XXV
When he had returned to the college after the summer, he came to his first call on Jean Story with a confident enthusiasm, eager for the first look in her eyes. He had not corresponded with her during the summer. He had not even asked for permission to write, confident though he was that her consent would now be given. He was resolved, as a penance for his first blunder, to hold himself in reserve on every occasion. Bob had written the news, always pressing him to take two weeks off for a visit to the camp, but Dink, despite the tugging at his heart, had stuck to Regan, perhaps a little secretly pleased to show his earnestness.
Now, as he came swinging impatiently toward the glowing white columns under the elms, he realized all at once what was the moving influence in his struggle for growth and independence.
“Here is the horny-handed son of toil,” he said, holding out his hand with a laugh.
She took it, turning over the firm palm with a little curiosity, and looked at him sharply, aware of a great change—they were no longer boy and girl. The vacation had made of the impetuous Dink Stover she had known a new personality that was strange and a little intimidating.
He did not understand at all the sudden dropping of her look, nor the uneasy turning away, nor the quick constraint that came. He was hurt with a sudden sharp sting that he had never known before and the ache of unreasoning jealousy at the bare thought of what might have happened during the summer.
“I’m awfully glad to see you,” she said, but the words sounded formal.
He followed her into the parlor puzzled, irritated by something he did not understand, something that lay underneath everything she said, and seemed to interpose itself as a barrier between them and the old open feeling of camaraderie.
“Mother will be so glad to see you,” she said, after a little moment of awkwardness. “I must call her.”
This maneuver completed his bewilderment, which increased when, Mrs. Story joining them, suddenly the Jean Story of old returned with the same cordiality and the same enthusiasm. She asked a hundred questions, leading him on until he was launched into an account of his summer experiences, the little bits of real life that had brought home to him the seriousness of the world that waited outside.
He spoke not as the Stover of sophomore year, filled with the enthusiasm of discovery, but with a maturer mind, which had begun to reflect and to reason upon what had come into his knowledge.
Mrs. Story, sunk in the old high-backed armchair near the fire, followed him, too, aware also of the change in the boy, wondering what lay in the mind of her daughter, camped at her knee on the hearth rug, listening so intently and yet clinging to her as though for instinctive protection.
Stover spoke only of outward things; the thoughts that lay beneath, that would have come out so eagerly before the girl, did not appear in the presence of another. As he understood nothing of this sudden introduction of a third into the old confidential relationship, he decided to be more formal than the girl, and rose while still his audience’s attention was held by his account.
“It’s been awfully jolly to see you again,” he said with a perfect manner to Mrs. Stover.
“But you’re going to stay to dinner,” she said, with a little smile.
“Awfully sorry, but I’ve got a dozen things to do,” he said, in the same careful, matter-of-fact tone. “Bob sent word he’d come later.”
Jean Story had not urged him. He went to her with mechanical cheeriness, saying:
“Goodbye. You’re looking splendidly.”
She did not answer, being in one of her silent moods. Mrs. Story went with him towards the door, with a few practical housekeeping questions on the ménage that had just begun. As they were in the anteroom, Jim Hunter entered and, greeting them, passed into the salon.
Stover, deaf to anything else, heard her greeting:
“Why, Jim, I am glad to see you.”
Mrs. Story was asking him a question, but he did not hear it. He heard only the echoes of what seemed to him the joy in her laugh.
“If you need any rugs let me know,” said Mrs. Story in patient repetition.
“I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “Yes—yes, of course.”
She looked at him with a little maternal pity, knowing the pang that had gone through him, and for a moment a word was on her lips to enlighten him. But she judged it wiser to be silent, and said:
“Come in for dinner tomorrow night, surely.”
This invitation fitted at once into Stover’s scheme of mislogic. He saw in it a mark of compassion, and of compassion for what reason? Plainly, Jean was interested in someone else, perhaps engaged. In ten minutes, to his own lugubrious satisfaction, he had convinced himself it was no other than Jim Hunter. But a short, inquisitive talk with Joe Hungerford, who magnanimously appeared stupidly unconscious of the real motives, reassured him on this point. So, after the hot tempest of jealousy, he began to feel a little resentment at her new, illogical attitude of defensive formality.
Gradually, as he gave no sign of unbending from his own assumption of strict politeness, she began to change, but so gradually that it was not for weeks that he perceived that the old intimate relations had returned. This little interval, however, had brought to him a new understanding. With her he had lost the old impulsiveness. He began to reason and analyze, to think of cause and effect in their relationship. As a consequence the initiative and the authority that had formerly been with her came to him. All at once he perceived, to his utter surprise, what she had felt immediately on his return: that he was the stronger, and that the old, blind, boyish adoration for
