Rough-Hewn Part 23

Marise's mother died that night, without seeing them again.

_AN EDUCATION IN THE HUMANITIES AND THE LIBERAL ARTS_

CHAPTER XXII

September, 1900.

The first weeks of Freshman year were like a return to the formless impersonality of little boyhood. Just as Neale had felt himself an amoeba-like cell among the finished, many-membered adults of his parents' circle, so he was now again only one more wriggle in the ma.s.s of Freshmen. n.o.body could tell him apart from any other Freshman. He could scarcely tell himself apart from the other Freshmen.

This did not afflict him as it might a more sensitive, self-conscious boy. Indeed he rather enjoyed the anonymity of his condition, the s.p.a.ce and vacuum about him which it created, where he floated free from any threat of the handling or pawing-over which was his especial fear when he entered into relations with other people. There was so much that was new to him in college life that it was occupation enough to look on without taking any part. He enjoyed the variety of his experiences, from the Greek-and-Roman feeling that came with walking up the Library steps, to the fairy-cave enchantment of floating on the shimmering water of the electric-lighted, marble-lined swimming pool. And he enjoyed most of all his aloof spectator's scorn of footless cla.s.ses like Rhetoric A, or cla.s.s-meetings where a few loud-mouthed blow-hards ran the show, while the real scouts like himself preserved a cautious, sardonic silence. He discovered the perilous secret, always a temptation to natures like his, that if you attempt nothing, share in no effort, you are automatically freed from any blame for the inevitable foolishness and blunders; you can stand on your safe little hillock and scorn the poor fools who try to do things and fail. The lone-wolf motive sang seductively in his seventeen-year-old ears. Nothing in any of his cla.s.ses, nothing in the Library or in any of the books in it gave the seventeen-year-old a hint of any valid, compelling reason for his a.s.suming the heavy, distasteful burden of responsibility.

Then one day, word was pa.s.sed around that the Flag Rush would be held that afternoon; the Flag Rush unanimously deplored by the directing forces of the University; the Flag Rush, that out-burst of meaningless brutality so shocking to all the European members of the Faculty, secretly contemptuous of the prosperous, illiterate, childish country where they taught.

Neale never dreamed of staying out of the Flag Rush. There was a row on, and his cla.s.s needed his muscles and his head. He went to the Gym. at the appointed hour, where all the Freshmen were a.s.sembled. Gathering confidence at being all together for once, they marched in a body over to South Field. There they found the Sophs. gathered about a tree, from a branch of which fluttered a 1903 flag. Juniors took charge of the affair, coaching and urging on the Freshmen. Still buoyed up by their ma.s.s, by being together, they advanced to the charge. They were uncertain, and for the most part, amiable big little boys, who really cared nothing about that flag, who really cared only about doing what was expected of them. As they advanced, they began to hurry, to rush forward nervously. Several detached Sophs. dived in at the leaders' feet and broke up the formation, but there was ma.s.s impetus enough to carry the rush forward. The Freshmen crashed into the defenders of the flag, pushed them back, circled them round ... at the first physical contact with the enemy they were no longer big little boys doing what was expected of them, they were young Berserk fighters, blind and furious with the delight of battle. A roar went up, a roar from their very hearts, like the yell which had burst up from their little-boy game-centers. Except for a few rare and artistic natures, who were suffering horribly from shock, every one of them was twice what he had been two minutes before. A Freshman somehow shot up through the crowd, hoisted on his cla.s.smates' shoulders, and laid his hands on the sacred branch; but defenders spouted up around him, grabbed his legs and pulled him down. With this, all semblance of organized purpose left the rush. It broke up into a disorganized melee, rolling and tumbling, panting and struggling in a hundred separate encounters.

Neale rolled and tumbled, panted and struggled with the rest, far, far from any cool Olympian detachment. He was one of the biggest and strongest of the Freshmen and felt his responsibility. He did what he could. But that was not much. The Freshmen did not know one another, and had no plan. Sometimes Neale collared his own cla.s.smates by mistake; sometimes a couple of Sophs. tackled him together, ran him back and dropped him on the gra.s.s.

A half-hour later the flag was still in the tree, and the furious boiling over of insensate young life had cooled to a simmer. The Juniors called the rush off, the Freshmen began to stream back to the Gym. Neale was surprised to find one sleeve to his jersey missing and innumerable rips and tears all over his other garments. He was bruised from head to foot and spat blood from a cut lip. Calmed, appeased, exhausted, he made limping for the gate.

As he pa.s.sed through it, he pa.s.sed through another and invisible gate, opening into quite a different path from the solitary, self-satisfied way of aloofness which he had been following. He did not, as a matter of fact, pa.s.s through the invisible gate. He was shoved through by a vigorous hand that slapped him on the shoulder. Turning, Neale looked into the masterful face of the Varsity Coach. "Report for football practice to-morrow!" was the order. "I'm Andrews!"

The information was unnecessary. Neale would not at this date have recognized President Low or Dean Van Amringe, but he knew the football coach. The next twenty hours were beatific. His mind refused to grasp facts. It wandered off into gorgeous day-dreams. He was on the Varsity ... no, he was a sub, called in at the last minute ... a long run! ... better, a recovered fumble ... then down the field, shaking off one tackler after another.

He would wake up to real life, blushing, swearing at himself for a condemned fool. And yet a few minutes later, in fancy he was the last defender between the goal line and a rushing Yale back...!

Not the faintest hint of any of this appeared on the surface. At home he preserved his normal appet.i.te which was his mother's gauge for his health and spirits, and although he told them, not unwillingly, about the Flag Rush, he preserved the sacred secret of his summons from Andrews, as though it had been his first sentimental rendezvous. The next day dragged endlessly, filled with the paper-like silhouettes of talking professors. But three o'clock was finally there, and he was at the Gym., silent, his face composed, his heart given to sudden swelling bulges, which made it hard for him to hear what was being said.

They gave him a suit. He trotted with the squad, _with the Squad_ over to South Field!

"Ever played?" asked the scrub quarter.

"Yes," said Neale. He did not feel obliged to tell how little.

"What position?"

"Half-back," he lied brazenly, having made up his mind that he hadn't the weight to aspire to the Varsity line.

They ran through signals. Then a scrimmage started but Neale was not in the line-up. A scrub back had his wind knocked out and didn't get up quickly enough for the coach. "Put in that Freshman bean-pole. Jump in, what's your name?"

Neale jumped and floundered for five minutes, then the peppery scrub quarter consigned him profanely to the side-lines. For two days after that he moped without a job, although still in a suit, out in the field.

Then he had another trial.

Gradually he made sure of his place as right-half on the scrub--not that he was any good, as they told him plainly: but because in those days the whole squad, including hopeless dubs, seldom numbered over thirty men, and thanks to the work in the mill at West Adams, Neale was physically fit.

With this place, minor though it was, came the great privilege of dinner, after practice, at the football house. There he picked up a little of the theory of the game from the blackboard talks; there after the Pennsylvania's guards-back had battered through for thirty points, he heard the coach, white and shaking with emotion, pour out his biting post-mortem. "You, Jackson," shaking his fore-finger at the left-guard, "did you shoot your body in low and spill them in their own territory?

No, you STOOD UP!"

Neale's flesh crept, he was almost glad that he had escaped the fearful responsibility of being on the Varsity. It was terrible, such a weight on your shoulders. He shrank from it, and with all his being, aspired to it.

He made no impression on the football world, but his own interior world was transformed. He was no longer an isolated, formless Freshman, dumped down into the midst of the most callously laissez-faire of Universities, he was no more a forgotten molecule with no share in, or responsibility for the ultimate reaction. He had a shelter for his personality against the vast, daunting indifference of the universe. He was on the football squad.

He had feared he might have some trouble in explaining his absence from the supper-table at home, but that proved unexpectedly easy. The second evening after he began to play on the scrub, he found Father in the library at home, reading the sporting sheet of the Evening Telegram.

"Any other Crittendens in college, Neale?" he asked.

"Not that I know about."

"That's you on the football team, then?"

"Only on the scrub, yes, I'm trying. We have dinner together after practice. You don't mind, do you?"

"Me? Of course not," said Father.

Mother heard all this, apparently had known it before, and did not ask him to take care of himself and not get hurt. Neale looked over at her gratefully. Mother was all right.

The football season slid along, the Varsity improving every week. Neale glowed with caste-loyalty as Sat.u.r.day after Sat.u.r.day he watched the prowess of his big brothers. Every day he felt himself stretching up, broadening out, nearer to their stature, though n.o.body else gave him a thought. Life was full of big and generous and absorbing matter.

Then came Thanksgiving Day, the climax ... and oh, after that, what a vacuum! Nothing in life but cla.s.ses! Holy smoke! It was fierce! What did the fellows do who hadn't had anything but cla.s.ses! How could they stand it? But of course, it wasn't such a come-down for them.

Going home as Neale did every afternoon, he had none of the scanty, ill-organized college social life. Sliding into college as he had, with no introduction from the right kind of Prep. school, and with a noticeably colorless personality, he was not thought of as a possibility for any fraternity. Time hung heavy on his hands. Lectures took up but three hours a day, on the busiest days. To fill in the rest of the time there was the swimming pool, the Gymnasium and the Library. He swam, practised the overhand racing stroke, dived; in the Gym. he fooled awkwardly on the parallel bars and side-horse; he tossed medicine b.a.l.l.s with any pick-up acquaintance; what he really enjoyed was the line of traveling rings which hung in front of the visitors' gallery--but one day he heard an upper cla.s.sman refer to these as "Freshmen's Delight,"

and thereafter he avoided them.

The Library, the first one to which he had had access, wasn't so bad.

Neale went there first to look up a reference for Comp. Lit. A. Of course you ran the risk of being thought a grind if you spent too much time there, but you could kill the hours very pleasantly with the bound volumes of the magazines in the shelves about the general reading-room.

Neale and most of his friends wasted an unconscionable number of hours on those magazines: but little by little the library habit began to form itself, by slow, infinitesimal accretions. He found it a good place to study, wrote English A. themes there, finally even got into the way of running through the card catalogue, and drawing books with t.i.tles that sounded good.

Christmas came. Father, recognizing manhood achieved, gave him a box of a hundred Milo cigarettes. Mother--poor, dear, ignorant Mother!--gave him a white sweater decorated with a light blue C! Even more than by smoking Father's cigarettes, Neale proved that he had begun to outgrow the cruel egotism of adolescence, by kissing Mother and thanking her, without telling her that almost any fool finally gets his diploma, but only the chosen few--and these as Juniors or Seniors--win the right to adorn themselves with the proud insignia of their Varsity letter.

After Christmas came the mid-year exams. Neale went into them confidently enough--and to his astonishment emerged with pa.s.sing marks, but with no great credit. D in German was the worst, and he'd studied German since he was a little boy! Greek, English and Latin marked him as mediocre with a C. Comparative Literature alone rated him B--and every one knew that Comp. Lit. was a snap course. Neale had never thought of himself as a grind, but he had been used to high marks at school, and the low grades nettled him. He began to see that there was more to this college work than he had understood. The studies themselves were not unlike those of high school; indeed they were easier than the science and mathematics that had been hammered into him at Hadley. But the point of view was different, and that had fooled him. There was a "take it or leave it" att.i.tude about everything at college; the professors did not, as at Hadley, hold their jobs only because they were able to drive the bright, the dull, the scatter-brained, the sluggish, all through pa.s.sing grades for the next year's work. No, these college professors and instructors gave themselves no such trouble. They set out their wares.

If the students helped themselves, so much the better: if they didn't, so much the worse--for the students. Neale mis-called the professors for lazy time-servers: but he wasn't going to let them put it over on him that way another time. He would read everything they suggested and more!

They would be astonished by the brilliance of his finals. But just then baseball practice started in the cage and Neale forgot all about his vendetta against the professors.

At baseball he expected to shine. This he had really played before coming to college. April saw the Freshman baseball squad practising on South Field. It was a terrible jolt to Neale to find himself in the discard. His vacant-lot, light-of-nature game had not compared favorably with the play of graduates of well-coached Prep. schools. He was thrown back on the Library. Perhaps it was just as well, he told himself with sour-grape philosophy. After all he was there, among other things, to get an education.

CHAPTER XXIII