“I tell you what,” said Eliza with a timid half-serious smile, “it might not be a bad idea if Hugh became his own boss. There’s no use doing it all for the other fellow. Say, child!” she exclaimed, “why wouldn’t it be a good idea if he tried to get the Altamont agency? I don’t believe that fellow they’ve got is much account. He could get it without trying.”
There was a pause.
“We’ve been thinking of that,” the girl admitted slowly. “Hugh has written in to the main office. Anyway,” she said a moment later, “he’d be his own boss. That’s something.”
“Well,” said Eliza slowly, “I don’t know but what it’d be a good idea. If he works hard there’s no reason why he shouldn’t build a good business up. Your papa’s been complaining here lately about his trouble. He’d be glad to have you back.” She shook her head slowly for a moment. “Child! they didn’t do him a bit of good, up there. It’s all come back.”
They drove over to Pulpit Hill at Easter for a two days’ visit. Eliza took him to Exeter and bought him a suit of clothes.
“I don’t like those skimpy trousers,” she told the salesman. “I want something that makes him look more of a man.”
When he was newly dressed, she puckered her lips, smiling, and said:
“Spruce up, boy! Throw your shoulders back! That’s one thing about your father—he carries himself straight as an arrow. If you go all humped over like that, you’ll have lung trouble before you’re twenty-five.”
“I want you to meet my mother,” he said awkwardly to Mr. Joseph Ballantyne, a smooth pink young man who had been elected president of the Freshman class.
“You’re a good smart-looking fellow,” said Eliza smiling, “I’ll make a trade with you. If you drum up some boarders for me among your friends here in this part of the State, I’ll throw in your board free. Here are some of my cards,” she added, opening her purse. “You might hand a few of them out, if you get a chance, and say a good word for Dixieland in the Land of the Sky.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mr. Ballantyne, in a slow surprised voice, “I certainly will.”
Eugene turned a hot distressed face toward Helen. She laughed huskily, ironically, then turning to the boy, said:
“You’re welcome at any time, Mr. Ballantyne, boarders or not. We’ll always find a place for you.”
When they were alone, in answer to his stammering and confused protests, she said with an annoyed grin:
“Yes, I know. It’s pretty bad. But you’re away from it most of the time. You’re the lucky one. You see what I’ve had to listen to, the last week, don’t you? You see, don’t you?”
When he went home at the end of the year, late in May, he found that Helen and Hugh Barton had preceded him. They were living with Gant, at Woodson Street. Hugh Barton had secured the Altamont agency.
The town and the nation boiled with patriotic frenzy—violent, in a chaotic sprawl, to little purpose. The spawn of Attila must be crushed (“exterminated,” said the Reverend Mr. Smallwood) by the sons of freedom. There were loans, bond issues, speechmaking, a talk of drafts, and a thin trickle of Yankees into France. Pershing arrived in Paris, and said, “Lafayette, we are here!”, but the French were still looking. Ben went up before the enlistment board and was rejected. “Lungs—weak!” they said quite definitely. “No—not tubercular. A tendency. Underweight.” He cursed. His face was a little more like a blade—thinner, grayer. The cleft of his scowl was deeper. He seemed more alone.
Eugene came up into the hills again and found them in their rich young summer glory. Dixieland was partly filled by paying guests. More arrived.
Eugene was sixteen years old. He was a College Man. He walked among the gay crowd of afternoon with a sense of elation, answering the hearty greetings with joy, warming to its thoughtless bombast.
“They tell me you’re batting a thousand down there, son,” yelled Mr. Wood, the plump young pharmacist, who had been told nothing at all. “That’s right, boy! Go get ’em.” The man passed forward cheerfully, up the prosperous glade of his store. Fans droned.
After all, Eugene thought, he had not done so badly. He had felt his first wounds. He had not been broken. He had seen love’s bitter mystery. He had lived alone.
XXX
There was at Dixieland a girl named Laura James. She was twenty-one years old. She looked younger. She was there when he came back.
Laura was a slender girl, of medium height, but looking taller than she was. She was very firmly moulded: she seemed fresh and washed and clean. She had thick hair, very straight and blonde, combed in a flat bracelet around her small head. Her face was white, with small freckles. Her eyes were soft, candid, cat-green. Her nose was a little too large for her face: it was tilted. She was not pretty. She dressed very simply and elegantly in short plaid skirts and waists of knitted silk.
She was the only young person at Dixieland. Eugene spoke to her with timid hauteur. He thought her plain and dull. But he began to sit with her on the porch at night. Somehow, he began to love her.
He did not know that he loved her. He talked to her arrogantly and boastfully as they sat in the wooden porch-swing. But he breathed the clean perfume of her marvellous young body. He was trapped in the tender cruelty of her clear green eyes, caught in the subtle net of her smile.
Laura James lived
