“It’s awfully good of you to wait,” she called to him. “I did my best to rush.”
Arrived on the landing, she gave him her hand, looking at him a little earnestly.
“How are you? You’re a terrible stranger.”
“Have I been very bad?” he said, holding her hand.
“Indeed you have. Even Bob said he hardly saw you. What have you been doing?”
She withdrew her hand gently, but stood before him, looking into his face with her frank, inquiring eyes. Stover wondered if she thought he’d been a trifle wild; and, as there was no justification, he was immensely flattered, and a little tempted dramatically to assume an attitude that would call for reform. He smiled and said:
“I’ve been on a voyage of discovery, that’s all. You’ll be interested.”
They sat down, and he began directly to talk, halting in broken phrases at first, gradually finding his words as he entered his subject.
“By George! I’ve had a wonderful two weeks—a revelation—just as though—just as though I’d begun my college course; that’s really what it means. All I’ve done before doesn’t count. And to think, if it hadn’t been for an accident, I might have gone on without ever waking up.”
He recounted his visit to Swazey’s rooms, drawing a picture of his self-satisfied self descending en prince to bestow a favor; and, warming out of his stiffness, drew a word picture of Swazey’s telling his story before the fire, and the rough sentiment with which he brought forth the odd, common little tintypes.
“By George! the fellow had told a great story and he didn’t know it; but I knew it, and it settled me,” he added with earnestness, always aware of her heightened attention. “It was a regular knockout blow to the conceited, top-heavy, prancing little ass who had gone there. By Jove, it gave me a jar. I went out ashamed.”
“It is a very wonderful life—simple, wonderful,” she said slowly, thinking more of the relator than of the story. “I understand all you felt.”
“You know life’s real to those fellows,” he continued, with more animation. “They’re after something in this world; they believe in something; they’re fighting for something. There’s nothing real in me—that is, there wasn’t. By George, these two weeks that I’ve gone about, looking for the men in the class, have opened up everything to me. I never knew my own country before. It’s a wonderful country! It’s the simple lives that are so wonderful.”
She had in her hand a piece of embroidery, but she did not embroider. Her eyes never left his face. For the first time, the roles were reversed: it was he who talked and she who listened. From time to time she nodded, satisfied at the decision and direction in his character, which had answered the first awakening suggestion.
“Who is Pike?” she asked.
“Pike is a little fellow from a little life in some country town in Indiana; the only one in a family of eight children that’s amounted to anything—father’s a pretty even sort, I guess; so are the rest of them. But this fellow has a dogged persistence—not so quick at thinking things out, but, Lord! how he listens; nothing gets away from him. I can see him growing right under my eyes. He’s interested in politics, same as Regan; wants to go back and get a newspaper some day. He’ll do it, too. Why, that fellow has been racing ahead ever since he came here, and I’ve been standing still. Ricketts is an odd character, a sort of Yankee genius, shrewd, and some of his observations are as sharp as a knife. Brockhurst has the brains of us all; he can out-think us every one. But he’s a spectator; he’s outside looking on. I can’t quite get used to him. Regan’s the fellow I want for a friend. He’s like an old Roman. When he makes up his mind—it takes him a long while—when he does, he’s right.”
He recounted Regan’s ideas on politics—his enthusiasm, and his ideal of a college life that would reflect the thought of the nation.
Then, talking to himself, he began to walk up and down, flinging out quick, stiff gestures:
“Brockhurst states a thing in such a slap-bang way—no compromise—that it hits you at first like a blow. But when you think it over he has generally got to the point. Where he’s wrong is, he thinks the society system here keeps a man wrapped in cotton, smothering him and separating him from the class. Now, I’m an example to the contrary. It’s all a question of the individual. I thought it wasn’t at one moment, but now I know that it is. You can do just what you want—find what you want.
“But we do get so interested in outside things that we forget the real; that’s true. Brockhurst says we ought to bring the college back to the campus, and the more I think of it the more I see what he means. The best weeks, the biggest in my life, are those when I’ve realized I had an imagination and could use it.” Suddenly he halted, gave a quick glance at her, and said:
“Here I’m talking like a runaway horse. I got started.”
“Thank you for talking to me so,” she said eagerly.
He had never seen in her eyes so much of genuine impulse toward him, and, suddenly recalled, in this moment of exhilaration, to the personal self, he was thrilled with a strange thrill at what he saw.
“You remember,” he said, with a certain new boldness, “how impudent you used to be to me, and how furious I was when you told me I was not awake.”
“I remember.”
“Now I understand what you meant,” he said, “but then I didn’t.”
She rose to order tea, and then turned impulsively, smiling up to him.
“I think—I’m sure I felt it would come to you; only I was a little impatient.”
And with a happy look she offered him her hand.
“I’m very glad to
