Part 4

Duggie--I can't imagine why--has never studied French until this year. He enrolled in a class only a week or so ago, and though it's merely an extra course with him and he could get his degree just as easily without it, he goes at it as if it were all-important. Berrisford knows French as well as he knows English, and volunteered to help him with his exercises. The other afternoon Duggie ran into Berri's room and said: "I 've an idea that we're going to have '_je suis bon_' in French to-day; I wish you would write out a few tenses for me so I can learn them on the way over--I simply have n't had a minute to myself for two days." Naturally Berrisford seemed delighted to help him, and gravely wrote something on a piece of paper that Duggie carried off just as the bell was ringing. When he got into the Yard and slowed up to look at it, this is what he found:

_Je suis bon_ _Tu es bones_ _Il est beans_ _Nous sommes bonbons_ _Vous etes bonbonnieres_ _Ils sont bon-ton._

Of course he did n't actually care; but I don't think the incident helped in Duggie's opinion to throw any very dazzling light on Berrisford's really serious qualities. Duggie regarded it, I 'm sure, as about on a par with the way we get out of sitting through our history lecture.

One day when the dreamy old gentleman who conducts the history course was trying to prove that Charlemagne either was or was n't surprised (I 've forgotten which) when the Pope suddenly produced a crown and stuck it on his head, a ripple of mirth swept gently across the room, very much as a light breeze ruffles the surface of a wheatfield. No one laughed out loud; but when between three and four hundred men all smile at once, it makes a curious little disturbance I can't quite describe. The old gentleman looked up from his notes, took off his spectacles, chose one of the other pairs lying on the desk in front of him (he has three or four kinds that he uses for different distances), and inspected the room. But by the time he had got himself properly focused there was nothing to see; the fellow who had made every one giggle by climbing out of the window and down the fire-escape was probably a block away. So, after a troubled, inquiring look from side to side, the dear old man changed his spectacles again and went on with the lecture.

Now, although it had never occurred to any one to crawl down the fire-escape until that day, every one in our part of the room has become infatuated with the idea, and three times a week--shortly after half-past two--there is a continuous stream of men backing out the window, down the iron ladder and into the Yard. In fact, the struggle to escape became so universal and there were so many scraps at the window and in mid-air on the way down over who should go first, that Berrisford evolved the idea of distributing numbers the way they do in barbershops on Saturday afternoon when everybody in the world becomes inspired with the desire to be shaved at the same time. It works beautifully; but of late the undertaking is attended by considerable risk.

At first Professor Kinde stopped lecturing and fumbled for his other spectacles only when he heard the class titter; I don't believe he in the least knew what was going on. But recently he has become extremely foxy. Although he has n't spoken of the matter, he realizes what is happening, and I think the ambition of his declining years is to catch somebody in the act of darting toward the window. At irregular intervals now, throughout his lectures, he--apropos of nothing--drops his notes, seizes a fresh pair of spectacles, makes a lightning change, and then peeks craftily about the room while the class tries hard not to hurt his feelings by laughing. Then, disappointed, but with an air of "I 'll-surely-strike-it-right-next-time," he changes back again and continues. The lectures have become so exciting and fragmentary that Berrisford and I are torn with the conflicting desires to stay and see what happens and to get out into the wonderful autumn weather. Usually, however, we leave, and the last time, just as I was preparing to drop to the ground, Duggie strode in sight. Berrisford, half-way down, happened to glance over his shoulder. When he saw Duggie he swung around, struck an Alexandre Dumas attitude, and exclaimed dramatically,--

"Sire, we have liberated the prisoners, cut away the portcullis and fired the powder magazine. Is 't well?" Duggie laughed.

"Powder magazines aren't the only things that get fired around these parts, monsieur," he answered as he passed on.

Now, there was nothing disagreeable either in the remark or the way Duggie made it; he seemed perfectly good-natured, and, although in a great hurry, very much amused. But, somehow, it was n't quite as if any one else had said it. I don't know what "reading between the lines" is called when there aren't any lines to read between; but anyhow that's what I couldn't help doing. Duggie's little thrust was made at Berri--but it was intended for me. And that 's what I mean when I say Duggie has me on his mind. He would have Berri there, too, if he liked him; but he does n't. I think he firmly believes that he regards us both with the utmost impartiality; yet I know (this is recorded in all modesty, merely as a fact) that he likes me, and that for poor Berri he has no use at all. Berrisford is tactless; he had no business, for instance, to tell Duggie about the watch.

One Saturday morning when Berrisford had finished his lectures for the day, and I found that a cut was to be given in my last one, we strolled along Massachusetts Avenue, without really meaning to go anywhere, until we came to the bridge across the Back Bay. We leaned over the rail awhile and watched the tide clutching viciously at the piers as it swirled out, and then, farther up, I noticed a flock of ducks paddling about in a most delightful little mud-hole left by the falling tide.

"I could hit one of those birdies if I had a shotgun," I said, closing one eye. (It just shows what a trivial remark may sometimes lead one into.)

"It wouldn't do you any good," Berrisford yawned; "you couldn't get it."

"I don't see why not. I could borrow a boat from the Humane Society and row out," I answered, rather irritated by Berrisford's languid scepticism.

"Well, what on earth would you do with the poor little beast after you did get him?" he pursued.

"What do you suppose?" I exclaimed. "What do people usually do when they shoot a duck?"

"I think they usually say that they really hit two, but that the other one managed to crawl into a dense patch of wild rice growing near by," Berrisford answered.

"I should have it cooked and then I 'd eat it," I said, ignoring his remark.

"What an extremely piggish performance! There would not be enough for any one but yourself. I would much rather go into town with somebody and have one apiece at the Touraine."

"Oh, Berrisford," I murmured; "this is so sudden!"

When we reached the other side of the bridge we got on a passing car, and after we sat down Berrisford said, "You 'll have to pay for me; I have n't any money either here or in Cambridge." As I had just eight cents in the world and had taken it for granted that Berri was going to pay for me, we jumped out before the conductor came around, and resumed our walk.

"If you have n't any money and I haven't any money, I 'm inclined to think the ducks will not fly well to-day," I mused; for the last time we had been to the Touraine the head waiter--a most tiresome person--told me we could n't charge anything more there until we paid our bills.

"I suppose you would just sit on the curbstone and starve," Berrisford sniffed. And as we walked along I saw that he had some kind of a plan. He took me through one of the queer little alleys with which Boston is honeycombed and out into a noisy, narrow, foreign-looking street, lined with shabby second-hand stores and snuffy restaurants,--the kind that have red tablecloths. At first I thought it was Berri's intention to get luncheon in one of these places, although I did n't see how even he could manage it very well on eight cents. However, I asked no questions. Suddenly he stopped and took off his sleeve-links. Then we walked on a few steps and went into a pawnbroker's.

It sounds absurd, but when I discovered what Berrisford was about to do I felt curiously excited and embarrassed. Of course I knew that lots of people pawn things, but I had never seen it done before, and like most of the things you can think about and read about in cold blood, I found that it made my heart beat a good deal faster actually to do it. In fact, I did n't care to do it at all, and told Berrisford so in an undertone; but he said,--

"Why not? There 's nothing wrong in it. You own something more or less valuable and you happen for the moment to need something else; why should n't you exchange them? If the soiled vampire who runs this place (what's become of him, anyhow?) would give me two small roasted ducks and some bread and butter and currant jelly and two little cups of coffee and a waiter to serve them, and a mediaeval banquet hall to eat them in, and a perfectly awful orchestra behind a thicket of imitation palm-trees to play Hungarian rhapsodies while we ate--instead of five dollars and a half, I should be just as well pleased; because it will amount to about the same thing in the end."

Just then the proprietor of the shop emerged from behind a mound of trousers and overcoats and shuffled toward us very unwillingly, it seemed to me. But Berrisford said he was always like that.

"You can't expect a display of pleasing emotions for a paltry five per cent a month," Berrisford whispered in my ear. I don't think, however, that the pawnbroker could have looked pleasant no matter what per cent he got. He took Berri's beautiful sleeve-links (they 're made of four antique Japanese gold pieces), went into a sort of glass cage built around a high desk and a safe, and did all sorts of queer things to them. He scratched the under side of two of the coins with a small file; then he dabbed some kind of a liquid that he got out of a tiny bottle on the rough places and examined them through one of those inane spool things that jewellers hang on their eyeballs just before telling you that you 've busted your mainspring. Next he weighed them in a pair of scales that he fished out of a drawer in the desk, and finally he held up his claw of a hand with all the fingers distended, for us to inspect through the glass.

"Why, you dreadful old man!" Berrisford exclaimed indignantly. "You gave me five and a half last time. I wouldn't think of taking less."

For a moment I supposed that the game was up and we 'd have to walk all the way back to Cambridge and be too late for luncheon when we got there; for Berrisford took his sleeve-links and strolled over to the door, saying in a loud voice,--

"Come on, Tommy; there 's a better one across the street." But just as we were leaving, "the soiled vampire" made a guttural sound that Berrisford seemed to understand, and we went back and got the amount Berri considered himself entitled to.

"The quality of mercy is a little strained this morning," he said when Mr. Hirsch went into the glass cage again to make out the ticket. I always had an idea that a pawn ticket was a piece of blue cardboard--something like a return theatre ticket. But it is n't, at all. It's simply a thin slip of paper resembling a check--only smaller.

Well, we had a delightful luncheon. After luncheon we thought of going to the matinee and sitting in the gallery, but Berri all at once exclaimed, as if the idea were a sort of inspiration,--

"I 'll tell you what we 'll do; let 's economize. I 've always wanted to; they say you can be awfully nice and contented if you never spend a cent, but just think noble thoughts."

"We might go and look at the pictures in the Public Library and then cross over to the Art Museum," I suggested. "It's free on Saturdays, you know." Berri thought that would be charming, so we walked up Boylston Street, stopping at a florist's on the way to send some American beauties and some violets to Mrs. Hemington, at whose house we dined that Sunday night. (She was thrown out of a carriage the other day and sprained her thumb, and we thought we ought to take some notice of it, as she was very nice about asking us to come to Sunday luncheon whenever we wanted to.)

Berrisford did n't care much for the Puvis de Chavannes pictures in the library,--that is, after he found out that they were as finished as they were ever going to be. At first he was inclined to think them rather promising, and said that by the time they got the second and third coats of paint on they would no doubt do very nicely.

"But the artist is dead," I explained. "And anyhow, he always painted like that."

"Why did n't some one speak to him about it?" said Berri.

"There would n't have been any use; he painted that way on purpose. It was his style--his individuality," I said.

"Do you like it?" he suddenly demanded. He was looking at me very intently, and I did n't know just what to say; for although I 've gone to see the pictures several times, it never occurred to me to ask myself whether I really liked them or not. I supposed--as every one says they are so fine--that I did.

"I don't mean do you know how much they cost, or what people said about them in the backs of magazines when they were first put up. What I want to know is-- Does looking at them give you great pleasure?"

"I think they 're simply preposterous," I said; and then we went outdoors again and over to the Art Museum.

We spent the rest of the afternoon there, sitting in front of a painting by Turner called The Slave Ship, and listening to what the people who passed by said about it. I did n't think there was very much to it--it's merely some small, dark brown legs in a storm at sea with a fire burning. But the people who came to look at it murmured all sorts of things in low, sad voices, and several of them read long extracts from a book that Berri said was by Ruskin. When I asked him how he knew, he answered that it could n't well be by any one else. (A great many people say that Berri's a fool, but I think he knows an awful lot.)

It makes one tired and hungry to criticise pictures all afternoon, and when we left the gallery Berri sat down on the steps and said he could never walk all the way to Cambridge in his exhausted condition; so once more we found ourselves confronted by famine.

Now, if mamma were only here I know I could explain everything to her, and she would n't think me so lacking in respect for my ancestors--so utterly lost--as she evidently does. But until she gets my letter (and perhaps even afterward) she will be unhappy over the crude, unqualified fact that I pawned my watch.

It belonged to my great-grandfather and is a fine old thing with a wreath of gold and platinum roses on its round gold face. I got twenty-five dollars on it. Nobody but Berri would have known, and there would n't have been the least fuss if Uncle Peter had n't come to town.

He was in Boston on business and appeared in my room one afternoon a few days afterward. I was ever so glad to see somebody from home, and I introduced him to Berri, who helped me show him the gym and Soldiers' Field and the glass flowers and pretty much everything open to visitors. He had a lovely time and asked us to dinner in the evening.

We had a pleasant dinner--only Uncle Peter kept glancing at his watch every few minutes (he was leaving on an early train). Finally he said: "What time is it, Tommy? I 'm afraid I 'm slow."

From force of habit I felt for my watch, and then, I suppose, I must have looked queer, for Berrisford began to chuckle, and Uncle Peter, after a moment of mystification, jumped hastily to a conclusion that, I am sorry to say, happened to be correct. He rubbed it in all through dinner and on the way to the station, and I suppose when he reached home he told mamma the first thing. For the evening of the day he arrived I got a telegram from mamma that said: "Redeem watch immediately. Keep this from your father; it would kill him."

Of course Berri had to elaborate the thing in his best style and keep Duggie awake for half an hour while he told him about it.

"I made it very graphic," he said to me gloomily, "but somehow or other it didn't seem to take."

*V*

The crash has come, and the Dean and my adviser, two or three instructors, some of the fellows at the table, and even Berrisford (this last is a little too much), have all taken occasion to inform me regretfully that they foresaw it from the first. This is the sort of thing that makes a man bitter. How did I know what was ahead of me? If they all realized so well that I was going to flunk the hour exams, why did n't they let me know then? It might have done some good if they had told me three weeks ago that they thought me stupid; but I fail to see the point of their giving me to understand at this stage of the game that they themselves all along have been so awfully clever. Yet, that's just what they've done; all except Duggie. And strangely enough it was Duggie that I most dreaded. As a matter of fact he has scarcely mentioned the subject. When I went into his room one night and stood around for a while without knowing how to begin and finally came out with,--

"Well, I suppose Berri 's told you that I didn't get through a single exam?"--he merely said,--

"That 's tough luck; I 'm darned sorry;" and then after a moment he added: "Oh, well, there 'll be some more coming along in February; it is n't as if they were n't going to let you have another whack at things."

"Of course I know it is n't my last chance," I answered drearily; "but I can't help feeling that the fact of its being my first makes it almost as bad. It starts me all wrong in the opinion of the Dean and my adviser and the college generally." Somehow I could n't bring myself to tell Duggie what I thought, and what, in a measure, I still think--namely, that the marks I got were most unjust. There 's something about Duggie--I don't know what it is exactly--that always makes you try to take the tone, when you 're telling him anything, that you feel he would take if he were telling the same thing to you. This sounds rather complicated, but what I mean, for instance, is that if he got E in all his exams and thought the instructors had been unjust, he would probably go and have it out with them, but he would n't complain to any one else. Of course it 's simply nonsense even to pretend, for the sake of argument, that Duggie could flunk in anything; but, anyhow, that 's what I mean.

However, I did n't have the same hesitation in saying to Berrisford that I considered myself pretty badly treated.

"I know, of course, that I didn't write clever papers," I told him, "but I at least wrote long ones. They ought to give me some credit for that; enough to squeeze through on, anyhow." Berri agreed with me perfectly that all the instructors were unjust, yet at the same time he said, with a peculiarly irritating, judicial manner that he sometimes assumes when you least expect it,--

"But I can understand--I can understand. It's most unfortunate--but it 's very human--very natural. As long as we employ this primitive, inadequate method of determining the amount of a man's knowledge, we must expect to collide every now and then with the personal equation." This sounded like a new superintendent addressing the village school board for the first time, but I did n't say anything, as I knew there was something behind it that Berri did n't care just then to make more clear. Berri has exceedingly definite ideas about things, but he "aims to please;" he finds it hard to express himself and at the same time to make everything come out pleasantly in the end.

"What you say is no doubt important and true," I answered; "but I don't know what it means."

"Why, I simply mean that in thinking the matter over one can't get around the fact that ever since college opened you 've been--what shall I say? People have been more aware of you than your size would seem to justify; you 've been, as it were, a cinder in the public eye." Berrisford stopped abruptly, and for a moment looked sort of aghast.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," he exclaimed, more in his natural tone; "I had n't any idea it was coming out that way; that's the trouble with metaphors."

"I don't see how I 've been more of a cinder than any one else--than you've been, for instance," I objected. "I 've seen more of you than I 've seen of any one, and I 've been seen more with you," I added.

"That's the frightful injustice of it," Berrisford put in triumphantly. "That's what I 'm trying to get at." (I don't believe he was at all, but I let him continue.) "We 've always done about the same things--but fate has ordained that in every instance you were to leave your impress upon the wax of hostile opinion, while I was as the house of sand, effaced by Neptune's briny hand. (Doesn't that last sound exactly like Pope at his worst?) You see, you got yourself arrested at the very beginning of things. Of course, socially speaking, it was a brilliant move; it simply made you. But on the other hand, I don't think it helped very much to--to--well, to bring you thoroughly in touch with the Faculty; and one has to look out for that. Then, you know, of all the hundreds that swarmed down the fire-escape during Professor Kinde's lectures, you were the only one who had the misfortune to be caught. This naturally made the fire-escape impossible from then on, and once more turned the garish light of publicity upon you. And to cap all--you were inspired to give Mr. Much the fine arts book. Why, my dear child, your name is a household word!"

The incident of the fine arts book, I confess, was enough to make a man just give up and turn cynical.

Mr. Much is a Boston architect who comes out from town twice a week to lecture on ancient art. They think a great deal of him in Boston. He stands at the head of his profession there, because, as he's never built anything, even the most critical have no grounds for complaint. Berri says there are lots of people like that in Boston,--painters and writers and musicians who are really very great, but think it more refined just to "live" their works. He meets them at his aunt's house, where they often gather to talk it all over. Well, at the first lecture Much told us to buy and read carefully a certain treatise on ancient art and always bring it to the lectures, as he would refer to it frequently. I acted on his advice to the extent of examining the book in the co-operative store one day; but it was large and heavy and the illustrations were rather old-fashioned, and it cost two dollars, so I decided I could get along without it. Most of the fellows did the same thing, and the impulsive few who actually bought it got tired after a while of lugging it to the lectures, as Much did n't show any intention of ever referring to it.

One morning as I was strolling over to hear him tell about the influence of Greek something or other on something else, and the deplorable decadence it had undergone later at the hands of the Romans, Hemington darted out of a bookstore in the Square and said: "If you 're going to Fine Arts, just take this book and give it to Bertie Stockbridge." (Bertie is his roommate.) "I 'm going to cut; I have to meet my father in town." I took the book and pursued my way.

Now, that morning, for the first time, Much, after lecturing for about half an hour, surprised every one by breaking off abruptly and saying,--