At dusk he went out and bought a box of crackers. He could see that the other young men on the streets were all accustomed to the place, that everyone knew everyone else intimately. They knew just where they were going and why, as they walked along, calm and assured. He felt as if they were all looking at him, and laughing. And although he thought he was lost in the strange streets, he couldn’t ask the way. “Could you please tell me—” No, he couldn’t make a sound—
And in sudden terror of having really been stricken dumb, he dashed into a drug store, that seemed so friendly with its familiar smell, its bright blue boxes of the very same toothpowder that they used at The Maples, the “Pear’s Soap Boy” getting his scrubbing from his grandmother, that he could ask quite naturally for a box of shoe polish.
He came out of the drug store, drooping his eyelids and curving his mouth scornfully, then catching sight of a clock on a building, pulled out Papa’s big watch, compared the two, and suddenly hurried off with a slight, anxious frown, as if he were late for an important engagement. Lamps were being lit in the houses—he could see books, geraniums, maids pulling curtains together. Lamps were being lit for these other people, lamps were being lit at home—
Oh, the breathless relief of getting off the street into his own room! He shut the door and leaned against it, his heart pounding as if there were pursuers on the stairs.
He ate the crackers, pausing for a long time between bites, his wide blue eyes fixed absently on the smoky red wall. He and the girls were coming home from a walk in the autumn dusk—a rabbit’s white tail went flashing under a hedge. The boats on the river hooted and moaned to each other through the fog, and the yellow leaves under the tulip tree were too wet to rustle. May’s chilly pink fingers lit the first fire, the thin blue and yellow flames came licking through the dry sticks and around the logs that had waited there for them ever since last April, beetles that had set up housekeeping came bursting out, the smoke poured up in one thick, greyish yellow curl. They had supper in front of the fire, cold beef and hot baked potatoes, and big, pale yellow-green grapes—
He was getting into bed in his room at home. Everything was just as it had always been, except the new suit waiting to be put on tomorrow, the bag still open, waiting for his brush and comb and toothbrush, and the two oblongs of dark olive-green leaves and vermilion berries on the wall paper that everywhere else had faded to shades of straw color. Mamma had hung there in her sealskin sacque, caught in a photographer’s snowstorm, and Papa, with his hand thrust into the front of his coat, but now they were packed to go to Cambridge with him.
There was a tapping at the door, and Maggie’s voice, low, so as not to wake the others.
“Victor—I saw your light. Are you all right? Can I help do anything?”
And he answered, pretending to yawn, so that she shouldn’t guess that he was wide awake with nervousness and excitement:
“Aw righ’, thank you—g’nigh’—”
Well, here he was. He finished his crackers. And then he blackened his shoes, slowly, thoroughly. When they were polished, that was all there was to it. He had nowhere to go in them.
But after awhile he made some friends, and they had good times together.
At the Holly Tree Inn, around the oilcloth covered table that red-haired John in his red shirt was wiping up with a cloth as black as a crow:
“Now I’ll tell you what it is about this fellow Zola—”
“The girl I’d like to see is Lily Langtry. Very snappy, my boy, very snappy!”
“Happy thought! What about an oyster supper and a few bottles of the rosy, one of these frosty evenings, beloved brethren?”
And John’s grubby hand setting down the wonderful poached eggs and hot, thin, buttered toast.
Strolling together to the place on the corner of Holyoke Street, with its cigars, its soda-fountain with the slender marble pillars on either side of the mirror, its jewelled lamp that might have lighted some harem.
“Afternoon, gentlemen.”
White walrus-mustache, eyeglasses on a bit of pink string, and straw hat that seemed as much a part of him as the fungus is part of the tree, he stood there in shirtsleeves and velveteen waistcoat, mixing soft drinks.
“What’s yours, Mr. Campion?”
To have such friends! To be called by name! “Ham sandwich and chocolate ice-cream soda, General!” And in his heart he was jumping up and down like an excited little boy.
A night in Boston, starting with “musties” at Billy Park’s, and going on—where? Among the clouds, among the comets? All men were brave, all women beautiful.
“Ha-a-appy thought! Nozher bottle of oh be joyful!”
“Fixshed bayonet for me, Zhorzh.”
“Branny—shhh-mash!”
And coming home in the horse car, how sweetly they sang:
“ ‘When I drive out eash day in my little coo-pay hay—’
hold—it—
‘I tell you I’m shomehing to shee—’ ”
They sang so sweetly that Victor could not keep back his tears. Their voices died, his sobs died. He and his friends slept upon each other’s shoulders until at the Yard entrance the kind conductor called, “Good morning, gents! Sports’ Alley!”
Then they saw each other home, back and forth, back and forth, for hours. And finally, in his own room, Victor remembered the carnation in his buttonhole. Someone had put it there—who in the dickens? Someone he’d promised never to forget. He put it in his hat in the middle of the floor and poured in all the water from his pitcher. Now and then he would lose himself in dreamy admiration of anything his eyes happened to fall on—his lamp, his soapdish—but presently he would wrench himself back, and pour in a little more water,
