A Hoosier Chronicle Part 21

Thatcher did not heed this mild rebuke; nor did he resort to propitiatory speech. His cool way of ignoring Dan's reproach added to the young man's annoyance; Dan felt that it was in poor taste and ungenerous for a man of Thatcher's years and position to come into Ba.s.sett's private office to discuss him with a subordinate. He had already learned enough of the relations of the two men to realize that perfect amity was essential between them; he was shocked by the indifference with which Thatcher spoke of Ba.s.sett, of whom people did not usually speak carelessly in this free fas.h.i.+on. Harwood's own sense of loyalty was in arms; yet Thatcher seemed unmindful that anything disagreeable had occurred. He threw away his cigar and drew out a fresh one which he wobbled about in his mouth unlighted. He kept swinging round in his chair to gaze at the map above Ba.s.sett's desk. The tinted outlines of the map--green, pink, and orange--could not have had for him any novelty; similar maps hung in many offices and Thatcher was moreover a native of the state and long familiar with its configuration. Perhaps, Dan reflected, its juxtaposition to Ba.s.sett's desk was what irritated his visitor, though it had never occurred to him that this had any significance. He recalled now, however, that when he had arranged the rooms the map had been hung in the outer office, but that Ba.s.sett himself had removed it to his private room--the only change he had made in Dan's arrangements. It was conceivable that Thatcher saw in the position of the map an adumbration of Ba.s.sett's higher political ambition, and that this had affected the capitalist unpleasantly.

Thatcher's manner was that of a man so secure in his own position that he could afford to trample others under foot if he liked. It was--not to put too fine a point upon it--the manner of a bully. His reputation for independence was well established; he was rich enough to say what he pleased without regard to the consequences, and he undoubtedly enjoyed his sense of power.

"I suppose I'm the only man in Indiana that ain't afraid of Mort Ba.s.sett," he announced casually. "It's because Mort knows I ain't afraid of him that we get on so well together. You've been with him long enough by this time to know that we have some interests together."

Dan, with his fingers interlocked behind his head, nodded carelessly. He had grown increasingly resentful of Thatcher's tone and manner, and was anxious to be rid of him.

"Mort's a good deal closer-mouthed than I am. Mort likes to hide his tracks--better than that, by George, Mort doesn't _make_ any tracks!

Well, every man is bound to break a twig now and then as he goes along.

By George, I tear down the trees like an elephant so they can't miss me!"

As Dan made no reply to this Thatcher recurred in a moment to Allen and Harwood's annoyance pa.s.sed. It was obvious that the capitalist had sought this interview to talk of the boy, to make sure that Harwood was sincerely interested in him. Thatcher's manner of speaking of his son was kind and affectionate. The introduction of Ba.s.sett into the discussion had been purely incidental, but it was not less interesting because of its unpremeditated interjection. There was possibly some jealousy here that would manifest itself later; but that was not Dan's affair. Ba.s.sett was beyond doubt able to take care of himself in emergencies; Dan's admiration for his patron was strongly intrenched in this belief. The bulkier Thatcher, with the marks of self-indulgence upon him, and with his bright waistcoat and flashy necktie transcending the bounds of good taste, struck him as a weaker character. If Thatcher meditated a break with Ba.s.sett, the st.u.r.dier qualities, the even, hard strokes that Ba.s.sett had a reputation for delivering, would count heavily against him.

"I'm glad you get on so well with the boy," Thatcher was saying. "I don't mind telling you that his upbringing has been a little unfortunate--too much d.a.m.ned Europe. He's terribly sore because he didn't go to college instead of being tutored all over Europe. It's funny he's got all these romantic ideas about America; he's sore at me because he wasn't born poor and didn't have to chop rails to earn his way through college and all that. The rest of my family like the money all right; they're only sore because I didn't make it raising tulips.

But that boy's all right. And see here--" Thatcher seemed for a moment embarra.s.sed by what was in his mind. He fidgeted in his chair and eyed Harwood sharply. "See here, Harwood, if you find after awhile that you don't get on with Ba.s.sett, or you want to change, why, I want you to give me a chance at you. I'd like to put my boy with you, somehow. I'll die some day and I want to be sure somebody'll look after him. By G.o.d, he's all I got!"

He swung round, but his eyes were upon the floor; he drew out a handkerchief and blew his nose noisily.

"By George," he exclaimed, "I promised Allen to take you up to Sally Owen's. You know Mrs. Owen? That's right; Allen said she's been asking about you. She likes young folks; she'll never be old herself. Allen and I are going there for supper, and he's asked her if he might bring you along. Aunt Sally's a great woman. And"--he grinned ruefully--"a good trader. She has beat me on many a horse trade, that woman; and I always go back to try it again. You kind o' like having her do you. And I guess I'm the original easy mark when it comes to horse. Get your hat and come along. Allen's fixed this all up with her. I guess you and she are the best friends the boy's got."

CHAPTER XII

BLURRED WINDOWS

With Sylvia's life in college we have little to do, but a few notes we must make now that she has reached her soph.o.m.ore year. She had never known girls until she went to college and she had been the shyest of freshmen, the least obtrusive of soph.o.m.ores.

She had carried her work from the start with remarkable ease and as the dragons of failure were no longer a menace she began to give more heed to the world about her. She was early recognized as an earnest, conscientious student whose work in certain directions was brilliant; and as a soph.o.m.ore her fellows began to know her and take pride in her.

She was relieved to find herself swept naturally into the social currents of the college. She had been afraid of appearing stiff or priggish, but her self-consciousness quickly vanished in the broad, wholesome democracy of college life. The best scholar in her cla.s.s, she was never called a grind and she was far from being a frump. The wisest woman in the faculty said of Sylvia: "That girl with her head among the stars has her feet planted on solid ground. Her life will count." And the girlhood that Sylvia had partly lost, was recovered and prolonged.

It was a fine thing to be an American college girl, Sylvia realized, and the varied intercourse, the day's hundred and one contacts and small excitements, meant more to her than her fellow students knew. When there was fun in the air Sylvia could be relied upon to take a hand in it. Her allowance was not meagre and she joined zestfully in such excursions as were possible, to concerts, lectures, and the theatre. She had that reverence for New England traditions that is found in all young Westerners. It was one of her jokes that she took two Boston girls on their first pilgrimage to Concord, a joke that greatly tickled John Ware, brooding in his library in Delaware Street.

A few pa.s.sages from her letters home are illuminative of these college years. Here are some snap-shots of her fellow students:--

"I never knew before that there were so many kinds of people in the world--girls, I mean. All parts of the country are represented, and I suppose I shall always judge different cities and states by the girls they send here. There is a California freshman who is quite tall, like the redwood trees, I suppose. And there is a little girl in my cla.s.s--she seems little--from Omaha who lives on a hilltop out there where she can see the Missouri River--and when her father first settled there, Indians were still about. She is the nicest and gentlest girl I know, and yet she brings before me all those pioneer times and makes me think how fast the country has grown.

And there is a Virginia girl in my corridor who has the most wonderful way of talking, and there's history in that, too,--the history of all the great war and the things you fought for; but I was almost sorry to have to let her know that you fought on the other side, but I _did_ tell her. I never realized, just from books and maps, that the United States is so big. The girls bring their local backgrounds with them--the different aims and traits... . I have drawn a map of the country and named all the different states and cities for the girls who come from them, but this is just for my own fun, of course... . I never imagined one would have preferences and like and dislike people by a kind of instinct, without really knowing them, but I'm afraid I do it, and that all the rest of us do the same... . Nothing in the world is as interesting as people--just dear, good folksy people!"

The correspondence her dormitory neighbors carried on with parents and brothers and sisters and friends impressed her by its abundance; and she is to be pardoned if she weighed the letters, whose home news was quoted constantly in her hearing, against her own slight receipts at the college post-office. She knew that every Tuesday morning there would be a letter from her grandfather. Her old friend Dr. Wandless sent occasionally, in his kindly humorous fas.h.i.+on, the news of Buckeye Lane and the college; and Mrs. Owen wrote a hurried line now and then, usually to quote one of John Ware's sayings. The minister asked about Sylvia, it seemed. These things helped, but they did not supply the sympathy, of which she was conscious in countless ways, between her fellow students and their near of kin. With the approach of holiday times, the talk among her companions of the homes that awaited them, or, in the case of many, of other homes where they were to visit, deepened her newly awakened sense of isolation. Fathers and mothers appeared constantly to visit their daughters, and questions that had never troubled her heart before arose to vex her. Why was it, when these other girls, flung together from all parts of the country, were so blest with kindred, that she had literally but one kinsman, the grandfather on whom all her love centred?

It should not be thought, however, that she yielded herself morbidly to these reflections, but such little things as the receipt of gifts, the daily references to home affairs, the photographs set out in the girls'

rooms, were not without their stab. She wrote to Professor Kelton:--

"I wish you would send me your picture of mother. I often wondered why you didn't give it to me; won't you lend it to me now? I think it is put away in your desk in the library. Almost all the girls have pictures of their families--some of them of their houses and even the horse and dog--in their rooms. And you must have a new picture taken of yourself--I'd like it in your doctor's gown, that they gave you at Williams. It's put away in the cedar chest in the attic--Mary will know where. And if you have a picture of father anywhere I should like to have that too."

She did not know that when this reached him--one of the series of letters on which the old gentleman lived these days, with its Wellesley postmark, and addressed in Sylvia's clear, running hand, he bowed his white head and wept; for he knew what was in the girl's heart--knew and dreaded this roused yearning, and suffered as he realized the arid wastes of his own ignorance. But he sent her the picture of her mother for which she asked, and had the cottage photographed with Mills Hall showing faintly beyond the hedge; and he meekly smuggled his doctor's gown to the city and sat for his photograph. These things Sylvia proudly spread upon the walls of her room. He wrote to her--a letter that cost him a day's labor:--

"We don't seem to have any photograph of your father; but things have a way of getting lost, particularly in the hands of an old fellow like me. However, I have had myself taken as you wished, and you can see now what a solemn person your grandfather is in his _toga academica_. I had forgotten I had that silk overcoat and I am not sure now that I didn't put the hood on wrong-side-out! I'm a sailor, you know, and these fancy things stump me. The photographer didn't seem to understand that sort of millinery. Please keep it dark; your teachers might resent the sudden appearance in the halls of Wellesley of a grim old professor _emeritus_ not known to your faculty."

The following has its significance in Sylvia's history and we must give it place--this also to her grandfather:--

"The most interesting lecture I ever heard (except yours!) was given at the college yesterday by Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, the settlement worker and writer on social reforms. She's such a simple, modest little woman that everybody loved her at once. She made many things clear to me that I had only groped for before. She used an expression that was new to me, 'reciprocal obligations,'

which we all have in this world, though I never quite thought of it before. She's a college woman herself, and feels that all of us who have better advantages than other people should help those who aren't taught to climb. It seems the most practical idea in the world, that we should gather up the loose, rough fringes of society and weave the broken threads into a common warp and woof. The social fabric is no stronger than its weakest thread... . To help and to save for the sheer love of helping and saving is the n.o.blest thing any of us can do--I feel that. This must be an old story to you; I'm ashamed that I never saw it all for myself. It's as though I had been looking at the world through a blurred window, from a comfortable warm room, when some one came along and brushed the pane clear, so that I could see the suffering and hards.h.i.+p outside, and feel my own duty to go out and help."

Professor Kelton, spending a day in the city, showed this to Mrs. Owen when she asked for news of Sylvia. Mrs. Owen kept the letter that John Ware might see it. Ware said: "Deep nature; I knew that night she told me about the stars that she would understand everything. You will hear of her. Wish she would come here to live. We need women like that."

Professor Kelton met Sylvia in New York on her way home for the holidays in her freshman year and they spent their Christmas together in the cottage. She was bidden to several social gatherings in Buckeye Lane; and to a dance in town. She was now Miss Garrison, a student at Wellesley, and the good men and women at Madison paid tribute to her new dignity. Something Sylvia was knowing of that sweet daffodil time in the heart of a girl before the hovering swallows dare to fly.

In the midyear recess of her soph.o.m.ore year she visited one of her new friends in Boston in a charming home of cultivated people. The following Easter vacation her grandfather joined her for a flight to New York and Was.h.i.+ngton, and this was one of the happiest of experiences. During the remainder of her college life she was often asked to the houses of her girl friends in and about Boston; her diffidence pa.s.sed; she found that she had ideas and the means of expressing them. The long summers were spent at the cottage in the Lane; she saw Mrs. Owen now and then with deepening attachment, and her friend never forgot to send her a Christmas gift--once a silver purse and a twenty-dollar gold piece; again, a watch--always something carefully chosen and practical.

Sylvia arranged to return to college with two St. Louis girls after her senior Christmas, to save her grandfather the long journey, for he had stipulated that she should never travel alone. By a happy chance Dan Harwood, on his way to Boston to deliver an issue of telephone bonds in one of Ba.s.sett's companies, was a pa.s.senger on the same train, and he promptly recalled himself to Sylvia, who proudly presented him as a Yale man to her companions. A special car filled with young collegians from Cincinnati and the South was later attached to the train, and Dan, finding several Yalensians in the company, including the year's football hero, made them all acquainted with Sylvia and her friends. It was not till the next day that Dan found an opportunity for personal talk with Sylvia, but he had already been making comparisons. Sylvia was as well "put up" as any of the girls, and he began to note her quick changes of expression, the tones of her voice, the grace of her slim, strong hands.

He wanted to impress himself upon her; he wanted her to like him.

"News? I don't know that I can give you any news. You probably know that Mrs. Owen went to Fraserville for Christmas with the Ba.s.setts? Let me see, you do know the Ba.s.setts, don't you?"

"Yes. I was at Waupegan three summers ago at Mrs. Owen's, and Mrs.

Ba.s.sett and all of them were very good to me."

"You probably don't know that I'm employed by Mr. Ba.s.sett. He has an office in Indianapolis where I'm trying to be a lawyer and I do small jobs for him. I'm doing an errand for him now. It will be the first time I've been east of the mountains since I left college, and I'm going to stop at New Haven on my way home to see how they're getting on without me. By the way, you probably know that Marian is going to college?"

"No; I didn't know it," exclaimed Sylvia. "But I knew her mother was interested and I gave her a Wellesley catalogue. That was a long time ago!"

"That was when you were visiting Mrs. Owen at Waupegan? I see, said the blind man!"

"What do you see?" asked Sylvia.

"I see Mrs. Ba.s.sett and Marian, niece and grandniece respectively, of Aunt Sally Owen; and as I gaze, a stranger bound for college suddenly appears on Mrs. Owen's veranda, in cap and gown. Tableau!"

"I don't see the picture," Sylvia replied, though she laughed in spite of herself.

"I not only see," Dan continued, "but I hear the jingle of red, red gold, off stage."

This was going a trifle too far. Sylvia shook her head and frowned.

"That isn't fair, Mr. Harwood, if I guess what you mean. There's no reason why Marian shouldn't go to college. My going has nothing to do with it. You have misunderstood the whole matter."

"Pardon me," said Dan quickly. "I mean no unkindness to any of them.

They are all very good to me. It's too bad, though, that Marian's preparation for college hadn't been in mind until so recently. It would save her a lot of hard digging now. I see a good deal of the family; and I'm even aware of Marian's doings at Miss Waring's school. Master Blackford beguiles me into taking him to football games, and I often go with all of them to the theatre when they're in town. Mr. Ba.s.sett is very busy, and he doesn't often indulge himself in pleasures. He's the kind of man whose great joy is in work--and he has many things to look after."

"You are a kind of private secretary to the whole family, then; but you work at the law at the same time?"

Harwood's face clouded for a moment; she noticed it and was sorry she had spoken; but he said immediately:--

"Well, I haven't had much time for the law this winter. I have more things to do outside than I had expected. But I fear I need prodding; I'm too p.r.o.ne to wander into other fields. And I'm getting a good deal interested in politics. You know Mr. Ba.s.sett is one of the leading men in our state."

"Yes, I had learned that; I suppose he may be Senator or Governor some day. That makes it all the more important that Marian should be fitted for high station."