Part 6

I don't know how long I stared at these things, or how long I should have kept on staring at them, if I had n't happened to glance up and see that Miss Sherwin was looking down at me and laughing. I think she expected me to say something, but I couldn't bring myself to come out with either of the only two things that occurred to me--one of which was that as it looked so exactly as I always thought it was going to, I did n't see why I felt almost like bursting into tears when we came over the hill-top and actually saw it; and the other was--that I should have very much liked to get down and taste it. However, Miss Sherwin had about all she could do to attend to the horses and did n't insist on an explanation; so we said hardly anything all the rest of the way, and just let the wind blow in our faces and watched the waves tumble across the hard sand for miles.

At first nothing at the Sherwins' seemed in the least real to me. Even Duggie struck me as altogether different, although he was, of course, just the same--only seen in unexpected surroundings.

First of all, when we arrived, a groom popped up from behind a hedge and took the horses; then two young men in dark green clothes with brass buttons and yellow waistcoats bustled down from the piazza to get our things out of the cart. They were rather handsome, but had very troubled expressions, and looked as if they worried a good deal for fear they shouldn't do it right. Duggie nodded to them over his shoulder, and I think they were secretly gratified at this--although I suspect them of having worried terribly for fear they might betray it. They helped us off with our coats and hats when we got inside, which is all well enough, and makes you feel as grand as you do in a barber-shop, but has its disadvantages, for they run away with everything you have, and lock them up somewhere in a safe, and when you want to go out to play with the dogs or take a walk and think it all over, you usually have to tell Vincent to tell Dempsey to tell Chamberlain that you would like a hat.

Miss Sherwin led me through some beautiful rooms, and as we walked along she turned to me and exclaimed,--

"Aren't you fearfully keen for your tea?"

I really don't care in the least for tea; in fact, I rather dislike it. But she seemed to take it so for granted that I should be in a sort of tea-guzzling frenzy by half-past five o'clock that I hated to disappoint her, and was going to say, "Oh, yes--fearfully," when it flashed through me that I could make my reply more elaborate and interesting than this, and thought it would be rather effective to murmur, "One gets so out of the habit in Cambridge." Then (all this took only about a second) it occurred to me that I 'd never in my whole life drunk a cup of tea in the afternoon with the exception of the time that Berrisford had some people out to his rooms. So I merely said--which was perfectly true: "I don't like tea; but I like those thin, round cakes that are brown at the edges and yellow in the middle." This made her laugh, and I was glad I had n't said the other thing, because she 's very pretty when she laughs.

One corner of the piazza is enclosed in glass, and we had tea out there where we could watch the sunset and the pink lights on the water as it rolled up almost to the lawn in the front yard. The two younger brothers came in--one of them has a tutor and the other goes to St. Timothy's--and while we were waiting for the tea things to be brought, Mr. and Mrs. Sherwin sauntered across the grass. I forget whether they had been gathering orchids in the conservatory or merely feeding the peacocks, but they were both exceedingly gracious and glad to see me. Yet their very way of taking me so for granted (just as Miss Sherwin had about the tea) made me uncomfortable at first. They could n't, of course, have asked me to explain myself--to tell them what right I had to consume cakes in their crystal palace and enjoy their sunset; but the mere fact that they did n't seem to expect me to justify myself in any way made me feel like an impostor.

The man who brought in the tea things had a good deal to do with this. I 'm quite sure that he disapproved of me from the first. He was older than the two who met us at the door, and I think he had probably long since ceased to worry on his own account; but he worried a lot over me. Later--at dinner--he just gave up all his other duties and stood behind my chair, mentally calculating the chances of my coming out even or behind the game in the matter of knives and forks. Whenever I used too many or too few (which I did constantly) he would glide away and remedy the defect, or craftily remove the damning evidence of my inattention. In writing to mamma about my visit I ended my letter by saying: "I had a delightful time--but it would take me years to get used to their butler." To which mamma replied: "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself, dear; they must live charmingly. But I simply can't see why they should n't have good butter. It's so easy to get it now almost anywhere. Perhaps they don't eat it themselves and don't realize that they are being imposed upon." (This will be one of the greatest triumphs of papa's declining years, as he is always blowing me up about my handwriting.) Whenever Dempsey (the other servants call him "Mr. Dempsey") came into the glass place I waited in a sort of trembling eagerness, half expecting him to announce "Lord and Lady Belgrave and Miss Muriel Fitz Desmond," but the only person who dropped in was an old man named Snagg, and although Dempsey made as much out of his arrival as any one possibly could--you can't, after all, do miracles with a name like Snagg. However, I was grateful to Mr. Snagg for coming, as it brought me back to earth again.

To tell the truth, before the evening was finished I began to get over the unreal sensation I had at first, and saw very plainly that whether or not I felt at home depended entirely on me. Duggie and his family--poor things--did n't have any idea that their Dempsey paralyzed me with fright, or that (just as Berri had predicted) by the time dinner was ready I was shaky in the knees with hunger. They assumed that a friend of Duggie's naturally would feel at home and know beforehand what was going to happen. This dawned on me when I realized that Duggie was exactly as he always is, and that the others were probably exactly as they always were, and I couldn't help appreciating after a time that if they took me so calmly, it was rather unreasonable of me not to feel the same way about them. No one made any effort to entertain me, which is very nice--after you get used to it. Mrs. Sherwin played solitaire after dinner, while Duggie and his sister (she was embroidering something) and I sat around a fire that Miss Sherwin said was built of driftwood from an old whaler, and Duggie declared was manufactured with chemicals by a shrewd person in Maine. I don't know who was right, but with the sea murmuring just outside the windows and coming down every now and then with a great thud on the little beach at the end of the lawn, I preferred to believe in the old whaler theory. Mr. Sherwin would appear every few minutes to read us something he had come across in a volume of literary reminiscences which reminded him of something entirely different that had happened to Thoreau or Emerson or Hawthorne or Margaret Fuller--all of whom he had, as a young man, known very well, indeed. He was delightful.

The next day was Sunday, and as no one awoke me, I found when I got downstairs that it was after ten o'clock and that everybody, with the exception of Duggie, had gone to church. Duggie had been up for hours taking a long walk with the dogs. He came into the glass place on the piazza, where I had breakfast, and read aloud about the game of the day before. Out-of-doors it was almost as warm as in summer, so we took some books and strolled along a cliff to a sheltered place on the rocks, and sat down in the sun. I did n't feel much like reading, although when you 're sitting out-of-doors in the sun I think it's rather pleasanter, somehow, to have a book on your lap. Duggie had a shabby little volume that he read for a minute or two at a time; then he would stop for five or ten and look at the sea swirling around a rock away below us. After a while I became curious to know what the book was, and the next time he closed it over his finger I reached out and took it. The name of it was M. Aurelius Antoninus, and it seemed to be a series of short, disconnected paragraphs with a great many footnotes. A good many of the paragraphs were marked. The only one I can remember went something like this,--

"Don't act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest--while it is in thy power, be good."

"I suppose you 're studying this for some course," I remarked after I had read the extract aloud. "It's so solemn I didn't think you could be reading it for fun," I added.

"I don't suppose I am reading it for fun exactly," Duggie laughed. "It isn't very funny to realize the force of that paragraph when there are so many things you hope to do."

"Well, of course I know I 'm not going to live ten thousand years, but it's so lovely down here that I don't feel a bit as if I were n't," I said, lying back in the sun and closing my eyes.

"That's why I read the book," answered Duggie; "it's tremendously easy to feel that way almost anywhere--down here particularly." He was more serious, I think, than he looked.

"Why should n't one?" I asked. But he only laughed and told me I 'd better read the book, too, and find out.

"It might be a short cut--a sort of revelation. It took me a good while to arrive at it by myself," he added. "Why, when I first went to Cambridge I had an idea that if a man's family were what's called 'nice,' and well known, and if he had good manners and knew a lot of other fellows whose families were nice and well known, and people went around saying that he 'd make the first ten of the Dickey, and be elected into some club or other--I had an idea that he really amounted to a great deal."

"Well, does n't he?" I asked boldly, for all that seemed to me pretty fine.

I think Duggie was going to answer rather sharply, but he must have decided not to, for after a moment he said:

"I suppose whether he does or not depends on the point of view."

"From yours, I take it, he doesn't?" I mused.

"He has a lot in his favor--all sorts of opportunities that other people have n't," Duggie admitted, "but I 've come to look at him as quite unimportant until he tries at least to take some advantage of them. Good Heavens! the wheels of the world are clogged with 'nice' people," said Duggie.

"But what on earth can a person do in a place like college, for instance?" I objected. "You 're there, and you know your own crowd, and you 're satisfied with it because it's awfully--awfully----" I hesitated.

"Awfully nice," Duggie laughed; "and you never see any one else, and they 're all more or less like you--and the rest of your class is composed of grinds, muckers, and 'probably very decent sort of chaps, _but_'----" Here Duggie reached over and gave me a push that nearly sent me into the sea. "But dontche care--I didn't mean to get started. And anyhow there 's plenty of time."

"Only ten thousand years," I replied.

"Fleetwood's Wednesday Evenings begin next week. If you want to remove your infamous towhead from its richly upholstered barrel for a minute, you 'd better come around," he suggested. "Fleetwood had his Wednesday Evenings on Friday last year because he thought it was more quaint--but I see he 's changed back."

"He told me if I came I should hear a lion roar," I said, trying to remember my talk with Fleetwood at The Holly Tree. At this Duggie lay back and shrieked aloud.

"That man will be found some day torn into small, neat shreds," he managed to say at last.

"Why?" I asked--for I knew he liked Fleetwood.

"Why, because I'm the lion," Duggie giggled.

*VII*

It must be several weeks since I 've written a word in my diary. To tell the truth, I spend so much time writing other things--things that are printed and sold--actually--at the bookstores--that somehow my own every-day affairs don't seem so important as they did. In a word--I 've been made an editor of the Advocate. It seems so wonderful to be an anything of anything with my name in print on the front page just above the editorials--the editorials that, as Duggie says sarcastically, have made the President and the University what they are. Mamma was delighted at my success, and so was Mildred--although she tried to be funny over my triolet, When Gladys Sings, in the last number, and wrote me that, unless Gladys were the name of a quadruped of some kind, amputation here and there would have improved her. Even papa was pleased, I think, although my first story made him very angry and he wrote me a terrible letter about it. I had simply described, as accurately as I could remember it, the time he went as "The Silver-Tongued Orator from Perugia" to make a political speech in the country and took Mildred and me with him. I told about the people at whose house we stayed, described the house and recorded our conversations at dinner and supper. That was really all there was to it. I considered it quite harmless. The Crimson in criticising it said: "The Jimsons--a humorous sketch by a new writer--is the only ray of sunlight in a number devoted almost exclusively to battle, murder, and sudden death;" a Boston paper reprinted it in full, and papa was perfectly furious. He wrote to me saying (among several pages of other things): "While admitting that your description of my friends is photographic and, in an inexpensive and altogether odious fashion, rather amusing, I take occasion to call your attention to the fact--it seems to have escaped you--that they are, after all, my friends. Furthermore (passing from the purely ethical to the sternly practical), it is among just these people that you will, in the not very distant future, be engaged in making (or trying to make) a living. Kindly snatch a moment or two from your literary pursuits and think this over in some of its more grim possibilities." He also rather superfluously informed me that I would "be older some day" than I am now. (This remark, by the way, seems to have a peculiar fascination for men who have passed the age of fifty.) I showed the letter to Berri, and when he had finished it he said thoughtfully: "A few communications like this, and the keen edge of one's humor would become a trifle dulled."

My election to the Advocate came about in the most unexpected way possible. It's queer how things happen. Berri was sitting in my room one afternoon apparently reading by the fire. Suddenly he looked up and exclaimed:

"Do you realize, Tommy, that failure is staring us in the face?"

"Why, I was in hopes that it had begun to--to avert its gaze somewhat," I answered, for I thought of course he was referring to the hour exams--and I 've studied a little every day since that calamity. "Besides," I added, "I don't see why you need complain; you got through."

"Oh, I'm not talking about our studies," Berri said impatiently; "they 're a detail. I mean that we don't seem to be getting anywhere; we 're not turning our accomplishments to any practical account; we 're not helping the college any and making ourselves prominent--prominent in a lawful sense, I mean."

"But we haven't any accomplishments," I objected. "We both tried for the Glee Club and they would n't have us; and everybody agreed that we couldn't play football--although we went out and did everything they told us to. We can't play the banjo or mandolin, and it's too early in the year to find out whether we 're any good at rowing or track athletics or baseball; so there 's nothing left. What on earth can a person do who has n't any talent or skill or ability of any kind?" I demanded gloomily.

"He can always write," Berri answered, "and he can always be an editor."

"Oh! you mean we ought to try for the Crimson or something."

"Well, not the Crimson exactly," Berrisford mused; "they say you have to work like anything on the Crimson; they make you rush about finding out when things are going to happen, or why they didn't happen when they said they would. That would be awfully tiresome--because of course you wouldn't care whether they happened or not. I 'd just like to sit around and edit; any one could do that."

"I should think you 'd go in for the Lampoon," I suggested; for I remembered that one of the Lampoon men had drawn a picture of something Berri had done. Professor Snook, who knows such a lot about folk-lore, was going to give a lecture in Sever Hall on The Devil. It was announced on all the bulletin boards by means of printed placards that read like this: "Thursday, November 10, Professor John Snook will deliver a lecture on The Devil;" and under the one outside of University, Berri wrote in pencil: "The first of a series on personalities that have influenced me." If he got himself noticed by the Lampoon without trying, I thought there was no telling what he could do if he put his mind to it. We discussed the matter awhile without, however, deciding on any definite plan.

That night we went to Fleetwood's first Wednesday Evening, and there I was introduced to-- But I 'm going too fast. I 'd better tell about the Wednesday Evening first.

When I suggested going Berri was n't particularly enthusiastic about it. He said he was afraid it would resemble one of his aunt's receptions where everybody was so cultivated that it was just like reading Half Hours with the Best Authors on a warm Sunday afternoon. I had an idea that it might be something like that myself, but I finally persuaded Berri to go with me notwithstanding.

I don't know what to make of myself sometimes. When I 'm with Duggie I 'm inclined to take things rather seriously; but when I 'm with Berri it all seems like a joke. They 're so different, and yet I feel as if I were so much a friend of both. When all three of us happen to be together I find it most uncomfortable. Of course Berri thought the Wednesday Evening highly amusing.

It was rather late when we arrived, and the room was crowded with fellows, very few of whom I had ever seen before. Fleetwood opened the door for us, with a Shakespearian quotation trembling aptly on his lips, and led us through the crowd to his inside room, where we left our coats and hats.

"You must come and meet my lions and hear them roar," Fleetwood said to us; and was about to take us across the study to where Duggie was standing against the wall with a semicircle of Freshmen in front of him drinking in his every word.

"Good gracious, man--you don't mean to say you got me away over here on a cold night to hear Duggie Sherwin drool about football," Berri exclaimed to me. Mr. Fleetwood laughed, and seemed to think this was very funny.

"Just look how glad of the chance all those others are, you unappreciative boy," he said reproachfully to Berri.

"Oh, well--he doesn't wake them up at a horrible hour every morning yelling like a fiend under a shower-bath," Berri explained. "You see, the lion and I occupy the same lair--or do lions live in a den? I never can remember."

"Perhaps Mr. Ranny knows," said Fleetwood to a tall, studious-looking fellow who had evidently planned his escape and was in the act of shyly carrying it out when Fleetwood detained him. Fleetwood introduced him to Berri and slid away to greet another man who had just opened the door. As I moved off to join Duggie's group, Berri gave me a queer look; but a few minutes later I happened to glance across at him, and as the tall fellow was laughing at everything Berri said I knew that Berri was enjoying himself.

Duggie shook hands with me and said good-evening just as if he had n't been in my room sprawling on the floor in front of the fire an hour and a half before, and then went on with what he was saying to the fellows nearest him--some polite looking little chaps; Freshmen, although I had never seen them before.

The talk was mostly about football; the games that had been played and the ones still to come--comparative scores and the merits and defects of players at other colleges. Of course Duggie could discuss only with the fellows just in front of him. I think he realized how embarrassing it would be to any of the others if he were to single them out and address remarks to them. Besides, it might have sounded patronizing. Yet every now and then, when whoever was talking happened to say something funny, Duggie somehow included the whole crowd in the laugh that followed. I think he managed it by catching everybody's eye at just the right time; I know that--although I was merely standing there looking on--whenever he caught mine, I felt as if I were right in the game. This often had the effect of causing a fellow to say something to the fellow next to him, and so it frequently happened that people who had joined the group merely to rubber in embarrassed silence at Duggie, found themselves making acquaintances and talking on their own account. I learned afterward that this was precisely what Fleetwood and Duggie counted on. It was Fleetwood's chief reason for having Duggie as often as he could at his Wednesday Evenings, and Duggie's only reason for going.

Across the room there was another centre of attraction in the person of a fine but rather pompous-looking old gentleman with a pink face and a snowy beard. His audience was more talkative than Duggie's, but not so large. It was n't composed entirely of Freshmen, either. As I was standing there making up my mind to slide through the intervening crowd and find out what he was talking about, Berri, who had been standing with a rapt expression on the outskirts of the second group, detached himself and came over to me. "You simply must come and listen to him; it's perfectly thrilling," he said.

"I was just going over to investigate," I answered. "What 's his specialty?"

"I don't know how to describe it exactly," Berri replied; "he's a kind of connecting link with the literary past; he 's what phonographs will be when we get them perfected. Dickens once borrowed his opera-glasses on the evening of the twelfth of June years ago, and some years later Thackeray stepped on his foot at a dinner-party. He remembers what they said perfectly, and gets asked out a lot. I 've heard him tell the Thackeray thing twice now, and he 's going to do it again in a minute if there 's enough of a crowd."

We went over and listened to him for ever so long, and although Dickens _had_ borrowed his opera-glasses and Thackeray _had_ stepped on his foot, he was n't in the least what Berri had led me to expect. I found him delightful and was sorry when he had to leave. (Berri insisted that he was driven rapidly to town to the Palace Theatre, where he was due to appear at 10.50--between a trick bicyclist and a Dutch comedian.)

When we had said good-by to him, Fleetwood came up bringing a pleasant-looking chap with spectacles. (I had often seen him in the Yard.)

"This is Mr. Paul," Fleetwood said to me, "and he wants to have words with you."

Mr. Paul talked about the old gentleman for a minute or two, and then said quite abruptly,--

"We 've been reading your stuff in English 83, Mr. Wood, and the fellows think it's darned good. I wish you 'd let us have some of it for the Advocate."