The Plastic Age Part 6

For a moment after reading Morse's letter Hugh was genuinely sorry, but almost immediately he felt irritated and hurt.

He handed the letter to Carl, who entered just as he finished reading it, and exploded: "The simp! And after I wasted so much time on him."

Carl read the letter. "I told you so." He smiled impishly. "You were the wise boy; you _knew_ that he would get over it."

Hugh should really have felt grateful to Morse. It was only a feeling of responsibility for him that had made Hugh prepare his own lessons. Day after day he had studied with Morse in order to cheer him up; and that was all the studying he had done. Latin and history had little opportunity to claim his interest in compet.i.tion with the excitement around him.

Crossing the campus for the first few weeks of college was an adventure for every freshman. He did not know when he would be seized by a howling group of soph.o.m.ores and forced to make an a.s.s of himself for their amus.e.m.e.nt. Sometimes he was required to do "esthetic dancing," sometimes to sing, or, what was more common, to make a speech. And no matter how hard he tried, the soph.o.m.ores were never pleased. If he danced, they laughed at him, guyed him unmercifully, called attention to his legs, his awkwardness, urged him to go faster, insisted that he get some "pash" into it. If he sang, and the frightened freshman usually sang off key, they interrupted him after a few notes, told him to sing something else, interrupted that, and told him "for G.o.d's sake" to dance. The speech-making, however, provided the most fun, especially if the freshman was cleverer than his captors. Then there was a battle of wits, and if the freshman too successfully defeated his opponents, he was dropped into a watering-trough that had stood on the campus for more than a century. Of justice there was none, but of sport there was a great plenty. The worst scared of the freshmen really enjoyed the experience. By a strange sort of inverted logic, he felt that he was something of a hero; at least, for a brief time he had occupied the public eye. He had been initiated; he was a Sanford man.

One freshman, however, found those two weeks harrowing. That was Merton Billings, the fat man of the cla.s.s. Day after day he was captured by the soph.o.m.ores and commanded to dance. He was an earnest youth and entirely without a sense of humor. Dancing to him was not only hard work but downright wicked. He was a member of the Epworth League, and he took his members.h.i.+p seriously. Even David, he remembered, had "got in wrong"

because he danced; and he had no desire to emulate David. Within two days the soph.o.m.ores discovered his religious ardor, his horror of drinking, smoking, and dancing. So they made him dance while they howled with glee at his bobbing stomach; his short, staggering legs; his red jowls, jigging and jouncing; his pale blue eyes, protruding excitedly from their sockets; his lips pressed tight together, periodically popping open for breath. He was very funny, very angry, and very much ashamed. Every night he prayed that he might be forgiven his sin. A month later when the intensity of his hatred had subsided somewhat, he remembered to his horror that he had not prayed that his tormentors be forgiven their even greater sin. He rectified the error without delay, not neglecting to ask that the error be forgiven, too.

Hugh was forced to sing, to dance, and to make a speech, but he escaped the watering-trough. He thought the fellows were darned nice to let him off, and they thought that he was too darned nice to be ducked. Although Hugh didn't suspect it, he was winning immediate popularity. His shy, friendly smile, his natural modesty, and his boyish enthusiasm were making a host of friends for him. He liked the "initiations" on the campus, but he did not like some of them in the dormitories. He didn't mind being pulled out of bed and shoved under a cold shower. He took a cold shower every morning, and if the soph.o.m.ores wanted to give him another one at night--all right, he was willing. He had to confess that "Eliza Crossing the Ice" had been enormous fun. The freshmen were commanded to appear in the common room in their oldest clothes. Then all of them, the smallest lad excepted, got down on their hands and knees, forming a circle. The smallest lad, "Eliza," was given a big bucket full of water. He jumped upon the back of the man nearest to him and ran wildly around the circle, leaping from back to back, the bucket swinging crazily, the water splas.h.i.+ng in every direction and over everybody.

Hugh liked such "stunts," and he liked putting on a show with three other freshmen for the amus.e.m.e.nt of their peers, but he did object to the vulgarity and cruelty of much that was done.

The first order the soph.o.m.ores often gave was, "Strip, freshman." Just why the freshmen had to be naked before they performed, Hugh did not know, but there was something phallic about the proceedings that disgusted him. Like every athlete, he thought nothing of nudity, but he soon discovered that some of the freshmen were intensely conscious of it. True, a few months in the gymnasium cured them of that consciousness, but at first many of them were eternally wrapping towels about themselves in the gymnasium, and they took a shower as if it were an act of public shame. The soph.o.m.ores recognized the timidity that some of the freshmen had in revealing their bodies, and they made full capital of it. The shyer the freshman, the more pointed their remarks, the more ingeniously nasty their tricks.

"I don't mind the razzing myself," Hugh told Carl after one particularly strenuous evening, "but I don't like the things they said to poor little Wilkins. And when they stripped 'em and made Wilkins read that dirty story to Culver, I wanted to fight"

"It was kinda rotten," Carl agreed, "but it was funny."

"It wasn't funny at all," Hugh said angrily.

Carl looked at him in surprise. It was the first time that he had seen him aroused.

"It wasn't funny at all," Hugh repeated; "it was just filthy. I'd 'a'

just about died if I'd 'a' been in Wilkins's place. The poor kid!

They're too d.a.m.n dirty, these soph.o.m.ores. I didn't think that college men could be so dirty. Why, not even the b.u.ms at home would think of such things. And I'm telling you right now that there are three of those guys that I'm layin' for. Just wait till the cla.s.s rush. I'm going to get Adams, and then I'm going to get Cooper--yes, I'm going to get him even if he is bigger'n me--and I'm going to get Dodge. I didn't say anything when they made me wash my face in the toilet bowl, but, by G.o.d!

I'm going to get 'em for it."

Three weeks later he made good this threat. He was a clever boxer, and he succeeded in separating each of the malefactors from the fighting mob. He would have been completely nonplussed if he could have heard Adams and Dodge talking in their room after the rush.

"Who gave you the black eye?" Adams asked Dodge.

"That freshman Carver," he replied, touching the eye gingerly. "Who gave you that welt on the chin?"

"Carver! And, say, he beat Hi Cooper to a pulp. He's a mess."

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

"Lord," said Dodge, "I'm going to pick my freshmen next time. Who'd take a kid with a smile like his to be a sc.r.a.pper? He's got the nicest smile in college. Why, he looks meek as a lamb."

"You never can tell," remarked Adams, rubbing his chin ruefully.

Dodge was examining his eye in the mirror. "No, you never can tell....

d.a.m.n it, I'm going to have to get a beefsteak or something for this lamp of mine."

"Say, he ought to be a good man for the fraternity," Adams said suddenly.

"Who?" Dodge's eye was absorbing his entire attention.

"Carver, of course. He ought to make a d.a.m.n good man."

"Yeah--you bet. We've got to rush him sure."

CHAPTER VIII

The dormitory initiations had more than angered Hugh; they had completely upset his mental equilibrium: his every ideal of college swayed and wabbled. He wasn't a prig, but he had come to Sanford with very definite ideas about the place, and those ideas were already groggy from the unmerciful pounding they were receiving.

His father was responsible for his illusions, if one may call them illusions. Mr. Carver was a shy, sensitive man well along in his fifties, with a wife twelve years his junior. He pretended to cultivate his small farm in Merrytown, but as a matter of fact he lived off of a comfortable income left him by his very capable father. He spent most of his time reading the eighteenth-century essayists, John Donne's poetry, the "Atlantic Monthly," the "Boston Transcript," and playing Mozart on his violin. He did not understand his wife and was thoroughly afraid of his son; Hugh had an animal vigor that at times almost terrified him.

At his wife's insistence he had a talk with Hugh the night before the boy left for college. Hugh had wanted to run when he met his father in the library after dinner for that talk. He loved the gentle, gray-haired man with the fine, delicate features and soft voice. He had often wished that he knew his father. Mr. Carver was equally eager to know Hugh, but he had no idea of how to go about getting acquainted with his son.

They sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, and Mr. Carver gazed thoughtfully at the boy. Why hadn't Betty had this talk with Hugh? She knew him so much better than he did; they were more like brother and sister than mother and son. Why, Hugh called her Betty half the time, and she seemed to understand him perfectly.

Hugh waited silently. Mr. Carver ran a thin hand through his hair and then sharply desisted; he mustn't let the boy know that he was nervous.

Then he settled his horn-rimmed pince-nez more firmly on his nose and felt in his waistcoat for a cigar. Why didn't Hugh say something? He snipped the end of the cigar with a silver knife. Slowly he lighted the cigar, inhaled once or twice, coughed mildly, and finally found his voice.

"Well, Hugh," he said in his gentle way.

"Well, Dad." Hugh grinned sheepishly. Then they both started; Hugh had never called his father Dad before. He thought of him that way always, but he could never bring himself to dare anything but the more formal Father. In his embarra.s.sment he had forgotten himself.

"I--I--I'm sorry, sir," he stuttered, flus.h.i.+ng painfully.

Mr. Carver laughed to hide his own embarra.s.sment. "That's all right, Hugh." His smile was very kindly. "Let it be Dad. I think I like it better."

"That's fine!" Hugh exclaimed.

The tension was broken, and Mr. Carver began to give the dreaded talk.

"I hardly know what to say to you, Hugh," he began, "on the eve of your going away to college. There is so much that you ought to know, and I have no idea of how much you know already."

Hugh thought of all the s.m.u.tty stories he had heard--and told.

Instinctively he knew that his father referred to what a local doctor called "the facts of life."

He hung his head and said gruffly, "I guess I know a good deal--Dad."

"That's splendid!" Mr. Carver felt the full weight of a father's responsibilities lifted from his shoulders. "I believe Dr. Hanson gave you a talk at school about--er, s.e.x, didn't he?"

"Yes, sir." Hugh was picking out the design in the rug with the toe of his shoe and at the same time unconsciously pinching his leg. He pinched so hard that he afterward found a black and blue spot, but he never knew how it got there.

"Excellent thing, excellent thing, these talks by medical men." He was beginning to feel at ease. "Excellent thing. I am glad that you are so well informed; you are old enough."