The Seven-Branched Candlestick Part 7

The first month of college was not yet over when I went, on one of those evenings, to hear an extra-curriculum lecture on the social duties of a college man. I had expected to hear a fop of some sort deliver dicta on the proper angle of holding a fork or inside information as to the most aristocratic set in college. It was that word _social_ that misled me.

Instead, the speaker was a rough, business-like man, rather shabbily dressed, who heaped fiery anathema upon the idle rich. And he spoke of the true social duties. He spoke mainly--because he knew most about it--concerning the opportunities for college men in settlement work.

I had never heard of settlement work before. It was a new thing to me--and perhaps it was its newness that at first attracted me so strongly. I waited until the end of the lecture, and joined a little group of listeners who gathered around the man with eager questions. I had a few of my own to ask, too--and he answered mine as he answered all of them, simply, kindly, directly.

The speaker was Lawrence Richards, director of one of the largest settlement societies in New York. There was something powerful, magnetically enthusiastic about him--and his face was tremendously keen and happy.

He was gathering up his papers to depart when he chanced to remark to me:

"See here, will you come over to my fraternity house with me and talk things over? We can sit in the library, and I'll tell you lots more that I know will interest you. We'll be comfortable--and fairly alone."

Mr. Richards, it seems, had gone to my university ten years ago. I asked him the name of the fraternity. When he told me it, I shook my head, No.

It was the house at which I had had that memorable luncheon--and whither I was not to be invited any more.

"Why not?" he persisted. "I want you down in my settlement. I want to show you how you can be of help to us. Won't you come over to the fraternity house?" And when I again declined, he insisted on knowing why.

But I did not tell him. "Perhaps some of the members of your active chapter will tell you," I replied, "but I will not."

He looked at me sharply, and his face grew grim. "I see," he said warmly. "The nasty little cads. Well, it's harder for me to excuse them than it is for you--and I'm their sworn brother!"

So I made an appointment to come down to the settlement, instead, and to take supper with him there some evening. He wanted to show me the splendid organization of things there: the club rooms, the dance hall, the gymnasium and reading room. He wanted to introduce me to the resident leaders. He wanted to persuade me to become a leader, myself: to attend one of the clubs of young boys, to join with them in their meetings, their debates, their entertainments and studies, to help them by friendliness and example.

"I suppose," he said, when he left me at a subway kiosk, "that you feel mighty sorry that you didn't make a fraternity, don't you? Well, I'm offering you a membership in a bigger and better one than ever had a chapter in a college--the brotherhood of humanity. You'll be proud of it, little fellow, if you'll join. So come along down and let us 'rush'

you!"

It was so good-natured a joke that I could not resent it. I had had my eyes opened, tonight, by some of the things that Mr. Richards had told me. I had learned that the city has its poor, its sick and wicked, its boys and girls embroiled in wrong environments, its lonely and unambitious, who must be comraded and wakened. And I had learned that I, young as I was, was able to help, to foster, to do good for such as these.

On the way home, I pa.s.sed a street corner where boys a few years younger than myself were loitering in obscene play. A little further on I came to a girl, not more than fifteen or sixteen, who was being followed by some toughs. She was a Jewish girl, too, I noticed--and she was crying with fright. I put her on a street car to get her out of harm's way.

It was of just such as these, both boys and girls, that Mr. Richards had spoken this evening. Perhaps he was right--and what a n.o.ble thing to be able to join in the help and companionship which the settlement could give them. I resolved to go down to him the very next evening.

When I reached home, Aunt Selina was just getting ready for bed. She came out into the hall in a pink silk dressing-gown, all frills and ruffles, and asked me complainingly where I had been so long. She was angry at my abrupt departure when her evening's guests arrived.

"I have been to hear a lecture delivered by a Mr. Lawrence Richards," I told her.

"Oh! That settlement man?" she asked.

"Yes."

She almost snorted. "I met him once at a meeting of our Ladies'

Auxiliary. He is such a plain, undistinguished fellow!"

I hesitated a moment. "Aunt Selina," I said, "I am going down tomorrow night to have supper with him. He wants me to become a leader in one of the settlement clubs. It would take only one night a week, he says----"

My aunt was so affected by the announcement that I had to run and fetch her smelling salts. "Oh, oh, down into that awful tenement house district? Down among those dreadful people? Indeed, you shan't go. If you do, I shall never allow you to come back! Think of the diseases you might spread!"

And she carried on so hysterically that, after a while, I gave in and promised I would not go--not for a while, anyhow.

"Why aren't you like other boys of your cla.s.s?" she demanded. "Why aren't you content to make the best of things and be satisfied with the splendid opportunities you have?"

"That's just what I'm trying to do, Aunt Selina," I told her. "Trying to make the best--the really best of everything that comes into my life!"

But she was unimpressed, and went off sobbing to bed.

X

THE RULES OF THE GAME

I became rather friendly with that near-sighted junior. He was so genial, good-hearted, apologetic a chap that I could not harbor any resentment against him for the events which took place at his fraternity house. They were not his fault, anyhow.

His name was Trevelyan, and he came from one of the oldest families in New York; one of the wealthiest, too. At college he was considered somewhat of a fool, his never-failing good nature giving justification for the opinion. I don't think that, since that first embarra.s.sing luncheon, I have never seen him unhappy--and even then it was on my account he was discontented, not on his own. And outside of college he must have been respected with all the awe which New Yorkers accord to the Sons of the American Revolution and five or six million dollars. But he was the least lofty, least sn.o.bbish man that I have ever known. Most of his college friends thought he was too much of a fool to play the sn.o.b; I thought he was too much of a gentleman.

He came to dinner at my aunt's apartment after he had known me for about a month. I do not know who of us was the more proud, my aunt or I--for to me the idea of having a junior and a member of one of the most powerful fraternities visiting at my home was quite as much of a marvel as my aunt seemed to feel it, that a member of the Trevelyan family--the Trevelyan's of Fifth avenue and Sixty-fourth street, don't you know--should be seated at her table and giving gracious attention to her gossipy conversation. For a whole week after his visit Aunt Selina made a great point of it--and of telling her friends of it. The distinction of having a Trevelyan to dinner was a great triumph over Mrs.

Fleming-Cohen, who had once entertained a Jewish mining magnate from the Far West--but who had never attained anything like a Trevelyan.

I think Trevelyan began at first feeling very much ashamed and sorry; he was just trying to square up matters with his own conscience. He had a room in one of the college dormitories. He seldom used it, but when he did he would invite me to stay up there with him and to sit until the wee, quiet hours, talking over our briar pipes, inters.p.a.cing the layers of blue smoke with argument and stirring plans. Trevelyan had great hopes for me. He had discovered that I was a runner.

As a matter of fact, I had done a little practicing with the track team at military school. I had never amounted to much, had never stood out tremendously in meets. I liked to run, I liked the healthy trim that the exercise gave me, but I'm afraid I never took it very seriously.

But Trevelyan saw things differently. Here was my great chance. Never mind the college papers, the literary societies and all that tame coterie of lesser inst.i.tutions. If I made the track team I would be a college hero--and, after seeing me capture the flag in the cla.s.s rush, he had no doubt of my vim and nerve. I must make the track team.

(Trevelyan, by the way, was a.s.sistant manager of the track organization.)

So, soon enough, I was out on the windy field in my old school track-clothes, racing around and around with a st.u.r.dy intention of proving myself worthy of Trevelyan's friendship. That was my chief reason for "coming out for track," after all.

The coach, a taciturn, gray old fellow, whose muscles were running too fat and whose temper had frayed out in the years of snarling at prospective champions, paid little attention to me until the week before the freshman-soph.o.m.ore track meet. Then he tried me out at a 44-yard run. That was what I had been used to doing at school. There was only one man in the freshman cla.s.s who could beat me in this run for certain.

There was no reason, said Trevelyan, why I should not be absolutely sure of my place on the cla.s.s team.

Three days before the meet the other "44" man sprained his knee. He was out of the race for the time being. There was no doubt now that I would be put in. So said Trevelyan, and so, in surly, semi-official fashion, said the coach.

But we had not counted on the captain of the freshman track team. This was one of my cla.s.smates, chosen from among the many candidates by the captain of the 'varsity team. This freshman leader I did not know personally. I had met him almost every day on the field, but he had never recognized me. His track shirt bore the monogram of a noted preparatory school; and it was echoed that he was the handsomest man in the cla.s.s. He was most certainly the most sn.o.bbish. He was thrown into contact with me in various organizations during our four years. I do not remember his ever having bowed to me. In his college world I, and such as I, did not exist.

At any rate, the college newspaper came out one noon to announce the members of the freshman track team, as chosen by its captain. My name was not among them.

In vain did Trevelyan protest to the 'varsity captain, to the coach--I even think he took the matter as high as a meeting of the faculty athletic advisory committee. Nothing could be done. The 'varsity captain shrugged his shoulders, the old coach growled but said nothing, the faculty advisers kept away from the topic as if it were beneath their tutelary notice. And the freshman-soph.o.m.ore track meet was held with me on the side-lines, among the spectators. I have no reason to gloat over it, but it is a rather amusing point that we lost the entire meet through losing the four-forty yard run.

"It's a dirty shame," said Trevelyan, his squinting eyes full of rue and anger. "I knew that sort of thing went on in the 'varsity circle--but I didn't think they'd carry it down into the cla.s.s teams. It's all college politics--and college politics are the meanest, most vindictive intrigue on earth."

I didn't ask him for a further explanation, and I suppose he felt it would be kinder not to make one. But I knew well enough to what he referred--and why there had been this sudden, underhanded discrimination. I made up my mind to forget the whole episode. I had not been so tremendously anxious to make the track team that I would let the disappointment of it rankle and grow and ruin my year's fun. I put it all behind me, resolving to take my enthusiasm into some other of the college activities where it would be more sincerely appreciated.

I consulted Trevelyan about it. He suggested the college newspaper. But after he had made the suggestion, he began to stammer and make strange protests. I asked him to tell me plainly what was wrong.

"Why, it's the same with that as with the track team. The editor-in-chief of the paper is in my 'crowd.' I'll speak to him--and save you any trouble. If he says yes, then you go out and win a place on the board of editors. But if he says no, I want you to promise me that you won't subject yourself to any more of this puppy-dog prejudice."