JARVIS OF HARVARD JARVIS OF HARVARD LISTEN ! ' " ^44444444444444444444444444444*^$ I J A R V I S OF? (HARVARD? I By S I f * * Reginald Wright Kauffman With a frontispiece by ROBERT EDWARDS f w L/MKEd * J Boston: L. C. PAGE & J | COMPANY, Publishers | Copyright, 1901, by L. C. PAGE f COMPANY (INCORPORATED) ALL RIGHTS RK8KRVK0 TO i9Sg l&ncle, COLONEL SAMUEL WRIGHT. " more than kin," the first, the best, the last, Do you remember how we, hand in hand, The man and child, wonld leave the troubled town And tread the summer highways, gay and green, With feet unwearied, while the butterflies, All yellow, danced above the buttercups, All yellow too ? How underneath the trees, Tall, graceful, pungent pines, that whispered low Strange, wistful secrets, like the trembling lips Of old men at their prayers, we looked far out From hilltops over rivers to far hills ? And how you peopled all that fairyland Of wood and sky for me ? Most tried, most true, Nearest and dearest, in the whirl of life On trifling friendships and on casual loves 1 see men waste their lives in little lusts. Not so at least have we. Just this I pray : That some time, not so long, as joyous ghosts, After the weary web is woven quite, We two may wander forth again, we two, And hand in hand once more, the man and child, Live those days over then forevermore. R. W. K. COLUMBIA, PA., January ist, 1901. PREFACE. ONE for whose literary judgment I have the great- est respect has warned me, after reading the manu- script of this story, that, in spite of the prevailing notion in regard to the futility of a novel's preface, some sort of foreword would be necessary for "Jar- vis " in case I did not want him to be misunder- stood. This, my friend was good enough to explain, was not because I had not been sufficiently clear in the tale itself, but because those few readers most easily offended were to be met only by a more dogmatic form of statement than is to be permitted in the course of a legitimate narrative. Acting, therefore, upon this advice, let me now say, once and for all, that my purpose in writing this book was simply to tell a story. In the course of that en- deavour I have tried merely to show what should, at any rate, be generally understood that American college life, not only at Harvard but at all our larger places of learning, is in no great respect different from life outside of those institutions. It is governed by the same laws and offers corresponding rewards Vlll PREFACE. and penalties, which are, with equal avidity, sought after or avoided. In so far as we concern ourselves with both its academic and social possibilities, Har- vard life is not unlike that of any other great college in that there, as in the outside world, the man who succeeds is the man who sets before him some ideal other than that of pleasure. The men who seek enjoyment only are common to all colleges, and are, from their very nature, conspicuous in all, but they are not in the majority and they do not succeed. If, then, this story is for any reason to be considered as distinct from other college stories, it is simply be- cause so few writers of this class of fiction have really understood the actual Undergraduate, or, understand- ing him, have set him truthfully upon paper. They have, on the contrary, done a tremendous amount of harm by treating him nearly always as merely an irresponsible boy, whereas he is really neither the child they consider him nor the man he considers himself. He is, in a word, on the one hand, in the most delicate state of transition, as susceptible as a chemist's scale whereof a feather's weight may turn the beam; and, on the other, a soul in which the man and boy are terribly, if secretly, contending for ultimate and enduring supremacy. R. W. K. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAOB I. THE BOY 1 II. THE SHIRT OF NESSUS 17 III. TRAUME 27 IV. THE ETERNAL MASCULINE 33 V. TOWER LYCEUM 49 VI. A GIRL IN A GARDEN 70 VII. A JUNIOR UNDERSTUDY 86 VIII. EXPLANATIONS 99 IX. DESTINY'S POST FACTO 108 X. EXIT A BOY 124 XL THE WAY OF A MAID 140 XII. A CHANCE ENCOUNTER 152 XIII. MELODRAMA IN LITTLE 166 XIV. "AT CARDS FOR KISSES" 185 XV. A BROKEN REED 207 XVI. WHEN KINGS GO FORTH TO BATTLE ... 227 XVII. AN ATHLETIC TRAGEDY 240 XVIII. THE PRICE OF DEFEAT ........ 262 XIX. RETROGRESSION 281 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER PACK XX. THE LAW OF COINCIDENCE 299 XXI. THE GOOD FAIRY 311 XXII. HALF GODS Go 326 XXIII. THE NEW DISPENSATION 343 XXIV. WHAT A DANCE MAY Do 358 XXV. GOKURAKF 373 XXVI. THE MAN 383 XXVII. MAN AND WOMAN 399 JARVIS OF HARVARD. CHAPTER I. THE BOY. SANDERS THEATRE was crowded. The tradi- tional sea of faces stretched from the front row beneath the platform, where sat the chattering groups lucky enough to have come down to col- lege with an acquaintance already formed at one of the large preparatory schools, far back to where the most tardy and lonely Freshman from Kansas was crushed against the wall of the rear aisle, strain- ing neck and eye and ear. On the platform were seating themselves those " Officers of Instruction and Government " who had not been so fortunate as to escape impression for this service of welcoming the College newcomers. To many of these the careless glances which they cast over their deferential audience revealed nothing new, and therefore, for them, nothing striking. The upturned faces, so far as appearances went, were sub- stantially the same faces that had been there the year F HARVARD. before and would be there in the years to come. And yet each of those countenances was the more or less imperfect index to a final character then in the mak- ing; the inadequate concentration of the hopes of some half dozen persons, approaching, often with blushing awkwardness and unconfessed hesitation, the psychological instant of finality. Matters of such small instant did not, in any case, trouble the faces themselves. On the con- trary, they masked but poorly an impatience which had to do with only the immediate future. Here at last was " Bloody Monday," the terrible day in the Freshman calendar, of which " old grads " had told them with sinister winks and awful, cryptic sugges- tions; the first Monday night of the College year, when dire things were to happen between Massa- chusetts and University, and every new lad who roomed on the Yard must have a punch ready for the raids of upper classmen. Of course, nobody had prepared a punch. Nobody ever does. But, respect- ful as all were, every one was anxious to get clear of the waves of mild restraint that emanated from that platform in Sanders, and to try conclusions with whatever waited without. Jarvis, seated in the centre of the pit, was not exempt from this, but he was also oddly aware of the spiritual significance of the scene about him. He wondered if the fellow at his right, a lad almost THE BOY. 3 as tall as himself, and not half so broad, shared his sense of it, and if, after all, he cared. For his own part, he was still much of the Laodi- cean. He belonged as yet to neither one extreme nor the other of the life about him. In fact, he had been a trifle late in arriving at Cambridge, and, for that and other reasons less pleasant, his initiatory experience had been one of turmoil. Sitting in the midst of this throng of lads, among whom, as yet unknown, were his destined companions for the next years of his life, he tried in vain to recall the greater part of the past few days. Beyond that first glimpse of the Yard, which next to his last sight of it stands out the most vivid impression in the life of a Harvard under- graduate, little was clear to him. The trips from adviser to instructor, from Freshman meeting to office, with the huge orange course-card under his arm ; the old buildings, with their quaint, staring, little window-panes ; the hundreds of new faces, all had produced on him only the effect of objects seen in a fog, his mind unable to retain any individual impression. The whole thing was such a series of mental asterisks that it reminded him of nothing so much as the abridged Second Book of the " Faerie Queene" that his tutor had vainly endeavoured to palm off on him the year before. One or two men he knew, and no more. Across 4 JARVIS OF HARVARD. the hall from him, close under the platform, sat Bert Hardy in laughing conversation with some friends from St. Paul's, and near by was Stannard whose acquaintance he had made when registering and trying to remember his religion and his mother's maiden name. But apart from these two, he was a stranger to almost every one of the six hundred of his classmates in the theatre. For the first time he felt a slight twinge of homesickness. Were it not for one person, he could almost wish himself back in Philadelphia and at home. Except for one person . Somebody had approached the front of the plat- form and was speaking from the right of the reading- desk. Jarvis never learned who this was, or indeed whether it was the first speaker. But the house was applauding, and he joined in the cheers. The cause of this enthusiasm was a tall, spare man, in a frock coat, who looked like the tenor of an opera and spoke like the bass. It was at once clear that this man had on his mind the knowledge of the pre- destined class-battle, but it was equally clear that he did not intend to mention it. Apparently believing that the best way to secure his ends was to ignore actual conditions, he merely talked of quiet and peace in terms superbly general, and the applause that constantly interrupted the expression of his laudable sentiments rang none the less sincere be- THE BOY. 5 cause his hearers had not the remotest intention of following his implied advice. The President was introduced. His quiet, com- manding figure and generously brief words of honest welcome were acknowledged with an increase of appreciation, but, it must be confessed, in the mat- ter at hand, had otherwise precisely the same degree of effect. Another and another spoke. The whole calendar of College saints, including a few uncanonised seniors, were, at one time or another, on the stage and every one managed to overlook impending realities while getting in some strong pleas for peace in the abstract. But to overlook impending realities was no longer an easy matter. As the talk flowed gently on, Jarvis became aware of a certain subdued growling sound that occasionally rose to a single shout beneath the high windows and then died away again to a low murmur of discontent, such as one gets from a conventional stage mob. Nor was Jarvis alone in noting this. It was soon evident that there were in the hall others with ears quite as good as his. Hardy, he saw, was leaning far over to a companion two seats away from him and was evidently speaking with considerable excite- ment. His hands were performing a rapid series of combative gestures and his eyes were afire with a delight patently not inspired by the eloquent words 6 JARVIS OF HARVARD. of the unobserved person who was then addressing his "friends of the Class of '03." Indeed, nobody was particularly interested in that address. The tide of impatience climbed higher and higher. From the early scraping of shoes in the back aisles, it had risen to the confused whisper in the pit, and was now seemingly climbing to the stage itself. Throughout the house boys were buttoning up their coats, reaching for their hats, and laying fast hold of the arms of their chairs, in apparent fear that the im- pending explosion would hurl them through the walls of Memorial. In the rear, one or two were already making their way to the doors, and all the while the noise from outside continued to grow in volume and in portent. Children have been known to prevent a panic in a school, and a word from a small soubrette has quieted a fire-affrighted theatre, but it would require the full force of Napoleonic measures to restrain an excited body of newly-made college men. Evidently the authorities knew this, for, whether from experience or instinct, academic instructors are not such fools as those under them would have us believe. At any rate, the man who was speaking in this case stopped short with a reminder of the reception that was about to be held by the Faculty in the other wing of the building. It was like the announcement of the concert that THE BOY. / follows the modern circus. " I will conclude," he said, " by remarking, in conjunction with what I had begun by saying this Yale accusation that in times past we have had to send to England for a man to teach us to row that we" -he was not of the Faculty " need only reply that Yale had to send to Harvard for her first three presidents to teach her how to be a college." The audience had completely missed the connec- tion of these remarks with the body of the speech to which they were intended to serve as a climax. But the sentiment was one that would, of itself, have secured applause, even had it not come as a message of relief, and for that reason the whole Freshman class was on its feet and open-mouthed. But, before a hand fell or a voice from within was raised, there came from the street a sudden deafening cannonade of voices : " Rah, rah, rah ! Rah, rah, rah ! Rah, rah, rah ! Nineteen-two ! " The cheer was given in unison. It was the signal that the big mob had become a little army; it was the defiance of the Sophomores. The effect was instantaneous. A wild cry, half courtesy to the speaker, half answer to the still echo- ing challenge, shook the interior of the theatre, and the next moment the hundreds were crushing into aisles and swarming over seats, in a wild endeavour to 8 JARVIS OF HARVARD. pass at once through doors that gave space for but ten at a time. Jarvis found himself carried along by the crowd and struggling with the best. An hour before he had regarded such exhibitions as too infantile ; now he simply did not pause to reflect at all. " Here, you ! " somebody cried, gripping him by the coat-tail. " You 're a big one. Help get us out first! Somebody's got to get things in order, or they'll make a jelly of us*" Jarvis cast a quick glance over his shoulder, and saw that it was Hardy and his friends who had thus assailed him. " Oh, it 's you ! " cried Hardy. " Well, hurry up. We don't want to rush out there like lobsters. There, that way ! There you go! Down in front! 3-25 A-48 ! That 's the racket ! " Dodging and scrambling, pushed from behind and impeded before, Jarvis found himself somehow at last down the steps and in the hallway. Hardy was still at his back and only two of the other members of the little band were missing. For his own part, when he had gone to the theatre it was with a vague desire to be present at the recep- tion and meet there, in however formal a manner, the men whose names were so familiar to his eye. But at this time there was nothing undetermined about his desires. He wanted to get out of those doors THE BOY. 9 and leap into whatever tumult was raging on the other side of them. This seemed to be the ruling passion of the flushed crowd about him. A few were making an arduous way across the lobby, headed for the peaceful recep- tion, but the great majority wanted to do battle, and at once. Hardy, however, would not have it so. It was just the moment for the rise of a great leader and had this short, robust youth with his almost feminine face, fair hair, and blue eyes, been as versed in the practical psychology of mobs as Danton himself, he could not more successfully have met the occasion. "Oh, fellows, get together! Get together!" he cried, dancing across the doorway with arms appeal- ingly outspread ; " they 're organised out there, and we won't have a smell at the cheese if we go at it a few at a time and just anyhow. Listen a minute, listen ! " He got the silence he asked, or enough, at any rate, to serve, and then, with a glance across the street, to make sure of his data, he continued, " They 're in the street, just the other side of the car track. They 're in lines of about fifty. The curb 's behind the front row, I think, an' the wire fence is hack of about the fifth row. It 's not more than a few feet high, you know, and the entrance by the 10 JARVIS OF HARVARD. Fogg Art Museum 's rather narrow. If we rush 'em in order, we can trip them over the curb and then squeeze them against the fence. Now, go out about ten at a time and run right for the middle. Grab every hat you can. Yell your class so 's not to have your own men against you. Try to force your way into the Yard. We want to get there and keep them out till we 're tired of it, or drive them out when they follow us, if we can. Look out for those steps and for the wires in the Yard. Make for Holworthy. That's at this end, you know. Now then, fellows, nine long Rahs and Nineteen-three ! " His hearers had been falling into rude ranks as he spoke, and when, with hands and voice he led the cheer, the place rang again with their response. Then came the answer of the Sophomores across the way, and the sallying party rushed out to battle. To battle, and, as it seemed at first, to victory. The advance columns, in one of which Jarvis breath- lessly found himself, came down the steps at top speed. By a miracle nobody fell, and, crossing the street, they had gained a terrible momentum by the instant they struck the first line of Sophomores, drawn up with care, but expecting no organised resistance. The crash was terrific. According to tradition, every one was using his arms, and wasting no energy on his fists, so that the whole weight of each single THE BOY. II body was propelled against the opposing line. For the twinkling of an eye the enemy wavered. Before they could rally, the second and the third columns had swept down and, the whole attack being con- centrated upon one point, those who composed the line that had directly faced it, were either pushed aside, or thrown on their backs upon the curb. Slowly, yet with tremendous force, the mass of Fresh- men struggled toward the entrance through which they hoped to gain the Yard. But here they came to a standstill. The Sopho- mores had been wise enough especially to protect this point, and for a time it appeared that no headway was to be made. Nor was that all. Jarvis caught sight of a new danger and the arm of the excited Hardy at one and the same instant. " Look ! " he yelled, putting his mouth close to the St. Paul's boy's ear. " Their long line 's closing around us from the back ! " For Hardy one glance was sufficient. There was no time to lose. " I know what to do ! " he shouted, in answer. " Here, you, and you, and you ! " He was clutching several of the Freshmen nearest to hand and by a series of signs (where his voice failed) was ordering them to follow him. Probably because, even in that dim light, he was recognised as the planner of the original attack, he 12 JARVIS OF HARVARD. got some twenty to obey him, and between them they managed to get clear of the crowd, and work their way into the open street a few rods to the west. " Now," he said, " there 's a gate here behind Hoi worthy. We'll go through there and around back of Fogg. Then we '11 catch 'em in the rear and open up the way. Go quick till you get there. Stop when I do. Then form a V, and at 'em hard and all together from the rear. Yell your class when you strike, but not a word before ! " His plan was carried out to the letter. They re- treated half way up the board walk to Sever, formed in two lines, which met with Jarvis as the head, and then, with arms tight about each other's shoulders, came thundering down upon the Sophomores' rear. Some had heard them coming and turned to resist. They were brushed aside without pause, and only weakened the strength of the wall the V was aimed to strike. " Heads down ! " cried Hardy. " Nineteen-three ! " There was another horrible shock. Jarvis' head struck some one in the stomach, and that stomach seemed to vanish before him as the paper in the hoop before the circus rider. Another and another con- cussion followed, and all at once he found that the man next ahead was calling " Nineteen-three ! " and, turning about, he followed Hardy in the now open way to the Yard. THE BOY 13 Nevertheless, he was not a little dazed, and as to what immediately followed he was never afterward particularly clear. They had formed again in front of Holworthy and the Sophomores had shortly followed, sweeping around from behind Thayer, whence they rushed en masse upon the advancing Freshmen. In a minute nearly all the few lights had been extinguished and the swirling clouds of men were hopelessly intermixed. The only way to identify oneself was to cry the year of one's class and strike blindly, but open handed, at any who cried otherwise. Vain were the attempts of overzealous instructors to quell the disturbance. They got no further than the outskirts ; they were well jostled for their pains, and generally ended by going the way of all peace- makers. From the steps of Univerity, Seniors cheered on the Sophomores, while the Juniors did as much for the Freshmen. The tide of battle rolled from Holworthy to Gray's and from Thayer to Matthews'. Many an upper classman found the temp- tation too much for him, and rushed into the fray. Here and there little knots of Freshmen would break out from the twisting mass and form again, but gen- erally it was a battle of every man for himself. Yet, up to a certain point, it was a good-natured fight, and the method of war consisted for the most part only of pushing an enemy over the low wires 14 JARVIS OF HARVARD that everywhere intersect the turf and mark out the paths. Soon, however, the arena became so deep a slough that to be thrown into the mud was no pleasant experience. Coats and hats were torn off, and so the battle raged for two hours. Most " Bloody Mondays " have ended only with the harmless exhaustion of both sides, when each marches off proclaiming itself the victor, and that, no doubt, would have been the climax of this one, had not a persuasive instructor, by some phenome- non, caught the combined attention of the mob and begun a sermon from the porch of Matthews just in front of the last lamp-post to bear a light. Every one had stopped, glad of a chance to rest, but the instructor, to do him justice, did not say much. He knew his audience better, perhaps, than most instructors. They had had their fun, and no serious harm had been done. But now they had better go home. It was late and an affair of this kind, prolonged to too great an extent, was almost sure to result in some injury or other grave trouble. The speaker paused. Perhaps he intended to stop altogether. Jarvis never knew, for just then a Sopho- more directly in front of him had evidently reached that conclusion, and turned about with a wild whoop and a flourish of arms that brought one hand in sounding contact with the Freshman's cheek. They were in the full light of the lamp and all THE BOY. 15 those about had seen or heard enough to make it incumbent upon Jarvis to reply. He looked at the offender, a tall but slim lad with sandy hair and brown eyes of battle. Then he recollected his own broad shoulders, his six feet of height and his hun- dred and eighty pounds. But the crowd had closed in about them and the instructor, the ultimate sym- bol of law and order, had wisely disappeared. Then some one shouted : " Give it to him, Naught-three ! " And that settled matters. The Sophomore looked as if he had never had a coat and that of Jarvis was off in an instant. The Freshman did not know how to box, but both the principals knew how to fight. Jarvis led with his right for his opponent's face. It was a hard blow, and when the Sophomore dodged, Jarvis pitched heavily forward. As he tottered his enemy landed a strong left on his head, and that sent him at once to the ground. Evidently his opponent had used his fists before. The two elements of the crowd were now crying their favourites, but no one attempted to interfere and a fairly precise ring had been preserved. Mad with shame and anger, Jarvis sprang to his feet and rushed headlong. But he had sufficient wit not to clinch, and, though two of his blows went wild and another was skilfully warded, the fourth landed 16 JARVIS OF HARVARD. heavily on the Sophomore's ribs. The latter had kept up a series of short "jabs" in the chest and back, but neither was much the worse when both paused for breath. Then, in an instant, it was over. The Sophomore advanced with his former caution and a wild flurry of feints. In pure desperation, Jarvis drove full from the shoulder. His fist rang against his enemy's jaw and the Sophomore fell hard and lay quiet. Of course Jarvis thought he was killed and of course he was not. The classmates of each closed about their champion to revive or congratulate, and presently the vanquished emerged from among his friends and walked up to Jarvis with outstretched hand. " I 'm licked," he said. " I had n't any business to fight, for I thought I had you at the start and, any- how, it 's rather absurd." Jarvis admitted, with some embarrassment, that it was. " But it was all luck with me," he added inconclusively. " Perhaps," was the answer, " but it served. Only really, you ought to take lessons. You 're awfully clumsy with your fists." CHAPTER II. THE SHIRT OF NESSUS. JARVIS started back to his room in a state of exul- tation that was completely novel to him. He had rarely before had the chance of testing his splendid strength. In spite of a bookish tinge to his nature, he was not above enjoying the lesser follies of boys of his age, and purely physical weariness induced a certain mental exhilaration. He had lost his hat early in the scrimmage ; he had forgotten to recover his coat when he finally managed to escape the admiration of his supporters in his fistic encounter. He had had his turn to sprawl in the mud, and he was now returning to his quarters in a pelting rain. But he recollected how man after man had gone down before his enthusiastic onslaughts, and he was delight- fully tired and buoyant. Perhaps it was an effect of this that, upon opening his door at Claverly, he could, for the first time, look upon the place as home. The study to which he entered bespoke a wild day's shopping, made with a long purse and from that point of view which comes to one only for the brief early years at college. 1 8 JARVIS OF HARVARD. Judged by this standard, the place should have been comfortable, not to say luxurious. It was crowded with a lot of lumber that he regarded as artistic. The heavy furniture almost overflowed the window-seats into Mount Auburn Street. Morris chairs, a desk, a tea table, all the accoutrements, necessary and other- wise, that go to make the modern college man's apartments, crowded the centre of the room. The walls were lined with book shelves on which predom- inated the handsome bindings of a literature not generally in circulation with the Young Person a sign whereby Jarvis hoped to display his liberality. Oriental rugs covered the floor and Eastern arms and fans, with one or two very fair reproductions of the old masters and some flaring posters, served to fill up the remaining space between floor and ceiling. A profusion of plaster casts of more or less merit crowded what corners were left. At one side of the big fire- place, above the gleaming andirons, a death-mask of Voltaire leered across at a crucifix, and beside a green-mounted Madonna of the Chair, a ballet-dancer done in water-colours, poised awkwardly on one foot. The whole place abounded in glaring contrasts, due, one felt, to a mental commotion, more distorted per- haps than normal, on the part of the owner. In just what direction that commotion tended was shortly evident. Jarvis at once picked up' the letters that had been delivered during his absence since five THE SHIRT OF NESSUS. l o'clock and, with nervous fingers, ran through them until he found the one that he had trembled for. He got it soon enough from among a score of bills and postal-cards offering the services of tutors in a dozen subjects, a square blue envelope, addressed in a clear, firm hand, and exhaling, he almost fancied, just a breath of the perfume he so associated with her. But his hurry was over in a moment, and he leaned wearily against the mantelpiece turning the letter over and over in his hands. The fire the only light in the room left the sturdy outlines of his figure in darkness, but blazed full upon the healthy, flushed face. It was a rather handsome face at any rate one that forced a second glance and showed to all the better advan- tage now that the rich brown hair, usually so severely brushed to one side, had matted low on the broad forehead and asserted to the full its tendency to curl. The eyes were bright, but so dark a brown that one would almost have called them black had not the straight brows and long lashes been deep enough to give them their true value. The nose, too, was strong, but the mouth was almost feminine in its bow, and the curve of the chin was not with- out its warning of weakness. The shadowy contour of his body was that of physical perfection, but the face was the face of a boy with the brow of a man, all unconscious of the terrible odds against it. 2O JARVIS OF HARVARD. He looked at the envelope again and again, but he could not bring himself to open it and, instead, the whole miserable course of events of which this letter was significant dragged their weary length before his mental vision. He had been brought up at his own home by rich parents, among a host of indulgent relatives. There he had been trained by tutors up to the day last spring on which he took his entrance examinations. He had scarcely ever been separated from his parents, and had thus failed to get the greatest benefit obtain- able from a boarding-school the toughening of the moral hide, the stability which, if it is not knowledge of the world, is at least strength to bear that knowl- edge. The requisite Greek and Latin for his exami- nations he certainly had acquired ; tact and the passive power of adapting himself to his surroundings he inherited. At a very early age almost too early for real promise he had shown literary tastes that had developed themselves rather than been developed into a certain talent. He wrote pretty verse with an ease and grace that perhaps rightly surprised the fond parents who were only too ready thus to be moved. His work was naturally wholly imitative, because he had no fund of experience or sensation to draw upon ; but he imitated so cleverly that his relatives were deluded into mistaking the adaptation for the original. Yet, with all this, his soul was a blank page. Of THE SHIRT OF NESSUS. 21 emotion, beyond the homely affections which go for nothing in the development of the artistic temperament, he knew nothing. Such domestic attachments are merely the water-wash which the colourist puts upon his paper that the tints of his sky or sea may be more brilliant. Of the passionate sunsets and pale dawns of life that were to come, Jarvis stood in complete ignorance. Book-read beyond his age, too, he had not, since early childhood, been spiritually close to either his father or his mother. The former, a Phila- delphia man of business and nothing more, had at first admired and then come to stand rather in awe of this mind for the existence of which he was respons ible. Thoroughly good and almost foolishly indul- gent, he was of a mental fibre hopelessly coarser than that of the boy, and Dick felt the moral wall that separated them none the less precisely although he could not understand its material. The lad's mother, on the other hand, though passionately devoted to her son, was, like many other mothers with a gift for devotion, even more passionately devoted to the formalities of social life which her position enjoined ; and it was only when, after some prolonged season of gaieties, she realised that she had been neglect- ing Dick, that she would become hysterically demon- strative over him. The boy generally hated his tutors because they were the outward and visible sign of the force that 22 JARVIS OF HARVARD. kept him from the haven of his hopes a boarding- school. This one gift was never granted him and, as with us all, the one gift denied became the only desire of his heart. But, although she managed to leave him with a regularity that was convincingly consistent, his mother, with all the obstinate selfish- ness of affection, firmly declared she could not have him leave her until he went to College. Mentally, however, the lad was very much alone, and once alone had free access to the large library of his maternal grandfather, which had rested un- touched during the interregnum in the Jarvis house- hold following the death of old Geoffrey Cooke and lasting until the advent of Richard Jarvis, 2nd. Dick made good, or rather free, use of the shelves that were otherwise untouched except for the dusters of conscientious housemaids, and read much that was good for his taste and bad for his soul. Endowed or cursed with a wonderfully vivid imagination, as many another child has done, he lived within him- self the stories that he read. At first he was David skulking among the mountain caves of Adul- lam ; Cicero hurling his denunciations in English against Catiline or defending Archias ; King Henry urging on his British yeomen at Harfleur; Montrose, the Young Chevalier, or Napoleon. Then he became by turns Rizzio, writing sonnets to the scarlet puppet ofJohnKnox; the self-abasing Aboard; the aveng- THE SHIRT OF NESSUS. 23 ing Rimini ; or else he was crying to the Alastor of his solitude to make the world her Actium, him her Antony. When, rather late, he outgrew these child-dreams, he came gradually but none the less surely, to realise the emptiness of his life. He saw that the artist must reproduce, and that if he had no impressions of his own to present, he could only imitate those of his masters. He told himself that a man might be a fool for giving way to his passions, but that he would certainly be a fool if he had no passions to give way to. The greater the soul, he reasoned, the greater the temptations. Why should he cheat his heart and God-given strength of their fire? Youth boiled in his veins, beat in his pulses, hammered at his breast. He would imprison it no longer. He would not starve his soul and grow old before he had been young. And then She came. The pure delight of her, could he ever forget it? They had met at Bar Harbor, she fresh from her schooling abroad. As a child he had known her for his neighbour and playmate. Now she was a woman and beautiful, but he never thought of that. What he entirely lost himself in was the charm of contact with a nature that seemed the counterpart of his own. He could not fail to perceive the social distinctions that increasing years had created. Childhood, like love, 24 JARVIS OF HARVARD. may know no caste ; but even in his present concfr tion it was impossible to be blind to the fact that the Braddocks, rich, amiable and intellectual though they might be, were, by the rigid Philadelphia code, quite outside his peculiar set. Yet even the strong bonds of heredity and environment the stronger, perhaps, because irrational could not restrain the ego in o him that had gone mad with its strength. In a moment he had shaken off the trammels of his former existence. He was an entity, an individu- ality, a soul entering upon its battle with multitudi- nous life. Then, of a sudden, he had learned the graver reason that divided them, the reason which, right or wrong, obtains above all local definitions and distinctions. And he had learned it only to learn, at the same time, his own weakness. He was no Odysseus to stop his ears against the siren's song. His morbid imagination had pictured this cata- strophe as the ruin of his whole life. He had come to Cambridge in a dream. But there had followed no word from her, and he began to have a vague hope of rehabilitation. Yet, so strong was her power over him, that he dreaded the sight of a letter from her hand with an alarm of which he could not pre- viously have thought himself capable. He longed with all his boy's heart for some friend, some coun- sellor, however fallible. With growing hope and THE SHIRT OF NESSUS. 25 terror he looked for the letter every day. And now it had come. Again he turned it over in his hand. What was he to do? How was he to reply? He was so alone ! If only there was any one to ask ! Almost . as if in answer to the wish, there was, a sudden ring at his bell, and a moment later Hardy, mud from top to toe, had divested himself of nearly all the few clothes left him by the " rush," and flung himself into one of the great armchairs at one side of the fire. " Give me some tobacco ! Was n't it splendid ? They were easy, easy, easy ! " he cried all in a breath. For the instant Jarvis felt like sending him away, but he made a determined effort to adopt the other's mood. " It was splendid," he conceded. " Here 's some tobacco. Shall I light the lamp?" " No, this is ripping. Let things as they are. I just could n't go to sleep for hours yet, so I stopped in to talk." There was a minute's silence. From the floor below there came through the quiet night the sound of a piano. Somebody was playing the " Traume " of Wagner and the low strains, so subtle for the inter- pretation of our highest and lowest selves, crept into and filled the room. From the fire one particular flame played a steady light upon Hardy. Jarvis 26 JARVIS OF HARVARD. regarded him, puffing at his pipe, In the strong, frank face there was much to invite. It struck Jarvis, too, that this young fellow with his hardy school training, his friends and his way, as it seemed, already made, stood for everything that the more lonely boy had missed. " Hardy," he said at last. " Yes ? " " We used to know each other pretty well in Philadelphia before you went away to school. That 's why I 'm talking to you now. I 'm going to tell you something about myself and ask your advice." CHAPTER III. TRAUME. To the mind of the young Undergraduate there is no horror quite so faithfully to be avoided as a scene. Hardy, to whom Jarvis' tone had left small room for speculation, no doubt felt to the full the unpleasant- ness of the situation, but if so, he was, in changing his mood, as much the gentleman as the other, and only grunted an inarticulate assent as he inwardly thanked his stars that the lamp was out. Both fellows refilled their pipes and then Jarvis began, " I suppose it's a queer sort of thing on my part," he said. " I 've never done anything of the sort before, but the matter has come to such a point that I Ve just got to ask somebody's advice." " I don't see how I 'm qualified," Hardy hopefully suggested. " You 're the only person I can talk to around here, anyhow, and I must at least talk it over with some one. It 's it 's about a woman." " Then I know I 'm not qualified." 28 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " Well, we '11 see. I shan't mention names, of course." Hesitatingly at the start, but gradually with growing feeling and eloquence, he made clear his situation. " It was the very night before I came up here." he went on. " I '11 never forget the picture. The dim, red light of the piano lamp cast such strange shifting shadows over her lithe figure as she played. The whole room was shaded in a soft kind of rosy twilight, except for the glaring white keyboard of the piano and the girl and for me beside her. She seemed to melt right into the whole quiet harmony of it. Her movements were all so slow and graceful. She put herself into the music even into the keys. One minute she 'd be pulsing with the air and the next the air would be quickened just as if by the life in her. She has a way a lingering sort of touch that gave a melancholy expression to it all. "Well, you know how quick innocence is in its perception of vice. I understood, from her own lips, exactly what her mistake had been. But she seemed to love me and so long as it was possible and that was to be so short a time I could n't stay away. I knew perfectly well what would result, but well, there I was. " I watched her, and watched her, and watched her. The spell was so perfect, I hardly dared to speak. I TRAUME. 29 may have thought I'd break the artistic charm, or may be the subconscious devil that hides in us all made me keep my mouth shut when stillness was worse than words. I don't know. Anyhow, when she stopped the music died away so languorously that the pause was intoxicating. I remember one of her hands was resting on the echoing keys. Her whole body was motionless and yet so vibrant with life that when, all at once, she laughed, I felt as if some one had cursed in a church. " I don't know what we talked about It all meant a good deal more than the words. But it came out that by some mistake she had thought I was n't to leave until the next week, instead of the next day. She put out her hand to me. It was like a gleam of white lightning. I 'd never talked love to her. It was the first time in my life I 'd ever even held a woman's hand in that way and I remembered seeing people do that sort of thing in Rittenhouse Square, so I dropped it and asked her to sing. " Everything might have been different if it had n't been for that. She picked ,up the ' Traume ' ot Wagner the very thing that fellow downstairs is playing. Well, she'd arranged the music to some foolish words I 'd written. Listen ! " He held up a warning finger and again the low sweet sound flooded the room. Hardy was looking steadily at the fire, his face between his hands. He 30 JARVIS OF HARVARD. did not move as the strange strains rose and fell like the quiet waves along the shore of some pure island Paradise or was it on some reef of Circe? " Listen," repeated Jarvis, and the music seemed to respond to his very words. " What does that say to you ? People tell you that it expresses the high- est and purest sort of love something so high and splendid that it is above the best of us. They say it is the only clear human conception ever achieved of a love between man and woman that is like the love of God. Is it? For they add that, sung with other words, or with the very slightest and subtlest change in the manner or even soul of the singer, it can mean everything that is seductive to the most splendid voluptuousness, as nothing else ever wrought by man has ever meant it. Well, that's what it meant to me." He paused again and the music sank to a low wail- ing echo, like the sob of a lost soul that was cringing in some dark corner of that very room. "She had a wonderful soft contralto voice," he continued. " The minute she began to sing I saw clearer than ever before just what the situation meant. Race instinct I suppose it was knocked over all my theories of right and wrong, but I was helpless. I just looked into the grave of everything power- less. Then I leaned over to turn the page and her hair brushed my cheek. TRAUME. 31 "Next day I came up here. The governor 'd arranged for the rooms, but I lived in them at first as if they were three rooms in a hotel. I did n't even unpack my trunks. I simply could n't take in the situation. No word came from her and then at last I began to see that I might start fresh if she 'd only let me alone. To-night," and he held up the blue envelope, " this letter came." There was another silence. Hardy took two long pulls at his pipe. " Well ? " he said at last. " What shall I do ? " asked Jarvis. " If I open it, I'm afraid You understand. The only question is whether I Ve a right to throw it into the fire." "And you left her as you found her." " I think the sin was mine. With her it was com- mitted so long before. I left her no worse, I should say." "Then don't be a fool. Read the letter, by all means. Then write an answer, letting her know as decently as you can, that the thing must end. You've only one course to follow, the course of a gentleman. I don't see why you thought you needed anybody's advice." "But how can I tell her?" " I leave that to your instincts. You Ve got every- thing to gain or lose and there are your parents to remember." 32 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " Then I '11 think it over." " Oh, certainly ! And do just what you would have done without me. At any rate, that's my advice first and last. What time is it? Four? Wonder the proctor did n't jump that musician. I 'm going to bed." He made for the door with a determination of manner sufficient to convince an ignorant onlooker that his couch had been moved just into Jarvis' hall. Midway, however, he checked himself and, wheeling- round, came back to the fire-place with outstretched hand. Jarvis met him in silence and, as the door banged upon Hardy's full flight, threw himself into his chair again. CHAPTER IV. THE ETERNAL MASCULINE. " PERHAPS, my beloved," said Martin Luther, as he stood with his wife beside the dead body of his only daughter, " perhaps it is better thus. The world is a hard place for girls." Jarvis remembered the words. The years, he reflected, have not altered the truth of what the great reformer said. We sin and the woman pays. We succeed and the glory is ours ; we fall and the shame is hers. As poor Inez wrote her recreant lover, we have the sword or the mart to help us to forget, but woman, as Nansen told his wife, must prove her courage by staying at home. It is a hard world for girls. Heretofore the great change to a new life had served to check, in a measure, all of Jarvis' attempts at ordered consideration of the recent past. As the physical reaction from his unwonted exertions in the Yard set in upon him, a profound pity for the woman, an intense loathing of himself and a sickening horror of hopelessness and despair swept down all of Hardy's easily reared bulwarks, and crushed Jarvis into his chair. The terrible sense of something lost 3 34 JARVIS OF HARVARD. and forever gone from him, of some ethereal and eternal attribute carelessly thrown away, stunned every other faculty save that for suffering. Incon- trovertibly forced on him was, above all, the knowl- edge that all his theories had been mistaken, wrong, and bad ; that he was the victim of his own ill-doing, as far beyond real pity as he was beyond true hope. And she ! Her face rose before him with all the charm of the irrevocable, the dark hair, the flashing eyes, the gleaming flesh. Again the slight flush oi her cheek intensified the glance that she darted upon him. Again he saw the long-lashed lids drooping over eyes dark but limpid, like still woodland pools in which rare beams of wandering sunlight linger, Whatever she had been, he thought, Mary Braddock loved him. And yet he found it useless to disguise any longer the fact that for her he could discover in his heart nothing but compassion. He told himself that he must never have loved her, or else her sacri- fice would surely endear her tenfold to him now. He no longer attempted to reason about it. He had in one night tried the game with happiness, and lost. At last, however, though unconsciously, a new course of thought began to shape itself in his sick brain. Whatever his duty to this woman, it could hardly be as severe as if he had not been but one of other lovers. After all, he had left her as he found her. THE ETERNAL MASCULINE. 35 He was the only loser, most likely the only sufferer, while she the thought blazed into his mind it was she who had robbed him. He was not fair no man in Jarvis' condition can be that and moreover he was cruel. He did try to continue in his belief of her love of him, but, in view of her past, the answer to such belief was now rather obvious. She was not there to plead the frankness of her confession, and, if she had been, it is likely that he would have passed it by unnoticed. Surely, there is also an eternal masculine ! Jarvis' tumultuous despair had to find some vent, and the man in him demanded that the woman should suffer. Upon her the vials of his wrath were opened. Human nature is capable of bearing only a limited amount of self-condemnation, and all at once he found it easy enough to see how she had been to blame. Why had she led him on? He was sure she had. He remembered a thousand now significant little words and gestures that before had passed as only the unpremeditated outbursts of an affectionate girl. She knew him to be a mere boy. She had read him aright, better than ever heretofore he had been able to read himself. He was surprised that he could have been so blind in regard to either. He was angry with both, but he soon found that he was much more angry with her. By degrees the storm of his self-reproach began 36 JARVIS OF HARVARD. to resolve itself into an overmastering antipathy for the woman, who, but a few evenings before, he had imagined was as indispensable to his life as food and air. He was too unlettered in the world's ways, too helpless as yet among its unknown cur- rents. The universe that he had constructed from his books had been, in one instant of passion, proved wrong and completely overturned. A man in that universe, he had been a defenceless child in the reality. He had been so utterly ignorant. But she knew! She knew! Oh, no, it was not fair! He endeavoured in vain to contend against this sense; to fight off as unfeeling and unjust this in- clination to condemn her unheard. But he was too tired, too exhausted by the preceding mental struggles to fight either long or hard, and, even while he felt himself sinking to potentially lower depths of self-hate, he gave* way and submitted. Bear in mind that this boy he was little more was home-bred, with pure instincts and originally high ideals. He had been withheld from that contact with his fellows which strengthens self-reliance, gives a tone to manhood, and at the same time brushes away the delicate down of ignorance that is the chief charm of ingenuous youth. If a man in like straits should think and feel as Jarvis then thought and felt, he would be an unbearable prig, but Dick was still THE ETERNAL MASCULINE. 37 short of maturity in all the qualities of thought that years alone can bring, and he had been deceived and entrapped, not deliberately, perhaps, but none the less irretrievably, by a woman of clear-sighted worldliness. He knew this and he could not feel otherwise. In a few short hours his sentiments had undergone a complete revolution. His whole being had suffered a tremendous overthrow, and the mind, dazed as yet from the shock of the struggle, was thus far unable to adjust itself to the new intellectual focus. The anni- hilation of the artificial self was, for the time at least, absolute, and he could not, all at once, appre- ciate the resurrection although assured of the self inherited. Nevertheless, he felt both bestial and abased. After all, he was, then, like other men, only a very slightly elevated animal; he who had felt himself inspired by some divine message, uplifted by some heavenly gift, some spark of the eternal fire ! Why, he had even imagined he had something in common with Dante and Milton and Shakespeare, some closer, invisible communion that set him apart from the rest of the world, he, slime from the vilest sewers of the race ! It was just as well that he had returned where he belonged. He could not conceive the point of view, the psychological character that, until that night, had been Richard Jarvis for so many years. He wondered at him. He could see the results, 38 JARVIS OF HARVARD. but was quite at a loss to enter into the train ot thought that had brought him hither. He had, it for that moment seemed, come into that room a boy and suddenly found himself a man. The head was thrown back upon the unyielding cushions, the square chin, the soft mouth, the frank eyes were still all those of a child, and if, in connection with that figure to which they belonged, they seemed unusually boyish, they were only the more beautiful for that. When he was introspec- tive as now, however, they were intent enough; and, as the gray light of a dismal Cambridge morning stole in at the windows, it laid cold fingers on his forehead and drew ominous lines beneath the eyes and about the mouth. Slowly, at last, he stood up, and going to his bed- room began to undress. The sun burst above the treetops and tinged the roofs with gold. At once the whole sordid street was so alive with joy that a great self-pity rose again within the lad. He could never love that sight, or be at one with the purity of nature again. Yet, if the battle had only begun, the initiatory skirmish was ended. Little by little, during the next week, the mist-figures about Jarvis began to resolve themselves into ordinate shape and form to his mental vision. By sheer force of constant succession, the very repetition of incidents created a rational THE ETERNAL MASCULINE. 39 series of impressions and, from this state, the step to a generally clear intellectual atmosphere was as brief and easy as it was imperceptible. He found his lot cast among a new set of con- ditions, himself confronted by a new combination of circumstances, which, he was forced to confess, would not have been, to his former attitude, by any means uncongenial, and which, even now, were not unpleas- ant. He took his meals at the place of a terrible Irishwoman, whose dining-room was small and crowded and poor, but expensive and popular, and, although his allowance speedily ran short, he early found it possible to borrow any amount at any mo- ment and to pay only when the creditor himself was in need of a loan. Quite involuntarily, too, his body first, and then his general temperament, were adapting themselves to the new life. Not that he was by any means recon- ciled or comforted. There was merely at work in him that unnamed, incomprehensible quality which not only aids, but in many cases, surely though easily, forces a man to acquiescence and endurance, if not indeed absolute forgetfulness. Simply by dint of that subtle power he began, in a few short days, to grow used to his changed lot, spiritual as well as material. He was surprised to find that he was making friends, or at least binding to himself many close 4O JARVIS OF HARVARD. acquaintances. On the floor above him roomed to- gether Bert Hardy and Tom Mallard, both Pennsyl- vanians ; the former an old playmate of whom, since schooldays began, he had formerly seen but little. This Freshman, by means of his Concord chums, soon put Jarvis in touch with a great many men whom otherwise he would most probably never have met. Mallard was a " conditional " Junior who took quarters with Hardy, at first against his will and simply because a long-standing intimacy between their families commanded it. He was a St. Mark's boy and in the beginning had little love for this enforced proximity; but, by the time the peculiar isolations of certain phases of Harvard life had allowed Jarvis to discover him, Mallard was fast becoming con- ciliatory and even flattered by the opportunities for patronage that the situation offered. With these two men Jarvis was soon on terms of real intimacy. For his part, Hardy was essentially a creature of good fortune. Not that he did not deserve all the fine things that came to him. He deserved them all and more. Only, the good things that the best of colleges has at its disposal are, like those of all life, notoriously insufficient to go around, and Fate, reflecting, perhaps, that there is solace in misery's companionship, has a way of settling such matters by bestowing the favours on but a select few of the deserving. The present recipient had been born rich THE ETERNAL MASCULINE. 41 and rather fair to look upon. He had the advantages of birth and a preparatory training at a large and influential school. Consequently, when he came down to Harvard his academic career was more or less a foregone conclusion. Other people had to make theirs. If they were the right sort they could do it, irrespective, no doubt, of money and previous acquaintanceship. If they were anything else, no amount of the last named conveniences would save them. But Hardy combined all three. He was not a cad and though he was ready and even anxious to sow his share of the oats that are wild, he did not care to turn that procedure into any sort of agrestic festival. With his money he was generous, but not ostentatious. And if he was a bit too lazy to go in for athletics himself and inclined to search diligently for courses described as " cinch," he was all the more enthusiastic in his admiration for those who did real work in either sphere of University life. It was this happy faculty for brilliance that, in spite of the factional combination of the Boston schools made his election to a high Class office just as much a matter of course for him as, for example, to the Polo Club, and it was a healthy determination to do his best by this office that brought him into Jarvis' room at eleven o'clock one morning some days after their conversation on the night of Bloody Monday. Hardy had always found it hard to begin anything. 42 JARVIS OF HARVARD. Consequently, for a while the talk ran in the usual cur- rent of the food at Mrs. Blank's, of the instructors, and their courses. The one was " rotten," the others were too full of " hot air," and the last were gener- ally very " stiff." Then Jarvis innocently touched upon football, and Hardy gave up his examination of the books and pictures along the walls. " Look here," he said, " why don't you turn out for the Class team?" Jarvis hurled a protesting pillow at his classmate's head. " Out you go ! " he cried. " Why, you know I never played in my life." " Well, a Class team is the way to begin." " Then why don't you try it?" " I have all I can do for the Class now. You ought to do your share. You 're big and strong and just built for it" " But I have n't been bid." " Neither was Billy Innez bid to the Friday Even- ings, but I got him in." " Omnipotent ! I 'd rather go there." " Oh no ! you would n't. Besides, you '11 have to give all your attention to the team." Jarvis considered it. " Of course, it 's not a sure thing? " " Of course it 's not. You Ve got to earn it like everything else here." THE ETERNAL MASCULINE. ^ " Well." He flipped a coin and, catching it in his hand, glanced at the result of the experiment. " I '11 go-" He did go and with considerable iclat. The rudi- ments of the game came easily enough. There was a good deal of hard work involved and a good deal of self-denial, but to Jarvis' passion for novelty these were rather pleasant than otherwise, and within the week, the " Crimson " was reporting a " find " for the Freshman eleven. Nor was this all. Contrary to the common manner of Freshmen, his studies also began, somewhat later, to occupy a considerable portion of his time. Greek and Latin he felt (on the strength of a B in his entrance examinations) privileged to neglect. Mathe- matics, because of an E, he deemed it useless to cultivate. But to History, Government and especi- ally to English, he devoted himself with something of his old zest and a new kind of dogged method that was altogether unusual in him. In English " 28," which was a ludicrously slight review of our literature in general, he was far too well read to be at home, but in the daily and fortnightly themes of " 22 " a course really intended for higher class- men he found precisely the occupation that was most indispensable to him in regaining his mental equilibrium. that he did regain it in all its juvenescence, 44 JARVIS OF HARVARD. But the work was what he needed, and he profited accordingly. His first theme was read aloud to the class of a hundred and fifty men, and this little honor spurred him on. Though provided with what should have been plenty of money, Jarvis had not yet proceeded in mock desperation to try to buy forgetfulness one of the most extravagant luxuries on the market but he had become more deeply introspective than ever before. Previous to his association with the Class football squad he had sat up until morning reading Swinburne with eyes too young, and smok- ing cigarettes with lips too unaccustomed. The result was the gratifying conclusion that all women and most men were bad. He imagined that the glamour was gone from all things ; that his illusions were permanently broken. As a matter of fact, he had merely succeeded in replacing his old poetical ideals with others equally false and almost irreparably hideous. Where he had formerly committed the blunder of thinking all things beautiful and good, he now made the mistake of acknowledging them all bad and ugly. He had only substituted demonolatry for pantheism. And in every direction there were times when it appeared that his efforts were thwarted by a complete despair. Passive as this state was, it only required a fresh glimpse of the wrong side of life, a chance word at the proper time, to change it from THE ETERNAL MASCULINE. 45 kinetic to potential, and this chance was not long in occurring. He had at last managed to write the letter that Hardy had suggested. It could not hurt her and, for his own peace of mind, it was imperative that the correspondence be broken off. He was kind, almost loving, and quite ridiculous. At first he had thought simply to let her notes go unanswered, but he was as yet too much a gentleman for that course; so he wrote in a way which, while it expressed nothing definitely, was calculated to let her understand that, much as they had been to each other, the foundation upon which their friendship rested was, to his mind, one of sand. It could not withstand the storms of life. He added that he could never again care for any other woman, and he really believed what he said. Smarting under the assumption that she was the author of his misery, he was, quite unwittingly, playing the cad for the first time in his life. But he was to expiate his fault to the full. He had not long to wait for his reply. Hardy came again to see him as, one night, he was undressing all over his three rooms. There was a little beating about the bush, questions about the foot- ball and the College in general then, playing with tongs, his back turned and speaking in that offhand fashion whereby young men always hope to make unpleasant things endurable, 46 JAR VIS OF HARVARD. " Oh, by the way," asked Hardy, " did you write that letter?" " Yes, day before yesterday." "Any answer? " "Not yet. But I know how it'll be. She's a woman of no illusions herself, and so well calcu- lated to have a good deal of influence over a fellow who kept all his untouched till she broke the charm. And no one knows better than she that she has broken it. Oh, she's been fully prepared for my letter ! " He was right. In age a year or two his elder, in reading quite as old as he, and in sophistication a full decade his senior, this woman had been taken by his poetic and distinctive nature, but whilst playing with him was still, in her own way, in love with him. Yet she well knew that whatever hold she might have upon him she could now exercise it only when actu- ally in his presence. He was. moreover, out of sight, and experience had taught her to regard such con- quests as were in that state as being just as well out of mind. And still, so complex is the nature of these women, that she too perhaps meant something of what she said when she replied. The letter came next evening. Jarvis opened it, it is true, not without emotion, but with feelings of a sort entirely new. It was simple and to the point : THE ETERNAL MASCULINE. 47 "My dear, dear Dick," it ran. "I must own that I was n't surprised at the contents of your last letter. I appre- ciate your abilities and your talents and I love you too dearly to be a stone about your neck. I shall watch your life with the greatest tenderness and the keenest interest. For the rest, I must, sooner or later, I hope, try to forget the man while I admire the artist. Yet I know that you will never find any one to love you as I have done. So, if you ever need such help as a weak woman can give and every man needs that some time my life, as you well know, is ready at your service. Whoever shall love you hereafter, I at least have had you first. MARY." For a moment after he had read this, Jarvis sat quite still beside his fire. He felt her words more than either of them would have expected. It was all falling out as he had wished and yet the foreseen result had set him again strangely and dangerously at sea. He was quick for the great change. He rose to his feet, stifling all natural regret and wounded conceit. With a loud scratch he struck a match and relit his pipe. He was afraid she was laughing at him, after all as indeed she partly was. He fancied, too, a note of triumph, and something of a threat in the last lines, and in this also he was probably not altogether wrong. " ' O Love ! O Lover ! Loose or hold me fast, I had thee first, whoever have thee last,' " 48 JARVIS OF HARVARD. he tried to laugh. " She might have been at least a little more original ! " And yet, even though he guessed that they were both only playing at love, he could not altogether excuse himself. To himself it was useless to say any longer that he had been a mere boy. He had all at once rightly or wrongly come to the conclusion that, whatever he was in years, he had been, in all essentials, a man. " Well," he said aloud. " Damn the football ! I'm ready for life. Let's begin to see what it is." And he threw down his pipe and went out. CHAPTER V. TOWER LYCEUM. JARVIS took the elevator and went up to Hardy's room. He did not, somehow, want to talk with his fellow-townsman, but he knew that his quarters were the most likely at hand in which to find a number of men. The place was filled with expensively-framed prints, highly-coloured examples of lithography, representing card-playing by a wonderful variety of disreputable players. There were photograph-racks crowded with pictures of cheap actresses whose large signatures were scrawled over the front, and marvellous poker- hands were nailed upon the walls. These, manifestly, were the peculiar jewels of Mallard. But there was also a big business-like working table, a number of Braun photographs, a little case of good books, and a dense fragrant cloud of the best tobacco. Mallard was not there. Even his mother could not have made him spend more time than was necessary with a Freshman, and although the Junior was one of those men who, for no apparent reason, are missed by the unseen but mighty current that is, after all, Har- 4 50 JARVIS OF HARVARD. vard, he was entirely too loyal an upper classman to spend his evenings with a newcomer. Hardy, however, was lounging by the fire in his shirtsleeves. A sister, innocent of Cambridge tra- ditions, had notoriously sent him a crimson smoking- jacket that, since its first incautious opening before a jeering crowd, had been hidden away and, as Jarvis entered, Stannard fair, handsome and boyish, but pale and precocious, one of the butterflies of the Freshman Class with a remarkable talent for drawing checks and caricatures was engaged in the popular pastime of hunting for it. "Hello, Hardy. Hello Stannard," said Dick as he dropped into a big wicker armchair. " Haven't you found that thing yet?" " No. Hardy won't tell where it is. I want it to hang as a model in Herbie Foster's window." "Well what else are you fellows going to do to- night?" " Oh, I don't know," replied Hardy. " Have a pipe, won't you? " " No, thanks; not now. I think I '11 go to town." " That 's something like ! " cried Stannard. " This lobster won't go anywhere." Hardy laughed. " I ought," he protested, " to go 'round to Sanborn's for a game of pool with Morgan, but I 'm too lazy to move." TOWER LYCEUM. 5! " Rotten trick," commented Stannard. Then, " Say, jarvis, where are you going when you get there? " Jarvis considered the somewhat indefinite form of it. " Oh, any old place. Where ought a fellow to go ? " " He ought to stay in Cambridge, I suppose. Otherwise, where would be the use of town? How about the Tower?" "The what?" " The Tower Lyceum. Have n't you been there yet?" Jarvis had not. " All these days in Cambridge and not at the Tower ! I can't let you neglect your education in this way, I really can't. What, one of us Faculty's darlings and not yet at the Tower? Come on ! " Jarvis readily acquiesced, and, bidding Hardy good night, they hurried up Holyoke Street and boarded one of the trolley-cars that are crowded from seven to nine and empty again until twelve to five. " Come up in front behind the motorrnan," was the guide's direction. " We can smoke there." As they passed through the car, Stannard nodded to one or two of his friends of whom there already seemed to be so many bound on a journey like his own. " You can't work that cigarette game on this car," cried one of these, as he saw Jarvis put his hand to his breast-pocket for his case. 52 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " Better come along, Major," laughed Stannard. The " Major," a tall, slim fellow, with reddish hair and big brown eyes, shook his head and went on try- ing to read his book and talk to the fellow beside him at the same time. When, however, the door had closed on the retreating forms of Jarvis and his cice- rone, and the momentary flash of their matches re- ported the smoking really begun, he leaned forward and touched the conductor on the arm. There is a rule on the Boston street-car lines which prohibits smoking among the passengers, but the Cambridge conductors value their popularity with the students too highly to risk it by enforcing, of their own free will, a merely formal regulation. " Conductor," said the Major, " I wish you 'd stop those men smoking on the front platform there. The smell makes me sick." The representative of corporations was forced to do his bidding when a passenger thus brought him face to face with the rule. Jarvis threw away his cigarette, but Stannard held his hidden in his hand and, on the closing of the door, continued puffing undisturbed. " That was the Major's work," he said, finally. " Who is he? " asked Jarvis. " The most remarkable man in College. Could do anything if he did n't so badly want to do nothing. You licked him on Bloody Monday, by the way." " Is that the man? I have n't seen him about." TOWER LYCEUM. 53 " Well, he is about, all right. He flunked out last year and the year before, so he 's really a Freshman. But he went under only because he was starving. He shovelled snow and tutored and almost carried a hod. Lived on milk at fifteen cents a day. Wrote lies for a syndicate of newspapers. They even say he was a waiter. But he's hit it at last. Went down to Milk Street and invested a hundred he'd borrowed God knows how. Now he's got more ready money and more snap courses than any man in the joint." While Stannard was speaking they had crossed the tossing, black river with its coronet of lights, where, away to their right crept Harvard Bridge, and were clattering through the maze of back streets about Henry Square. In front of the old Raleigh House they leaped from the car, hurried through a dark alley and emerged upon a narrow, crooked thorough- fare, villanously cobbled and ablaze with lights from fifty saloons and cheap lodging-houses. Directly opposite was a dingy, semi-ecclesiastical building, the chief features of which were a perilous fire-escape and a sign made of red incandescent lights forming the word " Tower." There was a long line of purchasers before the box-office, marshalled by a fat policeman who was doing his best to keep his feet warm in the damp, autumnal night. " You here again ? " he sang out as Stannard took his place at the end of the line. " Third time this week." 54 JARVIS OF HARVARD. The crowd grinned. " Why 're you getting in line?" he asked. " To get my ticket," replied Stannard rather shortly. " Oh," said the guardian of the peace, quite unruf- fled by the frigidity of his victim : " I thought you generally got it in the morning before you went back to Cambridge." Then he added to somebody in the crowd, "Take that pipe out of your mouth." As slowly, but also as certainly, as the mills of the gods, the progress of the line gradually brought the two Harvard men near the ticket-window. As Stan- nard drew a bill from his pocket he felt a touch on his arm, and turning saw the Major in the file behind him. The red haired man was looking up for a moment from the book that he still read. " Get admission tickets," he said with perfect clear- ness of tone and quite oblivious of the blue-coated au- thority. "I '11 put you on how to fix it up upstairs." Nearly falling over a frame that held the doubtful photographs of the next week's players, they ran up a short flight of steps and entered one of the Boston " sa id this person, " come here and meet your cousin, Dick Jarvis." CHAPTER VIII. EXPLANATIONS. THE situation was scarcely a pleasant one. Jarvis was stricken dumb. Mrs. Bartol was smiling and unconscious of the trouble that surrounded her. But Peggy and Mallard kept their wits. The girl walked straight forward to the Junior. " I Ve heard so much about you," she said. Mallard took the hand and bowed. Would he attempt to keep up the farce? " Not about me, I 'm afraid," he answered. Jarvis drew a deep breath. This then was to be another of the man's abominable jokes ! He need not have worried, however, for Mallard imperturbably proceeded, " The fact is, I 'm afraid there has been some mis- take. My name is Mallard." " Mallard ! " cried both the women at once, the younger perhaps a shade too dramatically. " Unfortunately, yes. I just now sent up my card to an aunt of mine whom I had never seen before and I thought I 'd found her. It seems I have n't. If you are looking for Dick Jarvis, he is the man you have just been asking the time of." IOO JARVIS OF HARVARD. Jarvis winced, drew his watch clumsily from his pocket and as clumsily replaced it as he came forward to the now thoroughly bewildered Mrs. Bartol. " Yes, I 'm Dick, Cousin Emily," he said. " The boy has evidently got my card mixed with that of Mr. Mallard, my friend here. That's all." He tried to look as if it were a simple matter of every day occurrence, but his success was hardly brilliant. " Tom," he went on, with an effort and not daring to look in the face of his friend, " you 've often heard me speak of my Cousin Emily." " Only to-day. And of her daughter too." " Yes, though I never saw her before this minute at least, for shall I say years ? " He shot an appealing glance at Peggy, who was busily engaged in smoothing out an imaginary wrinkle in her sleeve. " I Ve had to go out of town on business," he hurriedly continued, turning to his elder cousin, " and just got back to Cambridge half an hour ago. I found your note there and did n't want to keep you waiting, so I came just as I was. You see," he added with a poor attempt at pleasantry, " I knew it was to be a purely family party, anyhow," and he looked angrily at Mallard. " Of course, of course," stammered the widow, who had thus effectually been put in the wrong. " You EXPLANATION'S, see, I'm getting so dreadfully nearsighted. Peggy will tell you all about that. Otherwise I should have seen the mistake in a moment. Come over here to the light. The very image of your poor mother." (She always used the invidious adjective of people who did not like her.) " Not a bit changed. You 're not too old to kiss, I suppose ? " There being but one answer to these propositions from a distant relative, Jarvis permitted the caress, while a glance from the tail of his eye satisfied him that his audience was amused by the ceremony. " And we won't keep the dinner, either," continued Mrs. Bartol. " You '11 join us, of course, Mr. er Mallard?" " Oh, Mallard has an aunt to see," objected Jarvis, who felt that somebody had injured him and that his friend regarded him in no pleasant light. A hall-boy was going through the room, and Mallard turned to him. Then he replied, " I find my relative has gone away and forsaken me rather unexpectedly. Yes, Mrs. Bartol, I 'd be very glad of such a recompense for an otherwise fruitless trip to town." " I thought, Dick, you said Mrs. Bartol was at an- other hotel," he maliciously added as, a moment later, they sat down to dinner. " Oh," asked Peggy, gallantly coming to the rescue, " he got the word we left for him there did n't you ? " IQ2 : V J ARILS' OF HARVARD. Jarvis' eyes were a message of gratitude, as he replied. " Dear me, yes. I found you had gone when I got there." " Well, you see, we decided to stay here for a few days and mamma likes this place so well, and we hadn't time to let you know beforehand. We did n't think a messenger-boy would get you in time. Mamma, you know, always does things of a sudden." Much of Peggy's time was employed in explaining her mother. Jarvis began to see light and to breathe freer. Things went off smoothly enough then, and, as Mallard was so considerate as to devote, after dinner, his whole attention to Mrs. Bartol, thereby heaping coals of fire on the head of his friend, the confused Freshman got a chance to talk to the younger of his hostesses. The Junior, however, could not have had a very happy hour of it. Dick's father and her own daughter were the only two persons who would not have been bored by Mrs. Bartol. Their devotion was regarded by their acquaintances as one of those attachments called " beautiful," a tacit slur upon the object, and left further undiscussed as subjects beyond the possibilities of analysis. She would not, perhaps, have been unendurable had not the iron of Calvinistic environment entered too early in life into EXPLANATIONS. IO3 her soul, but the surroundings of her childhood had done their work with assiduous proficiency, and she was now one of those terribly proper matrons who lower their voices when they speak of navel oranges. The humility which is the immodesty of the humble was hers, and this, taken in conjunction with her mourning, was a perpetual offence. We are much more anxious to make our neighbours envy our happi- ness than to enjoy it ourselves, and to make them envy our distress is indeed a masterstroke of social diplomacy. That stroke Peggy's mother had per- fectly achieved. Her outward tokens of woe were in inverse ratio to the gaiety of others, and her own en- joyment of the occasion. Her grief for the late General was of the cloth only; and, more noticeable than all her other shortcomings was a purely phys- ical one. She was afflicted with that fatal combination, a too short upper lip and a keen sense of the ludi- crous in others. While Mallard was dealing with this formidable armament, Dick was trying to push his investigations in another quarter. " Did you really expect me here to-night?" he asked of Peggy. "Why not? You got our first note, didn't you? It was mailed last night. That was time enough to get you here." " Oh, come now ! You know what I mean." IO4 JARVIS OF HARVARD. "Do you?" " I think I do, but the whole thing is so muddled that I would n't be too certain of it." " Well, I 'm still feeling pretty much the same way, so you must make your what do you call it? cross-examination? as easy as you can, please." " Then just tell me this, did you know me all along?" "Isn't that rude?" " It may be conceited." " Well,' then, I thought I did, but when mamma came in with Mr. Mallard I told myself that Mr. Richard Jarvis, of whom I Ve heard so much, wouldn't accost a woman in a place where her where she would n't be if " Pshaw ! You must be easy on me too, you know. How was it you knew me? " " You '11 never believe me now." "Yes I shall." " Can you promise that ? " " At all events, I have the will to believe." " By your photograph, then." " My photograph? " "Um Uncle Richard sent us one that you had taken just before you left Philadelphia." "What, those hideous things? " He recalled them with a thrill of horror. " Do you want me to commit myself ? " she asked. " Why, I thought I 'd burned them, every one ! " EXPLANATIONS. IO5 " Then this was snatched from the burning. They were n't very good, that 's a fact, and I did take a very long chance ; but then I was almost sure it was you and when you sat down, I saw the crest on your ring." " So you were making game of me all the while ? " " You were making game of yourself, and you deserved all the punishment you got." " And a good deal more," said Jarvis with some mental additions. The strain ws.s still too great for him to remain with her long, but it was by no means too great to prohibit his return. On the contrary, his visits to the Grendome grew more and more frequent and those other trips to town more and more rare. Indeed, the only real difficulty that grew out of the imbroglio was that of explaining it all to Mallard, a bit of work which as he did not want to give the real parti- culars of the first meeting in the Public Gardens, kept Jarvis busily employed for the next week. Day by day during that week he saw more and more of Peggy. The acquaintance prospered. They came very easily to calling each other by their first names and took daringly most of the more trying initial steps. Though from an intellectual point of view she was anything but a surprise, she had, at times, a sharp tongue that delighted him. She was certainly neither deep nor well read, but she was just IO6 JARVIS OF HARVARD. as surely a wonderful puzzle. With no false ideas of reserve or convention, with a perfect freedom of expression and an utter disregard of the more artificial proprieties, she revealed to him in all its brilliance the enchanting open-air girlhood of the Middle West. A product of the city, she had yet about her the fragrance of the prairie, the pungency of the mountain pine. Try as he would, he could not understand her. The challenge she was con- tinually setting to all his notions of a woman's proper bearing in which he had grown up would at one time strike him as a pose and again as real ignor- ance, but at no time palled upon him. Indiscreet as she undoubtedly was, he was never so low as to suspect anything worse of her. But he did not once assign her to her real cause. He could only admit her complete fascination for him, and there he was generally content to let his speculations rest, recog- nising that in all things she presented an absolute contrast to the woman he was trying to forget. That forgetfulness he could not absolutely attain. There were days, of course, when the elasticity of his boyish nature and the new atmosphere that sur- rounded him would remove Mary Braddock to the shadowy background of his mental pictures. But he was always conscious that she was there and her pres- ence cast a menacing shadow over all his thoughts. At other times the despair and pity of it all, the EXPLANATIONS. IO? sense of utter loss and hopelessness, would overcome and master him, driving him from excess to excess in the mad dissipations of remorse. Simple policy and the desire of a conditional peace with himself did for him what a dead hope could not accomplish. He began to find the hours when he was most at rest when his first blighting mistake was most nearly forgotten and his subsequent crime as an Undergraduate was farthest from his mind, were those that he spent with Peggy Bartol. It was then that he came closest to a better and truer view of things. The contact with her fresh, keen pleasure in existence, the breathing in of the pure air of that healthy atmosphere in which she seemed to live, changed him in spite of himself. Was it quite sure that even now there was no hope ? CHAPTER IX. DESTINY'S POST FACTO. His brief interview at the Office had made it clear to Jarvis that if he meant to remain in College he must pay renewed attention to his studies, and this course of action rendered it impossible for him not to come into contact, however formally, with the fellows who, since his desertion from the Class team, had not troubled to seek him out. He dreaded the experience, but, once endured, he found it thanks to the mercy that tempers even Undergraduate jus- tice not so evil as he had feared. The men grew, if not at once warmer, at least perceptibly less cold. They did not, as Stannard put it, " give him the marble heart." Jarvis, besides, was really what is known as a good fellow. He was even more mature than the majority of his acquaint- ances that was the necessary consequence of his solitary bringing-up but he was also frank, simple, natural with them, and had the unconscious trick of meeting most of his friends half way on their chosen ground. Above all, he was not, with the 5nost of them, serious. DESTINY'S POST FACTO. 109 Thus in time there came again the games of pool at Sanborn's where his classmates congregated and from the upper classmen, that occasional, "Well, how 're you getting along?" that is always asked of a Freshman whose people one cannot avoid knowing. The climax, however, was reached when Hardy one evening hurried down to borrow a collar. " It was a hell of a thing for you to do," he re- marked, when Jarvis had finally vouchsafed a proud and partial explanation of his recent backslidings. " But I dare say you 're sorry for it, even if you won't say so, and since you really did n't understand what it meant, I '11 try to to square you." Jarvis had told him shortly not to bother, but he did bother and, by the time the offender gave in his rooms the inevitable tea to Mrs. Bartol and her daughter, he was again persona grata with the most of his acquaintances. That tea had been, Jarvis persuaded himself, a gathering enough mixed to give a stranger a fair idea of the multitudinous quality of Harvard life. There were men there who were trying for the " Crimson " and the " Advocate " and men who were trying for nothing at all ; men who belonged to all of the few clubs possible for a Freshman, and others who would never belong to any; two reconciled members of the Class football team, and one who would probably make the 'Varsity. HO JARVIS OF HARVARD. They talked of none of these things, however, and, having exhausted the recent football victory over Pennsylvania which Jarvis had suddenly felt his studies would not allow him to witness and again and again predicted another 17 to o game with Yale, there was little left to say. When it was all over and his relatives had been with him to town to dine, the two younger persons went to one of the series of concerts given by the Symphony Orchestra in Sanders'. Mrs. Bartol was to have accompanied them, but she had stopped at the house of a Cambridge friend, and had there, at the last moment, been fortunately attacked with one of the nervous headaches that she considered her pecu- liar prerogative. Arranging to have her carriage meet them, she, therefore, remained behind, and char- acteristically allowed the two other members of the little theatre party to go on without her. The programme had been long and a trifle weari- some to Peggy, who had not that interest in music which, quite apart from any technical knowledge, attached itself in a purely general way to the artistic side of Jarvis' nature. She would have been in- clined to a revolt of frivolity had not the last two selections proved of a more popular and appealing character than their predecessors. Jarvis, for his part, had, however, enjoyed it all with the keen satisfac- tion of a true amateur that had been marred only DESTINY'S POST FACTO. Ill by the title of the last composition to be played. This stared him in the face on first looking at his programme and stood Jike a spectre at the feast through the whole performance. It was the "Traume" of Wagner. That composition was for him ominous, even terrifying. In the first instance, reminiscent of the idealised days of the past summer, when he had originally made its acquaintance, it had become so inextricably interwoven with the catastrophe so lately passed, as to be regarded as its very mainspring and cause. Its weird character, that admits so perfectly of two so antipathetic interpretations, had for him but one. Every note was branded on his memory, every chord pregnant with his doom. In that company in which he came nearest to forgetting the disaster, he could not have borne to listen to that disaster's herald and in a nervous panic of fear he was vainly seeking some pretext for flight when, at the last moment, the programme for some occult reason, patent only to the leaders of orchestras was changed, and for the significant strains of Wagner was substituted Schumann's " Traumerei." The pure, gentle air was played as only two orches- tras in America can play it. The composition may not be music in the highest sense of the word there are "critics" who go so far as to say so but it never fails of its effect. To Jarvis, disassociated in 112 JARVIS OF HARVARD. his mind though it was from all its maker's history, the minor chords appealed so directly as to make, for the first time since his misfortune, the tears spring into his eyes. In a moment he felt supremely foolish, but he had felt first, and continued to feel, almost happy. Surely there was something still to be won ; surely a man can purge himself in the end. Even upon the less impressionable Peggy the effect was not thrown away, and as they passed from the theatre she was more serious and less trivial than he had ever known her. He ordered the carriage to drive around to Harvard Square and they strolled slowly about the Yard. It was a clear, cold night. Walking under the silent trees along one of the many intersecting paths of the almost deserted Quadrangle, they could see the stars gleaming through the bare branches above them. Peggy snuggled up in her opera cloak and moved a trifle closer, holding tight to his arm. " What a delightful place it is," she said, tritely enough, " and what good times you must have here." He reflected on the days just passed. " Not always," he rejoined. " It gets rather stupid some times." "Why, the Yale men who were always hanging about Farmington, never talked that way about their college." "They were more discreet, that's alL" DESTINY'S POST FACTO. 11^ Then he added, with a motion toward the darkened windows of Thayer, " Lipmann, the new candidate for half-back, lives in that corner room." Peggy paused and raised herself on tiptoe to take in what she could of the lion's den, and then, as they slowly resumed their walk, turned to Jarvis with, " Oh, Dick, why don't you go in for something of that kind? You wouldn't find it a bore ever then." Jarvis smiled. It was upon him to make a bitter reference to his one venture in that direction, but instead he only said, - " It takes two, in fact, a whole dozen of coaches to make that bargain." " But you could do it." Although at such times he regarded her as a very little girl, he could not help being flattered. " Do you think so ? " he asked. " I 'm sure of it. You 're built for it, if ever any- body was, and you're not doing anything here now." This was hardly complimentary. Besides, it was undoubtedly, in a sense, true ; so that it was not without a touch of pique that he replied with the dreary commonplace that they did not consider foot- ball everything at Harvard. "Oh, no ! That 's the way you all talk. But they consider it something outside, and I don't want to go lI4 JARVIS OF HARVARD. away and tell people, when they ask about my cousin here, that he is n't doing anything at all." " He 's just now in a way of getting an A in his English, at any rate," replied that relative. He was flattered again and his self-confidence restored. Nevertheless, he felt constrained to add, " The trouble with you is that you 're not yet closely enough associated with this place to under- stand it. Even I haven't been here long enough to catch it thoroughly." " It's not like Yale," she confessed. " No, it 's not. Everything 's different." " I 've noticed the men were. The typical man here " " There is no typical Harvard man. You hear a good deal about him, but he 's a myth. The only real type about Cambridge is the landlady and she is simply inexpressible. No," he continued, " the differ- ence is away deep down somewhere, but you, of course, notice it mostly on the surface." " Perhaps, but you somehow don't seem to be as good friends here." They had reached Gray's and now turned back again. " That is still on the surface," he corrected her. " If I have to rescue from the police a classmate I haven't met before and am not likely to meet again, that does n't create a bond of sympathy strong enough DESTINY'S POST FACTO II $ to make us comrades for life. He thanks me civilly, and unless we 've got something in common some- thing real, I mean there 's an end of it. That would n't be so in some places, but it 's so here, and why should n't it be? " " Yet there are lots of men who go through here and never know a soul." " They are not many, and they generally are un- sociable. You don't want to know a man and he does n't want to know you. You have nothing that you 're both interested in, and will never have till the days of your deaths, so why should you lick-spittle each other just because you happen to room across a nine-foot hall and behind a locked door?" " But how are you to know if he 's sociable or not? " " That v s a thing that usually shows for itself. Even such men as you talk of, will tell you that Harvard is their ideal college and they '11 mean it, too. As for meeting men, the best way is to borrow tobacco. Seriously, though, we just don't believe in the theory that you have to know every man in your Class well enough to call him by an insulting nickname." They laughed a little, but presently Peggy asked, " Is n't that a symptom of Harvard mistrust or un- belief?" " Perhaps," he answered, " I don't know. Any- how, Harvard unbelief is probably a finer belief than most who mouth and drool about it are capable of." II 6 JARVIS OF HARVARD. They had come back across the Yard again, and now turned down toward Claverly, sending the car- nage ahead. Almost at the steps was another cab with Mrs. Bartol inside of it. Peggy imperiously refused all of Jarvis' offers to accompany them, but before she quite reached the carnage door and the limited range of her mother's auditory powers, she added to him, " Now, don't forget what I said about the foot- ball. It's quite for the honour of the family, you see." " And not at all for the honour of any particular member of it?" he asked. " For yourself," she said. "And no one else?" " Perhaps I don't know them all. But, oh yes, I know mamma would like it ever so much." " Well, it 's too late to begin this year, perhaps too late for next." " Oh, it's never too late to begin." She sprang into the second carriage; there were hasty inquiries after Mrs. Bartol's head; a hurried good night, and the cab rattled away, leaving Jarvis standing upon the curb. He filled and lit his pipe, walking slowly back the way they had come. Was it never too late? As lie- paced back and forth through the Yard he saw in its true light the life that he had been leading. Those care- DESTINY'S POST FACTO. If? less words of a laughing girl, had they not a deeper, higher, meaning than she had thought to give them? The solemn old buildings looked down at him through the heavy shadows, here and there a lu- minous window now breaking their black fronts. He thought of the countless men they had sheltered and watched in the long years they had stood there, these austere Puritan warders of the place. How many strong hearts and honest lives had gone out from them, and made the world the better for their Har- vard life ! How many, through disappointment and defeat, had stood unnoted but true, because of the lesson they had learned here ! They, too, unknow- ing, had left their country better than they found it. Success was possible, it was even finer, without the reward his old dreams had pictured for, and made an integral part of it. In the end, it was the effort and not the reward that made the success. It was well, it was only right, to set up altars in the market- place for those great men who had won the reward as well ; but was it not even better, was it not esthetic- ally nobler, to remember also those other and name- less ones, the stronger that they fought on after al) hope of the victor's crown was quite gone ; men who, falling unheeded and in legions like the drops of summer rain, refreshed and purified the earth that never offered recompense or praise? And the other ones ? Was he to be one of those Il8 JARVIS OF HARVARD. who changed the " Veritas " for "Libido?" He knew that he was not learning the real lesson of Har- vard ; that he had in this short while seen only the reverse side of the College life ; that he had joined himself to the smaller and meaner portion of it. Mistaking vulgarity for Bohemianism, he had not wanted to see any other side, to belong to any other part. His artistic sense, distorted, deformed, had been crazed as well, and now, in the crisp night air, before these hideous old buildings, made beautiful by night and memory, the thoughtless phrase of a pure girl, had brought it back to sanity. He turned about again toward his rooms. His heart was light, his head clear, and his step firm. If high purpose and hard work, if right for the love of right, could purge a man from his sin, could free him from himself, Jarvis would be purged and freed. And yet, somewhere at the bottom of his soul, there lurked a misgiving, a fear. He did not want to be alone, but on the other hand, not wishing to talk to either the sensual Mal- lard or the cynical Major, he rang up Hardy and called through the tube for him to come down and have a smoke. Even latterly he had seen but little of the Philadelphian, for Hardy, though by no means a particularly good or unusually studious person, was conspicuously lacking in that sort of courage which dissipation seems to require. He was, however. DESTINY'S POST FACTO. 1 19 always glad to talk extravagantly on morals and religion, so that fifteen minutes found both the lads comfortably ensconced before Jarvis' study fire, pipe in mouth and glass in hand, the death-mask of Vol- taire leering sardonically at them in the flickering light cast by the crackling logs. "That's good stuff," said Hardy, tentatively, hold- ing up his glass between his eyes and the grate. " Where did you get it? " " My father sent it up. It 's some he has imported." " It 's away over anything you can get in town. And, speaking of town, have you seen Maggie Du Mar lately?" " No, I have n't been running that kind of thing for a while." "What's the trouble? Getting scared for your Mid-Year's before Christmas?" " No, I don't care about it, that 's all." " Mallard's afraid of his. He 's a regular model of propriety now. ' " Does n't he go into town at all, except the times he's been in with me?" " Yes, but only once in a while. You none of you can quit for good, if that 's what you mean." "What's that?" asked Jarvis, looking quickly and intently into the pink face of his interlocutor. It was exactly what he had wanted to talk about ; exactly what he felt he must ask somebody if only to I2O JAR VIS OF HARVARD. relieve his strained nerves. He would not have dared to open the subject, but he was all attention as Hardy continued, " I mean a fellow often gets well started up hill and stops short of the top, but once he begins to fall he rarely brings up short of the bottom." " I don't believe it," replied Jarvis brusquely. " I think a man can stop himself and be just as good as anybody who never started down." " In rare cases, perhaps yes. But as a rule the attraction of gravitation does all that is necessary for the rolling stone." " You think the world apt to unite in kicking it on down? Well, I had always believed a poor devil might become an angel if he chose." " Hardly. You see, he can't persistently choose. The world has n't much pity. It has too many other things to think about and prefers to think of the dirty ones." "Hasn't it any sympathy, then?" asked Jarvis, smiling again. As he spoke, the door opened without a pre- monitory knock and the Major came in. " Sympathy, my poor chap," he exclaimed, divest- ing himself of his overcoat and drawing a chair toward the hearth, " The world 's full of it, and it 's worth about ten cents on the dollar ! " Jarvis was not pleased with the interruption. He DESTINY'S POST FACTO. 121 had sought some sort of confirmation of his new hopes, and now the Major had intruded with an air that left neither of the others at ease. But the newcomer was quite unmoved by his reception and, lighting a cigarette, proceeded to carry on the conversation in his own behalf. " You might think," he went on, " that they 'd at least owe us a genuine pity in return for the awful example we make of ourselves, but those who bene- fit by us in this mortal life do not, unfortunately, receive our sacrifices at our own valuation." " That 's just what I 'm telling him," said Hardy, thawing a little. " It 's no use. The only thing to do is to live our own lives as we can't help living them. There 's a destiny that misshapes our ends, smooth-polish them how we will." " But I Ve no faith in Kismet," Jarvis objected. " A man can have some very good things in him, of course, and still go wrong and still fight his way back." " If that's his fate," the Major interpolated. " It never is," Hardy put in. " There 's a law in fate as in everything else." " No, whether it 's fate or not," persisted Jarvis, with the irrational stubbornness of the penitent, " ability is pretty sure to make its mark in the end." "It's good fortune and not worth or ability that 122 JARVIS OF HARVARD. wins the admiration of the crowd," said Hardy, catching something of the Major's spirit and endeav- ouring to shine by his light. " And the crowd," said the Major, with his final air, " is the only close corporation that really pays for what it wants." " Of course," Jarvis tried to define, "it all depends on what you mean by going wrong. I used to have the idea that the artist couldn't go wrong; that his soul should be a kind of prism, reflecting and disinte- grating every passion and phase of life." " And it 's the right one and very well put. In the end, what's the difference? Junius says that he never knew a rogue that was not unhappy. But the rule must be a poor one, for it does n't work both ways." " But," insisted Jarvis, in a voice that trembled, despite his internal condemnation of its foolish timid- ity, " how can a man offer himself to a pure woman, unless, of course, he's done his penance as I said? Such a marriage must be a failure in the end, what- ever you think of the rights of a woman to expect as much as she gives." " Oh, she '11 believe in you and, if she believes, what's the difference? Belief is at best only giving an unsupported theory the benefit of the doubt." Hardy knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose to go. DESTINY'S POST FACTO. 123 " The failure of marriage, Dick," he said sententi- ously, " is of course a tragedy, but it 's a vulgar one, look at it how you will. Meanwhile, avoid it by taking Punch 's advice, or by keeping well in mind Thomas of Malmesbury : ' There 's no action of man in this life which is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a prospect of the end.' My namesake uses it somewhere. Good night and don't try to run away from yourself. You can't do it and you 're interesting only as you are." CHAPTER X. EXIT A BOY. PEGGY left Boston shortly after the concert and Jarvis was a trifle depressed. He did not, however, know why he should be so until the Yale game and then he attributed his low spirits to that fiasco. For that game did not result in a Harvard victory < In fact, it was much more like a Harvard defeat. The veteran players in crimson were held hard by the men of New Haven, and the contest resulted in a tie, with all the honours to the Blue. And most of the money, as well. Jarvis, at any rate, had wagered that Harva'rd would win, and had lost the greater part of his allowance. He was re- flecting that evening that the remainder of the term would have to be passed under conditions of econ- omy that offered only the now indifferent charm of novelty for write home for money he would not and was trying to comfort himself with the thought that there was at least one man in the University whom the game had left in a fix even worse than his own, when the small individual he had in mind rushed out upon him from Foster's with a wild roar of delight. EXIT A BOY. 125 " Come on ! Come on ! " cried Stannard, flinging his arms about Jarvis' astonished shoulders. " Come on in town and help me celebrate ! " " If you don't mind," growled the victim of this attack, " I should like to know first what the devil there is to celebrate." " That's just it ! That's the splendid new part of my plan. Anybody could celebrate a victory. Everybody would. And it would be tame and old. But I always knew I was a genius and it has just oc- curred to me that I should change matters and cele- brate what amounts to a defeat." " Well, you can if you can," Jarvis, somewhat obscurely, replied, " but I have n't got the price. And I thought you hadn't either." " That 's where my genius shows itself again." " You don't mean you hedged ? " The thought disgusted him. "No," replied Stannard with a similar inflection, " What do you think I am? " " I long ago gave it up. But then you must have gone down between the halves and bet that Yale would n't score." " Wrong again ; I 'm going to do it without the price." "How?" " Oh, don't be so damned practical ! We '11 find out when we get to town. I Ve got fifty cents in my pocket and you must have a dollar anyhow." 126 JARVIS OF HARVARD. "And you propose to celebrate on a dolla fifty?" " I told you I was going to celebrate on nothing b\ all. Come on. You '11 see. The lovely thing about Boston is that the unexpected is always waiting just around the corner." " Well, I won't hang up the agent for any more theatre tickets." "Who asked you, grouchy? That's not celebrab ing. No, J had made up my mind what I was going to do when we licked Yale this year again had it all planned out and do you suppose I 'm going to let such a little thing as a Yale victory stand in my way?" Jarvis supposed not. He reflected that the plan, springing from such a source, offered the quality ot surprise. Stannard was known everywhere in Boston everywhere he should be known, because he was a Boston boy, and everywhere he should not have been because he was so inevitably Stannard. So, catching fire at last from the fellow's enthusiasm, Jarvis made a wild dive for the nearest car. It was the last night of his boyhood. He had thought before that he had one morning waked up a man, but he was still, at the psychological moment, able to cast the snake-skin of maturity and return again for an hour to the old fresh point of view. Now, however, it was for the last time. He little EXIT A BOY. 127 dreamed it and yet he must somehow have felt it, for he had never been so happily complete in it before. They did " everything," as Stannard ever afterward delightedly put it. They were not in town thirty minutes before they had gathered about them a dozen men from College, most of them strangers, but all of them soon afire from the irresistible two. They shouted in the hotel corridors, made speeches on the Common, caught an unfortunate student of the Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology, and made him sing " Fair Harvard " from the steps of one of the build- ings of Boston University. But they were always so good-natured about it that nobody, not even the Technology student, seemed very much to mind. In front of a Washington Street theatre they took the horses from a carriage and signs from passing cars. Then Stannard's genius shot suddenly to its apogee. They had torn the pole of one car from the wire overhead and just as the laughing crowd on the side- walks was growing denser, augmented by the people from the theatre, someone shouted, " Here 're the cops ! " " Grab a hat and club ! " shouted Stannard, " and we' 11 run the next car ! " The words were scarcely out of his mouth before car and policemen arrived together. Men sprang upon the fender and the platforms. Then, as the crowd opened and the car dashed ahead, they clutched 128 JARVIS OF HARVARD. wildly at the policemen, who were breaking through, and secured their coveted trophies. Before they had gone another block, conductor and motorman had both been bundled off. Jarvis leaped into the place of the latter and Stannard joyously assumed the former's position. The pas- sengers, some half dozen in number, had begun by laughing and ended by threatening or fainting accord- ing to sex. As they tore down the street, " Ladies and gentle- men," shouted Stannard above the pandemonium, " Pray do not be alarmed. There is no danger. We represent the corporation of Harvard University. This company owes us a small sum of money for the privilege of carrying students into and out of town, and as we have had a great deal of trouble in collect- ing our little bill as in fact, they seemed disinclined to pay us at all we were forced to secure a judg- ment on one of their cars. There is only one thing that will cause you the slightest annoyance ; I regret that we cannot stop to put off or take on passengers. We must not slack up until we reach our journey's end. I don't know just where that will be, but never mind - my motorman is both clear-headed and skilful." His motorman was not so sure of that. Jarvis knew that Stannard had enough fellows at his back to enforce his will on their living freight, but he had no sooner put his hand to the controller than he per- EXIT A BOY. 129 ceived that a regiment could not manage their speed. However, he did not particularly care. It would, after all, be time enough to care when they struck something. He could at least ring the gong and there was no car for a few blocks ahead. So as he seemed to have swung into full pace and was appar- ently unable to slow up, whichever way he turned that annoying handle, he jammed it back again to its farthest notch and, as he afterwards expressed it, " let her go." She went. They dashed on at a terrifying pace. He would just catch glimpses of the throng on the sidewalks trying to stop or turning to stare at his runaway charge. There was an unending line. People were dashing madly across the track in front of the fender. Now and then a lone policeman would stand directly ahead and wave his impotent arms, but only to dodge nimbly aside at the critical instant. And all the time Jarvis was gleefully conscious of the joyous Stannard, somewhere at his back in the car, clinging to the straps, and, as he sang the tenor part to " King Charles," marking time by ringing up suppositious fares. Suddenly, directly ahead, there dashed into view a dark line of men. In an instant he realised what it meant. " Cops ahead ! " he yelled and hammered wildly at the gong. Then, " Get out of the way ! " he shrieked, 9 130 JARVIS OF HARVARD. bending far forward over the front of the car, but aware that his voice was drowned in the roar of the charge. " I can't stop the damned thing ! " The police they are a canny lot must have grasped the meaning without the words, for they sprang aside and as the car dashed through their ranks they made wild clutches at its bars. Several men were bowled over. Jarvis saw them rolling into the gutters. But one made the step and before the Freshman could reflect on the meaning of such a thing, he had tossed this one off. Evidently, however, the fellow was not much hurt, for no more was ever heard of him. But now there was a blaze of light just a block in advance. The preceding cars must have been stopped What was to be done? There must be a brake some- where. He searched for it wildly. If something wa? not done and done at once the end was certain. Jarvis quickly resolved on one thing. He would stand there until the crash came and take the conse- quences, even if he could not avert those awaiting the other occupants of the car. But could he not avert them? He swung one lever after the other and thus somehow he never knew how, but somehow they came to a terrible stop within an inch, as it seemed, of the car immedi- ately ahead. The shock threw everyone about the floor. Jarvis EXIT A BOY. 131 was tossed almost to the back platform and, before any of them could recover, a dozen officers, sprung from nowhere, were sitting on everybody's chests. In the melee, however, some of the more fortunate criminals managed to escape. But the two ringleaders were marched off, safely enough, to a patrol wagon that stood only too ready. It was painfully evident that a battle for liberty was out of the question. Jarvis was more or less ashamed, but to Stannard there had been early vouchsafed a cheerful blindness to such merry forms of disgrace, and before they had reached the station house he had cemented a laugh- ing friendship with all of his captors by declarations that he and Jarvis were merely passengers on the ill-fated car, by highly-coloured narratives of the escapade, and by the willingness with which he finally wore away the tedium of the drive through singing that classic song that begins with the definite state- ment that " Harvard was Harvard." " My name," he replied, fifteen minutes later in reply to the House Sergeant's question, " is William Shakespeare, as you will see by the initials on my clothes. Ben's, however, is Ben Jonson, though you won't find him so labelled. His laundry people got down an R in place of a B. We plead ' not guilty.' What's the bail?" " The magistrate's asleep long ago." 132 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " Then for heaven's sake, wake him up. We live in Roxbury, and must get home in time to go to the high school by nine o'clock." The sergeant was a little man, whose severe mouth was owing only to an equally severe loss of teeth. " You can send out and see if you can get enough bail," he grinned. " It won't be very much for you, I calculate. But you 'd better have it before you wake the old man." The inference was obvious, and was acted upon with the result that by daylight the money had been secured from Cambridge, and the precious pair were again in their own beds. Perhaps because the incident did not look any too well for the traction company or the police, or else as is less likely because Stannard's lie had been really accepted, the forfeited bail did not bring about any unpleasant complications and, as the affair was carefully kept out of the papers, few people were ever any the wiser for it. Jarvis was not one of these. His realisation of the peril in which he had thoughtlessly placed a number of lives, was, although late, sharp enough, and his store of knowledge seemed considerably increased by the narrowness of his own escape. This added a touch of seriousness to his work, and made his life during the month following the Yale game colourless perhaps, but decidedly more to be approved. EXIT A BOY. 133 So far as his studies were concerned, the only thing that now particularly worried him was the growing feeling that it was perhaps too late to catch up. Yet he worked hard, and at Christmas time signed off at the Office for a week only. Then it seemed he had scarcely returned before the terrible Mid-Year's were upon him. He looked at the " Crimson's " bewilder- ing schedule in something very like amazement. There would be no difficulty about English and he had worked hard enough, he thought, to master suffi- cient History to get him through that course. But the others? " Oh, it will come out all right," Hardy assured him that morning at Mrs. Blank's, " You Ve still got lots of time to bone, and there is n't any time like the night before an examination." " French is all right, and I 'm not scared of His- tory," Stannard announced from across the table. " You 're taking that, are n't you, Hardy ? I got a book of printed notes on it at the first of the year, and if I can only find it or get another copy it 's still around my room somewhere, I guess it '11 be a cinch." " Well, I hope I can get past it," said Jarvis. " But i could never remember dates and mathematics, I know it 's no use trying to do anything." Hardy's comforting assurances went for little. They knew him, for his part, to be one of those who worked none too hard until the eve of an examina- 134 JARVIS OF HARVARD. tion, and then studied themselves to the very verge of the grave, and such men, they reflected, always got through almost as well as the grinds. In this they were right. Hardy did get through, and with something that was very like distinction. The series of seminars and coaches which he called to his aid, worked wonders, and within a few days after the conclusion of the time of trial, he was off to his home with all the old colour in his cheeks. Not so the other two. Every evening at dinner they had made comparisons of the progress. There was just one difference in these reports : Stannard was always sure that he had " passed somehow " and Jarvis was equally certain that he had not passed at all. " They seem to try so hard to ask you everything you 'd expect them not to," he complained. " You start out thinking you can bluff at the questions you don't know, and then you end by feeling like handing in a blank book." "I often do," said Stannard. "And, say, is this right? I translated ' toro ' ' bull ' in a line about ' Primus ut viridante toro consederat herbae.' It was Latin A. I wish I 'd passed the advanced stuff before I ever left Groton." Finally they attempted an impromptu seminar in Stannard's room, but that abode of pleasure contained everything that made living enjoyable and study im- EXIT A BOY. 135 possible. A move was made to Jarvis' quarters, but there it was discovered that the Philadelphia!! had no notes, and that Stannard's were illegible. " You see, I thought that was the beauty of 'em," their author explained. " I fixed them so with con- siderable labour. Then, if I had to show them at a consultation, the instructor coulcN&'t tell whether they were good or bad. It worked, too," he added, in proud defence. "Well," said Jarvis, ever ready to accept his fate, " it begins to look as if the game were up, anyhow." He felt a lump in his throat, and wanted dreadfully to have Stannard get out of the room. " Oh, I 'm not fixed yet ! " cried that young person. " Are n't you ? I 'd like to know how you intend to manage it. It means probation anyhow, and such hard work to stay here that we '11 be just like that man Mallard." " Probation 's not so bad. My brother told me all about it when he was in College. Rot! Anyway, Mallard thinks he 's all right. He thinks he '11 have another chance at the end of this year and make the first eight of the O. K., and be initiated at the dinner, and all that." They laughed a little, nervously, and Stannard looked out of the window and tried to whistle the Institute March. Then he got up with a little sigh and made a rush for the hall door. 136 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " My adviser 's such a stinker," he muttered as he bade good bye. The agony was long, but it had to come to an end at last, and Jarvis was not the only unastounded one at its denouement. To " call at the Office between the hours of," etc. that was, of course, the form of the conclusion. There was a small army of unfortunates to keep him company and these greeted him with for- lorn little smiles as he entered the bare ante-room in front of the wire-screened counter. The final interview, he had to admit, was as pleasant as it was possible to make it. He had failed in a great many things and he had not, all through the past term, shown that consistency in study and con- duct that would er indicate that, in short, was evidence of good faith in the matter of his University connection. There had been occasions when his seat was empty at nine o'clocks and other lectures. Oh, yes, that had been at the start. Of late he had shown a better disposition, but he had been a trifle dilatory about showing it. Did he not think so him- self ? Well, then, in consideration of that later stand, it was not intended to deal too harshly with him. So many did not, at the start, fully appreciate the Faculty's attitude. That being the case, then, it had been decided to to place him upon probation. Every possible aid would be offered him toward rehabilitation, and, in the mean time, if he really EXIT A BOY. 137 wanted to be re-established, it would be well for him to go at once and have a talk with his adviser. Too proud to wheedle or protest, Jarvis walked away, feeling pretty much as if his College career was about at an end. He did not mind that so much for himself as for his parents, and it was only the thought of them that took him to his adviser's for the first time since the single visit in September. Mr. Barker was in. He was a rather young man, with a keen, clean-shaven face, and spectacles. He had a pleasant room and was smoking a cigarette. " I don't suppose you remember me," said Jarvis, mentioning his name, "but I 'm one of your charges, I believe, and at the Office they seem to think I 'd better have a talk with you. I Ve been put on probation." Mr. Barker smiled. He did not, to Jarvis' surprise, seem to think this so very awful a catastrophe. No doubt he had been warned of it; certainly he had had to deal with numberless such cases. He remembered Jarvis perfectly, he said. It was hard luck that he should have begun so poorly, but the present state of affairs meant only a certain degree of grinding. " But that 's just what I Ve been doing for the last two months," Jarvis at last protested. "Rather blindly, I'm afraid," said Mr. Barker, smiling. 138 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " You judge by the results? " " Not entirely." It was more than Jarvis could bear. " Then you 're just like the others ! " he broke out. " They all seem to have known all along what was coming and they would n't warn me." Mr. Barker drew a weary hand across his pale face. " I think there was a former interview at the Office?" he suggested. " But," said Jarvis, " they gave scarcely any hint of this." He really thought so as he spoke. " Was it fair, do you think?" he went on, "At any other college I Ve ever heard of they 'd have openly cautioned a man." The adviser grew grave enough. " Very possibly," he assented. " I don't know much about other colleges, but I do know a little about this one, and I know that is not our way. Here you are given the chance for the best things in life. If you 're the sort that does n't want to take that chance, you 're the sort the College does n't want, that 's all. Don't you see for yourself that it is better so? Had you been told, you might have, managed to pass, but you would not have gained what you gain to- day. You have been treated as a man. You knew the rewards and penalties, and you are not a child. What will be the result? You will understand, as you could never otherwise have understood, what you came EXIT A BOY. 139 here for, and you will go to work with renewed energy and with definite, systemized endeavour. I shall help you all I can. We will all do that. But we want most of all to have you help yourself." He had gained his point before he was half through. To the plans that were then unfolded they meant, as he had said, simply hard work and no cutting, Jarvis listened with growing enthusiasm, and when at last he rose to bid good bye, he shook hands a trifle unsteadily. " It will turn out all right, I am sure," said the adviser. " I don't care how it turns out," said Jarvis. " I '11 do my best. The way of this place is the right way, and I would n't have any other at any other place, if I had to leave College to-morrow." CHAPTER XI. THE WAY OF A MAID. JARVIS, of course, did not have to leave College. On the contrary, he did very well indeed. In student parlance, there is " nothing doing" through February and March. The weather is atrocious ; the absence, in Cambridge, of respectable sidewalks becomes dangerously evident, and those Undergraduates who are not ill or rowing, have little left but their studies. Thus it was that, during most of this period, the bell of Harvard Hall became Jarvis' time-piece and lectures his recreation. Two or three of his fortnightly themes were published in the " Advocate," and he was one day overjoyed to receive a politely printed slip requesting the privilege of the use of some of his verse for that forbidden ground to Freshmen, the " Monthly." Stannard had remained in College by an astounding series of lucky strokes and was already on the staff of the " Lampoon," a place earned for him by his clever pencil. Hardy and the Major were not perceptibly changed, but Mallard had astonished all his friends by losing himself in the twenty-five eight-oared boats THE WAY OF A MAID. 141 and numberless four and "pair oareds " that were beginning to practise tiresome starts and to make endless trips from the abattoir to the basin. Toward the end of the term, however, study did not occupy all of Jarvis' time. With his conditions at last worked off and his courses all well in hand, he even regained his lost athletic prestige by winning, again under the giant Innez, a place on his Class base- ball nine, where, in a mild way, he distinguished himself not a little. Then came the languorous spring, never quite so splendid a thing anywhere else, when the Yard is fresh with the bright green of the turf and the streets are sweet with the tender new leaves and the scent of distant blossoms ; the spring when strong youths' voices are singing in unison under the elms anything from grand old Latin hymns to " Lizette " and " Mrs. Craigin's Daughter ; " the time of club dinners and "Pop" concerts in town and Strawberry Nights, and Finals. All springs are glorious there and each more glorious than the last. One is even gently interested in the Class races on the Charles "the back yard of your best girl's home," as Stannard always called it. Jarvis enjoyed it to the full, with a strong, healthy heart and a clear right-seeing head. He had never been in better trim in all his life, and thus, when the glo- ries of Class Day, with its tree ceremonies and 142 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " spreads," this time driven indoors by a not un- friendly rain, had passed before his admiring eyes and he had seen the Commencement exercises in Sanders he went home for his vacation, even from the awful 'Varsity boat-race, with something about as close to a realisation of Harvard as a man can come to before he leaves the place forever. " Not that you can put Harvard in words," he assured his none too impressionable mother. " You can't. But if the absurd people who are always say- ing we 're blase and bored and cynical could see us in May and June, there would be an end of such stuff. Why, we even put up with the only people who try verbally to express the place Memorial Day orators, or else baccalaureate preachers who haven't ever been, you know, and could n't anyway." During the summer he took the best of care of himself. After his brief baseball experience, there had been made to him a clear intimation that his football shortcomings would be overlooked and that a man who had proved so promising would have an opportunity early in the fall of trying for the 'Varsity eleven. Accordingly, he spent most of his vacation in the White Mountains, without a sight of his still dreaded Nemesis, and when, at the very end, he learned th.at his cousin Peggy had gone to finish a rather late season at the country house of an uncle in southern Pennsylvania, he readily accepted an THE WAY OF A MAID. 143 invitation to put in a few days there on his own account. Thus it happened that one glorious crimson after- noon found him driving with that young lady among the hills of Lancaster county. Far out below them from the bald summit of Katalech stretched a sea of green and gold, of orange and yellow, of red leaves and sere, rolling off upon all sides in shimmering waves of emerald and ruby to the far away purple line of the Tuscaroras. Here and there the ocean of tossing leaves was broken by a small, square island of bare, dun-coloured earth, from which rose a few stacks of ungarnered corn, and again there were the white walls of a tobacco-shed dancing in the sunlight, or a red-brick farmhouse, with little windows casting back the last rays of the sun that was setting, in a glory of red and gold, over Winter Hill. Overhead long, slow trains of field-crows were winging their melancholy flight homeward. Among the trees directly below them there shone the naked trunk of a birch, like some arrested dryad, and above the myriad needles of a lone pine were whispering to each other as do the lips of one stricken with palsy. That was what Jarvis tried to tell Peggy as they drew up the old horse and looked out upon the scene. Peggy laughed. " It is pretty," she said. The past few days, Jarvis was forced to own, had 144 JARVIS OF HARVARD. been rather dull. When, therefore, they started out on this particular afternoon for a drive to Katalech, he welcomed the chance for something new and he was not disappointed. They had had a hard time get- . ting here ; but now, after going off on several false scents and rounding up in barnyards, to the con- sternation of a hundred hens, or before farmhouse doors, to the wide-eyed terror of the natives, here they were at last, and Peggy at once wanted to start back again. " Let 's go back by way of Lancaster," she sug- gested. " We can stop at Penn's for supper, and get home by nine o'clock. It's so much nicer a road." " Is it?" said Jarvis, loath to hurry on. " With all my heart then, only where is the road? " " Oh, I don't know exactly, but I 'm sure it's much nicer. It must be nicer than going the way we came. We can ask the way, you know." He did know. He had already asked the way fifty times, and he was tired of asking, especially as he did not speak Pennsylvania Dutch. Peggy's suggestions, however, were generally final. Of course they lost the way. He knew they would do that. They had not gone three miles before the fact became perfectly evident. What was worse, those three miles had taken them into the Martic Hills, where there is not a house in every five miles. At the first, some very disreputable-looking char- THE WAY OF A MAID. 145 coal-burners directed them to the right. Six miles down the right they met a woodcutter. " I '11 ask him," ventured Jarvis. " Oh, what 's the use of asking so often ? " said Peggy ; " They just laugh at you." But Dick was not to be moved this time, and ad- dressed the pedestrian. The woodcutter sent them back to the charcoal- burners. Thence they were directed straight ahead. They had been misunderstood before. The way lay up and down steep hills that, at the distance of a hundred yards, looked simply perpen- dicular. The forest, dense with underbrush, grew straight up to the rugged road, and the tall silent trees stretched their bare, black arms directly over- head. There was a mysterious, solemn air about the place that made the girl draw well back in the seat, and the horse was tired, and could go but slowly. At this rate it was ten o'clock by the time they got out of the hills, and Jarvis recalled to Peggy, who had become unaccountably silent, that the natives went to bed at nine. " I 'd like to know whose fault that is," was her only comment. Her tone indicated that the fault was his. The next hour he spent in stopping at every cross- roads, " shinning " sign-posts, and, by the short lived light of many matches, trying to read the directions 10 146 JARVJS OF HARVARD. given there. It was quite archaeological ; he cut his shoes on the stones of the wayside gullies ; twice he fell over the larger ones. And then the effort was useless. A sign read " Two miles to Rotherville." He said that was not the way they wanted to go. Peggy said it was. He gave in, and three miles further on got out of the cart and read " Two miles to Rotherville." Even then they almost missed the place, which consisted of a half dozen houses, strung along the gloomy road. He got out again, and attacked a side door, while they both hallooed with all the strength of their united voices. At last, a window opened, and they were directed in a strong German accent to go back the way they had come. The next time they hesitated over a sign-post, he asked Peggy which way they should go. But Peggy was beyond the reach of sarcasm. " Oh, go where you please," she said. " I '11 not advise you again. You know it all, of course." He used his last match to look at his watch. "What time is it?" she asked, manifesting but a languid interest. " Half-past eleven," he replied. She awoke at once. " Mamma '11 think this a nice thing ! I hope you 're glad now you brought me out and lost me." THE WAY OF A MAID. 147 Now, Jarvis' love for Mrs. Bartol had not developed with acquaintance, so he pointed out that it was Peggy herself, and not he who had proposed this way home. " I did n't either," she said. " I wanted to go back by way of Lancaster ; not by all the back lanes in the county." As she spoke, they came to the top of a hill. The young crescent of the moon had set long ago and the stars were the only light in the dark blue sky above, or on the silent fields and creeping fences at either side. But straight ahead there now shone an unmistakable glow the lights of Lancaster. As they entered a side street, " Do you want to go to Penn's? " asked Jarvis. The next morning he encountered Peggy outside the smoking-room. In spite of her threats, she had made it all right with mamma. She really flirted outrageously with her mother. " Why were you so sulky last night?" he asked. " I was n't a bit sulky," she said. " I was feeling perfectly jolly." " But you did n't talk." " Yes, I did. Well, it was too cold to talk." " I thought it quite warm," he replied. " But if you were cold, you should n't have abused me. It was n't any fault of mine." " Yes, it was," said Peggy, and ran upstairs. 148 JARVIS OF HARVARD. He stood for a bit looking after her, and rolling a cigarette. Then he turned back into the smoking- room, and took up the morning paper. But he could not read ; the girl was still too fascinating a mystery to him. What did she mean? Was this simply the real in- discretion of a merry, unsophisticated girl? Or was she an ordinary flirt, an insincere coquette? There were few things he loathed more. He had known one woman of some social standing that should have placed her above reproach, yet whom he had found almost beneath it. That woman had poisoned his opinions of the rest, but he could feel, even for her class, something that was far nearer akin to respect than for those of this other. A man like Mallard, for instance, could enjoy a flirtation with the best or the worst of them, whatever the best or the worst might be; but Jarvis was no longer one of those happy, big boys, joyously taking life as they find it. He had lost his boyhood, and life was bitterly, terribly, almost fatally real to him. Everything was extreme, and he could not bear those who tried to take a tedious middle course. He must have one thing or the other. Yet of his two premises one must be true, for of his cousin's absolute purity he never doubted. In- deed, his mind never took even this analytical turn while Peggy was with him. While they were in the THE WAY OF A MAID. 149 air, her scintillations no more permitted of analysis than does the tail of a rocket. He did not take them as they were, perhaps, but he involuntarily admired them and therefore concluded that they were super- latively good. It was only when they ceased to cut the darkness of his horizon that he attempted to doubt the verity of his surmises concerning them, and then he had only the burnt stick by which to judge. The incident of the drive proved typical of the next two days of the week. He walked and drove with Peggy. He played golf and tennis with her. He even tried to appear interested in her uncle's unusually dull dissertations upon politics ; tried still harder to be civil to her mother. Mrs. Bartol fluttered about through the routine incidents of her daily life, endeav- ouring to bring within the short circle of her sight and hearing as many objects as she embraced in the broad circumference of her smile. She had an idea that she ought to talk literature to a College man, as she called Jarvis, and, as her knowledge on this sub- ject was, among her friends, notoriously small, and her confidence inversely large, the task of civility was not always quite endurable, even for a guest. She was one of those persons who base their claims to be considered unusual upon a detailed knowledge of Dickens at his worst, and a marginal commentary of " How true ! " Jarvis was at a loss to account from hearsay or I5O JARVIS OF HARVARD. observation for any hereditary element in the character of the daughter. Where did she get herself? What a pity the father was not alive ! She had, indeed, neither a knowledge of, nor a love for, good books, but, then, she did not pretend to any, and she differed from her mother physically and intellectually in every way possible. On the other hand, her father, accord- ing to all that Jarvis could elicit during the lucid intervals of the uncle, had been quite worthy of his spouse. So it was some freak of atavism, probably. The visitor began vaguely to wonder whether, what- ever this girl might be, she was not too profound for him. He was still too conceited not to resent any- thing that he found too deep. Besides, any idea of profundity appeared so incompatible with this cheery, light-hearted girl, whose every word seemed to come simply because it happened to be the first that occurred to her. Yet he could in no other way account for her. For the time at least he would give it up. Meanwhile, he did not waver in the determination for a change of amusement when he found the milder ones, despite the distinct aid of Peggy's presence, something of a bore. He would find them sufficient in due time and he was resolved to have his try at regeneration. Things were not, however, to remain stupid for long. As he had made up his mind, for obvious THE WAY OF A MAID. 151 reasons, not to stop over in Philadelphia, he had fixed on Sunday for his departure for Cambridge. It was late Friday afternoon that Peggy entered the library with the announcement that she had just got word from a friend of the previous summer who was to pass close by their place that evening and would stop off with her for a day. CHAPTER XII. A CHANCE ENCOUNTER. JARVIS came down to dinner somewhat early that evening. Peggy was just going out through the hall on her way to the cart that was waiting at the door. As he paused on the steps and looked down at her, she seemed somehow more than ever a thing of nature, a part of the great life out of doors. " Sorry I have n't room for you here," she said. "Why, where are you going?" asked her cousin, for the moment forgetful of the friend who was to arrive that day. " To meet my guest, of course. Oh, I '11 be back in good time for dinner on this occasion. You need n't be jealous." He often afterward wondered what it was that at this moment made him curious in regard to a mat- ter which had, in the first instance, so utterly failed to affect him. " You have n't told me your friend's name yet," he said. " You have n't asked before. This is the first time you Ve shown even a passing regard in the affair." A CHANCE ENCOUNTER. 153 "Well, who is it?" " Miss Mary Braddock." He could not help but start Then he fancied some trick of his imagination. " Who?" he repeated. " Mary Braddock." As if powerless to take it in, he stood looking blankly at her. Peggy, however, put her own construction upon his action. " Why, do you know her? " "No that is, yes, I do," he stammered. In his absolute stupor he yet happily realised, as if by actual inspiration, that his memory of past events must be guided by Mary's own. "What does that mean? "-asked the untroubled Peggy, who, in perfect ignorance of the torture she was inflicting, seemed bound to pursue the original course of her inquiry. By a superhuman effort Jarvis managed to pull himself somewhat together. " It means yes and no. It may be my Mary Brad- dock, or it may not." Perhaps, after all, it was not. " Oh, there can be only one. I met mine but never mind. Tell me first who is yours." Jarvis was still able to produce a smile. " Never you mind," he replied. " If you won't tell me first, you must wait till you come back. It will 154 JARV1S OF HARVARD. do very well then and you will not be on time for either train or dinner, if you don't start at once." He watched anxiously to see the effect of his words. He felt that he must get away and be alone for a while if he were to control himself in the pres- ence of the woman who had entrapped him. Luck- ily, Peggy took him at his word, and with a saucy courtesy turned away. When the door had closed behind her, he stood still for a moment and then, turning back up the stairs, sought the comparative seclusion of his own room. What did it mean? What was he to do? He could not, of course, help hoping that there was some mistake about the name, but at the bottom of his heart he knew well enough that there had been no mistake. It was indeed she. In a curious occult way he had come to regard his cousin as the inno- cent pythia to some terrible, outspoken oracle of fate. She had told him he would succeed at his foot- ball and he had not the slightest doubt of his success. Even had he been of a weaker physique, he would not have doubted. And now she was right again. She must be right. There could be but one Mary Braddock. How then had she got here? Had she learned of his presence and was she at last beginning to dog his steps? Was she come, it did not, at that crisis, A CHANCE ENCOUNTER. 155 seem absurd to think so, to denounce him as un- worthy of the company in which she found him? His morbid imagination reviewed the final chapters of every sensational novel he had ever read. He pictured to himself the villain Jarvis in a hundred attitudes of exposed abasement, until the inordinate fears of a melodramatic denouement took such a hold upon him that he was tempted to flee the house. He had thrown himself on the fantastic coverlet of his bed and thrust his head among the punctilious pillow-slips with a force that made the little brass framework tremble from end to end, and the springs >eap beneath him in but slowly lessening reaction. In a short time, however, the habit of conformance with propriety began to assert itself, and the miser- able dread that his host should find him late for dinner together with the vanity that prompted him to conceal all signs of distress soon brought him to his feet. He took a drink of brandy from the flask in his suit-case, changed his crumpled linen and again started downstairs. Control himself as he might in other particulars, he descended slowly and with a tread rather faltering. As he reached the step from which, twenty min- utes before, he had talked to Peggy, another woman crossed the hall and paused exactly where his cousin had stood when he last spoke to her. She had brushed by the servant and come in ahead of her 156 JARVIS OF HARVARD. young hostess, walking over the difficult polished floor with a graceful, swaying, almost silent tread, that Jarvis mentally likened to that of a splendid, stealthy tigress. It was Mary Braddock. She was indeed so graceful that you would have overlooked her unusual height; so perfectly, as one would say, in hand, that you would not have called the great sweeping curves of her figure in any wise elaborate. The broad white forehead, the wealth of black hair, the arched eyebrows and the curling lashes that seemed to weigh heavily upon the slow lids, all unable to hide the great dark eyes where lurked yet revealed itself so much of knowledge these, with the delicate, firm outlines of the nose and chin, the moist red mouth that was ever waiting as it afraid to give utterance to the crimson thoughts behind it how well Jarvis knew them all and how fatally! Again, for an instant, he felt like running away, but Peggy's laugh, as she tripped over beside her companion, reassured his failing courage and piqued his pride. He came down the remaining steps quickly and, to all appearances, really happy and at ease. " Here 's Dick now," said Peggy in tones that spoke of former and recent mention of the name. The light fell full on his broad but graceful figure as Mary turned slowly toward him. One hand, which A CHANCE ENCOUNTER. 157 a half-inch of cuff made to appear quite small, rested lightly on the bannister. His head was thrown back on a neck the thickness of which a high collar sufficiently concealed. Evening dress became him and, as he was too intent upon appearing simply un- concerned to give one thought to his looks beyond the point where they ceased to portray his thoughts, he was really altogether handsome. The new arrival was quick to solve every difficulty. With perfect tact she came forward and greeted him as of old. "Yes, here he is and not very much changed in a year, either. I 'm awfully glad to see you again, Dick." Jarvis noticed that she seemed even more radiantly beautiful than when he had last seen her, and yet he could not look straight in the eyes that sought his own with so perfect a good-fellowship. " You 're not half so glad as I am," he said. " Miss Braddock 's been telling me all about you," his cousin interpolated. " I did n't know I was bring- ing two such good friends together." " Nor I," assented Jarvis, " Where on earth do you come from, Mary? " " Not from the next world, at any rate. Merely Pittsburgh." She spoke slowly, almost were it not for the words themselves languorously. Her voice was 158 JARVIS OF HARVARD. deep and low and there was even a trace of foreign accent, the relic of her long schooling in France. Jarvis hastened to answer. " Pittsburgh? " he repeated. " Surely that's near enough to the other side of the Styx." " Oh, it 's some distance from these Elysian fields." " Exactly," said Jarvis, regaining again the maturer pose that he had a year ago always unconsciously taken in her presence. " How well you say what I can only try to and miss." The dinner went off well enough. Mary was cer- tainly at her ease ; the unsuspecting Peggy as light- hearted as ever. The old gentleman, rotund and purple, talked politics from under his grizzled mus- tache and Mrs. Bartol smiled forth platitudes and quotations from Dickens. Even Jarvis found his sensational fears vanishing and his manner becoming quite as commonplace as that of his table-companions. When the women had left the room he even managed not to stay long behind them, but went out while the uncle drowsed over a cigar, and returned to the library where he expected to find the others. There was nobody in the room but Mary. " For a moment, at least," she explained with a little pout, " they Ve run away and left me all alone." " Well, never mind. You need n't worry. I '11 hardly suppose they '11 allow you very long at my mercy," he replied, uncomfortably. A CHANCE ENCOUNTER. 159 " On the contrary. I am worrying for fear they will return sooner than I want them." " No, you 're not worrying. You 're merely flat- tering." " It 's easier. But seriously, I do want a chat with you. Is it too cold to go outside somewhere where we shan't be interrupted ? " Jarvis' nervousness began to reappear in full force. There was, however, scarcely a choice of answers. " Cold? Not at all," he replied as best he might. " It 's positively balmy, but you 'd better run up- stairs and get a wrap of some kind. Then I '11 show you the way." " ' When I send for thee, Then come thou.'" laughed Mary. "You remind me of my nursery days. There 's no need of leaving you. There 's a cloak out here in the hall that will do well enough. I noticed it as I came in." Jarvis had wanted a moment in which to collect his courage for the storm that, ridiculous and melo- dramatic as he knew such a convulsion of the ele- ments would be, he could none the less help fearing. But as he was to have no respite, he submitted with the best grace possible. As they passed through the hallway, Mary picked up the wrap of which she had spoken. It was one of those useless, beautiful pieces of gauze which women I6O JARVIS OF HARVARD. pretend to believe protects them from any inclemency on the part of the weather. And it belonged to Peggy. Jarvis remembered wrapping it about her the night of the concert in Cambridge. "That thing's of no use," he said, with a sudden harshness in his voice. " Oh, it will do perfectly well," replied his com- panion easily. " It 's quite balmy outside anyhow, you know." " But it does n't belong to you," he objected, and then, fearing for himself the result of such an indis- cretion, he hastened to add, "Does it?" " Really, you 're very rude this evening. Are n't you well? Or do they teach such things at Harvard? I hardly think we are likely to elope in these clothes or at this stage of our acquaintance." " I only wanted you to take proper care of yourself," he clumsily explained. Mary Braddock laughed softly. " How touchingly interested in me you are ! " she said. " I 'm not in the least disturbed because you have neither hat nor coat. Come." And she stepped on to the porch and thence to the wooded drive-way that led through the sloping lawns. The moon hung ominously low over the bare tree- tops and shed a pale, uncanny light upon them. There was a smell of frosted grass already in the air, A CHANCE ENCOUNTER. l6l despite the early season, and the gravel of the newly- made road crunched as they walked over it among the weird shadows that to Jarvis' distorted fancy seemed to stretch out skinny, crooked arms, as if to draw him back into the surrounding darkness. From circumstances diametrically opposed, both, as they strolled mysteriously through the checks of moon- light and shade, were for some time silent. It was a clear, cool night, but it was not the air that made Jarvis shiver. Except from the corner of his eye he dared not a look at the woman beside him. Once his swinging hand brushed the soft cloak that hung from her shoulders and he drew back, remem- bering again that walk with Peggy through the old Yard. Somehow, it all seemed so long ago. He was beset by a terrible, overmastering fear. All the foolish dread of the early evening had now recoiled upon him with a double force. He felt utterly helpless, altogether powerless to resist. He was either quite subservient to the will of this woman, or else he was the puppet of a fate still more relentless and irresistible. For the moment he was, besides, profoundly em- barrassed. Peggy might be expected to reappear at any time. Yet he was uncertain whether he wanted her to do so or not. Her coming would rescue him, for the time at least, from a situation sufficiently anoma- lous and even tragic enough in its possibilities, but it ii 162 JARVIS OF HARVARD. must likewise discover him in the midst of an inter- view at the best peculiar, at the worst clandestine. He was guilty and he expected suspicion. Divided between extreme fear and palpitating suspense, he walked like a sheep to the shambles. On her side, Mary Braddock was tossed about by emotions equally conflicting, though absolutely differ- ent. Exactly why she had brought him here she would have found it hard indeed to tell. She was neither a vicious nor a revengeful woman. Above all things else, she was first passionate, then selfish, and then good-natured. But when either the first or the second of these attributes they are too common to be called faults was uppermost, everything else in her was swept down before it. To-night she found the first two combined in the possession of her soul. At other times perfectly humane, at such moments she could be calculatingly cruel. In most moods easy and malleable, she was now as hard as flint. After the first shock, she had, in letting Dick Jarvis drift away from her, neither distress on her own account nor remorse upon his. The scene of her life in which he had played so prominent a part was to her mind, so far as she herself was concerned, as insignificant as it had been brief. Their paths had diverged and it was not very likely that, should they again draw near, there would be much in common left between them. So, after a weak and sporadic A CHANCE ENCOUNTER. 163 attempt at correspondence, inspired almost from the first, by the dread of a too jarring conclusion, she had thought she would be very willing to let this lover pass shortly out from her existence and sooner or later from her memory. It was not so. She had acted her part so well, or so ill, that she lost sight of the paradox and, to some slight degree, lived her r61e. It was a fatal mistake. Most of us are apt to confound our pride with our hearts, and hers suffered like Dick's when the inevi- table ending came. It was, then, with a feeling that she honestly mistook for a better, that she wrote the final note meant to set the period. When chagrin, like most other things, proved only temporary, she had, toward him, as divorced from her, nothing but good-will. She wanted to see him prosper. She regarded him as a boy, but she was keen-sighted enough to observe in him possibilities that she was eager to admire and anxious to see realised. She wanted him to succeed. This fresh meeting had been to her as great a surprise as it had been to him. Pride had at last healed itself with the balm of fresh conquests. Life was still too young to regret those past. He had been out of her sight and she had neither the desire nor the ability to keep him in her mind, but although in these matters of minor import she was sufficiently mistress of herself not to display her feelings, yet to 1 64 JARVIS OF HARVARD. meet him again so suddenly and in such circumstances was a genuine shock to her. The first glance at him was enough. As she saw him standing on the stairs, she felt she could not lose him yet. In an instant she had reviewed the field of battle and, like a good general, estimated the forces at her command and the host that would be arrayed against her. Not one word or action, however slight, had, during the continuance of the dinner, escaped her observation. She saw much clearer than any of the other actors, just which way the play was going. She observed in Jarvis the growth of an affection of which as yet he was himself unconscious, and she noted in Peggy, who could conceal nothing, an admir- ation for her cousin that bordered very closely upon something more defined. Mary liked the girl and could not have wished that any ill should befall her. The step was a short one to the conclusion that an attachment for Jarvis would, for a variety of reasons, prove in the last degree disastrous. In the first place, he was ridiculously young. He had much to see and learn before he could possibly understand himself, and as for his understanding Peggy, Mary could easily see that was impossible. But more than all this, he was not, by reason of his history, the man to make a husband for her. Such a woman could only take as much in exchange for herself as she gave. On his part, too, Jarvis had everything to lose and A CHANCE ENCOUNTER. 165 nothing to gain by an early marriage. What talent he possessed needed every moment of University training that could possibly be given it. To permit, when one was able to prevent, even the threat of a break in so necessary a course of preparation was, for any of his friends, a crime capital. She knew that, however he might imagine his ideals shattered and his knowledge of the world enlarged, he must ever essentially remain a dreamer of dreams, and that so long as he was this, she, as a woman of the world, would always possess a charm for him and exercise, at least while tangibly present, a ruling influence upon his character. Last, and most important of all, she believed him bound to her by the chain of first sin as she knew her- self to be bound to another. Her passionate selfish- ness declared her unable, even if not unwilling, to weaken one link of his shackles. She was not so blind as to mistake that selfishness of her motives, yet she honestly thought that the fulfilment of her argu- ments would lead not only to the accomplishment of her own desires, but to his eternal welfare as well. Fartlm than this she did not attempt to go. CHAPTER XIII. MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. IT is difficult to break such a silence as they had kept in their walk from the house. Neither was in a hurry to open the conversation which obviously impended. Jarvis was frankly afraid and Mary was not quite certain what, when once it was started, she really wanted to say. As is usual in such cases, the fates, by taking the matter entirely into their own hands, kindly relieved her of all responsibility. " Your cousin is a very charming girl and a very pretty one," she said irrelevantly. " Yes?" replied Jarvis with an interrogative smile. Somehow he scented an air of embarrassment about his companion that went far toward relieving his own sense of alarm. " I met her at Bar Harbor," Mary pursued. " She left just before you came last summer." " I think I 'd heard that she 'd been up there early in the summer, but, strange enough, I have never heard you speak of her before." "Really? We got along famously, I assure you." " And quite enjoyed yourselves, I suppose." MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. 167 " To be sure." Jarvis was quick to follow up the advantage that he thought he had gained. Perhaps, after all, here was the opportunity for freedom. " No, not to be sure," he said. " When we were in Philadelphia, you had quite another tale to tell me. You said you could scarcely endure it there before I came." Quite unconsciously his voice had dropped into a minor key of gentle reproach. In an instant she had taken him up, believing, living every word. " Oh, Dick," she said, laying one throbbing white hand upon his arm, " Won't you ever understand that we must play this game to the finish? Don't you see how it is?" He looked down at her for a moment in the strange half-light. She was quivering with emotion, but he could not see that. He had to contract his brows and frown intently to distinguish even her outlines, but what he did manage to see set his fears, for the moment, at rest. He caught her white wrist. It was not the caress of a lover, not a detention, but an attack. "What do you mean?" he asked slowly and be- tween his teeth, after the manner of the villain in the melodrama, whom he felt that he oddly resembled. " What do you want of me? " But she was not afraid of him. She had at no 1 68 JARVIS OF HARVARD. time been that. At the worst she had been only uncertain. "Mean?" she said, disregarding his second ques- tion. " Why, simply what I say. Whatever I have suffered, you know that I was in earnest when I wrote you that I 'd never be a stone about your neck." " I 'm not so sure that you would n't be just that. I 'm not so sure that you could help yourself, even if you wanted to, and I hardly believe that you want to." " I certainly imagined that you had some little proof of my trust in you." There was a pause in which, as it struck home, he blushed deeply. Although she could not see the blood it had drawn, she knew that the shot had told and she hastened to proceed, " I think I meet all the requirements when I say that I am as ready now to suffer on for your sake as I have been all along." This time she had missed sadly. He flung down her hand in disgust. " Suffer, suffer ! You talk as if you were the only one to suffer ! " " One finds it hard to discover exactly what you had to lose," she had been about to add, "by the arrangement," but he took her up before she could finish. " To lose? " he cried, speaking rapidly and regard- lessly, and yet lapsing unconsciously into the stronger MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. 169 speech that her presence seemed always to inspire. " What I had to lose ? My belief in man, my trust in woman, my faith in God that's all I lost. I sold my inheritance in all Nature ; I sold you my brain and my possibilities. I opened the white page of my soul to you, and what did you write on it? You know the word. You could write but the one. I came to you a mere boy and you sent me back to the mother that bore me. Do you think I can ever kiss her lips again after that? And then you talk about suffering ! You grant an amnesty to me \ Did / ever rob you of anything? Did / ever smutch your soul? Never! And you know it. You actually had the audacity to tell me so yourself." " I am surely rewarded for my frankness." She was standing erect before him, her hands clenched at her sides, her low even tones contrasting strangely with the intense swift utterance of his speech. In an instant he was stricken sullen and silent; abashed, angry with her for exciting him to brutality. Then he broke out in a dogged mutter, " If I have lost the gentlemanly sense, it is you whom I have to thank for my misfortune." " Do they teach this also at Harvard ? " He was blind with shame. That the words were identical with those which Peggy had once used served only to augment his anger and self-contempt 1 70 JARVIS OF HARVARD. As a matter of fact, to force him to insult her, however unintentionally she might do so, was for her, the most profitable move possible. He saw only that he had been insufferably rude, inexcusably brutal. The desire for atonement of whatever sort was at once paramount. His every other sentiment and thought vanished before a wild anxiety for penance and repar- ation. She was, after all, a woman, surpassingly beautiful and unfortunate, and, there was no denying it, they were slaves in the same galley. The moon had swung higher in the heavens and cleared the tree-tops in its ascent. A cloud which had covered it for some minutes before broke free, as if from an embrace, and a strange new light, a wonder- ful white radiance, poured over the figure of Mary Braddock as Dick looked at her. Divinely tall she seemed to him then and he could see at last the ill- suppressed emotion which shook her from head to foot, the dilating nostrils, the haughty mouth, the angry eyes. Nor did he seem less of a revelation to her. She noted well the handsome face intensified in its beauty by the passion of the moment, the broad white fore- head on which the brown hair had hung one damp curl, the creation of the mist, and for one instant there swelled in her heart a strange interweaving of pity for him and for herself that brought oddly to her ears the strains of the renunciation-song in " La MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. I/I Traviata." The next he had taken her in his arms and she knew the futility of longer struggling vyith herself. " You are mine, Dick," she said. It was a bad discord. He withdrew himself almost violently. "No!" he cried. " Yes. What's the use of denying it? What's the use of struggling against it? You are mine." " Absurd ! No, no ! I am my own and no one's else. Eternally my own." The storm had burst at last. The curtain had gone up upon the melodrama. " Oh," she complained, " why do you make it necessary to explain it to you? Don't you see how it is?" He tried to laugh it off and failed. " Through a glass darkly," he said. But she was threateningly calm. " Then you must see it face to face as I do. It is n't pretty, but it 's fearfully true." " To be commonplace, that is usual with truths." " It is the case with this one, at any rate. You know how fragile everything is ; how futile promises are. Marriage is, after all, only ' an oath, and oaths must have their day.' But the one tie on earth that wherever a man is and whatever he be still holds him fast, binds you to me," 1/2 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " You are right, it has n't a pleasant face. You mean ?" " The only bond in this miserable life that won't, that can't be broken, the chain of first sin." She was giving to his most exaggerated fancies a local habitation and a name, but he bore up with the courage of a martyr. " Really," he said, " I fail to see why the first holds stronger than the second. And does the second hold stronger than the third? Do we travel in an intel- lectual perspective toward a moral vanishing-point? Don't you remember the chap they asked about in the Bible the fellow with the seven wives? " " You ask why more to me than to all the others? Oh, it 's far too hideous for laughter ! It 's so awfully simple and satisfactory. The others were the conse- quences ; I am the cause. Good God, don't you think I 'm held fast to somebody? Or do you think I was always bad ? " Instinctively he had shrunk from the impetuosity of her assault and he was now leaning against a tree as if for support What he tried to say was, " For so the whole round world is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." But she had been right again. It was true; it was too hideous for laughter ; and what came to his lips was only, " Go on." MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. 173 " Oh, I can't go on. It will, though. I can't free you any more than you can free yourself. You are a Frankenstein. You have created your monster, and you can't get away from it. You must just go on living with it till it kills you. That 's what we 're all doing." He was convinced, and yet he would not surrender without a fight- On a sudden, one hope presented itself. It was the thought of Peggy. Had she not said it was never too late ? Had Mary not been carried away by an unquestion- ing belief in her own eloquence and in every word she said, she would surely have pitied him in noting the way in which the haggard young face of the big broken fellow lighted up at the first faint gleam of what she thought an impossible hope. " Is that all? " he asked, hoarsely. "Isn't it enough? I'm your real mother. I brought you into the real world, the world in which you must live, from which you can't escape till the day of your death. If you can then." " How preposterous ! You are denying the whole doctrine of repentance ! " " Not at all. You can repent as much as you like ; but if you conceal your sin it will rankle in your heart and master you in the end. It 's the inevitable law of being." "I can't imagine what you are driving at" 174 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " Simply this : Your sin must find you out. You must pay the penalty. The penalty of this particular sin is unhappiness to the end. It will either drive you to excesses that will end your life miserably, or if you endeavour to forget it and to be respectable, it will force you to concealment and hypocrisy and secret shame and self-contempt." " Then you do away don't you? with the pos- sibility of searing the conscience and the probability of purging it? " " Oh, there may be those who can sear it I doubt it, but there may be. Yet, at all events, you are not one of them, nor am I." " And of purging it?" " You might do that. But I don't think you can. If you succeed you will still have to pay the penalty of unhappiness and misery, for you can't forget. You could not live happily with a pure woman and still remember, even if she forgave you. And she would n't. They only sometimes think they do. In the end they turn. They must feel themselves superior in their virtue, and her very goodness would be a continual reminder of your evil, and she would always suspect you. In such circumstances you could not forget." " Oh, if you please, we '11 talk of such circumstances afterwards, if we must talk of them at all." " Then what do you think? " MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. 1/5 " I think this : That a man can wash himself clean. Why, I 'm only one of a million like me ! It 's all absurd, I tell you ! Surely, a man who has a pure love in his heart can never wholly decline upon mere lust." " And you are wrong. ' Mere ' is a dangerous word to apply to so formidable, so treacherous a foe. You should n't so contemptuously limit the strongest of passions one that has seized the generic name for all of them. Once enthroned in the heart as it has been in yours, it can never be ousted. Oh, I 'm not talking generalities ! I 'm speaking from obser- vation and terrible personal experience." " Perhaps, but I can't believe we were given strong desires and weak resistance for damnation only. There must be a plan. There must be some secret, some great use for it all. If it is n't to strengthen us in the end by our conquest of it, what is it for? " " You were not given weak resistance. Your whole premise is wrong. Your resistance was not weak but you did n't use it, you did n't want to use it, you weakened it yourself." " I was given illusions, distorted conceptions of life." " No, you gave them to yourself. You carefully collected them. You went hunting for them." " As an irresponsible child yes." " Well, whether you make your bed yourself or 1/6 JARVIS OF HARVARD. some one else makes it for you, you must lie on it all the same. It 's no more unjust that you should suffer for what you did as a child than for what was done by your parents and your parents' parents years before you were even born." " It 's a dangerous philosophy." "What is ever more dangerous than the truth? Neither by chance, nor will, nor weakness, are we al- together what we are. Why, birth binds us to a relentless past, an impenetrable past, and at the same time hides it from our sight. Life ties us for good or bad to those who are to come. Even death does n't break our fetter. We 're each only a link in an end- less chain that forever makes toward the ideal, and, forever returning upon itself, falls short." " Whoever created good, created evil too. You can hardly suppose it ordained if not necessary to the continuance of life." " You are too general. It 's the specific case I 'm talking about. You must always be the slave of your desires, because you have been forging them too long to be able to break away from them now. Besides, what sin is more fatal than unassuaged desire? It 's a slow disease that will kill you if you let it go on, and yet one for which you will know the cure is always waiting just outside your very door. Do you imagine you can forego that? " " I know by sad experience that the cure is not in MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. 177 the indulgence. That way lies the mad pursuit of the unattainable. It 's like trying to catch a beauti- ful flame and only getting burnt fingers for your trouble." " But, however high your purpose, you personally are physically, intellectually, morally, incapable of succeeding in it. You are an epicure, or at least a poet, not an ascetic." " Well, if I fail it 's worth the trying for, any- way." "Why, you 'd kill yourself." " If I drop, it will be with my eyes fixed on the goal." " Much good would that do you. Pshaw ! You imagine you are an abstract philosopher ; you 're only a drowning man catching at straws." " No. I am sure of one thing, anyhow. Whoever has known truth and goodness and beauty shan't be tempted by anything less." " Do you really mean to say that good can come out of evil ? That evil was ordained for nothing else ? Do you mean to say that lust to call things by their names makes saints and not voluptuaries? Remember, there was only one Saint Augustine." " I don't believe it. I think there were and are lots of them. Roses grow from graves." " Really? But we are not discussing ' Natural Law in the Spiritual World.' I think you '11 find that love 12 1/8 JARVIS OF HARVARD. can't come in where lust is no, nor where it has been." " And yet you say that you love me." " Except, I mean always, a devotion for a com- mon sufferer. Otherwise lust is the vandal pas- sion. It leaves only desolation behind it. There is no room for anything else while it is with you, and nothing remains for another where it has trod." " I 'm afraid you fail to alter my conviction that a man can make himself. Stubborn persistence, sheer, blank determination, will accomplish anything." " So you think that sin has the power to open up all the beauty of your soul? " " I think that sin abandoned can wake all that 's good in a man; can rouse him from sloth and dul- ness to strength and a clearer perception of things ; can translate him into a new sphere where, under the stress of action, the essential self will show. Why it 's preposterous, it 's monstrous, this teaching of yours ! You preach the vilest kind of fatalism. If a man is strong enough to renounce the things that are evil, and cleave to the things that are good, he is all the better for having passed through the furnace, all the finer, higher, nobler." " If he is strong enough. But who is? Very few. You are n't. My poor boy, I know you so much better than you know yourself! You are n't unusual MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. 1/9 You are only beating at your prison-door as every other madman does at first. Your reasoning is only raving. You are confounding the effects of sin with those of repentance." " Well, I repent." " You think you do, but you have n't been really tempted yet. You pursued evil once, and now that you have found it a snare this time, you imagine you '11 never be dazzled by it again." " It was n't evil, but good that I that all of us seek that first time. We are poor, blind boys and girls groping for a larger life. The kisses we give each other are n't given to the real lips, but to some pure ideal, some lofty image. Perhaps no man can ever find that higher thing, but he ought surely to leave the shams when they 're discovered, and try to get nearer to his hope by the best means at his dis- posal. I thought it was a new Star of Bethlehem that I was following. Must I be punished because it proved a jack-o'-lantern from the Slough of De- spond?" " But sin does n't take any one unaware, if that 's what you really mean. It is precisely because it 's gradual that the descent to hell is so easy." " Whoever made my soul meant that soul which so yearns for Him to be led blindfold through the excess of love, - the pursuit of the ideal, not to hell, but to heaven. That is where my faith, such l8o JARVIS OF HARVARD. as it is, takes its stand. We are to see the supreme beauty of good by proving the extreme ugliness of vice." " My dear, that 's all very well to say, but it 's too good for this world. You would n't marry any but a pure woman bad men never will but if you go about preaching such heresy to her and its worse than my fatalism you will be striking at the very fundamental principles on which her purity depends. Moral pioneers never have an easy time of it. Against them are drawn up the priests and priestesses es- pecially the priestesses of home and custom, every one to whom tradition is synonymous with wisdom. The loyal, the faithful, the hypocritical and the hypercritical, the good, the brave, the gentle, the easy-going, the pure, all these will prove more cruel to you than the wildest Dahomeyans." "Then I must die for tasting a little honey? You mean to say, I suppose, that there is no compassion under heaven or in it." "None absolutely none. If we pitied we would only draw down suspicion on ourselves. Men think that those only who are in the same boat can really feel for each other, and so our secrets would all be laid bare if we dared to show any sympathy." " Well, we can never agree. What 's the use of arguing about it? We are only like the Scholiasts Erasmus objected to for squabbling about whether MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. l8l sin is a privation in the soul or a spot upon it. You can't convince me." " Time will." " Until it does I '11 continue to try to make myself worthy of a pure woman's love." It was a base thing for him to say, but she did not heed it. " You are like a horse plunging into a fire. Let me prophesy. I tell you solemnly that this woman, whenever she crosses your path, will, sooner or later, cast you down deeper than you ever were before. Oh, there are depths and depths ! Your sin, I say, must find you out. And whoever she be, and however dearly she loves you, the mark of the beast is upon you and the blindest affection must see it. And upon that day either because you have fool- ishly confessed, or because you have returned again to your sin she will turn you out of her heart and send you back to me. ' Your own iniquities shall take you, you shall be holden by the cords of your sins.' " Jarvis could not but be a little awed. She spoke in an even and subdued voice, in a tone of sad coun- sel, but to him her words seemed to come with all the thunder of an irrevocable sentence. She was still standing in the full moonlight and looked, in her white drapery, like the relentless occult priestess of some forgotten heathen god. Far off in the vil- 1 82 JARVIS OF HARVARD. lage a bell was tolling solemnly, its strokes rolling through the woods and echoing among the hills, heavy with doom. " Mary," he asked in a low voice, " do you honestly think it 's no use? " " A union between virtue and vice? I think it is no use. The only men fit to marry are those who have just married discretion and have from the be- ginning set limits to their desires." " Then, what do you want me to do? " " I want you to submit to the law of life ; to play the game fair and to the finish, even if it 's a losing one. You have only one hope your talent. You ought to be unutterably thankful that you have that. It 's more than most of us have. You can lose your- self perhaps, in the cultivation of that. You cer- tainly cannot in anything else. You have years before you. You 're only a boy. Give all your voli- tion, time, fortune, body, brain, heart, to that. If you imagine yourself in love it will mean the break- ing up of your College course and lose you that last hope. " I 'm not thinking about myself," she continued, " You will come back to me in time, because you can't help yourself. You see, I am, as always, per- fectly frank with you. I want you to live; to see life in its every phase ; to study it as well as your books; to suffer; to fight; to make your soul an MELODRAMA IN LITTLE. 183 inn a mere resting place, but nothing more for all the light and shade of life, and all it comprehends, every pain, every joy, every passion. To make yourself, since you cannot be an angel, at least an artist. The end belongs to Fate." "Those were the very arguments that brought me v/here I am now." " I dare say. And now your own only chance is :o follow them out to a consistent finish." " I am done with them for good and all." " Then I am sorry for you." " I shall leave here to-morrow morning to-night if there is a train." " Ah, you are afraid of me ! " " Perhaps." " But I do not intend to stay." " Nevertheless, I am going." " Then I shall say auf Wiedersehen! "No good bye." "Auf Wiedersehen" Again she put out her hand kindly. She had been convinced by her own words. He bent over her fingers and kissed them. " I think you were in earnest," he said, "and I owe you many more apologies than I can make." " I was in earnest. But how will you explain this flight to Mrs. Bartol? And to Peggy? " It was the first time she had used the diminutive 1 84 JARVIS OF HARVARD. by which he knew his cousin and the words jarred upon him. " Oh, don't let's discuss her," he said. Mary caught him by the shoulders and wheeled him about, looking close into his face. There was a moment of silence. Then she said, shaking her head and smiling at her own seriousness, " Oh, Dick, Dick, the woman has come already ! " "What are you driving at now?" he asked, half angry, wholly amazed. She thought there was fear in his tone. Jealousy, never far from the heart of the best of women, surged up into her eyes and blinded her. His imagined timidity served only to enrage her. " Until we meet," she said. " Meanwhile, you love your cousin." He returned her stare blankly. Then it was in- deed as if scales had fallen from his eyes. " Yes," he replied. CHAPTER XIV. "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." THE predominating sense in Jarvis' mind was one pf amazement. From the time when, with his lately voluble companion, he returned in silence to the house, until he had finally made a clumsy escape from beneath its roof and was again well on his way to Cambridge, he was chiefly occupied with a strenu- ous effort to accommodate his thoughts to the new acquaintance he had made so unexpectedly the evening before. Verily, we know ourselves least of all in this un- knowable universe ! Jarvis had been much given to the bad habit of introspection and painful self-analysis common to young fellows of his temperament and environment. He had studied his own soul with a remarkable zest that proved the taste of gall not wholly unpleasant to him. He had come to the rather obvious conclusion that he was a very bad man indeed and now he had suddenly discovered that he had all along been again working on a mis- taken hypothesis. There was no doubt about it. Young as they both were, he was in love with his pretty and seemingly 1 86 JARVIS OF HARVARD. insufficient and shallow cousin. He was so much in love with her that, for the moment at all events, he would not admit that she was insufficient or shallow. He found it enough that she was, in his eyes, beauti- ful. Forgetting the new conclusion that one's self is the thing most effectually concealed from one, he at once hastened to the plausible fallacy that, as he had not understood his own character, it was preposterous for him to have attempted a judgment of hers. He was so perversely illogical that there could be no suspicion of the sincerity of his passion. The hope which had flamed up within him at his new discovery was pathetic in its intensity. There was no heed now of the woman he had so lately feared ; no thought at all of her who had laid open his soul for him. She was almost forgotten. At last there was a chance to awaken from the horrible night- mare of the past months, to shake off the false theories, the degenerate views, and to breathe the pure air of the actual, the earth where men lived and worked and fought and died ; where effort succeeded to lethargy and labour took the place of despair. At last there was something for which to hope and work and wait. It was undoubtedly a rather selfish view to take of so delicate a passion. He was regarding it for his own advantages only. But until lately he had been living in a world where evil was an intangible, in- "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." 187 visible tyrant, that could not be assailed or propiti- ated. He had looked from that planet up to the light of a better, but with no purpose, no definite reward for an endeavour to attain it. Now he was so supplied with incentives that he thought himself well upon his aerial journey. Besides, he was by no means less unselfish than most persons of his age. In that early moment of young, joyous hope, when the dawn of a first pure love showed him a mirac- ulous self which he had never dreamed of before, there was no more doubt or conflict in his heart. Certainly all possibility of failure seemed precluded by the strength of the new desire. He had spoken of it to Mary, but since her keen perception had seen his inmost self and her too ready tongue had pointed out to him the exact workings of his heart toward Peggy, he had no thought of anything but achieve- ment. The ancient struggle of the love of art against the love of woman was not yet for him. The perfect confidence of ultimate success seized upon him and shared its rule with a wild desire to begin this new life and work at once. There was little or no regret at leaving his cousin behind him. The train could not travel fast enough toward the scene of his coming regeneration. He weaved a hundred fond plans and laid down as many careful systems for that metempsychosis, secure in the armour of a new righteousness. He had drawn 1 88 JARVIS OF HARVARD. a ground-floor corner room in Holworthy. How he would work and slave there ! How bravely he would face the old temptations ! He would renew his body by a serious undertaking in athletics, and then, with a fresh lease of life, he would take up all the still loose threads of his studies. The prescribed forensics would be dull work, but " English B " would prove plain sailing. And his electives would be of the best. He was returning with a fresh start and unhandicapped. He had wrestled successfully with his Lysias and De Amicitia last spring ; had overcome the turgid German Com- position; read and "passed" in the endless consti- tutions of " Government I ; " and, most formidable of all, had laid that condition in mathematics which, from a disembodied ghost, had grown to so living and real a terror for him. He had read all the prescribed extracts in history that he had begun by merely skimming over in order to get through his " Confer- ences," and all this without any other incentive than the desire to remain in College. How simple it would therefore be now to take up his work where he had laid it down last June ! Nor did his ambition cease there. He would write regularly for the " Advocate ; " even the " Monthly " should not forbid him. He would finish his course with honours and, with a name already made in the small College world, he would set to work and pro- "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." 189 duce a book that should command the plaudits of the larger world outside. Other men had done it and he felt that the spirit once his had only been strength- ened by the suffering that it had undergone. Then, when the air was echoing with his name, he would lay that name and all its honours at her feet, unworthy still, but redeemed and glorified, the dross burnt away, but the metal pure and strong. Mallard would chaff, the Major would be cynical, even the taciturn Hardy would be mildly amazed. That would be difficult, but he could bear it, in a measure he had even already borne it, and he could thrash the three together if they tried his patience too far. Maggie Du Mar and the rest of her stamp in Boston should they ever cross his path again would curse or cajole him. That would be easy. He loathed the thought of them. So intense was the sense of emancipation that he no longer thought to abhor himself. He was perfectly sure. His awakening was something of a shock that night as he walked into the Major's room in Hollis, whither a note from Hardy had directed him. A burst of light and a cloud of tobacco smoke were the first things to greet him. And then, out of this, emerged the familiar figures of his old friends. The place was in its usual state of disorder, though its owner conditioned, of course, had returned in plenty of time to have set it to rights. Books and JARVIS OF HARVARD. papers and unwashed dishes were so scattered about that for a moment Jarvis feared treading upon some of them. Stannard, retained at College by the usual miracle that he himself would have proved the least able to explain, was engaged at a charing dish, and Hardy was trying to recline with some semblance of grace in one of the impossible, cramped old window- seats. The Major was drawing a cork, and two or three other men were occupied with similar matters of a culinary nature. " Hello, " said the Major, coming forward, cork- screw in hand, " Glad to see you, old man. Come in." " And shut the door," added Hardy, as the others joined in welcome. Stannard left his chafing dish long enough to shake hands. "You're just in time," he said. "Major, where 's another plate? You know everybody here, Dick, don't you? Here 're Lippincott and Morgan. Sit down anywhere. There, knock those books off that armchair. And oh, yes ! I beg your pardon, but what did you say your name was? " He had lifted the curtain over the entrance to the next room from whence came a low answer of, " Anything you choose to make it." "Worth," said the Major laconically, and drew a cork. "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." IQI "To be sure, Worth. Now, you know everybody, anyhow. I '11 have this rabbit ready in a minute, if you have n't spoilt it. " It 's like my chance for the Institute takes long in getting through last ten, you know. Everybody tired blackballing the other fellows' friends, so people no one ever heard of are let in just to break the deadlock." Everybody was smoking a pipe except Hardy, who puffed dubiously at an Egyptian cigarette, and the Major, who had compromised on a cigar. Jarvis, however, refused all offers of tobacco. If the wrench was to come, he thought it might as well come now. " Why, what on earth 's the matter with you ? " drawled Hardy, and when he had refused the liquor too, " You must have struck the Salvation Army in Philadelphia." " Or read the General Booth interview in this even- ing's 'Transcript,'" suggested Morgan, who, with Lippincott, was a fair representative of a certain suc- cessful class, and was, by the way, born promising at the oar. " The General has a column of it to-day," he went on. " He usurps a place before the public about once a month now." " There really ought to be a society formed for tak- ing the Bible out of the hands of the laboring-classes," said the Major. " Here, mix me a ' Mamie Taylor,' Morgan." IQ2 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " Is it in danger of becoming so dreadfully vulgar?" asked Hardy. "What? The Bible, or Morgan's glass? " queried Jarvis, laughing, and glad to turn the conversation from himself. " Both," replied the Major. " The next thing we know they '11 be publishing an expurgated edition for the use of the Young Person." " An expurgated edition of Morgan's glass," said Lippincott, " would be a good thing for young Mor- gan, but an expurgated edition of young Morgan would n't leave enough of him to be of much benefit to anybody." " Don't be ephemeral, Willie. Some day somebody will stick a pin in you, or blow too hard against that bubble known as William Lippincott and there '11 be a damned sight less left of it." "Well, don't annihilate each other just yet," said Stannard, coming cautiously forward through the de- bris with a couple of smoking plates. " If you must be resolved into your original elements, let this do it. It's a bit stringy, but pretty fair, don't you think?" " Corking ! " said one. " Bully ! " said another. " Rank," declared the Major, promptly making prodigious headway into his share. " Here, Mr. Worth ! Wake up and come out ; the ' parrage ' is ready, and it '11 be ' cauld ' if you stop for another nightmare." "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." 193 " This is enough of a one, anyhow," added Morgan. " Well, he does n't want it cold, at all events. " * Some like it hot, some like it cold, Some like it in the pot ' I really forget how many days old." The curtain was drawn back and a tall, thin man appeared beneath it, shaking long, black locks of hair from his sallow face, and rubbing a pair of bright, dark eyes. "Come here, Worth," called the Major. "You take things mighty easy for a man who is having only one night's glimpse of Harvard. This is Mr. Jarvis, the latest arrival. You don't have anything exactly corresponding to this in Germany, so wake up and study it." Then he added to Dick, with the waive of an exhibitor toward the stranger, " Latest importation. Genuine Heidelberg. Lippm- cott's guest." " I disown him ! " cried the accredited host. Worth, however, smiled and nodded rather com- placently, took his share of toast and cheese and, to prove the correctness of the Major's statements as to his university, drank whiskey instead of beer. "And you positively won't have anything, Dick?" asked Hardy. " No, thank you, I don't think I shall." " Then I have it. It 's not the Salvation Army. It 's worse. It *s a woman." '3 194 JARVIS OF HARVARD. " I thought they had the opposite effect," said Mallard. " They surely used to." " Oh, but I mean a serious case." " Did you ever know Dick to be facetious? Has she a soprano voice, Dickie?" " You 're both wrong," said Jarvis, quietly; "it's only the football." "Oh, come off! Don't give us a lie patent like that," cried Hardy. " Fact." " How do you like the Harvard idea of honour, Mr. Worth? " asked Morgan. Worth smiled again. " It is one of the things that Sterne could not have said were managed better in France," he replied. " In Paris a reporter says of a deputy, * he is a jug- gler with the truth.' There are letters, friends, scare- heads, a doctor, and a duel." " Some times a man even gets hurt," interrupted Hardy. " John Bull uses his fists, and that 's vulgar," continued Worth, imperturbably. " Tony stabs the the offender in the back " " And Hans marks his face, eh ? " asked the Major. " At Yale," said Lippincott, " one either calls his friend names behind his back, or does his fighting over a telephone." "But here at Harvard," Worth concluded, "you "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." 195 are too far advanced for any of those methods. A simply says, ' You 're a liar ' ; B replies, ' You 're an- other, ' and there 's an end of it." " Ah, Jarvis," said the Major. " This is not, as it seemed, a deus ex machina, but a diabolus ex infra'' " Anyhow," said Hardy, " I stand by my original proposition. It 's a woman and it 's serious." Worth's sneer had not been without its effect on farvis, and he found himself a bit ruffled by the last remark of Hardy, who, he had begun to hope, was effectually silenced. " Really," he submitted, " I don't see that it's any Df your business." " There ! " cried Hardy, waving the stump of his cigarette. " The prosecution rests ! " " Well, the accusation is n't so very awful," said ;he Major. " Why," rejoined Stannard, " who ever heard of a Sophomore marrying unless it was a chorus-girl ? " " Marrying? Oh, I thought you said it was seri- ous." "What do you mean?" growled Jarvis. " Nothing," replied Stannard. " Don't you know the Major well enough to be sure by this time that he never by any chance means anything?" " Thank you," grinned the Major, " but our youth- ful Concordian 's partly convinced me. Dick is 196 JARVIS OF HARVARD. entirely too righteously indignant to be altogether innocent." He really did mean nothing. Not one of the party imagined that there was any trespass upon Jarvis' privacy, but the latter was now thoroughly out of temper. He even lost his awe for the silently patron- ising German student. " You 're awfully funny for a while, Major," he commented, " but your jokes lack originality some times." " And so does your criticism, as somebody else of equal brilliance said somewhere or other. Stan- nard 's always telling me the same thing." " Then there 's indeed no grace in oft-repeated prayers." " Oh, break it off, both of you ! " cried Morgan. "It's not very entertaining to the rest of us." " And the first thing you know you '11 be disproving all Mr. Worth's theories about our mode of settling our difficulties," chimed in Lippincott. " Let 's play cards." " Were there ever seven men together at this time of night without one of them and only one want- ting to play cards? " cried Stannard. " And another wanting to go home," added Hardy. "Why don't you finish your quotations? That's where I want to go." " No, you don't. You '11 stay right here. I 'm "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." 197 your room-mate this year. I '11 rout you out when I get home anyhow if you don't." " Perhaps Mr. Worth does n't play poker," sug- gested Morgan. " And it is a queer way of quieting rancorous tongues." " Of course he does," said the Major, all at his ease despite Jarvis ' ill-concealed bad-humour. " Who ever heard of a foreigner, and especially a Dutchman, not playing the American game? If you had said gaigel now." "Oh, it'll be Dick, 'the Methody,' that doesn't play," said Hardy. " I thought you were going home," said Jarvis. " Did Mr. Runover never catch you playing in the Lower School?" " I '11 try to play," said Worth. " So '11 I ! " cried Dick, and seizing Stannard's newly filled stein, he drained it to the bottom. But he did not hear the jeering applause that greeted his last action. After all, one last night of it was n't going to do any hurt. He had been utterly out of tune. The whole scene was discordant to him. He had been a fool to come here in his present frame of mind. Then Stannard's sneers at marriage for a fellow of his age had hurt the pride which Jarvis' years dignify by the name of self-esteem, and he had been foolish enough to show it and angry at himself and at all about him 198 JARVIS OF HARVARD. because he had done so. Whoever heard of a Soph- omore marrying? The little cad! The merest con- nection, however remote, of Peggy's personality with such a scene enraged him. He would show these puppies how to win the battle of life, when they were going with the wounded to the rear. Then he saw that he could n't, of course, marry until he was out of College. The idea was not new to him since the evening before, but the environment, the setting, hardly tended toward hopefulness. He felt that he had been slow to realise what three years meant. Never mind. He was strong in his love and he must conquer. If he did not have the joy of the prize he would have the happiness of dying in the fight for it. But still, if in the mean time . He was very far away and He took the drink. There would be no mean time then. Anyhow, he needed the night to sleep on it and one more hour of this kind of thing would not hurt him, would, in fact, serve to let him down easily. Stannard cleared the table and piled the dishes on the hearth. The chairs were dragged up and the men threw themselves into them. " Come on, Hardy," said the Major. " I told you I was going home," said the reluctant one. " The only compromise I '11 make is to stay to look on." "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." 199 " Believing that poker is a good game to win at and euchre a good one at which to lose? " asked Morgan. " As still somebody else said," Lippincott hurriedly interposed. " Won't you really play, Hardy? " " No, I hardly ever do, thank you." "Oh, come on!" expostulated Stannard. "You were just now kicking at Dick. What are you afraid of ? It 's an easy game. Ten calls twenty, three of a kind a jack-pot, no robber decks and your scarf-pin for the limit." " My dear boy," cried the Major. " Don't be un- sociable." Jarvis was silent. " I 'm not unsociable," protested Hardy, " and of course you know, Stannard, that it 's not because I 'm afraid of losing anything. I just don't want to play to-night, that 's all. I prefer to look on." " Oh, come on ! " " I don't want to." " Let him alone," said Morgan. "If he won't, he won't. That 's his stubborn kind." Jarvis reflected that he admired that stubborn kind and he became still more angry because of the obvi- ous conclusion. However, he thought, he was in for it now. The room was by this time so filled with smoke that the higher placed gas-jets had become of little use and had therefore been extinguished. The gay 2OO JARVIS OF HARVARD. draperies and light pictures of the place were com- pletely lost to view and only the board and the faces of the players around it were to be seen. Indeed, their heads seemed to float in the air quite independ- ent of their bodies and shifted about the margin of the disk of light like evil cherubim. Morgan was half stupefied and trying hard to con- centrate himself on the game ; Lippincott was giving more attention to concealing the condition of his fellow-classman than to his cards; the Major was keeping up a continual fire of epigrams upon the uni- verse in general, and Stannard was succeeding in showing his thorough acquaintance with the game only by the equanimity with which he met his con- stant losses. Hardy hovered around the outside of the circle for a while, like an over-cautious moth about the proverbial candle, but he soon found that the best game to play is the poorest to look at, and re- tired to the narrow old window-seat. Worth sat silent, opposite Jarvis with only a small purchase of chips before him. Every one was smoking and most, by the side of their chairs, had bottles from which they drank direct. The German was the only ex- ception. He said he never drank when he played. " That 's a bad sign," said the Major. " I '11 have to put more tea in my pipe. I always smoke tea when I do mathematics, or poker does me. It clears my head." "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." 2OI Jarvis went into the first hand with three kings and won. As he swept in the bits of ivory a sudden superstition took possession of him. Lippincott had been just behind him with three queens, and none of the other three who came in held better than a pair of aces. Luck was surely with any one who could win like that. With its usual logic the fantastic side of his nature declared that if he won in this game despite what the proverb says about the lucky at cards he would be victorious in that greater one upon which he had so set his heart. The idea of an omen, always fascinating to him, gained in this case a complete control of his play. He grew hot and excited; discarded wildly and smiled in exultation or could have wept with cha- grin as he won or lost. When the play hung in the balance, his heart seemed to stop beating, and he could hardly breathe. By a strange complex action he threw into those bits of pasteboard all the hope and fear, the energy and labour, that he had ready for the fight which his distorted imagination had made this game to represent. For a while the luck rose and fell variably. The cards demonstrated no disposition toward any parti- cular " run." One time they would be high, the next low, and every one about the table had his turn at the winnings. Gradually, however, Jarvis and Worth began to forge steadily ahead. Morgan lost a pot to 202 JARVIS OF HARVARD. the latter on a low straight, and bought more chips. The other men's little ivory pillars had lowered to the relative size of grave-stones, and the winners' began to rise proportionally. Then the losers stayed out while Jarvis raised his opponent on three queens. Worth held three aces. " You must have been learning at Holyoke," said Mallard, as he dealt for the next hand. " How's that?" asked Worth. " That crowd over there play from eight at night till eight in the morning regularly." The game went steadily on. The other men were far behind. Neither Worth nor Jarvis had drawn on the bank more than once. Lippincott looked at his watch while Dick thumped a devil's tattoo on the board before him. " What 's the time ? " asked somebody. " Six o'clock. We '11 have two rounds of Jack pots and then quit. Does that suit? " Nobody objected except Morgan, and he was quickly silenced by Lippincott. The cards were " running " at last. Nobody seemed to hold anything except Worth and Jarvis. Dick was nearly mad with excitement. There were only two pots left and Worth was far " to the good." Morgan stayed in with the winners for five dollars and laid down two pairs. Jarvis displayed an ace high straight. Worth deliberately laid down a flush. "AT CARDS FOR KISSES." 2O3 Jarvis could no longer hide his excitement. He had turned from hot to cold. A clammy sweat actu- ally broke out upon him. His fingers were so numb that he could not handle his cards but dropped them continually. His eyes blazed like a man's in the delirium tremens. The other men chaffed him inces- santly, but he did not appear to hear it, only laughing in a high-pitched voice that rang false and cracked. Worth maintained a calm, uninterested expression that maddened his scarcely less lucky adversary. He kept his chips piled in regular, neat little columns in front of him, while Jarvis' lay in a disordered heap and were continually rolling unheeded to the floor. The deal went round four times. Then Stannard " opened." Lippincott and the Major dropped out in turn. Dick was ready to scream with fear lest Worth should follow their example. Instead the German drew one card. That was almost as bad. Morgan took three and Mallard gave himself the same number. Jarvis held a pair of deuces. He threw the five cards on the floor and asked hoarsely and in a voice that trembled pitiably, for a fresh hand. He got four sixes. No sound was to be heard save the clicking of the chips. Stannard bet a dollar. The words were not out of his mouth when Dick raised to the limit. Worth was the only one to stay in and he raised to the limit again. 204 JAR VIS OF HARVARD. " I won't see you," said Dick. "Let's put in the whole pile and finish it up." The onlookers laughed. " You 're too anxious," said Stannard. " Damn you shut up ! " cried Dick. Worth calmly and slowly moved his little columns to the centre of the table. He seemed to take great care lest he should spill one. Dick pushed his store into them with a force that sent them spinning all about the room. u Four sixes ! " he fairly yelled. " That 's good," said Worth, quietly, and laid down his cards. Jarvis had risen from his seat and was leaning excitedly over the board. When he knew that he had won, he sank back into his chair with a gasp of relief. The unlucky players laughed. " I never saw you so wild for a few dollars, Dick," said Mallard. "That country trip must have cost you a pile." " Oh, I don't care for the stuff," said Jarvis. " I was only interested for the game's sake. We '11 have a little supper at the Barker House to-morrow evening." He had won ! He had won ! He had won ! No other thought could find a place in the happy tumult of his mind. The foul air of the room, the close "AT CARDS FOR KISSES.'* 205 atmosphere, reeking with stale tobacco, heated men, cheese, and the remains of liquor, and thickened by the excited breath of the players, was to him the most intoxicating oxygen. He did not hear them wake the protesting Hardy, who stood stretching his cramped limbs. The victory was promised, the end secure. When the Major proposed an " eye-opener," he rilled his glass to the brim and his hand so shook with nervous joy that the red-brown liquor spilled down his fancy waistcoat. Some one had pushed up the blinds and the light of the early autumn dawn was creeping through the smoke and playing strange tricks with the lamp-light on the pale faces of the standing boys. But Jarvis was sitting alone, laughing to himself. " Here 's to hell with ' began the inarticulate Morgan, grabbing the table to prevent his swaying to and fro. " No," interrupted Hardy, laughing, " here 's to the Sophomore's wedding ! " " Gentlemen," said Worth, calmly, " let me, as I leave to-day and shall be unable to accept Mr. Jarvis' invitation let me propose the toast." He was standing across from Jarvis half hidden in the peculiar light, his white face and diamond eyes gleaming strangely, almost weirdly. Dick rose and held his glass ready. " Mr. Worth has n't spoken two words to-night," 206 JARVIS OF HARVARD. he said. " It 's surely his turn." He, too, was white, but radiantly joyful and smiling a happy, foolish smile. Worth's voice was low, even, and musical. " Gentlemen," he began. " I am bidding farewell to Harvard. I have enjoyed much my stay here and I thank you for contributing to my pleasure. It is morning. The sun is rising and the world awakening to a fresh lease of conscious existence. This, then, is my appropriate toast: To all of you who have been so kind to me, Life. May it be bright as woman's eyes and ' brief, as woman's love.' " Jarvis' glass fell crashing to the floor. CHAPTER XV. A BROKEN REED. DISTRAUGHT with the excitement of play and con- fused by the clash of omens, Jarvis went to bed that morning to awake long after noon with a mind strangely at rest. We believe, all of us, very much what we want to believe, and Dick, forcing his reason to scout the idea of anything occult in Worth's mal-apropos toast, allowed his fancy to set the first value on the superstition he had held regarding the outcome of the game. His last taste of dissipation was over ; he had not found it sweet, and he was quite ready to begin the work that he had laid down for himself. It was, therefore, with a perhaps mistaken, but none the less sincere, energy that he set upon carrying out his plans. Unconsciously the strongest college student must become the creature of the academic atmosphere. He is utterly cut off from the outside world and college successes or disasters are soon the symbols for actual victory and defeat, and then the only real victories or defeats that there are. Finding that, with some serious work, he would be more than able to master his studies, he began to 208 JARVIS OF HARVARD. look forward to the football. Here his way was for . the first few days easy enough. The promising work of his short experience the year before had, in the lapse of time, completely overshadowed his sudden desertion, and he was a welcome candidate. Harvard, however, was late in beginning this work. As early as the third of September Yale's squad had been announced. On the fifth, nine of Pennsylvania's players had reported for practice ; by the seventh all that team were on hand, and a few days later its candidates had begun training. The graduate coaches were pouring into New Haven, but not until the seventh was anything done at Cambridge. On that day Jarvis was one of the band of forty players who, led by Haley, the little captain, came out from the Locker Building on Soldiers' Field. There was a regiment of enthusiasts on hand to cheer them and this added not a little to the spirit of the initial practice. For twenty-five minutes the whole company of candidates was hurried through the preliminary manoeuvres. Starts and falling on a ball tossed among or toward them were practised either alone or in pairs, and failures were denounced by the coaches in no easy terms. Catching and punting were tried for twenty minutes more, and then the practice was brought to an end with a run around the field and a spurt to the Lockers. A BROKEN REED. 2OQ Six men of the last year's team were there two ends, two half-backs, the quarter, and the full-back. But a good deal of dismay was produced when Tom McCuen, the Scotch trainer, in sweater and cap, authoritatively announced that " Billie " Dire, the full- back of the '99 team, would not play that season. There were rumours, too, to the effect that Beetnurt, the centre, was unable to arrange a little difficulty with the Office, and that Stendhal, the rushing half, would not return to College. Serious, however, as was this apparent drain on the the back-field, the days that immediately followed developed a fair amount of new material, so that it soon became evident that the chief weakness would, after all, be on the line between the ends. However, Kohl, the former guard, might still " come out " and Lorenz, the old tackle, would surely play. Jarvis was set down as a candidate for right end and thus had at first little chance for a place, since that position was considered secure in the hands of the man who had held it during the previous season. Yet he liked the work and found it, for the time, comparatively pleasant. He enjoyed being set to dive at the swinging " dummy" which, as less dangerous, has now almost entirely replaced the old tackling " a live man" and in all the rest of the elementary " limbering up " he found only the best of exercise. Indeed, he " limbered up " to such an 14 2IO JARVIS OF HARVARD. extent that he soon reduced his weight to a hundred and sixty pounds. In a few days a graduate who had been famous in Jarvis' place in years gone by, was put in direct con- trol of Dick's preparation. That afternoon he was given especial attention while the other five men who were " trying for the position " were " bunched " under another coach. Then the squads were again formed and a couple of hours were spent in forming into impromptu interference while one odd man was detailed to " break this up." Dick plunged into the advancing crowd with con- siderable zeal and when he failed did so only through a lack of experience. But coaches have a common faith in the benefits of abuse and he was well berated for his shortcomings. " We '11 probably have our first line-up to-morrow," his instructor concluded, " and unless you brace by that time you might as well stay in your room." The remark was not of the sort that inspire confi- dence, but Jarvis was not the person easily to be shaken in his desperate determination. He had got at least some recognition, and he had mastered the fact that it is better to be sworn at than not to be noticed at all. They did not " line-up " next day, but there were more attacks upon interference, and Jarvis went into the scrimmage with a mind made up to do his best. A BROKEN REED. 2H Once upon the field he tried as hard for what he now knew must be a second place as he would, in other circumstances, have tried for a first. He put away a deeply rooted distaste for what he had chosen to con- sider was forcing himself where he was not wanted ; he felt that he could be useful to others, and he had, individually, too much to lose to be deterred by any- thing less substantial than a broken leg. The College was being scoured for men, and personal appeals had succeeded the former printed requests. The result was an outpouring of fellows, many of whom Jarvis had never seen before, and whose very names were continually forgotten by the men who directed them. Every day, until recitations had well commenced, there was a light morning practice with dumb-bells, from ten-thirty to eleven-fifty, ending with a run of almost two miles, up and back along the park system on Charles River. Then in the afternoon came the regular work : Five minutes at ten yard starts ; prac- tice at passing and falling on the ball, kicking, " line- ups for snap-backs," general "breaking through" and tackling again the heavy " dummy" that, swung from a beam, wriggled and rushed with terrible force. Altogether, they were never more than two hours at this exercise, but while it lasted it was sufficiently violent. At last the famous coaches of other years began to 212 JARVIS OF HARVARD. appear: Dabille, Dr. Ruisseaux, Carters, Edmunds, Willis the centre, and Campbell Ford. Then there were regular " line-ups " of the third and first and second and fourth rate men five minute games, in which Dick, playing with all his heart and soul, shone even better than he knew. Yet he now felt that even for a secondary place he would have had no chance in the world had it not been for his unusually fine physique, his absolute devotion to the study of detail and tactics, and the blind disregard for personal safety that forced him upon the notice of the athletic Olympians. These things did for him what steady practice and familiar acquaintance with the game failed to do for the ordi- nary man. Every afternoon would see him going through the regulation drilling among a hundred other indistinguishables in dirty moleskins and crim- son jerseys. At first even the opening run about the field not to speak of the morning trot gave him an ugly stitch in the side and his stomach was continually crying out for many of the things that he knew he ought to deny it. It was no longer a light task to refuse. The whole man was already in revolt, but, weak as the flesh was, the spirit remained un- broken, and he masterfully persevered. Most of the men on the squad were far advanced in experience and practical knowledge. Nearly all wore on their dirty sweaters something to indicate an honourable A BROKEN REED. 213 apprenticeship on school or class eleven, but Dick was given an even chance with the best and asked nothing more. For some time the work was carried on with but little change, regardless of wind or weather. There were days when the breeze roared across the big field and the skeleton-like rows of empty seats, so that the candidates who were waiting their turn along the side- lines shivered in their blankets, and those engaged in the actual practice were either in a bath of sweat or, at the next moment, chilled to the very bone. The new gridiron was so well turfed and drained as to be considered the finest in the country, but the best field would have to suffer at times and there were after- noons when a cold, cutting rain would be pelting in the faces of the players and covering the grounds with mud. The carefully muffled line of languid on- lookers would have utterly melted away and only the stolid, inexorable forms of the coaches, swathed in mackintoshes and greatcoats, with here and there an umbrella, or dressed themselves as for the game, remained to bind these splashed, short-breathing, dishevelled savages to the world of liberal culture from which they had so recently emerged. When he looked back upon it, the whole thing was to Jarvis a wild chaos of continual action. With all the waiting at the side, there yet seemed to be no standing still. Everything was so quick that there was little time, in 214 JAR VIS OF HARVARD. the inexperienced mind, for thought. Long as the afternoon appeared, each man was kept pretty con- stantly employed. There was no considerable cessa- tion of labour from the time the players jumped into their ill-smelling clothes and half-laced jackets until the final exhilarating shower-bath and alcohol " rub- down " closed the day's work and made it all seem well worth while. Dick was continually moved from one little group to another, now flinging himself upon the ground to secure the bit of pigskin, now diving head first into the heels of a fleeing player, or springing with an equal force to clutch him as he advanced ; plunging at the heavy " dummy " outside the fence, kicking in all manner of attitudes and circumstances ; catching the ball as it was punted to him or running with it as it was " passed," to be called back before he had gone ten yards; or, lastly, tossing madly about in the seething whirlpool of men in the mimic games in the centre of the field. That was the hardest work. It was there that ac- tual playing counted for most and safe comparison could be made. Resolved to show well, Dick was apt to spring, no matter how slight the excuse, into every melee. The ball would slip from stiffened fingers or wet hands; he would fall heavily to the frozen ground or bury his head in the ooze. His nails were torn, his shins bruised, his eyes blackened A BROKEN REED. 215 and his nose bleeding most of the time. At first he had been continually sore from head to foot. But he made the men of the 'Varsity angry and that was a good sign. And if he was well sworn at by the coaches, this only made their meagre praise the better worth the winning. All this while his ethical position was undergoing a subtle change. The body was again conquering the mind. Many men who go in for the experience of football have no mind to be overcome, but such as have are very likely to suffer temporary subjugation, so that Jarvis was by no means an anomaly. Beyond getting through his " Conferences," he had done little more than enough at his studies since he fell into the r ull current of the game. As the body had won when