The Plastic Age Part 22

Hugh avoided the Nu Delta house for the remainder of the term and spent more time on his studies than he had since he had entered college. The result was, of course, that he made a good record, and the A that Henley gave him in English delighted him so much that he almost forgot his fraternity troubles. Not quite, however. During the first few weeks of the vacation he often thought of talking to his father about Nu Delta, but he could not find the courage to destroy his father's illusions. He found, too, that he couldn't talk to his mother about things that he had seen and learned at college. Like most of his friends, he felt that "the folks wouldn't understand."

He spent the first two months at home working on the farm, but when Norry Parker invited him to visit him for a month on Long Island Sound, Hugh accepted the invitation and departed for the Parker summer cottage in high feather. He was eager to see Norry again, but he was even more eager to see New York. He had just celebrated his twentieth birthday, and he considered it disgraceful that he had never visited the "Big City," as New York was always known at Sanford. Norry met him at Grand Central, a livelier and more robust Norry than Hugh had ever seen. The boy actually seemed like a boy and not a sprite; his cheeks were tanned almost brown, and his gray eyes danced with excitement when he spotted Hugh in the crowd.

"Gee, Hugh, I'm glad to see you," he exclaimed, shaking Hugh's hand joyously. "I'm tickled to death that you could come."

"So am I," said Hugh heartily, really happy to see Norry looking so well, and thrilled to be in New York. "Gosh, you look fine. I hardly know you. Where'd you get all the pep?"

"Swimming' and sailing. This is the first summer I've been well enough to swim all I want to. Oh, it's pretty down where we are. You'll love the nights, Hugh. The Sound is wonderful."

"I'll bet. Well, where do we go from here? Say, this is certainly a whale of a station, isn't it? It makes me feel like a hick."

"Oh, you'll get over that soon enough," Norry, the seasoned New Yorker, a.s.sured him easily. "We're going right out to the cottage. It's too hot to-day to run around the city, but we'll come in soon and you can give it the once-over." He took Hugh's arm and led him out of the station.

It had never entered Hugh's mind that Norry's father might be rich. He had noticed that Norry's clothes were very well tailored, and Norry had told him that his violin was a Cremona, but the boy was not lavish with money and never talked about it at all. Hugh was therefore surprised and a little startled to see Norry walk up to an expensive limousine with a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel. He wondered if the Parkers weren't too high-hat for him?

"We'll go right home, Martin," Norry said to the chauffeur. "Get in, Hugh."

The Parker cottage was a short distance from New Roch.e.l.le. It was a beautiful place, hardly in the style of a Newport "cottage" but roomy and very comfortable. It was not far from the water, and the Parkers owned their own boat-house.

Mrs. Parker was on the veranda when the car drew up at the steps.

"h.e.l.lo, Mother," Norry called.

She got up and ran lightly down the steps, her hand held out in welcome to Hugh.

"I know that you are Hugh Carver," she said in a beautifully modulated voice, "and I am really delighted to meet you. Norry has talked so much about you that I should have felt cheated if you hadn't come."

Hugh's fears immediately departed. "I should have myself," he replied.

"It was awfully good of you to invite me."

After meeting Norry's father and mother, Hugh understood the boy better. Mrs. Parker was both charming and pretty, a delightful woman who played the piano with professional skill. Mr. Parker was an artist, a portrait-painter, and he got prices for his pictures that staggered Hugh when Norry mentioned them casually. He was a quiet, grave man with gray eyes like his son's.

When he had a minute alone with Hugh, he said to him with simple sincerity: "You have been very kind to Norry, and we are grateful. He is a strange, poetic lad who needs the kind of understanding friendship you have given him. We should have been deeply disappointed if you hadn't been able to visit us."

The expressions of grat.i.tude embarra.s.sed Hugh, but they made him feel sure of his welcome; and once he was sure of that he began to enjoy himself as he never had before. Before the month was out, he had made many visits to New York and was able to talk about both the Ritz and Macdougal Alley with elaborate casualness when he returned to college.

He and Norry went swimming nearly every day and spent hours sailing on the Sound.

Norry introduced him to the many girls who had summer homes near the Parker cottage. They were a new type to him, boarding-school products, sure of themselves, "finished" with a high polish that glittered effectively, daringly frank both in their speech and their actions, beautiful dancers, good swimmers, full of "dirt," as they called gossip, and as offhand with men as they were with each other. Within a week Hugh got over his prejudice against women's smoking. Nearly every woman he met, including Mrs. Parker, smoked, and every girl carried her cigarette-case.

Most of the girls treated Norry as if he were a very nice small boy, but they adopted a different att.i.tude toward Hugh. They flirted with him, perfected his "petting" technique, occasionally treated him to a drink, and made no pretense of hiding his attraction for them.

At first Hugh was startled and a little repelled, but he soon grew to like the frankness, the petting, and the liquor; and he was having a much too exciting time to pause often for criticism of himself or anybody else. It was during the last week of his visit that he fell in love.

He and Norry were standing near the float watching a number of swimmers.

Suddenly Hugh was attracted by a girl he had never seen before. She wore a red one-piece bathing-suit that revealed every curve of her slender, boyish figure. She noticed Norry and threw up her arm in greeting.

"Who is she?" Hugh demanded eagerly.

"Cynthia Day. She's just back from visiting friends in Maine. She's an awfully good swimmer. Watch her." The girl poised for an instant on the edge of the float and then dived gracefully into the water, striking out with a powerful overhand stroke for another float a quarter of a mile out in the Sound. The boys watched her red cap as she rounded the float and started back, swimming easily and expertly. When she reached the beach, she ran out of the water, rubbed her hands over her face, and then strolled over to Norry.

Her hair was concealed by a red bathing-cap, but Hugh guessed that it was brown; at any rate, her eyes were brown and very large. She had an impudent little nose and full red lips.

"'Lo, Norry," she said, holding out her hand. "How's the infant?"

"Oh, I'm fine. This is my friend Hugh Carver."

"I've heard about you," she said as they shook hands. "I only got back last night, but everybody seems to be digging dirt about Norry's friend.

Three of my friends are enemies on account of you, and one of 'em says she's going in swimming some day and forget to come back if you don't give her a little more time."

Hugh blushed, but he had learned a few things in the past weeks.

"I wish they would tell me about it," he said with a fair a.s.sumption of ease. "Why didn't you come back sooner?" He was pleased with that speech. He wouldn't have dared it a month before.

The brown eyes smiled at him. "Because I didn't know you were here. You haven't got a cigarette about you, have you? Norry's useless when it comes to smokes."

Hugh did have a package of cigarettes. She took one, put it in her mouth, and waited for Hugh to light it for her. When he did, she gazed curiously over the flame at him. She puffed the cigarette for a moment and then said, "You look like a good egg. Let's talk." She threw herself down on the sand, and the boys sat down beside her.

From that moment Hugh was lost. For the remaining days of the visit he spent every possible moment with Cynthia, fascinated by her chatter, thrilled by the touch of her hand. She made no objection when he offered shyly to kiss her; she quietly put her arms around his neck and turned her face up to his--and her kisses set him aflame.

For once, he did not want to return to college, and when he arrived in Haydensville he felt none of his usual enthusiasm. The initiation of the freshmen amused him only slightly, and the football games did not seem so important as they had the two previous years. A letter from Cynthia was the most important thing in the world, and she wrote good letters, chatty, gay, and affectionate.

Custom made it necessary for him to room in the fraternity house. It was an unwritten law of Nu Delta that all members live in the house their last two years, and Hugh hardly dared to contest the law. There were four men in the chapter whom he thoroughly liked and with whom he would have been glad to room, but they all had made their arrangements by the time he spoke to them; so he was forced to accept Paul Vinton's invitation to room with him.

Vinton was a cheerful youth with too much money and not enough sense. He wanted desperately to be thought a good fellow, a "regular guy," and he was willing to buy popularity if necessary by standing treat to any one every chance he got. He was known all over the campus as a "prize sucker."

He bored Hugh excessively by his confidences and almost offensive generosity. He always had a supply of Scotch whisky on hand, and he offered it to him so constantly that Hugh drank too much because it was easier and pleasanter to drink than to refuse.

Tucker had graduated, and the new president, Leonard Gates, was an altogether different sort of man. There had been a fight in the fraternity over his election. The "regular guys" opposed him and offered one of their own number as a candidate. Gates, however, was prominent in campus activities and had his own following in the house; as a result, he was elected by a slight margin.

He won Hugh's loyalty at the first fraternity meeting after he took the chair. "Some things are going to be changed in this house," he said sternly, "or I will bring influence to bear that will change them."

Every one knew that he referred to the national president of the fraternity. "There will be no more drunken brawls in this house such as we had at the last house dance. Any one who brings a cheap woman into this house at a dance will hear from it. Both my fiancee and my sister were at the last dance. I do not intend that they shall be insulted again. This is not a bawdy-house, and I want some of you to remember that."

He tried very hard to pa.s.s a rule, such as many of the fraternities had, that no one could bring liquor into the house and that there should be no gambling. He failed, however. The brothers took his scolding about the dance because most of them were heartily ashamed of that occasion; but they announced that they did not intend to have the chapter turned into the S.C.A., which was the Sanford Christian a.s.sociation. It would have been well for Hugh if the law had been pa.s.sed. Vinton's insistent generosity was rapidly turning him into a steady drinker. He did not get drunk, but he was taking down more high-b.a.l.l.s than were good for him.

Outside of his drinking, however, he was leading a virtuous and, on the whole, an industrious life. He was too much in love with Cynthia Day to let his mind dwell on other women, and he had become sufficiently interested in his studies to like them for their own sake.

A change had come over the campus. It was inexplicable but highly significant. There had been evidences of it the year before, but now it became so evident that even some of the members of the faculty were aware of it. Intolerance seemed to be dying, and the word "wet" was heard less often. The undergraduates were forsaking their old G.o.ds. The wave of materialism was swept back by an in-rushing tide of idealism.

Students suddenly ceased to concentrate in economics and filled the English and philosophy cla.s.ses to overflowing.

No one was able really to explain the causes for the change, but it was there and welcome. The "Sanford Literary Magazine," which had been slowly perishing for several years, became almost as popular as the "Cap and Bells," the comic magazine, which coined money by publishing risque jokes and pictures of slightly dressed women. A poetry magazine daringly made its appearance on the campus and, to the surprise of its editors, was received so cordially that they were able to pay the printer's bill.

It became the fashion to read. Instructors in English were continually being asked what the best new books were or if such and such a book was all that it was "cracked up to be." If the instructor hadn't read the book, he was treated to a look of contempt that sent him hastening to the library.

Of course, not all of the undergraduates took to reading and thinking; the millennium had not arrived, but the intelligent majority began to read and discuss books openly, and the intelligent majority ruled the campus.

Hugh was one of the most enthusiastic of the readers. He was taking a course in nineteenth-century poetry with Blake, the head of the English department. His other instructors either bored him or left him cold, but Blake turned each cla.s.s hour into a thrilling experience. He was a handsome man with gray hair, dark eyes, and a magnificent voice. He taught poetry almost entirely by reading it, only occasionally interpolating an explanatory remark, and he read beautifully. His reading was dramatic, almost tricky; but it made the poems live for his students, and they reveled in his cla.s.ses.

Hugh's junior year was made almost beautiful by that poetry course and by his adoration for Cynthia. He was writing verses constantly--and he found "Cynthia" an exceedingly troublesome word; it seemed as if nothing would rime with it. At times he thought of taking to free verse, but the results of his efforts did not satisfy him. He always had the feeling that he had merely chopped up some rather bad prose; and he was invariably right. Cynthia wrote him that she loved the poems he sent her because they were so pa.s.sionate. He blushed when he read her praise.

It disturbed him. He wished that she had used a different word.