The Whirligig of Time Part 17

James did not seem particularly interested in points of etiquette in royal households.

"What do you make out of this business of the Carsons?" he asked.

"What business?"

"Hadn't you heard? Aunt C. told me about it when I was there last Sunday. Beatrice's mother has made up her mind to sue for a divorce, and Beatrice has quarreled with her about it."

"Good Lord! No, I hadn't heard a thing. I knew what the father was, of course.... Has anything in particular happened?"

"Apparently, yes. Aunt C. can tell you more exactly than I. Beatrice has confided the whole thing to her--they're thick as thieves already; she gets on better with her than with Aunt Miriam, even. It seems that the husband, Lord Archibald, is on to the fact that his wife has had a good deal of money to spend lately; Uncle Giles having given her a lot since he got that--"

"Yes, I know. Go on."

"Well, that's about the whole thing. He's been bullying her, making her give it up to him ... and one thing and another, till she got desperate, and decided to try for a complete divorce. There's plenty of ground, even for English law ... but Beatrice's idea is that there's no need. Of course, it will mean a lot of scandal. She says that if she had been there to deal with him there would have been no talk about it, and that, at worst, a separation would have been all that was necessary."

"Poor Lady Archie! She has had a tough time; I shall be glad to see her well out of it. A divorce--! Well, she has more sense than I gave her credit for."

"It seems to me that Beatrice is quite right," said James, a trifle stiffly. "I should have thought that a divorce was the thing most to be avoided. It's not like an American divorce.... I understand her point very well."

Harry did not reply to this; he simply growled--made a curious sound in the bottom of his throat. It amounted to a polite way of saying "Nonsense!" Apparently James accepted the implied rebuke, for he said no more on the subject. His brother also was silent for some time and gazed thoughtfully out on the lights of the Campus. "I've got troubles of my own, James," he said presently. "Have you heard anything about last night yet?"

"Last night? No; what?"

"Well, you've heard of Junius LeGrand, in our cla.s.s?"

"The actress? Yes."

"Well, he's become rather a power in the cla.s.s; not only he is making straight for the Dramat. presidency, but he's more or less the center of a certain clique; the social register, monogrammed cigarettes, champagne-every-night and abroad-every-summer type; the worst of it, that is. Well, I had a dreadful scene with him last night. I got a thrill and called him names, and he didn't like it."

"What happened?"

"There was a whole bunch of us sitting round at Mory's, and I was talking partly in French, as I usually do when--when mildly excited, and referred to him as a 'pet.i.te ordure.' Of course that isn't a pretty thing to call a person, even in French, and I probably shouldn't have said it if I hadn't been drinking. I meant it all, though, and was willing to stand by it, so when he got mad I called him other and worse things, in English. He wasn't tight, but he was pretty furious by that time, and there'd have been a free fight if people hadn't held us apart."

"That's pretty poor, Harry," said James gravely, after a moment's consideration. "I don't mean your hating LeGrand--though you needn't have actually come to quarreling with him. But your being tight and he not puts you in the wrong right off.--What's all this about your drinking, anyway?"

"I don't, so you could notice it.... That was the first time I ever got carried beyond myself, except about once--or twice. I'm not fond of the stuff; I only drink when I want to be cheered up."

"That's bad, too; it's much worse to drink when you're in bad spirits than when you're in good," said James, with a wisdom beyond his experience.

"After I've drunk, the good spirits are in me," retorted Harry, with rather savage humor.

"It's no joking matter. Harry, will you cut it out entirely, if I ask you to?"

"You'll have to do some tall asking, I'm afraid.--I don't like you much when you preach, James. I came here for sympathy, not sermons."

"You won't get me to sympathize with your making a beast of yourself."

"James, you know perfectly well you were tight as a tick at the football banquet in Boston last fall."

"I'm no paragon, I admit."

"You say that as if you thought you were, and expected me to say so. No, you're right--you're not. There!"

James' humor suddenly changed. His grave face relaxed into a smile, he rose from his chair and wandered to the end of the room and back to the window-seat.

"All right, we'll leave it at that; I'm not." He stood for a moment hands in pockets, smiling down at his brother. "It's nice to find one point we can agree on, anyway.... I won't bother you. After all, I suppose there's not much danger."

"No ... I don't think I should ever really get to like the stuff." But Harry did not smile and fall in with his brother's mood; he had too much on his mind still. "I haven't told you the most disagreeable part of it," he went on. "Something happened to-day that made me sorry I had made a fool of myself. Shep McGee came to me to-day and said that he'd heard about our little _coup de theatre_, and that he was sorry, but being one of Junius' particular friends he couldn't be friendly with me any more unless I apologized. I was sorry, because I've always liked Shep and got on very well with him."

"What did you say?"

"Oh, of course I was pretty peeved, and I messed it up still further. I told him I was glad he'd spoken, because henceforth my acquaintance would not be recruited conspicuously from Junius' special friends. I said that, strange as it might seem, I felt myself able to hand him, Shep, over to Junius' complete possession without a tear. I added that I thought he would find it safer in the future to choose his friends exclusively from the cause of Christ, and suggested that he might try to convert Junius to the same august organization...."

Some explanation may be necessary to show why this remark outraged James' feelings to the extent it did. The organization to which Harry referred was Dwight Hall, the college home of the Y. M. C. A., Bible study cla.s.ses, city and foreign mission work, in all of which branches of religious and semi-religious activity many of the worthiest undergraduates interest themselves. James particularly admired the organization and those who worked in it; he would have gone in for some department of its work himself had he possessed the qualities of a religious leader. Most of his best friends were Dwight Hall workers; the senior society to which he belonged was notorious for taking many of them into its fold yearly--so much so, indeed, that it has become a popular myth that an underground pa.s.sage exists between Dwight Hall and the society hall.

Consequently, Harry's contemptuous epithet, together with the tone in which he uttered it was quite enough to shock and pain James very much.

But what put him out even more was the thought that Harry had said this to Shep McGee. The latter was one of the most respected men in Harry's cla.s.s, and James had happened to take a particular fancy to him. He rather wondered at McGee's making a friend of such a person as LeGrand, but he did not stop to think about that now.

"Harry," said he in a sharp, dry voice, "I think that's the rottenest remark I ever heard you or any one else make--if you used that expression to McGee."

"I did."

"I never thought you were capable of saying such a rotten thing, and I don't mind your knowing what I think of it. Are you going to apologize to McGee?"

"No."

"Well, I shall. If I can't apologize on your behalf, at least I can apologize for being your brother! What the devil do you mean by saying such a thing, in cold blood, to such a man? If you don't believe in the work yourself, can't you let other people believe in it? What do you believe in, anyway? Do you call yourself a Christian? Do you call yourself a gentleman? Do you flatter yourself that McGee isn't a hundred times a better man than you are?"

"Rumblings from the underground pa.s.sage." This remark, given with a cold, hard little smile, in which there was no geniality, no humor, even of a mistaken nature, amounted to a direct insult. Any reference made to a Yale man about his senior society by an outsider, be it a brother or any one else, is looked upon as a breach of etiquette--was at that time, at any rate. Harry's remark was worse than that; it was a rather cowardly thrust, for he was insulting a thing that James, by reason of the secrecy to which he was bound, could not defend.

James did not reply; he simply grabbed up a hat and flung himself out of the room. Harry listened to his footsteps retreating down the stairs with a sinking heart; all his anger, all his resentment ebbed with them, and by the time they had died away there was nothing left but hopeless, repentant wretchedness. In the last twenty-four hours he had made a public disgrace of himself, he had fallen out with one of his best friends, and he had wounded the feelings of the last person on earth he wanted to hurt. And all because of his asinine convictions, because he thought his ideals were a little higher than other men's, his honesty a little more impeccable than theirs.

He got up and left the room, cursing himself for a fool, cursing the fate that had brought him to this pa.s.s, cursing Dwight Hall, the senior societies, the university that harbored them, the school, the country that had put ideas into his head. But chiefest of all he cursed Junius LeGrand....

But that did not do any good.

The next morning he wrote and posted a note of apology to James:--

Dear James--I am sorry about last night--really, I am. I will try not to make such an a.s.s of myself again.

HARRY.

The same evening he received an answer, also through the mail. It was simply a post-card bearing the words:

All right. JAMES.

Its curt, businesslike goodwill and the promptness of its arrival comforted him somewhat. He wisely determined to keep away from his brother for the present and let time exert what healing effect it could.

When they did meet again, after some ten days' interval, no reference was made to the episode. James was cordial, very cordial. Far, far too cordial....