RUMBLINGS

"Please, sir, could you give me any dope for the News about your coming back to coach the football team?" asked a timid voice from the doorway.

"No, heeler, no; I've already said I wouldn't give anything about that till I made up my mind, and I haven't yet." Thus James, more petulantly than was his wont, from his chair below the green-shaded lamp. The heeler, obviously a freshman, blinked disappointedly through the half-gloom for a few seconds and then moved to go.

"Wait a bit," said James, his good-humor restored; "I'm sorry, heeler. But when I tell you that you're the thirteenth person that has come in at that door since seven o'clock, and that I've got a hundred pages of economics to read for to-morrow, perhaps you'll understand why I'm a little snappy about being interrupted."

"That's all right," murmured the heeler vaguely. He was used to being snapped at by prominent seniors, but he was not used to being apologized to by them, and was not sure how he liked it.

"I tell you what I'll do, though," went on James. "I'll give you a locker notice that ought to have been put in long ago. Here." He reached for the heeler's notebook and wrote in it: "All senior members of the football squad are requested to remove their clothes from their lockers as the space will be wanted for spring practice." "There, that'll put you fifty words to the good, anyway," he said brightly, and the heeler went his way in peace.

James had conducted himself most creditably during his college course, and in the course of a few months would graduate if not exactly in a blaze of glory, at least in a very comfortable radiance. His standard of values had been a simple but satisfactory one; first, Football; second, Curriculum; third, Other Things. Any number of the steadier and worthier portion of the college world make this their creed, and find it works out extremely well. In the case of James, at least, such a standard gave a sane and well-balanced view of life. He took football with the most deathly seriousness, it is true, but only in its season, and its season, owing to the rigors of the New England climate, lasts hardly more than two months out of the twelve. During that time James practically hibernated when not actually on the football field, lived mainly on boiled rice and barley water, indulged in no amusements or vices, went about thoughtful and preoccupied, scarcely spoke even to his most intimate friends, studied only just enough to keep his stand above the danger mark and slept, as Harry rather vividly put it, "anywhere from thirty to forty hours out of the twenty-four." Out of the football season he was cheerful, cordial, loved the society of his fellows, smoked, drank in moderation, went to the theater, played cards, ate every kind of food he could lay his hands on and studied with a very faithful and intelligent interest. His classmates admired him during the football season, and loved him the rest of the year. Generally speaking, he conformed closely to his type; but his type was one of the best the college evolved.

After the News heeler left him on the evening in question he read economics uninterruptedly for about half an hour; then he took a cigarette from his case and lit it. The case was the gold one that Harry had brought him from Europe. He thought of Harry as he lay back in his chair after lighting the cigarette, and it is not too much to say that the thought of him impaired the pleasure of the first few puffs. Harry was, indeed, the chief, the only cloud on the horizon. It was too bad; he had begun so well. No one could have desired a more brilliant freshman year for him, what with his track work and his literary success and the excellent stand he maintained in his studies. And yet now, at about the middle of his sophomore year, he seemed to be going in any direction but that of fulfilling the promise of his first year. James could see for himself, and he had heard things.... Perhaps, after all, though, it was merely that he had begun too well; that his promise was fulfilled before it was fairly given. Many men graduated from college high in the esteem of their classmates without having distinguished themselves as much as Harry had in one year. Perhaps he was really going on exactly as well as before, only people were just beginning to find out that he was only an American boy of nineteen, not Apollo and Hermes rolled into one. That was what James hoped; but it occurred to him that if such had been the case the idea would have come to him as a certainty, not as a hope.

Harry himself sauntered into the room before the cigarette was smoked out. Well, his outward appearance had not suffered, at any rate, was James' first thought. The slimness of his figure was unimpaired; his features retained their clear-cut lines of youth and innocence; his complexion shone with the glow of health, nothing else.

"Give me a cigarette, and hurry up about it, too," were his first words. "I've just been under a severe mental strain.... It will probably be the last one for many moons, too, if I start in training to-morrow, like a good little boy."

"Oh, of course; you've been to the call for track candidates," replied his brother, handing over the desired commodities. "Well, was it a good meeting?"

"Inspiring. Don't you see what a glow of enthusiasm I'm in? First Dimmock got up and opened his mouth. 'Fellows,' he said, 'I'm darned glad to see you all here to-night, but I wish there were more of you. I see fewer men out than usual, and we need more than ever this year, and I'll tell you why. We want to do better in the intercollegiates. We think we are strong enough for the dual meets, but we want to make a better show in the intercollegiates. But we've got plenty of good material here, and with that we ought to get together and work hard and show lots of the old Yale spirit, for we'll need it all in the intercollegiates.'

"Well, Dimmock is a good soul, if he has got a face like a boiled cod, and we cheered and clapped and patted him on the back. Then Macgrath took the floor. He said he thought we were going to have a good year, for there was plenty of material in sight, though he was sorry to see so few there to-night. He hoped we weren't forgetting what the Yale spirit was, because we particularly wanted to do well in the intercollegiates. He spoke of the new cinder track and the lengthening of the two-twenty yard straight-away, and ended with a hope that we would all get together and do Yale credit in the intercollegiates.

"Then McCullen, who as perhaps you know, is manager, got up. As he is a particular friend of yours I won't try to give an exact account of what he said. His main points, however, were the fewness of the candidates present, the probable wealth of good material in hand, the new cinder track and the desirability of doing well in the intercollegiates. Lastly, a man called Hodgman, or Hodgson, or something, who was captain back in the eighties somewhere, was introduced. He spoke first of the new cinder track and straight-away, from which he lightly and gracefully went on to congratulating the team on having so much good material this year—though he saw fewer there to-night than he had expected. He closed with a touching peroration in which he intimated that the track team had in general come off well in regard to Harvard and Princeton, and what was wanted now was a little better showing against the other universities in the intercollegiates.... Oh, it was a glorious meeting!"

James fully appreciated the humor of this narrative, as the sympathetic twinkle in his eye betrayed, but he merely observed after Harry had finished:

"Well, that's true; they ought to do better in the intercollegiates. There's a good deal of feeling about it among the graduates, too, I believe."

"Oh, it's true enough." Harry, who felt the heat of the room, opened the window and lay down at full length on the window-seat, directly in the draught. "I'd take the word of those four noble, strapping, true-hearted men for it any day in the year. Only—only—oh, heck! Why should I have to sit up and listen to those boobs spend an hour in telling me that one thing? And what the devil do I care about it anyway, if it's the truest thing that ever happened?"

"Well, I care about it, though I'm no good at track and not a member of the team," commented James.

"Perhaps if you were on it you wouldn't care quite so much.—Well, I'll train and I'll practise regularly, not because I want Yale to win the intercollegiates, but because I think it's good for me. It is good for the figure, and I'd rather have my muscles hard than soft."

"Well, it comes to the same thing, if you keep to it, and don't go gassing to the track people about your reasons."

"I shall go gassing to every human being I've a mind to.—And I'll tell you one thing there's going to be trouble about, if they try to use coercion, or the Yale spirit gag. That's about the Easter vacation; there's some talk of making the track people stay here and train. I have other plans for Easter."

"What are they?—For Heaven's sake, shut that window! What a fool you are, lying in a draught like that, with the track season beginning."

"James, you are every bit as bad as any of them, at heart," said Harry, shutting the window. "You wouldn't give a continental if I caught pneumonia and died in frightful agony, except for its cutting the university of a possible place in the intercollegiates.—Why, I'm going down to the Trotwoods' place in North Carolina. Trotty's going to have a large and brilliant house-party. Beatrice is going; he met her in New York not long ago and took a great shine to her." For Beatrice, in the company of Aunt Miriam, was paying a visit to the country of her dreams.

"What?" said James, pricking up his ears. "Beatrice going? Why hasn't Trotty asked me?"

"Didn't dare, I suppose," said Harry indifferently. "I'll make him, though, if you like. That's the way the King's visits are arranged; he says he'd like to visit some distinguished subject, and a third party tells the distinguished subject, who asks the King, who accepts. It's complicated, but it gets there in the end."

James did not seem particularly interested in points of etiquette in royal households.

"What do you make out of this business of the Carsons?" he asked.

"What business?"

"Hadn't you heard? Aunt C. told me about it when I was there last Sunday. Beatrice's mother has made up her mind to sue for a divorce, and Beatrice has quarreled with her about it."

"Good Lord! No, I hadn't heard a thing. I knew what the father was, of course.... Has anything in particular happened?"

"Apparently, yes. Aunt C. can tell you more exactly than I. Beatrice has confided the whole thing to her—they're thick as thieves already; she gets on better with her than with Aunt Miriam, even. It seems that the husband, Lord Archibald, is on to the fact that his wife has had a good deal of money to spend lately; Uncle Giles having given her a lot since he got that—"

"Yes, I know. Go on."

"Well, that's about the whole thing. He's been bullying her, making her give it up to him ... and one thing and another, till she got desperate, and decided to try for a complete divorce. There's plenty of ground, even for English law ... but Beatrice's idea is that there's no need. Of course, it will mean a lot of scandal. She says that if she had been there to deal with him there would have been no talk about it, and that, at worst, a separation would have been all that was necessary."

"Poor Lady Archie! She has had a tough time; I shall be glad to see her well out of it. A divorce—! Well, she has more sense than I gave her credit for."

"It seems to me that Beatrice is quite right," said James, a trifle stiffly. "I should have thought that a divorce was the thing most to be avoided. It's not like an American divorce.... I understand her point very well."

Harry did not reply to this; he simply growled—made a curious sound in the bottom of his throat. It amounted to a polite way of saying "Nonsense!" Apparently James accepted the implied rebuke, for he said no more on the subject. His brother also was silent for some time and gazed thoughtfully out on the lights of the Campus. "I've got troubles of my own, James," he said presently. "Have you heard anything about last night yet?"

"Last night? No; what?"

"Well, you've heard of Junius LeGrand, in our class?"

"The actress? Yes."

"Well, he's become rather a power in the class; not only he is making straight for the Dramat. presidency, but he's more or less the center of a certain clique; the social register, monogrammed cigarettes, champagne-every-night and abroad-every-summer type; the worst of it, that is. Well, I had a dreadful scene with him last night. I got a thrill and called him names, and he didn't like it."

"What happened?"

"There was a whole bunch of us sitting round at Mory's, and I was talking partly in French, as I usually do when—when mildly excited, and referred to him as a 'petite ordure.' Of course that isn't a pretty thing to call a person, even in French, and I probably shouldn't have said it if I hadn't been drinking. I meant it all, though, and was willing to stand by it, so when he got mad I called him other and worse things, in English. He wasn't tight, but he was pretty furious by that time, and there'd have been a free fight if people hadn't held us apart."

"That's pretty poor, Harry," said James gravely, after a moment's consideration. "I don't mean your hating LeGrand—though you needn't have actually come to quarreling with him. But your being tight and he not puts you in the wrong right off.—What's all this about your drinking, anyway?"

"I don't, so you could notice it.... That was the first time I ever got carried beyond myself, except about once—or twice. I'm not fond of the stuff; I only drink when I want to be cheered up."

"That's bad, too; it's much worse to drink when you're in bad spirits than when you're in good," said James, with a wisdom beyond his experience.

"After I've drunk, the good spirits are in me," retorted Harry, with rather savage humor.

"It's no joking matter. Harry, will you cut it out entirely, if I ask you to?"

"You'll have to do some tall asking, I'm afraid.—I don't like you much when you preach, James. I came here for sympathy, not sermons."

"You won't get me to sympathize with your making a beast of yourself."

"James, you know perfectly well you were tight as a tick at the football banquet in Boston last fall."

"I'm no paragon, I admit."

"You say that as if you thought you were, and expected me to say so. No, you're right—you're not. There!"

James' humor suddenly changed. His grave face relaxed into a smile, he rose from his chair and wandered to the end of the room and back to the window-seat.

"All right, we'll leave it at that; I'm not." He stood for a moment hands in pockets, smiling down at his brother. "It's nice to find one point we can agree on, anyway.... I won't bother you. After all, I suppose there's not much danger."

"No ... I don't think I should ever really get to like the stuff." But Harry did not smile and fall in with his brother's mood; he had too much on his mind still. "I haven't told you the most disagreeable part of it," he went on. "Something happened to-day that made me sorry I had made a fool of myself. Shep McGee came to me to-day and said that he'd heard about our little coup de thÉÂtre, and that he was sorry, but being one of Junius' particular friends he couldn't be friendly with me any more unless I apologized. I was sorry, because I've always liked Shep and got on very well with him."

"What did you say?"

"Oh, of course I was pretty peeved, and I messed it up still further. I told him I was glad he'd spoken, because henceforth my acquaintance would not be recruited conspicuously from Junius' special friends. I said that, strange as it might seem, I felt myself able to hand him, Shep, over to Junius' complete possession without a tear. I added that I thought he would find it safer in the future to choose his friends exclusively from the cause of Christ, and suggested that he might try to convert Junius to the same august organization...."

Some explanation may be necessary to show why this remark outraged James' feelings to the extent it did. The organization to which Harry referred was Dwight Hall, the college home of the Y. M. C. A., Bible study classes, city and foreign mission work, in all of which branches of religious and semi-religious activity many of the worthiest undergraduates interest themselves. James particularly admired the organization and those who worked in it; he would have gone in for some department of its work himself had he possessed the qualities of a religious leader. Most of his best friends were Dwight Hall workers; the senior society to which he belonged was notorious for taking many of them into its fold yearly—so much so, indeed, that it has become a popular myth that an underground passage exists between Dwight Hall and the society hall.

Consequently, Harry's contemptuous epithet, together with the tone in which he uttered it was quite enough to shock and pain James very much. But what put him out even more was the thought that Harry had said this to Shep McGee. The latter was one of the most respected men in Harry's class, and James had happened to take a particular fancy to him. He rather wondered at McGee's making a friend of such a person as LeGrand, but he did not stop to think about that now.

"Harry," said he in a sharp, dry voice, "I think that's the rottenest remark I ever heard you or any one else make—if you used that expression to McGee."

"I did."

"I never thought you were capable of saying such a rotten thing, and I don't mind your knowing what I think of it. Are you going to apologize to McGee?"

"No."

"Well, I shall. If I can't apologize on your behalf, at least I can apologize for being your brother! What the devil do you mean by saying such a thing, in cold blood, to such a man? If you don't believe in the work yourself, can't you let other people believe in it? What do you believe in, anyway? Do you call yourself a Christian? Do you call yourself a gentleman? Do you flatter yourself that McGee isn't a hundred times a better man than you are?"

"Rumblings from the underground passage." This remark, given with a cold, hard little smile, in which there was no geniality, no humor, even of a mistaken nature, amounted to a direct insult. Any reference made to a Yale man about his senior society by an outsider, be it a brother or any one else, is looked upon as a breach of etiquette—was at that time, at any rate. Harry's remark was worse than that; it was a rather cowardly thrust, for he was insulting a thing that James, by reason of the secrecy to which he was bound, could not defend.

James did not reply; he simply grabbed up a hat and flung himself out of the room. Harry listened to his footsteps retreating down the stairs with a sinking heart; all his anger, all his resentment ebbed with them, and by the time they had died away there was nothing left but hopeless, repentant wretchedness. In the last twenty-four hours he had made a public disgrace of himself, he had fallen out with one of his best friends, and he had wounded the feelings of the last person on earth he wanted to hurt. And all because of his asinine convictions, because he thought his ideals were a little higher than other men's, his honesty a little more impeccable than theirs.

He got up and left the room, cursing himself for a fool, cursing the fate that had brought him to this pass, cursing Dwight Hall, the senior societies, the university that harbored them, the school, the country that had put ideas into his head. But chiefest of all he cursed Junius LeGrand....

But that did not do any good.

The next morning he wrote and posted a note of apology to James:—

Dear James—I am sorry about last night—really, I am. I will try not to make such an ass of myself again.

"Harry."

The same evening he received an answer, also through the mail. It was simply a post-card bearing the words: