The morning on which Bradley was to
begin his term at the seminary was a clear, crisp
day in later November. He had rented a room in
the basement of a queer old building, known as the
Park Hotel, a crazy mansard-roofed structure which
held at regular intervals some rash men attempting
to run it as a hotel.
Bradley had rented this cellar because
it was the cheapest place he could find. He agreed
to pay two dollars a month for it, and the use of
the two chairs, and cooking stove, which made up its
furnishing. He had purchased a skillet and two
or three dishes, Mrs. Councill had lent him a bed,
and he seemed reasonably secure against hunger and
cold.
He looked forward to his entrance
into the school with dread. All that Monday morning
he stood about his door watching for Milton and seeing
the merry students in procession up the walk.
The girls seemed so bright and so beautiful, he wondered
how the boys could walk beside them with such calm
unconcern. Their laughter, their mutual greetings
threw him into a profound self-pity and disgust.
When he joined Milton and Shepard, and went up the
walk under the bare-limbed maple trees, he shivered
with fear. They all seemed perfectly at home,
with the exception of himself.
Milton knowing what to expect smuggled
him into the chapel in the midst of a crowd of five
or six others, and thus he escaped the derisive applause
with which the pupils were accustomed to greet each
new-comer at the opening of a term. He gave one
quick glance at the rows of faces, and shambled awkwardly
along to his seat beside Milton, his eyes downcast.
He found courage to look around and study his fellow-students
after a little and discovered that several of them
were quite as awkward, quite as ill at ease as himself.
Milton, old pupil as he was (that
is to say, this was his second term), sat beside him
and indicated the seniors as they came in, and among
the rest pointed out Radbourn.
“He’s the high mucky-muck
o’ this shebang,” Shep whispered.
“Why so?” asked Bradley,
looking carefully at the big, smooth-faced, rather
gloomy-looking young fellow.
Shep hit his own head with his fist
in a comically significant gesture. “Brains!
What d’ ye call ’em, Milt? Correscations
of the serry beltum.”
Shepard was a short youth with thick
yellow hair, and a comically serious quality in the
twist of his long upper lip.
Milton grinned. “Convolutions
of the cerebrum, I s’pose you’re driving
at. Shep comes to school to have fun,” Milton
explained to Bradley.
“Chuss,” said Shep, by
which he meant yes; “an’ I have it, too,
betyerneck. I enter no plea, me lord”
There came a burst of applause as
a tall and attractive girl came in with her arms laden
down with books. Her intellectual face lit up
with a smile at the applause, and a pink flush came
into her pale cheek. “That’s Miss
Graham,” whispered Shepard; “she’s
all bent up on Radbourn.”
The teachers came in, the choir rose
to sing, and the exercises of the morning began.
Bradley thought Miss Graham, with her heavy-lidded,
velvety-brown eyes, looked like Miss Wilbur. Her
eyes were darker, he decided, and she was taller and
paler; in fact, the resemblance was mainly in her
manner which had the same dignity and repose.
At Milton’s suggestion Bradley
remained in his seat after the rest of the pupils
had marched out to the sound of the organ. Then
Milton introduced him to the principal, who took him
by the hand so cordially that his embarrassment was
gone in a moment. “Come and see me at eleven,”
he said. After a short talk with him in his room
a couple hours later, his work was assigned.
“You’ll be in the preparatory
department, Mr. Talcott, but if you care to do extra
work we may get you into the junior class. Jennings,
look after him a little, won’t you?”
The principal was a kind man, but
he had two hundred of these rude, awkward farmer-boys,
and he could not be expected to study each one closely
enough to discover their latent powers. Bradley
went away down town to buy his books, with a feeling
that the smile of the principal was not genuine, and
he felt also that Milton was a little ashamed of him
here in the town. Everything seemed to be going
hard with him. But his hardest trial came when
he entered the classroom at one o’clock.
He knew no one, of course, and the
long, narrow room was filled with riotous boys and
girls all much younger than himself. All the desks
seemed to be occupied and he was obliged to run the
gauntlet of the entire class in his search for a seat.
As he walked down the room so close to the wall that
he brushed the chalk of the blackboard off upon his
shoulder, he made a really ludicrous figure. All
of his fine, free, unconscious grace was gone and
his strength of limb only added to his awkwardness.
The girls were of that age where they
find the keenest delight in annoying a bashful fellow
such as they perceived this new-comer to be.
His hair had been badly barbered by Councill and his
suit of cotton diagonal, originally too small and
never a fit, was now yellow on the shoulders where
the sun had faded the analine dye, and his trousers
were so tight that they clung to the tops of his great
boots, exposing his huge feet in all their enormity
of shapeless housing. His large hands protruded
from his sleeves and were made still more noticeable
by his evident loss of their control.
“Picked too soon,” said
Nettie Russell, with a vacant stare into space, whereat
the rest shrieked with laughter. A great hot wave
of blood rushed up over Bradley, making him dizzy.
He knew that joke all too well. He looked around
blindly for a seat. As he stood there helpless,
Nettie hit him with a piece of chalk and someone threw
the eraser at his boots.
“Number twelves,” said young Brown.
“When did it get loose?”
“Does your mother know you’re out?”
“Put your hat over it,” came from all
sides.
He saw an empty chair and started
to sit down, but Nettie slipped into it before him.
He started for her seat and her brother Claude got
there apparently by mere accident just before him.
Bradley stood again indecisively, not daring to look
up, burning with rage and shame. Again someone
hit him with a piece of chalk, making a resounding
whack, and the entire class roared again in concert.
“Why, its head is wood!”
said Claude, in apparent astonishment at his own discovery.
Bradley raised his head for the first
time. There came into his eyes a look that made
Claude Russell tremble. He again approached an
empty chair and was again forestalled by young Brown.
With a bitter curse he swung his great open palm around
and laid his tormenter flat on the floor, stunned
and breathless. A silence fell on the group.
It was as if a lion had awakened with a roar of wrath.
“Come on, all o’ ye!”
he snarled through his set teeth, facing them all.
As he stood thus the absurdity of his own attitude
came upon him. They were only children, after
all. Reeking with the sweat of shame and anger
which burst from his burning skin, he reached for a
chair.
Nettie, like the little dare-devil
that she was, pulled the chair from under him, and
he saved himself from falling only by wildly clutching
the desk before him. As it was, he fell almost
into her lap and everybody shrieked with uncontrollable
laughter. In the midst of it, Miss Clayson, the
teacher, came hurrying in to silence the tumult, and
Bradley rushed from the room like a bull from the arena,
maddened with the spears of the toreador. He
snatched his hat and coat from the rack and hardly
looked up till he reached the haven of his little cellar.
He threw his cap on the floor and
for a half hour raged up and down the floor, his mortification
and shame and rage finding vent in a fit of cursing
such as he had never had in his life before. All
awkwardness was gone now. His great limbs, supple
and swift, clenched, doubled, and thrust out against
the air in unconscious lightning-swift gestures that
showed how terrible he could be when roused.
At last he grew calm enough to sit
down, and then his mood changed to the deepest dejection.
He sank into a measureless despair. A terrible
ache came into his throat.
They were right, he was a great hulking
fool. He never could be anything but a clod-hopper,
anyway. He looked down at his great hand, at
his short trousers, and the indecent ugliness of his
horrible boots, and studied himself without mercy
to himself. He acknowledged that they were hideous,
but he couldn’t help it.
Then his mind took another turn and
he went over the history of that suit. He didn’t
want it when he bought it, but he found himself like
wax, moulded by the soft, white, confidential hands
of the Jew salesman, who offered it to him as a special
favor below cost. In common with other young
men of his sort he always felt under obligation to
buy if he went into a store, even if there were nothing
there that suited him. He knew when he bought
the suit and paid eleven dollars for it that he would
always be sorry, and its cheapness now appalled him.
He always swore at himself for this
weakness before the salesman, and yet, year by year
he had been cheated in the same way. For the first
time, however, he saw his clothing in all its hideousness.
Those cruel girls and grinning boys had shown him
that clothes made the man, even in a western school.
The worst part of it was that he had been humiliated
by a girl and there was no redress. His strength
of limb was useless here.
He sat there till darkness came into
his room. He did not replenish the coal in the
stove that leered at him from the two broken doors
in front, and seemed to face him with a crazy, drunken
reel on its mis-matched legs. He was hungry,
but he sat there enjoying in a morbid way the pang
of hunger. It helped him someway to bear the sting
of his defeat.
It was the darkest hour of his life.
He swore never to go back again to that room.
He couldn’t face that crowd of grinning faces.
He turned hot and cold by turns as he thought of his
folly. He was a cursed fool for ever thinking
of trying to do anything but just dig away on a farm.
He might have known how it would be; he’d got
behind and had to be classed in with the children;
there was no help for it; he’d never go back.
The thought of Her came in
again and again, but the thought couldn’t help
him. Her face drove the last of his curses from
his lips, but it threw him into a fathomless despair,
where he no longer defined his thoughts into words.
Her face shone like a star, but it stood over
a bottomless rift in the earth and showed how impassable
its yawning barrier was.
There came a whoop outside and a scramble
at the door and somebody tumbled into the room.
“Anybody here?”
“Hello, where are you, Brad?”
He recognized Milton’s voice. “Yes,
I’m here; but wait a minute.”
“Cæsar, I guess we’ll
wait! Break our necks if we don’t,”
said the other shadow whom he now recognized as Shep
Watson. “Always live in the dark?”
They waited while he lighted the dim
little kerosene lamp on the table. “O conspiracy,
shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,”
quoted Shep in the interim.
“Been ’sleep?” asked Milton.
“No. Se’ down, anywheres,”
he added on second thought, as he realized that chairs
were limited.
“Say, Brad, come on; let’s go over t’
the society.”
“I guess not,” said Brad sullenly.
“Why not?” asked Milton, recognizing something
bitter in his voice.
“Because, I aint got any right
to go. I aint goin’ t’ school ag’in.
I’m goin’ west.”
“Why, what’s up?”
“I aint a-goin’, that’s
all. I can’t never ketch up with the rest
of you fellers.” His voice broke a little,
“an’ it aint much fun havin’ to
go in with a whole raft o’ little boys and girls.”
“Oh, say now, Brad, I wouldn’t
mind ’em if I was you,” said Milton, after
a pause. He had the delicacy not to say he had
heard the details of Bradley’s experience.
“We all have to go through ’bout the same
row o’ stumps, don’t we, Shep? The
way to do with ’em is to jest pay no ’tention
to ’em.”
But the good-will and sympathy of
the boys could not prevail upon Bradley to go with
them. He persisted in his determination to leave
school. And the boys finally went out leaving
him alone. Their influence had been good, however;
he was distinctly less bitter after they left him
and his thoughts went back to Miss Wilbur. What
would she think of him if he gave up all his plans
the first day, simply because some mischievous girls
and boys had made him absurd? When he thought
of her he felt strong enough to go back, but when
he thought of his tormentors and what he would be
obliged to endure from them, he shivered and shrank
back into despondency.
He was still fighting his battle,
when a slow step came down the stairs ending in a
sharp rap upon the door. He said, “Come
in,” and Radbourn, the most powerful and most
popular senior, entered the room. He was a good
deal of an autocrat in the town and in the school,
and took pleasure in exercising his power on behalf
of some poor devil like Bradley Talcott.
“Jennings tells me you’re
going to give it up,” he said, without preliminary
conversation.
Bradley nodded sullenly. “What’s
the use, anyhow? I might as well. I’m
too old, anyhow.”
Radbourn looked at him a moment in
silence. “Put on your hat and let’s
go outside,” he said at length, and there was
something in his voice that Bradley obeyed.
Once on the outside Radbourn took
his arm and they walked on up the street in silence
for some distance. It was still, and clear, and
frosty, and the stars burned overhead with many-colored
brilliancy.
“Now I know all about it, Talcott,
and I know just about how you feel. But all the
same you must go back there to-morrow morning.”
“It aint no use talkin’, I can’t
do it.”
“Yes, you can. You think
you can’t, but you can. A man can do anything
if he only thinks he can and tries hard. You can’t
afford to let a little thing like that upset your
plans. I understand your position exactly.
You’re at a disadvantage,” he changed his
pace suddenly, stopping Bradley. “Now,
Talcott, you’re at a disadvantage with that
suit. It makes you look like a gawk, when you’re
not. You’re a stalwart fellow, and if you’ll
invest in a new suit of clothes as Jennings did, it’ll
make all the difference in the world.”
“I can’t afford it.”
“No, that’s a mistake,
you can’t afford not to have it.
A good suit of clothes will do more to put you on
an equality with the boys than anything else you can
do for yourself. Now let’s drop in here
to see my friend, who keeps what you need, and to-morrow
I’ll call for you and take you into the class
and introduce you to Miss Clayson, and you’ll
be all right. You didn’t start right.”
When he walked in with Radbourn the
next morning and was introduced to the teacher, Nettie
Russell stared in breathless astonishmemt. He
was barbered and wore a suit which showed his splendid
length and strength of limb.
“Well said! Aint we a big
sunflower! My sakes! aint we a-coming out!”
“No moon last night.” “Must
’a ben a fire.” “He got
them with a basket and a club,” were some of
the remarks he heard.
Bradley felt the difference in the
atmosphere, and he walked to his seat with a self-possession
that astonished himself. And from that time he
was master of the situation. The girls pelted
him with chalk and marked figures on his back, but
he kept at his work. He had a firm grip on the
plow-handles now, and he didn’t look back.
They grew to respect him, at length, and some of the
girls distinctly showed their admiration. Brown
came over to get help on a sum and so did Nettie, and
when he sat down beside her she winked in triumph at
the other girls while Bradley patiently tried to explain
the problem in algebra which was his own terror.
He certainly was a handsome fellow
in a rough-angled way, and when the boys found he
could jump eleven feet and eight inches at a standing
jump, they no longer drew any distinctions between
his attainments in algebra and their own. Neither
did his poverty count against him with them.
He sawed wood in every spare hour with desperate energy
to make up for the sinful extravagance of his new
fifteen dollar suit of clothes.
He was sawing wood in an alley one
Saturday morning where he could hear a girl singing
in a bird-like way that was very charming. He
was tremendously hungry, for he had been at work since
the first faint gray light, and the smell of breakfast
that came to his senses was tantalizing.
He heard the girl’s rapid feet
moving about in the kitchen and her voice rising and
falling, pausing and beginning again as if she were
working rapidly. Then she fell silent, and he
knew she was at breakfast.
At last she opened the door and came
out along the walk with a tablecloth. She shook
her cloth, and then her singing ceased and Bradley
went on with his work.
“Hello, Brad!” called a sudden voice.
He looked up and saw Nettie Russell’s
roguish face peering over the board fence.
“Hello,” he replied, and
stood an instant in wordless surprise. “I
didn’t know you lived there.”
“Well, I do. Aint tickled
to death to find it out, I s’pose? Say,
you aint so very mad at me, are yeh?” she added
insinuatingly.
He didn’t know what to say,
so he kept silent. He noticed for the first time
how childishly round her face was!
She took a new turn. “Say, aint you hungry?”
Bradley admitted that he had eaten
an early breakfast. He did not say it was composed
of fried pork and potatoes and baker’s bread,
without tea, coffee, or milk.
The girl seemed delighted to think he was hungry.
“You wait a minute,” she
commanded, and her smiling face disappeared from the
top of the fence. Brad went to work to keep from
catching cold, wondering what she was going to do.
She reappeared soon with a fat home-made sausage and
a couple of warm biscuits which she insisted upon
his taking.
“They’re all buttered
and they’ve got sugar on ’em,”
she whispered significantly.
“Say, you eat now, while I saw,”
she commanded, coming around through the gate.
She had put on her fascinator hood,
but her hands and wrists were bare. She struggled
away on a log, putting her knee on it in a comically
resolute style.
“The saw always goes crooked,”
she said in despair. Bradley laughed at her heartily.
“Say, do you do this for fun?”
she asked, stopping to puff, her cheeks a beautiful
pink.
“No, I don’t. I do it because I’m
obliged to.”
She threw down the saw. “Well,
that beats me; I can’t saw, but I can cook.
I made them biscuits.” She challenged his
opinion, as he well knew.
“They’re first rate,”
he admitted, and they were friends. She watched
him eat with apparent satisfaction.
“Say, I can’t stay here,
I’ll freeze. Are yeh going to be here till
noon?”
“Yes.”
“Well, when I whistle you come
in and get some grub, will yeh?” Bradley smiled
back at her laughing face.
“This ain’t your folks’ wood pile.”
“What’s the difference?” she replied.
“You jest come in, will yeh?”
“Yes, I’ll come.”
“Like fun you will! Honest?” she
persisted.
“Hope to die,” he said solemnly.
“That’s the checker,”
she said, and disappeared with a click of the tongue.
Bradley worked away in a glow of cheerfulness.
It was astonishing how much this little victory over
a roguish girl meant to him. He had changed one
person’s ridicule to friendship, and it seemed
to be prophetic of other victories.
The time seemed very short that forenoon.
Once or twice Nettie came out to bring some news about
the cooking.
“Say, I’m making an apple
pie. I’m a dandy on pies and cakes.”
“I guess they would be ‘pizen’ cakes.”
She threw an imaginary club at him.
“Well, if that ain’t the
sickest old joke! You’ll go without any
pie if you get off such a thing again.”
But as dinner-time drew on he felt
more and more unwilling to go into the kitchen.
He heard her whistle, but he remained
at the saw-horse. It would do in the country,
but not here. He had no right to go in there and
eat.
There was a note of impatience in
her voice when she looked over the fence and said,
“Why don’t you come?”
“I dassant!”
“Oh, bother! What y’ ’fraid
of?”
“What business have I got to
eat your dinner? This aint your wood-pile.”
“Say, if you don’t come in I’ll I
dunno what!”
“Bring it out here, it’s warm.”
“I won’t do it; you’ve
got to come in; the old man’s gone up town and
mother won’t throw you out. There isn’t
anybody in the kitchen. Come on now,” she
pleaded.
Bradley followed her into the house,
feeling a good deal like a very large dog, very hungry,
who had followed a child’s invitation into the
parlor, and felt out of place.
He sat down by the fire, and silently
ate what she placed before him, while she chattered
away in high glee. When Mrs. Russell came in,
Nettie did not take the trouble to introduce him to
her mother, who moved about the room in a wordless
way, smiling a little about the eyes. She was
entirely subject to her daughter. She heard them
discussing lessons and concluded they were classmates.
Bradley went back to his wood-sawing
and soon finished the job. As he shouldered his
saw and saw-buck, Nettie came out and peered over the
fence again.
“Say, goin’ to attend the social Monday?”
“Guess not. I ain’t much on such
things.”
“It’s lots o’ fun;
we spin the platter and all kinds o’ things.
I’m goin’,” she looked archly inviting.
Bradley colored. He was not astute,
but hints like this were not far from kicks.
He looked down at his saw as he said, “I guess
I won’t go, I’ve got to study.”
“Well, good-by,” she said
without mortification. She was so much of a child
yet that she could be jilted without keen pain.
“See y’ Monday,” she said as she
ran into the house.
Someway Bradley’s life was lightened
by that day’s experience. He went home
to his bleak little room in a resolute mood. He
sat down at his table upon which lay his algebra,
determined to prepare Monday’s lessons, but
the pencil fell from his hand, his head sank down and
lay upon the open page before him. Wood sawing
had worn him down and algebra had made him sleep.