The Plastic Age Part 13

"Of course, Hugh. But I don't understand."

"Oh, what's the dif? Let's go."

He tucked his arm in Carl's, and the two of them pa.s.sed out of the Union on their way to the Nu Delta house. Later both of them understood.

Carl's good looks, his excellent clothes, his money, and the fact that he had been to an expensive preparatory school were enough to insure him plenty of bids even if he had been considerably less of a gentleman than he was.

Already the campus was ringing with shouts as freshmen entered fraternity houses, each freshman being required to report at once to the fraternity whose bid he was accepting.

When Carl and Hugh walked up the Nu Delta steps, they were seized by waiting upper-cla.s.smen and rushed into the living-room, where they were received with loud cheers, slapped on the back, and pa.s.sed around the room, each upper-cla.s.sman shaking hands with them so vigorously that their hands hurt for an hour afterward. What pleasant pain! Each new arrival was similarly received, but the excitement did not last long.

Both the freshmen and the upper-cla.s.smen were too tired to keep the enthusiasm at the proper pitch. At nine o'clock the freshmen were sent home with orders to report the next evening at eight.

Carl and Hugh, proudly conscious of the pledge b.u.t.tons in the lapels of their coats, walked slowly across the campus, spent and weary, but exquisitely happy.

"They bid me on account of you," Carl said softly. "They didn't think they could get you unless they asked me, too."

"No," Hugh replied, "you're wrong. They took you for yourself. They knew you would go where I did, and they were sure that I would go their way."

Hugh was quite right. The Nu Deltas had felt sure of both of them and had not rushed them harder because they were too busy to waste any time on certainties.

Carl stopped suddenly. "G.o.d, Hugh," he exclaimed. "Just suppose I had offered the Alpha Sigs that cash. G.o.d!"

"Aren't you glad you didn't?" Hugh asked happily.

"Glad? Glad? Boy, I'm bug-house. And," he added softly, "I know the lad I've got to thank."

"Aw, go to h.e.l.l."

The initiation season lasted two weeks, and the neophytes found that the dormitory initiations had been merely child's play. They had to account for every hour, and except for a brief time allowed every day for studying, they were kept busy making a.s.ses of themselves for the delectation of the upper-cla.s.smen.

In the Nu Delta house a freshman had to be on guard every hour of the day up to midnight. He was forced to dress himself in some outlandish costume, the more outlandish the better, and announce every one who entered or left the house. "Mr. Standish entering," he would bawl, or, "Mr. Kerwin leaving." If he bawled too loudly, he was paddled; if he didn't bawl loudly enough, he was paddled; and if there was no fault to be found with his bawling; he was paddled anyway. Every freshman had to supply his own paddle, a broad, stout oak affair sold at the cooperative store at a handsome profit.

If a freshman reported for duty one minute late, he was paddled; if he reported one minute early, he was paddled. There was no end to the paddling. "a.s.sume the angle," an upper-cla.s.sman would roar. The unfortunate freshman then humbly bent forward, gripped his ankles with his hands--and waited. The worst always happened. The upper-cla.s.sman brought the paddle down with a resounding whack on the seat of the freshman's trousers.

"Does it hurt?"

"Yes, sir."

Another resounding whack. "_What?_"

"No--no, sir."

"Oh, well, if it doesn't hurt, I might as well give you another one."

And he gave him another one.

A freshman was paddled if he forgot to say "sir" to an upper-cla.s.sman; he was paddled if he neglected to touch the floor with his fingers every time he pa.s.sed through a door in the fraternity house; he was paddled if he laughed when an upper-cla.s.sman told a joke, and he was paddled if he didn't laugh; he was paddled if he failed to return from an errand in an inconceivably short time: he was paddled for every and no reason, but mainly because the upper-cla.s.smen, the soph.o.m.ores particularly, got boundless delight out of doing the paddling.

Every night a freshman stood on the roof of the Nu Delta house and announced the time every fifteen seconds. "One minute and fifteen seconds after nine, and all's well in the halls of Nu Delta; one minute and thirty seconds after nine, and all's well in the halls of Nu Delta; one minute and forty-five seconds after nine, and all's well in the halls of Nu Delta," and so on for an hour. Then he was relieved by another freshman, who took up the chant.

Nightly the freshmen had to entertain the upper-cla.s.smen, and if the entertainment wasn't satisfactory, as it never was, the entertainers were paddled. They had to run races, shoving pennies across the floor with their noses. The winner was paddled for going too fast--"Didn't he have any sense of sportsmans.h.i.+p?"--and the loser was paddled for going too slow. Most of the freshmen lost skin off their noses and foreheads; all of them s.h.i.+vered at the sight of a paddle. By the end of the first week they were whispering to each other how many blisters they had on their b.u.t.tocks.

It was a bitterly cold night in late February when the Nu Deltas took the freshmen for their "walk." They drove in automobiles fifteen miles into the country and then left the freshmen to walk back. It was four o'clock in the morning when the miserable freshmen reached the campus, half frozen, unutterably weary, but thankful that the end of the initiation was at hand.

Hugh was thankful for another thing; the Nu Deltas did not brand. He had noticed several men in the swimming-pool with tiny Greek letters branded on their chests or thighs. The branded ones seemed proud of their permanent insignia, but the idea of a fraternity branding its members like beef-cattle was repugnant to Hugh. He told Carl that he was darn glad the Nu Deltas were above that sort of thing, and, surprisingly, Carl agreed with him.

The next night they were formally initiated. The Nu Delta house seemed strangely quiet; levity was strictly prohibited. The freshmen were given white robes such as the upper-cla.s.smen were wearing, the president excepted, who wore a really handsome robe of blue and silver.

Then they marched up-stairs to the "goat room." Once there, the president mounted a dais; a "brother" stood on each side of him. Hugh was so much impressed by the ritual, the black hangings of the room, the fraternity seal over the dais, the ornate chandelier, the long speeches of the president and his a.s.sistants, that he failed to notice that many of the brothers were openly bored.

Eventually each freshman was led forward by an upper-cla.s.sman. He knelt on the lowest step of the dais and repeated after the president the oath of allegiance. Then one of the a.s.sisting brothers whispered to him the pa.s.sword and taught him the "grip," a secret and elaborate method of shaking hands, while the other pinned the jeweled pin to his vest.

When each freshman had been received into the fraternity, the entire chapter marched in twos down-stairs, singing the fraternity song. The initiation was over; Carl and Hugh were Nu Delts.

The whole ceremony had moved Hugh deeply, so deeply that he had hardly been able to repeat the oath after the president. He thought the ritual very beautiful, more beautiful even than the Easter service at church.

He left the Nu Delta house that night feeling a deeper loyalty for the fraternity than he had words to express. He and Carl walked back to Surrey 19 in silence. Neither was capable of speech, though both of them wanted to give expression to their emotion in some way. They reached their room.

"Well," said Hugh shyly, "I guess I'll go to bed."

"Me, too." Then Carl moved hesitatingly to where Hugh was standing. He held out his hand and grinned, but his eyes were serious.

"Good night--brother."

Their hands met in the sacred grip.

"Good night--brother."

CHAPTER XIII

To Hugh the remainder of the term was simply a fight to get an opportunity to study. The old saying, "if study interferes with college, cut out study," did not appeal to him. He honestly wanted to do good work, but he found that the chance to do it was rare. Some one always seemed to be in his room eager to talk; there was the fraternity meeting to attend every Monday night; early in the term there was at least one hockey or basketball game a week; later there were track meets, baseball games, and tennis matches; he had to attend Glee Club rehearsals twice a week; he ran every afternoon either in the gymnasium or on the cinder path; some one always seduced him into going to the movies; he was constantly being drawn into bull sessions; there was an occasional concert: and besides all these distractions, there was a fraternity dance, the excitement of Prom, a trip to three cities with the Glee Club, and finally a week's vacation at home at Easter.

Worst of all, none of his instructors was inspiring. He had been a.s.signed to a new section in Latin, and in losing Alling he lost the one really enjoyable teacher he had had. The others were conscientious, more or less competent, but there was little enthusiasm in their teaching, nothing to make a freshman eager either to attend their cla.s.ses or to study the lessons they a.s.signed. They did not make the acquiring of knowledge a thrilling experience; they made it a duty--and Hugh found that duty exceedingly irksome.

He attended neither the fraternity dance nor the Prom. He had looked forward enthusiastically to the "house dance," but after he had, along with the other men in his delegation, cleaned the house from garret to bas.e.m.e.nt, he suddenly took to his bed with grippe. He groaned with despair when Carl gave him glowing accounts of the dance and the "janes." Carl for once, however, was circ.u.mspect; he did not tell Hugh all that happened. He would have been hard put to explain his own reticence, but although he thought "the jane who got pie-eyed" had been enormously funny, he decided not to tell Hugh about her or the pie-eyed brothers.

No freshman was allowed to attend the Prom, but along with the other men who weren't "dragging women" Hugh walked the streets and watched the girls. There was a tea-dance at the fraternity house during Prom week.

Hugh said that he got a great kick out of it, but, as a matter of fact, he remained only a short time; there was a hectic quality to both the girls and the talk that confused him. For some reason he didn't like the atmosphere; and he didn't know why. His excuse to the brothers and to himself for leaving early was that he was in training and not supposed to dance.

Track above all things was absorbing his interest. He could hardly think of anything else. He lay awake nights dreaming of the race he would run against Raleigh. Sanford had three dual track meets a year, but the first two were with small colleges and considered of little importance.

Only a point winner in the Raleigh meet was granted his letter.

Hugh won the hundred in the soph.o.m.ore-freshman meet and in a meet with the Raleigh freshmen, so that he was given his cla.s.s numerals. He did nothing, however, in the Raleigh meet; he was much too nervous to run well, breaking three times at the mark. He was set back two yards and was never able to regain them. For a time he was bitterly despondent, but he soon cheered up when he thought of the three years ahead of him.

Spring brought first rain and slush and then the "sings." There was a fine stretch of lawn in the center of the campus, and on clear nights the students gathered there for a sing, one cla.s.s on each side of the lawn. First the seniors sang a college song, then the juniors, then the soph.o.m.ores, and then the freshmen. After each song, the other cla.s.ses cheered the singers, except when the soph.o.m.ores and freshmen sang: they always "razzed" each other. Hugh led the freshmen, and he never failed to get a thrill out of singing a clear note and hearing his cla.s.smates take it up.