Kitabı oku: «The Diary of a Freshman», sayfa 11

XI

I don't think I 've had a pen in my hand, except when I wrote a note to Berri, for more than two weeks. In the first place I left in such a hurry to meet the family in New York that, among the various things I forgot to pack at the last minute, my diary was one. (Even if I had taken it, I probably shouldn't have found time to record all we did.) Then, as I was with mamma and papa and Mildred during the entire vacation, there was no necessity for writing letters.

I did n't go to Washington with Berri for two reasons. The family naturally wanted me to spend the holidays with them, and I could n't help feeling that, if I refused Berri's kind invitation, he would be much more likely to stay, part of the time at least, in Cambridge and write his thesis. In a way I was right; for when I told him I simply could n't go with him, he said sort of listlessly, —

"Well, then I suppose I ought to stay here and finish that thing, oughtn't I?" which was an optimistic way of letting me know that it had n't even been begun. I did n't know what to answer exactly, because if I 'd agreed with him he would have thought me unsympathetic and looked hurt, and if I had advised him to let the whole matter slide, and forget about it, and have a good time (which was, of course, what he wanted me to do), I felt sure that he would eventually blame me for giving him bad advice. That's Berri all over. So I merely remarked, "You 'll have to be the judge; it 's too serious a matter for any one else to meddle with," and felt like a nasty little prig as I said it. He was restless and gloomy after that, and took a long walk all alone, during which I 'm convinced that he very nearly made up his mind to stay in Cambridge and slave. I say very nearly, because he didn't bring himself quite to the point of telling anybody about it. But the next afternoon (college closed with the last lecture of that day), when I turned into our street on the way to my room, there was a cab with a steamer trunk on it standing in front of our house; and as I opened the front door, Berri and a dress-suit case clattered down the stairs. He stopped just long enough to shake hands and exclaim, "Good-by, Granny – have a good time – I left a note for you on your desk. The train goes in less than an hour." Then he rushed out of the gate and jumped into the cab, slamming the door after him with that sharp, thrilling "Now they're off" clack that cabs, and cabs only, possess. That was the last I saw of him.

New York was a pleasing delirium of theatres and operas and automobile rides up and down Fifth Avenue, with just enough rows between Mildred and me, and papa and me and Mildred and mamma (the other possible combinations never scrap), to make us realize that the family tie was the same dear old family tie and had n't been in any way severed by my long absence. It took us three days to persuade mamma to ride in an automobile, – a triumph that we all lived bitterly to repent; for she ever afterwards refused to be transported from place to place by any other means, – which was not only inconvenient, but ruinous. She justified her extravagance by declaring that in an emergency she preferred to be the smasher to the smashed. I met lots of fellows I knew on the street, and some of them took me home with them to luncheon or to that curious five-o'clock-sit-around-and-don't-know-what-to-do-with-the-cup meal they call "tea." Meeting their families was very nice, and I felt as if I knew the fellows ever so much better than I did in Cambridge.

One incident might have ended in a tragedy if I hadn't happened to preserve a certain letter of mamma's. ("Never write anything and never burn anything – isn't it Talleyrand who tells us that?" as the friend of Berri's aunt would say.) It was the real reason of our spending the last two days of the vacation in Boston, and came about in the following way.

One day at luncheon (we were going to a matinée afterwards) I glanced at my watch to see how late we were, and mamma noticed, for the first time, that I was carrying a cheap nickel-plated alarm-clock sort of an affair instead of the gold-faced heirloom that has been reposing for lo! these many weeks in Mr. Hirsch's pawn-shop. Since our meeting she hadn't referred to this painful subject, and as I had become used to the dollar watch on the end of my chain, it never occurred to me to say anything about it. That day she looked at the watch and then at me, and finally she murmured, "Why, Tommy!" with the expression of one who seems to see the foundations of Truth, Respectability, and Honor crumbling to dust; and she finished her luncheon in silence, breathing in a resigned kind of way and studying the table-cloth with eyes like smitten forget-me nots. On the way upstairs I lagged behind, and Mildred said to me, —

"Mamma has on her early-Christian-martyr look. What on earth's the matter now?" But I was unable to enlighten her. Mamma had known from the first that the watch had been pawned; I could n't imagine why she was so upset.

All was explained, however, when I went to her room. Some time ago she had sent me a draft for thirty dollars. It came in a cheerful letter (no letter containing a draft for thirty dollars is sad) about nothing in particular. I remembered that at the time the postscript had puzzled me, for it said, "Of course I have told your father nothing about this," and there was no clew in the body of the letter to what "this" referred. The draft wasn't mentioned. It seems that mamma was under the impression she had written me several pages on the evils of extravagance, the horrors of debt, and the general desirability of redeeming one's watch as soon as possible, – which she hadn't at all. Not being a mind-reader, I assumed that her draft was a spontaneous outburst of maternal esteem, had it cashed with a loving grateful heart, and spent the money in three days. Therefore, when she caught sight of my tin timepiece (it keeps much better time, by the way, than the heirloom ever did), she had distressing visions of me indulging in a perfect carnival of embezzlement, and finally ending up with shorn locks, striped clothes, and a chain on my leg.

I never realized before that the human brain is perfectly capable, under certain circumstances, of harboring two distinct beliefs at the same time, – the truth of either one of which necessarily excludes the other. (There is probably a more technical way of stating this, but I haven't got that far in my philosophy course as yet.) Now, when I solemnly declared to mamma that she had never mentioned her check in connection with my watch or anything else in fact, I am sure she believed me. She said she believed me, and seemed greatly relieved. But, on the other hand, although she knew I was telling the truth, and rejoiced in the fact, I am certain that she was unable at the same time to abandon her equally strong conviction that she had written and sent precisely the letter she had intended to. I don't pretend to explain this mental phenomenon, and I discreetly refrained from discussing it with mamma, for in the midst of our talk I began to have a dim, delicious suspicion that her letter was at that moment reposing in my inside pocket. (When I am away from home, I always carry several plainly addressed letters in order that there may be as little trouble as possible in case anything should happen to me. I remembered having put the letter with the postscript into my coat-pocket instead of my desk, as I wished to refer to it when I next wrote home.) So, when mamma finally said, "Well, I believe you," and then added with an air of abstraction, "But I wish you had saved that letter," I thrust my hand into my pocket, glanced at several envelopes, and exclaimed dramatically as I showed her one of them, —

"Madam, your most idle whim is my inexorable law." Then we all went to the matinée.

But that wasn't the end of the watch. Mamma made me give her the pawn-ticket, and insisted on going home by way of Boston for the purpose of redeeming it herself. The reason of this change in the family plans was not explained to Mildred and papa; but they were docile, and seemed to think it would be very nice to see my rooms before leaving for home.

There was no opportunity to visit Mr. Hirsch when we arrived yesterday, as we spent most of the day in exploring Cambridge. But this morning (they all left for the West this afternoon), while Mildred was packing and papa had gone to see about tickets, mamma, with her head swathed in a thick black veil, and I slipped out to go to the pawnbroker's. I have an idea that by going herself instead of simply sending me mamma had a vague but noble belief that she was rescuing me somehow from moral shipwreck. And then, no doubt, the mere fact of one's venturing out incognito, as it were, to wrest ancestral relics from usurious fingers is not without a certain charm.

Well, of course we met papa at the door of the hotel. The ticket-office was just around the corner, and he had engaged berths and tickets with a rapidity that was as unfortunate as it was incredible, for he greeted us with, "Starting for a walk? I'm just in time," and proceeded to join the expedition with evident pleasure. Mamma lingered uneasily on the sidewalk a moment, and then said, —

"We 're not going for amusement, dear; we 're going to shop. You know how that always tires you." But papa, who was in good spirits at the prospect of leaving for home, quite unsuspiciously ignored the suggestion and replied cheerily, —

"Well, I think I 'll go along, I might want to buy something myself."

I exclaimed, "How jolly!" in a sepulchral tone, and we started.

Now, mamma in the role of a gay deceiver is sublime. The fact that she is trying to play a part and perhaps setting "an awful example" makes her miserable, although she sometimes succeeds in concealing the fact until afterwards. I saw that we were in for a delightful morning, and would probably end by missing the train. We loitered unscrupulously in front of shop windows, apparently entranced by everything from hardware to cigars. We sauntered in and out of countless dry-goods places in quest of dark-blue ribbon of such an unusual shade that Boston had never seen its like; we paused for half an hour, now and then, to inquire the price of diamond tiaras and alabaster clocks set with rhinestones; we bought a bouquet of frost-bitten roses (I had to carry it) from a one-armed man, and tarried to hear his reminiscences of life in a sawmill; we went to pianola recitals, phonograph exhibits, and assisted at an auction sale of bar-room furniture. And papa wearied not. Mamma and I were nearly dead, but he not only wasn't bored, – he seemed to be having the time of his life. We could n't devise anything too silly and futile and tiresome for him to enjoy, and as the time before the train left was beginning to grow ominously short, mamma at last resorted to heroic measures.

I don't think she had formed any definite plan when she abruptly led us into the subway; but our going there was probably not unconnected in her imagination with the boundless opportunities for losing oneself in the sewers of Paris and the catacombs of Rome. The subway may or may not resemble these historic places, – I'm sure I don't know, – but, at any rate, after we had been there five or six minutes we lost papa.

We all three had stood aimlessly watching the cars whizz up to the platform and away again into the subterranean dusk, until papa (this was his first sign of impatience) mildly remarked, "I think, dear, that as you and Tommy seem to be rather attached to this place, I 'll buy a newspaper." Then he strolled off, and mamma clutched me. We watched him approach the news-stand and pick up a magazine. His back was partly turned.

"It 's our only chance," said mamma hoarsely, with a half-guilty, half-affectionate glance towards the news-stand. I understood and, seizing her hand, ran with her to the nearest car. An instant later we were buzzing through the bowels of the earth in quite the opposite direction from the pawn-shop.

To tell the truth, the only thing I knew about the locality of Mr. Hirsch's establishment was that we should never reach it unless we got out and took a car going the other way. This we did, and when I thought we had gone far enough on the return trip and we emerged once more into the daylight, we seemed to be miles from the place – the only place – from which I could have found my way. So we jumped into a cab and told the man to drive as quickly as he could to that place. (I had to describe it at some length, as I don't as yet know the names of many streets here.) He was very intelligent, however, and it was n't his fault that, after we had jolted along for four or five blocks, the horse fell down. We left him lifting one of the poor thing's nervous hind legs in and out of the tangled harness. He looked as if he were trying to solve some kind of a gigantic, hopeless puzzle. We hurried on for about a quarter of a mile, and then I suddenly discovered that we had been in the right street all the time. It was one of those queer streets that never look familiar when you 're going the other way. I confess it took a great deal of courage to impart this discovery to mamma; but she appreciated the fact that we had very little time to lose, and did n't stop to point out to me that if I ever become a business man, I 'll be a failure. The horse was on his feet again when we got back to the cab, so we jumped in once more, and after an interminable drive (half of me was out of the window most of the time, like a Punch-and-Judy doll, directing the cabman) we finally drew up in front of the pawn-shop. It was then that we really distinguished ourselves.

"I've come for my watch," I said to Mr. Hirsch. He gave me the look of a bird of prey. It reminded me of an eagle I had seen once, – an eagle that had been stuffed by an amateur. He held out his hand and spoke a solitary, fateful word. Mamma's face – in the excitement of the moment she had pushed up her veil – became dim with horror; her features for an instant were positively incoherent.

"The ticket?" she whispered gropingly. "It's in the bottom of my trunk."

Mildred and papa and a group of porters, peering up and down the street like a concourse of Sister Annes, were on the curbstone in front of the hotel when we got back. The baggage was piled on a wagon, papa looked haggard and years older than when I had last seen him, and Mildred gave us a haughty stare as we alighted. Mamma was hustled wildly from the cab to the carriage, and I had time merely to peck hastily at their tense faces and gasp good-by. As the carriage swung around the corner, mamma appeared for a moment at the window, exclaiming, "I 'll send it to you in my first letter," and then sank from view. This afternoon, when I returned to my peaceful little abode in Cambridge, who should be in his room but Berri? He was at his desk, bending earnestly over a big pad of thesis paper.

"You've finished it, after all," I said, for the floor near his chair was littered with neat manuscript.

"Yes, it's finished, – fifty beastly pages of it," Berri answered, as he jumped up to meet me. I wanted to ask him all about it, – how he had managed to do it during the gayeties of Washington, and if it had taken much time. But he said rather wearily, —

"Oh, don't let's talk about it; I 'm so sick of it," and began at once to question me about my trip to New York. We chatted for about half an hour, and then I got up to go into my room and unpack my trunk. Thesis paper is n't like the ordinary paper on which themes are written; it has a margin on all four sides, and as I had never used any, I went over to Berri's desk to examine a sheet of his.

"Why, you 've had the thing type-written," I exclaimed; for there was a pile of type-written notes in front of the thesis paper. "Why don't you hand it in that way instead of copying it again? Your hand is so hard to read."

Berri wrinkled his forehead in a queer, annoyed kind of way; then he looked confused and blushed a little, and finally he gave an uncomfortable laugh.

"Oh, Granny, you 're so brutally guileless," he murmured. "Why can't you just see and understand things? It sounds so much worse than it really is, when you make me say it in so many words." Even then I didn't altogether grasp the situation.

"You mean that somebody helped you?" I asked. That did n't seem to me worth making such a fuss about, somehow.

"Well, that's a very refined and ladylike way of putting it," he answered. "I got a man in the Law School to write it for me, and paid him ten dollars for his trouble."

I had never thought much about this sort of thing, and it was impossible all at once to know just where I stood in the matter. I didn't know what to say, and I think I blurted out, —

"Oh, Berri, I 'm so sorry."

"Well, I 'm sorry you know about it," Berri mused drearily. "No, I 'm not, either," he added quickly, after a moment; "I 'm darned glad, – for now that you know, you can do what you like; I 'm not playing the hypocrite, anyhow. Only, don't talk to me about it. I 've thought the whole thing over from every point of view; it's the only thing I can do. I 'm willing to run the risks, and I 'm going to do it."

It was impossible to go back to other topics after that, so I went into my room and unpacked my trunk. I don't believe I ever unpacked so carefully and put everything away so neatly before. Mrs. Chester came in and complimented me as I was finishing. It must have been because I was thinking.

With all my thinking, however, I can't say that I 've got much farther than I was when Berri first told me. I simply know that he oughtn't to have done it, and am very, very sorry that he has. If he tried to defend himself in any way, I could have it out with him; but he does n't. When he finished copying the thesis, he came into my room and said, "I 'm going over to drop this through Fleetwood's door; do you want to go along?" and I went with him, hoping that at the last minute he might, in his unexpected way, change his mind. On the way over he did burst out with, —

"You see, it's this way: If I didn't know Fleetwood so well, I should n't do it; I shouldn't care. But he'll think, if I fail to hand in the written work, that I'm presuming on the fact that we 've breakfasted together at The Holly Tree and gone to the theatre and all that. I hate that kind of thing." I tried to make him see that Fleetwood would n't look at it in this way at all, and that even if he did it would be his fault, not Berri's. But Berri answered: "You need n't go on to tell me how dishonest it is, – I know all that. I 'm not worse than lots of other people, though;" and by that time we had reached Fleetwood's door. I put my hand on his arm as he was about to drop the thesis through Fleetwood's letter-slide and said, "Please don't, Berri; wait until to-morrow morning, anyhow;" but he pushed the roll through the door, and as it fell with a thud inside, he laughed and answered, —

"Too late. Now I'm going to forget about it." He went to town for dinner, and I had mine about an hour ago at Mrs. Brown's. I was the only one there. In a few minutes I have to go out again, as I promised —

Later.

Just as I had written that far, the front door opened and slammed and the tin steps clattered as they only do when Duggie is coming up. The loneliness of the house, and the feeling that college opened to-morrow, and Duggie on the stairs all took me back to my first evening in Cambridge. The only difference was that instead of going to his own room Duggie this time came bursting into mine.

"I came to say good-by," he exclaimed; and when I got over my astonishment, he went on to tell me that he had decided during the vacation to go away – to Europe – and stay until Class Day. He had never told me before that he had taken his degree in three years, and that it would n't have been necessary for him to come back this year at all if he had n't wanted to. He has been entitled to his degree for months; but of course he is anxious to graduate with his own class in the spring. He has n't talked to any one about going abroad, as he was n't sure of it until a few days ago.

"I 'm leaving on the midnight train to-night," he said, "and I came out here on the chance of your having got back. My family are all in the country, I left them this afternoon." I wanted to tell him how sorry I was that he was leaving us, and how glad I was that he could go; but somehow I don't think I showed what I really felt. The time was so short (I had promised Duncan Duncan to help him with some Advocate editorials at half past eight), and those things never seem to sound the way I should like to have them. But in a way I had an opportunity to let him know how I felt toward him, for while we were sitting there, he laughed and said, —

"As you won't stay and talk to me, I think you might at least do the next best thing. You know I 've always wanted to read this, and now that I 'm going away, you ought to let me." Then he took my diary from the mantelpiece and pretended to read the first page.

My first impulse was to ask him not to. If he had been going to stay in Cambridge, I should n't have let him, of course; but as he was leaving in a few hours and seemed anxious to read the thing, and as it really did n't make any difference whether he did or not, I finally let him.

"I don't see why you want to, and you probably won't get beyond the first few pages, but you may," I said.

So I left him by the fire with the diary in his hand. I thought perhaps I should find a note about it when I got back this evening, but I didn't.