“Yes.”
“I wonder—”
“What?” she asked as he stopped.
“Did you suggest to Bob what he said to me this afternoon?” he said point blank.
She looked at him troubled and undecided, and he suddenly guessed the reason.
“Oh, won’t you trust me enough to tell me,” he said boyishly, “if you did?”
She looked into his eyes a moment longer.
“He was afraid you wouldn’t like it,” she said simply. “Yes, I told him to go.”
A dozen things rushed to his lips, and he said nothing. Perhaps she liked his silence better than anything he could have said, for she added:
“You will do the big things now, won’t you? You see, I want to see you at your biggest.”
When he went home that night, he seemed to walk on air. He had taken no advantage of her friendship, tempted almost beyond his powers as he had been by the kindness in her voice and her direct appeal. He had to tell someone, not of the interest he felt she had shown him, but of his own complete adoration and supreme consecration. So he hauled Hungerford up to his room, who received the information as to Stover’s state of mind with gratifying surprise, as though it were the most incredible, mystifying, and incomprehensible bit of news.
XXIII
When Stover returned to college as a junior, he showed the results of his summer with Regan. He had gone into construction gangs, and learned to obey and to command. He had had a glimpse of what the struggle for existence meant in the stirring masses; and he had known the keenness of a little joy and the reality of sorrow to those for whom everything in life was real.
He had long ago surrendered the idea of entering Skull and Bones over the enmity of Reynolds and Le Baron, and this relinquishing somehow robbed him of all the awe that he had once felt. He had returned a man, tempered by knowledge of the world, distinguishing between the incidental in college life and the vital opportunity within his grasp.
The new debating club, launched in the previous spring, had been an instant success, and its composition, carefully representative, had become the nucleus of a new comradeship in the class. With the one idea of proving his fitness to lead in this new harmonizing development, Stover made his room a true meeting-place of the class, and, loyally aided by Hungerford and Story, sought to restore all the old-time zest and goodwill to the gatherings about the sophomore fence. His efforts were met by a latent opposition from Hunter and Bain, on one side, who never outgrew their wounded resentment, and from Gimbel on the other, who, though enthusiastically seconding him in the open, felt secretly that he was being supplanted.
But, as Story had foreseen, Stover had the magnetism and the energy to carry through what no other leader would have accomplished. Once resolved on the accomplishment, upheld by a strong sentimental devotion, Stover went at his task with a blunt directness that disdains all objections.
Each Saturday night was given over to a rally of the class en masse at the Tontine. Certain groups held off at first, but soon came into the fold when Stover, who was no respecter of persons, would find occasion to say publicly:
“Hello there, what happened to you last night? Get out of that silk-lined atmosphere of yours! Wake up! You’re not too good for us, are you?”
“Well, why weren’t you there? It’s no orgy—you can get lemonade or milk if you want. There are bad men present, but we keep ’em from biting.”
“I say, forget your poker game for one night. We all know you’re dead game sports. That’s why we want you—to give us an atmosphere of real life.”
The remarks were made half in jest, half in earnest, but they seldom failed of their object. At the Saturday night rallies it was the same. Stover was everywhere, saying with his good-humored, impudent smile what no one else dared to say, sometimes startling them with his boldness:
“Here now, fellows, no grouping around here. We want to see a sport and a gospel shark sitting arm in arm. Come on, Schley, your social position’s all right—there’s only one crowd here tonight. No one here is going to boost you into a senior society. Percolate, fellows, percolate. We’ve scrapped like Sam Hill, now we’re tired of it. No more biting, scratching, or gouging. Don’t forget this is a love feast, and they’re going to be lovelier. Now let’s try over that song for the Princeton game. Bob Story perpetrated it—pretty rotten, I think, but let’s hit it up all the same.”
The rallies jumped into popularity. The class gasped, then laughed at Stover’s abrupt reference to the late unpleasantness, and with the laugh all constraint went. The class found itself, as a regiment returns to its pride again. It went to the games in a body, it healed its differences, and packed the long room at the Tontine each Saturday night, shouting out the chorus which Buck Waters, McNab, Stone, and the talent led.
Many, undoubtedly, marvelling at the ease with which Stover had inspired the gathering, admired him for what they believed was a clever bid for society honors. But the truth was that he succeeded because he had no underlying motive, because he had achieved in himself absolute independence and fearlessness of any outer criticism, and his strength with the crowd was just the consciousness of his own liberty.
By the fall of junior year, he was the undisputed leader of the class, a force that had brought to it a community of interest and friendly understanding. Unknown to him, his classmates began to regard him, despite his old defiance, as one whom a senior society could not overlook. Stover had no such feeling. He believed that the hatred in what remained of the sophomore society organization was, and would continue, unrelenting, and this conviction had determined him in a course of action
