“You, old Dink Stover!”
“Bless your heart.”
“Put it there.”
“Glad to see you again.”
“How are you?”
“You look fit as a fiddle!”
“The All-American this year!”
“Hard luck about McCarthy.”
“Ta-ta.”
His was the popular welcome, and yet it left him unsatisfied, with a strange tugging at his heart. They were all acquaintances, nothing more. He went to his room on the second floor in Lawrence, and, finding his way over the bare floor and the boxes that encumbered, reached the window and flung it open.
Below the different fences had disappeared under the joyful, hilarious groups that swarmed about them. He saw Swazey and Pike, two of the grinds of his own class, men who “didn’t count,” go past hugging each other, and their joy, comical though it was, hurt him. He turned from the window, saying aloud, sternly, as though commanding himself:
“Come, I must get this hole fixed up. It’s gloomy as the devil.”
He worked feverishly, ripping apart the covers, ranging the furniture, laying the rugs. Then he put in order his bedroom, and, whistling loudly, fished out his bedclothes, laid the bed, and arranged his bureau-top. That done, he brought forth several photographs he had taken in the brief visit he had paid the Storys, and placing them in the position of honor lit his pipe and, camping on a dry-goods box, like Scipio amid the ruins of Carthage, dreamily considered through the smoke-wreaths the distant snapshots of a slender girl in white.
He was comfortably, satisfactorily in love with Jean Story. The emotion filled a sentimental want in his nature. He had never asked her for her photograph or to correspond, as he would have lightly asked a hundred other girls. He knew instinctively that she would have refused. He liked that in her—her dignity and her reserve. He wanted her regard, as he always wanted what others found difficult to attain. She was young and yet with an old head on her shoulders. In the two weeks he had spent in camp, they had discussed much together of what lay ahead beyond the confines of college life. He did not always understand her point of view. He often wondered what was the doubt that lay in her mind about him. For, though she had given him a measure of her friendship, there was always a reserve, something held back. It was the same with Bob. It puzzled him; it irritated him. He was resolved to beat down that barrier, to shatter it some way and somehow, as he was resolved that Jim Hunter, whose intentions were clear, should never beat him out in this race.
He rose, pipe in mouth, and, taking up a photograph, stared at the laughing face and the quiet, proud tilt of the head.
“At any rate,” he said to himself, “Jim Hunter hasn’t got any more than this, and he never will.”
He went back to the study, delving into the packing-boxes. From below came a stentorian halloo he knew well:
“Oh, Dink Stover, stick out your head!”
“Come up, you, Tom Regan, come up on the jump!”
In another moment Regan was in the room, and his great bear clutch brought Stover a feeling of warmth with its genuineness.
“Bigger than ever, Tom.”
“You look fine yourself, you little bantam!”
“Lord, but I’m glad to see you!”
“Same to you.”
“How’d the summer go?”
“Wonderful. I’ve got four hundred tucked away in the bank.”
“You don’t say so!”
“Fact.”
Stover shook hands again eagerly.
“Tell me all about it.”
“Sure. Go on with your unpacking; I’ll lend a hand. I’ve had a bully summer.”
“What’s that mean?” said Stover, with a quizzical smile. “Working like a slave?”
“No, no; seeing real people. I tried being a conductor a while, got in a strike, and switched over to construction work. Got to be foreman of a gang, night shift.”
“You don’t mean out all night?”
“Oh, I slept in the day. You get used to it. They’re a strange lot, the fellows who work while the rest of you sleep. They brushed me up a lot, taught me a lot. Wish you’d been along. You’d have got some education.”
“I may do something of the sort with you next summer,” said Stover quietly.
“They tell me Tough McCarthy’s not coming back.”
“Yes; father died.”
“Too bad. Going to room alone?”
“For a while. I want to get away—think things over a bit, read some.”
“Good idea,” said Regan, with one of his sharp appraising looks. “If a man’s given a thinker, he might just as well use it.”
Hungerford and Bob Story joined them, and the four went down to Mory’s to take possession in the name of the sophomore class. Regan, to their surprise, making one of the party, paid as they paid, with just a touch of conscious pride.
The good resolves that Dink made to himself, under the influence of the acute emotions he had felt on his return, gradually faded from his memory as he felt himself caught up again in the rush of college life. He found his day marked out for him, his companions assigned to him, his standards and his opinions inherited from his predecessors. Insensibly he became a cog in the machine. What with football practise and visiting the freshman class in the interest of his society, he found he was able to keep awake long enough to get a smattering of the next day’s work and no more.
The class had scattered and groups with clear tendencies had formed, Hunter and Tommy Bain the center of little camps serious and ambitious, while off the campus in a private dormitory another element was pursuing mannish delights with the least annoyance from the curriculum.
The opposition to the sophomore societies had now grown to a college issue. Protests from the alumni began to come in; one of the editors of the Lit made it the subject of his leader, while the college, under the leadership of rebels like Gimbel, arrayed itself in uncompromising opposition and voted down every candidate for office that the sophomore societies placed in the field.
That the situation was serious and working harm to the
