THE EGOTIST DOWN

Amory's two years at St. Regis', though in turn painful and triumphant,

had as little real significance in his own life as the American "prep"

school, crushed as it is under the heel of the universities, has

to American life in general. We have no Eton to create the

self-consciousness of a governing class; we have, instead, clean,

flaccid and innocuous preparatory schools.

He went all wrong at the start, was generally considered both conceited

and arrogant, and universally detested. He played football intensely,

alternating a reckless brilliancy with a tendency to keep himself as

safe from hazard as decency would permit. In a wild panic he backed out

of a fight with a boy his own size, to a chorus of scorn, and a week

later, in desperation, picked a battle with another boy very much

bigger, from which he emerged badly beaten, but rather proud of himself.

He was resentful against all those in authority over him, and this,

combined with a lazy indifference toward his work, exasperated every

master in school. He grew discouraged and imagined himself a pariah;

took to sulking in corners and reading after lights. With a dread of

being alone he attached a few friends, but since they were not among

the elite of the school, he used them simply as mirrors of himself,

audiences before which he might do that posing absolutely essential to

him. He was unbearably lonely, desperately unhappy.

There were some few grains of comfort. Whenever Amory was submerged,

his vanity was the last part to go below the surface, so he could still

enjoy a comfortable glow when "Wookey-wookey," the deaf old housekeeper,

told him that he was the best-looking boy she had ever seen. It had

pleased him to be the lightest and youngest man on the first football

squad; it pleased him when Doctor Dougall told him at the end of a

heated conference that he could, if he wished, get the best marks in

school. But Doctor Dougall was wrong. It was temperamentally impossible

for Amory to get the best marks in school.

Miserable, confined to bounds, unpopular with both faculty and

students--that was Amory's first term. But at Christmas he had returned

to Minneapolis, tight-lipped and strangely jubilant.

"Oh, I was sort of fresh at first," he told Frog Parker patronizingly,

"but I got along fine--lightest man on the squad. You ought to go away

to school, Froggy. It's great stuff."

*****

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 738