. Of course there ll be a 
 few girls looking at you, rather, from around cor 
 ners, but they re all very proper. Anyhow, come 
 and see." 
 
 Yet in Peter s satisfaction after the concert 
 there was a disturbing doubt, a thought that per 
 haps Joan had noticed his unhappy suit and his 
 soft, wrinkled collar, and had tried to appear as 
 though she had not noticed them. But, to tell the 
 truth, Joan had not thought of Peter s dress at 
 all. To her, men s clothes were indistinguishably 
 alike, and I think that unless a man had gone 
 utterly nude, she would not have been able to tell 
 wherein he was at fault with too much or too little. 
 But Peter worried about it, and took himself se 
 verely to task. 
 
 "Work dragged along; Peter went almost 
 thoughtlessly to his classes, read a little of what 
 he was told to read, and, for the most part, let the 
 
PETER KINDRED 147 
 
 warm rooms, the cold streets, the sun and wind 
 and snow, noon and evening soothe him and rest 
 him and keep him from thinking of anything very 
 much, or taking anything seriously. It was a 
 sort of interlude familiar to youth, when, after 
 a season of endeavor and struggle the spirit sinks 
 back to rest. It is rarer in grown men; they do 
 not live as 1 intensely as youngsters and so there 
 are fewer struggles, and fewer hours of drowsi 
 ness. The desires and ambitions grow deeper and 
 truer, but their expression becomes more tem 
 pered and more even, a steadier beat of endeavor, 
 a slower but a more unfaltering stride. A man 
 gathers momentum with his years, and then it is 
 harder and harder to rest. 
 
 Peter promised himself solemnly that he would 
 call on Joan before a fortnight had passed, a 
 promise that satisfied him and yet did not worry 
 him with any thought of fulfilling it, for a fort 
 night is a long time, and anything can happen in 
 a fortnight. Indeed, something did happen he 
 chanced upon Joan at the Merle, alone at a round, 
 brown table. He sat down with her, and won 
 dered what to order ; he wanted an egg mayonnaise 
 sandwich, a remarkable thing, but extremely dif 
 ficult to handle, full of small, smooth, yellow bits 
 of egg that always fell out. He was afraid that 
 he would disgrace himself, and so contented him 
 self with a drink, and an easy straw. 
 
 They were speaking of New York when they 
 rose to go. 
 
148 PETER KINDRED 
 
 " Helen Graff is from New York," Joan said, 
 "and what is more, she rather likes you. She 
 thinks that you re almost the awkwardest man she 
 ever saw." Joan laughed delightedly, and Peter 
 laughed because she did, although he did not see 
 why Helen Graff should so admire awkwardness. 
 Joan must have felt his thought, for she said, 
 "You see, Helen is fearfully awkward and shy 
 and embarrassed herself, and so I suppose she 
 greets it gleefully in anyone else." 
 
 "Am I as bad as all that, really?" 
 
 "Well, perhaps not quite as bad. But you know 
 you are awfully, awfully shy and quite forlorn 
 and bewildered." 
 
 Peter rather wanted to feel hurt at that, but it 
 was hard to feel hurt at it, even though there was 
 some truth in it. 
 
 "Doesn t it embarrass you to meet a person like 
 me?" he asked with a trace of what he hoped 
 was bitterness in his voice. 
 
 "As a rule it does," she answered quickly, "but 
 with you it was different. You were so forlorn, 
 I wanted to pat you." 
 
 Peter laughed. He was not really ashamed of 
 his unhappy manner. In any romance of his own 
 contriving he would not willingly have been the 
 bluff knight but the pathetic page. It was some 
 thing he would never have admitted. 
 
 "I didn t think that Miss Graff was shy," he 
 said. "In fact, that s all that saved me from . . . 
 that s all that saved me." 
 
PETER KINDRED 149 
 
 "She is a bit queer that way, Mr. Kindred. 
 She was really frightfully embarrassed, and when 
 she is confused, she talks a great deal. ... It 
 wasn t at meeting you so much, but because I for 
 got your name. 
 
 They stopped before a red-brick dormitory that 
 reminded Peter of the Harvard club houses. It 
 was more delicate and more prim, and it seemed 
 to be considering peaceful and chaperoned 
 thoughts. 
 
 "Will you come in, Mr. Kindred?" Joan asked. 
 
 "I d love to, but I have a lecture. Some other 
 timef 11 
 
 "Of course. I told you so before." 
 
 "There s just one thing," Peter said, and then 
 stopped and gulped. "Oh, never mind," he mur 
 mured. 
 
 "What is it!" 
 
 "No next time." 
 
 "Oh, don t be a child," Joan said impatiently. 
 Peter frowned at her tone. 
 
 "Now I shall certainly wait," he said doggedly. 
 
 "I m sorry," she smiled. "Wait if you wish. 
 . . . Tell me." 
 
 "Well ... I thought that you might call me 
 Peter instead of Mr. Kindred," he said. 
 
 "Why, certainly, if you want me to. I would 
 have anyway, after a while. You made an awful 
 fuss about it." 
 
 Peter colored faintly. He knew that he had 
 made an unwarrantable fuss about it. 
 
150 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Good-bye," he said, and shook hands with her. 
 
 "Good-bye," she said, and went up the steps of 
 the house. He turned away and started soberly 
 back toward the Square, thinking that he was al 
 ways awkward, and that she had not invited him 
 to call her Joan, and that he would blunder along 
 somehow, and call her Joan anyway, whether she 
 liked it or not. But the thought kept coming into 
 his mind that he would not have made such a 
 bother about calling David David, or Frank Frank. 
 
 Peter visited Joan soon after, summoning, as 
 he stood before the door of Bertram Hall, all the 
 sense of masculine lordliness and all the scorn of 
 things feminine that he could rouse in his nature 
 to his aid. He found, finally, that he did not need 
 them, for Radcliffe evinced no curiosity about 
 him whatsoever; yet when Joan did come at last 
 into the room, he felt more comfortable, and less 
 open to some vague suspicion or other. It was a 
 black day, and so they sat in the sedate reception 
 room and talked. It is not my intention carefully 
 to record their conversation together, or indeed, 
 any of Peter s conversation; talk is a matter of 
 no importance save here or there, when the talker 
 becomes suddenly articulate. There is always at 
 first some agreement on the weather, as though to 
 test out voices, oil up vocal chords, settle the tone 
 and volume of sound to be used. However, it is 
 curious that as we grow older, there is more and 
 more stress laid upon this preliminary tuning, 
 
PETER KINDRED 151 
 
 whereas in youth, or rather in childhood, we come 
 at once to what is nearest our hearts. 
 
 Two Carverians cannot be together, unless they 
 are old and established friends, without discussing 
 Carver. Peter was made uncomfortable by Joan s 
 knowledge of the man; she had by far a more 
 technical grasp on economics than he had, and he 
 wished that Don were with him, behind whose 
 greater intelligence he might retire and reorgan 
 ize. Finally, he was forced to admit the limits of 
 his knowledge, and then Joan liked him a good 
 deal, and took a sort of proprietory interest in 
 him, that he could never have consciously aroused 
 in her, no matter how he had tried. He would 
 have thought once that such an intellectual sub 
 mission would disgust him, but he found it unex 
 pectedly pleasant and laughed a little at it, and 
 felt proud of Joan. He learned of her own fame 
 at Radcliffe with an odd satisfaction. 
 
 While they were talking, Helen Graff came in, 
 and joined them. Peter liked her; she was a cor 
 rect complement to Joan. They were both en 
 thusiastic, but where Joan was cool and precise, 
 her friend was ardent and vague. Peter thought 
 that she was probably a woman with feelings, but 
 that one could either bear with them, or else argue 
 about them intelligently. 
 
 When Helen went, Peter commented again on 
 her seeming lack of self-consciousness, and again 
 expressed surprise that Joan should have called 
 her shy. 
 
152 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "It seems so, doesn t it!" Joan said. "And 
 yet, you are quite wrong about Helen. Do you 
 know, Peter, I have seen her come from a dance, 
 and cry." 
 
 It gave Peter a shock to hear Joan. call him by 
 name. That, and the astonishment at what Joan 
 had said left him fairly mute. It was the first 
 time that she had called him Peter, although he 
 had called her Joan as manfully as he could 
 early in the visit. As for Helen, it was unbe 
 lievable. 
 
 * But why on earth ? " he murmured. 
 
 Joan shrugged her shoulders. "Just out of dis 
 appointment with herself. She always thinks that 
 she has done badly. . . . But, do you know, I 
 think that I should like to meet your friend, Don 
 Mark. Shall If" 
 
 "You certainly shall. That s splendid." 
 
 "I think that Helen would like to meet him, 
 too." 
 
 "Great." 
 
 "We might have tea together, or lunch some 
 day. I m curious to see if I am really the sort of 
 woman he can talk to." 
 
 "Lunch or tea, just as you say. At the Lan 
 tern or in Boston?" 
 
 "Goodness, no! We could only eat at the Cock 
 Horse." 
 
 "Right 0. How would tomorrow do?" 
 
 Joan smiled. "You impatient creature," she 
 said. "Tomorrow would not do at all. But the 
 
PETER KINDRED 153 
 
 day after . . . and let us make it tea, because 
 luncheon is too businesslike." 
 
 Peter went back to Don in high excitement, and 
 found him busily reading the financial section of 
 the Boston Transcript. At such a sober sight 
 Peter caught his exuberance and held it, and an 
 nounced their tea engagement as casually as he 
 could. Don pretended not to hear, but frowned 
 heavily at his paper. So Peter repeated what 
 Joan had said of Don. The paper fell at last, and 
 Don stared at him open-mouthed. 
 
 "Holy suffering mackerel!" he cried, "did you 
 tell the woman that? Then I shall certainly not 
 go." 
 
 "Oh," said Peter airily, "as you say." 
 
 "Besides," grumbled Don, "I have to attend a 
 class." 
 
 "Bight," said Peter. 
 
 "Where are we to meet? 9 
 
 The next day was newly pleasant to Peter. 
 Through the drowse of lectures, the slow, warm 
 hours, the small and intimate tasks, flowed a tide 
 of contentment, rippled faintly with excitement. 
 Peter thought that in Don, he himself was putting 
 his best foot forward; that Joan* would like Don 
 for himself, and Peter the better for Don ; that he 
 would be making more certain their friendship, 
 and that he would be showing Joan, besides, that 
 after all, he was not entirely as unintelligent as 
 she may have thought him. A dozen times during 
 the day he had the mind to talk to Don about the 
 
154 PETER KINDRED 
 
 coming tea party and Joan and Helen, but laughed 
 shame at himself for his boyishness. Yet at sup 
 per Don began talking about it, and Peter 
 realized with amusement that Don was even more 
 excited than himself, but Don hid it behind a 
 mask of surly sarcasm. 
 
 The next afternoon, dressed with immaculate 
 carelessness, they walked up Brattle Street to 
 gether to the Cock Horse. As they settled into 
 their seats at a table in a corner, Joan and Helen 
 came in, red-cheeked, stamping light snow from 
 their shoes. Peter jumped up and led them to his 
 table, where Don was standing, half in confusion. 
 Helen began to talk at once, but Joan sat down 
 with a calm smile; she was entirely at her ease, 
 and beckoned Peter to sit near to her. 
 
 " Helen very nearly didn t come," she whis 
 pered to him. 
 
 Peter whispered back, "Don wouldn t come 
 either. But I couldn t have kept him away." 
 They smiled-at each other. 
 
 Don, answering Helen almost at random at first, 
 grew interested in something she was saying. The 
 waitress stood patiently behind them waiting for 
 their order. Filially, Joan ordered for them, and 
 a little later chocolate and toast and marmalade 
 were brought to their table in quaint, heavy china. 
 By that time the conversation had grown general. 
 Then as Don was talking to Helen, she took a sip 
 of chocolate, and gave it two quick chews before 
 swallowing it. Peter caught Don s eye and 
 
PETER KINDRED 155 
 
 grinned so wickedly that Don grew fiery red and 
 swallowed a mouthful of much too hot chocolate, 
 and coughed and gasped, to Helen s horror, while 
 Peter laughed unrestrainedly. When Don had got 
 his breath back again, he shook his fist at Peter 
 across the table, whereat Peter laughed more than 
 ever. Helen was prettily worried about him and 
 hoped that he wouldn t choke any more and offered 
 him water; there was not any primness or con 
 straint after that, but the four sat together in 
 friendly warmth while the dusk grew outside and 
 the shadows on the snow deepened into blue. 
 Finally the talk came to music, through a number 
 of things. 
 
 "You must certainly hear Tod und Verkla- 
 rung," Helen said. " Mustn t they, Joan?" 
 
 " Isn t that very modern?" Don asked. 
 "Strauss, or someone?" 
 
 "Heavens," Helen cried, "Strauss is old fash 
 ioned." 
 
 "I get very little out of the moderns," Don said 
 frankly. "It s my own fault, of course. I don t 
 understand them." 
 
 "Last week," Peter said, "during the last 
 movement of the New World I absolutely sort of 
 exploded, and bits of me kept floating around near 
 the ceiling, bumping into the statues." 
 
 "So did I," Don admitted. 
 
 "I think you go mostly to hear those big trum 
 pets like pretzels, what-you-may-call- ems," Peter 
 said. 
 
156 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Helen remarked that, of course, Dvorak was no 
 modern, either. 
 
 "Well," Peter said, "I think that s the sort of 
 thing music ought to be. It ought to make a man 
 want to go out and work ; it ought to fill him full 
 of courage to live and produce and . . . breed, 
 and all that. And poetry, too, and art." He 
 wound up triumphantly, thinking of Jill. 
 
 "That s Carver, of course," Joan said. 
 
 "Most of the modern music I ve heard . . . the 
 really modern," Peter went on, "would just send 
 a man to sleep or something." 
 
 "For the most part," Joan said, "I find the 
 moderns rather bewildered emotionally, and al 
 most pathetic, don t you think?" 
 
 "I suppose it s rather our fault," Don said. 
 "It s all too complicated for us to follow." 
 
 "No," Joan answered, "It s a glorification of 
 pure sensuousness. Don t you see, it s meant to 
 be as unintelligible as perfume. We re not meant 
 to follow it, but to sort of take a deep breath of 
 it, and then let it mean something. Like a cubist 
 picture." 
 
 Peter looked happily over at his friend. Helen 
 was sitting beside him, her eyes shining with in 
 terest at the discussion, and Peter fairly bubbled 
 with content at the manner in which the after 
 noon was passing. 
 
 "Besides," Joan was saying in her precise way, 
 "don t you think that the majority of artists to 
 day are more intent on fame than on greatness! 
 
PETER KINDRED 157 
 
 Fame lies in the public, you see, and greatness 
 would lie in their own selves." She blushed the 
 least bit and looked down at her plate. I didn t 
 just think of that," she said, "I thought of it a 
 long while ago." 
 
 "It s awfully good, though," Peter said eagerly. 
 
 Joan smiled and went on. "I think perhaps 
 there are too many famous men all expressing 
 themselves as fast as ever they can, and setting a 
 bad example." 
 
 "Why, Joan!" said Helen, surprised at her 
 friend s earnestness. 
 
 "Yes, I do," Joan said defiantly, and sat up 
 straight and prim in her chair, her cheeks pink. 
 
 "I do wish that David had met you," Peter said 
 in a low voice to Joan. She looked at him vaguely, 
 still troubled with the echoes of her own vehe 
 mence. 
 
 "David?" she asked. 
 
 "Well ... he is in France now. A musician." 
 
 Later, as they went home together, Helen said 
 to Joan. "You old bluffer! Whatever will they 
 think?" 
 
 Joan walked happily along. "It was fun, 
 though, wasn t it?" she said. 
 
 "Yes, very. Except for my conscience." 
 
 Joan laughed and squeezed Helen s arm. 
 "Wasn t Peter funny and full of awe?" 
 
 "He s always that way. Did you like his 
 friend?" 
 
 "Don Mark? Did you?" 
 
158 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Helen hesitated a moment and looked thought 
 fully before her. "Very much," she said in a 
 voice that seemed to be deepened by the very thin 
 nest slice of tone. 
 
 At the same time, in his room on Holyoke, Don 
 was stretching out his arms between one of the 
 most brazen yawns Peter had ever seen. Peter, 
 sitting at the edge of the old morris chair, his 
 knees up under his chin, his fingers clasped about 
 his ankles, was smiling up at Don half amused and 
 half questioning. Don brought his clenched fists 
 slowly up, up, and slowly down, while his mouth 
 closed and his body relaxed. It was a stupendous 
 bit of carelessness. 
 
 "Oh," he said, reaching for his pipe, "they re 
 all right." 
 
 Peter had not answered his mother s last gos 
 sipy letter. There had been other things he 
 wanted to do at the time, and as the days went by 
 and there seemed always to be other things of one 
 sort or another, it was increasingly hard to sit at 
 his desk, and gossip back. There was nothing to 
 tell his mother; there rarely was, but he managed 
 to find a bit of harmless incident here and there, 
 and these he put into his letters. Now that his 
 life seemed to have taken a sudden twist, he 
 could think of nothing to talk of save Joan, 
 and, unfortunately, nothing to say about her, 
 for, indeed, he did have nothing to say about 
 her, even to Don, and so, of course, nothing to his 
 
PETER KINDRED 159 
 
 mother. He wished to take nothing before his 
 mother that was not definitely settled in his own 
 mind; he felt that she played clumsily with his 
 thoughts, and with his adventures, and, far from 
 respecting them, was carelessly curious to pick 
 them apart. So he kept from her any thought he 
 was not entirely sure of, and gave her only those 
 settled ideas she could juggle without hurting. 
 It may be that if she had seen how unsettled Peter 
 was for the most part, and how lacking in the ar 
 rogant confidence that he seemed to have, she 
 would have been more tolerant of him; but I am 
 afraid she would have been more curious, as well, 
 and more intent on meddling. 
 
 Peter s silence was accepted quietly at home, 
 but not without some bitter feeling of resignation. 
 It was not unexpected, but it was misunderstood ; 
 for while Peter had no purpose in not writing, his 
 mother and father thought that it was the out 
 growth of his whole tendency away from them, 
 and felt it keenly. His father started more than 
 one letter to him, to beg of him to write to his 
 mother, but an unhappy pride kept him from ever 
 sending them. 
 
 Such a state of affairs never entered Peter s 
 head. He was living idly, reading and talking, 
 spending some hours in the rooms of acquaint 
 ances, Don s friends, or his own. It was not a 
 very different Harvard from his own, that he 
 found. For instance, there was one man intent 
 upon philosophy, and another who was studying 
 
160 PETER KINDRED 
 
 to teach history; there was a group of Carver- 
 ians, who knew Don slightly, and had heard of 
 Joan ; a musician, unlike David, sober and exact ; 
 an aesthete or so ; one spirit mildly reminiscent of 
 Frank. Few were entirely unknown to the oth 
 ers, and Peter himself was not a strange name to 
 all of them. Some followed this man or that, some 
 were intimate with professors, some lonely. All 
 these men, with few exceptions, had passed 
 through the same various phases of intellectual 
 life that Peter had passed through, coming to col 
 lege undecided, often thoughtless, though some 
 times with a real bent, dipping casually into dif 
 ferent theories, hearing rumors of one thing and 
 another, tasting here and there, growing, develop 
 ing, judging, comparing, slowly deciding. To 
 such men college meant talk, books, professors, 
 arguments, years of freedom to discuss and leisure 
 to appreciate. To many, the clubs, the teams, the 
 social events of Harvard were as far and strange 
 as though they were of another land. For a while 
 Peter could not understand why he had not known 
 them before, had not found them out one by one, 
 his earlier years, but in truth their earlier years 
 had been much the same as his ; they were men of 
 few but significant friendships; they were de 
 veloping when he was developing, and grew as he 
 grew; if he had met them before, he would not 
 have recognized their parallel trend to his. 
 
 He did not join forces with the other Carver- 
 ians, as Don did. He listened to their talk, how- 
 
PETER KINDRED 161 
 
 ever, with deep interest, as he listened to the liber 
 als. He found no reason to make small points 
 clear. Underneath it all, all the talk, the argu 
 ment, the activity of the different groups, the 
 longing and the enthusiasm, it was given him to 
 catch a stir of passing youth, of generations rest 
 less, gone before, of restless generations yet to 
 come and to inherit his life there, the familiar 
 halls, the paths, the walks, afternoons and eve 
 nings, the well beloved things. He thought of 
 what Frank had said that afternoon in autumn, 
 with the blue roof tops of Harvard before them, 
 distant through the trees. He wanted a son to 
 share in that inheritance. 
 
 Peter would have nothing of love, bnt he was 
 less stern than Don. He had softened his views 
 to allow for the general desirability of woman, 
 although he still contended that romantic love 
 was rot, and fit for children. He was willing to 
 admit that there might be some deeper affection 
 between a man and a woman than he could find 
 in the friendship of two men, based upon his dis 
 covery in a woman of something strange and 
 graceful, something attractive and bewildering. 
 
 "I do not accept this romantic twaddle about 
 love at all," he said to Don, "and still I grant 
 some indescribable feminine attractiveness. How 
 you can consistently deny that is more than I can 
 understand." 
 
 "If you were as logical as you think yon are, 
 
162 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Peter my boy, you would see that yon are con 
 fusing intellectual appreciation with silk stock 
 ings. Fie!" 
 
 "I m not thinking of silk stockings at all," 
 Peter answered hotly. "But what I say is that 
 there is something more than a woman s intelli 
 gence to be considered. Something that isn t sen 
 sual, either." 
 
 "It isn t possible. There is only intelligence 
 and sensuality." 
 
 "You can t say that of Joan." Peter looked at 
 his friend steadily. 
 
 I could but I sha n t. You wouldn t like it. 
 
 "Don t be absurd!" 
 
 "No, sir. I sha n t say a word. But I will say 
 this ... If there s something in a woman that 
 can t be placed in the intellect, and reached 
 through intelligence, and something that can t be 
 placed in the body and reached through debauch 
 . . . why, then, it can t be reached at all, and 
 you ll be jealous of it all the rest of your days." 
 
 "Not I. Jealousy is too dangerous a thing . . . 
 uncontrolled emotion. Of course there is jeal 
 ousy, but it has to be integrated." 
 
 Integrated was a word new to Peter s vocabu 
 lary. He had picked it up from one of the philoso 
 phers, and he enjoyed using it. Don smiled when 
 ever he heard it. 
 
 After four days of biting cold that sent the pass 
 ing students scuttling along Holyoke to and from 
 the Yard, and brought out huge brown raccoon 
 
PETER KINDRED 163 
 
 coats from the closets of the patricians, Peter 
 heard that there was skating on the Charles, and 
 thought at once of Joan. He was afraid that Don 
 would object to going along, and would not care 
 to ask Helen, too, but he hoped that Don could be 
 won over, for there was so much unfamiliar in 
 taking any woman skating that he wanted some 
 one else with him to share it. For a full morning 
 he caught delicious glimpses of himself carrying 
 Joan s skates down Boylston Street, while she 
 walked beside him, and putting her skates on her, 
 finally, at the bank of the river. That gave him 
 the greatest pleasure of all, and he secretly en 
 joyed the faint blush it occasioned him. 
 
 He was immensely relieved to find that Don 
 would go, and had, besides, no great objection to 
 Helen going, too. Peter telephoned to Joan from 
 the pharmacy between lectures, and heard his coin 
 chink in the pay station, with a hollow and beat 
 ing heart. Joan was delighted with the idea, and 
 promised Helen s eagerness also, and so it was ar 
 ranged. Peter would rather have written her a 
 note, but he was afraid that the ice would not 
 hold. 
 
 The day of their skating was bright and yellow 
 and cold, and Peter found himself walking down 
 Boylston Street with Joan, carrying her skates, 
 quite as he had imagined he would, save for the 
 difference that he was merrier and happier. Don 
 and Helen swung along, a few paces behind them, 
 and he could hear their talk and laughter. They 
 
164 PETER KINDRED 
 
 came opposite the power house and one of the 
 boat clubs, and turned along the river bank. 
 Before them, the Charles spread in a smooth, 
 white sheet, shining and mottled, black with occa 
 sional deep water beneath the ice. A few eager 
 muckers were playing at the edge of the ice, while 
 further out across the river folk skated in the 
 wind, in groups and alone, with flashes of color 
 among hats and scarves. In the sun Joan sat on a 
 bench and Peter knelt at her feet, fastening her 
 shoes. He thought how bony and angular her 
 feet were. She was not at all ashamed of them, 
 however, and put them out boldly to be laced; 
 when her skating shoes were on they looked trim 
 and slender. Peter, with hands made awkward 
 by the cold, laced his own shoes, and they scram 
 bled to the ice and sailed together out across the 
 river. Don and Helen, having fastened their own 
 skates, were already ahead of them, moving in 
 long, graceful strides. Peter tucked his hand 
 under Joan s elbow; she bent her wrist and 
 reached for it; they locked their fingers together 
 and struck out after their friends. 
 
 Luckily enough, Peter skated well, for Joan 
 went swiftly, and with the wind behind them they 
 were flying over the smooth ice. The late winter 
 sun beat a warm tattoo on their faces, and filled 
 their eyes with yellow light. 
 
 " Isn t it splendid." Joan said, as they swept 
 past Don and Helen, and waved back at them. 
 4 You skate very well. I m glad of that ... I 
 
PETER KINDRED 165 
 
 rather thought I d have to pull yon around, and 
 we were sure that Mr. Mark would fall all over 
 everything." 
 
 "Why," asked Peter, "do yon always expect 
 these things of me? Do I look so helpless and 
 timid and ... all that!" 
 
 "Well, yes, you do a bit, * Joan answered him. 
 "You look as though yon smoked cigarettes 
 and wrote poetry not very good poetry and 
 danced." 
 
 "I smoke a pipe, and once in a while a cigar, 
 after dinner, when I feel important ... I enjoy 
 that. I d like to write poetry even bad poetry, 
 but I d never be able to write even a jingle. No 
 and I don t dance. I used to, until people started 
 to make a business of it, and then I gave up. I 
 couldn t keep abreast of the new steps, and that 
 made me seem awfully awkward and ignorant to 
 everybody. But even now I can t help feeling 
 that all this bother has gone on about dancing 
 because it s just another way of being famous and 
 social without bothering people s brains at all 
 while they re being it." 
 
 "Yes," Joan said, "but, of course, there s more 
 in it than that." 
 
 "There s always more in things than just the 
 little I manage to say, but there s usually so much 
 more that I d never finish talking ... so I just 
 pick out one thing . . . whrup!" he cried as Joan 
 stumbled and he caught her tightly to him, while 
 with her whole weight on his arm she swept along 
 
166 PETER KINDRED 
 
 on one foot. After a moment they came into the 
 rhythm of their stride again, but Peter still held 
 her closely, and she was content at that, and 
 grasped his fingers tightly. He felt faintly atrem- 
 ble, and thoughtful of her. 
 
 "It s my fault, of course," he told her. "I 
 shouldn t have been talking so importantly, when 
 we should be skating. I sha n t talk again. " 
 
 She smiled and gave his arm a friendly pres 
 sure that put him into splendid spirits with him 
 self. They skated on more evenly and swiftly to 
 ward "Watertown and Brighton, while the sun sank 
 lower and lower and the afternoon drew near to 
 dusk. Then they turned in a flashing sweep and 
 started back again, past Don and Helen, who 
 turned after them and raced them. Together they 
 lengthened their stroke and put more power in it, 
 and skated so for nearly a mile, until the other 
 two gave up and coasted and drifted behind. They 
 had unlinked their arms, holding each other by 
 the hands to travel more swiftly ; now they drew 
 together again. Peter, half breathless, looked at 
 Joan with shining eyes. The flight into the wind 
 had whipped the color into her cheeks, and in the 
 turning dusk her lithe young body skimmed be 
 side him like some impetuous bird. Her chin was 
 buried in the fur about her neck, and only her 
 eyes answered him and then looked steadily ahead. 
 He thought that he had never seen so delicately 
 chiselled a being, and he felt his spirit grow wide 
 and warm to make room for her. 
 
PETER KINDRED 167 
 
 It was afterglow when they came at last to the 
 "bridge again, and saw before them the boat 
 houses, the distant lights of Boston, and the lam 
 bent broad windows of the power house, glaring 
 with an uncanny emerald light through the winter 
 evening. Beyond them towered the cold, white 
 circle of the stadium, gray in the dim light, and 
 behind them the sky was fading to a clear green, 
 with one star bright in the west. In silence they 
 coasted slowly to the bank, and Peter, with 
 numbed fingers, knelt before Joan again and un 
 did her shoes, while she looked soberly over his 
 head at the river and the hastening forms of Don 
 and Helen. He thought how lean and strong her 
 feet were, how clearly etched, and hoped tremen 
 dously that they were not cold, so much, indeed, 
 that he did not think how cold he was himself, his 
 hands and feet, until from his tight skating shoes 
 he struggled into his wide walking shoes and stood 
 up, and then he could do no more than limp help 
 lessly. Don and Helen drew near with a fine flash 
 ing of skates and ringing ice and laughter, and the 
 four walked stiffly back toward the Square, their 
 blood leaping through their young bodies, silent 
 and content. 
 
 The upshot of their afternoon together was that 
 they were to be friends. Helen announced the 
 fact to Joan, and Don more clumsily gave Peter 
 to understand as much. But neither Peter nor 
 Joan did anything more than smile happily to 
 
168 PETER KINDRED 
 
 themselves, and hum a snatch of tune, as, on op 
 posite sides of Cambridge, they went to their 
 classes in the morning. 
 
 Joan, with candid suddenness, took Peter into 
 her confidence and her friendship, though as for 
 confidences, there was little of that, for Joan had 
 no jealously guarded thoughts, and her simple, 
 straightforward life was entirely apparent. On 
 the other hand, for all that Peter had thought him 
 self apportioned justly between Don and Frank 
 and his lone, half forgotten love, and David, he 
 found that there was an overwhelming part of 
 himself he had not known was empty, and in that 
 part Joan installed herself. Indeed, as the winter 
 wore on, that part grew greater and greater, and 
 began at last to urge dominion on the provinces 
 ruled by his other friends. 
 
 They skated again, Joan and Peter alone, and 
 then on a Saturday, the four of them, all day in 
 the mellow sun, making a gleeful lunch of sand 
 wiches and hot coffee from a thermos bottle Don 
 had carried, far up the river toward Watertown. 
 The next day, Sunday, Peter and Don were lonely 
 and restless, and since Joan was in Boston, they 
 carried Helen off for a long walk, and laughed and 
 talked and strode the fearful afternoon away. In 
 justice to Don it must be observed that he would 
 as lief have walked with some philosopher or 
 economist from his acquaintance, but Peter wanted 
 to see Joan again, and although he could not, he 
 thought he would see more of Joan in Helen than 
 
PETER KINDRED 169 
 
 in some argumentative upholder of the single tax, 
 or no tax at all. 
 
 He called again at Bertram Hall, but without 
 the need of masculine snobbery to sustain him, and 
 rather enjoyed being peeked at by two girls with 
 solemn eyes, before Joan came down. Sometimes 
 they walked out Brattle Street together, past 
 Longfellow s house, past gardened and well-ar- 
 bored homes that Peter envied for their gentle 
 ness, their trees and lawns, and the air of years 
 about them. From such walks they came back at 
 tea time, and sat together in a corner of the Cock 
 Horse, talking in low voices, and patiently wish 
 ing that there were more toast and marmalade. 
 Often they met in the Square, and then Peter went 
 with Joan upon her errands and sometimes cut a 
 class to walk her back to Radcliffe again. Some 
 times he met Helen, and more than once with Don 
 along the three of them trudged about the country 
 while Joan steadfastly attended to her lectures. 
 Little by little they grew to frequent the Cock 
 Horse, and to consider one table there at lunch- 
 time their own private property, but it was rarely 
 that the four lunched together, as their hours fell 
 differently, but more often two of them, or 
 three. But all the time neither Peter nor Don 
 said any word to each other about either Joan or 
 Helen. 
 
 Snow had fallen lightly over Cambridge, a thin 
 covering, but enough to spoil the skating soon 
 after their full day on the river. A week later a 
 
170 PETER KINDRED 
 
 great storm swept upon Cambridge, blowing slant 
 ing flakes of snow driving from the north, piling 
 drifts and smothering the roofs for three days. 
 At the end of it the clouds tattered into flying gray 
 strips, the sky welled blue again, and the sun spar 
 kled and shone on the deep coverlet of white that 
 weighed down the branches of trees, and stood out 
 fatly upon the roof tops, like some impossibly gor 
 geous meringue upon a pie. 
 
 The snow changed the walks to afternoons at 
 Bertram Hall, with the famous mistress of the 
 Hall taking her dignified tea in her small room 
 nearby them, or sometimes among the shops of 
 Boston, when Joan needed a bit of china or a can 
 dlestick or a print. Sometimes, not often, she tele 
 phoned to Peter when she wanted his company, 
 and he put everything aside to go with her. He 
 enjoyed their shopping adventures; to walk to 
 gether along Tremont or Boylston Street, with 
 people hurrying by, and just a touch of briskness 
 in the wind and in the sun on the snow ; to go im- 
 portanfly into shops and stare wisely at luxurious 
 trifles, and then go importantly out again. Peter 
 could never have done such a thing alone, but Joan 
 was to the manner born. 
 
 "Tell me why," he asked her, after they Had 
 been admiring a very old brass candlestick in a 
 quaint shop, "an old thing is always so much more 
 expensive and desirable than a new one?" 
 
 "Don t you see any difference, yourself, 
 Peter ? Joan challenged him. 
 
PETER KINDRED 171 
 
 "Very little, I must admit . . . except that a 
 new one looks shinier . . . and more made." 
 
 "Well, that s it, really. The love of antiques 
 is a sort of culture, an appreciation of things that 
 seem somehow to have happened, and not to have 
 been made." 
 
 "Yes, I see ... only that it seems to be rather 
 an attempt to get away from the work bench." 
 
 "I suppose it is." 
 
 "That isn t very Carverian, is it?" Peter asked 
 soberly. 
 
 "Not if it s carried to an extreme, of course." 
 
 "I knew a chap my first year," Peter said, 
 "who sent all over England for a certain shade of 
 leather to bind a book. He wanted it to match a 
 tie he liked. He was an awfully silly ass." 
 
 "Well?" Joan said. 
 
 "I don t mean to draw a perfect analogy. But 
 would you say that an old candlestick on your 
 mantelpiece would make you more efficient than a 
 new one? Or that you d be healthier because you 
 ate your dinner from an old table ... at great 
 expense ? No, it s just a waste. * And then Peter 
 went on very logically to outargue Joan upon the 
 matter of the value of antiques, and when she had 
 admitted the indubitable logic of his argument he 
 was highly pleased with himself, but it took not a 
 mite of pleasure away from his excursions into 
 the shops with her, nor did it detract at all from 
 the flavor of his tea afterward. Joan bought no 
 old furniture, and neither did he. As for Peter, 
 
172 PETER KINDRED 
 
 he would have been just as happy wandering in a 
 toy shop, if Joan were along, pricing and apprais 
 ing in her certain voice, at his side. 
 
 But finally Joan, a bit conscience-stricken at the 
 days that went by so idly, went sensibly to work 
 again, and so upset Peter by her quiet and seri 
 ous determination to waste no more time, that, 
 after upbraiding himself in round, Carverian 
 terms for his slothfulness, he plunged furiously 
 into his studies, working so late at night that once 
 or twice he fell asleep over his books. His en 
 thusiasm, in turn, stirred Joan to exaggerated ef 
 fort, which was not good for her. When the two 
 met, they talked over their courses. The fact that 
 they were both so intent upon study, made work 
 more pleasant for each one, added to the welfare 
 of their consciences, and gave them a feeling of 
 companionship; they set themselves all the more 
 sternly to their reading. Often at midnight, the 
 house hushed, the streets below his window ghostly 
 still, Peter, at his desk, thought of Joan facing 
 her task courageously, and grew energetic and 
 light-hearted at the thought. He knew that they 
 were both living at last quite according to their 
 beliefs, and the more tired he grew, the more his 
 spirit drove him happily on. There was a new 
 note of sympathy between them, a new loyalty and 
 thoughtfulness. When Joan s eyes grew tired and 
 her head was held less proudly on her slim neck, 
 Peter went soberly to his classes, with a troubled 
 face. 
 
PETER KINDRED 178 
 
 It lasted a fortnight. Then Joan, unused to 
 the long hours she had been spending at her 
 books, yet urged on unusually through her weari 
 ness by her pride before Peter, caught cold, and 
 went quietly home with a fever, there to lie in a 
 tossed bed beside Helen s flowers, while Peter sat 
 blankly at his desk and wondered idly what the 
 books and the papers might be that lay folded so 
 neatly and familiarly there. Joan was at home 
 for a week, and Peter, after the first day or so, 
 made a half-hearted attempt to go sternly to work 
 again, but it came to nothing and trailed away into 
 absent-mindedness. 
 
 Joan returned wanly to Bertram Hall, with a 
 doctor s implicit orders that she be decently spar 
 ing of her work, and Frank came to Boston, out 
 of the north. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A T AN outlandish hour Frank came thunder- 
 ** ing np the spindly stairs in a rush of cold 
 morning, and fell upon Don, to Peter s startled 
 satisfaction, for it gave him a chance to be half 
 way to his door before it was flung open and 
 Frank swept in. His heavy coat was as fresh and 
 cold as the early and windy streets outside ; Peter 
 was hugged to its rough surface, and then was 
 whirled back with Frank to Don s room, where 
 that gentleman lay in an aggrieved pile on the 
 floor, wondering through his sleepiness if it had 
 really been Frank he had heard. 
 
 The three of them breakfasted royally at the 
 Lantern, where Frank was welcomed hardly less 
 happily by Susan and Mrs. Prentis. Susan, in 
 fact, remembered that he had always asked for two 
 pots of particularly thick cream for his cereal, 
 and she brought him two as though he had never 
 been gone, to Peter s envy. 
 
 Frank was full of his own adventures, but first 
 of all he must know the history of his two friends. 
 
 174 
 
PETER KINDRED 175 
 
 "I m a Carverian now," Peter told him, and he 
 shook his head sorrowfully. 
 
 "Oh, oh!" he cried, and pointed an accusing 
 finger at Don. 
 
 They were both intensely glad to have Frank 
 back again. He had not changed a whit from his 
 old self and he made Peter feel as though he had 
 not changed either, as though nothing had 
 changed, as though nothing ever would. 
 
 After breakfast Don went off to a lecture, and 
 Peter told Frank everything there was to tell, 
 all that had happened to him, to Don, the gossip 
 of Harvard, Joan and Helen. Frank installed 
 himself in his old room, emptied his valise over a 
 chair, and sprawled out on the window seat. 
 After a while it was hard to believe that he had 
 not always been there. 
 
 Finally he told Peter why he was in Cambridge. 
 
 "IVe given up trying to make a business man 
 of myself, "he said. "I don t fit in. So I m com 
 ing down here again for a Ph.D., and then ... I 
 shall probably teach." 
 
 Frank a teacher! It was a startling idea, and 
 one that Peter could not stomach at all. It was 
 entirely incongruous to put Frank among profes 
 sors. At Peter s dismay Frank laughed gleefully. 
 
 "That s the way I felt about it, too, at first, 
 until I realized that I was never going to have any 
 day but Sunday to myself for the rest of my life 
 . . . Sunday, and such holidays . . . And then I 
 put my foot down. Think what it means, Peter, 
 
176 PETER KINDRED 
 
 my lad . . . the only day given yon to enjoy the 
 sunlight and the wind and the trees and the whole 
 country, is to be forever Sunday, overrun with 
 honest families making honest noises. And the 
 rest of your life sitting at a desk, and going to bed 
 at night. It s not for me. I shall sit at a desk at 
 night and walk when the sun is up, and do my 
 share of the world s thinking out in the open air 
 . . . except in winter . . . and even then. And 
 besides, I may do some good, making fiery speeches 
 against Carver." 
 
 Peter felt very differently toward the busy mills 
 and offices, but he could not find it in his mind to 
 blame Frank for anything, although he would have 
 argued with anyone else. 
 
 "Do you know, Peter," Frank went on to say, 
 "I grew to hate the people around me. They had 
 no faculty for idleness; they couldn t enjoy a 
 darn thing." 
 
 Peter smiled at the old Frank who was so fa 
 miliar to him. He would not have disputed with 
 him for a fortune. It would have been an impu 
 dence against the years behind him. But it gave 
 him a deal of pleasure to feel such a tiny bit of tol 
 erance in himself, and to know that he was silent 
 only because he wanted to be. And because he was 
 glad to be. 
 
 Frank s coming made work even more unlikely 
 for Peter. It was impossible, of course, to sit at 
 home while Frank and Don went tramping, or to 
 let Frank adventure in Boston alone ; such things 
 
PETER KINDRED 177 
 
 were of more moment than forty pages of foreign 
 exchange. The three spent their time living over 
 the past years together. The very first night they 
 went to Whin s again, and Peter grew fairly bois 
 terous. 
 
 He was anxious to have Frank meet Joan. 
 Somehow, Frank s approval belonged to her, as 
 her due. Besides, he wanted to show her to Frank 
 as though to say: See here, I have grown and 
 matured as much as this. But he disliked his own 
 eagerness, which seemed boyish to him, and quite 
 an opposite to what he wanted Frank to think 
 him. Because of it he waited until it was almost 
 time for Frank to go north again, before he took 
 him to the Cock Horse to meet Joan and Helen. 
 But afterward, for all his scheming, he was so 
 truly eager to have Frank talk about her, that 
 Don and Frank both burst out laughing at him, 
 and covered him with confusion, and his stumbling 
 explanation served only to add to it. 
 
 "There is something in me," he said to Joan 
 later, "which never grew up. It s a childishness, 
 a sort of inferiority ... as though I had to be al 
 ways praised, or I d feel badly. Could it be breed 
 ing, do you think?" 
 
 "I hardly think so/ Joan said, "although I 
 don t know much about it. It might be just a 
 lack of confidence in yourself, you know. The 
 sort of thing that sensitive children get when they 
 first begin to realize that older folk are people 
 just like themselves, only bigger and wiser . . . 
 
178 PETER KINDRED 
 
 and then they lose it again as soon as they find 
 the older folk aren t so awfully much bigger and 
 wiser after all. Perhaps you never grew up so 
 far." 
 
 "Yes, I did," Peter avowed, "I grew up at Exe 
 ter, and I kept on growing. But that part of me 
 didn t change. ..." 
 
 "Why do you think it might be breeding, 
 Peter?" Joan asked. 
 
 "My parents are like that, and their parents 
 were. People who aren t what they know they 
 ought to be, and what they want to be. ... I 
 don t know. There s something there, I think, 
 that won t be downed by any will to down it. . . ." 
 
 Joan smiled, and said: 
 
 "The mind is always fighting that sort of thing. 
 But it takes a few generations to make a real suc 
 cess of it." 
 
 "Do you know, Joan, I think perhaps just such 
 an upward trend in generations is the thing that 
 makes a work-bench philosophy so splendid. I 
 could work pretty hard, thinking my son would 
 be a greater man than I, and still no more than 
 what s in me ... and my wife." 
 
 "Peter," Joan asked suddenly, "haven t you 
 ever wanted a son to come after you in Harvard?" 
 
 "Awfully, Joan." 
 
 "I have, too, Peter. You re right about work 
 ing hard. I think the bitterest thing in the world 
 would be not to be able to send my daughter to 
 Kadcliffe. That is, next to having no daughter." 
 
PETER KINDRED 179 
 
 They were silent for a long while. Peter looked 
 thoughtfully at Joan. She was very dear to him, 
 and what she had said hummed in his heart, like 
 a secret shared with a beloved friend. 
 
 That night Frank went north again, and when 
 he was gone, Peter and Don, of a sudden, were a 
 year older. 
 
 Peter rather resented being a year older, after 
 all. He disliked the fact of having so long ago 
 spent his freshman season, and wished vaguely 
 that he were not hurrying so fast across that lus 
 trum of his years. The summer he had passed 
 abroad was gone ; he did not want it to be so en 
 tirely gone. For a while he regretted David 
 keenly, and felt, in his loss, how inevitably life 
 was sweeping him along. He felt guilty, too, after 
 a fashion, that he had let David grow discouraged 
 and come to nothing. It ended by his writing 
 David a long letter, but as he wrote he thought of 
 what Joan had said to him of greatness and fame, 
 and he hardly knew what to say to David then. 
 
 "It is the sort of day I know you would enjoy," 
 he wrote. "The sun is full, up and down Mount 
 Auburn, and all of Cambridge has been piled high 
 with snow for nearly a week. Remarkably enough, 
 there is no slush, and the snow is too deep for 
 mud. There are sleighbells arid wind and the clink 
 of open goloshes. 
 
 "What of you, David? Are you still a garret 
 eer? And did you find your great man? You 
 must know Paris marvelously well by now, and 
 
180 PETER KINDRED 
 
 you must be full of adventures. But is it so much 
 easier to express yourself, after all? Don t yon 
 struggle as you used to do? I m curious, quite 
 frankly. 
 
 "I m very old and wise. You never took Bab 
 bitt in Comp Lit., but the course was made for 
 you. I was introduced to your ivory tower, but 
 it was after you had gone. Otherwise . . . well, 
 I doubt I should have let you go so easily. You 
 should have found your music in your own self, 
 David . . . not in the quietness of your life, but 
 in its rebellion. 
 
 "I had no mind to preach. But I was thinking 
 of the woman who told me once that greatness lay 
 inside one s own self, and fame outside. I wish 
 you had met her. Quite slim, with ruddy hair and 
 pale blue eyes almost gray really gray some 
 times, and a sort of windy, clean-hitting mind, 
 sudden and frank. My meeting her is a long 
 story. . . . I ve no idea how we ever came to be 
 friends. She s a woman of New England a se 
 nior at Eadcliffe I can hear all New England 
 talking in her voice orchards, rocks, villages and 
 churches. 
 
 "I have too much to tell you, ever to hope to do 
 it coherently. Frank is coming back for a Ph.D. 
 next year ; he is disgusted with business ; another 
 ivory tower. Don lives in his room . . . and Har 
 vard goes on. I love it I shall hate like fury to 
 graduate. 
 
 "I hope you ve not taken to modern music. 
 
PETER KINDRED 181 
 
 We ve had a great deal of it here in Boston. Oh 
 I m quite a critic now ... I have a Symphony 
 seat. Isn t it absurd! I even have a theory about 
 modern music. Do you remember when I couldn t 
 hum a tune? 
 
 "I have been thinking of those old days, of 
 Exeter, and of our freshman year. You re lucky 
 to be a musician, David. There s a lot I d want 
 to write, if I could. I d write an American sym 
 phony, first, and you d be the hero of it, but I d 
 keep you here in America and give you an awfully 
 hard time and doubt and bewilderment and dis 
 couragement and then Yoicks! a really tremen 
 dous ending, every instrument working like mad, 
 the conductor waving up and down and jumping 
 around, and the drums banging away for dear 
 life. 
 
 " You never knew Harvard, but you would have, 
 if you had stayed. The real Harvard means Bad- 
 cliffe. I would have laughed at that once. It 
 means Radcliffe, and Belmont and Waverly 
 Brattle Street, the tea houses the Charles in 
 winter skating Boston, the shops along Boyls- 
 ton Street the Symphony oh, a host of things 
 that you and I never dreamed of. 
 
 " Write to me of your garret in Paris. ... It 
 must be wonderful." 
 
 Joan, under orders to deal lightly with her work, 
 turned fairly helplessly to Peter, with the result 
 that few days went by in which they were not to 
 gether some part of the time. She had given up 
 
182 PETER KINDRED 
 
 her dramatic work entirely. She said there was 
 too much else to do and to think about; that ex 
 planation she offered Helen, and for a while 
 Helen, realizing better than Joan how little it was 
 true, was angry and worried. But after Helen 
 and Don had talked the matter over at lunch, she 
 began to think seriously about it, albeit with a 
 twinkle in her eyes, and made a particular point 
 of discussing Peter whenever Joan would, and 
 that was often, and tried to meet Peter, too, and 
 to talk to him. Don was sarcastic ; but Helen was 
 faintly thrilled. 
 
 In March it was still winter in New England, 
 the brown earth lost beneath ice, as though it 
 never would be otherwise; Peter and Joan, red- 
 cheeked, muffled and bundled and snowy. Don 
 and Helen sat indoors and studied in their various 
 rooms, or met at lunch, but Peter and Joan pre 
 ferred to be out of doors if they could; they had 
 talked a great deal together, about all manner of 
 things, and it was pleasant just to be with each 
 other in Cambridge and in Boston again. It was 
 good to be side by side, without talk, in a wind, 
 arm in arm over slippery places. It was better 
 than to be sitting always opposite each other, in 
 a corner, talking and arguing. 
 
 Then, at the end of March, Tod und Verklarung 
 was announced in a Symphony program, and 
 Helen proceeded happily to make an event of it. 
 It was to explain a great many things in music 
 that she had been unable to make clear, to fill, 
 
PETER KINDRED 183 
 
 somehow, an empty place in Don s enthusiasm. 
 She went over it carefully in advance; she was 
 anxious for Don to enjoy it thoroughly, and was 
 prepared to be intensely disappointed if he did 
 not. Peter, catching a flash of her enthusiasm, 
 felt as though something were to happen, almost 
 as he had used to feel before a big game. But 
 Joan, in turn, was slyly amused at Helen. She 
 had a mind to talk to Peter about it, and laugh 
 with him at Helen s anxiety for Don, and yet, for 
 a reason inexplicable to herself, she hesitated, and 
 thought better of it. She was not accustomed to 
 demureness in herself; it puzzled her. But she 
 knew, nevertheless, that if she made a mock of 
 Helen s affection for Don before Peter, she would 
 not be able to hold her face up to him while she 
 mocked. It half vexed her to feel so ; but it was 
 half pleasant, too. 
 
 On the night of the concert, winter broke slug 
 gishly, and a wind that was not a winter wind 
 blew steadily out of the west. In it there was a 
 hint of brown, wet earth again. The two men rode 
 in to Boston, a feeling of adventure stirring in 
 Peter s body. Don had little to say; his thoughts 
 were not upon music, but at his desk, where his 
 work was piled high, and among his neat notes. 
 He did not remember a tithe of what Helen had 
 said; even then he had listened to her absently, 
 wondering while she spoke of music, how best to 
 undertake his own problems of study, and settle 
 them before spring. Don and Peter entered the 
 
184 PETER KINDRED 
 
 hall without comment, and took their seats to 
 gether. 
 
 The symphonic poem was played last of all; 
 after it was over, the two men went silently with 
 the crowd out of the hall. Helen was sleeping 
 with Joan in Boston that night. They waved to 
 Don from a lighted motor, and were gone. Peter 
 had not seen them. Under the lamp-light people 
 crowded against him and eddied past; motors 
 drew up at the curb ; there was noise and hurry 
 ing. Peter hardly heard it. He was aware of the 
 wide street, and the night, and insistent move 
 ment. Don took his arm and they walked slowly 
 up Massachusetts. An acquaintance called to 
 them from his motor; it came throbbing up be 
 side them, and they clambered into the back seat. 
 There they were isolated, quiet. The motor sped 
 smoothly forward toward the bridge, and the wind 
 rushed into their faces. 
 
 On the bridge they came into the full sweep of 
 the night. The sky was bellied with stars across 
 the zenith. A hollow of solemn wind was above 
 them; the river below, suddenly gleaming, and 
 then lost; and all about them were darkness and 
 the twinkle of far-off lights. The car thrummed 
 down the river road, gathering speed along the 
 unlighted track, its lamps flaring on ahead. Across 
 the water lay Boston, a gray of thin moonlight 
 upon roofs, darkly shadowed with streets. It was 
 a night when the sea comes close, when cities steal 
 insensibly together, when men are not lonely and 
 
PETER KINDRED 185 
 
 strange to one another any more, but live and 
 love together ; their pulses beating bravely a fine 
 tattoo into the infinite abyss. Or so it seemed. 
 And Peter, throwing back his head at last, with 
 the full power of his lungs sang the final great 
 sentence of the symphony, the Verklarung, rising 
 tip, up, up to a triumphant insistence of faith, dis 
 covered and determined. 
 
 That night, for the first time, Peter dreamed of 
 Joan. They were in Switzerland somehow ; there 
 was a cottage; Joan was kneeling before a tiny 
 fire of faggots. And then they were in Cambridge 
 again, and he was losing Joan. Inarticulate, mis 
 erable, he pleaded with her. She did not go, 
 and he kissed her. He woke up in love with 
 her. 
 
 It was an awakening more strange than any he 
 had ever known. He was suddenly wide awake; 
 bed was intolerable. He was full of some wild 
 and startled energy that struggled in him to be 
 let loose, but he did not kno\7 how to loose it. He 
 wanted to sing, a torrent of notes, without mean 
 ing. He moved slowly, as though his movements 
 were delicious and incomprehensible; he sat for 
 long spaces of time staring at the wall, at his desk, 
 at the cover of a book, attentive, as though listen 
 ing for something. 
 
 His heart weighed nothing, but it took up the 
 entire space of his breast. He could plainly hear 
 its beating. He wanted to cry out to someone that 
 
186 PETER KINDRED 
 
 some marvelous thing had occurred to him. Fi 
 nally he stood before his window, looking down at 
 Holyoke in the early morning sun, glowing through 
 the pane of glass onto his face. He stretched his 
 arms wide above his head and laughed deeply, 
 from the very bottom of his being. 
 
 "Lord!" he cried, "Lord!" And then sud 
 denly he grew sober and thoughtful, and a rush 
 of tenderness overwhelmed him. 
 
 There was nothing as it had been in Cambridge. 
 Everything was entirely changed, but wherein, he 
 could not say. Overnight it had taken to itself 
 whatever of glory Venice may have had, or Flor 
 ence, or Home, or Paris. There were no other 
 cities but Cambridge. There were names, unin 
 habited, somewhere north and south and west. 
 New York was one of them. Skeletons lived there 
 . . . what old, old skeletons! 
 
 The sight of Don at breakfast sobered him 
 abruptly. His voice trembled as he greeted him, 
 and he made a great business of eating his break 
 fast, lest he be caught in talk. It would have been 
 impossible for him to talk ; there would have been 
 no breath for his voice. He smiled almost con 
 tinually; he could not help it. 
 
 He was torn between the desire to see Joan at 
 once, and the fear of seeing her, for he knew that 
 he was not master of his breath. That Joan did 
 not love him was a matter of no importance to 
 him. Indeed, he would have been amazed and hor 
 rified at the thought of himself importunate for 
 
PETER KINDRED 187 
 
 her love; the remarkable fact to Peter was that 
 he himself was in love. Like some whirlwind, it 
 had swept him clear of everything, all talk 
 and argument, all experience, and it filled and 
 drenched every nook and cranny of him. That 
 was enough. If Joan had come to him then and 
 offered him her love, I think it would have wreaked 
 havoc with him; it would have been an unfortu 
 nate thing; he would not have known how to ac 
 cept it. 
 
 After breakfast Peter went back to his room, 
 up Mount Auburn Street. Winter had, indeed, 
 broken; the wind was fresh and warm, and blew 
 steadily. At his feet runnels of melted ice trickled 
 into the gutter ; between the blocks of paving stone 
 the earth was soft and drenched and muddy. 
 There was a sunny odor of wet trees, of stirring 
 earth, the sleepiness and drowsiness of slow awak 
 ening orchards over all New England, in the wind 
 that blew so brightly in his face. It brought him 
 the half remembered fragrance of roads and fields 
 and old stone walls in "Waverly, from Wellesley, 
 from Providence and Springfield, far-lying in the 
 sun, blown upon by that same wind. He stood on 
 his doorstep a long while loath to go indoors. His 
 room was warm and close ; he sat at his desk, and 
 the stretch of shining sky above the south, over 
 the river he knew must be sparkling in the sun, the 
 wind moving there across the clear sky, the mur 
 mur of water dripping and splashing from the 
 roofs, all called him out again. There was noth- 
 
188 PETER KINDRED 
 
 ing to do in his room. He went out, to walk a long 
 way. 
 
 As he walked, the ecstacy of his spirit died away 
 within him, insensibly into a faint depression, 
 curiously akin to an old sadness he had known in 
 Exeter, a sadness because the earth was beauti 
 ful. This, too, died away, and he grew tranquil 
 and proud, save only that in his tranquility was 
 woven a fierce longing to be with Joan again, and 
 a memory of the dreamed kiss. He wanted to go 
 to her at once, and yet intuitively he knew it to be 
 impossible, that it would torment him. 
 
 There was not much time left him before the 
 spring holidays ... a few days. He thought that 
 he would give himself a day of grace, in which to 
 consider himself, and after he would go to 
 Joan. 
 
 It was a luxury to think she was fond of him, 
 and he doled it out to himself sparingly. He re 
 membered incidents of their intimacy, when she 
 had whispered to him some quaint confidence, or 
 when she had smiled at him in frank affection. He 
 was a boy in love; it was as though his life had 
 been of a sudden heroically consecrated. 
 
 He turned and came back along the river. It 
 was Sunday; the quiet of the day he had once so 
 disliked, possessed him. A single church bell 
 tolled faintly and far off, toward Corey Hill. In 
 his own spirit was the sun, the steady blowing of 
 the wind, the fresh lapping of water, the fragrance 
 of the earth. 
 
PETER KINDRED 189 
 
 "No one told me it would be this sort of thing," 
 he said; "no one at all." 
 
 That night he sat in Don s room, talking until 
 very late. He did not want to let the day leave 
 him, to go to bed and so let the night drift off into 
 nothing. He talked of Helen and Joan, of Joan 
 with a certain hesitancy, that Don, however, did 
 not notice. He wanted to confess his love to Don, 
 and yet he wanted to hide it from him. He felt 
 diffident before Don, young, overcharged with 
 emotion. So he sat and talked generally and aim 
 lessly. He had no stomach for a discussion; he 
 wanted only to be awake, talking himself to sleepi 
 ness. He tried to get Don to talk about Helen. 
 
 "She s mighty fine," Don said. "A bit emo 
 tional." It was his only criticism; he seemed to 
 be more interested in economics. 
 
 Peter went into his own room finally, and so 
 berly undressed. Once in bed, he fell asleep almost 
 directly. Late the next morning, the telephone, 
 ringing in the empty house, awakened him. It 
 was Joan, to ask him if they might have lunch to 
 gether. His mind, waking from heavy sleep, half 
 forgot that he was in love. 
 
 To see Joan again puzzled him. She sat across 
 the table from him, entirely familiar, and yet his 
 thoughts as he watched her were tangled and con 
 fused, as though they belonged to a stranger. 
 His confidence before her was gone; the old 
 thoughts beat against a strange wave of humble- 
 
190 PETER KINDRED 
 
 ness, and sank at her feet. He watched the effect 
 on her of whatever he said, eagerly, his mind con 
 tinually struggling to assert itself as it had been 
 accustomed to do, his spirit timorous. He was 
 as nervous as a child who knows that something is 
 expected of him before a group of people, and, 
 alarmed, he tried not to show it. But when at last 
 Joan would do no more talking, and sat watching 
 him soberly, then, despite himself, all of Peter 
 Kindred swept up into his eyes and glowed there, 
 half pathetically. He smiled as though he had 
 been whipped, and Joan, stirred and troubled, 
 looked away. 
 
 It was their last meeting before Peter went 
 home, and after it, she went thoughtfully to her 
 room, and shut herself in there, staring quietly 
 through her window at the gaunt trees and the 
 dark earth. Helen knocked at her door, and she 
 did not answer, but repented of it afterward, and 
 went at last into Helen s room to find her friend. 
 
 "Helen," she asked, "have you ever seen a 
 man in love? "What did he look like?" 
 
 Don went home with Peter to New York, and 
 Peter was glad of that. He was coming home dif 
 ferently, affectionately. He had grown suddenly 
 toward manhood; he had been touched with hu 
 mility and with humanity. Yet he wanted to take 
 with him his life in Cambridge, and that was very 
 nearly Don. He felt that with Don beside him it 
 would be easier to be kindly, and so it turned out, 
 
PETER KINDRED 191 
 
 for there was a certain awkwardness in his fa 
 ther s greeting, that would have approached sul- 
 lenness if it had not been so mingled with curi 
 osity for Peter s guest. Indeed, Mr. Kindred, un 
 like his wife, had neither forgotten nor forgiven 
 Peter his neglect. Neither he nor his wife under 
 stood at all the manner of Peter s development, 
 but when the older man called his son ungrateful 
 and selfish, the mother could not find it in her 
 heart really to blame Peter, and laid her unhap- 
 piness at the door of what she vaguely considered 
 a misunderstanding between them. He was her 
 son. So Mrs. Kindred hugged Peter no less fondly 
 upon his return, and if she watched him anxiously, 
 it was from eagerness to find what she, with pa 
 tient and thoughtless faith, knew would some day 
 be there, the expression of all that she considered 
 splendid in a man. 
 
 Edith, upon the other hand, had long ago for 
 gotten her feud with Peter, and liked him for 
 bringing Don home, whom she legitimately might 
 enheroize. For that matter, the whole family 
 made something of a hero of Don; it was always 
 their first reaction toward intelligent strangers. 
 
 Peter, with Don there, was happy to be home, 
 and that was soon evident to his family. He spent 
 occasional hours gossiping with his mother, he 
 discussed business with his father, he listened to 
 Edith s talk of social affairs. He was no longer 
 at odds with them; he felt that he had stepped 
 out of their group, and that he might visit them 
 
192 PETER KINDRED 
 
 almost as a stranger would, courteously. There 
 was, besides, an affection for them, that, unin 
 hibited by any struggle to get away from them, 
 made it pleasant merely to be with them, to watch 
 the course of their affairs, to take an impersonal 
 interest in their problems which were no longer 
 by any possibility his problems. It seemed to him 
 that he came from a different life, on leave of ab 
 sence, to consider simple questions of a lesser 
 life. 
 
 So Peter felt, but his family saw only his cour 
 tesy, and felt only his kindness. To them it was 
 quite as though the boy of days before Exeter 
 had grown up as they would have wished him, 
 father and mother fearing a bit more poetic, per 
 haps, and impractical. It brought a sort of 
 pompous satisfaction to the father, as though, 
 somehow, he had been responsible for it, and to 
 the mother the quiet happiness of justification. 
 In turn it pleased Peter greatly that his parents 
 were satisfied, and caused him to feel lordly and 
 potent, at his easy ability to create such harmony. 
 Looking back upon the troubledness of the past 
 years, he was inclined to blame himself severely 
 for that trouble, and for the lack of what he called 
 a sense of humor. He thought that he had ac 
 quired a sense of humor, and attributed his gen 
 tleness to that. As a matter of fact, Peter never 
 did acquire a sense of humor, all his life long. 
 
 Unlike the occasion of Frank s visit once be 
 fore, Peter felt no shame in his family or in his 
 
PETER KINDRED 193 
 
 home. Don would understand ; there was no apol 
 ogy needed. These were natural people; such 
 homes were many, and necessary and important. 
 He no longer felt that a criticism of his family 
 was also a criticism of him; there was growing 
 in him what was later to be a pride in the humble 
 ness of his beginnings. Translated, perhaps his 
 thoughts at that time would have been : I am born 
 to greater things. Lo, my birthplace, and my fam 
 ily, my earliest environment, my origin! 
 
 Nor was he restless in the small flat, for in Don, 
 there was something of Cambridge, its quiet, its 
 distances all of it, indeed, excepting Joan. 
 
 But Joan was constantly in his mind, a serene 
 presence. He tried not to talk of her, but he could 
 not help it, he must needs describe her to his 
 mother, but casually, very casually. Mrs. Kin 
 dred s heart warmed as he talked, that he should 
 be confiding in her; it was quite happily correct, 
 and was included in the whole duty of a son. She 
 had always expected to be confided in, ultimately. 
 As for Peter, it was a joy merely to say aloud to 
 some one of Joan that her eyes were so and so, 
 and her hair so and so, and to make light of their 
 friendship while his full heart mocked at him, his 
 full heart and his mother, too, for since she wanted 
 to be confided in, she would not have Joan any 
 thing less than her son s love as she would have 
 said, his sweetheart. How he would have hated 
 her if she had really said the word aloud ! 
 
 In the intimacy of their life together in New 
 
194 PETER KINDRED 
 
 York, Peter could not keep his secret longer from 
 Don, and confessed his love for Joan at last, in 
 the close darkness of the bedroom they shared to 
 gether. When he had spoken he lay still and 
 held his breath, waiting for a pealing organ to 
 fill the darkness with music, waiting for some great 
 thing to happen ; but in his heart he doubted that 
 there would be even a fitting solemnity in Don s 
 reply, and as the silence grew and Don made no 
 stir, he was sorrier and sorrier that he had spoken 
 and felt younger and younger with each succes 
 sive moment. Finally he gulped. 
 
 "Don!" he ventured, with a laugh he hoped 
 was light. 
 
 Don moved slowly in his bed. 
 
 "Akh!"he said. 
 
 But in the morning, on their way to the dining 
 room, he put his arm lightly over Peter s shoul 
 der, and gave him a pat, and during breakfast 
 Peter saw Don looking at him intently. 
 
 It was Don who arranged the afternoon with 
 Helen, a play, and tea afterward at the Plaza. 
 He did it all quietly enough, and surprised Peter 
 with the whole plan arranged and completed, the 
 tickets bought, the Plaza selected for tea, and the 
 day of the affair itself only a night away. Peter 
 was astounded and overjoyed, and all the more so 
 because he had forgotten that Helen lived in 
 New York, and the realization of it was amaz 
 ing. 
 
PETER KINDRED 195 
 
 "Why," he cried to Don, "it ll be a regular old 
 reunion!" 
 
 How was it that he had not even thought of it 
 before? It would be almost like seeing Joan 
 again. 
 
 Yet he was sobered and made thoughtful by a 
 faint opposition in his parents, an opposition he 
 felt although it was not openly expressed, out of 
 politeness to their guest. In his father s silence 
 Peter read condemnation of such extravagance, 
 and in the aggrieved air of both Edith and her 
 mother there was more than a hint that Edith 
 should have been asked to go. But Peter would 
 rather not have gone at all than have taken Edith. 
 
 Since Don was in his confidence, even though 
 that confidence had been fairly unfortunate, the 
 meeting of the three of them held an unusual 
 charm of intimacy to Peter. For certainly, Helen 
 knew of whatever fondness Joan had for him, and 
 even though he knew that she would say nothing 
 about it, and though he did not even dream to 
 capture the slightest hint, the unspoken secret be 
 tween them, in which Don shared, endeared Helen 
 to him. And there was, of course, a flavor of Cam 
 bridge in their meeting as they had so often done, 
 a flavor of Cambridge, of pleasant and familiar 
 things in unfamiliar surroundings. When they 
 saw each other in the lobby of the theater, Helen s 
 evident delight at being with them again warmed 
 the cockles of his heart. 
 
 Don was justly bored with the play, but Peter 
 
196 PETER KINDRED 
 
 was in no mood to be bored with anything. 
 There was a sweetened love scene that he en 
 joyed tremendously, as he had enjoyed such 
 things in the picture theaters a year before; 
 one half-guilty glance at Helen by his side com 
 forted him, for she was evidently as emotionally 
 flushed at it as he. Beyond her, Don brooded sar 
 castically; the hero on the stage registered the 
 deepest agony at an unexpected misfortune to his 
 passion, and Peter let his thoughts sweep out of 
 New York in a wide, swift arc, and land sweetly 
 in Boston. After the last curtain he followed Don 
 slowly along the crowded aisle, feeling the evening 
 chill reaching in from the opened doors; to Don s 
 grumbles he said nothing at all. Don was right, 
 quite right, but Peter had had a very pleasant 
 time, nevertheless. 
 
 The three friends walked home arm in arm 
 across the park through the damp April evening. 
 Don s thoughts were bent bitterly upon govern 
 ment and people; Peter was thinking happily of 
 Joan, and Helen was, too. 
 
 But the home-coming was not to be entirely 
 without unpleasantness. That night Edith went 
 to a dance, and the following day she was impor 
 tant with society matters. The most pressing of 
 these she imparted at luncheon; the daughter of 
 a wealthy manufacturer of ribbons had been heard 
 to observe that anyone at that dance was certainly 
 declasse, that it was a distressingly bourgeois af 
 fair. This effectively had damned the evening, 
 
PETER KINDRED 197 
 
 but Peter, ascertaining that the daughter of the 
 ribbon king had herself hugely enjoyed the danc 
 ing and the chicken salad, became impetuously dis 
 gusted. 
 
 "The dirty little brat!" he cried. He would 
 have said more, but that Don sat opposite him, 
 smiling quietly. Don s amusement made Peter 
 ashamed, but Peter s outburst had stirred the 
 family to a faint sense of discord again. It was 
 not that they disagreed with Peter wholly in his 
 opinion of that beribboned arbiter of society, but 
 that they entirely objected to hearing anyone de 
 scribed as a dirty brat, particularly a young lady 
 who could trace her family back for two genera 
 tions, whose father was an extremely able busi 
 ness man; a young lady, besides, who stood for 
 something definite in society, and always looked 
 quite clean. It moved them to a sudden doubt if 
 Peter was after all so much the creature they 
 had hoped he would be. 
 
 The day before college opened there was a let 
 ter on his plate at breakfast ; he knew at once that 
 it was from Joan. Thrills made tremulous his 
 stomach ; breakfast was intolerably long; he bolted 
 his coffee, and went into his own room. It was a 
 short note, but Joan s signature at the end held 
 him entirely in thrall. He read the letter twice; 
 there was just a bit of news of Boston, and a naive 
 wish to see him again, and then her name, Joan. 
 He was staring at it when Don came in, and laid 
 a heavy hand on his shoulder. 
 
198 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Well, old one," he said, "tell me about it." 
 
 Peter shrugged his shoulders. "What is there 
 to tell?" he asked. 
 
 "How did it happen!" Don asked. 
 
 " I woke up with it. " 
 
 "Splendid . . . after a dream?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And then you thought you were in love? " 
 
 Peter objected to Don s use of the word thought. 
 
 "Well," Don said, "you woke up in love." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What do you mean by in love ? 
 
 Peter pondered over the question. "I don t 
 know," he said finally. "I can t reduce it to any 
 thing logical. She simply swept right through all 
 of me." 
 
 "Peter," Don said gravely, "didn t I hear you 
 make mince meat of just such illogical love a while 
 ago?" 
 
 "This isn t romantic love, Don," Peter said 
 very earnestly. * Anything but that. 
 
 "Ah. You mean then that after your dream 
 you woke up and realized that Joan would make 
 an excellent mother, and a sensible wife. The sort 
 of woman you wanted. 
 
 i l Hmm . . . Oh, I knew all that before. I woke 
 up and . . . well, I was in love." 
 
 Don smiled faintly. "And Joan?" 
 
 Peter shook his head. "I have no idea," he 
 said; "what do you think?" 
 
 "I? Nothing, Peter, nothing at all. I have no 
 
PETER KINDRED 199 
 
 idea, really. I imagine that she s fond of you." 
 
 Peter could not help smiling at that, half 
 pleased. 
 
 "I sha n t argue with you about love," Don 
 went on. "Yon know what I think of it. I think 
 it s darn foolishness . . . but Joan is fine, and 
 you could hardly do better. What do you plan ? 
 
 "Glory I have no plan! Why, Joan isn t in 
 love with me." 
 
 Don shook his head impatiently. "Fiddle," he 
 exclaimed. "You sentimental child. Do you ex 
 pect her to wake up, too, some morning and clutch 
 at her heart and sing out, Heavens, I m in love? 
 She ll marry because she knows that the particu 
 lar man she s marrying is the best chap for her." 
 
 Inwardly Peter writhed at that ; it was a fear 
 fully Carverian thing to say, and he hated and 
 feared the possibility of it, for he knew that Joan 
 would never choose him, and that unless she did 
 miraculously awake some morning as Don doubted 
 she ever would, and find herself in love, his would 
 be a hopeless affair. Don went on thoughtfully. 
 
 "There s no reason why your parents and hers 
 shouldn t help you to get started, you know. 
 
 "Yes, they ought to help. But I don t think 
 they would. I know that mine wouldn t, at any 
 rate." 
 
 There was a moment s silence, and then Peter 
 spoke timidly. 
 
 "Do you know, Don," he said, "it s kind of darn 
 wonderful to be in love. 
 
200 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "For God s sake, Peter," Don cried, "don t be 
 a fool!" 
 
 Mrs. Kindred kissed her son good-bye more 
 fondly than she had been accustomed to, but not 
 quite as fondly as she had hoped to, distracted at 
 the last moment by the thought of the ribbon 
 king s daughter. His father shook hands with 
 him genially, and gave him a timid pat on the 
 cheek. Edith vaguely allowed herself to be kissed 
 and hoped archly enough that Don would find time 
 to write to her some day. The two went into the 
 damp and acrid apartment hallway, down the iron- 
 trellised elevator, along the low street, and into 
 the gnomelike tunnel of the subway. 
 
 The high dome of the Gcand Central was mur 
 murous with unrest, with travel and adventure. 
 Bed-capped negro porters loitered in groups, or 
 carried bags across the marble floor to the wait 
 ing gates of trains. There were preludings of 
 Harvard, the silver ripple of a coon-skin coat, un 
 mistakable undergraduates. Out of the streets of 
 New York, the great station was spacious with 
 distance of many cities. The two men went 
 through the Boston gate, and into the close, warm, 
 and yellow-lighted car. 
 
 Next morning the train burrowed into the sta 
 tion at Back Bay, and Don and Peter came out 
 and sunned themselves. 
 
 To Peter there was too large a hint of happi 
 ness in this last return to Cambridge, and this first 
 
PETER KINDRED 201 
 
 return to Joan, to permit the usual haste in com 
 ing back to the house on Holyoke. He wanted to 
 taste it, to go about it at leisure. Besides, he 
 wanted to feel himself for a while in Boston, 
 Joan s city, before he came to Cambridge again. 
 So he and Don ate their breakfast in the sunny 
 breakfast room of the Copely, among the perfumes 
 of flowers and women, and the good brown odor 
 of coffee, and Peter felt like singing. 
 
 While they had been gone, April rain had 
 cashed Cambridge, and April sun had warmed 
 the trees. There were no more icy places, no more 
 frozen spots of bare earth. The gaunt outlines 
 had faded, the angles had rounded, had softened, 
 had melted in the rain. The grass was faintly 
 green; there was an odor of trees. It was like 
 coming into the country. Only the shadows were 
 still chill and unwarmed. 
 
 Peter wasted time, consciously. He was im 
 patient to see Joan, and he put off seeing her as 
 one puts off the pleasantly jellied portion of a 
 cake at tea, for the last bite. He nibbled at his 
 cake, doing a hundred odd things, unpacking, ar 
 ranging his books, and his clothes, registering, 
 attending classes. Then after lunch he telephoned 
 to her, fearful that some anti-climax would occur 
 to spoil things ; but there was none ; her fresh voice 
 answered him, and asked him to dine with her that 
 night in Boston at her home. She seemed uncom 
 monly glad to hear him again, and his pulses beat 
 away at a great rate. But at the thought of din- 
 
202 PETER KINDRED 
 
 ing with her in Boston before her mother and 
 father, he felt oppressed. When he told Don about 
 it, Don offered him advice. 
 
 " There is only one way to tell a man s breed 
 ing and that is by watching him eat. Long gen 
 erations of don ts at table make the gentleman; 
 it can t be imitated or aped. Handle yourself, 
 creature." 
 
 That night he dressed himself with great care, 
 and went into Boston with a beating heart. He 
 could not help but think that Joan s parents would 
 see to the bottom of his manners at once, discover 
 
 his love for their daughter, and . . . and He 
 
 did not know what they would do then, but it would 
 be terrible and mortifying. 
 
 However, they seemed to take his manners for 
 granted, and were affable and kind. They em 
 ployed no butler ; he felt better for that, and after 
 Joan s mother had shaken him warmly by the 
 hand, and Joan s father had made a little joke 
 about Harvard, he felt at home there, and happy. 
 They were quiet people, thoughtful, with a hint of 
 grim humor in their manner. Their family had 
 lived for many generations in New England. 
 
 When Peter was unbuttoning his coat in the 
 hall, before his name had been announced, Joan 
 came flying down the stairs to him. He had never 
 seen her in an evening gown; he had never im 
 agined that she would be so lovely, and he wished 
 that Don could see her. He wanted to hold out 
 his arms to her as she came so swiftly and lightly, 
 
PETER KINDRED 203 
 
 and then to kiss very tenderly the slim hand she 
 held ont so gladly to him. But he was. almost 
 horrified at the thought of it. He could do no 
 more than press her hand clumsily and hard, and 
 feel what might have been the ghost of a lump in 
 his throat at the sound of her greeting. 
 
 Dinner was more pleasant than he had dared 
 hope ; merrier ; and well worded, too. There were 
 several discussions, political and economic, in 
 which Joan spoke, while her family listened to 
 what she had to say, and answered her carefully. 
 Peter contrasted these parents to his own, and 
 understood Joan the better for it. Indeed, at first 
 he grew embarrassed to find so much weight at 
 tached to what he himself said, and became con 
 fused, but he liked it all, very much. He could 
 not keep his eyes from Joan, the sweep of hair 
 about her temples, the delicate grace of her neck 
 and shoulders, the movements of her hands, and 
 when her eyes met his, he smiled, but once when 
 she looked at him for a long moment he colored 
 and turned away. The knowledge that he must be 
 silent before the very real hurt of his love, made 
 him miserable. 
 
 Supper came to an end, coffee was sipped, talk 
 drifted idly, and they went upstairs. On a win 
 dow seat half way up, Joan stopped and curled 
 herself into a corner, deep in cushions, in shadow. 
 The parents left them, and Peter stood before 
 Joan and looked at her, fingering the leather chain 
 of his watch. The stairs wound up beyond them* 
 
204 PETER KINDRED 
 
 and fell away below them in a sweeping curve; 
 they were both silent. 
 
 "Sit down, Peter," Joan said, "and tell me 
 about yourself." 
 
 There was too much to tell ; he could say noth 
 ing; words crowded to his tongue, but they 
 were all Joans. For a hot, adventurous instant 
 the phrase I love you flamed through his mind 
 and came perilously close to his lips, but he shut 
 his teeth on it in horror again. It would be an un 
 forgivable thing to say, and it would go answer- 
 less. He looked at Joan helplessly, and her eyes 
 held his solemnly, until he sat down finally, and, 
 drawing his ankle under him, swung the free leg 
 up and down, idly, above the stairs. Joan sank 
 deeper into the cushions, and her hands stirred 
 about her throat and hair. Peter was seized with 
 a feeling of weakness ; he wanted to capture those 
 hands and bury his face in them. 
 
 "Peter," Joan said, "why don t you say some 
 thing?" 
 
 Peter gulped and took a breath. "There isn t 
 much to say, Joan," he said. "I . . ." He got 
 no further, but played nervously with his chain, 
 and watched his leg swinging. 
 
 "Tell me about your vacation." 
 
 "Oh it was very nice Don was with me, you 
 know. We went on a party with Helen . . . other 
 wise we didn t do much." 
 
 "I know. Helen wrote me all about it. She 
 said that Don grumbled so." 
 
PETER KINDRED 205 
 
 Her voice, through the semi-darkness of the 
 window seat, faltered ever so slightly, as though 
 she, too, fonnd it no easy matter to talk. She 
 laughed a little." 
 
 Did yon miss . . . Cambridge, Peter!" she 
 asked. 
 
 Again words rushed tumultuously to his mind. 
 He chose them with a fast-beating heart and a 
 sense of disaster. 
 
 "Yes, awfully . . . and I missed you, too." 
 His voice trailed to a whispered laugh; he could 
 hear his blood throbbing through his body. He 
 sat erect. 
 
 "And you, Joan?" 
 
 "I have been working a little . . . and . . . 
 thinking." He heard her voice tremble at the 
 last word. 
 
 "Joan," he said abruptly, and then was still. 
 No words would come. From the other end of 
 the window seat there was a sharp-drawn breath, 
 as though Joan were making a high resolve, that 
 needed courage. Her voice reached him thinly, 
 like a far-off flute. 
 
 "Peter, "it said. "Tell me. Are you in love! " 
 
 The blood sprang back to Peter s heart, and 
 held its motion for a long second. His mouth was 
 dry; his body held in the grip of disaster, huge, 
 gray, utterly still. There was no breath drawn 
 in all the world, no sound save the heavy beat of 
 quietness. He could not speak; his head nodded, 
 dumbly. From her corner Joan sat erect, facing 
 
206 PETER KINDRED 
 
 him, snow pale, with wide, dark eyes, her clenched 
 hand at her throat. 
 
 "With whom, Peter?" she whispered. 
 
 For a moment neither one moved. In Peter 
 there was a stirring, a growing, a rushing, a 
 miracle that welled up from unfathomable depths, 
 that swept through the empty corridors of his 
 body, that leaped at last to his mind, into his eyes 
 and arms. A pouring of wild energy took posses 
 sion of him and struggled with unbelief within 
 him. It was incredible, it was untrue, it was stark 
 madness. His body struggled with the flood, 
 tugged, fought for its moorings; the flood swept 
 over him and bore him before it. Joan s lips quiv 
 ered and she put out a slender hand toward him; 
 his arms went out to her. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PETEE turned down Holyoke Street and ran at 
 top speed. It seemed almost impossible to 
 hold the tremendous bubble of news he had for 
 Don, it kept growing bigger and bigger within 
 him, and he must run faster and faster lest it 
 escape him and he suddenly shout it to the nar 
 row street before he had entered his own house. 
 He burst through the door and leaped up the 
 rickety stairs; Don was in his own room, bent 
 over his desk, a lamp turned full and yellow on 
 the book outstretched before him, a green shade 
 low over his eyes. The room, save for that single 
 lamp, was in shadow ; Peter stood in the doorway, 
 breathless from his running. 
 
 The bubble must have escaped after all, for at 
 the sight of Don, Peter felt at once tired and im 
 personal, indeed, almost defiant. He came slowly 
 into the room; he had no wish to blurt out any 
 thing, but he was important with his news, never 
 theless. 
 
 " Hello," he said. Don stirred wearily, and 
 207 
 
208 PETER KINDRED 
 
 looked questioningly at Peter. But now that 
 Peter might tell Don what he pleased, he wanted 
 to postpone it, almost, in fact, to hide it for a 
 secret as a miser might. He sank into a chair and 
 stared at Don. 
 
 "Hmm," he said. "How s everything?" 
 
 Don turned moodily to his desk again, and then 
 Peter wanted to tell him at once. But he hardly 
 knew how. 
 
 11 Guess what," he said. 
 
 What?" Don answered from his book. 
 
 Peter considered silently. Then, "It s hap 
 pened," he said. Don swung swiftly around on 
 him. 
 
 "What s happened?" he asked in amaze 
 ment. 
 
 "Joan s in love with me." 
 
 Don looked at him without saying a word. 
 Then he shook his head, and swung back to his 
 desk, and looked at his book, but after a moment 
 he rose and walked over to Peter and touseled 
 Peter s hair. 
 
 "Well, old one," he said, and then, "Good 
 stuff." 
 
 All in all, the entire world took Don s view of 
 the matter, and Peter was the only excited per 
 son, with the possible exception of Helen, and she 
 was told later. But certainly the streets were as 
 greatly interested in April, the houses no less in 
 tent upon their own affairs, the sun no warmer, 
 the wind no more fragrant. Yet perhaps the wind 
 
PETER KINDRED 209 
 
 was a little more fragrant. But the students who 
 passed below his window, or who went by him in 
 .the Yard, talking and laughing, and the serious 
 professors upon their platforms were no whit im 
 pressed, and saw no unusual radiance in Peter 
 whereby they might know that he was beloved. 
 And Peter was confounded above all by the quiet 
 way in which Joan accepted their betrothal. 
 
 They met at lunch the next day. He had wak 
 ened in the early yellow and gray of dawn, and 
 had lain there in his bed, his mind groping through 
 the resurgent miracle of the night before, exultant 
 to believe, yet awed and doubtful. Later he had 
 dreamed above his breakfast, and had gone to his 
 classes with eyes that were bewildered at accus 
 tomed sights, with ears that heard nothing of lec 
 tures, still living helplessly, it seemed, over and 
 over again that unbelievable surrender. He won 
 dered how Joan had met the day ; he wanted to be 
 with her, and, for some reason, to comfort her. 
 It was with a strange terror and excitement in his 
 body that he turned at noon to the Cock Horse, 
 knowing that Joan would be there. But he had 
 not expected the quiet happiness of her smile as 
 she caught sight of him, or the shy, eager pressure 
 of her hand. Watching her, he could scarce be 
 lieve what had befallen him. They said little to 
 each other across the table, but there was a new 
 note for Peter in Joan s voice, a depth, a tender 
 ness, a whisper of intimacy. 
 
 "Dear," she said to him, "I think I shall tell 
 
210 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Helen soon. And there is a great deal of thinking 
 to be done." 
 
 There was, indeed, a deal of thinking to be done, 
 and it was like Joan to consider that at once, and 
 like Peter to overlook it. For one thing, there 
 must be no more dallying with work; they must 
 set their hearts together upon graduation in June. 
 And for another thing, there were their various 
 families. Peter had not thought of saying any 
 thing, but Joan insisted upon that. 
 
 "Peter," she said, "we re not playing, are we? 
 Then if we re not, our folks ought to know and 
 help." 
 
 But Peter was worried. "My folks won t help, 
 Joan," he said. "And anyhow, let s wait ... I 
 want to be through here, and working ... I want 
 to be independent first. Then I won t feel so ... 
 humble about it." 
 
 Joan smiled and shook her head. "Peter, 
 Peter," she murmured. 
 
 "You see," Peter went on, "it s different with 
 you. Your people would listen and talk it over, 
 and come to some decent opinion. But my father 
 would be awfully angry at me without thinking a 
 bit, and mother, too, because I have nothing at all 
 to be married on, not even a job anywhere . . . 
 and I wouldn t want your folks to help, Joan, hon 
 estly ... it would make me feel rotten." 
 
 Joan played with her napkin and considered 
 that. She looked up at last and reached her hand 
 across the table to Peter. "Perhaps you re right, 
 
PETER KINDRED 211 
 
 Peter," she said. "We must be independent, of 
 course, because if we weren t we d have no place 
 in society; we wouldn t be worth our keep." 
 
 "Not only that, Joan, but I want to meet your 
 parents on an equal footing. I don t want to need 
 their blessing." 
 
 It was decided that only Don and Helen should 
 know until Peter, at least, was independent to 
 scraie small extent. Peter wanted Joan s family 
 to like him for himself, and not because Joan had 
 chosen him, and he was very much afraid of feel 
 ing boyish before them and helpless and impetu 
 ous if he should ask for their judgment at that 
 time. 
 
 At Brattle Square they met Don, and the three 
 of them walked back again to the river, and sat 
 on a weather-worn bench under a tree, with 
 the sun high and warm above them, and the grass 
 at their feet fresh and newly green. The river 
 beyond rippled and shone under the sun ; an eight- 
 oared shell went by, oarlocks clacking, the bare 
 shoulders of the men dipping and rising together 
 to the coxswain s harsh monotone, their oars 
 catching the sun, flashing yellow under the wide 
 blue sky that rose shining and tranquil above the 
 level fields and woods and far-off roofs toward 
 Brighton. A wind blew in the faces of the three 
 friends, redolent and cool, stirring the sun on 
 their cheeks. 
 
 They sat there for a long while, happily, talk 
 ing very little, save now and then of New York, 
 
212 PETER KINDRED 
 
 of Don who was to study there for the law, and of 
 the city itself, the mighty test, the awaited oppor 
 tunity. The descending sun slanted more fully 
 in their eyes, as Don left them at last to ponder 
 together what they would give to life. For they 
 knew already what life would give to them. 
 The next day Joan told Helen. 
 
 April blossomed slowly into sure green, through 
 cold days and warm, under northern skies, cloud 
 less and spacious above low, distant horizons, 
 warming Boston with the heat of the sun, tapping 
 with rain on Peter s window panes, gathering the 
 soft odor of fields and orchards and earthy roads 
 to drift idly through Joan s open Windows. The 
 two rooms were empty, their owners tramping to 
 gether about the countryside, talking an afternoon 
 into evening on some tumbled, ivy-grown stone 
 wall, adventuring together in Boston, dining some 
 times with Joan s parents. Don and Helen, too, 
 were often together, but to find the four of them 
 at once was unusual, for Peter and Joan wanted 
 to be alone; there were forever so many things 
 to talk about, and such deep and sacred silences 
 to keep. 
 
 " Mother likes you," Joan said to Peter, "and 
 father, too, I think. But Peter, I m afraid that 
 they re a little bit suspicious. They are such dear 
 people!" 
 
 "There s not much longer, Joan/ Peter said. 
 
 He had made up his mind to try journalism, 
 
PETER KINDRED 213 
 
 for he had no knowledge at all of business or of 
 any profession or trade, for that matter. His 
 ignorance had startled him at first, thrown him 
 almost into a panic, until he had thought of the 
 papers. He knew, at any rate, how a newspaper 
 looked, and he knew that he could write as well 
 as what he had seen written. The decision 
 smoothed his way, apparently; Don agreed with 
 him, and Helen had promised him an introduc 
 tion. He was full of excitement, exuberant en 
 ergy. 
 
 Glory, he said, * if I *m taken, it will be fifteen 
 a week, certainly not less than twelve. Helen said 
 that a cub usually gets that much. Jinks, Joan, 
 we could live on twenty." 
 
 His eyes dreamed of a tenement, and two brave 
 people loving and working there. Joan was to 
 study stenography over the summer; it would be 
 a stepping-stone to all manner of great things for 
 her. 
 
 His life moved serenely with April, with morn 
 ing and evening, sun and rain. He remembered 
 his other life faintly, dimly through a dream. The 
 Peter of Exeter, of New York, of Harvard had 
 lived once ; this was another Peter who woke each 
 morning to a world made up only of himself and 
 Joan. Cambridge was a rhythm to hold his own 
 days as they interwove with those of Joan, New 
 York a vague and looming splendor ahead of him 
 beyond the full flowering of May, college only 
 an insistence of key and pitch. Hours slipped in- 
 
214. PETER KINDRED 
 
 sensibly into days, one indistinguishable from 
 another, save when he might not be with Joan. 
 For a while he lost track of time. A Peter Kin 
 dred went absently to classes, jotted down notes, 
 scribbled letters to a family in New York, an 
 swered questions, bowed to acquaintances, but it 
 was not he. 
 
 Joan, too, was tranced with the soft succession 
 of days. If Peter were not with her, she could 
 think of nothing but what she must tell him when 
 they met again. Study was impossible, a thing 
 of the past. When at times she grew conscience 
 stricken, her anxious mind could not whip her body 
 to its will. It was entirely too sweet a thing to 
 take possession of the spring, all the full happi 
 ness of surrender to the drowsiness, stirred as it 
 was with the brimmed joy of her heart. 
 
 But there were moments of impatience with the 
 slow drift of days that followed one another so 
 gently, the hours that brought them so very slow 
 ly to the starting point. For there was too much 
 ahead for them to accept without a pang the un 
 availing and ineffectual happiness. It was happi 
 ness, but it was marking time. 
 
 " Peter," Joan cried more than once, "if it 
 were only autumn now, and I were coming down 
 to you ... to our home, Peter. " 
 
 And Peter would nod gravely, with sombre eyes, 
 and pat Joan s hand. Yet before her, Peter felt 
 himself half quixotic, half childish. There was in 
 the level gray of her eyes, the sure logic of her 
 
PETER KINDRED 215 
 
 thought, the prim stress of her voice a power 
 that held him silent and often rebuked his en 
 thusiasm, and yet because of her slim body and 
 the delicate lines of her face, he wanted to arm 
 himself with knightly weapons and go staunchly 
 ahead of her, clearing a path for her against all 
 manner of ogres. However, there were no 
 ogres, save those which waited for him in New 
 York, and for all his impatience and his valorous 
 eagerness to be at grips with them, he could not 
 entirely down a qualm of nervous fear, the fear of 
 untried arms and an untested courage. But the 
 hint of such a thing to Joan shocked her. 
 
 "Why, Peter dear," she said, "how silly. 
 There s work to be done, and we shall find it ... 
 work for both of us ... hard, splendid work. 
 I m not afraid. I ll love it." 
 
 "Of course it s there," Peter said, "And we ll 
 find it." 
 
 "Won t it be good to come home at evening, 
 Peter?" 
 
 "And to find you there." 
 
 "No . . , I ll be working, Peter. I 11 be coming 
 home, too." 
 
 * Yes. But I 11 be coming home last, and whistle 
 a very private, secret whistle to you, under your 
 window." 
 
 "I ll whistle back, Peter." 
 
 "And then Don and Helen will come all of a 
 sudden for supper." 
 
 "That will be expensive." 
 
^ PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Then the next night we can dine with mother 
 and father." 
 
 "I don t know, dear. I don t know if we ought 
 to, very often. It would be almost playing at 
 being independent, wouldn t it? And we must 
 really strike out, for ourselves, and make our own 
 way. Or otherwise . . ." 
 
 They were both silent. Then Joan spoke again. 
 
 "I wonder if we ll come back to Cambridge 
 again some day," she said softly. 
 
 "Of course we will. And some day my 
 son . . ." 
 
 "And my daughter ..." 
 
 Peter said nothing for a moment. Joan laid 
 a soft hand over his. 
 
 "What were you going to say, Peter?" 
 
 "I hardly know. I was thinking of Harvard 
 . . . and then I was thinking how . . . how I shall 
 love your son, Joan." 
 
 She was quiet and then said gently, "I wanted 
 to talk to you about that, Peter." 
 
 Peter caught her hand to his lips, but while he 
 kissed it, he laughed. "Joan," he said awkward 
 ly, holding her hand against his face, "tell me, 
 may I give a party when you re . . . when we re 
 going to have a baby?" 
 
 Joan laughed, and her fingers trembled in his 
 clasp. "Yes, Peter," she said, "if it s not too 
 extravagant." 
 
 April gave way to May, and Peter and Joan 
 
PETER KINDRED 217 
 
 tried hard to study as they should. But little 
 girls paraded through the streets in May parties, 
 laundered and starched, resplendent with tinsel; 
 the trees were in full leaf, the wind was a hint of 
 lilacs. Voices and sounds up and down the streets 
 softened and mellowed and droned, footsteps were 
 slower and whispered more through the open 
 windows. Men loitered longer and longer before 
 the dormitories, and sat smoking and talking on 
 the steps of lecture halls. Mandolins tinkled 
 through the Yard at evening, from yellow lighted 
 windows; twilight lasted until late, and night 
 came mistily, with a damp fragrance. Barrel 
 organs played up and down Mount Auburn 
 Street; melodies stole insensibly through the 
 wind, melodies and fragrances, orchards in bloom 
 at last, far off in the west and north, folk stirring, 
 restless folk in cities, no longer lonely, but seek 
 ing, wandering the streets upon adventure. Boston 
 called insistently through the gradual evenings, 
 across the river, called with lights and women s 
 faces. There was a smell of tar on the roads, and 
 the noises of trolleys were low and distant, mur 
 murous and heavy. Oh, it was hard to work with 
 a clear wind stirring the pages of a book, and the 
 whole body crying to be with a beloved, a hatless, 
 coatless, eager beloved. 
 
 "Peter/ Joan said one day, after she had spent 
 a night at home, "I ve told mother. She wanted 
 to know. She s very glad, dear, and she wants to 
 see you." 
 
218 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Joan! I m scared to death! I feel like a 
 child caught in a jam bottle!" 
 
 "You re a goose. They re awfully decent 
 people, Peter. And I m not a jam bottle." 
 
 "I know it, dear. But I m not used to talking 
 to parents . . . anybody s parents." 
 
 He had a long talk, however, with Joan s 
 mother and her father. As he told her afterward, 
 he gulped all the way in to Boston. But as he ran 
 up the stairs her mother came to meet him, and 
 giving him both her hands, looked at his face for 
 a long time. He looked back at her, and they 
 stood so until of a sudden, surprisingly, she bent 
 forward and gave him a kiss. 
 
 "I loved her, then," he told Joan, "and I felt 
 entirely differently toward them both. As though 
 somehow they were trusting me not only with you, 
 but with a part of all their own selves, their own 
 hopes, and ambitions, and faith. It stiffened me 
 up wonderfully. But we had a great talk, and I 
 made a fearful ass of myself, of course, and said 
 all sorts of remarkable things . . . and they 
 didn t seem to mind, or think me an impudent 
 baby at all ... and we did have a good talk. 
 Your father is a brick ... I had no idea how 
 much you mean to them, Joan. Well," and he 
 took a deep breath, "I promised we d hit it hard, 
 and your mother is coming to Cambridge to 
 morrow to see you and we re all to take tea 
 in my room afterwards. Jinks, it s a jolly 
 world!" 
 
PETER KINDRED 219 
 
 The old house on Holyoke street waited joyous 
 ly for tea time. A copper kettle, unused for very 
 nearly two years, stood boldly on a table, scoured 
 and burnished for the occasion by Franklin, that 
 kindest and very oldest of negroes. Before it 
 ranged four nondescript cups ; Peter had had one, 
 Don had furnished two, and Franklin again, the 
 fourth. No matter, they would hold tea from the 
 brown tea pot with the broken handle, just as 
 well. And to the side towered a small mountain 
 of Cambridge s noblest and stickiest cakes, which 
 had cost Peter all that was left of a bank account. 
 With the tea table behind him, dark against the 
 window and the failing light, and with Don beside 
 him, Peter awaited his guests. It was not until 
 they had come that Peter realized he had bought 
 neither sugar nor cream for the tea. 
 
 Helen was excited at being finally in Peter s 
 room, and peeked in at Don s room across the 
 way, and giggled to find it in disorder, but Don 
 had left it so quite on purpose, a purpose as 
 stubborn and illogical as a small child s. Joan 
 said little, but after she had looked around Peter s 
 room, went quietly to his desk and sat there and 
 looked out of the window across Mount Auburn 
 street, as Peter must have done his three years 
 at college, as he would still be sitting some 
 times while in her own room she bent above her 
 books. 
 
 That evening, at supper, even Don was restless, 
 and had no heart for work. He and Peter sat 
 
220 PETER KINDRED 
 
 together in the Green Lantern, before their own 
 familiar table, and he fingered the rough, blue 
 patterned cloth absently. 
 
 " Peter," he said abruptly, "let s go in town 
 to-night. We might try the Pops. Walk in and 
 back. What do you say?" 
 
 "Great. I could no more sit home to-night . . ." 
 
 And presently the two were walking toward 
 Boston, while a south wind blew steadily in their 
 faces, a long way out of the sky. 
 
 "Think," Peter said, as they left the lights of 
 Cambridgeport behind them and drew near the 
 bridge, "How strange it will be to be leaving all 
 this behind, all these years, the many little things, 
 Don. To be coming up against the big things at 
 last, suddenly. I ve caught a glimpse of it to 
 night, a feeling of it, with the wind and the trees 
 and the smell of lilacs and cottages . . . the old 
 days slipping away, the days of drifting and 
 romancing, and time to take a deep breath and go 
 in. They ve been good years, haven t they, and 
 they ve given me a big faith. Somehow tonight 
 I feel as though I shall do well. At any rate, it 
 won t be for lack of trying." He clenched his 
 fists and lifted his head. 
 
 Don sighed. "Yes," he said, "You ve been 
 given faith, ancient. And you may come against 
 big things. But ... I m afraid that it will be 
 patience you ll need the most. We ll be together, 
 at any rate. I ... I wish you well, Peter." 
 
 He laid his hand awkwardly on Peter s shoul- 
 
PETER KINDRED 221 
 
 der, and a lump rose in Peter s throat. His 
 voice trembled as he answered him. 
 
 "I know it, Don," he said. 
 
 To Peter, the future held vast enterprise. He 
 looked to the south ; across the arc of starry sky, 
 beyond the darkness of the land lay the great 
 city of his own, sounding with the deep toned 
 hurrying of people, tumultuous with light, with 
 high flung walls to house the roaring lives and 
 enterprises of her folk. There, the thoughtful 
 walks of Cambridge forsaken, the spacious even 
 ings, the drowsy hours forgotten, alert at last, his 
 days of apprenticeship, of squiredom, a memory 
 for quiet hours, his vigil over, dubbed and arisen, 
 he must test his right to a place among people, a 
 membership in folk, he must build his home with 
 what strength he had, build broadly and well, for 
 Joan and for her children. It was the religion 
 worth having. 
 
 And still the days lengthened and the twilight 
 grew longer, the sweet smell of earth, of grass, 
 of trees and of gardens heavier and more insis 
 tent, life warmer and drowsier in the sun, as 
 college moved gradually to Commencement. The 
 finals crept closer and closer, and for a week Joan 
 and Peter turned stubbornly to their books. Then 
 for the last time Peter sat in the curved seats of 
 the lecture halls, and heard the ending of his 
 courses, the farewells of the kindly, serene, re 
 lieved professors, with eyes that looked back 
 curiously over his years. For the last time he 
 
222 PETER KINDRED 
 
 walked under the hot sun across the Square, lo 
 throw his note book upon his desk and sink into 
 his dilapidated chair while through the open 
 window floated the slow, familiar voices of his 
 college. 
 
 He had not written to his parents of his be 
 trothal. He wanted to tell them later, after he 
 had found his work, and in that decision Joan s 
 parents agreed with him. He would not think of 
 them now; his examinations waited. 
 
 For two weeks then, he bent his memory upon 
 facts, curious truths that he had long forgotten 
 and would speedily forget. Joan he saw rarely; 
 one afternoon they walked together as they had 
 used to do, and one Sunday he dined with her in 
 Boston. He noticed how tired she looked, how 
 darkly shadowed her eyes were. She had been 
 working very late for many nights. 
 
 "I m going through with honors, Peter," she 
 whispered to him. 
 
 Before his last examination he worked the whole 
 night through. At midnight his mind fought with 
 weariness ; but at three o clock he was wide awake. 
 The house was utterly still; an unfathomable 
 silence held all the land in breathlessness and 
 hush. He alone, of all people, lived and moved 
 and breathed. His thoughts were almost audible 
 in the stillness, like a thin music; the leaves of 
 his book turned with noisy rustlings; his room 
 was peopled with the creatures of his fancy. The 
 world slept, the world was dead. Across the silent 
 
PETER KINDRED 223 
 
 Yard, in other streets Joan lay asleep ; he dreamed 
 of her hair, curved delicately above the pillow. 
 A cart rolled down Holyoke, the horse s hoofs 
 making a friendly noise through the quiet 
 ness. He drew back the curtain of his window; 
 dawn was misty and gray outside, and in the east 
 a band of faint yellow lay across the sky. Slowly 
 he rose and stretched his arms wide apart; with 
 quiet steps he went across the room and out into 
 the hall. A great, darker silence enveloped him, 
 as he made his way down the stairs that creaked 
 as he went. He opened the door and stepped out 
 into the morning. The greater stars were pale 
 in the dawning, and a cold, damp wind blew 
 gently against his face. The houses were deeper 
 gray against the sky, with no windows awake; 
 the arc lamp at the corner was faded in the 
 growing light. The air was fresh, as though it 
 had been washed in clear iced water, and he took 
 a deep breath of it. Far off an early car swung 
 grumbling dully around a curve. 
 
 Across the hushed Square he went, past the 
 chill Yard, the looming dormitories silent among 
 the trees, and on toward Radcliffe until at last 
 he came before Bertram Hall. One window there 
 was Joan s, where she lay sleeping. He stood a 
 long while watching it, and his heart was like the 
 clear telling of a prayer. He turned finally and 
 went home; Don was at his desk already, as 
 though he had always been there. 
 
 At noon Peter came out of the shadow of Sever 
 
224 PETER KINDRED 
 
 into the sun, crossed the Yard slowly, and went 
 to his room and slept. College was over ; he had 
 done well. 
 
 The next day was his last in Cambridge; his 
 trunk went early in the morning, and in the after 
 noon he went with Joan on a long walk through 
 Waverly, to sit finally where they had often been, 
 on a low stone wall with a wide slope of meadow 
 before them, an orchard distantly, and a hill with 
 red bushes beyond. Above them spread the kind 
 sky of New England, and white pilgrim clouds 
 sailed gravely by. They sat there, hand in hand, 
 watching the clouds moving in the south, thinking 
 their long, long thoughts together, with no need 
 of words. Indeed, there was nothing that they 
 might say, save that they were dear to one an 
 other, and their hands nervously entwined told 
 them so better than their lips could. It was their 
 last day together for a long while, and there was 
 much to be accomplished before they met 
 again. 
 
 "Now, that it s come," Peter said, "it s hard 
 to go, Joan." 
 
 "It is very hard, Peter." 
 
 "I feel as though there were a thousand things 
 that I must say, and yet there is nothing." 
 
 "I too, dear." 
 
 "Oh, Joan," he cried, of a sudden, "Do you 
 love me?" 
 
 She smiled and bent toward him and kissed him. 
 They said no more, and as the sun sank lower to 
 
PETER KINDRED 225 
 
 the tree tops they clambered from the wall and 
 returned slowly, with linked arms to Cambridge. 
 But Peter, turning, said good-bye to that field and 
 that low wall. 
 
 Don had still another day to wait and then a 
 summer in the west before he came to New York. 
 The four friends sat at supper in the Green Lan 
 tern, and Peter said good-bye there to Mrs. Pren- 
 tiss and to Susan. There would be many Peters 
 after him, but they were no less sorry at his 
 going, and with his dessert Susan gave him two 
 pots of cream. 
 
 He said good-bye to Joan later. He was aghast 
 at really leaving her; his mind murmured her 
 name over and over again, soundlessly. For a 
 moment she clung to him as though she would not 
 suffer him to go. 
 
 "Good-bye," she whispered. 
 
 And that was all, and she had left him swiftly. 
 In numb amazement he followed Don, and in the 
 car as it clattered and shrilled toward Boston his 
 mind was weaving thoughts of no importance, 
 names and phrases, far out beyond his body. But 
 he was glad that Don was beside him. The car 
 sped over the open bridge, and with a start he saw 
 the familiar curve of lamps on either bank, the 
 distant arc of the bridge lights, the shivering pools 
 of gold in the still, dark river below him, the 
 blacker mass of Boston beyond, against a sky of 
 stars. It was going very fast, all of it ; there was 
 little left him of all those years, save what he 
 
226 PETER KINDRED 
 
 might remember: an hour, or even less. He 
 turned to Don almost in bewilderment. 
 
 "Why," he said, "it was only a day or so ago 
 that I came down from Exeter! I seem only to 
 have grasped at something, and then it was gone, 
 something I saw and wanted ... it is almost as 
 though it had never been! Three years!" 
 
 Down the narrow, crooked streets they went to 
 gether, into the smoky, gloomy station, and out 
 along the platform beside the waiting train. 
 There Don left him. 
 
 "Good-bye, old one," he said. "Keep a stiff 
 upper lip and hit hard." He hesitated as though 
 he would say more, but he seemed embarrassed, 
 indeed, at what he would have said, and wrung 
 Peter s hand clumsily, and turned and went 
 swiftly back along the platform. Peter watched 
 him go as though, in his going, Cambridge went, 
 too. 
 
 Beyond the shed of the station the tracks spun 
 out in myriad shining lines, crossed and recrossed 
 each other; a bridge, black against the sky, 
 soared vaguely over the yard ; red lights twinkled 
 near by, and farther and farther, until they were 
 lost, red lights and green, low along the rails or 
 high among signal towers, burning clear and 
 abruptly through the night. The station was 
 noisy with the escaping steam of engines, and 
 with the muffled hurrying and the occasional voices 
 of people. Beyond, along the rails, above the 
 south, the night was calm, distant. Peter climbed 
 
PETER KINDRED 227 
 
 the high steps of his car, and crept into his berth. 
 
 Later he awoke and watched the darkness 
 rush past his window, occasionally shot with 
 sudden gold lights that came and were gone. 
 The monotonous hum of the train soothed him, 
 save when his body tossed as the car swung to a 
 curve. 
 
 Far behind him in the night lay Boston and 
 Cambridge, quiet and forsaken. The little wooden 
 houses were asleep on Mount Auburn Street, and 
 the Yard wr.s dark, with those same stars above 
 the dormitories that he could see from his win 
 dow. They watched above Joan, too ; he thought 
 with a pang how much closer each gold light would 
 be to her, as he passed it, than he would be in the 
 morning. And Cambridge Cambridge would 
 sleep for a summer, and the ghosts of his foot 
 steps and the echoes of Don s voice and his would 
 drift in the deserted house on Holyoke with the 
 warm odor of trees and grass. And then would 
 come autumn and the wave of another generation 
 would break over Harvard, driving echoes and 
 ghosts before it. 
 
 He woke again in the wan morning light to see 
 huddled gray tenements, draggled with hanging 
 wash, flying past him. He dressed himself 
 soberly, feeling cold and nervously excited. The 
 train clicked over the Harlem Eiver, sparkling 
 in the early sunlight, and sped along between close 
 tenements. He looked at them curiously, for now 
 this city was his home, and these would be a part 
 
228 PETER KINDRED 
 
 of him. The train swooped into the black tunnel. 
 In the station people went by him hurriedly, in 
 tent, worried and thoughtful. He walked slowly, 
 with his shoulders back and his chin held high, 
 thinking of Don. He went down into the lighted 
 crashing of the subway. A short man with a thin, 
 twisted mouth stumbled against him, and snarled. 
 A tall woman in black shoes with soiled white tops 
 and draggled heels walked stiffly up and down the 
 platform, chewing a bit of gum. The air was 
 hot and lifeless in the subway; there was a stale 
 smell of cigarettes and papers and dust. Peter 9 a 
 eyes widened. He had come home. 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 / 
 
 THEEE is a street in lower New York that an 
 swers to the nickname of Newspaper Row, 
 where a group of the great city dailies have their 
 unimpressive offices. At the foot of the street an 
 elevated railroad bulks darkly against the struc 
 ture of Brooklyn Bridge ; the bridge is lost behind 
 offices, and soars majestically for the river. Be 
 neath, hurry a constant throng of people over 
 cobblestones; horses and trucks, motors, trolleys, 
 with a great hubbub, blowing of whistles, shouting 
 of newspaper vendors and clanging of bells. Fac 
 ing this is the small sweep of open park, the very 
 determined court house, and beyond, the lofty, 
 mountainous roofs of the lower skyline, with the 
 chill stone tower of the Woolworth Building im 
 measurably high against the clear and pale sky, 
 so high that it seems almost as if from its topmost 
 windows one could see far across the ocean to 
 London and Madrid, and all the south outspread 
 under the sun, its hazy valleys, mountains and 
 river courses. 
 
 229 
 
230 PETER KINDRED 
 
 To this street Peter came with his introduction 
 from Helen, and presented it nervously to her 
 cousin, a sub-editor of the Sun. The man shook 
 hands with him cordially, and took him at once to 
 his chief. In the newspaper offices, all seemed to 
 be noise and confusion, coatless and perspiring 
 men at typewriters, some kicking their heels, talk 
 ing, smoking, rushing here and there with sheets 
 of paper, tables piled high with all manner of 
 things, papers, scribbled and torn, a noise of dis 
 tant machinery. They waited deferentially for 
 the chief to be ready to talk to them. He turned 
 at last and looked blankly up at Peter. The sub 
 editor explained, and the chief s face grew weary. 
 
 " There M be nothing for you to do," he said, 
 "we re laying off men over the summer. Sorry." 
 
 The sub-editor led Peter back again, and shook 
 hands with him. * * Too bad, he murmured. * It s 
 hard now, you know ... you might try the 
 Tribune up the street . . . next door . . . they re 
 looking for young college men. Good luck. Drop 
 in any time . . . glad to have met you." 
 
 Peter went out into the street with a hollow feel 
 ing in his body. It was unbelievable how suddenly 
 this thing had happened. He had expected . . . 
 he hardly knew what he had expected, but nothing 
 so abrupt. He had had an introduction, and he 
 had thought that even if he were not placed, he 
 would be no poorer. But as he came into the 
 street again, he realized suddenly that he had no 
 introduction now, and that in exchange for it, he 
 
PETER KINDRED 231 
 
 had received nothing. He was vastly poorer. The 
 curtness of the affair troubled him, as though it 
 had been utterly impossible from the beginning, 
 as though he had been impudent somehow in even 
 thinking of such a thing. He stared thoughtfully 
 across the park at the many-windowed buildings. 
 People moved by him rapidly, and he watched 
 them, troubled. They went along with swift 
 strides, elbowing their way, their thoughts appar 
 ently intent upon some inward worry, jealous of 
 time, of people, of all things that might hinder 
 them. 
 
 Peter took grave counsel with himself. He had 
 been thrown more suddenly upon his own re 
 sources than he had expected, and in a momentary 
 flash of panic, he knew those resources to be weak, 
 how weak he did not know, he had not experienced 
 or considered. He recalled what the sub-editor 
 had said to him about the Tribune, and he hesi 
 tated, but there seemed to be no avoiding it. He 
 could not content himself with this one refusal 
 and go home ... to do what! He did not know 
 that either, and yet the idea of walking unbidden 
 into the Tribune office was repugnant to him; 
 it seemed impudent and undignified. But there 
 was no help for it, he must try, and again he felt 
 a rush of panic at the thought that if he were re 
 fused he would be still poorer, and indecision at 
 the thought following it, that if he went home he 
 would still have the Tribune as a possibility, for 
 other and more propitious days. But he frowned 
 
232 PETER KINDRED 
 
 at himself finally, and went into the Tribune build 
 ing with a slow-beating heart. 
 
 He came to a rail, separating him from a tele 
 phone, an operator, and a tall office boy, who 
 seemed to have recently ontgrown the suit he 
 wore. He asked to be announced to the managing 
 editor with a voice that not all the determination 
 of his will could make steady. The telephone girl 
 and the office boy let the momentum of their talk 
 run on a moment, and then the boy came amiably 
 to the rail, and asked Peter his name. 
 
 "Mr. Peter Kindred," said Peter, and then 
 added hastily, "he won t know me though." 
 
 The telephone girl looked at him coldly and im 
 pudently, and the office boy lounged at the rail 
 pleasantly. 
 
 "What d ye want to see him about?" 
 
 Peter s face burned and words died in him. It 
 was impossible to tell this creature why he wanted 
 to see the editor. 
 
 "What difference does it make?" he said at last 
 faintly. 
 
 "What d ye want to see him about?" the office 
 boy asked again, less amiably, and the telephone 
 girl smirked. 
 
 Peter was silent; it was a dreadful situation. 
 Somehow, in the attitude of these two people he 
 sensed mockery; before them he was being made 
 to look ridiculous. He grew furious, but the more 
 his cheeks burned, the more impossible it was for 
 him to speak with assurance, the more impossible, 
 
PETER KINDRED 233 
 
 indeed, to think of what to say. When his own 
 silence had become unendurable to him he re 
 peated his request. 
 
 "I want to see the editor," he said. 
 
 "What about?" 
 
 Peter spoke as stubbornly and as brazenly as he 
 could. "I want a job here. * 
 
 But even as he said it, he knew that he had 
 lost a job, even if there were one to be had. The 
 telephone girl laughed outright, and the office boy, 
 grinning widely, walked behind a partition and 
 presently reappeared, so soon, in fact, that he 
 could not have gone more than a dozen steps. 
 
 "He says he ain t got nothing for you," he 
 said, smiling in high amusement. Peter tried to 
 meet his eyes, tried to look stern, to look indiffer 
 ent, but his eyes trembled. Confusion and morti 
 fication overwhelmed him, and without a word he 
 turned and left the place. 
 
 Once outside, with the sunshine blinking in his 
 eyes, he stood irresolute, feeling very small and 
 shameful. It seemed to him that many people as 
 they went by in the sun were laughing at him 
 grimly, but it did not lessen the half furtive speed 
 of their going and coming. Then he grew angry 
 indeed at himself, and cursed himself in round 
 and blasphemous numbers. But it all did no good ; 
 he was oppressed with a sense of the lost oppor 
 tunity he had feebly let go by. The high office 
 buildings stared down at him from the sky with 
 blank, impersonal windows ; there was nothing left 
 
234. PETER KINDRED 
 
 him to do, and sore and depressed lie started 
 home. Beyond the foot of the bridge he found 
 himself on the Bowery, and thought he might walk 
 the length of it. 
 
 The name roused him to curiosity, linked as it 
 was with his childhood books and occasional crim 
 inal tales. He forgot his unhappiness for a time 
 and walked briskly, peering down the streets he 
 passed, standing before the small, dark shops, 
 wondering to see so very many of them pawn 
 shops, each with its identical dusty store of re 
 volvers, flimsy violins and sorry jewelry. The 
 street was gloomy with shadow; the elevated 
 trains clattered and jarred above him, but the 
 Bowery was lonely, there were few people. A 
 large woman in an untidy black blouse came out 
 of a doorway and gaped about her ; she might have 
 been a character from Dickens, but she seemed 
 phlegmatic and sleepy and dull. A dark-browed 
 man in a derby swaggered out of a saloon and 
 went down a side street; Peter s eyes followed 
 him. There, for instance, might go such a villain 
 as he had often read about. Here was a swag 
 gering creature in a derby who came out of a sa 
 loon and disappeared, and lo and behold, all the 
 underworld came with him and laid tempestuous 
 siege to Peter s mind. Down a street he went him 
 self, looking up at the tenements ; babies sprawled 
 before him, old women gossiped in doorways, a 
 warm smell of unclean places drummed on his nos 
 trils. There were dirty children playing in the 
 
PETER KINDRED 235 
 
 gntters, on skates, spinning tops, fighting and 
 shouting, running, as though all the world were 
 just like this, a huddled squalor, a crowded, peo 
 pled place, as though there were no other world 
 to envy or disdain. 
 
 Yet here Peter was made aware of a fierce pulse 
 of life, a reality, a crude, raw energy that stirred 
 and troubled him. It was like dipping below sur 
 face waters into the green rush of a deep tide; 
 what monstrous passions moved there, what bru 
 tal forces, what untutored faith! For the first 
 time he hesitated to formulate what he had seen in 
 the usual comforting terms of academic eco 
 nomics. Finally, he became confused with many 
 things, with the unnecessary gorgeousness of the 
 wealthy, with the utter mawkishness of their pity 
 and sympathy for the unfortunate, with the wait 
 ing land, fertile but hard, lonely, and exigent, with 
 the intense and dull stupidity of the poor. They 
 had no need of pity. If anything, they had need 
 of a thoughtful hatred, to get behind them and 
 push them somewhere. They had need of savage 
 control. 
 
 66 There ought to be an impersonal power, an all- 
 powerful bureau, to size them up, individually, 
 and give them work." 
 
 Such a bureau might just as well limit the num 
 ber of their offspring. "The devil !" Peter said; 
 "it would be better if the rich knew how to have 
 more babies." 
 
 But at any rate, until some intolerant force took 
 
236 PETER KINDRED 
 
 them in hand and gave each one the right sort of 
 work, and made it sure, the poor would be just as 
 helpless and driven as ever ; and every man s mus 
 cles ought to be worth enough money to feed a 
 family of ... a decent sized family, of course. 
 
 And there was the sensible power again, hating 
 them because they were poor and dirty and fool 
 ish. It was much better than pussyfooting up and 
 down and loving them a great deal, and leaving 
 them there. Education . . . 
 
 The logic of it brought him back to himself 
 again, and the disasters of the morning. He had 
 not found work; that was bad enough, but not 
 half the disappointment in himself, for out of an 
 encounter with an office boy and a telephone girl, 
 his confidence in himself had come well cowed. If 
 only, he told himself again and again, he had had 
 the impudence to tell the office boy he carried 
 grave news of the Balkans, of the White House, 
 of the editor s wife anything; and yet he knew 
 that he would never have the impudence for that. 
 He saw before him a long line of office boys, and 
 he would be forced to whip his spirit to meet them. 
 Yet now he knew that no matter how bravely he 
 considered what he would do and say, at the actual 
 moment he would be no match for them, no match 
 for anyone. It was a frightening thing to con 
 sider. 
 
 His parents accepted his failure philosophically 
 enough, and he thought he detected a mildly tri 
 umphant gleam in his father s eye. His mother 
 
PETER KINDRED 1237 
 
 gave him a smile and a pat of encouragement, but 
 it was a matter of entire indifference to Edith; 
 for her the world was a simple grouping of men 
 with and without money, and the daughters of 
 such men. That there should or should not be 
 work was a question indeed far removed from any 
 vital matter. 
 
 For a day he gave his attention anxiously to 
 what he would do, but he came to no decision, and 
 found no way out of his difficulties. The want sec 
 tion of a newspaper disclosed nothing; no other 
 newspaper was advertising for cub reporters, no 
 business men needed inexperienced men, save as 
 office boys; there was a dearth, apparently, only 
 of cooks and general houseworkers, and a great 
 quantity of chauffeurs, governess-companions, 
 and long-experienced men in every field, all filled 
 to the brim with energy and ability, it seemed, 
 and willing to work for almost no salary at all 
 that is, all except the governesses, who invari 
 ably stipulated a large salary and light labors. 
 Peter grew close to bewilderment ; he wondered if 
 anyone wanted him at all. 
 
 In the afternoon, with a sinking heart, he went 
 to another newspaper. It was useless to stand 
 and argue there ; he told his business to the office 
 boy at once, and was at once declined. He had not 
 expected anything else, and walked home again, 
 his hands thrust deeply into his pockets. 
 
 That night at dinner he asked his father s ad 
 vice. Mr. Kindred senior looked important at 
 
238 PETER KINDRED 
 
 that, and settled himself in his chair, with a clear 
 ing of the throat. 
 
 "Hmm," he said, "let me see. Yon want a 
 newspaper job. Well, try the newspapers,. I 
 don t mind yonr being on a newspaper. Try 
 them." 
 
 "I have tried them," Peter said. "I can t get 
 in to the editor." 
 
 "Hmmm . . . well, it s hard . . . what did you 
 expect ... an unlicked cub out of college? I 
 should think you d go into some business, and get 
 experience ... go out on the road and learn to 
 sell . . . it s what I ve told you. Laces . . . silks 
 . . . varnish . . . anything. Learn something about 
 business. Knock some of the nonsense out of 
 you. Get experience." 
 
 Peter pursed his lips. "Perhaps I shall," he 
 said, "but I d rather stay here in town, I think." 
 
 His father smiled amiably. "Well," he said, 
 "that s right. Why didn t you ask me all this 
 before? I might have sent you to a man I know 
 on the Times; he d have given you some good ad 
 vice, if anybody could." 
 
 Peter s eyes lighted. "That s fine," he cried, 
 "will you give me a note to him? I ll go down 
 to-morrow. I didn t know you knew anybody on 
 the Times." 
 
 His father considered for a moment. He had 
 been hurt somewhat that Peter had not come to 
 him at once for help, and yet there was in his mind 
 the desire not to help Peter, not to make the way 
 
PETER KINDRED 239 
 
 easier for Peter than it had been for him, not to 
 smooth off the edges against which Peter would 
 bump. It would do the boy good to have trouble, 
 he said; life had been made too simple for him 
 entirely. It would do him good to see how far his 
 fantastic ideas would carry him. For some rea 
 son he quite neglected to say also that it would 
 do his own self good to see those ideas knocked 
 out of Peter for a while. 
 
 "Well," he said finally, "I ll speak to one of the 
 men at the office. He knows this newspaper fellow 
 better than I do, and I ll see if he ll give you an 
 introduction." 
 
 The next afternoon Peter went idly out of the 
 apartment house and turned west toward River 
 side Drive. It was a warm June day, and already 
 there was an odor of summer in the air, the pe 
 culiar warm smell of city summer, of soft asphalt, 
 of parks and bushes, of houses and cooking, of 
 motors and washed streets. The river lay broad 
 and deep blue below the Drive, dotted near shore 
 with trim white boats. Across its great sweep 
 rose the brown cliffs of the Palisades, low fac 
 tories &t their base, wharves and smoke stacks; 
 green wild wood above, the red roof of a house, 
 and over them the western sky, from where river 
 and cliffs wound north beyond the towering walls 
 of New York to be lost in the green distance, to 
 where the buildings hid the water finally as it 
 swept south to the bay. But water and sky were 
 a different blue than New England rivers and 
 
240 PETER KINDRED 
 
 New England sky, less clear, and almost less blue. 
 Peter sat down on a bench under a tree, his back 
 to the river, and looked soberly at the massive 
 gray apartment houses that fronted the water, 
 across the Drive. Motors moved by him smoothly, 
 their tires whining over the shiny black road, 
 leaving behind them a blue haze of smoke, 
 and a faint smell of oil and gasoline and leather. 
 Children played up and down the pavement, little 
 girls in socks, with bobbed hair, neat little boys 
 in sailor suits, on velocipedes or scooters, some 
 jumping across the squares of hopscotch. Nurse 
 maids wheeled perambulators up and down, and 
 talked and gossiped; others sat on benches, baby 
 carriages before them, and healthy, clean, washed 
 and ironed babies in them, with rattles and dolls. 
 Two women in light summer suits swung briskly 
 along the street, their clothes ruffling in the small 
 breeze, their high-heeled slippers twinkling below 
 slim, graceful ankles. Peter looked at them 
 gloomily; this part of the city was given over to 
 careless folk, to children, to play. Here the de 
 pendents of successful men should come, un 
 troubled and unhurried, to sit in the sun and 
 watch the river and the slow boats up and down. 
 He felt almost as though he had no right to be 
 there, as though the sturdy buildings opposite him 
 were regarding him questioningly, as though the 
 busy men in downtown offices were wishing him 
 away from their Drive, this Peter Kindred with 
 out a position, without even a family to be proud 
 
PETER KINDRED 241 
 
 of, prond enough to look tranquilly at those 
 women, their graceful bodies and slim ankles and 
 tmworried laughter. This was their city, their 
 river, their buildings ; in it they were at home to 
 love and build, to woo and suffer and enjoy, 
 whereas Peter . . . what was he? A man of no 
 importance, from Cambridge. The name came to 
 him with a rush of feeling, memory, new courage. 
 He stared truculently at the buses and the 
 motors as they went by. Some day he, too, would 
 live there, by the great suffering mackerel. 
 
 Afternoon slipped into evening; the blue grew 
 old and faded, above the Palisades the sky turned 
 to a yellow haze, and shadows began to lengthen 
 along the Drive. The water of the river deep 
 ened, and dusk came from the east across the city. 
 Motors droned northward in a gathering stream, 
 their lighted lamps a flaring gold in the gradual 
 amethyst of dusk, buses with windows alight, 
 their decks crowded with people, rumbled and 
 jarred through the traffic. Behind Peter the deep 
 river grew deeper and was lost, save where tiny 
 red and gold lanterns moved with the passage of 
 unnoticed boats. The wind blew colder and moist, 
 and in it drifted from the south bells and fog 
 horns of ships, faintly and far off. Across the 
 water the lights of Jersey grew slowly in uneven 
 gold; above the dark looming of the coast the 
 last faint colors of a sunset faded, and over them 
 the larger stars already silver, pale in the clear 
 green sky above the west. The city was still, 
 
242 PETER KINDRED 
 
 voices were shadows, and only Peter had no place 
 there, no love, no chance to build. His heart sped 
 with his thoughts to Boston, and with troubled 
 eyes he thought of Joan, and with a dry throat 
 longed for her voice at his side. 
 
 The next morning he took the note his father 
 had given him to the Times. The man whom he 
 had come to see was brisk and emphatic, slim, en 
 ergetic, nervous. When he had read the note, he 
 shook his head and smiled. 
 
 "Not a chance," he said. "I ll take you in to 
 the chief if you wish, Mr. Kindred, but I can tell 
 you beforehand what he ll say. We lay off men 
 in the summer. There s no news." 
 
 He was discoursive, and as Peter stood dumbly 
 before him, he went on. 
 
 "What do you want to go into newspaper work 
 for, anyhow? How do you know you ll like it? 
 There s nothing easy about reporting, it s the 
 hardest game of all. Are you dead set on it?" 
 
 "No," said Peter, "but I need a job somewhere 
 I can write decent English, and ... I need 
 money." 
 
 "Well, if you want to be a writer, there s noth 
 ing like the newspapers, no sir ... it s a won 
 derful experience, a wonderful experience. Oh, 
 absolutely. But I don t think you ll find any place 
 here in town this summer. No, it would surprise 
 me very much if you did." 
 
 "But a fellow must start in some time!" Peter 
 said desperately. 
 
PETER KINDRED 243 
 
 " Yes, quite right, quite right. I had to start in, 
 too, we all had to." 
 
 " How did you start?" 
 
 "Oh, I just started in, started in." He looked 
 at Peter importantly for a moment. "Look here, 
 young man," he said suddenly, "you re from col 
 lege, aren t you? Well, then . . . about every 
 other man who comes out of college wants to be a 
 newspaper man here in New York. That s a fact. 
 And every newspaper man all over the country 
 has his eye on right here. We have about a dozen 
 papers in the city. What are you going to do? 
 We ve got to take just the men who are absolutely 
 necessary, men we can t do without. For that 
 matter you ve got to be necessary in any line to 
 get along in this town. You ve got to be some 
 body. They ve got to be unable to get along with 
 out you. But once you make a place here, you re 
 at the top, you re the tenpin, you re the "king. It s 
 a great little town, a wonderful city. Oh, abso 
 lutely." 
 
 "What could I do?" Peter asked gloomily. 
 
 "Let s see; you want big money; you want to 
 write. Go into advertising. Advertising, that s 
 it. The biggest thing in the country. I tell you, 
 young fellow, you re wasting your time in the 
 newspaper offices. I d be glad to help you, if I 
 could do anything, but there s nothing I could do. 
 There are men in Denver and Los Angeles and 
 Washington now that we need right here in this 
 office, men who M jump at the chance to come. But 
 
244 PETER KINDRED 
 
 we re full up, full up. Come in again some time." 
 Peter thanked him and left the building. Out 
 side he came at once into the hurry and restless 
 movement of the Rialto, the theater district, the 
 roaring forties. The sun beat hot on the street 
 and the low buildings; there was the sound of 
 many people moving, and a great stench of auto 
 mobiles. Men and women passed him, talking 
 loudly, dressed in one extreme or another, with 
 vacant faces, and tight waists, powdered noses, 
 rouge, cigarettes, cigars, pimples. Peter looked 
 at them angrily. Necessary, necessary . . . the 
 word ran through his head. Were these people 
 necessary to anyone at all? That he, then, should 
 be unnecessary, filled him with intolerant anger. 
 What sort of a city might it be? And yet these 
 mummers were busy, were paid, were at home in 
 the city where Peter was unnecessary. He vowed 
 with a rebellious heart that he would not be un 
 necessary, but the thought of that brisk journalist 
 worried him, gnawed at him. There, indeed, was 
 a necessary man to the city, a man to reflect, to 
 express the great middle tone of it, the pitch and 
 key of it, that made it New York, nervous, brag 
 gart, metallic, inquisitive, impudent, enthusiastic. 
 For all the thought bit at him, it was understand 
 able; New York was so. But the Eialto . . . 
 Peter was very sore and disgusted, indeed. At 
 the Circle he stopped and watched a street 
 sweeper, almost with affection. There was a man 
 who did a man s work, who loved his God, his fam- 
 
PETER KINDRED 245 
 
 ily, and the morality of his people. He, too, had 
 a place in the city, and Peter had not. And Peter 
 found it in his mind half to envy the husky, stolid 
 policeman who stood on a corner and looked so 
 confidently about. 
 
 That night he wrote a long letter to Joan, to 
 whom he had said nothing before concerning his 
 failure and disappointment. However, he could 
 keep it to himself no longer, although he did not 
 tell her the entire trouble of his spirit. 
 
 "I have seen a different city," he wrote, "a 
 city as remote to Boston, even to what I had con 
 ceived it to be, as Nineveh. Curious folk are suc 
 cesses, men whom you and I would very like have 
 laughed at in Cambridge. They seem to have the 
 knack of catching people on the fly; it is the only 
 way to catch New Yorkers, and to do that you 
 must have vivid bait. Men spring up all over with 
 nothing to commend them save impudence, and 
 they sell that to other men. A man changes the 
 tire of his car; a crowd collects and gapes. And 
 yet a moment before on that street you would have 
 sworn that no man there but was on an important 
 and hurried journey. And every man, even 
 though he be the proprietor of a ramshackle shop 
 with broken windowpanes, has the one and only 
 something or other, the finest this or that, and 
 knows more about all the world than all the world 
 itself. 
 
 "I m afraid that the newspapers are impos 
 sible, my dearest. As one man told me, I must be 
 
246 PETER KINDRED 
 
 somebody first, although I doubt that somewhat ; 
 I know of men who have gone to work as report 
 ers, from college. But perhaps there was some 
 thing else behind them. At any rate, I have been 
 rebuked by editors and office boys. Oh, well, I 
 shall find something soon. Don t worry. But I 
 think that father will be angry at our engagement. 
 Let him. 
 
 "Jinks, I am lonely for Cambridge! These 
 dusty, baked streets, and these gloomy, high walls 
 and the unfriendliness of people weigh down on 
 me. They re not glad that another creature has 
 come to help them work . . . work? To run a 
 trolley, perhaps ! I have a secret ; it has to do with 
 you " 
 
 When he had written his letter, he sat for a 
 long while holding it before him, his eyes search 
 ing for Joan through remembered images that 
 stirred wanly above his desk, blown to and fro in 
 the slight night wind from his open window, his 
 body reaching out to her, desirous, surging against 
 the prison of its being. It was good to write to 
 her, as though she were there, as though he were 
 telling her all this. He brooded so, and through 
 the window from below came drifting the slow, 
 muffled voices of the city, the far-off rumbling of 
 cars, the gradual coming and going of motors; a 
 distant freight train moved with long reverbera 
 tions, hollow bell tolling, and from the river 
 sounded the faint, hoarse horns of ships ; a block 
 away a barrel organ was playing the Miserere. 
 
PETER KINDRED" 247 
 
 The summer dragged through Jnne and July, 
 the city grew weary, asphalt melted in the sun and 
 under its dusty gray covering it was soft, like 
 viscous gum. By breakfast time the day was hot, 
 the wind was hot, what little wind there was; 
 sounds wilted. At evening men sat at the open 
 windows of their apartments in shirt sleeves, fan 
 ning themselves slowly, children still sprawled 
 and played in the streets, the stench of motors was 
 insistent, diffuse, choking. There was no relief 
 from the intolerable, humid heat ; moving or still, 
 people s bodies were bathed in cold, sticky sweat. 
 There was no energy in the city for anything ; men 
 and women sat listlessly at night on the benches 
 of the Drive, and looked at the river. Somewhere 
 distantly there might be country and cool green, 
 but in the streets the thought was unimaginable. 
 The trees grew dry, the leaves pale and dusty; 
 heat radiated from the pavements long after the 
 sun had gone down in a red murk over the Pali 
 sades. Under the yellow glare of day the city was 
 as though dead, the streets almost deserted. At 
 night the city breathed again; families sat on 
 doorsteps, there was subdued talk, folk moved 
 about. 
 
 It was ebb tide in Peter s courage; he got 
 through it as best he could, with grim and des 
 perate patience. He read, wrote letters, walked 
 about the city, sat whole afternoons away in pic 
 ture theatres where at least during the droning 
 course of a film he forgot the heat, forgot his 
 
248 PETER KINDRED 
 
 body, his clinging, moist clothes. He had no heart 
 to plan anything; he went without hope to three 
 more newspapers, and found no encouragement; 
 he wrote to one more, and was unanswered. He 
 answered many advertisements, some personally, 
 some by letter, but they all came to nothing. Men 
 wanted office boys, or young clerks to tie up bun 
 dles, to take stock or to run errands at a few dol 
 lars a week ; other offices wanted only experienced 
 salesmen. 
 
 Into Peter s mind was creeping a full and bitter 
 knowledge of what competition might mean, of 
 the unending struggle among men to live, of the 
 entire loneliness of men among men. It seemed to 
 him that here was no companionship of labor, no 
 humanity, no common bond of men together fac 
 ing the darkness, glad, as they should be, for even 
 the slightest addition to their strength, but that 
 rather here was a cold-eyed jealousy, scorn of 
 other lives, greediness and suspicion. It seemed 
 as though he were denied the right to live and to 
 work and to love and to build, as though men 
 would be happier if he were dead, and they in 
 peace to what gluttony they pleased. It was 
 damnably uncarverian, all of it. 
 
 His father, too, grew impatient at last, and sent 
 him to several .of his business acquaintances, but 
 they could offer Peter nothing save a hope of 
 something in the fall. 
 
 Early in August his spirit failed him entirely, 
 and for the first time he wrote a shameful letter 
 
PETER KINDRED 249 
 
 to Joan, a petulant, long letter, almost the wail of 
 a child. It was nearly a week before he heard 
 from her again, and then she wrote a splendid 
 answer, of faith and encouragement. 
 
 "Something will turn up, dear Peter," she 
 wrote, "and if we must wait until fall, why, then, 
 I suppose we must. You must not lose heart . . . 
 it is not like you to do that. Other men have found 
 work, and have waited even longer. It is no criti 
 cism of you, dear, that you have been unfortunate 
 so far. It is miserable that you should be in the 
 city this hot summer. But courage ! I shall be 
 with you soon, I know." 
 
 Two days later Peter wrote again. 
 
 * Yoicks ! his letter ran, " it has come ! I have 
 found it. I am a worker, a business man, a crea 
 ture upon a salary, a necessary person! And 
 Joan, you ll not guess my salary. Not wages, 
 mind you salary! Fifteen dollars a week! 
 
 "And here s the whole thing. Your very dear 
 letter crept into me and bellied me out with hope. 
 I bought all the newspapers, and took them up to 
 my room, and went over every single male wanted 
 column and I found it: the Porter-Baffle Com 
 pany wanted a copy writer . . . they re a big ad 
 vertising agency, you know . . . and down I went. 
 They have a lot of offices way up on the fifteenth 
 floor of one of the Fourth Avenue buildings, at 
 Twenty-Seventh Street. In I went with knees 
 trembling and all the scorn I could get on my face, 
 and asked about it. There weren t many answers, 
 
250 PETER KINDRED 
 
 I think, because they took me. A long, thin crea 
 ture looked me all over and asked me about my 
 experience and I lied like a devil and told him how 
 I d always been interested in advertising, ever 
 since I was born, and how my best friend at Har 
 vard was the son of an agent in the West . . . 
 imagine ! But I nearly choked as I said it. And 
 then he asked me to write a lot of things and make 
 some sketches of what he called layouts I played 
 around with the ideas and juggled them, and he 
 seemed satisfied, and I got the job. I got it! I 
 got it ! Imagine you dearest old Joan ! 
 
 She telegraphed to him at once; he found the 
 telegram on his desk at home, after his first day 
 in the new office. It was a happy homecoming; 
 his mother and father smiled at him across the 
 dinner table, and Edith asked him innumerable 
 questions, even a little impressed with the digni 
 fied sound of his position copy writer with the 
 Porter-Baffle Company, advertising. His family 
 seemed content with him; he read in their faces 
 nai ve satisfaction and pride. He knew that his 
 father would be talking to the men of his acquaint 
 ance about his son, just down from Harvard, and 
 gone into advertising, doing very well, remark 
 ably. The thought warmed him, tickled him, in 
 deed. He answered Edith s questions with a feel 
 ing of fondness for her. 
 
 After dinner, with Joan s telegram in his 
 pocket, he went slowly down Riverside, and sat 
 again upon a shadowed bench with the Drive be- 
 
PETER KINDRED 251 
 
 fore him. Moonlight was pale on the river, the 
 sky was clear and dim above the Palisades, and 
 the high, broad walls of the houses loomed gray 
 through the moonlight, a wash of gray, deeply 
 shadowed, broken with the gold of windows. Peo 
 ple talked nearby, moved up and down before him, 
 arm in arm, laughing and murmuring. It was his 
 city at last, and he knew how beautiful it was. 
 For a time, profound loyalty possessed him. 
 
 He was given a large flat desk in a small, par 
 titioned room, well crowded with similar desks and 
 men at them, young men, for the most part, very 
 busy and worried young men, and old desks. An 
 immense spread of window rose abruptly before 
 him, and through it he could see northward across 
 the city, above the lower roof tops, and past occa 
 sional high buildings. In his room other men 
 wrote copy and specialized on layouts; a man 
 bought paper and printing and cuts, and still an 
 other attended to the buying of space in maga 
 zines and newspapers, as it was needed. In the 
 room beyond the partition, a commercial artist did 
 sketches, posters, bold color work, and another, 
 fine pen work. In the large space outside, type 
 writers clicked incessantly, office boys moved 
 among the files, clerks kept their books. Across 
 its length were the private offices of the solici 
 tors. 
 
 "But," Peter said to the man who sat nearest 
 to him, "I always imagined that a solicitor was a 
 
252 PETER KINDRED 
 
 sort of unpleasant fellow, just about at the bot 
 tom of everything. " 
 
 "Hell," said the man, "not in this game. 
 Though there s all kinds of solicitors. But these 
 solicitors are really a sort of partner. Different, 
 you know." 
 
 After a while, Peter learned the hierarchy of 
 solicitation. First, and lowest, are the men who 
 solicit for the newspapers. They move among the 
 agencies, urging the respective merits of their 
 newspapers upon unwilling ears. It is an agent s 
 duty to remain both friendly to them, and un- 
 bothered by them, a difficult and tactful task. ( 
 Next, the magazine solicitors, of varying impor 
 tance, according to their magazines, some, who 
 represent the "Saturday Evening Post," almost 
 of regal importance. And, finally, the agency soli 
 citors. 
 
 "You see," Peter s desk mate explained to 
 him, "our men the agency men really have to 
 create the business. That is, they go to Mr. 
 Whozis, who makes glue, say, and they get him 
 to advertise his glue. They get him to spend fifty 
 thousand dollars, say. That s not much." 
 
 "Whew!" said Peter. "How do they do 
 it?" 
 
 "Oh they study his line learn his problems 
 and show him how this or that sort of advertising 
 would help him. Or, now, they go to Whatshis- 
 name, who is advertising already, and show him 
 how he can do better. Then they call in the maga- 
 
PETER KINDRED 253 
 
 sine and newspaper solicitors, or they listen to 
 their arguments, and give them so and so many 
 pages of advertising. And then we write up the 
 ads." 
 
 "Jinks," said Peter, "I should think that 
 they d have to be awfully clever and know a lot 
 for that!" 
 
 "Well, they do. They re the slickest men in the 
 business. And, of course, they have to know 
 something." 
 
 "But do they really know more about a man s 
 business than he does himself?" 
 
 The acquaintance winked. "Well," he said, 
 "what s the difference if they land the account, 
 hey?" 
 
 In the heat of midsummer the office moved with 
 a dash and a clatter. Every one seemed to be 
 busy all the time ; it was as though great move 
 ments were afoot, as though important business 
 matters centered there from all over the country. 
 The office, so high, was cooler than the street; 
 men moved there alertly, urgently, swiftly. On 
 Peter s desk lay future booklets, pamphlets, 
 advertisements, full pages in obscure magazines, 
 letters that would be copied in many thousands. 
 He labored over them joyously, filled with a sense 
 of the value of his part in big matters, in large 
 expenditures. Only, sometimes he wondered at 
 the impudence of statements he was told to elab 
 orate. 
 
 "Look here," he said on one occasion to the 
 
254 PETER KINDRED 
 
 man who sat next to him. " Here s this automo 
 bile folder, and I m going to feature the most 
 beautiful car in the world. But, Lord knows, it 
 isn t that!" 
 
 "What s it to you!" the man said. "The pub 
 lic wants to hear it. If you didn t say it was the 
 finest thing in its class, they d think there was 
 something wrong with it. Go ahead don t worry 
 they ll swallow it, alright, alright!" 
 
 And again, there were times when Peter s copy 
 came back rigorously censored. "For God s 
 sake," one man scrawled across the page, "you re 
 not selling tea to ladies in Boston, you re selling 
 chewing tobacco to farmers in Wisconsin. Talk 
 to them!" 
 
 But it was not long before Peter learned what 
 was meant by a selling talk, and for a while he 
 took pleasure in snappiness and what he thought 
 might be salesmanship. He added the words sell 
 ing point and slogan to his vocabulary. 
 
 At the end of August he was tired and a bit 
 pale and thin. He was unused to sitting at a desk 
 all day, indoors, hard at work, and the heat sapped 
 his strength, that and the smother of the subway. 
 But he was eager and fairly content, a little 
 rushed along, perhaps, and bewildered with the 
 swift swing of working days and new impressions. 
 However, when he learned that he was satisfac 
 tory on the whole, and that he might continue at 
 his desk indefinitely, he was jubilant, and planned 
 to tell his family about Joan at once. 
 
PETER KINDRED 255 
 
 He came more proudly home that night among 
 the close-packed and weary rabble, conscious of 
 playing a not unworthy part, feeling himself some 
 what a solitary and romantic figure among a drab 
 multitude. He found his father in shirt sleeves 
 sitting solemnly before an open window in a 
 gloomy room, tired and hot, drawn with the ac 
 cumulated weariness of the summer, silent, jeal 
 ous of rest and quiet and comfort. His mother 
 was in another room ; he was glad of that, for he 
 wanted to speak to his father manfully, alone. 
 But it was a difficult thing to tell. 
 
 "I m to stay on at the office," he said, and his 
 father nodded slowly, as though he had not ex 
 pected anything else. Peter hesitated. 
 
 "I thought I ought to tell you, sir," he said, "I 
 . . . I want to be married." 
 
 His father did not move or speak. Peter cleared 
 his throat. "I ve been engaged . . . engaged for 
 some time." 
 
 "What foolishness is this?" his father asked, 
 ominously quiet. 
 
 Peter frowned. "I ve been engaged . . . for 
 some time," he said again. After a silence he told 
 his father about Joan. Mr. Kindred brought his 
 hand down on the arm of his chair. 
 
 "Well, then," he said, "you d better forget all 
 about it," and then, explosively, "you ll get no 
 help from me." He was very angry. 
 
 "I didn t expect to," Peter said coldly. 
 
 " No $ And how did you think you d live I 
 
256 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Peter told him. "We both intend to work," He 
 said. 
 
 His father said nothing for a long while. Then 
 he threw himself back in his chair. 
 
 "I might have expected something like this," 
 he muttered. At that moment his wife entered the 
 room. 
 
 "Here," he cried to her, "here. Listen to this. 
 The boy . . . Tell your mother, Peter." 
 
 "Peter . . . what is it?" his mother cried in 
 alarm. 
 
 "Nothing, mother," Peter said humbly, "noth 
 ing, except that I m engaged and I m going to be 
 married." 
 
 Peter ! His mother went up to him hurriedly 
 and shook him. "What do you mean?" 
 
 "I ve been engaged since April," Peter said 
 coldly. He disliked the scene intensely ; he wanted 
 to get away from it. His father threw himself 
 back in his chair again, but his mother s face 
 lighted with a rush of pleasure. 
 
 "To that Boston girl! Why, Peter!" She 
 looked at him, and then kissed him sentimentally. 
 He disliked that, too. 
 
 "Bah," his father cried. "Well ..." 
 
 "You bad boy, to have fooled me all this time. 
 But I knew it," his mother said slyly. 
 
 "Not a red penny," his father muttered. 
 
 His mother sat down and looked up at him 
 affectionately. She wanted to know all about 
 it 
 
PETER KINDRED 257 
 
 "But you re so young," she cried, "how do you 
 know?" To her it wasi entirely a matter of ro 
 mance. 
 
 "She s of very good family, isn t she?" she 
 said. "You two children . . . are her folks so 
 rich? . . . dear me." 
 
 Peter was on edge with impatience and nervous 
 ness. He wanted to cry out. His father said 
 nothing, but stared gloomily before him. His 
 mother asked him a hundred questions, repeating 
 herself over and over again. She was amazed and 
 excited at the thought of a wedding; her friends 
 kept popping into her mind ; she thought how sur 
 prised they would be, she wanted them to be en 
 vious. She wondered what Joan s parents were 
 like, and if they would care for her. Her whole 
 life swelled with curiosity, with new opportuni 
 ties, with legitimate and sentimental excitement. 
 But Peter s father sat stubbornly mute, nursing 
 his anger at what was vaguely in his mind as his 
 son s ingratitude. 
 
 Dinner was eaten in silence and constraint. 
 Peter knew that his mother had told Edith, for 
 she looked at him in a new and somewhat startled 
 manner, as though, for the first time, it occurred 
 to her that Peter was a male, with all the due emo 
 tions of a male, and the proper sexual desires. 
 There was unspoken curiosity, too, in her gaze, 
 for what Joan might be; as for his mother, she 
 made no attempt to conceal it. How, or on what 
 Peter would live, never entered her head; her 
 
258 PETER KINDRED 
 
 mind was set upon engagements, weddings, gossip 
 and receptions. 
 
 "The prettiest wedding I ever saw," she said, 
 "was at night, in the girl s home. The place was 
 full of white flowers, and an orchestra played be 
 hind palms." 
 
 "That must have been great fun!" Peter mut 
 tered. 
 
 "It was lovely. I cried," his mother said. 
 
 "Oh, that s all nonsense," Peter exploded. "A 
 lot of silly twaddle and fuss about a perfectly sim 
 ple thing. You can make just as fine a home and 
 have just as many babies from a justice of the 
 peace!" 
 
 And then his father lost his temper. Confound 
 it ! " he cried. Peter, be still ! I Ve heard about 
 all the foolishness from you, young man, that I 
 can stand!" 
 
 But the next night his father called him in to 
 his own room, and carefully shut the door. 
 
 "Now, then, Peter," he said, but with half a 
 tone of gentleness in his voice, "what is all this 
 about marrying and being engaged and this . . V 
 Joan?" 
 
 "Why, there s not much," Peter said, a bit 
 wearily. "I told you all there was to tell last 
 night. ..." 
 
 "Yes, I know. Who is she?" ... Peter told 
 him. 
 
 "What do her parents say?" 
 
PETER KINDRED 259 
 
 "They think it s splendid, " Peter said, with an 
 emphasis that lie could not control. His father 
 stroked his chin. 
 
 "Of course you understand that this is a great 
 shock to your mother and myself, Peter/ he said. 
 
 Peter* sighed. "Yes, sir," he said dutifully. 
 
 "I cannot afford to support you, Peter," his 
 father 1 went on solemnly, "and I would not if I 
 could. I don t believe in this helter skelter mar 
 riage business." 
 
 "We haven t expected anyone to help us." 
 Peter said. 
 
 "Certainly you re not fool enough to think 
 that you can live on what you re making?" 
 
 "No. But Joan will work, too. Between us we 
 will make enough. We have the same ideas about 
 that . . . and other things. That s why we re 
 marrying." 
 
 "Do you mean that this young lady has gone 
 crazy over babies, too?" 
 
 "It s not crazy, sir," Peter said hotly. "We 
 believe that a man and a woman are here on earth 
 only to marry and work and breed children, and 
 that s the only way people can be happy and do 
 any good and be of use to the country and them 
 selves. There s nothing crazy about that, is 
 there?" 
 
 "And what if yon have a baby on your few 
 dollars a week?" 
 
 * We sha n t have any until we re ready, Peter 
 said coldly. 
 
260 PETER KINDRED 
 
 His father grunted. "Children will happen, 
 you know . . . can t be helped. " 
 
 "Not the way we expect to live, sir/ Peter 
 said. 
 
 "Humph, And how do you expect to live, may 
 I askT" 
 
 "Decently/ Peter said angrily, "until we re 
 ready to have children. We re not marrying to 
 . . .-to . . . " 
 
 "Oh," said his father. He was silent for a mo 
 ment. "You are going to live ... as though you 
 weren t married until you can have children." 
 
 As Peter did not answer, he went on after a bit. 
 "You expect to be able to live like a ... to live 
 that way as long as you please!" 
 "Certainly," Peter said. 
 
 His father sighed. "All fools aren t dead yet," 
 he said grimly. 
 
 Peter was furious. "It is a matter," he said 
 icily, "that concerns only me and Joan." 
 
 "Well ... we won t discuss it. Now under 
 stand me! I sha n t forbid you to marry. But 
 you may expect no help from me. And I 11 not go 
 to any expense toward the wedding. That is their 
 affair." 
 
 "There ll be no wedding, sir." 
 "What?" 
 
 "Our marriage is a matter of importance only 
 to the state. We ll make a contract to care for 
 our children, and obey the marriage laws. That s 
 all." 
 
PETER KINDRED 261 
 
 His father gasped. "You have the Impudence 
 to say this to my face?" he cried. Then he grew 
 quiet and repressed. "And does the young lady 
 agree to all this folderol, too?" 
 
 "We ve gone over it quite thoroughly. There s 
 no reason why marriage should be made a vaude 
 ville act." 
 
 Mr. Kindred grew grim and his eyes sparkled, 
 but he controlled his voice. 
 
 "I sha n t talk to you any more, Peter," he 
 said. "If you want to make a laughing stock of 
 yourself, go ahead. If you want to break your 
 mother s heart, go ahead. I don t care; I m 
 through; I wash my hands of you. It s what I 
 might have expected, with these damned new 
 fangled ideas in the colleges. Go on go on get 
 out. I m through. 
 
 His mother, however, first refused to believe that 
 Peter could have any such terrible ideas about 
 weddings, and then became excited and wept. 
 
 "Peter, how can you do such a thing?" she cried 
 passionately. "It isn t right, dear, it isn t right; 
 it s sacrilege. They can t be nice people to allow 
 it, I m sure they re not nice people. Why, Peter 
 think, Peter, it will hang over your head all your 
 life, you ll be miserable, you won t be really mar 
 ried, it ll be wrath and shame. . . . Oh, this is 
 terrible, terrible!" 
 
 She carried on at a great rate, but there was 
 no help for it; Peter would not even discuss the 
 matter. So she grew subdued after a while, and 
 
262 PETER KINDRED 
 
 went about looking consciously hurt and tearful. 
 
 Thereafter dinner was eaten in silence and em 
 barrassment, more marked for the jovial intrusion 
 of one Eddie, a friend and admirer of Edith. He 
 was a large man, with soft features and watery 
 blue eyes ; his hair was swept back from his head 
 in a greased pompadour. He smiled continually 
 and ate swiftly and noisily, with scant courtesy; 
 he talked in a cocksure, impudent voice, with a 
 slight nasal twang. 
 
 "I guess that dance the other night was some 
 dance/ he said to Edith. He turned to her 
 mother. "You oughta seen Edie, Mrs. Kindred; 
 she was the queen of the ball, all right." 
 
 And so he prattled on about dances and the 
 atres and people, giving his opinions on every 
 thing. He turned finally to Peter. 
 
 "Well," he said, "how goes the advertising! 
 It s a great little game, I tell you. I know ; I m an 
 advertising man myself." 
 
 As a matter of fact, he worked in a printing 
 shop and called on minor druggists and moving 
 picture theater proprietors who might want small 
 pamphlets prepared for them. He had a large 
 acquaintance among soda clerks. 
 
 Peter said nothing to Joan about the manner 
 in which his family had accepted his announce 
 ment, other than to tell her generally that they 
 had been very much upset, but that they had taken 
 the matter well enough finally; he thought that 
 
 I 
 
PETER KINDRED 263 
 
 they would be more pleasant about it as they grew 
 more used to it, and saw no gain in worrying 
 Joan and her parents unnecessarily. So Joan pre 
 pared to come to New York within a fortnight, and 
 wrote jubilantly of things in her own calm life. 
 
 But Don came to New York first, from the 
 west, sunburned and energetic. His telephone 
 message caught Peter half-way through his break 
 fast, and Peter shouted with, excitement to hear 
 his voice. They met at noon, in the wide, low 
 lobby of the Prince George, and exchanged a 
 mighty handclasp, their eyes laughing deeply, 
 contentedly at each other, out of their grave faces. 
 
 "Oh, Jingoes!" Peter said gruffly, "it s good to 
 see you again, you old crocodile I" 
 
 Later, in a corner of the dining room, they 
 looked at each other curiously and smiled half- 
 eagerly, half-shyly, as men smile at one another 
 after long absences. 
 
 " Peter, " Don asked earnestly, "how are you 
 hitting things?" 
 
 "Well enough, Don." 
 
 "Great. . . . Tell me how do you feel about 
 things . . . the work?" 
 
 "It s good stuff. But you get an awfully funny 
 idea of economics. Everybody in the world seems 
 to be a salesman. There doesn t seem to be any 
 thing anywhere except salesmen. And they re all 
 advertising experts." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 T)ETER came into the office with such a helpless 
 * and self-conscious smile quavering about his 
 mouth that the space buyer asked him jovially if 
 he were to be married that day. Although there 
 was nothing remarkably merry in the question, 
 Peter burst out laughing at it, and sat at his desk 
 with a deeper and a more visible smile, one he 
 could not get rid of. The next morning Joan was 
 coming. 
 
 And this, therefore, was her last day in Boston. 
 He could not keep his eyes away from the broad 
 window facing the north ; beyond that low horizon 
 haze of very distant roofs, and on beyond a bit, 
 Joan was preparing for her trip, packing, bidding 
 folk and places good-bye, thinking of Peter, and 
 looking probably to the south, toward that win 
 dow. Or perhaps she was shopping, walking 
 down Boylston, past the Common, past Arlington 
 Street where the cars climb up from the tunnel to 
 Boylston Street, and stop at the edge*of the park, 
 opposite the trees and the warm green grass and 
 
 264 
 
PETER KINDRED 265 
 
 the lake with the swans on it. That would be 
 walking south, and so she would be looking toward 
 his window too. Although his mind was eager 
 and sharpened for work, all morning long he 
 watched the clouds pile up in the north, above the 
 end of the city, and disappear. 
 
 The day passed in a sort of happy bewilder 
 ment, untroubled and patient waiting. The city 
 seemed to Peter to be expecting her also ; every 
 thing would be entirely different when she had 
 come, made whole and intelligible. Only his pa 
 rents threw a shadow on the day, but he put them 
 resolutely from his mind ; he hoped for some vague 
 change in them as well. 
 
 After dinner that night he was restless, and 
 since he could not be with Don he wandered idly 
 about the streets, grateful for the cooler wind, the 
 darkness, the coming and going of people, faces 
 moving past him, the lighted shops and the street 
 lights, the impetuous, half-phantomlike city at 
 night. "With only a handful of hours between him 
 self and Joan he became nervous and impatient, 
 and could hardly get himself home to bed, as 
 though, somehow, the time would pass the quicker 
 if he were awake watching it. 
 
 In the morning before breakfast he swept under 
 the still city in the deserted subway, and coming 
 swiftly up the stairs into the mighty and reverber 
 ant terminal, stood almost alone beneath the lofty 
 curved roof, breathless and elate before the closed 
 gates where Joan s train would come, some twenty 
 
266 PETER KINDRED 
 
 minntes before her train was due. He stood ex 
 pectant for five minutes, and then there was still 
 a quarter-hour left him; he paced up and down 
 slowly across the broad and sibilant floor, looking 
 curiously at the few figures in the station : a pretty 
 mistress with earrings, thoughtful and worried, a 
 haunted Jew with curly hair waiting for his wife, 
 perhaps, an old nurse and two slim, eager chil 
 dren. A guard in gray arranged a line of rope 
 before one gate ; Peter heard a loud voice crying 
 that on that track the Boston train would be com 
 ing. He took his place so that he could see the 
 empty track below, and the shadowed platform. 
 Red-capped negro porters went through the gate 
 talking in low voices and down the track and 
 along the platform. A yellow flaming light grew 
 through the gloom of the yards and swung on 
 toward them, the low dun train creeping across 
 clicking switches, nosing its way slowly in along 
 the platform. It came to a stop, the platform be 
 came dotted and then filled with people, hurrying 
 up the incline to the gate; a few men went by 
 swiftly; one stopped and caught the mistress with 
 the earrings in a great hug, and they turned and 
 went out together, laughing and talking. People 
 crowded the gateway, surged through and passed, 
 and then there was Joan. But even as she dropped 
 her bag and turned toward him, shyness overcame 
 them both, and after the smallest and most imper 
 sonal of kisses, they walked silently, with burning 
 cheeks, across the station. 
 
PETER KINDRED 267 
 
 Peter *s heart had stopped in his body from ut 
 ter, embarrassed and inarticulate happiness; he 
 looked at Joan, smiling eagerly, and she, meeting 
 his eyes, put her slim hands to her cheeks to hide 
 the red glowing there. With a low laugh he took 
 her arm and pressed her closer to him as they 
 walked. He became articulate. 
 
 " Jinks," he said. 
 
 But once in the subway they both lost all shy 
 ness, and each brimmed over with things that 
 needed to be said at once, but in the shriek and 
 clatter they must needs go unsaid, for all their 
 necessity. So Peter and Joan did little more than 
 smile at one another, and look and look. 
 
 The family waited for their arrival in such ef 
 fective regalia as they could commandeer for the 
 occasion, taffeta and ruffles, starch and Mr. Kin 
 dred s very best business suit. Whatever of fear 
 Peter may have had was speedily put at rest. As 
 they came through the door his mother sailed 
 majestically into the hall and bore down on them, 
 beaming. 
 
 "Mother," Peter- said, "this is Joan." 
 
 Mrs. Kindred bustled forward as though she 
 expected to be kissed, but Joan shook hands with 
 her gravely. They went back to the parlor, where 
 his* father and Edith were standing awkwardly, 
 hardly knowing whether to come forward or to 
 stay where they were, to be sitting or standing. 
 Joan went directly to Mr. Kindred and shook 
 hands with him. 
 
268 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "How do you do?" she said. He bustled a 
 little, too, and smiled and nodded, but could think 
 of nothing to say, so cleared his throat and pulled 
 at his collar. In turn, Edith greeted Joan half- 
 shyly and clumsily, offering her a limp hand ; she 
 would have understood it better if Joan had not 
 been so grave and gracious and unembarrassed. 
 
 "Now, then," said Peter s mother to Joan, 
 "come right with me, and I ll show you where 
 to put your things, and you can make yourself 
 right at home." She went out, and took Joan 
 with her, leaving Peter and his father and sister 
 standing together like so many sheep. Peter and 
 his father stared at each other, and then the older 
 man cleared his throat again and put his hands 
 behind his back and rocked up and down on his 
 toes. Edith played nervously with a book, and 
 kept her eyes down. When Peter s eyes and his 
 father s had grown as round as two saucepans 
 from staring at each other, Mrs. Kindred brought 
 Joan back, and the five of them went in to break 
 fast. 
 
 He had never been so purely exuberant as he 
 was that day at the office, with Joan in New York 
 at last. It made a difference, remarkably. . . . 
 There had never been anything like it. The city 
 glittered for him like wine in the sun; her pres 
 ence was manifest in every lout who hurried up 
 and down the streets. She was there, she was in 
 hailing distance, she would be there at evening, in 
 his own home ; the day spent away from her was 
 
PETER KINDRED 269 
 
 exquisite with the sure thought of her at its close. 
 He had no appetite at noon; he wanted to tele 
 phone to her, but it was more pleasant to deny 
 himself that. At night he came home unaware of 
 the slow, struggling crowds, unaware of anything 
 save the lordliness of his life, washed clean in 
 happiness. 
 
 His mother met him at the door and gave him 
 an extra fond kiss and a hug. Edith came out of 
 her room and whispered to him. 
 
 "She s perfectly sweet," said Edith. 
 
 But Joan laughed when she saw Peter, and gave 
 him her hand, which he held a while, immeasur 
 ably happy. And after dinner Joan put on a 
 little blue hat, and she and Peter went out to 
 gether, to walk up and down Eiverside, arm in 
 arm, and all the music in the world stole with the 
 night into Peter s body and swept through him, 
 and the Drive, the lamps, the wind and the dark 
 turned into music, too, and stirred him and 
 troubled him with the very fierceness and insist 
 ence of his content. 
 
 "Peter," Joan said at length, "I told your 
 mother that we d not be married by contract. 
 After all, dear, it doesn t matter, and she was 
 very, very much upset at the thought of it. 
 So we shall go simply before a Justice of the 
 Peace." 
 
 But mother wants a regular, terrible wedding, 
 Joan." 
 
 "I know, but that s impossible. I ll not be 
 
270 PETER KINDRED 
 
 gaped at when I m married. So it s settled, 
 dear." 
 
 But somehow Peter disliked the thought of a 
 Justice of the Peace. It was a small dislike, and 
 he frowned it down at once. 
 
 However, it would do ; apparently it saved his 
 mother from succumbing beneath the black shame 
 of a contract marriage, and as Joan said, the 
 principle was too unimportant a one to fight 
 about; it would be enough to be married quietly, 
 before their parents. From this, the Kindreds 
 managed to derive some satisfaction, and Mrs. 
 Kindred almost grew to believe that there might 
 be something pleasantly exclusive about a wed 
 ding to which none of her friends, however inti 
 mate, could be invited. 
 
 The days went by swiftly, and much was done 
 and little spoken. Peter s father had taken a 
 solid liking to Joan, and Edith was fairly well 
 thrilled at the imminence of a wedding. As for 
 Peter s mother, she grew visibly in pleasure, 
 pleasure at the admiration of her friends for Joan, 
 pleasure at the shopping to be done, the china, the 
 linen, the modest furniture, and the tiny flat it 
 self, perched on the fourth floor of a model tene 
 ment by the East River. It was in the very heart 
 of the slums; that had bothered her fearfully at 
 first, but Mr. Kindred had stood up manfully 
 against her; Peter could afford no more certainly; 
 it was clean and cheerful; the slums be ... be 
 . . . who was Peter to be too good for the slums f 
 
PETER KINDRED 271 
 
 And when she saw the well-built tenement, and 
 the tiny flat itself, the three little rooms, shining 
 with sun and cleanliness, she became reconciled 
 and grew cheerful and hopeful and told her friends 
 defiantly that she d like nothing better than to live 
 there herself. 
 
 But as for Peter, he lived in a daze of content 
 ment, and loved everything, from Edith to the 
 tiniest cup with blue flowers painted on it and 
 the remarkable yellow vase an aunt gave as a 
 wedding present. 
 
 One Sunday they spent in the little flat, un 
 packing china and silver the little they had 
 and linen. They cooked their lunch on the great 
 stove in the main room; Joan cooked, wonder 
 fully well, Peter thought, but he could hardly eat 
 for watching her. She came up behind him 
 softly, and laid her hand along his cheek. 
 
 Oh, Peter, she cried, < won t it be f un ! " He 
 caught her hand and kissed it. The voices of in 
 numerable children mingled with the noises of the 
 street; the windows, broad, from ceiling to floor, 
 were yellow with the sun of early afternoon. 
 
 At evening they walked home together, through 
 crowded streets, past dark-doored and unpleasant 
 tenements, under the shrill elevated roads of Sec 
 ond and Third Avenues, through the streets grown 
 suddenly quiet now and dignified, past brown- 
 stone houses, down the white grandeur of Fifth 
 Avenue in the dusk, and across the wide twilight 
 of the Park. To the south, Fifty-ninth Street 
 
272 PETER KINDRED 
 
 towered against the night, a dim and lofty crest of 
 roof-tops and lights half way to heaven ; and there 
 too glittered the thousand windows of the Plaza 
 like a great jewel in the dusk against the evening 
 sky. Courage swelled through Peter like a gale ; 
 it was his city, the beautiful, the mighty, his to 
 know, to love and to conquer, from the slums 
 behind him in the east to those lights upon the 
 south. And again he was oppressed with a sense 
 of many folk, and the longing to be known and to 
 be great among them. 
 
 Through all the excitement preparatory to the 
 wedding Joan moved untroubled and precise, 
 capable and delightful. After one day, Mrs. Kin 
 dred surrendered to her entirely, and even took a 
 pleasure in that, and boasted of it. Together 
 they shopped and unpacked bundles in the little 
 tenement and sewed and cleaned and arranged and 
 put things away. Peter, in his office, fell to his 
 work with a heart as light as foam; at night the 
 dinner table was merry with unusual talk and 
 Mr. Kindred, smiling and important, carved the 
 roasts and kept the best bits for Joan. And as 
 Joan had the consummate tact upon one occasion 
 to find something about the sleek Eddie to admire, 
 Edith, was not jealous of her; at least, not very 
 much. But Peter would forget to eat for looking 
 at her, he was so happy. After dinner Peter and 
 Joan would go out ; once to a picture theater, but 
 Joan did not oare for that, she preferred to be 
 out walking, talking and keeping silence, or sit- 
 
PETER KINDRED 273 
 
 ting by the Drive, watching the river. Sometimes 
 Don called for them, or they met him and the 
 three of them walked together, Joan between the 
 two men, an arm for each. The Drive fascinated 
 her, the smooth, shadowy road, the quiet, gleam 
 ing river below, the distant sounds of freight 
 trains and ships, the trees, the motors, but most 
 of all the looming apartments facing the west. It 
 was almost like old days to be together; Helen 
 was lacking, but she would come later. 
 
 Then Joan s parents came down from Boston, 
 and the curious confusion of meeting took place 
 all over again. But Joan s mother and father 
 were kindly people, and expected little; the Kin 
 dreds were ready to receive them with a touch of 
 reverence, although Peter s father held the very, 
 very private opinion that he was as good as the 
 next one, himself. But it was very private in 
 deed, and so the meeting went off well enough. 
 
 The night before the wedding Joan and Peter 
 and Don walked a long way out along the Drive, 
 and watched the moon go down below the Pali 
 sades. They walked home slowly, it was late and 
 dark and silent at the edge of the city. The night 
 crept into Don and moved him to unaccustomed 
 feeling. 
 
 "You two," he said, "are very nearly all I 
 have. I don t want any more." He groped for 
 "words as they walked on. "I ... I hope - . . it 
 means all the world to me to have things go right 
 with you, old people." He was silent, and Peter 
 
274 PETER KINDRED 
 
 smiled at Joan and laid his arm across Don s 
 shoulders. 
 
 " Doesn t Helen count at all?" Joan asked, but 
 Don did not answer. 
 
 The next day, before their parents, they were 
 married. Joan took the matter serenely but 
 Peter felt young to have his father watching him, 
 and his mother cried. When Joan had said her 
 yes in a voice that trembled ever so slightly and 
 when he too had said his yes, it seemed to him 
 that a great organ should have answered, pealing 
 through the room. The lack of it was almost awk 
 ward, as though a ghostlike director had waved his 
 baton and no music had sounded where there 
 should have been music. Behind him his mother 
 cried a little. And when at last he was pronounced 
 Joan s husband and she his wife, a great rush of 
 tenderness and holiness flooded him and he would 
 gladly have winked the tears from his eyes, but 
 that he saw his father bustling forward, and then 
 there were no tears to wink. 
 
 There followed a wedding luncheon; exuber 
 antly merry, to which Don came with a huge box 
 of roses for Joan, and then the three friends 
 walked across the Park to their tenement. There 
 Don left the man and his wife, Peter and Joan 
 Kindred, to their tiny home, and walked slowly 
 and alone back over the way they had come. Dusk 
 drifted across the city from the east, the voices 
 grew faint, the sounds died away. In their tene 
 ment the stove burned warm and bright, and four 
 
PETER KINDRED 275 
 
 chops sizzled in a low pan ; a pungent and pleas 
 ant smell of cooking filled the room. Joan moved 
 happily about, and Peter sat sprawled in a chair 
 watching her. It was their home, these three 
 rooms, their own home, its ruddy space to hold 
 them close against all the world. There they would 
 be when the gleaming dishes were washed and 
 put away, and there they would be the whole night 
 long ; when dawn broke in the east they would be 
 there. And there Peter would come ever after 
 and find Joan forever and ever ... let no man 
 put asunder. . . . 
 
 From above the stove, the firelight a-glint on 
 her hair, she smiled at him and her slim fingers 
 blew him a kiss. He rose and peered in at the 
 two little side rooms; in one the two plain beds 
 and the dresser, in the other a couch, a chair, a 
 bookcase. It seemed to him that they welcomed 
 him merrily. He tiptoed across the room to where 
 Joan stood by the stove, and standing beside her 
 he prodded a chop inquisitively with a fork. 
 "Joan," he said soberly, "we re married." 
 "Peter," Joan said, "you watch these chops, 
 and I ll set the table. But be very careful, dear, 
 for chops are fearfully, fearfully expensive now." 
 
 "You dear, silly people," Helen cried, after she 
 had with extravagant delight explored the corners 
 and the closets of the tenement, and curling her 
 self up on the couch, had realized suddenly that 
 Joan was really married, and the four of them 
 
276 PETER KINDRED 
 
 were together again, "why on earth didn t you 
 have your wedding in a church, all alone?" 
 
 "Phaugh!" Joan exclaimed, "and have a lot of 
 unreality tacked on to it, and things we don t 
 believe in?" 
 
 "But the music, Joan, and the quiet. Of 
 course a contract is an idea, a principle, but what 
 on earth is a Justice of the Peace?" 
 
 "We didn t want music, Helen." 
 
 "It s so much more beautiful, though." 
 
 Here Don gave voice to a sound resembling a 
 roar, and Helen bridled up at once. 
 
 "That s all very well," she said, "but marriage 
 is a beautiful thing, and it ought to be made as 
 beautiful as it can, and you needn t think you 
 can sit there and laugh, Don Mark, because it s 
 something that ought to go down through life as 
 the most splendid and holy ..." 
 
 At that point her voice was buried under the 
 combined scorn of Don and Joan, but Peter sat 
 silent ; indeed he sympathized with Helen and felt 
 that she was right. He too would have liked 
 music ; his emotional being, deeply stirred at his 
 marriage, had yet craved a deeper stirring, a 
 greater beating of wings, a loftier soaring beyond 
 the limits of his understanding, beyond the limits 
 of his own power, to tremble upon ineffable 
 things. Although his marriage had been splen 
 did, it had not been beautiful, and even then he 
 had felt the lack of music to sweep his spirit up 
 beyond the power of his body to hold it. Helen, 
 
PETER KINDRED 277 
 
 though she was downed, was entirely right; a 
 Justice of the Peace was exceedingly Carverian, 
 but very barren after all. And Peter wondered 
 if Carverian barrenness were so tremendously 
 essential. But that sounded like treason. 
 
 To Peter it was a recurrent miracle to wake 
 each morning and find Joan sleeping in her prim 
 white bed beside his ; to hurry to the cubicle they 
 called the den and there to dress, hopeful that he 
 would be able to have breakfast ready for her. 
 But she was always dressed first, and the kettle 
 was singing and bubbling on the stove when he 
 was ready. Breakfast in the sunny room was 
 like a quiet benediction before the full sweep of 
 the day. Then he would go grandly out through 
 the gateway of the tenements, striding along very 
 manfully to work, with a fine spirit to whistle in 
 his mind. But once in the office it was no easy 
 matter to concentrate upon the business in hand, 
 with his thoughts the morning long moving with 
 Joan about the three sunny rooms, washing and 
 tidying, and then across the streets of the city with 
 her upon an earnest quest for work. For Joan 
 must find a place for herself very soon, or their 
 small capital would dwindle to nothing. 
 
 At noon she called for him, and they went out 
 together along the broad, crowded, tumbled ave 
 nue, among a rush of clerks and stenographers 
 and factory girls, and lunched together in a large 
 bakery where white-aproned waitresses ran inde 
 pendently and impersonally about. The room was 
 
278 PETER KINDRED 
 
 gloomy and close, and smelled of cheap food, the 
 narrow brown tables were crowded with an ill- 
 favored and fugitive rabble, eating from thick, 
 heavy crockery. They could do no more than 
 smile at one another there, among the people, and 
 through the noise and the clatter of eating. Yet it 
 was worth all manner of things to be together at 
 all. Then they walked up and down Fifth Avenue 
 in the sun, and talked of Joan, of where she had 
 been and what she had done and what she would 
 be doing, and watched the myriad motors stream 
 slowly past them, and the well-groomed, hurrying 
 women intent upon their shopping. Or they 
 walked along the brown-stone dignity of Madison 
 Avenue, past the waiting motors drawn up at the 
 curb, until it was time for Peter to be back in his 
 office again. 
 
 And finally he would come home through the 
 blue evening among the dull, impersonal crowds, 
 out of the hurry, the heat, the jangled noises and 
 the swiftness of people, into the three little rooms 
 and the night outside, the comfortable chair and 
 Joan, the news of her day, and the beloved sight 
 of her again. But there was cooking to be done 
 then, and later dishes to be washed, a thin dis 
 cordance in the peacefulness of home-coming. It 
 would be pleasanter just to sit and talk. Yet it 
 was jolly enough to putter away at china and cut 
 up vegetables and wipe off silver with Joan there, 
 moving about so lightly and precisely. In the bare 
 stillness of the close rooms they seemed to be 
 
PETER KINDRED 279 
 
 shut entirely away by themselves ; New York was 
 like some other city, far to the west. They 
 were off the track of familiar routes ; their friends 
 and Peter s family lived somewhere distantly. 
 Peter was glad that he was so far from his fam 
 ily. They had all come over the first Sunday, 
 moving- like a silent caravan through the slums, 
 depressed by the dirty streets and the innumer 
 able shouting children, and then they had sat 
 crowded and silent in the tenement, father and 
 mother, Edith and Eddie, and even the irrepres 
 sible Eddie, after a few wilted remarks, was sub 
 dued. When they had gone, Joan had smiled at 
 Peter pathetically and had suggested that the two 
 of them go out for a breath of air, but they hardly 
 knew where to go, for there was no quiet any 
 where near by, but roaring streets and avenues. 
 And there was supper to get. 
 
 Very often Don and Helen came to supper, with 
 large white paper bags, chicken, pickles, bread, 
 what not, for Joan had insisted that she could not 
 possibly afford to feed them whenever they came, 
 and so they always brought a tribute of some 
 sort, and Helen stole jams and jellies from her 
 mother s big pantry, and carried them hidden in 
 her muff. But the four of them managed to rob 
 the cooking of its seriousness, and to make ridicu 
 lous the drying of plates, and that was always a 
 great relief to Peter. 
 
 Indeed, it seemed as though they brought Cam 
 bridge with them to the slums, and olden uncon- 
 
280 PETER KINDRED 
 
 corn and blitheness, and with the lamps lighted 
 and the dinner cooking it was hard to believe that 
 the swift gray river that flowed narrowly by the 
 end of the street was not the Charles after all. 
 
 And then one evening Joan came home with a 
 small bottle of very bad red wine and great news. 
 She put the wine triumphantly down on the table, 
 and the two of them stood back to look at it. 
 
 " Peter, dear," Joan said gravely, "you re not 
 to get drunk. " 
 
 On the morrow she would become officially no 
 less a personage than the secretary of the busi 
 ness manager of a certain great magazine. Peter 
 was astounded at such good fortune, but Joan took 
 it quite as a matter of course. 
 
 "But, Peter," she said, "why not?" 
 
 "However did you do it?" he asked in amaze 
 ment. 
 
 I think he was glad to get me. He should have 
 been," Joan said seriously. 
 
 Solemnly they filled two glasses with the bitter 
 red wine, and clinked them together. In high 
 spirits they toasted Joan s unexpected salary. 
 Indeed, they were to be fabulously wealthy . . . 
 together they had thirty dollars a week. It was a 
 great deal, and it seemed rather as though life 
 were willing soon to give them all they asked, and 
 that was little enough. 
 
 "Joan," said Peter, "we shall need someone 
 now to look after us a bit." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose we shall. Though I might be 
 
PETER KINDRED 281 
 
 able to do everything. Still, I think it would be a 
 good thing to have a woman to clean our dishes 
 after breakfast and to cook our supper. " 
 
 They found a Mrs. Mulligan the next day, a 
 large lady with gray hair and one eye. To her 
 they entrusted their flat, and went gloriously off 
 to work the morning after. 
 
 Peter was home first that evening. As he en 
 tered the door, a fearful odor of burning fright 
 ened him. With trembling fingers he switched on 
 the light. 
 
 The gas stove was going merrily, and on it 
 glowed a frying-pan with the charred remains of 
 what had been once some sort of vegetable. The 
 table was set, and on a platter lay four dead and 
 greasy-looking chops, stone cold. Peter stood 
 looking at them helplessly, in utter and futile dis 
 may. 
 
 It was left to Joan to voice a protest, and that 
 she did, the next morning. 
 
 "I m a union worker," said Mrs. Mulligan. 
 
 "And does that mean that at five o clock yon 
 simply walk out and leave everything behind you 
 in a perfect mess?" Joan asked. 
 
 "If you don t like it, you can come home 
 earlier," Mrs. Mulligan told her. "I don t have 
 to be working for the likes of you. My sister s 
 uncle is a great man in Canada, I ll have you 
 know. I was born in a grand place myself. I 
 needn t work if I don t want to. I had a son 
 woul i have kept me in grand style with an autee- 
 
282 PETER KINDRED 
 
 mo-bile if he was living. But he died. It s a sad 
 world." She wept a little. "I don t have to be 
 working for the likes of you," she wound up 
 finally, "and you can just come home earlier." 
 
 So Mrs. Mulligan was dismissed from service, 
 and so was a Mrs. Shiplivsky some few days later, 
 when Joan, coming home unexpectedly at noon, 
 found that good lady comfortably ensconced in a 
 chair, a whisky bottle in one hand and a news 
 paper in the other. 
 
 The slums seemed to be entirely drained of help 
 ers at that point, Mrs. Mulligan and the Mrs. Ship 
 livsky being the only ladies apparently on the 
 whole east side with the necessary leisure and 
 temperament for the friendly business of house 
 keeping. Since Joan knew well that an experi 
 enced maid was entirely beyond her resources, she 
 was obliged to shoulder the burden herself. But 
 as she told Peter, she was happier for knowing 
 that no miserable creature was dirtying her little 
 home. Yet it was no slight task to come home at 
 half-past six and start supper at once. It was 
 an hour before they could be ready, or even an 
 hour and a half, and that brought supper at eight, 
 and they were very hungry then. They could not 
 be through cleaning and tidying until late, and so 
 there seemed to be no time for reading or for 
 anything, for that matter, save cooking and clean 
 ing, and then cooking and cleaning all over again. 
 
 But Peter s mother looked with almost a thrill 
 upon her bohemian children, one of them aa ad- 
 
PETER KINDRED 283 
 
 vertising man, and one of them on the staff of a 
 certain great magazine, and both of them so ro 
 mantically happy in the slums . . . imagine ! 
 
 Well . . . they were happy enough, Lord 
 knows, laughing their trouble away as best they 
 could. And if Peter s heart grew hot and rebel 
 lious at all Mulligans and Shiplivskys, it was 
 stirred, too, with a strange and troubled tender 
 ness for the eager, slim woman beside him, a dumb 
 tenderness that swept through him like music, 
 that cried mutely for some expression. He kissed 
 the tips of her fingers, and his spirit struggled 
 with wings in his breast ; he wanted to kneel before 
 her, to lose himself in a passion of articulate 
 speech. He could do no more than hold her very 
 tight, and help with the dishes. 
 
 It was entirely as they had dreamed of living, 
 and yet Peter wondered sometimes if it were pos 
 sible that their dream in its broad sweep had 
 troubled itself too little with Mulligans. And 
 with Joan s slender health to guard, it was less 
 like treason to wonder. 
 
 For a while an unfortunate succession of en 
 gagements that Helen could not break, and Don s 
 work at law school kept them away from the tene 
 ment, and so it was nearly a fortnight after the 
 Shiplivsky incident that they finally came again, 
 together, for supper. By then Joan and Peter 
 were growing just a bit lonely for them. 
 
 "My dears," Helen announced as she came im 
 petuously through the door, "we ve brought you 
 
284 PETER KINDRED 
 
 the most entirely beautiful pie you ever saw m 
 your life. Didn t we, Don? And there were per 
 fectly fascinating cakes as well, but he wouldn t 
 let me buy any. Oh, dear! But I do like you, 
 anyway," she told him comfortingly. 
 
 Don said little, but he was content just to be 
 there again with Peter and Joan, and watched 
 them half anxiously, gravely happy. It seemed 
 as though he had put all his own hopes and be 
 liefs into their hands, as though he had given his 
 own life into the keeping of that tenement, and 
 Peter and Joan. And Helen, too, in her own way, 
 watched Joan and Peter anxiously and more 
 sharply than they thought, while she bustled about 
 and opened packages and peeked into closets. 
 
 Joan set them all to work at once. Don s blond 
 head was bent over a bowl into whose thick yel 
 low depths he peeled potatoes with a tremendous 
 carving knife. Opposite him Peter meekly cut 
 up carrots, and later washed the leaves of a head 
 of lettuce very carefully under the faucet of the 
 sink. Helen set the little round table with four 
 crowded places, and assisted everybody with 
 everything, while Joan, imperious and urgent, 
 moved the pots about on the stove, lighted the 
 gas jets, opened doors, and gave directions. 
 
 " Peter," Don said in a low voice, " Joan looks 
 a bit tired, don t you think?" Peter nodded his 
 head, but Joan, overhearing it, laughed lightly. 
 
 "Joan," Helen said, "you absolutely must take 
 care of yourself. Mustn t she, Don?" 
 
PETER KINDRED 285 
 
 "My dear," Joan answered, "I have Peter to 
 take care of, and that s enough for anyone. His 
 buttons fall off by millions : I have never seen such 
 buttons." 
 
 "She s really "working awfully hard at the of 
 fice," Peter said. 
 
 "Well, that s fine, " Don said sagely, "but I 
 wouldn t overdo it." 
 
 They were at supper, the table piled awkwardly 
 with dishes. Joan brought things sizzling over 
 from the stove; they all made a great business of 
 eating, and whatever they lacked in food or com 
 fort they made up in laughter. The three had 
 chairs, but Peter sat on a low rocking chair and 
 rocked up and down over tis food, his head and 
 shoulders just above the table. Joan did cook 
 unusually well, yet even the worst cooking in the 
 world would have tasted good enough to those 
 four together in the tiny yellow-lighted room with 
 the big stove and the china closet and the great 
 windows; only Peter thought that the carrots 
 would have been better if he had been less familiar 
 with them. Under the table their knees all 
 bumped together. 
 
 "I ll grow more used to it after a time," Joan 
 said, while she poured cocoa into the four cups 
 and insisted with a gesture that Peter eat all his 
 carrots. 
 
 "Pro been to see the Gary people," Helen said 
 "Have you?" Joan cried eagerly. "What did 
 they say?" 
 
286 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "I can work there a bit if I want to, and learn 
 what they re doing. Of course I d get no pay 
 for it." 
 
 "You don t care, do you?" 
 
 "I don t need it, I suppose . . . and yet, you 
 always feel differently about a thing if you re 
 paid for it." 
 
 "I think it would be an awfully good experience 
 for you, Helen," Joan said. 
 
 "I suppose it would. I may do it. Ultimately, 
 I imagine, that they d give me a regular posi 
 tion." 
 
 "You bet you ll do it, young lady," Don said 
 sternly. 
 
 "Joan," cried Helen plaintively, "will yon 
 make that man stop trying to order me around all 
 the time ? I tell you, I can t even breathe without 
 his permission." 
 
 " He s perfectly right, Joan decided. Reach 
 behind you, Don, and get the lettuce like a dear 
 man." 
 
 "What is more," said Don to Helen, "if you 
 don t behave yourself you ll have no pie." 
 
 "You re a perfect pig, and I ll go right down to 
 a settlement and conduct a Bible class for little 
 children . . . there! 
 
 "Then I shall tell these people what you said 
 about them the night you cried and . . . 
 
 "Don Mark! if you don t be still instantly 
 I ... I ll pinch your baby when you have 
 one!" 
 
PETER KINDRED 287 
 
 "What did she say, Don?" Peter demanded, 
 laughing. 
 
 "She said that everybody she loved was get 
 ting married/ Don said brazenly, "and that she 
 didn t know how she d live all alone without you 
 two, and that if anything ever happened to 
 you . . ." 
 
 "Oh, dear," Helen wailed, and hid her face in 
 her napkin, but Joan stopped a moment on her 
 way to the stove and rumpled Helen s hair. 
 
 But after all, Joan was tired, and there was no 
 gainsaying it, although she tried in a thousand 
 ways to hide it. She needed rest, and there was 
 no way of resting; little things accumulated and 
 had to be done, cooking, cleaning, the minor parts 
 of housekeeping, and then long and unaccustomed 
 hours at the office. The color went out of her 
 cheeks, but she resented fiercely the implication 
 that it was beyond her strength. 
 
 "Don t be absurd," she told Peter, "I m not 
 doing any more than other people are doing." 
 
 Autumn was growing sere and slipping into 
 winter. There were fewer voices on the street at 
 night, and the sun at morning through the window 
 was pleasant and warm on the breakfast table. 
 The court of the tenement as the sun fell more 
 and more to the south grew gloomier and quieter, 
 and lamps at night were clearer in the cold. The 
 wind began to boom from the west, and the sky 
 to grow faintly gray, as though from the far north 
 
288 PETER KINDRED 
 
 shadows of snow darkened the clouds. More and 
 more Peter was aware of the insistent odor of 
 the model tenements; it seemed to him that it 
 was an odor of pathos, of unequal struggle, of 
 unwilling helplessness. Sometimes from the win 
 dows of these little flats tired and wan faces of 
 women peered out at the street, where mothers 
 walked with their baby carriages or neat children 
 played gloomily among shouting muckers. It 
 was a pathetic fight for respectability, waged 
 against uneven odds, for self-respect, for cleanli 
 ness, a battle fought by failures, who must have 
 realized their failure and yet who clung tenaci 
 ously to the little they could keep from their hopes 
 and faith. Here they could still be clean, could 
 still have some mite of sun and air and sky, could 
 still treasure some bit of finery, and enjoy pri 
 vacy. Here, too, through the well-built doorways, 
 they could walk without entire shame, and yet the 
 odor of defeat persisted, saddening Peter despite 
 himself. Beyond, the thrumming slums waited, 
 teeming, squalid and ominous, shrill and defiant, 
 low-voiced and uneasy, restless and brooding. 
 Faint circles grew beneath Joan s eyes ; at night 
 when the dishes were washed she went to bed and 
 fell asleep at once, and in the morning she was 
 slow at rising. Peter, too, was tired. But Joan 
 said only that she must grow used to it, that she 
 was unaccustomed. 
 
 "Old one," Don said to him as they walked up 
 town together, "what s the matter. Joan looks 
 
PETER KINDRED 289 
 
 frightfully, and you re thin and tired-looking 
 yourself. What s wrong?" 
 
 " Nothing, Don . . . except the theory of labor, 
 perhaps. Carver would say that there was noth 
 ing wrong. He spoke half bitterly. 
 
 "Fiddlesticks! Peter, tell me what the trouble 
 is." 
 
 "Why, it s nothing, Don . . . just little things 
 of utterly no importance. Joan s tired, and she 
 can t rest up. I hardly know what to say . . . 
 just these silly little things that have to be done 
 cooking cleaning and then all day at the of 
 fice." 
 
 4 * You can t go on getting more and more tired, 
 Peter." 
 
 "I know, I know," Peter said wearily. "But 
 what is there to do? At noon we lunch together 
 at a miserable bakery, and so we must have a de 
 cent supper. And that means cooking, and when 
 we get up, we must have breakfast. And that 
 means more cooking. And who is to do all 
 that?" 
 
 "But heavens above, man, can t you get a 
 woman in to help?" 
 
 Peter shook his head. "That s just the rotten 
 part of it," he said. "People do their own work 
 in the slums." 
 
 Don whistled apprehensively. "You ll have to 
 find someone somewhere," he said. 
 
 "There s no one, Don. And if there were a 
 woman who had the time, she d be too proud to 
 
290 PETER KINDRED 
 
 do our work. You don t understand the slums. 
 People are ashamed to cook and to wash dishes in 
 this country. And after five o clock they must all 
 be home." 
 
 They walked on for a bit in silence, and then 
 Peter continued hesitatingly, almost as though 
 he were trying to straighten things out in his own 
 mind. 
 
 "Somehow," he said, "I m getting to feel dif 
 ferently about things, Don. These people that I 
 meet, the folk I run up against and have dealings 
 with they re all so miserably different from what 
 I had expected and imagined. Sometimes I catch 
 nyself wondering if I haven t been too enthusias 
 tic, too eager after all, too optimistic." 
 
 "Oh, come, Peter," Don said, "you re a bit low, 
 you know." 
 
 "No, it s not that entirely. But Lord knows, 
 to build, to produce for the state, you need folk 
 to help. You need a bit of co-operation, a bit of 
 help here and there. You need some sort of tol 
 erance, some amount of though tfulness in other 
 people. All these folks are out for themselves in 
 t blind panic." 
 
 "The man who builds truest produces most for 
 the state." 
 
 "He has no chance to. The man who boasts 
 louder outsells him and enlarges and finally runs 
 him out of business." 
 
 "In the long run " Don began. 
 
 "Hell with the long run," Peter said gloomily, 
 
PETER KINDRED 291 
 
 "I know the principle of the silly thing as well as 
 you do." 
 
 "In the long run," Don went on calmly, "the 
 man who makes real things comes out on top." 
 
 "Oh, I suppose so," Peter admitted wearily, "if 
 he s well subsidized to start with, and can live on 
 next to nothing for half a century." 
 
 Finally Peter broke out crossly: "I tell you, 
 men build up their whole lives on the fact that 
 they can fool other men. Perfectly naively. And 
 they pile up tremendous fortunes." 
 
 "It s for you to fight against that sort of 
 thing," Don said. 
 
 "But what have I to fight with? Faith in the 
 right, belief in Carver, and fifteen dollars a week. 
 I ll lose the fifteen dollars if ever I insist too 
 loudly on the rest." 
 
 "Success ..." began Don sternly. 
 
 "Akh," Peter said quickly, "I must live, Don. 
 Later ... all the moralizing you please." 
 
 They walked together up Fifth Avenue toward 
 Fifty-ninth Street, past the bronze doors and 
 broad windows of great shops, past the gray build 
 ings, past the buttressed towers of St. Patrick s, 
 the deep-roomed, portly clubs, the silent houses. 
 Evening was growing in the city, and street lamps 
 burned a pale yellow in the twilight along the 
 gleaming avenue. 
 
 "All this," Peter said, "goes through me like 
 some old, stately music. I want it, I want it 
 awfully ... I want to be part of it, to know the 
 
292 PETER KINDRED 
 
 people, to be someone among them ... to make 
 it somehow my city." 
 
 " You re tired, old one," Don said, "and 
 gloomy. You need a bit of Joan to cheer yon up. 
 It wouldn t be fair to argue with you." 
 
 "Yes," Peter said. And then, "Oh, I wish . . . 
 I wish . . . that Joan and I ..." 
 
 He was suddenly silent, curiously troubled by 
 something. 
 
 But whatever it was, he could not speak of it 
 to Don. 
 
 Ultimately, however, they did find a woman to 
 help them somewhat, to do their breakfast dishes 
 and the beds, and to start their supper before they 
 came home. It cost them almost half of Joan s 
 earnings, and left them little for food, but Peter 
 felt that it was well worth the sacrifice, and 
 blithely minimized his appetite, and that was not 
 good for him. 
 
 Snow fell over the city before Christmas ; in a 
 day it was black mud in the gutters, and dirty low 
 piles in the middle of the streets. For a morning, 
 while it had been white, the city had seemed pass 
 ing sunny and cheerful, but afterwards the city 
 was gloomier and more despondent than ever. A 
 moist chill rose from the pavements and drifted 
 in the wind, and Peter shivered in his coat. 
 
 It was a bitter matter to Peter that he had so 
 little money to spend on Joan s Christmas. There 
 was not even enough to buy her a suitable gift, 
 
PETER KINDRED 293 
 
 and so he stole a stocking of hers, and roamed 
 about the shops whenever he could, to find some 
 thing to go in it. The great department stores 
 were fairly seething with people, with all the 
 women in the world, he thought, scented and 
 harassed. Jostled by crowds and unnoticed by 
 saleswomen, he was fairly unsuccessful in his 
 search, and could buy her nothing but a pair of 
 mittens, and hoped desperately that she had none. 
 For the rest, he filled the stocking with little trin 
 kets and fruit and candy that he bought at small 
 corner stores sweet smelling with Christmas trees 
 arrayed on the street before their windows, and 
 hung the stocking at the foot of her bed in the 
 dark, with a sore heart for the lightness of it. 
 Yet in the morning Joan s surprised happiness 
 at the mittens and the childish delight with which 
 she spread the trinkets out before her on her coun 
 terpane, touched him so deeply that he came near 
 crying because he loved her and all that he said 
 and did was so inadequate. 
 
 Her parents sent a huge box from Boston. It 
 smelled deliciously of frosty wood, and when 
 opened contained a little of very nearly every 
 thing in the world, and only Don and Helen were 
 needed then, to make a celebration of it. Helen 
 arrived first, but Peter thought that when Don 
 came in Helen grew a bit quiet and self-con 
 scious. 
 
 "What happened, dear?" he asked Joan that 
 night when the two friends had gone. 
 
294 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "I ve wanted to tell you, Peter," she said to 
 him gravely. * Helen is in love with Don. 
 
 Peter stared at Joan with an open mouth. Such 
 a thought had never entered his head. He began 
 to laugh quietly. 
 
 "Why," he cried, "isn t that perfectly fine!" 
 
 "No, dear, it s not," Joan said gravely, and he 
 grew sober at once. After all, it was not. It 
 came over him that it would be a one-sided love 
 affair. Don was not in love with Helen; Peter 
 knew that of a certainty. He remembered that 
 Don had called her too emotional once ; he began 
 to feel saddened and helpless. 
 
 "How do you know, Joan I . he asked. 
 
 "Helen told me ... of course. And I m very 
 much afraid that it will spoil things, Peter." 
 
 "Do you know, I thought that Helen seemed 
 a little subdued . . . ever after that supper when 
 she said she d pinch his baby. But heavens, I 
 hadn t the faintest idea that it was anything but 
 my own imagination." 
 
 "The worst of it is that now she ll be shy and 
 self-conscious, and Don will detest that. You ve 
 never met her family, have you, Peter? Her 
 father is a great big man with a curious, stubborn 
 temper. I ve heard him shout and roar at dinner 
 and I ve seen him put his feet up on the table, 
 just to torment his wife before guests. And 
 Helen s mother keeps dinning into Helen s ears 
 how splendid all the other daughters are, and how 
 ungrateful Helen is herself. And the two of them, 
 
PETER KINDRED 295 
 
 in a thousand little ways, try to make Helen think 
 that she s an awfully, awfully inferior sort of 
 person. I don t know whether they really mean 
 to do it, or not, but the harm was all done long 
 ago." 
 
 "It s miserable, isn t it," Peter said, "can t 
 we buck Helen up?" 
 
 "No ... no. There s no way of doing it. She 
 needs . . . Oh, she needs success. Either a man, 
 or some big work. You see, she has nothing to go 
 by, dear. No man has ever made love to her. 
 And she s never really done anything. That s why 
 I m so anxious for her to take up Gary work, and 
 make something of it." 
 
 "Hanged if I don t go to Don and jolly well 
 tell him what I think of him," Peter said. A 
 mighty wave of quixotic affection for Joan swept 
 through him, and carried along with it all women s 
 lives. Because of her, and from his great happi 
 ness, he wanted to do battle for the happiness of 
 all sad women. He felt old and wise and radiantly 
 capable of settling all the world s small troubling 
 out of hand. Joan rebuked him gravely. 
 
 "Hanged if you don t jolly well go to bed now, 
 dear," she said. 
 
 As the days passed, quietness drew in on Helen 
 more and more, and little by little she came to sit 
 silently in a corner, watching Joan and Peter with 
 wistful intentness, and rarely looked at Don; 
 when she spoke to him, it seemed to Peter s 
 
296 PETER KINDRED 
 
 anxious mind that she hesitated and stumbled. 
 All the gleefulness of her spirit seemed to have 
 been subdued ; she appeared to be questioning her 
 self. When she rallied Don it was with a curious 
 faint note of defiance in her voice. Don, alone, 
 noticed nothing, and for that Peter gave due 
 thanks. Despite his first excited quixotism, he 
 knew that if Don thought for a moment that Helen 
 was in love with him, he, too, would grow troubled 
 and silent, would try to keep away from her. 
 
 It was strange, how singularly complex it made 
 life, how shadowed and worried and uneasy, this 
 self-consciousness about love. If only, Peter said 
 to himself, people didn t think about it so much, 
 and if it weren t so miserably necessary for their 
 bodies, and if it could only be administered in lit 
 tle pills, what a tremendous lot of work people 
 could do. 
 
 But why was Peter himself so restless? 
 
 Helen, sadly in need of bucking up, had a long 
 talk with Joan. 
 
 4 I m such an inferior sort of person, " she 
 said. "No man could like me very much." 
 
 "Don t be absurd," Joan exclaimed. "How 
 can you say such a thing?" 
 
 "Because . . . and he needs a clever woman, 
 with all sorts of self-control. I m just a dabbler. 
 And even mother thinks that I am ugly." 
 
 "Oh," cried Joan, "darn your mother." 
 
 But if affairs had tangled themselves on the 
 
PETER KINDRED 297 
 
 east side, and had grown so very complicated, they 
 had gone smoothly enough on the west side. 
 
 "Peter, my dear," his mother whispered to him 
 on a night in January, "I have a secret for you." 
 She was excited about something, and after tak 
 ing Peter s arm, drew him into her own room. 
 
 "Edith is engaged," she announced radiantly. 
 
 "Oh," said Peter blankly. 
 
 His mother licked her lips, as though she were 
 rolling the news about in her mouth, and tasting it. 
 
 "To Eddie," she whispered in dramatic tri 
 umph. 
 
 Peter s first reaction was a sharp stabbing of 
 displeasure, a feeling as though this sleek Eddie 
 had come too close to him and were patting him 
 familiarly on the back, as though, somehow, he 
 had been made unfairly defenseless against that 
 unpleasant creature. But his mother was extraor 
 dinarily well pleased. How she smiled ... it oc 
 curred to him suddenly that Edith, too, must be 
 tremendously happy. 
 
 "Well," he said, "isn t that fine?" 
 
 And it did seem vaguely pleasant that Edith 
 should be engaged. Coming to consider the mat 
 ter, Peter supposed that he would see little enough 
 of his brother-in-law, after all, and if Edith were 
 so well pleased with her choice . . . why, it would 
 do. But Peter felt, too, that it would make small 
 difference what he thought about the matter. 
 
 It was a relief at dinner to find Eddie a trifle 
 subdued, and not inclined to any unusual familiar- 
 
298 PETER KINDRED 
 
 ity. Indeed, Eddie seemed suddenly halted in 
 mid career, and appeared to be wondering what 
 had happened to him. For a while Peter felt 
 sorry for Eddie, and then sorry for Edith, and 
 then impersonal and above the whole matter 
 and sorry for no one at all. But his mother 
 planned volubly innumerable affairs for the be 
 trothed couple, and Edith, sitting beside her 
 pleased father, fed Eddie small bits of bread, 
 which he ate timidly. 
 
 The winter passed for that young couple in a 
 round of dances. Snow came heavily in Febru 
 ary, whirling through the narrow, deep streets, 
 and after it came sturdy, poorly clothed men, with 
 long shovels, and a light of hope in their eyes, re 
 kindled hope for the bit of work given them, men 
 chattering in all manner of languages, blowing on 
 their cold red hands, shovelling the snow into lum 
 bering carts, to be dumped unceremoniously into 
 the river. 
 
 "If only I could get those men into the coun 
 try," Peter said to himself. And then he won 
 dered if they d not all come running back home 
 again. 
 
 Two days of warm sun melted the remnants of 
 the snow to black slush, and that was all of winter. 
 
 At such dances given for Edith as Peter could 
 not politely refuse, he was introduced to the so 
 ciety of his sister s group. There he saw the rib 
 bon king s daughter, and many other daughters, 
 
PETER KINDRED 299 
 
 identical to her save here or there in the matter 
 of embellishment. There were a great many men 
 patterned after Eddie. These men, caught in 
 groups in the dressing room, consumed endless 
 cigarettes; they seemed to have no faintest idea 
 why they were there, nor did they impress Peter 
 with knowing what their life was all about, but 
 they were sure that it was important, neverthe 
 less, and so when they discussed any matter, or 
 spoke of social affairs, it was always in an ener 
 getic and weighty manner. 
 
 Peter was secretly troubled at these dances, 
 troubled at the very prodigality of sex. There 
 was something restless about all of it, something 
 half barbaric and half passionate, yet half flip 
 pant and thoroughly careless, something old and 
 spoiled, romance with the dust brushed from its 
 wings, children unable to enjoy fairy stories. 
 
 He turned to a woman beside him. 
 
 "But I should think you d grow so fearfully 
 tired," he said. 
 
 She smiled at him pleasantly, and waved her 
 fan. * I do, she answered, * I get awfully tired. 9 
 
 He looked at her with faint interest. Then he 
 turned and waved his hand at the crowded room 
 and the dancers. 
 
 "Tell me," he said, "how under the sun do you 
 ever find time to think in all this?" 
 
 It was a bit out of her depth, and she pouted 
 and toyed with her fan. It occurred to her finally 
 to venture upon more familiar ground. 
 
300 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "They say that you re a socialist and live in 
 the slums, and everything/ she said brightly. 
 Peter looked at her gloomily. 
 "Not everything/ he answered patiently. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 TT7ITH the first sluggishness of spring in the 
 
 * * city, Peter s weekly salary was doubled. 
 The amazing part of it was that it came entirely 
 unexpected, the result of happy chance and a flare 
 of impudence. It so happened that a very par 
 ticular idea was needed for a very particular com 
 pany that manufactured an excessively mediocre 
 line of jellies. 
 
 "Oh, the devil," Peter said idly, when he heard 
 about it, "why not take a lot of howling big space 
 and advertise in direct public letters to the White 
 House r> 
 
 "Do you mean to the President, Kindred?" 
 asked a solicitor, who overheard him. 
 
 "No," said Peter with what he imagined was 
 comic seriousness, "what would he do with a lot 
 of jellies ? To the President s wife, of course." 
 
 "There s something in that, you know," the so 
 licitor muttered. 
 
 And the preposterous idea was taken, and the 
 wages of the horrified Peter were doubled. 
 
 301 
 
302 PETER KINDRED 
 
 The next Saturday, with thirty dollars in his 
 pocket, he walked home slowly, up Fifth Avenue 
 and through the Park, from Fifty-ninth Street, 
 and then east again at Seventy-second. In the 
 Park the turgid breaking of winter was apparent. 
 The sun of late afternoon slanted across the dis 
 tant roof tops of the west side in full yellow, and a 
 moist wind, grave and chilly, blew at him from the 
 east. Old and forgotten snow lay scattered, half 
 ice, half melted, gray with the passage of days, 
 like tufts of dingy cotton caught in the crevices of 
 rocks. There was a sweet smell of wet, sun- 
 warmed, brown earth, and it mingled and drifted 
 with the odor of asphalt, of pavements, of oil and 
 motors and old gray snow. Here in the Park there 
 was comparative quiet, save for the inescapable 
 murmur of the city, and Peter let his thoughts 
 drift to Cambridge. 
 
 To Cambridge . . . there was a deal of peace- 
 fulness in the very sound of it. It would be good 
 to be there, in those level spaces, to rest and think 
 things over. To look at his life through the little 
 end of the telescope. To see Joan, too, from that 
 untroubled and unhurried calm? 
 
 And yet Peter knew that he would find those 
 spaces all too bare that had once been so richly 
 fraught with quietness, the students passing and 
 repassing upon their inexigent tasks all too young 
 and untried. He had been away little less than 
 a year, and already the old Peter was a curiously 
 boyish fellow to him, with square, flat beliefs about 
 
PETER KINDRED 303 
 
 things, and an almost unbelievable enthusiasm. 
 And the old house on Holyoke . . . what argu 
 ments had raged there ! About what? He hardly 
 knew ... it seemed to him that from that quiet 
 ness, that peace, that shining faith, he had come 
 against the world to find what! He thought of 
 the office, his desk there, the shouting and brazen 
 city below him, spread to the north; he thought 
 of jellies and jams, and his fingers touched the 
 crisp bills in his pocket. For an impudence he 
 had been allowed to live, he and his faith. 
 
 "Carver," he said to himself, "is the religion 
 for a gentleman. But the first battle is for breath 
 and the space to be a gentleman in." 
 
 How bitterly he would have opposed that once, 
 with the logic and the majesty of the state. 
 
 "I can t bother with it now," he said, "I have 
 my breath and my food to get. Later, perhaps." 
 
 Later he would build strongly for the state. 
 
 And still it would be good to be in Cambridge, 
 to look back over his year from a perspective, to 
 advance old enthusiasms against the city and 
 watch their fate. It would be good to walk out 
 through Waverly and sit again on that familiar 
 wall, with spring breaking just so sluggishly over 
 the fields and the hills of New England, to watch 
 the low clouds pile up in the south, to think of 
 matters very slowly and peaceably again, out of 
 the hurry and press of them. 
 
 But not Joan. 
 
 As he had walked a year ago in Cambridge at 
 
304 PETER KINDRED 
 
 the end of winter, he walked now in the Park, con 
 sidering Joan. And again he knew that his 
 trouble was love, and again it was new and be 
 wildering, but this time it brought him no con 
 tent. 
 
 Gradually through the bleak winter, the morn 
 ings and evenings together, the hurried noons, 
 the tide of desire had been growing in Peter, swell- 
 and gathering. He had watched it growing with 
 curiosity, then bewilderment, and finally with 
 alarm. 
 
 Little by little he had been made aware of a 
 longing in him that was unsatisfied, and that he 
 could not satisfy. 
 
 Slowly, but relentlessly, it had come over 
 Peter that his love which had seemed so whole, so 
 complete, so perfect, was growing, was demanding, 
 was insisting. It broke on his bewilderment like 
 the thunder of the sea on a light sea wall. Her 
 slender body, the motions of her hands, the proud 
 carriage of her head, the sweep of her hair from 
 her temples, all these were in the ringing of that 
 sea, and beat upon him with ever redoubling 
 power. Yet there was no day when he could say 
 "she is dearer to be now than she was yesterday." 
 It was the slow, merciless rising of a tide. Her 
 voice that he had always loved, stirred his body 
 still more deeply. He kissed her ; Peter was grown 
 used to kisses, and the stirring was unsatisfied. 
 His heart quickened at the suppleness of her body. 
 
 Little by little what he had of her grew to him 
 
PETER KINDRED 305 
 
 impalpable and fugitive. He wanted something to 
 make Joan somehow real, to make her truly his 
 own, one way or another, something to make her 
 his own if he were there or if he were away, some 
 thing he could pin on his body and wear. There 
 was nothing to grasp at, nothing real about his life 
 with her; it was an elusive happiness, forever 
 hovering on the edge of something tremendous. 
 He kissed her, and afterwards there was no dif 
 ference in the world. He wanted something that 
 would make a difference in the world when he had 
 kissed her, something as true and as real as pain. 
 The tide of his desire deepened in his body. He 
 wanted something to compass it, to compass Joan, 
 to compass everything in the world ... to answer 
 him . . . 
 
 After his coup, he had planned to surprise her 
 with a great bunch of flowers. But when the time 
 came for that surprise he was lost and over 
 whelmed at last in a mighty rush of tenderness 
 that leaped the barriers he had built to hold it, 
 and swept through him, wreaking havoc, mocking 
 him, his love, his very life. It whirled him and 
 smothered him like a lost woodsman in white 
 water. His body was possessed of insufferable 
 longing. He could buy her flowers indefinitely 
 ... he could buy her all the flowers in the world, 
 and lose himself in roses at her feet. And out 
 of them he d come as rebellious, as unsatisfied, as 
 ever. It wasn t that he wanted . . . not flowers. " 
 
 And so, finally, through the slow spring after- 
 
306 PETER KINDRED 
 
 noon in the Park, he faced it gauntly . . . this 
 thing ... he wanted Joan ... all of her . . . 
 the way, he thought, he d want a woman of the 
 streets. 
 
 It had been a slow, slow awakening. He sat 
 down on a bench and stared at himself. It fright 
 ened him, this unexpected declaration of his body. 
 The thought of obtruding it upon Joan horrified 
 him. He blamed himself bitterly for something, 
 what, he did not know, but blamed himself over 
 and over. It seemed to him that he was perverse 
 and ridiculous, that a low fellow peeked out of 
 him, that he had broken faith with himself. He 
 felt helpless and muddled; he was ashamed, but 
 half ecstatic. 
 
 Far away, indeed, was Cambridge, and the idyl 
 of the year before, far away the unconcern of 
 Holyoke, the serene and tempered reality of the 
 Yard, the untroubled comings and goings. Sit 
 ting alone there on a bench in the Park, he pon 
 dered the brutality of his body and fought against 
 it, he reaffirmed his old beliefs. They thundered 
 down from Cambridge, a bright, Carverian regi 
 ment. 
 
 A man had no right to feel that way about his 
 wife. It made a fearful mess of things. 
 
 Peter insisted grimly that, after all. he was no 
 better than Eddie. 
 
 With that grimness something gaunt and hard 
 crept into Peter s life for a while, and he found 
 himself steeling his spirit against Joan, steeling 
 
PETER KINDRED 307 
 
 himself despairingly against the light touch of her 
 hands, forcing himself to let pass unnoticed the 
 thousand tiny ways she ministered to him. But 
 if the two cool fingers she laid upon his mouth as 
 she leaned across the breakfast table fled back to 
 Joan at once, all morning long as he bent above his 
 desk they lay ghostlike on his face. And if he 
 shut his heart before her eager smile to be with 
 him again at noon, it fled into his mind and 
 haunted him until evening. There were many 
 nights Peter lay awake staring hollow-eyed 
 through the darkness at the dim and unprofaned 
 white of her bed beside him, curbing the restless 
 tossing of his body for fear of waking her. And 
 Joan, awake, lay quietly for fear of waking him. 
 
 And so those two very, very young married 
 people went pathetically through early spring, 
 while Helen plunged desperately into Gary work, 
 feverishly energetic and utterly in despair by 
 turns, and Don with great wisdom and clarity of 
 argument discussed polygamy. 
 
 "The state," he said, "is dependent upon its 
 population. "We need children, more children, all 
 the children we can get. But the right sort. It s 
 the important question to-day." 
 
 Here* he would look triumphantly about him, 
 and Helen would look at him in hypnotized misery. 
 Then the tenement would reverberate with dread 
 ful and merciless debate, and in the end they 
 would all be hot and tired and angry. 
 
308 PETER KINDRED 
 
 " I am simply taking Carver to the logical ex 
 treme," he said. "A man should have as many 
 children as he can support. A woman can only 
 bear a certain number ... so and so many . . . 
 and keep her health and her usefulness to the 
 group. In the case of the economically produc 
 tive man, then, all those unborn children are a 
 waste." 
 
 " Where will the extra women come from?" 
 Joan asked. 
 
 "Some men . . . most men, in fact, can t pro 
 duce enough food, enough goods, to care for the 
 full number of children their wives could bear. So 
 their wives will bear other families besides, for 
 more economically successful men." 
 
 "But suppose they don t want to?" Peter asked 
 scornfully. 
 
 "They ll be taught to want to. Monogamy is 
 only a habit." 
 
 "You can t use people that way, Peter insisted 
 hotly. "You won t get any children at all." 
 
 Don gestured largely. "You can t make me be 
 lieve," he said, "that a decent, normal woman 
 would find it such a terrible matter to bear the 
 children of a decent, normal man." 
 
 Lord, how silly it was, and how blind and deaf 
 and inhuman Don sounded to Peter. It was im 
 possible to talk to him with any show of power; 
 directly Peter mentioned any emotion whatso 
 ever, Don heaped scorn upon him. 
 
 "Do you think a woman would share a man 
 
PETER KINDRED 309 
 
 with three other women just because he ran a 
 factory or some thing ?" Peter cried. 
 
 "A matter of habit and training." 
 
 Peter thought of surrendering Joan to some 
 successful manufacturer of shaving soap, and 
 boiled over, 
 
 "You are awfully stupid, you know," he cried. 
 
 "It would be rather hard on the poor man who 
 loved his wife, wouldn t it?" Joan said. But she 
 didn t look at Peter. 
 
 "I see no reason why it should be," Don in 
 sisted. "It s entirely a question of how you ve 
 been brought up to look at things. I know that I, 
 for one, would give my wife gladly to the state, if 
 I couldn t support enough children." 
 
 Peter glanced swiftly across at Helen, who was 
 leaning back in her chair, plucking nervously at 
 her dress. He turned to Don abruptly. 
 
 "You ll never have any children," he said. 
 "They ll be frogs." 
 
 "They will not be frogs," Don answered an 
 grily. 
 
 "Polywogs first . . . and then frogs. 
 
 "It seems to me," Helen said diffidently, "that 
 none of us knows enough biology to talk about it 
 very well." 
 
 "Eot," said Don. 
 
 "Weren t most of the rich men the sons of ter 
 ribly poor people?" Joan asked. 
 
 Finally Peter grew entirely upset. 
 
 "What do you know about anything!" he said 
 
310 PETER KINDRED 
 
 to Don. "What do you know about life and peo 
 ple and . . . and love, damn it?" 
 
 He shrieked the last words at the top of his 
 voice. 
 
 Rot, said Don comfortably. 
 
 From such arguments Peter came with a grow 
 ing horror of intemperance, and a gathering be 
 lief in the futility of carrying anything to its 
 logical extreme. He began then to entertain a 
 very healthy doubt that life, which seemed to him 
 to be growing more and more complex with each 
 successive day, could be brought so logically and 
 lucidly to any simplicity after all, and he won 
 dered if a man could do better than to take hold 
 of some general principle big enough and vague 
 enough to embrace everything, and then confess 
 frankly to agnosticism, grow old, experience, 
 learn, and bend according to the blowing of knowl 
 edge. For instance, he thought, life must be a 
 vastly different thing to his father than it was 
 to him, and yet at heart, was there such a pro 
 found and fundamental difference there? No 
 more, surely, than the difference already between 
 his attitude and that of Don. Yet had they not 
 both of them started from the same concept . . . 
 nay, had not all three of them started almost so? 
 Life, work, children, home and peace . . . and yet 
 the different lives of the three of them had 
 brought them finally to what seemed entirely dif 
 ferent beliefs. After all . . faith was of neces- 
 
PETER KINDRED 311 
 
 sity empiric. Peter stressed those five concepts 
 differently than his father had done, and added, 
 from the vantage of his generation, still two more 
 words, the state, and the gentleman. Don, adding 
 the same words, stressed still differently, and 
 Peter s father would have called Don an anarchist, 
 a menace to the country, an immoral fellow, a 
 criminal (if he were very angry) and possibly a 
 lunatic. But back of it all? ... 
 
 There were more than just his own problems 
 to worry Peter. 
 
 " Joan," he said to her in April, "I have never 
 seen Helen look so badly." 
 
 "I know," Joan answered, "she looks very thin 
 and pale." 
 
 Joan, too, was all too pale, but Peter blamed 
 it on the spring, and the difficult winter, and New 
 York, and the slums, and any number of things be 
 sides. 
 
 "It s miserable the way he carries on about 
 polygamy," Peter said, apparently irrelevant. 
 
 Joan nodded. "It is miserable," she said so 
 berly. 
 
 They were sitting together after supper in their 
 narrow den, Joan curled up on the couch, and 
 Peter in the chair. He lighted a pipe and sucked 
 at it for a moment or two in silence. 
 
 "It s sort of hopeless," he said at last. Joan 
 sighed. 
 
 "There s nothing to do," she said, "but next 
 year I shall try to get Helen away." 
 
312 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Away?" 
 
 "Anywhere; west, perhaps. The more she sees 
 Don, the more it hurts her, I think. She s never 
 been in love before, and it s very bad for her." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose it is. Worse than for most 
 folk." 
 
 "You see, she s so fearfully frank to herself 
 about it. And then there s the feeling of her own 
 worthlessness, and she can t get the better of that. 
 And she really needs . . . because she s so aroused 
 . . . her first love . . . and at her age . . ." 
 "That s just the wretched part of it." 
 They were both uncomfortably silent, while the 
 blood throbbed in Peter s temples. 
 
 "It seems unfair, Peter," Joan said softly. 
 "Joan," Peter said, "what s the matter with all 
 of us? Why are we so much more at odds with 
 life than our parents were?" 
 "Do you think we are, Peter?" 
 "It seems so to me. I don t believe that they 
 were ever troubled so. They grew up and fell 
 in love, and controlled themselves ably and were 
 married and had children. But we all of us seem 
 to be torn about so." 
 
 "Perhaps they were, too." 
 "No, I am sure. Sex to them seems to have 
 presented so much an easier problem. But we 
 ... we face it and understand it, and then . . . 
 suddenly we re helpless and totally wrecked. 
 And still we re so much franker and wiser and 
 braver about it." 
 
PETER KINDRED 313 
 
 " Perhaps that s it, Peter." 
 He smoked for a time, thoughtfully. "Per 
 haps," he said at last. 
 
 "It may be that we are all too nrach like chil 
 dren, too inquisitive, too anxious to peek into all 
 manner of things, and so we hurt ourselves." 
 
 "You mean that we think too much of sex?" 
 
 "Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I think we 
 talk too much about it, that we re too self-con 
 scious. I wonder if it s good, after all, to think 
 of it so much." 
 
 "But that is the only way to master it, dear." 
 
 "Sometimes I wonder if it is," Joan said. 
 
 "Our parents never bothered so, did they?" 
 
 "I don t know ... I imagine not. But we be 
 gin to talk of things so early. We go beyond love 
 making, and understand things. We re biologists, 
 after a fashion. And then when we fall in love 
 we re so old and wise, and the love making, the 
 courting seems like the play of children." 
 
 "And then we re caught," Peter said bitterly. 
 
 Joan looked at him intently, but he was not look 
 ing at her. He spoke hurriedly. 
 
 "We wander into the kitchen like so many silly 
 lobsters, bundled up in a shell of self-control . . . 
 and we brandish a paper claw of knowledge . . . 
 and then we re eaten up." 
 
 "Yes," Joan said, "and perhaps if we just went 
 in like onions ..." 
 
 "Without anything at all to defend us ... po 
 tatoes, rather . . . not onions ..." 
 
314 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "In the meanwhile, someone is making a meal 
 of poor Helen," Joan said soberly. 
 
 "I ... I don t think people ought to talk about 
 babies so much," Peter said a bit uncertainly. 
 "At least, not until they re married." 
 
 "Heavens," said Joan. 
 
 But it did seem to Peter as though Helen would 
 have been far happier if she had known sex only as 
 a shy young miss, thought love to be a sweetness 
 of moonlight and words and prettiness and music. 
 How very much happier she would be sitting by 
 some old-fashioned casement, spinning old-fash 
 ioned dreams of Don, all the insistent tumult of 
 her body to be miraculously stilled somehow with 
 a kiss. Peter thought of Edith, her untroubled 
 amours, her complacent marriage at last, Edith 
 stirred with nothing greater than curiosity and 
 moonlight her life long, delicately ignorant of 
 babies. 
 
 Through April he had a deal to think of that 
 concerned only Peter and Joan Kindred and the 
 city. The street car men went on strike. 
 
 From the western fortresses of organized labor 
 agents had been at work in the city for longer 
 than the city knew. And so, one morning, the 
 alarmed burghers read in their morning papers 
 above their coffee cups that these men had de 
 manded so much from the companies for their 
 employees, and that the companies had refused 
 to deal with them. In two days, jammed with 
 screaming headlines, with mass meetings of car 
 
PETER KINDRED 315 
 
 men, with furious talk and oratory and peculiarly 
 diffident voting, the strike was declared, and the 
 city aghast, found its transit crippled. But not 
 for long. Militia came down from up state and 
 sat in the armories or paraded the streets very 
 fierce and bold, and new green men manned the 
 cars and bumped them into each other and ran 
 them bewildered about the city. Slowly transit 
 developed, and the strikers, growing angry, took 
 to rocks and bottles. Then there were riots all 
 over the city, and a great seething and shouting 
 in the slums ; policemen rode on the platforms of 
 cars, behind wire netting, and platoons of re 
 serves cheerfully broke the heads of men and 
 women and had their own heads broken. The 
 city, weary and forlorn, crowded the sparse cars, 
 or walked bitterly; tiny public motors creaked 
 and bumped up Fifth Avenue loaded to the ca 
 pacity of their springs with late and footsore 
 humanity. The companies stood firm, majestically 
 dignified, and the organizers from the west gave 
 out dark interviews to the newspapers in which 
 they promised all manner of dangerous affairs if 
 they did not at once have their own way, while 
 the strikers grew hungrier, and the slums seethed. 
 Where was the fault? The newspapers took 
 sides with the strikers, for their long hours, their 
 unfair treatment, and their unfortunate families. 
 Helen went in with them heart and soul, and 
 painted the morals of the companies a dreary 
 black ; she went to what mass meetings she could. 
 
316 PETER KINDRED 
 
 joined a relief committee, came into the tenement 
 with flashing eyes and excited phrases, storming 
 and bitter. But Peter and Joan took no sides. 
 They walked to their offices and walked home, 
 hating the strike intensely, but they blamed 
 neither the car men nor the companies. 
 
 "I ll not believe these tales I hear of the hor 
 rors of being a motorman," Peter said. 
 
 And again, "I know that the presidents of the 
 companies are fat and wealthy and impudent. 
 We d have very much worse car service if they 
 were skinny and worried." 
 
 Yet it seemed to Peter that the companies were 
 no more impudent than the car men would be, if 
 they could. 
 
 "For the rest," he said, "it s a question of 
 whether I want the bricklayers and carpenters and 
 the masons to be more powerful in this country 
 than the engineers and the scientists and the fac 
 tory owners. And I don t. Still, it s all unfair." 
 
 They were walking home together at evening, 
 crossing Second Avenue beneath the gloomy 
 shadow of the silent elevated. Half way down the 
 block a car was stalled, and a crowd of people 
 were gathering. Joan and Peter stopped to 
 watch; the crowd about the car swirled and 
 pushed; there was a crash" of glass, a confused 
 shout. The folk eddied and whirled, broke and 
 closed again. Through the momentary opening, 
 Peter caught sight of a policeman with a battered 
 hat, using his night stick. 
 
PETER KINDRED 317 
 
 "Come on home," Peter said. 
 
 A whistle shrilled and a squad of blnecoats came 
 running from around a corner. A mounted officer 
 galloped along the cobbles, leaning low in his sad 
 dle. The mob groaned and shouted; stones flew; 
 the bluecoats flung themselves into the people. 
 Out of the doors of the tenements grimy men and 
 women ran howling and screaming, with sticks 
 and bottles, clubs, old chairs. Peter saw a man 
 lurch across the street holding his head, blood 
 trickling through his fingers. The mob broke and 
 gave way, and suddenly, Peter and Joan were in 
 the very midst of them, struggling to keep their 
 feet. 
 
 Terror seized Peter, disgust, fear of the beat 
 ing clubs, the sound of them whacking at people s 
 heads, the howling of the mob, the surge of bodies. 
 He held Joan close and struggled blindly to be 
 free of them, his heart in his throat. 
 
 And then a stone grazed Joan s face, and cut 
 her cheek. At her faint cry Peter stood erect, 
 with wide open eyes. An unholy might blazed in 
 him; he was filled with fury; his nostrils opened 
 broadly. His slight body leaped like a cat at a 
 shouting laborer in front of him ; he picked up the 
 broken leg of a chair and beat his way out of the 
 mob like a passionate wildcat. Stones hit him, 
 fists struck at him; guarding Joan with one arm, 
 he felt nothing but anger and hate and the desire 
 to kill someone. His club beat onto the backs of 
 men and women alike ; he saw nothing, recognized 
 
318 PETER KINDRED 
 
 nothing. Inarticulate sounds came from his 
 mouth. Bloody, torn, disheveled, the two of them 
 hurried down the street toward their tenement 
 A hulking fellow, taking him for a striker, grinned 
 at him and shouted something in a foreign tongue. 
 Peter snarled a curse at him, and hurried on. 
 
 It was only the utmost passion of tenderness 
 for his wife that kept him at her side, bathing her 
 cheek, kissing her white face. He was like an 
 aroused, caged animal; he wanted to go back 
 there and beat up people, to drive the whole world 
 into the East Eiver. He breathed unevenly, and 
 his eyes glowed. He hated the people, hated them 
 with every fibre of his being, the slums, the mob, 
 all the fury, the violence, the riot they stood for. 
 He wanted to feel his club beat into men s faces 
 again. 
 
 That night his smouldering anger blazed again 
 at the astounded Don. 
 
 "No one asked my help," he said, "or anyone s. 
 They started throwing rocks. Because they 
 couldn t have their own way. I hope to God they 
 starve to death. I hope they have their beastly 
 faces pushed into the mud so hard they never 
 come up. I hope . . ." 
 
 Joan looked at Peter in wonder. Down the 
 block, too far for them to hear, a woman wailed 
 incessantly. They had taken her husband to jail, 
 and first they had broken his head. 
 
 By April s end Peter was moody and irritable, 
 
PETER KINDRED 
 
 sallow, and troubled with headaches that camped 
 at the base of his skull. The office bothered him, 
 the swift way things went on, the complacent con 
 fidence, the easy criticism, the daily writing and 
 rewriting, puzzling, composing. He went at mat 
 ters grimly, turning out flawless work, and sneer 
 ing at it as it left his desk. He wanted to shout 
 to his room companions to be quiet, to quit their 
 boasting, their ready mimicry of successful things, 
 their personal chatter. He was sick of impudence, 
 of the eternal glitter of brass over the whole city, 
 cheaters decked out in tinsel. He wanted to cry 
 to the men along the streets to hold up their heads 
 and look at the sky ; it seemed to him that all New 
 Yorkers were a nervous, harassed, intent and ill- 
 favored folk, thin and mangy or blunt and wor 
 ried, bitten with appetites, washed in lukewarm 
 sentiment. 
 
 At home he controlled his morose humor with 
 difficulty. It was a pathetic and peculiar conso 
 lation to him that, after all, Joan was his wife, 
 that he would always be with her, that she loved 
 him, and yet it was the very skeleton of a satis 
 faction, a gaunt and empty framework, through 
 which his desires poured unheld. His life was 
 like a sieve to hold the tremendous pressure of 
 his love ; it rushed through and wasted itself upon 
 thin air. 
 
 After supper Ee watched her moving through 
 the lamplight, with sombre eyes that seemed to 
 be set upon a point far beyond her, as one listens 
 
320 PETER KINDRED 
 
 to music, while through the opened window floated 
 the voices of the slums, the rattle of wagons, the 
 low-toned odors of the city in spring. 
 
 In the morning he walked swiftly down Fourth 
 Avenue. Trucks, motors, trolleys, crowded the 
 street; a wind blew dust along the pavement in 
 black whirlpools. Far above him he could see 
 among the roof tops the gentle blue of April sky, 
 and thin, white clouds. He walked through gloom, 
 among the shadows of the deep street bottoms; 
 the wind against his face was stale and dusty. He 
 held his head up to watch the sky and his thoughts 
 were of Cambridge, the low, level country, with 
 the wide sweep of the heaven above, Cambridge, 
 the growing grass and the aged trees in leaf 
 again, the cottages and gardens, the orchards and 
 the south wind and lilacs. Cambridge, and the 
 slow drift of men s voices on Holyoke Street. . . . 
 
 On his desk was a letter from Frank. 
 
 "All afternoon," he wrote, "I have been in the 
 rooms of a serious group of Carverians, and all 
 afternoon they did nothing but expound Carver 
 to me and to each other, with infinite logic and in 
 telligence. And it was all very stupid and very 
 earnest and very sad. 
 
 "Why must men be always so intensely lop 
 sided? Why is it our inveterate fate to grasp at 
 one string, and follow that blindly, wilfully, to its 
 extreme? I, for one, believe that there is no one 
 answer to satisfy everything. For every labor 
 trouble we need a different answer. I watch the 
 
PETER KINDRED 321 
 
 lives of these people all around me, and I hear 
 their firm explanations. How very much larger 
 their lives are than what they say of them ! 
 
 "And you . . . how goes your little world in 
 the slums 1 I have been thinking of you these blue 
 and gold days. Lilacs are out; I have been for 
 long walks in "Waverly. But your house on Holy- 
 oke has fallen into stranger hands. I passed there 
 yesterday; there were two windows broken, and 
 Franklin told me very sadly that everyone in the 
 house had been gorgeously drunk the night be 
 fore. As I stood there, there was a bloody racket 
 in my old room, and a book came flying out of the 
 window. Eesurgent youth . . . Cambridge grows 
 older and older. 
 
 Good old Don. He has written me a long brief 
 on polygamy. It rages here, too, among the most 
 advanced Carverians. Carver, I fancy, dislikes 
 the idea a lot, but he s helpless now. It is useless 
 to argue with such folk; they talk so loudly, and 
 they are so sure. However, it is an unimportant 
 matter. There is always someone to be confident 
 of disagreeable things, from Eevelations to the 
 GEdipus. 
 
 "My love to all of you. I wonder when I shall 
 see you again. " 
 
 Peter walked slowly through the office to where 
 a high window faced the south, and stood there 
 with the letter in his hand, looking down across 
 the city. The sun had misted the south with light, 
 had misted the low roofs stretching away to the 
 
322 PETER KINDRED 
 
 broad, blue river, the tugs, the thin lines of 
 bridges, spans, towers, fading into the sunlight. 
 White plumes of smoke drifted from the chimneys 
 and blew across the city. To the south towered 
 the group of skyscrapers at the end of the island, 
 high, unbelievably high and remote, faintly lu 
 minous and dim in the sun s haze, and above them 
 all, the slim tower of the Woolworth against the 
 light sky. The sun beat warm through the closed 
 window. Peter opened it and leaned out; he 
 heard the busy humming of the city below him, the 
 far-off jar of trucks and wagons. An idle wind 
 blew against his face, and it seemed to him that 
 through the odor of the wind there was a drift 
 of spring, of water, of country, of grass and flow 
 ers, somewhere, very far away. 
 
 He took a deep breath and went back to his desk. 
 For a day he was glad that he was in New York. 
 
 At evening he walked home, up the smooth, dark 
 flowing of Fifth Avenue, that stretched, a line of 
 yellow lights, before him. Past shadows of the 
 Park he went, newly green, fragrant, beneath the 
 cold and friendless dignity of gray stone houses, 
 then east, across the avenues, under the clatter 
 of the elevated, and into the slums. There was no 
 odor now of spring, but a dreary smell of people, 
 of rooms, of dark and dilapidated hallways. Chil 
 dren played and shouted shrilly through the 
 thrumming of the streets ; their voices clashed to 
 gether in minor glees. A barrel organ wailed 
 lugubriously, and chattered thin chords ; before it 
 
PETER KINDRED 323 
 
 three little girls in dirty dresses danced childishly, 
 and nearby another group of girls skipped a rope, 
 reciting their monotonous dogma. At Second 
 Avenue, pedler carts stood lined against the 
 curb, and women bargained in high, excited voices. 
 Through all the evening there was a wail; the 
 slums droned and whined. The minor sound of it 
 moved through Peter s body, filling him with an 
 insufferable longing, a vague and restless melan 
 choly. He wanted desperately the quiet and peace 
 of the countryside, the friendliness of trees, the 
 smell of earth. He wanted to be away from peo 
 ple. He wanted to be with Joan alone, to be with 
 her and only the night about them, to be with her 
 anywhere, anywhere at all away from voices, from 
 eternal close walls and lamplight, from the 
 smother of the city that pressed on him from every 
 side He wanted to be in Cambridge again, 
 through slow and unpeopled streets, the wide, se 
 rene evening ... he wanted ... he did not 
 know what he wanted, but he wanted it intensely. 
 Joan came behind him and laid her arm about 
 his shoulders. With a sudden cry he turned and 
 drew her down upon him awkwardly and kissed 
 her and kissed her. Holding her there, he buried 
 his face insatiably in the bit of lace at her breast ; 
 instinctively she struggled to regain her feet, and 
 her hair loosened and fell about his face. He let 
 her go, and turned away, biting his lip. She stood 
 before him; her hand fluttered a moment toward 
 him, but he was not looking at her ; it dropped to 
 
324 PETER KINDRED 
 
 her side again. She stood irresolute, and as he did 
 not turn, walked at last to the bedroom, rearrang 
 ing her hair with both hands, her loose sleeves 
 falling away from her slender, delicately moulded 
 arms as she stood before the mirror, twisting her 
 russet hair high on her head. She was breathing 
 a bit unevenly, and smiling, but Peter sat with 
 flaming cheeks and a beating heart, waiting for 
 her voice to class him definitely with Eddie. 
 
 As the evenings in May grew warmer and more 
 plaintive, Peter and Joan found their three little 
 rooms growing smaller and smaller, the stove, 
 which always seemed big in the tiny kitchen, grow 
 ing larger and larger. It was jolly to leave the 
 tenement and the stove and the dishes, and wan 
 der off upon minor adventures to the stoves and 
 dishes of undiscovered restaurants. Once they 
 dined uptown in a lordly fashion, but that was 
 too expensive, even for Peter s exceeding wealth, 
 and thereafter they sought out little places down 
 town. They walked together through the Italian 
 section, and ate in old, old houses, tumbled, 
 painted in crude, dull colors, where clandestine 
 and sleepy quiet brooded, and long, thin crusts 
 stood up in glasses upon the tables, to crunch and 
 crackle in their mouths. They wandered idly 
 through the murmurous Ghetto, past the small, 
 gloomy shops crowded one upon the other, where 
 it seemed as though everything in the world were 
 for sale; past long blocks of pedlers* carts piled 
 high with fruits and vegetables, candies, linens 
 
PETER KINDRED 325 
 
 and laces. They took supper in a dingy Hebrew 
 dining room, and ate a vast amount of remarkably 
 good bread and drank sparingly of some terrible 
 coffee. There was almost a scene because Peter 
 refused to tell the slow and melancholy waiter 
 why he had not finished all his coffee. And they 
 ate at the famous restaurants of the Village, 
 north, south, and west of Washington Square. 
 
 Peter was happier rambling so with Joan than 
 he had been all spring. It was almost as though 
 he had won back the untroubled companionship 
 of the year before in those dark streets, among 
 those dusky alleys, as though he wanted, after 
 all, no more than to be with her, to touch her arm, 
 her hand as they walked, to whisper to her of this 
 and that, and smile very knowingly at her across 
 the table. There was something articulate in ad 
 venturing so, in guarding her from all sorts of 
 imaginary dangers and terrors, in demanding at 
 tention for her from waiters, in fussing tremen 
 dously about her coat and her rubbers and the 
 chair she sat on. At any rate, it was a good deal 
 more expresive than washing dishes and peeling a 
 carrot, no matter how he bustled about the dishes 
 or fussed with the carrot. 
 
 They took Don and Helen to Polly s, off Wash 
 ington Square, riding down Fifth Avenue, through 
 the evening on the top of a bus, high above people 
 walking on the streets, peering down upon the 
 motors that swarmed slowly up and down about 
 them. As they came out of the shopping district 
 
326 PETER KINDRED 
 
 the traffic thinned away until of a sudden below 
 Twenty-third Street they were riding down a si 
 lent and deserted avenue between empty build 
 ings. Across the glitter of Fourteenth they 
 went, a pleasant wind on their faces, past old 
 brownstone houses, a rambling church, past 
 the age old serenity of the Brevoort, out of an 
 other land entirely, another city, under the white 
 arch and into the faint fragrance of trees in the 
 Square. 
 
 They walked through the empty rooms of Pol 
 ly s and out to the back, and down a stairs to the 
 canvas-roofed yard. There, under bright yellow 
 lights, sat the group of Greenwich Village bo- 
 hemians who made Polly s their rendezvous. The 
 first impression was one of laughter, of w r omen s 
 eyes staring, of colored tarn o shanters and 
 smocks, and general confugalty, a clatter of 
 dishes, a chiming of voices. Peter, striving to look 
 very bold and bohemian and unconcerned, picked 
 out a table, and the four of them sat down and 
 stared around them. 
 
 At first it was hard to distinguish anything, or 
 do very much more than whirl giddily about in 
 the atmosphere and think of Paris and Mimi and 
 Eudolphe and Louise and Little Billee. But after 
 a bit things stood out through the laughter and 
 the voices and the clatter, women s faces, young 
 and excitable, bobbed hair, colored smocks, mis 
 chievous faces. Everyone talked very loudly and 
 eagerly, save a quiet few who went seriously about 
 
PETER KINDRED 327 
 
 their eating. Peter looked in vain among the men 
 for long hair, or even a beard ; they seemed to be 
 rather slim, merry youngsters, with here and there 
 a blunt, dark New Yorker, and here and there a 
 stalwart viking, probably from Harvard. They 
 all had an air of rhapsody about them, as though 
 they might break forth into something at any 
 moment, and yet no one of them looked to be ab 
 sorbed in any great work, or, indeed, to be much 
 preoccupied with work at all, save those few folk 
 intent upon their eating. But they were all young, 
 remarkably young; there wasn t a respectably el 
 derly person in Polly s, and although Peter recog 
 nized the folly of it, he could not help dreaming 
 himself in Paris. 
 
 Having been there before, he called for Mike in 
 a loud voice, and presently that gentleman ap 
 peared flying along with a crowded tray, abrupt 
 and bristly. To him Peter ordered and settled 
 back in his seat again. 
 
 Watching these bohemian folk more carefully, 
 he made discoveries. For one thing, they looked 
 a bit fagged, and once or twice he thought he 
 caught them off their guard, and then they seemed 
 pathetically uncertain, as though they had stopped 
 a moment to ask what it was all about. But be 
 fore they even formulated their question, an eddy 
 of laughter, or some intense debate would snatch 
 them up again and whirl them along. 
 
 And he discovered that the women were not as 
 pretty as they had seemed before. He looked at 
 
328 PETER KINDRED 
 
 Joan; she was like a rare and delicate flower in 
 a cluster of wild weed, and his heart leaped and 
 capered and sang that she should be so splendid. 
 She found Peter looking at her so eagerly that she 
 blushed and laughed and blushed again and started 
 talking to Don very fast. But Peter came gallop 
 ing out of Paris at a great rate. 
 
 A humorously melancholy chap plucked at a 
 painted ukelele he had made from a cigar box, and 
 sang a song about Greenwich Village in an un 
 certain voice, a song, however, that everyone 
 seemed to know, for they all laughed together at 
 the appropriate parts. The few intent folk went 
 seriously on with their meals and Mike came and 
 went explosively. 
 
 "This fascinates me," Helen said to Peter in a 
 low voice. "Do you think that all these women 
 have studios and . . . and go in for free love, 
 and all that sort of thing?" 
 
 "Any old room is a studio in bohemia," Peter 
 said, "and as for the rest ... I can t say. But 
 I suppose so." 
 
 He looked at Helen curiously. Her eyes were 
 shining, and her cheeks were pink ; Peter frowned. 
 
 "They rather believe in polygamy . . . with 
 out children," he said, and smiled to see Helen 
 grow confused. 
 
 "Careful, old Helen," he said privately to him 
 self. 
 
 "Do you think they re all artists?" she whis 
 pered. 
 
PETER KINDRED 329 
 
 "No. But they all express themselves, no 
 doubt. They wrestle around with their emotions, 
 and it keeps them fit." 
 
 "Still/ Helen said slowly, "it s rather fine to 
 . . . just defy things, and live your own life . . . 
 and forget the things you think are wrong." 
 
 Peter rushed impetuously against her. "You re 
 mixing up these folk with the Masses group," he 
 cried. "These people aren t fighting, Helen. 
 They re just out of the world, having a high old 
 time." 
 
 "Well, then the Masses group . . ." 
 
 "Old lady," Peter said seriously, "anarchists 
 are just as passionately opposed to injustice as 
 we are." 
 
 "Peter," Helen said, "I think you re wrong 
 about artist folk. Perhaps not this kind, but the 
 real, long-haired men in cotton shirts. All their 
 happiness is in the life they live. In being poor 
 and free." 
 
 Peter smiled and patted her hand. "Happiness 
 doesn t mean freedom, dear," he said with a fine 
 benevolence. 
 
 "But passion . . ." Helen began. 
 
 "Passion is very popular these days," Don said 
 suddenly from his end of the table. 
 
 Peter sat silent, biting his lip. 
 
 They walked across the Square together in the 
 warm night, among a crowd of people, mothers 
 and babies from the slums, youths and maidens, 
 shapeless and noisy. To the south the city 
 
330 PETER KINDRED 
 
 stretched to the sea ; east and west the wide rivers 
 ran closer and closer. Far down town rising 
 among the sleeping buildings, gleamed the red 
 light of the Woolworth, above the empty, cavern 
 ous streets. To the east and west lay the slums, 
 the bitterest slums, the slums of darkest and most 
 barbarous fable, teeming with dangerous, alien 
 folk, with crude gaiety and swift tragedy. Yet 
 here in the Square was an insistent dignity and 
 sobriety; the old houses on Eighth Street stood 
 sternly facing the oncoming tenements as the city 
 moved to the north. Down these side streets lived 
 romance; here art lived, nay, whatever of art it 
 was, here it lived gaily and viciously, and starved 
 and made merry in garrets. Beyond brooded the 
 people, lashed and forgotten. The nearness of 
 life in this Square beat in upon Peter; it was al 
 most a threshold to reality. It seemed to him 
 that all about him life was real, uncompromising, 
 urgent and swift, light among students, tragic 
 among paupers. Here was no theorizing, no pa 
 tience, no slow unfolding of beliefs. Each day was 
 life, to be fought for and grasped, torn and 
 glutted. 
 
 The wind of New York at night blew in his face 
 from the south. It was a wind of the sea, and yet 
 no wind of the open sea, as Boston had been, but 
 rather of the dark tide among wharves and ships, 
 the odor of the swift, seaward rivers. He held 
 Joan s arm close in his as he walked, and happi 
 ness swung into his stride. 
 
PETER KINDRED 331 
 
 "Only," he said to her, "my longing for peo 
 ple ... to know them ... to be a part of their 
 lives, to understand their lives goes so far 
 deeper in me than my experience . . . and it 
 haunts me. For that reason I wish I had experi 
 enced widely . . . had tasted all manner of 
 things . . . Those folk we left . . . what do I 
 know of them? What part of their lives have I 
 lived?" 
 
 "I know," said Joan. 
 
 They walked together silently, closer to each 
 other than they had ever been. 
 
 "I remember," Peter said at last, "how im 
 patient I was at the end of my sophomore year 
 because I wasn t glorious. And David, too . . . 
 he had no patience left him. We have always been 
 impatient to be glorious, thinking to find it around 
 the next corner ... I wonder if I ll ever look 
 back on this year, Joan, and say that." 
 
 "I hope so, Peter." 
 
 "Yes ... it would be rather unfortunate, 
 really to be glorious, dear, and to go around cor 
 ners without caring!" 
 
 At the Park Don and Helen left them, and they 
 walked on together, talking of Cambridge days, 
 recalling and criticising, judging the worth of old 
 things. It was almost as though they were alone 
 again, the streets were so quiet, and they talked 
 in half whispers. They came into their little tene 
 ment, out of the world, with a strange sense of in 
 timacy, of being home, of being together, always 
 
332 PETER KINDRED 
 
 and always together. Peter took Joan s face in 
 his hands and kissed her, and his heart was like 
 the lapping of water at full tide. 
 
 Yet once at home silence overtook them both; 
 they were ill at ease, and could do no more than 
 smile at one another half timidly, half vaguely. 
 They wandered restlessly through the tiny rooms, 
 arranging trifles; they could find nothing to say, 
 and yet each wanted to speak. 
 
 " It must be late," Joan said at last. 
 
 They made themselves ready for bed quickly, 
 Peter in his den, Joan in her room. His heart 
 now was unusually still, his movements detached 
 and methodical. Through his mind ran the three 
 ascending octaves of the Verklarung, in stilly 
 music. Somehow it seemed as though the night 
 were of vast importance, but why it should be he 
 did not know. He switched out the light and went 
 across the kitchen into the bedroom, and climbed 
 into his bed. He bent above Joan. 
 
 "Good night, dear," he said. Her arms went 
 up about his neck and drew his face down to hers. 
 
 Suddenly terror seized hold of him, and he half 
 struggled away from her, but her slim arms crept 
 closer about his neck. 
 
 "Peter," she murmured. 
 
 His heart began to beat heavily; he felt curi 
 ously weak, half sick. He took a deep, sighing 
 breath, and stooped toward her. 
 
 The mighty deeps of tenderness stirred and 
 lifted, eddied and broke, rushed roaring and surg- 
 
PETER KINDRED 833 
 
 ing over Him, engulfing him, drowning him, swept 
 on irresistibly, up, up, in a tremendous tide, shat 
 tering and rending, swept him helpless, strug 
 gling, on the very crest of the wave. . . . Ah, but 
 he was swept with it, the tide rose behind him. 
 And then of a sudden he was the tide, he was that 
 mighty power, he was that triumphant tenderness 
 himself, he, Peter Kindred, that thunderous, music, 
 that deep, deep crying . . . 
 
 All night he held her very gently, sleeping. 
 
 The next day the sun, streaming on her face, 
 woke her to a tremendous and amazing din. 
 
 "Peter," she cried, "my dear . . ." 
 
 Peter, in the bathroom, through a great splash 
 ing of cold water, was singing, singing as though 
 to split his throat. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 DON was shut away in his room before his ex 
 aminations, with his books and his notes, 
 coming out only for meals, for references at the 
 library and a few minutes in the air before sup 
 per. Helen, grown impatient of Gary work, had 
 plunged into some books on biology, and seemed 
 to be filling her mind with formulae. During the 
 early spring she had met with some radical folk, 
 feminists and the like, and she took to spending 
 more and more time with one or another of them, 
 discussing everything and anything that seemed 
 unfair, and dealing life some mortal whacks. It 
 was a case of worm turning; she forgot herself, 
 championing the poor, the underpaid laborer, the 
 over-used mother, and with enthusiasm for the 
 cause of woman s independence, she lost, to a 
 great degree, her own dependence. She grew 
 a bit grim and relentless, and upon more than one 
 occasion startled her mother and father into si 
 lence, a feat that pleased her immensely. 
 But Peter and Joan did not care for Helen s 
 334 
 
PETER KINDRED 335 
 
 feminists. To Joan s mind they were too bitter, 
 too excited, too eager, and to Peter it was a case 
 of the extremist again, a creature he viewed with 
 a deal of suspicion, a creature who would build 
 up the whole house by hitting one nail -a terrible 
 blow and letting the other nails be. But it seemed 
 to Peter that he was always tearing his clothes 
 on a great many nails and that the house would 
 be no less ramshackle if one were driven in firmly. 
 And there, I fancy, we have Peter finally a con 
 servative, after a fashion, and no more entirely 
 right than Helen, save that he would be glad to 
 see the nail driven in, if it could be done a little 
 less furiously. 
 
 But life at that time was too happy for Peter 
 to trouble himself with wrongs, and for a while 
 he fell in love with the city, even with the 
 insolent and windy walls towering above him, 
 with the narrow vistas of sky, the river, the 
 bridges soaring across to the east, and the deep, 
 dusty streets. It was late May in New York, when 
 every wind from the south and the west brought 
 its fugitive fragrance to drift above the streets 
 and into open windows, when evening was slow 
 and gradual and late, and morning was blue and 
 gold and freshly washed. Beyond the city the 
 counties were blossoming in daisies, in roses, and 
 lilacs. In the office windows were open, and in 
 quisitive winds came in to peek about and rustle 
 papers and blow lightly across cheeks. Along the 
 avenues the sun shone on straw hats and men 
 
336 PETER KINDRED 
 
 walked without coats, and at noontime it was 
 pleasant just to wander up and down in the warm 
 ing sun and the wind and not to eat at all. 
 
 Edith was to be married and the Kindred house 
 hold hummed like a hive. There were fittings for 
 Edith, there were consultations among the family, 
 there were dinners and shopping expeditions, un 
 ending bustle and talk, furniture to be decided 
 upon and shopped for, curtains to be made, sew 
 ing to be done. Through it all, Peter s mother 
 moved radiantly worried, rushed, breathless and 
 excited. Edith, whirled from her feet, performed 
 prodigies of buying, and Eddie, quietly dizzy, 
 came to have lunch with Peter. He was inclined 
 to play the braggart still, but Peter found it child 
 ish and amusing, and warmed to an undertone of 
 bewilderment and hope and a touch of fright that 
 Eddie could not entirely conceal. 
 
 "You know," he said to Peter, "what you did 
 wasn t as foolish as it sounds. It must be sort of 
 nice just to go off . . . Say, " he appealed to Peter 
 wistfully, "do you think we re going to be friends? 
 You know I m not strong on this anarchist stuff 
 ... It s all right, I guess," he said hastily, "but 
 it s not in my line. I haven t had the time to take 
 it in. ... Don t you think we ll sort of hit it 
 off all right, though?" 
 
 "I certainly do," Peter said gravely. 
 
 The rehearsal for the wedding went off gaily, 
 the city slept save Eddie and woke again, and 
 it was Edith s wedding day. In the vestry of a 
 
PETER KINDRED 337 
 
 church, Peter and his father stood and stared at 
 each other, and Peter was reminded of the day he 
 had brought Joan home, and they Had stared at 
 each other just so wide-eyed and puzzled. He 
 thought his father would always be just so puz 
 zled at him, puzzled to know whether Peter were 
 such a man as he, timid lest Peter should peer 
 into him and find him ridiculous, after all, and by 
 finding him so, settle the matter definitely for him, 
 this matter which he did not quite want settled. 
 So he rocked up and down on the balls of his feet, 
 and beat one fist into the palm of his hand behind 
 him, made noises in his throat, and stared at Peter. 
 Peter had grown old enough rather to enjoy 
 watching him. 
 
 "I suppose mother and Edith have been dress 
 ing all day," he said. 
 
 "Eh?" said his father, stopping his rocking 
 more or less in mid air, "oh . . . Hmn . . . Yes, 
 yes, all day. Hmm." And then, after a silence, 
 he went on rocking again. 
 
 Guests came ; the church grew murmurous with 
 people; the minister took his place looking very 
 important and reverend; Eddie appeared, white- 
 faced and somehow courageous. An organ pealed 
 and shook and thundered through the dusk of the 
 nave, and Edith came slowly, dim white, carrying 
 flowers, tremendously unlike the Edith Peter had 
 known, and behind her his mother. A hush sighed 
 through the church, and in the silence intoned the 
 marriage service; the rich colors of the figured 
 
338 PETER KINDRED 
 
 windows glowed in the gloom and from some high 
 window stole downward a pale fall of dusty sun 
 light. His mother wept audibly, and other people 
 wept, and the voices of Eddie and his sister trem 
 bled and drifted before the deep, pealing ques 
 tions. In Peter s throat a lump grew and grew, a 
 blessed illogical lump, for no reason at all, save 
 that here, somehow in this unholy and inquisitive 
 gathering, life had been touched with majesty and 
 beauty, had been expressed poignantly and ten 
 derly, in all its pathos, its hopefulness, its loveli 
 ness and courage. 
 
 The organ shook a passion of chords through 
 the shadow, and it was over. Folk crowded about 
 the couple with kisses and laughter and talk, and 
 in their midst Peter caught a glimpse of his 
 mother, her face shining radiantly through her 
 forgotten tears. 
 
 Edith and her husband were gone, and the folk 
 drifted away. The vestry room was still, and 
 through the empty quiet of the church the organ 
 ist played idly, watching the dancing dust across 
 the thin falling of sunlight. 
 
 That night his mother and father sat together 
 alone in their familiar place. The rooms that had 
 belonged to Peter and to Edith ever since they 
 were old enough to have rooms of their own, were 
 empty and dark. The two old people sat to 
 gether soberly, doing nothing, staring out before 
 them through the lamplight to the slow and even 
 years ahead, old age and growing quietness and 
 
PETER KINDRED 339 
 
 empty rooms. They had climbed a long hill; they 
 had breasted the top; the road led down again 
 into ultimate darkness. They would be always 
 coming home now to empty rooms and quietness. 
 The excitement had worn itself away, the woman 
 was tired ; of all the company, of all the stress and 
 planning, the talk and laughter, the momentary 
 splendor, there was nothing left save gossip, and 
 two old people. Edith in a train hurrying to the 
 southland, and Peter in a tenement across the 
 city . . . other roads, other faiths, other names. 
 In the morning, the man thought, he would be go 
 ing to the office, and mornings after and mornings 
 after that, and then he would be sitting in the 
 same chair a while, and finally, an end. Haply, 
 he mused, there would be children, and he would 
 be a grandfather, and told, like as not, to mind his 
 business. 
 
 And so they sat forlorn, facing the stillness. In 
 another room the housegirl made a faint stir as 
 she moved about, and through the open window 
 the wind brought the dull and heavy odor of the 
 city, the faint hum and undertone of the streets. 
 The man roused himself with a start at last and 
 looked at his wife. Her hands lay folded in her 
 lap, her face was lined and weary. He bustled to 
 his feet. 
 
 "Well, mother," he said uncertainly, "shall we 
 open a little wine . . . for the occasion ... a lit 
 tle toast to the children, all by ourselves? . . ." 
 
 She smiled at him and roused herself. To the 
 
840 PETER KINDRED 
 
 south and to the east, far off, the names of her 
 two children were whispered through the dark 
 ness and were answered, nor was there, south or 
 east, a thought of these two old folk who held their 
 glasses of red wine to the light, and turning to 
 ward each other clinked them together bravely, 
 and wished their children well. 
 
 "Edith," they said, and then, "Peter." 
 
 Don, coming doggedly through the examina 
 tions, took rooms in town over the summer, and 
 continued his apprenticeship in a friendly law 
 office on Wall Street. It was unnecessary to his 
 degree, but as he admitted to Helen, he wanted to 
 be in the east that summer, and rather dreaded 
 the thought of going back to his family. With 
 Don in the city, Helen flatly refused to budge, and 
 since she would not go with her family either to 
 the seashore or to the mountains or, indeed, any 
 where at all, they flounced angrily off and left her 
 in charge of the big house, which she promptly 
 filled full with all manner of radicals, and held 
 committee meetings on birth control in the 
 shrouded parlor. When the parlor maid threat 
 ened to leave at that, she told her she could damn 
 well leave if she wanted to, and that so shocked 
 the parlor maid that she stayed out of spite. 
 Joan was inclined to be a bit upset about the whole 
 affair, and wished that Helen were spending her 
 summer in the country, or that Don had gone 
 home. But Helen took to striding about the city 
 
PETER KINDRED 341 
 
 in low-heeled shoes, and picking up acquaintances 
 among charwomen and bootblacks. 
 
 With Helen a Radical enthusiast, her old shy 
 ness before Don swung about completely into an 
 unusual boldness, and matter-of-factness. For 
 one thing, she insisted on having polygamy out 
 with him, and after an excessively stormy hour or 
 so, professed herself suddenly converted to the 
 logic of it. Thereafter she rather swept Don off 
 his feet with the enthusiasm she put into it ... 
 the theory of it, at any rate . . . and Peter finally 
 very sternly refused to discuss the matter at all, 
 and would do no more than shake his head sorrow 
 fully at mention of it and cover his ears with the 
 palms of his hands. Then Don would begin to 
 shout, and Peter would open his mouth as wide 
 as he could, and howl tremendously, until Don 
 was too out of breath to do more than grunt ex 
 actly like an infuriated wild boar; through the 
 din Helen always managed to find some particu 
 larly heartless and sexless thing to say, with a 
 convincing air of really believing it. Finally Don 
 and Peter managed to break a tea cup between 
 them, and Joan, out of patience, stood them both 
 in a corner for five minutes, and told Helen to be 
 have herself. 
 
 On a June morning Joan awoke early and com 
 plained of nausea. She was better after her 
 breakfast coffee, but the following day she re 
 mained thoughtfully at home, and Peter, in his 
 office, tortured himself with terrible imaginings 
 
842 PETER KINDRED 
 
 and swore Joan should see a doctor the very mo 
 ment he came home, and if one doctor were not 
 enough, why then all the doctors in the city, and 
 that, besides, he was a fool and a chump to let 
 her eat in all those helter skelter restaurants. She 
 was curiously silent when he came home at last, a 
 bit reserved and almost self-conscious, and 
 watched Peter with a look half troubled and half 
 smiling. 
 
 "Joan," said Peter firmly, "I m going to tele 
 phone a doctor." 
 
 She laughed at that, and came over to him and 
 put her hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "I ve been to see a doctor, dear," she said. 
 Her hand was unsteady on his shoulder, and Peter 
 grew frightened. He sprang up. 
 
 "What . . . what s the matter?" he stam 
 mered. 
 
 "I m going to have a baby," she said with a 
 half frightened catch in her voice. 
 
 The blood flowed out of Peter s body, his insides 
 melted away, and he was left a mere numb intel 
 lect staring and staring. Finally he wet his lips 
 and gulped. 
 
 "Gee," he said hoarsely. 
 
 Hearing and movement swam back to him; he 
 walked across to the table and took up a book and 
 put it down again. Then, seemingly, he remem 
 bered Joan, and put his arm clumsily around her 
 shoulders. Then he sat down in a chair and stared 
 at her, and then he got up, and then he sat down 
 
PETER KINDRED "343 
 
 again. All the words in the world had suddenly 
 dashed together in a great white ball, and were 
 spinning aronnd madly, while he watched nearby 
 and waited for a word or two to come flying out. 
 It seemed as though the only word left outside the 
 whirling was Gee, and so he repeated that again, 
 and waited for another word to come. Finally, 
 one came. 
 
 " Jinks, " he said. 
 
 All that evening he smiled at Joan with the 
 helpless, pathetic smile of an utter idiot. 
 
 It was Helen who told the news to Don. 
 
 "Don, old man," she cried to him breathlessly, 
 "we re going to have a baby!" 
 
 "Helen!" Don cried, and his heart stopped 
 beating. 
 
 "Joan, yon silly thing," she said. 
 
 They capered about, holding each other s hands 
 like children. 
 
 "Isn t it perfectly great?" she said. 
 
 "Aren t we to have a party!" Don asked at 
 last. 
 
 "We two?" 
 
 "Of coarse not. Don t yon remember that 
 Peter promised ..." 
 
 "Hush, hush . . . Why, Peter grows absolutely 
 pale at the very mention of it." 
 
 Joan insisted upon continuing her office work 
 for a while, at any rate ; they would need all the 
 money they could save, she said, and Peter, per- 
 
344 PETER KINDRED 
 
 force, agreed with her, although unwillingly. Yet 
 he, in turn, insisted that she rest at evening, and 
 so he cooked the snpper, clumsily enough, and 
 washed the dishes, and broke a few, and burned 
 himself upon one occasion, and scalded himself 
 upon another. 
 
 June wilted away into heat and the July sun 
 blazed down on the city, searching out the slums 
 with sullen fury. The wind dropped away and 
 the drone of spring gave place to a sort of breath- 
 lessness, a gloomy and uneasy quietness, stirred 
 with faint muttering. Peter was not unused to 
 the city in summer, and yet there was a hopeless 
 ness about it in the slums, a sort of personal un 
 friendliness, a closeness and intolerable intimacy 
 with the heat, as though the sun was just a bit 
 nearer, the air a bit stiller and stickier and heavier. 
 The pavements, burning in the sun all day, kept 
 the city hot through the night ; in the early morn 
 ing there was a little wind, but it died away long 
 before noon. With no wind to stir them, the slums 
 were like an uncleaned pool, odors drifted idly 
 in the streets, close and sour odors, and clung to 
 the tenements. During the day the avenues were 
 deserted ; at nightfall, women in draggled blouses, 
 and soiled wrappers, with untidy hair, leaned 
 from their windows and called down to the streets. 
 Babies played at the windows and grew dirty; 
 men in coarse undershirts, with bare necks and 
 bare arms sat on the steps of the tenements and 
 loitered in the damp doorways. In the gutters 
 
PETER KINDRED 
 
 children played their monotonous games ; gangs of 
 ragged muckers wandered about idly and the ulu- 
 lation of their shouting echoed and reechoed 
 through the streets. . . . 
 
 "Weeallee, weeallee . . ." 
 
 From Second Avenue came the dull grumble 
 and thunder of the elevated, and beyond Third 
 lay the city silent to the Park, it seemed, with 
 houses shuttered and boarded up, and no wind 
 even to stir the dust in the streets. Only in the 
 slums the people sprawled and waited, held their 
 breath, and on a few window sills red geraniums 
 drooped and withered. 
 
 It took the courage out of Joan. Her face grew 
 white and peaked, her slender hands more thin, 
 almost transparent, her lithe movements slower 
 and slower. She made no complaint, and if Peter 
 were watching her, she smiled. Alone, sometimes, 
 she cried; she did not know why, but she could 
 not help herself. For a while, in the mornings, 
 she was insufferably nauseated, and went to her 
 work faint and dizzy. She hid her trouble relig 
 iously from Peter, who had no inkling of it; he 
 thought her very brave, however, seeing how tired 
 she was; she could not conceal that. But she 
 would not give up her office work. 
 
 "Not yet, Peter," she said. "We shall need 
 every littlest penny." 
 
 Peter plunged into his work with all the power 
 of his mind and body. He was aroused to battle 
 for himself as he had never been, fired with the 
 
346 PETER KINDRED 
 
 realization of his manhood, his fatherhood. 
 Belief, theory, intolerance were forgotten, he 
 grasped his pencil like a club. 
 
 "It s up to me," Peter said. 
 
 "It may not be Carver to do another man s 
 boasting for him," he added, "but I ve little time 
 now to bother with that." 
 
 So Peter went patiently and energetically to 
 work and made friends in the office. It wasn t 
 hard to swing into the stride of things; it was 
 good to be a unit in some brisk energy, to claim 
 companionship with men in an effort. With only 
 the need of doing well to worry him, things 
 changed about somewhat, and seemed to be of dif 
 ferent stuff. 
 
 "After all, dear," he said to Joan, "we stand 
 as a sort of interpreter. That s rough, of course, 
 but generally . . . that is, we find out what a chap 
 wants to say, or what he ought to want to say, and 
 then we take it to the sort of people he ought to 
 say it to, and put it so that they can understand 
 it. It s not so bad, you know, from that point of 
 view." 
 
 A few men spoke of Peter Kindred, linked him 
 up casually with the Hammond Watch and the re 
 membered jellies ; in August he was invited to take 
 charge of the copy department on a small maga 
 zine. 
 
 He hurried home to Joan with the news, and 
 tumbled up the steps. 
 
 "Joan, old lady, what do you think? . . ." 
 
PETER KINDRED 347 
 
 Joan, however, was of the opinion that he d find 
 a wider field in the agency, and thought it would 
 be better to stay there for a time, at any rate, get 
 deeper into the matter, and watch for bigger 
 things. Still it was significant and unexpectedly 
 pleasant to be asked to take charge of anything, 
 and quite worthy of the little spree that Peter 
 suggested and Joan, although she had no taste for 
 it, had not the heart to refuse. 
 
 " Jimminy," Peter Said. "I d like to get you out 
 of the slums, dear." 
 
 "Well . . . yes," Joan said. 
 
 "You see," Peter began timidly, "I thought 
 that perhaps if I said yes to that offer ..." 
 
 "No, dear," Joan said decidedly, "we must 
 look ahead, you know . . . things will be all 
 right." 
 
 "Well . . . surely next year . . . somehow. 
 The country ... or something." 
 
 "I hardly know. There s coal, and ... all 
 sorts of things. But the country would be splen 
 did for ... little Peter." 
 
 Little Peter! 
 
 Why, of course. He d have to be considered 
 from then on, and if the country would be splen 
 did for him, that was important. Peter laughed 
 quietly; he had been thinking only of Joan and of 
 himself, and all that time there were three to be 
 considered ... a family! As he laughed his life 
 grew and grew, sounded depths, reached out be 
 yond frontiers, brimmed full of tenderness and 
 
348 PETER KINDRED 
 
 happiness. What a tremendous big family little 
 Peter made ! 
 
 At noon they walked together in Madison 
 Square, and sat on a shaded bench. They did not 
 like the Square but there was no other place to 
 go, and Joan was too tired just to walk up and 
 down. The walks were crowded with paupers, 
 the fountains played and old men stood staring at 
 the rhythmic rise and fall of the water; they 
 watched it dumbly and helplessly, old men with 
 bent knees and baggy trousers and watery eyes. 
 On the benches sat ragged men, unshaven and re 
 markably dirty, with tumbled brown socks hang 
 ing over their shoes. Some read old newspapers, 
 some leaned back and slept and snored, many just 
 sat. Here and there the bleared wreck of a 
 woman, with wild, unkempt hair and untied shoes, 
 sunned herself and mumbled. Peter hated these 
 people, hated these wrecks more than he had 
 hated the slums, more than he had ever hated 
 anything all his life long. Indeed, these were a 
 vastly different matter from the slums ; here was 
 no force, no evil, no unrest, but here was utter, 
 utter defeat, man come to infinitely less than noth 
 ing, like a drifting and horrible decay. 
 
 Men walked swiftly across the Square, talking 
 and gesturing, young men with unpleasant faces, 
 dark, blunted, bepowdered little stenographers, 
 factory girls, in pairs and groups. Motors whined 
 by up and down Fifth Avenue, busses jarred and 
 bumped over the cobblestones of Twenty-third 
 
PETER KINDRED 349 
 
 Street. Across the Square, beneath the high, 
 sunny tower of the Metropolitan, perspiring men 
 in shirt sleeves stood upon soap boxes, tossing 
 about above the sea of faces around them, shout 
 ing and gesturing, calling for socialism, calling 
 for the brotherhood of man, calling for God and 
 religion and what not besides, working themselves 
 into a veritable frenzy, their voices hoarse, their 
 faces dripping wet, their hair blowing about. 
 They had been bitten by a Cause . . . below them 
 faces looked up passively; there was nothing else 
 to do ; and it was pleasant to stand in the sun and 
 listen idly to a hoarse shouting. Across from them 
 a man put up a stand and started to sharpen a 
 knife ; after a bit he cut up some wood, and hacked 
 at a bar of lead, and sharpened the knife again, 
 repeating a nasal formula as he labored. A mes 
 senger boy stopped and watched him, a crowd 
 drifted about him slowly, and stood waiting. . . . 
 For what? For nothing at all. Just waiting. 
 
 "If I could write about the slums," Peter said, 
 "I should want to draw them just that way, stand 
 ing about, together, dully, waiting. And then 
 working like trojans. And then standing about 
 again, and waiting." 
 
 "Why don t you, dear?" Joan said. 
 
 "That would be a rummy go, wouldn t it? I 
 might . . . some day when I have my own den 
 . . . and everything." 
 
 "Peter," Joan said suddenly, "do you know 
 that milk has gone up a penny?" 
 
350 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Yes," Peter said, "I know. A dairymen s 
 league, or something. Still . . ." 
 
 "But Peter," Joan said, "what of the slum 
 babies?" 
 
 He smiled. "I think," he murmured, "you d 
 write a better book than I, old lady." 
 
 Joan sighed. "We ll have to think of all that, 
 too, Peter," she said. 
 
 He was silent for a time, watching the sky above 
 the buildings to the south. 
 
 "Do you know," he said at last, "I ll rather 
 want him to live on the gold coast . . . some 
 where near Holyoke Street/ 
 
 The wonder of it wasn t that he was going to 
 have a baby and be its father, but that he was 
 going to have Joan s baby and that Joan would 
 be its mother and hold it in her arms and make 
 little sounds at it. This was the remarkable part 
 of the whole matter, that his love for her had 
 come to something real, as real as he was him 
 self, something he could touch and watch and hug 
 if he wanted to, when no one was looking . . . and 
 after all, this strange little creature would be 
 neither more nor less than his love for Joan 
 caught, condensed, patted and moulded into shape 
 . . . and he could play little piggee with its toes 
 ... he grew riotously and happily confused, and 
 the baby kept changing like a Wonderland baby 
 from a formless expression of his love for his 
 wife to a creature with toes to be loved for them 
 selves, and then back again. But out of it all 
 
PETER KINDRED 351 
 
 came one thing clear, even a deeper tenderness 
 for Joan, a greater humility, a wider courage. 
 Touched with fatherhood, his life crowded for 
 ward like a swift ship under a full spread of sail. 
 Men were other ships to be gaily saluted; he 
 walked with a sort of humorous pride, and made 
 decisions about things with the satisfied solemnity 
 of an old man. 
 
 And yet he planned very little, for that would 
 have clouded the serene breathlessness of waiting. 
 
 In September Joan s strength gave out, and 
 Peter, given a fortnight for himself, took her 
 north to her parents at Marblehead, to let the 
 green ocean, foaming against the rocks, the clear 
 sky and the bright wind struggle and blow against 
 her listlessness. She sat out all day long under 
 a tree, white and tired, and Peter read to her, and 
 old friends hurried to see her, and blood came 
 swinging back to her cheeks again slowly. 
 
 They were fortunately gone, for a tidal wave 
 of heat piled up in the west and broke itself upon 
 New York; horses fell in the streets, and in the 
 slums people rotted and died and babies wailed 
 incessantly. Milk went up another penny, and 
 there was talk of a shortage ; hollow-eyed women 
 gathered about the milk carts dumbly, holding 
 their babies. 
 
 After a week of it, Helen called up Don. 
 
 "Don," she said, "if I don t get away from 
 these streets, to-night, I shall die." 
 
852 PETER KINDRED 
 
 " There are boats and things/ Don said. 
 
 "Will you go?" 
 
 "Where!" 
 
 "On a boat, any boat to Coney Island." 
 
 "Oh, Lord," Don moaned. 
 
 "Will you go?" 
 
 "To Coney Island?" 
 
 "If you don t, I ll go alone, and have an ad 
 venture." 
 
 "I ll go," said Don hastily. 
 
 They rattled down to the Battery on the ele 
 vated, peering below them at empty black streets, 
 in the warehouse district, rushing along between 
 blank walls, shuttered windows, secret and gloomy 
 places beyond the reach of the world. At the Bat 
 tery they stood at the edge of the city, the mass 
 of towers rising beyond them, the sonorous canons 
 of the avenues, the huddled houses, the echoing 
 streets at their back. Above their heads the ele 
 vated shrilled around a curve to where, spread 
 out behind them, lay the city, sounding with 
 many voices under the night. Here, at the edge, 
 was the salt air of the sea ; the moonlight lay dim 
 across the bay; the red light of a distant ship 
 burned like a jewel on the water, and a lighted 
 ferry moved in myriad tiny squares of gold stead 
 ily far out from shore. From the Narrows came 
 blowing faintly the sound of a fog horn. 
 
 They bought their tickets and climbed up the 
 dusty, wooden stairs of the wharf, to find them 
 selves in a smother of people. It was hot and 
 
PETER KINDRED 353 
 
 close nnder the roof; the air was lifeless. Don 
 fanned himself with his hat, and Helen went ex 
 ploring. She came back to him finally, and tugged 
 at his arm. 
 
 "Don," she said, "I want some popcorn and 
 some peanuts. " 
 
 The boat swung in against the dock, the people 
 huddled closer together, the gates were pulled 
 open and the crowd surged through. Beyond the 
 gates, the two of them came clear of folk, and 
 filled their lungs with air again. Then Helen ran 
 lightly down the steps, and up through the boat 
 to the top deck, Don hurrying along after her. 
 
 They found a place in the middle of the ship, 
 a raised deck with room enough for them to sit 
 there. A bell tinkled clearly, below them the en 
 gines thrummed, the paddle wheels smashed at the 
 water, the ship shuddered; above them a steel 
 piston moved up and down in the darkness ; the 
 ship gained headway ; the land fell away, the tow 
 ers of the city grew smaller and smaller, a dark, 
 shadowy mass against the paler night, spun out in 
 occasional high pin points of yellow light, and far 
 off, now, through the moonlight, the solitary red 
 beacon of the Woolworth in the sky. 
 
 Don looked about him at the crowded deck. 
 Couples sat with their arms about each other, and 
 kissed each other, the women half defiantly 
 ashamed, the men rowdily unaware of their neigh 
 bors. From below drifted a dance tune, the thin 
 wail of a violin, the jingle of a piano. The ship 
 
354 PETER KINDRED 
 
 moved swiftly and steadily; little by little in the 
 eyes of men and women other folk were lost, and 
 lovers saw only each other, the night, the blue-gray 
 moonlight on the water, the wide sky overhead, 
 heard only their own whispers and the swish of 
 water under the boat. The moonlight touched 
 their faces, and rippled in shadows across the 
 looming funnels of the ship ; the wind blew steadily 
 from the sea, and fluttered in the folds of dresses. 
 Dark hulks of anchored ships drifted by, a red 
 lantern burning, and a green lantern, lazily rising 
 to the slow waves of the bay. Through the Nar 
 rows they went, close to the wooded, misted shore, 
 lanterns among trees, the yellow windows of cot 
 tages, into the wide, level stretch of water along 
 the silent pathway of the moon. Don and 
 Helen talked in whispers together, of Peter, 
 of themselves, of happiness and life; a wisp of 
 her hair blew across Don s face; close to them, a 
 man and woman, cheek to cheek, dreamed of the 
 ocean, of lands beyond the ocean, populated, some 
 how, by such as they, of friendly cities and fa 
 miliar mountains, their tenement forgotten. The 
 lights of Luna Park rose distantly along the 
 water, nearer and nearer, and they were there. 
 
 All things were abandoned, then, but laughter 
 and excitement, and Don and Helen, their pockets 
 stuffed with pop corn, dragged each other about 
 from one thing to another, shouting in the dark 
 as their cars sped down the steep railways, whis 
 pering to each other in the Old Mill, winning no 
 
PETER KINDRED 355 
 
 less than two tea cups and a large woolly bear 
 from the booths and galleries they could not 
 pass by. 
 
 The last boat sounded near the wharf, and again 
 they sat on the top deck among the crowds, and 
 felt the wind blow on their faces and watched the 
 dim smother of foam spread fainter and fainter 
 behind them. Nearby two hatless fellows started 
 to sing; the chorus swelled; Don sang along in a 
 wild, discordant basso. 
 
 "Don t pickle my bones," he sang, and Helen, 
 beside him, let her head rest timidly against his 
 shoulder, while his eyes dreamed out over the 
 water, and his spirit grew big with fellowship, 
 richly and carelessly content among those people 
 in the moonlight. But Helen, with closed eyes, 
 felt only the beating of her own heart, and it 
 seemed to her that she and Don were there alone, 
 quite silent . . . 
 
 "It has been splendid, Don," she said, when 
 they parted that night, and for a while Don stood 
 looking at her, still holding her fingers lightly. 
 
 "It certainly has, old Helen," he said at last 
 slowly. 
 
 Again the next evening he called for her, and 
 they walked together up Eiverside, to sit, finally, 
 upon a mottled bench beneath a great tree, the 
 dusky river below them, the slow-moving boats. 
 Don laced his fingers about his knees, and they 
 sat and talked of work and of the city. 
 
 "Imagine," Helen said, "our having a baby!" 
 
356 PETER KINDRED 
 
 " Shall yon pinch it?" Don asked. 
 
 "No . . . you must be very careful how yon 
 pinch a baby. It s apt to give it bad habits." 
 
 "Peter writes that Joan is stronger." 
 
 "Don ... do you think that . . . perhaps . . . 
 anything could happen?" 
 
 Don sighed. "I don t believe she should have 
 gone on working, Helen. But, of course . . . fish 
 hooks . . . it 11 be all right." 
 
 They spoke of the city, of the summer. 
 
 "The milk has given out," Helen said. "The 
 dairymen aren t satisfied . . . someone must be 
 richer than he has any right to be ... but no one 
 will admit it." 
 
 "But I thought . . . from the papers . . ." 
 
 "It s not official yet. I was in Ohrystie Street 
 to-day, and then I went up to Peter s street . . . 
 the women are frantic. But who cares ? I don t 
 know ... I don t think anyone cares, Don, 
 whether the poor die or not ... if only there s 
 no violence." 
 
 They walked down the Drive arm in arm. It 
 was as they had always done, and yet, vaguely, 
 Don missed something; some trifle was not as it 
 had once been . . . and yet it was. Perhaps 
 where Helen s head had rested so lightly . . . but 
 Don had no inkling of it ... if that was it. 
 
 He spent a restless three days, then, wonder 
 ing what it was he so wanted to tell Helen that 
 should make him so eager to see her again. He 
 could think of nothing . . . The strike broke over 
 
PETER KINDRED 357 
 
 the city, and in the slums women wrecked milk 
 carts and fought for milk for their babies ; from 
 the west side women poured east, wealthy and 
 horrified, and blundered about. The companies 
 blamed the farmers, and the farmers blamed the 
 companies, while the people suffered and won 
 dered and waited. . . . 
 
 For three days Helen lived in the slums from 
 morning till night, finding milk somehow for 
 babies, begging it, fighting for it, and stealing it, 
 and during those days Don could not see her at 
 all nor even discover her to talk to. After a day 
 of overwhelming silence he was uneasy and there 
 after restlessness grew swiftly on him, and this 
 thing he so wanted to tell her, swelled in him 
 dumbly and bit at him with its importance, drove 
 work out of his head, filled his body with crying 
 rebellion, until at last, at noon of the fourth day, 
 he walked the streets of the lower city in such a 
 gnawing fever of impatience that it seemed almost 
 as though his body would burst with a horrible 
 bang and scatter him into a thousand pieces. And 
 yet he had formulated nothing ... he trudged 
 in the shadow of the street bottom, cursing the 
 high buildings that sneered down at him so in 
 solently, grumbling at the summer, hating the 
 hurrying people who moved in his path. He came 
 back to his office with his lunch untasted, hot, 
 sullen, insubordinate. There was a telephone 
 number on his desk. He pulled off his coat and 
 pulled the telephone to him angrily. 
 
358 PETER KINDRED 
 
 "Yon may get me that number," he said to the 
 girl. 
 
 He waited without thought, brooding, drifting 
 with the impatient tide of his body. 
 
 " Hello. " 
 
 Was he Mr. Don Mark? Good. The Jefferson 
 Market Court speaking . . . Magistrate O Reil 
 ly s clerk ... a woman there . . . one Helen 
 Graff ... or Goff . . . charged . . . disseminat 
 ing birth control literature . . . stealing milk . . . 
 assaulting an officer . . . bail . . . 
 
 Three minutes later a hatless, coatless, murder 
 ous, blond young man came charging through the 
 swinging doors of a court room like an angry 
 bull, and was promptly fined for contempt. . . . 
 
 The Kindreds came down from Marblehead, a 
 bit tanned, and Joan was her old self again, or 
 seemed to be, although she rested a good deal, and 
 her face and hands were very thin. But Peter 
 came down in love with the sea, and more than 
 ever in love with New England ; it touched Helen 
 to see how wistfully Joan looked at Peter when 
 she thought herself unseen, and how Peter bustled 
 about her and took care of her. Those days of 
 rest in the north after their community of strug 
 gle, had wrought and linked them together, as 
 though there, in a meadow above the sea, they had 
 fallen in love with each other all over again. And 
 Helen was happy, too, and quiet. She whispered 
 it to Joan. 
 
PETER KINDRED 359 
 
 "You glorious child," Joan cried, "are you 
 sure?" 
 
 Helen s laugh was low and deep with content. 
 "You didn t see his face when he saw me in 
 court," she said, "and I was a sight for the gods 
 ... all beaten to pieces and muddy . . . But you 
 mustn t tell a soul, because he s only finding it 
 out for himself now, the dear, funny old thing." 
 
 Peter was in town for the last days of the milk 
 famine, and watched the long line of miserable 
 women standing before a relief station, their 
 starved babies hugged tight to their breasts. 
 
 "How useless it all is," he thought, "this tre 
 mendous waste of human life and human energy, 
 for lack of a power to direct it. ... So many 
 wretched beings dying of too little, while those we 
 trust to feed them are at each other s throats for 
 more . . ." 
 
 "There would be enough for all," he said, "if 
 only there were a power to arrange it. A power 
 impersonal beyond selfishness, and wise beyond 
 discontent, a power to hate ... to make an end 
 of greed, an end of grasping . . . 
 
 "To allot to each man his decent share . . . 
 
 "Perhaps some day all men will be forced to 
 fight bitterly for their race life, fight side by side 
 against the darkness, husbanding their energy, 
 making use of all that man can devise, only to live 
 . . . out of such a catastrophe that power may be 
 born, grim, urgent, relentless . . . and then, at 
 last, every man will be necessary to every other 
 
860 PETER KINDRED 
 
 man . . . there will be room for neither the arro 
 gant, nor the lazy . . . there will be room for 
 neither pride nor profit, but only for a great will 
 to live and work and hold our grasp on the 
 sun. ..." 
 
 The fall winds swept through the city, boom 
 ing out of the west, blowing the sky bright, bur 
 nishing the copper gleam of sun on the roof tops. 
 Outdoors drifted an odor of gathering chill, of 
 ending, of hurrying, and at night the street lamps 
 burned clear in the city through the wind. From 
 his office window Peter watched the clouds move 
 across the north; beyond lay Cambridge, her halls 
 echoing again to voices and footsteps, the drift 
 and tang of far-off fires, the kindly Yard, the old, 
 old houses . . . Frank . . . and youth resurgent, 
 eager and untried, light-hearted . . . how the 
 odor of those years came to him from the north 
 again, above the tumbled papers of his desk ! 
 
 In the den of the tenement sat Joan, sewing at 
 tiny dresses with awkward and impetuous fingers. 
 
 The wind boomed louder and shrilled about the 
 roofs, the sky grew grayer and grayer, the sun 
 sank further to the south. From the north drifted 
 a fine flurry of snow, fell lightly above the roof 
 tops, melted. 
 
 December grew old, and for Christmas the shop 
 windows were bravely dight in tinsel and baubles 
 and holly and tops, and the air tingled faintly with 
 the scent of pine trees. On the avenues, before 
 
PETER KINDRED 361 
 
 boxes for the poor, red-hooded and white-whis 
 kered Santa Clauses stood shivering with cold, 
 and rang little tinkling bells without hope. Be 
 yond the tenements, the river was gray and wrin 
 kled and chill. Then the river was still and deep, 
 heavy green. And then from the sea swooped a 
 white tumult of storm, slanting the snowflakes 
 through the sounding streets, tearing at the cor 
 nices of roofs, smothering the city in piling white. 
 And through the storm Peter s voice calling Bos 
 ton desperately, across the desolate and wind 
 swept land, his telephone before him. 
 
 Silent and anxious, Joan s mother raced south 
 through the flutter and beat of snow. 
 
 The storm spent its fury, tattered away into fly 
 ing gray clouds at night, and the sun, rising 
 golden in the east, kindled the city to a blaze of 
 white and shone in Joan s still room at last. And 
 Don came wearily out of the tenement, and stum 
 bled blindly west. 
 
 Helen caught at his arm and shook him as he 
 came in, but his face was tell-tale. She grew pale, 
 and her eyes widened. 
 
 "The baby . . . Don?" she said faintly. He 
 could not speak ; he shook his head. 
 
 She pressed her clenched fist against her mouth, 
 and struggled fiercely with her words. 
 
 "Joan?" she whispered at last. Don took a 
 deep breath. 
 
 "The baby is dead. They think that Joan will 
 come out all right . . . finally ..." 
 
362 PETER KINDRED 
 
 His voice trembled. He was very tired, and his 
 eyes filled with tears. Clumsily he put out his 
 hands to her, and lifted his head. 
 
 " Helen/ he said, and she took his hands and 
 pressed them and bent her head above them. 
 
 In the tenement a young doctor whispered to a 
 sober, white-capped nurse in brief, staccato sen 
 tences. At the window a woman with a drawn 
 face stared out blindly at the street in Joan s 
 room was silence and the heavy odor of chloro 
 form. 
 
 In his den Peter sat alone and bowed his head 
 above his shivering hands. 
 
 "A power to control ... a power to hate . . . 
 wise and impersonal . . ." 
 
 Isn t God there ? " he cried at last. * Isn t God 
 anywhere?" He stood erect. "I will go and find 
 God," he said. 
 
 But all men go to find Him, the armies of their 
 faith thundering before them ; on every field their 
 faith is challenged and confused, and on every 
 field they search with outflung arms to come to 
 grips with God. 
 
 THE END 
 

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