“In all which,” said Swazey’s quick voice, “there is no question about our learning a little bit.”
A laugh broke out.
“Lord, no!”
“That doesn’t count?”
“Why the curriculum?”
“That,” said Regan, rising, “brings up the subject of education, which is deferred until another time. Ladies and gentlemen, good night. Who’s winning? Ricketts. That’s because he’s said nothing. Good night, everybody.”
Stover went with him.
“Tom,” he said, when they came toward the campus, “do you know what I’ve learned tonight? I’ve learned what a complete ignoramus I am.”
“How did you happen in?” said Regan.
Stover related the incident without mincing words.
“You’re a lucky boy,” said Regan, at the conclusion. “I’m glad you’re waking up.”
“You know I know absolutely nothing. I haven’t thought on a single subject, and as for politics, and what you men talk about, I don’t know the slightest thing. I say, Tom, I’d like to come around and talk with you.”
“Come,” said Regan; “I’ve had the door on the latch for a long while, old rooster.”
XVII
The next afternoon Stover passed Brockhurst going to dinner.
“Hello,” he said, with a cordial wave of the hand.
“Hello,” said Brockhurst, with a little avoidance, for he had a certain physical timidity, which always shrank at the consequences of his mental insurgency.
“I was a chump and a fool last night,” said Stover directly, “and here’s my apology.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Drop in on me. Talk things over. You’ve started me thinking. Drop in—I mean it.”
“Thanks, awfully.”
Brockhurst, ill at ease, moved away, pursued always by a shackling self-consciousness in the presence of those to whom he consciously felt he was mentally superior.
One direct result came to Stover from the visit to Swazey’s rooms. Despite the protests and arguments, he did not report for the competition for the crew.
“Stay in for a couple of months,” said Le Baron. “We want the moral effect of everyone’s coming out.”
“Sorry; I’ve made up my mind,” said Dink.
“Why?”
“Want time to myself. I’ve never had it, and now I’m going to get it.”
Le Baron of the machine did not understand him, and he did not explain. Stover was essentially a man of action and not a thinker. He did not reason things out for himself, but when he became convinced he acted. So, when he had thought over Brockhurst’s theories and admitted that he was not independent, he determined at once to be so. He began zealously, turning his back on his own society crowd, to seek out the members of his class whom he did not know, resolved that his horizon should be of the freest. For the first time he began to reason on what others said to him. He went often to Swazey’s rooms, and Regan’s, which were centers of discussion. Some of the types that drifted in were incongruous, bizarre, flotsam and jetsam of the class; but in each, patiently resolved, he found something to stir the imagination; and when, under Regan’s quickening influence, he stopped to consider what life in the future would mean to them, he began to understand what his friend, the invincible democrat, meant by the inspiring opportunity of college—the vision of a great country that lay on the lips of the men he had only to seek out.
Dink was of too direct a nature and also too confident in the strength of his position to consider the effect of his sudden pilgrimage to what was called the “outsiders.” Swazey and Pike, at his invitation, took to dropping into his room and working out their lessons with him. Quite unconsciously, he found himself constantly in public companionship with them and other newly discovered types who interested him.
About two weeks after this new life had begun, Le Baron stopped him one day, with a little solicitous frown, saying:
“Look here, Dink, aren’t you cutting loose from your own crowd a good deal?”
“Why, yes, I guess I am,” Dink announced, quite unconsciously.
“I wouldn’t get identified too much with—well, with some of the fellows you’ve taken up.”
Stover smiled, and went his way undisturbed. For the first time he felt his superiority over Le Baron. Le Baron could not know what he knew—that it was just these new acquaintances who had waked him up out of his torpor and made a thinking being of him. Others in his class, mistaking his motives, began to twit him:
“I say, Dink, what are you out for?”
“Running for something?”
“Getting into politics?”
“Junior Prom, eh?”
He turned the jests aside with jests as ready, quite unaware that in his own crowd he was arousing a little antagonism; for he was developing in such deep lines that he did not perceive vexing details.
All at once he remembered that it had been over a fortnight since he had called at the Storys’ and he ran over one afternoon about four o’clock, expecting to stay for dinner; for the Judge kept open house to the friends of his son, and Stover had readily availed himself of the privilege to become intimate.
Although Bob Story was bound to him by the closest social ties, Dink felt, nor was he altogether at fault in the feeling, that the brother was still on the defensive with him, due to a natural resentment perhaps at Dink’s too evident interest in his sister.
When he arrived at the old colonial house set back among the elms, Eliza, the maid, informed him that no one was at home. Miss Jean was out riding. But immediately she corrected herself, and, going upstairs to make sure, returned with the welcome information that Miss Story had just returned and begged him to wait.
He took the request as a meager evidence of her interest, and entered the drawing-room. Waiting there for her to come tripping down the stairs, he began to think of the new horizon that had opened to him, and the new feeling of maturity; and, feeling this with an acute realization, he was impatient for her to come, that he might tell her.
It was a good ten minutes before he turned suddenly at a rustling on
