Perhaps he lacked the basic stuff. The Old Colonel was a little despairing: he had begun to fear that in this lay the true explanation. But perhaps—and this was the old man’s hope—the matter got down to a simple phrase of ancient usage: that Hugh had merely not yet learned to be a “man of his hands.” The meaning goes deeper than mere manual toil. It implies achievement, discipline, self-reliance. It is not a thing to mistake. It promotes the kind of equality that the Old Colonel himself knew—that which abides at a Western cow ranch or in the battle trench. Hugh’s face was not unlined; but dissipation rather than stress had made the furrows. The lips did not set quite firm, the young eyes were slightly dimmed and bloodshot. There was, however, the Colonel saw with relief, no trace of viciousness in his youthful face. He was an Anglo-Saxon: after the manner of most Northern men he was an honest young debaucher, taking his orgies rather seriously and overdoing them in a way that would be shocking in a Latin. Possibly the same Northern blood gave him a background of strength: this was the old man’s hope.
“You’re looking a bit seedy, Hugh,” the Old Colonel began in his usual straightforward way. “I’m afraid you’re getting to be sort of a poor stick.”
His tone was that with which he was wont to begin an interesting story: perfectly matter-of-fact, just as if he were pronouncing a judgment on the weather. Hugh flushed to the roots of his hair but he didn’t take offense. No one ever could take offense when the Colonel told them truths.
“Complimentary mood today, eh, Colonel,” Hugh commented lightly. In reality he didn’t feel in a festive mood at all. But he sat still, dreading what might come next.
“No, not particularly,” the Colonel answered soberly. “You know, Hugh, the interest I’ve always taken in you. And you know why.”
Yes, Hugh knew why. It went back to one of his own mother’s girlhood romances—a rather beautiful story such as men tell their wives and sweethearts but from masculine reserve do not talk over among themselves.
“I know,” Hugh agreed.
“I can’t see,” the old man went on thoughtfully, “that in spite of the—er—damnable joy of having you around, you’re any good to yourself or anyone else. Why don’t you lay off of it a while?”
“You mean—this?” Hugh tilted his glass up on one edge.
“I didn’t happen to mean that, but perhaps I’d better include it. I saw you last night, Hugh, and I’m not one to think hard of a boy for an occasional exhilaration. But the trouble was—it was the night before too, and the night before that, and nobody knows how many more such nights. You’re looking a little soft around the mouth, and just a little—too old for your years. Won’t do, Hughey boy. I mean why don’t you lay off this sort of life you’ve been leading: too much ease, too much loaf, too much booze, too much chorus, not enough work. Oh, damn their skins! I wish they’d sent you to France.”
“And I guess you know how I felt about that,” Hugh replied in his own defense. Yes, the Colonel knew: Hugh had really and earnestly wanted to go to France. He had been commissioned, however, rather sooner than was best for him, and he had been kept in an office in Washington.
“And the worst of it is you never even had to go through the grind of being a real buck private, with nothing particularly in sight. You’ve had everything too easy. You ought to sweat once, and feel a few breaks in your skin and a few sore muscles. Soft, Hugh, soft as soap. Lazy as sin. Why don’t you get out and rough it for a while?”
Hugh stood up. “I don’t know—” he began stiffly.
“But I do. Sit down.”
The eyes of the two men met, and those of the old man smiled under his bushy brows. Hugh sat down again. He knew, only too well, how true these words were. He had always been soft, and trial had never hardened him. “I suppose the same old chant—to go to work.”
“Not this time. I’m going to prescribe another treatment—a more pleasant one. I know there’s no use of asking you to go to work. I don’t see what work you could do. Sitting around an office, considering the safe and sane nature of your investments, wouldn’t help you much. But, Hugh, I have some English friends—good enough beggars most of ’em—and once or twice they’ve confessed—that the only thing that kept them from utter damnation was devoting their lives to sport.”
Hugh knew about these “good enough beggars” that were friends to the Colonel—many of them men of great names and titles whom lesser Americans would boast of knowing. The Old Colonel shook his head somewhat sadly, and for a moment his eyes gazed out over the twilight grounds.
“When I say ’sport,’ ” he explained, “I mean he-man sport. Into Africa after lions. Shooting a tiger from the ground. Up to Tibet after snow leopards. Down to New Zealand after trout. Going—going—going—never getting soft. Blizzards and jungle and thirst and cold. I know there’s no chance for me to get you to do real work. But damn me—I can’t help but think there’s a little of the old stuff in you somewhere, and I’ve been thinking that a hard course with rifle and fly rod might—might get you going along the right lines. If you’d once learn to love the outdoors, and learn to love to fight, who knows what might
