The Seven-Branched Candlestick Part 6

The cla.s.s was soon over, since we were only kept for a preliminary explanation of the course and a few words of supercilious greeting on behalf of the young instructor. We came out upon the campus again, locked arm in wet arm, paradoxically proud of what we had suffered.

But some more soph.o.m.ores were waiting for us. We had to go into the fountain over and over again. My own personal score was nine times. Nor did my good nature--kept at what a cost!--serve to bring me any leniency.

In fact it was only when I showed a trace of anger that the soph.o.m.ores finally released me and took me over to the gymnasium to give me a sweater and a pair of old pants, much too big for me, to wear until my other suit was dry.

I went home from that first day jubilant, excited, sure of my coming four years. I had proven to myself and to all these others that I was ready to take a joke, to share it and enjoy it even when it was "on me."

I had come out of it all with a tame but conclusive triumph of patience and good nature.

I told my aunt of what had happened, when we sat down to dinner. She was shocked at the recital. She wanted to know what sort of boys these soph.o.m.ores were--were they of good family and all that? Otherwise, if they were ruffians, common street boys--she was going to write a letter of complaint to the Dean of the university. I had a hard time restraining her from it: I only did succeed by maintaining stoutly that hazing was part of the social scheme, and was indulged in only by "boys of the best families!"

The next morning, when I had traveled uptown to the college site, I was met by more than one soph.o.m.ore and upper cla.s.sman who gave me a broad smile or a humorous wink. The story of my dousings had probably gone the rounds of the campus.

That night there was to be a reception given to the freshman cla.s.s by the college Y. M. C. A. I had arranged with Aunt Selina that I would not be home until late.

There was a baseball game between the two cla.s.ses in the afternoon. The soph.o.m.ores won, of course--as I believe they almost always do in that first game. But after that there was a cla.s.s rush around the flag pole.

I was light enough to climb up, stockinged-feet, upon the shoulders of some of the taller cla.s.smates. I managed, somehow or other, to reach that silly little flag and to tear it down, and then to dive down into the twisting, jammed crowd below me, hugging the rag to my breast in bulwarked hiding. And when the whistle blew I was still in possession of it.

Popularity is a heady wine--and I had my fill of it that day and evening. I--little I--had won the cla.s.s rush for the freshmen. Everybody seemed to know my name, to recognize me, to want to speak to me. At the reception, later on, I was surrounded by a great group of freshmen too shy to stand by themselves. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, of course, I should have been more shy than any of them--but these were not ordinary circ.u.mstances. I was a suddenly awakened hero, a wolf who had thrown off his meek lamb's outfit.

As I was leaving for home, full of ice cream, punch and much self-conceit, a junior came toward me hesitatingly. He seemed to be near-sighted, for he groped rather pitifully for my sleeve, and thrust his face close to mine.

"Aren't you the freshman that won the rush?" he asked me.

I told him promptly that I was.

"Well, won't you come around for lunch tomorrow at our fraternity house? We'll be mighty glad to have you."

I had learned a little of fraternities at school. They had not amounted to anything there; but I knew that college fraternities were different--were big, powerful organizations which could make or break a man's college career. My aunt had spoken to me of fraternities, too; she wanted me to join one which should give me--and her--a deal of social prestige. And I, hungering for new experiences and--as every boy does--for things that are mysterious and secretive, wanted, too, the distinction and glory of making a fraternity. It seemed to my freshman mind the most important thing upon the horizon.

And so, when this upper cla.s.sman invited me to luncheon, my heart bounded high with expectation. I knew from other college men that an invitation to lunch was but the beginning of the usual system of "rushing" a prospective member: the preliminary skirmish of festivities which would prelude the final invitation to join the fraternity. And I was going to lunch at one of the most influential and exclusive of the university's fraternities.

It is needless to say, I was dressed in my Sunday-best the next morning.

And, after my 11 o'clock recitation, I hurried out to find the upper cla.s.sman waiting for me by the side of the fountain which had been the scene of my yesterday's wetting. I smiled indulgently at the thought of it. How changed everything was since then! The upper cla.s.sman waited for me to come up to him. I saw that he did not recognize me at once, and a tremor of suspicion came over me. What if it were all a hoax--another bit of hazing?

He was immensely cordial; took me by the arm and marched me across the campus, down a side street and into the palatial, pillared house of his fraternity. On the way, his genial face full of a stupid, expansive smile, and his near-sighted eyes twinkling vacantly, he told me of the men I should meet.

Inside, in the magnificent hall, with its weathered oak beams and mission furniture and bronze plaques upon the tapestried walls, I met a host of good-looking, well-dressed men. There was evidently a "rushing committee" of upper cla.s.smen, who took me about and introduced me to all the others. There were one or two freshmen, too, whom I recognized; and these were wearing in their lapels a strange, gleaming little b.u.t.ton. I was to learn later than this was the "pledge b.u.t.ton" which announced that these men had been offered membership to the fraternity and had accepted it.

When we went into luncheon the near-sighted junior sat me next to him.

He seemed tremendously embarra.s.sed. Once or twice he leaned over to whisper to other men; then he would steal a glance at me and blush a brick red, his inefficient eyes puckering to squint closely.

The other men, for the most part, disregarded me. A cla.s.smate--one of the pledged freshmen--spoke to me now and then, but loftily and as if it were an effort of hospitality.

As I felt the coldness increase, I grew glum and silent. My new-found confidence oozed out into bewilderment. What had I done? What had I said to insult them all, to hurt my chances of election to their midst? I could not figure it out.

They were courteous enough. They were what they claimed to be: a crowd of young gentlemen. But I could sense, electric in the air, the disapproval and amus.e.m.e.nt which they felt.

And after lunch was over, I did not join the others in the big, leather-walled smoking room. I made a mumbled apology and went. They accepted it blandly, smiling, smirking a little, and let me go.

I had just gone down the steps and towards the campus when the near-sighted junior came after me, redder than ever of face, his eyes, blinking very hard. He hurried up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.

"See here, 'fresh,'" he said thickly, "I owe you an explanation. I don't want the other fellows to see me giving it to you. Come on, walk along with me."

At the corner, out of range of the windows of his fraternity house, he began his hurried, jumbling speech.

"I could see," he said, "how uncomfortable they made you. They tried to be decent, honestly they did. But they--they've never had--never had to entertain a--one of your sort before, don't you see? We--we don't ever take--well, it's all my fault. I'm so darn near-sighted that I didn't realize. I couldn't see--I didn't know--"

He could not go on, for his dull, honest face was fearfully distressed.

"What didn't you know?" I demanded.

"That you were--now, don't get sore, because I like Jews as much as any folks--and I can't see why we don't take them in our fraternity. Only--"

"Only you didn't realize I was a Jew," I said hotly.

"That's it--I'm so near-sighted that I--"

I did not wait for his stammered finish. I went swiftly away and home, my heart well-nigh bursting.

IX

MY AUNT AND I

"It isn't true," snapped my aunt, when I told her of what had happened at the fraternity house. "I can't imagine that young gentlemen of such an aristocratic set could act so meanly. You must have done something wrong. You must have insulted them personally, yourself. I'll wager, you're to blame--not they."

I was too sickened by it all to protest. I repeated to her slowly the words of apology which the near-sighted junior had spoken to me at our parting, and, when they did not convince her, gave up the task and went to bed without any supper. I was old enough to have cured myself of the habit of tears--though, as a matter of fact, no men ever do quite want to cure themselves of it--but I remember that my pillow was damp the next morning, and the grey, foggy sky, through the window, seemed in sad tune with my spirits.

I dressed and went up to college, fearful to meet any of that fraternity crowd again, wondering how they would act towards me, trying to be indignant, but succeeding only in a shriveled self-debas.e.m.e.nt. Because I was a Jew--that was their one and only reason for showing me the door in so polite and gentlemanly a fashion.

But when, at the chapel entrance, I b.u.mped into one of the pledged freshmen, he simply did not pay any attention to me at all. He appeared not to know me, murmured an unhurried and general, "Excuse me," and went on. A few yards further on, I met with one of the seniors at whose fraternity table I had been sitting the noon before. He bowed hastily and walked past.

Neither one nor the other of them seemed to be much perturbed by the meeting, nor to notice my own discomfiture. I could not imagine that such incidents as mine of yesterday were common occurrences and yet they seemed to take it so much as a matter of course.

I fought with my pride in the matter for a long while. Then, at the end of a noon-time recitation, I spoke of it to a freshman with whom I had struck up a friendship two days old. The friendship ended there. He seemed scandalized at my mentioning fraternities at all: it was a subject far too sacred for discussion, evidently. He merely snapped back stiffly that he expected to be pledged to another fraternity sometime during the day, and that he did not care to hurt his chances by talking too freely. It made me see the secretiveness of the system from another angle.

I received no more invitations to lunch. I contented myself henceforth with a humble sandwich and gla.s.s of milk at the "Commons" eating hall.

It was galling to see cla.s.smates being escorted across the campus to the fraternity houses, to overhear them accepting invitations to theater in the evening, to watch the process of their conversion to this fraternity or that one. It was like being in a bustling crowd with hands tied and mouth gagged--and the sullen rage of a disappointed boyhood in my heart.

Aunt Selina did not know how to comfort me. I think she tried to, in her superfluous way. At first she wanted to make light of the fraternities, gibing at them whenever opportunity arose at the dinner table. But she did not feel lightly about it--and her disappointment was too great to be laughed away. She still had a dim suspicion that I had made some fearful misstep--had brought the failure on myself. And so, after a while, she kept silent on the subject, and would not speak of it at all.

But her silence was more harshly eloquent than all her foolish talk had been.

It seems that Paul Fleming, a nephew of Mrs. Fleming-Cohen, had belonged to a fraternity at college; and Mrs. Fleming-Cohen was always alluding to it, as if it gave her a social security which my own aunt could never attain. Aunt Selina wanted me to make a fraternity to prove to Mrs. Fleming-Cohen how easy a matter it was. She had implied as much, when we had first come back from the country.

Our life together as days went by, seemed to be going peacefully and smoothly into some sort of a makeshift groove. I knew well enough that she and I would never grow to be genuinely fond of each other. Our aims were different; and the beginning of college had given me some inkling of what my aims were going to be. I was only eighteen, to be sure; but I was older, more settled than most youths of twenty or more. I blamed myself a little for my impatience with her, for my hasty conclusions concerning those friends of hers who came up from Washington square to eat her meals and to fill her with senseless chatter of art and literature. And yet I could not help loathing them. Whenever they came to dinner, I made an excuse of studying at the house of another freshman for the evening, and thus escaped them.