Part 5

He watched him as he jerked his head and blew smoke in the damp air. The way he tossed the ashes away was perfect. And when Lawrence suddenly turned and, looking frankly in the freshman's father's eyes, said with a reserved smile, "You need not worry about that, Mr. Jansen," and stretched an arm about the freshman's shoulder, Darnell thought he would rather be that freshman than anyone in the world--except the owner of the arm.

Then he began to speak again, and Darnell found himself leaning forward a little. He remembered thinking, "I don't care if it is impolite to listen."

Lawrence said in a rapid manner, without opening his teeth very wide, "The team? We brought them down from the island last evening. Sea air is a good tonic to begin a season's training with, and they are all in excellent shape. Billy, you must bring your father down to the field to see my big brown babies." Darnell remembered every word, though he did not understand quite what it meant at the time.

Soon after getting settled he took pains to pick up an acquaintance with this freshman. That was the time he first found out that the senior was one of the Lawrences. The freshman said, "Yes, he's a mighty fine fellow. He played on his class eleven in his freshman year." But that was all Jansen said. He did not enthuse as he should have. He had no more than the ordinary fear and reverence of a freshman for a senior. There was a man on the team named Stehman. He was the one this freshman turned and gazed after on the campus.

But now Darnell knew more about him than Jansen did. From the last year's "Bric-a-brac" he had learned the senior's club and what committees he was on, and the book opened up now, of its own accord, to the picture of the Glee Club. He could have told you Lawrence's middle name and his street and number at home, and his campus address as well. Whenever the freshman went to night session of Hall he looked up as he went by to see if the room in West were lighted, and he wondered what he was doing up there behind those curtains. Once, while passing by, some one was calling "Hello-o-o, Harry Lawrence!" and in Lawrence's own voice came a muffled "Hello! Come up." It did not seem quite right for them to be noisy and familiar with Lawrence as with ordinary fellows. He did not understand how Lawrence allowed it.

* * * * *

In Jansen's room it was, and Old North was ringing curfew, when Lawrence shook his hand and said in his peculiar throaty voice, "Glad to know you," or else "Glad to meet you." He never could be certain which it was. It was on a Tuesday evening, and he had made a poor recitation in algebra that day. He noticed that Lawrence was only about an inch taller than himself.

Darnell looked straight back at him and said, "I think I have heard my sister speak of you, Mr. Lawrence. She met you down here at the sophomore reception last June." His voice was perfectly firm and strong, but his mouth persisted in drooping a little at the corners. He could not help that.

Lawrence said, "Yes, I remember very well," which delighted the freshman's sister Louise, when Darnell wrote to her about it, just as much as if it had been true. "Is your sister coming down to any of the dances this year?" added the senior.

"No, I don't believe she is. My aunt brought a whole crowd down that time. Mamma was on the other side, or she would not have allowed it. Louise is not out yet." Then he dropped his big brown eyes and blushed because he felt that he was talking too much and because he had said "mamma" before the senior.

But Lawrence was only looking grave and interested and well-bred, and he replied, "I see. That's too bad. I wish she could come."

"Yes," said Darnell, "I wish she could come," and then, although he did not want to, he arose to go, because he thought that Lawrence wished to talk confidentially with his freshman, Jansen.

Lawrence, who did not care about his going, because he found it as easy to talk to two freshmen as to one, said, "I hope I'm not driving you out, Bonnell. Good-night. If your sister should decide to come down this year, don't forget to let me have a chance at her card before it's filled. Good-night, Bonnell."

"Oh, I won't," said the freshman. "Good-night."

As if he could forget. As if he would be allowed to forget, indeed! She, dear little thing, in her own becoming little way, worshipped him, too. And at Mrs. Somebody's School in Somethingtieth Street, she used to slip an arm about the waist of her latest everlasting friend, and whisper something about it on the way upstairs after prayers.

During her evening's acquaintance with him in June she had told the great, dark, wonderful man that had "a whole tragedy in his face," "a certain indefinable something" in his manner, and many other things, too, no doubt, that she had a brother who was coming to college the next fall, and she asked Lawrence in a very timid, pretty, natural manner if he would please look out for her brother, who would be a freshman and only sixteen years old. And Lawrence, who was watching the way she held her head and approving of it, said, "Of course I will," and forgot about it during the next dance, which was with a Newark girl, who asked him how the Sunday night hot-liquor club was prospering. That was last June.

To be sure Lawrence did not get his name just right, but then many people did not come that near when they first heard it. Besides, what of that? Had he not looked at him and addressed him twice? That was more than most freshmen could say.

But it hurt a little the next day, when Darnell changed his mind about going to the library because he saw that if he kept on up the walk he would meet Lawrence coming toward Dickinson's with three other seniors. For he received only an absent-minded glance without the movement of an eyelash. But you could not expect Lawrence to remember all the people he met. And, perhaps, he was worshipped all the more for it.

On Sunday he used to gaze with his big brown eyes from his seat in the freshman section way over through the juniors and past some of the seniors, back to Lawrence's place. Sometimes a big head of football hair was in the way, so that he could not tell whether he was there. He was absent so frequently. But when they all arose to sing the first hymn, then he could see, and then he would recall what the football column in the paper he had been reading before chapel reported that "President Lawrence" had done or said, and he wondered whether he himself had read it and how it felt to see one's own words in type.

He seldom joined in the singing, Darnell noticed, unless it was "Ein Feste Burg" or "Lead, Kindly Light," and though he could not tell why, Darnell admired him all the more for his not singing every time. At any rate, it was just like him to stand there with his hands in his pockets and his aristocratic head thrown back and look dark and grave and mysterious. He always looked especially so, Darnell thought, in chapel. His mien seemed to be haughty and kingly, not merely dignified and exclusive like that of many upper-classmen. Lawrence when a freshman could never have been hazed or guyed. He could not imagine him stooping to haze anyone either.

Lawrence could do anything. Anyone could see that from his eyes and chin and the straight, firm mouth with the thin lips. Darnell knew very well that Lawrence could stand high in his class if he wanted to. Probably he could play football. He was built well enough. Darnell thought it would not be quite Lawrence's style to play football. He would hate to see him tackled or rolling in the mud. That would never do for him. Lawrence, he thought, would not have played on the team if he were asked. Darnell had been a Princeton man less than a month.

But he had what was far better than playing on the team--the management of it. And he was just right as he was. He was a dignified, weighty senior, respected by all and feared by many, no doubt, and a man, not a boy, who had travelled much and lived much and had had all sorts of experiences in his younger days. He was old now, nearly twenty-two.

But the most wonderful thing about him was his composure and his commanding reserve. He had the look of the gentleman. His manner seemed altogether impervious to excitement. He was master of every situation. To have such a man in their classes must have been rather embarrassing to the professors. Darnell supposed that the other Lawrences were rather afraid of him when he came home.

His perfect command of himself and of everyone and of everything about him was what most impressed the freshman. That was the reason that when his idol fell, it jarred him.

* * * * *

On Thanksgiving evening his head was throbbing and his ears ringing with the echo of horns and cheers, and before his eyes were flashing little kodak recollections of how the line looked when the ball was put in play, and how the crowd waved and yelled when the full-back tried for a goal. But there was a lot of aunts and cousins and things-in-law for dinner, whom he had to kiss and smile at when they said, "How you have grown!" He wanted to get near some class-mate and put his arm about him and talk it all over, like any other healthy young man after the game. And, as early as he decently could, he slipped on his big new coat and stole out by the basement door.

He walked down the avenue to Madison Square, getting jostled and excited once more. Noisy gangs of fours and eights and dozens were marching and dancing along the street. Some wore orange, others blue. Some were students at various colleges, most of them had never seen one.

He went into the Hoffman. Closely packed streams of men were crowding in and out. The air was hot and there was a confused din of many voices. He worked his way to the end of the glaring room, but saw none of his intimates and but few fellows that he had ever seen before. Most of the crowd were of the sort he had seen on the street, young men of the town with college ribbons all over them, and such boisterous noises grated on him, so he started out again. Some hoarse cheering and husky laughter made him turn and look toward the corner where the throng was thickest. Then he hurriedly pushed his way through the crowd to gain a nearer view of what he saw upon the table.

He tried to persuade himself that it was someone else. He did not understand how he could be among people of this sort.

But there was no mistaking that mouth, though he had never seen the hair hanging down that way, nor the eyes as they were now. About the neck was the rim of a hat.

Suddenly two other fellows brushed past Darnell. He looked up and thought he remembered having seen their faces on the campus. They seemed to be excited, and they wedged their way roughly through the crowd to the table. "Leave him alone," one of them was calling out above the din. Brushing aside some slight interference, they picked up the heap from the table, half carried it through the crowd, saying, as they went along, "You're all right, Harry. Brace up, Harry, you're all right," and paying no attention to the crowd, they hurried across the room to the Twenty-fourth Street entrance and disappeared.

For a moment the freshman only stared at a long, tall clock and wondered. Then he suddenly turned and hurried out into the street.

It was no affair of his. The others were there. They were the ones to take care of him. But the electric light had given him one glimpse, and for the moment it was very revolting. He turned and walked slowly home.

He tried to reason himself out of it. It was nothing to feel so queer over. It was not such a terrible thing, after all, especially after having the game turn out as it did. Most every young man was indiscreet at some time or other. Lawrence was a young man like many others, only he happened to have been indiscreet under unfortunate circumstances. That was all. It seemed worse than it really was.

But he did not want Lawrence to be like others. That was just the point. If it had been someone else he would not have cared. But for Harry Lawrence, Lawrence the superb, his Lawrence, there in that glaring place--jeered at and made a fool of--by that mob of muckers. It was all wrong.

"Well," he said to himself, as he went upstairs to his room, "I suppose I'm too much of a kid, and I'll have to get over my kid ways of looking at things. The sooner the better."

But all the same, it hurt, and when he was dropping off to sleep, he was startled into wakefulness again by one of those queer, sudden pangs which make one ask, "What is it I've lost?"

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF LAWRENCE

I

Many fellows seem to think that all an athletic officer has to do is to look important and travel about the United States with his team and make out a bill for expenses.

It's easy enough to carry a japanned tin box, and sell tickets through a hole where the wind blows, as treasurer. As president it is a fine thing to make frequent trips to New York, and attend conclaves that are secret, and make speeches in conventions and read your opinions next morning in the paper in fine long sentences prefixed with "President So-and-so said last night," and to be lunched by famous authorities and interviewed by rapacious reporters who think that because the public supports football they have a right to see all the inside workings of intercollegiate diplomacy. All this is the pretty part of it.

But like all greatness there is a deal of hard hustling and perspiration and discouragement and annoyance underneath. So much so, that one seldom has time to tell himself how fine a thing it is to wear a 'varsity blazer with the orange monogram on the breast-pocket. And this is usually heavy with bills to pay and memoranda of things to see to. Besides, the responsibility is tremendous.

* * * * *

H. Lawrence, Ninety Blank, had blood-shot eyes this morning, and he hurried down the clattering iron stairs of West College tying his neck-tie. As the ugly entry door slammed behind him he did not put his hands in his pockets and begin to whistle, as he used to do in under-classman days, because he was not sauntering over to Reunion to smoke a pipe, or down to Witherspoon to loaf until the next lecture. He glanced at the clock in old North tower and hit up his pace.

He had given orders to the team to be at the station with their grips packed at 9.38, and before that time he had to wire a member of the Graduate Advisory Committee, asking where he could find him that evening, and to an official of the Manhattan Athletic Club that he should not be able to consider his proposition at present, and to the manager of a Southern college football team that he regretted that all Princeton's open dates were now filled, and to the Jersey City Station restaurant to prepare a luncheon of training food for twenty men, and not to roast the beef to death this time. After that he would have to call upon the dean and find out whether the faculty had decided to let Harrison play football or not, and find and be nice to another member of the faculty who was indignant because seventeen grand stand tickets had not been saved for him and his wife's relatives at the last Saturday's game, and then hurry to the station by way of the bank, where he would ask if they had heard anything more about that protested check, while he was making a good one out for himself, and then see to it that all the team and subs were flocked together and pushed into the train and made to stay there until told to get out and play football. Some of which would have been more properly the duties of Sinclair, the treasurer, who was not catching on as rapidly as Lawrence thought he should.

He took long, strong strides and looked straight ahead of him, which was in the direction of an old shop opposite the gate, with a picturesquely warped roof which he did not see.

He did not see the fellows along the walk either, and those he did not cut he nodded to absently without removing his frown. This caused certain passers-by to shake their heads and say, "Harry Lawrence is getting a swelled head since he's become so important," especially those who greatly wanted to be important themselves but weren't, and so had plenty of time to criticise those who were.

But Lawrence, with a half dozen unopened letters in his pocket which he would read on the train going up, did not dream of being criticised. And if he had he would not have felt very badly about it. He did not have time.

Nor would he have had time to stop and thank his good friends Nolan and Linton, who, when Lawrence had rushed by with one of those "How-do's" which make one think that one's name has been forgotten, had looked worried and then said, "Harry'll kill himself before the end of the season," while Lawrence tore open a telegram with which the boy met him in front of College Offices and hurried on. He had no time for breakfast, because the man had forgotten to wake him, and the night before he had been handling the files of applications for the Thanksgiving game seats with Sinclair and dictating to a stenographer until 2 A.M.

Every evening from eight until midnight there was a reception in his room, with Sinclair to help receive. It began when they came in from the club after dinner, with a workman or two from the town waiting in the entry, who touched their hats and said, "Please, sir, Mr. McMaster says this bill is correct." Then would come members of the team who wanted the management to remove conditions for them, and coachers who wanted to talk serious business and had but a short time to spare, and some of the fellows who wanted to smoke and chat and seemed hurt when told to get out; and in addition, the hordes of applicants for seats, who kept running in and out, incessantly buzzing in the management's ears like flies, and just as pestiferously merciless, from eight until twelve, when the door was locked.

These represented all phases of college life, from the professor who "never incurred any difficulty in getting all the seats he wanted in previous years" to the young freshman whose mother knew the management's mother, and thought he might be especially considered for that reason, and including class-mates who made it a personal matter of friendship, and thought they ought to be considered ahead of mere strangers for that reason. Also emissaries from a certain woman's college, who must have tickets before they are put on sale, because the poor, timid girls could not stand in line with all those men, and cousins of members of the team, and many others, all of whom furnished an excellent reason for being entitled to just a little more consideration than anyone else. None of which counted them anything in Lawrence's reign.

But this was not what made Lawrence scowl and look fierce as he hurried by a little, wistful-eyed freshman, whom he did not see, and who had been hoping all the way from the First Church gate to the dean's that maybe this time the senior would recognize him. Lawrence was used to all this, and he liked it. He liked having a lot of things to attend to in a short time, to see many people and give orders and talk fast and feel his brain warm with quick thinking. He enjoyed responsibility, and he thought it was thrilling to get in a situation and then take a long breath, so to speak, and command it. Nor was he too old to fully appreciate his privilege of being on intimate terms with ancient heroes of the football field, and he was glad to be thrown with so many other prominent alumni. And he took great satisfaction in watching the long-headed Advisory men begin to acknowledge by their attitude that although an undergraduate he had reliable executive ability and somewhat of independent resource besides. One of them clapped him on the back one day and said, "Good! That's the proposition we'll make 'em," and added, "You are your father's own son, Lawrence."

Except that he would have liked to have a little time to loaf and enjoy life, he was quite well pleased with being president of the P. U. F. B. A., and did not care a rap whether the college considered him arrogant or not. He was attending to his own business and had the satisfaction of knowing that he was doing it rather well, with the attendant satisfaction of having had the honorable position given him by the vote of the college body without his or his friends' boot-licking one of them for it. And that is one of the most satisfactory feelings in the world.

The thing that troubled him was a letter in his pocket. That was the reason that when the ninth old grad. approached him on the field and said, "Say, Lawrence, just between us now, what do you think of the chances with Yale?" he replied, curtly, "How do I know?" and hurried on up the side lines. This was decidedly fresh, and he jumped on himself afterward because he did not believe in letting private affairs interfere with business. Usually he could stand a dozen old graduates.

The letter had come the day before. It was from his father and enclosed Lawrence's November allowance. He never received but one letter a month from the governor, and it nearly always contained two statements: "Enclosed please find ..." and "Your mother and all are well," both of which make very agreeable reading.

This time the letter was not dictated, but written in the Colonel's own small, straight hand, and there was an extra paragraph. It ran thus: "Had I known what this official position of yours involved, the amount of time, the number and variety of interruptions, and the vulgar prominence that your name and movements occupy in the press, I should never have given my consent, which, as you may remember, I did reluctantly, to your acceptance of it. In my opinion what you are learning at college could better be acquired at home: a little of business down-town with me, your _other accomplishments_ up-town in the clubs and other places with your friends." This was not the sort of letter to do any good.

"'Your other accomplishments'--now what the devil does he mean by that, I wonder?" thought Lawrence. And then he folded the letter and tossed it into a pigeon-hole marked "Unanswered," and turned his attention upon a large blue-print marked "Stand B" and tried to assure himself that the reason his mind kept jumping back to pigeon-hole "Unanswered" was because he was sorry at being too busy to study, and disliked having such a low stand in class. But it wasn't his class standing that kept him awake until old North struck five.

After this when in New York he did not go up-town to dine with the family as often as formerly. When he did his father merely said, "Judge Hitchcock told me he saw you on Broadway last Wednesday," and similar remarks in a casual tone.

"Yes, sir," Harry would reply, with his attention on the crest on his plate.

Then each would wonder what the other meant, until Helen would interrupt with, "By the way, I saw by the _Tribune_ this morning that 'President Lawrence of Princeton' says that Yale will beat Harvard at Springfield. So it's all right then, Winston." He was her husband, Yale '86, and Helen was a good sister, who had a large intuition and knew things.

On Thanksgiving Day the College of New Jersey went up to New York feeling quite certain of winning the game. The alumni said we would win. The heelers doubled their bets. The coachers were sure we'd win. Most of the authorities conceded the victory to Princeton. The team were confident of winning. Yale won.