Chapter 3

"I must feel sure of you, Pauline. Sometimes everything seems to be against me, and I even doubt you. And--that's when the temptations pull hardest. If we were married it'd all be different."

Yes, it would be different. And he would be securely hers, with her mind at rest instead of harassed as it would be if she let him go so far away, free. And where was the harm in merely repeating before a preacher the promise that now bound them both? She looked at him and he at her.

"You don't put any others before me, do you, dear?" he asked.

"No, Jack--no one. I belong to you."

"Come!" he pleaded, and they went down to the boat. She seemed to herself to be in a dream--in a trance.

As she walked beside him along the country road on the other shore a voice was ringing in her ears: "Don't! Don't! Ask Olivia's advice first!" But she walked on, her will suspended, substituted for it his will and her jealousy and her fears of his yielding to the urgings of his father and the blandishments of "that Cleveland girl." He said little but kept close to her, watching her narrowly, touching her tenderly now and then.

The Reverend Josiah Barker was waiting for them--an oily smirk on a face smooth save where a thin fringe of white whiskers dangled from his jaw-bone, ear to ear; fat, damp hands rubbing in anticipation of the large fee that was to repay him for celebrating the marriage and for keeping quiet about it afterward. At the proper place in the brief ceremony Dumont, with a sly smile at Pauline which she faintly returned, produced the ring--he had bought it at Saint X a week before and so had started a rumor that he and Caroline Sylvester were to be married in haste. He held Pauline's hand firmly as he put the ring on her finger--he was significantly cool and calm for his age and for the circumstances. She was trembling violently, was pale and wan. The ring burned into her flesh.

"Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," ended Barker, with pompous solemnity.

Dumont kissed her--her cheek was cold and at the touch of his lips she shuddered.

"Don't be afraid," he said in a low voice that was perfectly steady.

They went out and along the sunny road in silence. "Whom God hath joined," the voice was now dinning into her ears. And she was saying to herself, "Has GOD joined us? If so, why do I feel as if I had committed a crime?" She looked guiltily at him--she felt no thrill of pride or love at the thought that he was her husband, she his wife. And into her mind poured all her father's condemnations of him, with a vague menacing fear riding the crest of the flood.

"You're sorry you've done it?" he said sullenly.

She did not answer.

"Well, it's done," he went on, "and it can't be undone. And I've got you, Polly, in spite of them. They might have known better than to try to keep me from getting what I wanted. I always did, and I always shall!"

She looked at him startled, then hastily looked away. Even more than his words and his tone, she disliked his eyes--gloating, triumphant. But not until she was years more experienced did she study that never-forgotten expression, study it as a whole--words, tone, look. Then, and not until then, did she know that she had instinctively shrunk because he had laid bare his base and all but loveless motive in marrying her.

"And," he added, "I'll force father to give me a big interest in the business very soon. Then--we'll announce it."

Announce IT? Announce WHAT? "Why, I'm a married woman," she thought, and she stumbled and almost fell. The way danced before her eyes, all spotted with black. She was just able to walk aboard the boat and drop into a seat.

He sat beside her, took her hand and bent over it; as he kissed it a tear fell on it. He looked at her and she saw that his eyes were swimming. A sob surged into her throat, but she choked it back. "Jack!" she murmured, and hid her face in her handkerchief.

When they looked each at the other both smiled--her foreboding had retreated to the background. She began to turn the ring round and round upon her finger.

"Mrs. John Dumont," she said. "Doesn't it sound queer?" And she gazed dreamily away toward the ranges of hills between which the river danced and sparkled as it journeyed westward. When she again became conscious of her immediate surroundings--other than Dumont--she saw a deck-hand looking at her with a friendly grin.

Instantly she covered the ring with her hand and handkerchief. "But I mustn't wear it," she said to Dumont.

"No--not on your finger." He laughed and drew from his pocket a slender gold chain. "But you might wear it on this, round your neck. It'll help to remind you that you don't belong to yourself any more, but to me."

She took the chain--she was coloring in a most becoming way--and hid it and the ring in her bosom. Then she drew off a narrow hoop of gold with a small setting and pushed it on his big little finger.

"And THAT, sir," she said, with a bewitching look, "may help you not to forget that YOU belong to me."

She left the ferry in advance of him and faced Olivia just in time for them to go down together to the half-past twelve o'clock dinner.

V.

FOUR FRIENDS.

As Mrs. Trent's was the best board in Battle Field there were more applicants than she could make places for at her one table. In the second week of the term she put a small table in the alcove of the dining-room and gave it to her "star" boarders--Pierson, Olivia and Pauline. They invited Scarborough to take the fourth place. Not only did Pierson sit opposite Olivia and Scarborough opposite Pauline three times a day in circumstances which make for intimacy, but also Olivia and Pierson studied together in his sitting-room and Pauline and Scarborough in her sitting-room for several hours three or four times a week. Olivia and Pierson were sophomores. Pauline and Scarborough were freshmen; also, they happened to have the same three "senior prep" conditions to "work off"--Latin, zoology and mathematics.

Such intimacies as these were the matter-of-course at Battle Field. They were usually brief and strenuous. A young man and a young woman would be seen together constantly, would fall in love, would come to know each the other thoroughly. Then, with the mind and character and looks and moods of each fully revealed to the other, they would drift or fly in opposite directions, wholly disillusioned. Occasionally they found that they were really congenial, and either love remained or a cordial friendship sprang up. The modes of thought, inconceivable to Europeans or Europeanized Americans, made catastrophe all but impossible.

It was through the girls that Scarborough got his invitation to the alcove table. There he came to know Pierson and to like him. One evening he went into Pierson's rooms--the suite under Olivia and Pauline's. He had never seen--but had dreamed of--such a luxurious bachelor interior. Pierson's father had insisted that his son must go to the college where forty years before he had split wood and lighted fires and swept corridors to earn two years of higher education. Pierson's mother, defeated in her wish that her son should go East to college, had tried to mitigate the rigors of Battle Field's primitive simplicity by herself fitting up his quarters. And she made them the show-rooms of the college.

"Now let's see what can be done for you," said Pierson, with the superiority of a whole year's experience where Scarborough was a beginner. "I'll put you in the Sigma Alpha fraternity for one thing. It's the best here."

"I don't know anything about fraternities," Scarborough said. "What are they for?"

"Oh, everybody that is anybody belongs to a fraternity. There are about a dozen of them here, and among them they get all the men with any claim to recognition. Just now, we lean rather toward taking in the fellows who've been well brought up."

"Does everybody belong to a fraternity?"

"Lord, no! Two-thirds don't belong. The fellows outside are called 'barbs'--that is, barbarians; we on the inside are Greeks. Though, I must say, very few of us are Athenians and most of us are the rankest Macedonians. But the worst Greeks are better than the best barbs. They're the rummest lot of scrubs you ever saw--stupid drudges who live round in all sorts of holes and don't amount to anything. The brush of the backwoods."

"Oh, yes--mm--I see." Scarborough was looking uncomfortable.

"The Sigma Alphas'll take you in next Saturday," said Pierson. "They do as I say, between ourselves."

"I'm ever so much obliged, but----" Scarborough was red and began to stammer. "You see--I--it----"

"What's the matter? Expense? Don't let that bother you. The cost's nothing at all, and the membership is absolutely necessary to your position."

"Yes--a matter of expense." Scarborough was in control of himself now. "But not precisely the kind of expense you mean. No--I can't join I'd rather not explain. I'm ever so much obliged, but really I can't."

"As you please." Pierson was offended. "But I warn you, you've got to belong to one or the other of these fraternities or you'll be cut off from everything. And you oughtn't to miss the chance to join the best."

"I see I've offended you." Scarborough spoke regretfully. "Please don't think I'm not appreciating your kindness. But--I've made a sort of agreement with myself never to join anything that isn't organized for a general purpose and that won't admit anybody who has that purpose, too."

Pierson thought on this for a moment. "Pardon me for saying so, but that's nonsense. You can't afford to stand alone. It'll make everything harder for you--many things impossible. You've got to yield to the prejudices of people in these matters. Why, even the barbs have no use for each other and look up to us. When we have an election in the Literary Society I can control more barb votes than any one else in college. And the reason is--well, you can imagine." (Mr. Pierson was only twenty years old when he made that speech.)

"It doesn't disturb me to think of myself as alone." The strong lines in Scarborough's face were in evidence. "But it would disturb me if I were propped up and weren't sure I could stand alone. I'm afraid to lean on any one or anything--my prop might give way. And I don't want any friends or any associates who value me for any other reason than what I myself am. I purpose never to 'belong' to anything or anybody."

Pierson laughed. "Do as you please," he said. "I'd like to myself if it wasn't such an awful lot of trouble!"

"Not in the end," replied Scarborough.

"Oh, bother the end. To-day's good enough for me."

"You'd better not let Miss Shrewsbury hear you say that," said Scarborough, his eyes mocking.

Pierson grew serious at once. "Splendid girl, isn't she?" She happened to be the first he had known at all well who hadn't agreed with him in everything he said, hadn't shown the greatest anxiety to please him and hadn't practically thrown herself at his head. His combination of riches, good looks, an easy-going disposition and cleverness had so agitated those who had interested him theretofore that they had overreached themselves. Besides, his mother had been subtly watchful.

"Indeed, yes," assented Scarborough, heartily but not with enthusiasm--he always thought of Olivia as Pauline's cousin.

The four had arranged to go together to Indian Rock on the following Sunday. When the day came Olivia was not well; Pierson went to a poker game at his fraternity house; Pauline and Scarborough walked alone. As she went through the woods beside him she was thinking so intensely that she could not talk. But he was not disturbed by her silence--was it not enough to be near her, alone with her, free to look at her, so graceful and beautiful, so tasteful in dress, in every outward way what he thought a woman ought to be? Presently she roused herself and began a remark that was obviously mere politeness.

He interrupted her. "Don't mind me. Go on with your thinking--unless it's something you can say."

She gave him a quizzical, baffling smile. "How it would startle you if I did!" she said. "But--I shan't. And"--she frowned impatiently--"there's no use in thinking about it. It's all in the future."

"And one can't control the future."

"Yes, indeed--one can," she protested.

"I wish you'd tell me how. Are you sure you don't mean you could so arrange matters that the future would control you? Anybody can SURRENDER to the future and give it hostages. But that's not controlling, is it?"

"Certainly it is--if you give the hostages in exchange for what you want." And she looked triumphant.

"But how do you know what you'll want in the future? The most I can say is that I know a few things I shan't want."

"I shouldn't like to be of that disposition," she said.

"But I'm afraid you are, whether you like it or not." Scarborough was half-serious, half in jest.

"Are you the same person you were a month ago?"

Pauline glanced away. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean in thought--in feeling."

"Yes--and no," she replied presently, when she had recovered from the shock of his chance knock at the very door of her secret. "My coming here has made a sort of revolution in me already. I believe I've a more--more grown-up way of looking at things. And I've been getting into the habit of thinking--and--and acting--for myself."

"That's a dangerous habit to form--in a hurry," said Scarborough. "One oughtn't to try to swim a wide river just after he's had his first lesson in swimming."

Pauline, for no apparent reason, flushed crimson and gave him a nervous look--it almost seemed a look of fright.

"But," he went on, "we were talking of the change in you. If you've changed so much in, thirty days, or, say, in sixty-seven days--you've been here that long, I believe--think of your whole life. The broader your mind and your life become, the less certain you'll be what sort of person to-morrow will find you. It seems to me--I know that, for myself, I'm determined to keep the future clear. I'll never tie myself to the past."

"But there are some things one MUST anchor fast to." Pauline was looking as if Scarborough were trying to turn her adrift in an open boat on a lonely sea. "There are--friends. You wouldn't desert your friends, would you?"

"I couldn't help it if they insisted on deserting me. I'd keep them if their way was mine. If it wasn't--they'd give me up."

"But if you were--were--married?"

Scarborough became intensely self-conscious.

"Well--I don't know--that is----" He paused, went on: "I shouldn't marry until I was sure--her way and mine were the same."

"The right sort of woman makes her husband's way hers," said she.

"Does she? I don't know much about women. But it has always seemed to me that the kind of woman I'd admire would be one who had her own ideals and ideas of life--and that--if--if she liked me, it would be because we suited each other. You wouldn't want to be--like those princesses that are brought up without any beliefs of any sort so that they can accept the beliefs of the kingdom of the man they happen to marry?"

Pauline laughed. "I couldn't, even if I wished," she said.

"I should say not!" he echoed, as if the idea in connection with such an indelibly distinct young woman were preposterous.

"But you have such a queer way of expressing yourself. At first I thought you were talking of upsetting everything."

"I? Mercy, no. I've no idea of upsetting anything. I'm only hoping I can help straighten a few things that have been tumbled over or turned upside down."

Gradually, as they walked and talked, her own affairs--Dumont's and hers--retreated to the background and she gave Scarborough her whole attention. Even in those days--he was then twenty-three--his personality usually dominated whomever he was with. It was not his size or appearance of strength; it was not any compulsion of manner; it was not even what he said or the way he said it. All of these--and his voice contributed; but the real secret of his power was that subtile magnetic something which we try to fix--and fail--when we say "charm."

He attracted Pauline chiefly because he had a way of noting the little things--matters of dress, the flowers, colors in the sky or the landscape, the uncommon, especially the amusing, details of personality--and of connecting these trifles in unexpected ways with the large aspects of things. He saw the mystery of the universe in the contour of a leaf; he saw the secret of a professor's character in the way he had built out his whiskers to hide an absolute lack of chin and to give the impression that a formidable chin was there. He told her stories of life on his father's farm that made her laugh, other stories that made her feel like crying. And--he brought out the best there was in her. She was presently talking of the things about which she had always been reticent--the real thoughts of her mind, those she had suppressed because she had had no sympathetic listener, those she looked forward to talking over with Dumont in that happy time when they would be together and would renew the intimacy interrupted since their High School days.

When she burst in upon Olivia her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks glowing. "The air was glorious," she said, "and Mr. Scarborough; is SO interesting."

And Olivia said to herself: "In spite of his tight clothes he may cure her of that worthless Dumont."

VI.

"LIKE HIS FATHER."

Scarborough soon lifted himself high above the throng, and was marked by faculty and students as a man worth watching. The manner of this achievement was one of those forecasts of the future with which youth bristles for those who take the trouble to watch it.

Although Pierson was only a sophomore he was the political as well as the social leader of his fraternity. Envy said that the Sigma Alphas truckled to his wealth; perhaps the exacter truth was that his wealth forced an earlier recognition of his real capacity. His position as leader made him manager of the Sigma Alpha combination of fraternities and barbs which for six years had dominated the Washington and Jefferson Literary Society. The barbs had always voted humbly with the aristocratic Sigma Alphas; so Pierson's political leadership apparently had no onerous duties attached to it--and he was not the man to make work for himself.

As the annual election approached he heard rumors of barb disaffection, of threatened barb revolt. Vance, his barb lieutenant, reassured him.

"Always a few kickers," said Vance, "and they make a lot of noise. But they won't draw off twenty votes." Pierson made himself easy--there was no danger of one of those hard-fought contests which in past years had developed at Battle Field many of Indiana's adroit political leaders.

On election night he felt important and powerful as he sat in the front row among the arrogant Sigma Alphas, at the head of his forces massed in the left side of the hall. He had insisted on Scarborough's occupying a seat just behind him. He tilted back in his arm-chair and said, in an undertone: "You're voting with us?"

Scarborough shook his head. "Can't do it. I'm pledged to Adee."

Pierson looked amused. "Who's he? And who's putting him up?"

"I'm nominating him," replied Scarborough, "as the barb candidate."

"Take my advice don't do it, old man," said Pierson in a friendly, somewhat patronizing tone.

"You'll only get our fellows down on you--them and all the fraternity men. And--well, your candidate'll have a dozen votes or so, at most--and there'll be a laugh."

"Yes--I suppose there will be a laugh," said Scarborough, his eyes twinkling.

"Don't do it," urged Pierson. "Be practical."

"No--I leave that to your people."

Just then nominations for president were called for and the candidates of the two factions were proposed and seconded. "The nominations for president are----" began the chairman, but before he could utter the word "closed" Scarborough was on his feet--was saying, "Mr. Chairman!"

Pierson dropped his eyes and grew red with embarrassment for his friend who was thus "rushing on to make a fool of himself."

Scarborough's glance traveled slowly from row to row of expectant young men.

"Mr. Chairman and fellow-members of the Washington and Jefferson Society," he said in a conversational tone. "I have the honor of placing in nomination Frank Adee, of Terre Haute. In addition to other qualifications of which it would be superfluous for me to speak in this presence, he represents the masses of the membership of this society which has been too long dominated by and for its classes. It is time to compel the fraternities to take faction and caste and political wire-pulling away from this hall, and to keep them away. It is time to rededicate our society to equality, to freedom of thought and speech, to the democratic ideas of the plain yet proud builders of this college of ours."

Scarborough made no attempt at oratory, made not a single gesture. It was as though he were talking privately and earnestly with each one there. He sat amid silence; when a few barbs nervously applauded, the fraternity men of both factions, recovering themselves, raised a succession of ironical cheers. A shabby, frightened barb stood awkwardly, and in a trembling, weak voice seconded the nomination. There was an outburst of barb applause--strong, defiant. Pierson was anxiously studying the faces of his barbs.

"By Jove," he muttered, "Vance has been caught napping. I believe Scarborough has put up a job on us. If I can't gain time we're beat." And he sprang to his feet, his face white. In a voice which he struggled in vain to keep to his wonted affected indifferent drawl, he said: "Mr. Chairman, I move you, sir, that we adjourn." As he was bending to sit his ready lieutenant seconded the motion.

"Mr. Chairman!" It was an excited voice from the rear of the hall--the voice of a tall, lank, sallow man of perhaps thirty-five. "What right," he shouted shrilly, "has this Mr. Pierson to come here and make that there motion? He ain't never seen here except on election nights. He----"

The chairman rapped sharply.

"Motion to adjourn not debatable," he said, and then mumbled rapidly: "The question's the motion to adjourn. All in favor say Aye--all opposed, No--the ayes seem to have it--the ayes have----"

"Mr. Chairman; I call for a count of the ayes and noes!" It was Scarborough, standing, completely self-possessed. His voice was not raised but it vibrated through that room, vibrated through those three hundred intensely excited young men.

The chairman--Waller, a Zeta Rho, of the Sigma Alpha combination--knew that Pierson was scowling a command to him to override the rules and adjourn the meeting; but he could not take his eyes from Scarborough's, dared not disobey Scarborough's imperious look. "A count of the ayes and noes is called for," he said. "The secretary will call the roll."

Pierson's motion was lost--one hundred and thirty-two to one hundred and seventy-nine. For the first time in his life he was beaten; and it was an overwhelming, a public defeat that made his leadership ridiculous. His vanity was cut savagely; it was impossible for him to control himself to stay and witness the inevitable rout. He lounged down the wide aisle, his face masked in a supercilious smile, his glance contemptuously upon the jubilant barbs. They were thick about the doors, and as he passed among them he said, addressing no one in particular: "A revolt of the Helots." A barb raised a threatening fist; Pierson sneered, and the fist unclenched and dropped before his fearless eyes.