The Plastic Age Part 30

Won't you please write to me just what is wrong--if anything really is and if I have anything to do with it.

I shall continue to worry until I get your letter.

Most sincerely, HUGH.

Weeks went by and no answer came. Hugh's confusion increased. He thought of writing her another letter, but pride and common sense forbade. Then her letter came, and all of his props were kicked suddenly from under him.

Oh my dear, my dear [she wrote], I swore that I wouldn't answer your letter--and here I am doing it. I've fought and fought, and fought until I can't fight any longer; I've held out as long as I can. Oh, Hugh my dearest, I love you. I can't help it--I do, I do. I've tried so hard not to--and when I found that I couldn't help it I swore that I would never let you know--because I knew that you didn't love me and that I am bad for you. I thought I loved you enough to give you up--and I might have succeeded if you hadn't written to me.

Oh, Hugh dearest, I nearly fainted when I saw your letter. I hardly dared open it--I just looked and looked at your beloved handwriting. I cried when I did read it.

I thought of the letters you used to write to me--and this one was so different--so cold and impersonal. It hurt me dreadfully.

I said that I wouldn't answer it--I swore that I wouldn't. And then I read your old letters--I've kept every one of them--and looked at your picture--and to-night you just seemed to be here--I could see your sweet smile and feel your dear arms around me--and Hugh, my darling, I had to write--I _had_ to.

My pride is all gone. I can't think any more. You are all that matters. Oh, Hugh dearest, I love you so d.a.m.ned hard.

CYNTHIA.

Two hours after the letter arrived it was followed by a telegram:

Don't pay any attention to my letter. I was crazy when I wrote it.

Hugh had sense enough to pay no attention to the telegram; he tossed it into the fireplace and reread the letter. What could he do? What _should_ he do? He was torn by doubt and confusion. He looked at her picture, and all his old longing for her returned. But he had learned to distrust that longing. He had got along for a year without her; he had almost ceased thinking of her when Norry brought her back to his mind.

He had to answer her letter. What could he say? He paced the floor of his room, ran his hands through his hair, pounded his forehead; but no solution came. He took a long walk into the country and came back more confused than ever. He was flattered by her letter, moved by it; he tried to persuade himself that he loved her as she loved him--and he could not do it. His pa.s.sion for her was no longer overpowering, and no amount of thinking could make it so. In the end he temporized. His letter was brief.

Dear Cynthia:

There is no need, I guess, to tell you that your letter swept me clean off my feet. I am still dizzy with confusion. I don't know what to say, and I have decided that it is best for me not to say anything until I know my own mind. I couldn't be fair either to you or myself otherwise. And I want to be fair; I must be.

Give me time, please. It is because I care so much for you that I ask it. Don't worry if you don't hear from me for weeks. My silence won't mean that I have forgotten you; it will mean that I am thinking of you.

Sincerely, HUGH.

Her answer came promptly:

Hugh, my dear--

I was a fish to write that letter--and I know that I'll never forgive myself. But I couldn't help it--I just couldn't help it. I am glad that you are keeping your head because I've lost mine entirely. Take all the time you like. Do you hate me for losing my pride? I do.

Your stupid CYNTHIA.

Weeks went by, and Hugh found no solution. He d.a.m.ned college with all his heart and soul. What good had it done him anyway? Here he was with a serious problem on his hands and he couldn't solve it any better than he could have when he was a freshman. Four years of studying and lectures and examinations, and the first time he bucked up against a bit of life he was licked.

Eventually he wrote to her and told her that he was fonder of her than he was of any girl that he had ever known but that he didn't know whether he was in love with her or not. "I have learned to distrust my own emotions," he wrote, "and my own decisions. The more I think the more bewildered I become. I am afraid to ask you to marry me for fear that I'll wreck both our lives, and I'm afraid not to ask you for the same reason. Do you think that time will solve our problem? I don't know. I don't know anything."

She replied that she was willing to wait just so long as they continued to correspond; she said that she could no longer bear not to hear from him. So they wrote to each other, and the tangle of their relations became more hopelessly knotted. Cynthia never sent another letter so unguarded as her first, but she made no pretense of hiding her love.

As Hugh sank deeper and deeper into the bog of confusion and distress, his contempt for his college "education" increased. One night in May he expressed that contempt to a small group of seniors.

"College is bunk," said Hugh sternly, "pure bunk. They tell us that we learn to think. Rot! I haven't learned to think; a child can solve a simple human problem as well as I can. College has played h.e.l.l with me.

I came here four years ago a darned nice kid, if I do say so myself. I was chock-full of ideals and illusions. Well, college has smashed most of those ideals and knocked the illusions plumb to h.e.l.l. I thought, for example, that all college men were gentlemen; well, most of them aren't.

I thought that all of them were intelligent and hard students."

The group broke into loud laughter. "Me, too," said George Winsor when the noise had abated. "I thought that I was coming to a regular educational heaven, halls of learning and all that sort of thing. Why, it's a farce. Here I am sporting a Phi Bete key, an honor student if you please, and all that I really know as a result of my college 'education'

is the fine points of football and how to play poker. I don't really know one d.a.m.n thing about anything."

The other men were Jack Lawrence and Pudge Jamieson. Jack was an earnest chap, serious and hard working but without a trace of brilliance. He, too, wore a Phi Beta Kappa key, and so did Pudge. Hugh was the only one of the group who had not won that honor; the fact that he was the only one who had won a letter was hardly, he felt, complete justification.

His legs no longer seemed more important than his brains; in fact, when he had sprained a tendon and been forced to drop track, he had been genuinely pleased.

Pudge was quite as plump as he had been as a freshman and quite as jovial, but he did not tell so many s.m.u.tty stories. He still persisted in crossing his knees in spite of the difficulties involved. When Winsor finished speaking, Pudge forced his legs into his favorite position for them and then twinkled at Winsor through his gla.s.ses.

"Right you are, George," he said in his quick way. "I wear a Phi Bete key, too. We both belong to the world's greatest intellectual fraternity, but what in h.e.l.l do we know? We've all majored in English except Jack, and I'll bet any one of us can give the others an exam offhand that they can't pa.s.s. I'm going to law school. I hope to G.o.d that I learn something there. I certainly don't feel that I know anything now as a result of my four years of 'higher education.'"

"Well, if you fellows feel that way," said Hugh mournfully, "how do you suppose I feel? I made my first really good record last term, and that wasn't any world beater. I've learned how to gamble and smoke and drink and pet in college, but that's about all that I have learned. I'm not as fine as I was when I came here. I've been coa.r.s.ened and cheapened; all of us have. I take things for granted that shocked me horribly once. I know that they ought to shock me now, but they don't. I've made some friends and I've had a wonderful time, but I certainly don't feel that I have got any other value out of college."

Winsor could not sit still and talk. He filled his pipe viciously, lighted it, and then jumped up and leaned against the mantel. "I admit everything that's been said, but I don't believe that it is altogether our fault." He was intensely in earnest, and so were his listeners.

"Look at the faculty. When I came here I thought that they were all wise men because they were On the faculty. Well, I've found out otherwise.

Some of them know a lot and can't teach, a few of them know a lot and can teach, some of them know a little and can't teach, and some of them don't know anything and can't explain c-a-t. Why, look at Kempton. That freshman, Larson, showed me a theme the other day that Kempton had corrected. It was full of errors that weren't marked, and it was nothing in the world but drip. Even Larson knew that, but he's the foxy kid; he wrote the theme about Kempton. All right--Kempton gives him a B and tells him that it is very amusing. h.e.l.l of a lot Larson's learning. Look at Kane in math. I had him when I was a freshman."

"Me, too," Hugh chimed in.

"'Nough said, then. Math's dry enough, G.o.d knows, but Kane makes it dryer. He's a born desiccator. He could make 'Hamlet' as dry as calculus."

"Right-o," said Pudge. "But Mitch.e.l.l could make calculus as exciting as 'Hamlet.' It's fifty-fifty."

"And they fired Mitch.e.l.l." Jack Lawrence spoke for the first time. "I have that straight. The administration seems afraid of a man that can teach. They've made Buchanan a full professor, and there isn't a man in college who can tell what he's talking about. He's written a couple of books that n.o.body reads, and that makes him a scholar. I was forced to take three courses with him. They were agony, and he never taught me a d.a.m.n thing."

"Most of them don't teach you a d.a.m.n thing," Winsor exclaimed, tapping his pipe on the mantel. "They either tell you something that you can find more easily in a book, or just confuse you with a lot of ponderous lectures that put you to sleep or drive you crazy if you try to understand them."

"There are just about a dozen men in this college worth listening to,"

Hugh put in, "and I've got three of them this term. I'm learning more than I did in my whole three first years. Let's be fair, though. We're blaming it all on the profs, and you know d.a.m.n well that we don't study.

All we try to do is to get by--I don't mean you Phi Betes; I mean all the rest of us--and if we can put anything over on the profs we are tickled pink. We're like a lot of little kids in grammar-school. Just look at the cheating that goes on, the copying of themes, and the cribbing. It's rotten!"

Winsor started to protest, but Hugh rushed on. "Oh, I know that the majority of the fellows don't consciously cheat; I'm talking about the copying of math problems and the using of trots and the paraphrasing of 'Literary Digest' articles for themes and all that sort of thing. If more than half of the fellows don't do that sort of thing some time or other in college, I'll eat my hat. And we all know darned well that we aren't supposed to do it, but the majority of fellows cheat in some way or other before they graduate!

"We aren't so much. Do you remember, George, what Jimmie Henley said to us when we were soph.o.m.ores in English Thirty-six? He laid us out cold, said that we were as standardized as Fords and that we were ashamed of anything intellectual. Well, he was right. Do you remember how he ended by saying that if we were the cream of the earth, he felt sorry for the skimmed milk--or something like that?"

"Sure, _I_ remember," Winsor replied, running his fingers through his rusty hair. "He certainly pulled a heavy line that day. He was right, too."

"I'll tell you what," exclaimed Pudge suddenly, so suddenly that his crossed legs parted company and his foot fell heavily to the floor.

"Let's put it up to Henley in cla.s.s to-morrow. Let's ask him straight out if he thinks college is worth while."