CHAPTER 2. Spires and Gargoyles 1 page

At first Amory noticed only the wealth of sunshine creeping across the

long, green swards, dancing on the leaded window-panes, and swimming

around the tops of spires and towers and battlemented walls.

Gradually he realized that he was really walking up University Place,

self-conscious about his suitcase, developing a new tendency to glare

straight ahead when he passed any one. Several times he could have sworn

that men turned to look at him critically. He wondered vaguely if there

was something the matter with his clothes, and wished he had shaved

that morning on the train. He felt unnecessarily stiff and awkward

among these white-flannelled, bareheaded youths, who must be juniors and

seniors, judging from the savoir faire with which they strolled.

He found that 12 University Place was a large, dilapidated mansion, at

present apparently uninhabited, though he knew it housed usually a dozen

freshmen. After a hurried skirmish with his landlady he sallied out on

a tour of exploration, but he had gone scarcely a block when he became

horribly conscious that he must be the only man in town who was wearing

a hat. He returned hurriedly to 12 University, left his derby,

and, emerging bareheaded, loitered down Nassau Street, stopping to

investigate a display of athletic photographs in a store window,

including a large one of Allenby, the football captain, and next

attracted by the sign "Jigger Shop" over a confectionary window. This

sounded familiar, so he sauntered in and took a seat on a high stool.

"Chocolate sundae," he told a colored person.

"Double chocolate jiggah? Anything else?"

"Why--yes."

"Bacon bun?"

"Why--yes."

He munched four of these, finding them of pleasing savor, and then

consumed another double-chocolate jigger before ease descended upon him.

After a cursory inspection of the pillow-cases, leather pennants, and

Gibson Girls that lined the walls, he left, and continued along Nassau

Street with his hands in his pockets. Gradually he was learning to

distinguish between upper classmen and entering men, even though the

freshman cap would not appear until the following Monday. Those who were

too obviously, too nervously at home were freshmen, for as each train

brought a new contingent it was immediately absorbed into the hatless,

white-shod, book-laden throng, whose function seemed to be to drift

endlessly up and down the street, emitting great clouds of smoke

from brand-new pipes. By afternoon Amory realized that now the

newest arrivals were taking him for an upper classman, and he tried

conscientiously to look both pleasantly blasй and casually critical,

which was as near as he could analyze the prevalent facial expression.

At five o'clock he felt the need of hearing his own voice, so he

retreated to his house to see if any one else had arrived. Having

climbed the rickety stairs he scrutinized his room resignedly,

concluding that it was hopeless to attempt any more inspired decoration

than class banners and tiger pictures. There was a tap at the door.

"Come in!"

A slim face with gray eyes and a humorous smile appeared in the doorway.

"Got a hammer?"

"No--sorry. Maybe Mrs. Twelve, or whatever she goes by, has one."

The stranger advanced into the room.

"You an inmate of this asylum?"

Amory nodded.

"Awful barn for the rent we pay."

Amory had to agree that it was.

"I thought of the campus," he said, "but they say there's so few

freshmen that they're lost. Have to sit around and study for something

to do."

The gray-eyed man decided to introduce himself.

"My name's Holiday."

"Blaine's my name."

They shook hands with the fashionable low swoop. Amory grinned.

"Where'd you prep?"

"Andover--where did you?"

"St. Regis's."

"Oh, did you? I had a cousin there."

They discussed the cousin thoroughly, and then Holiday announced that he

was to meet his brother for dinner at six.

"Come along and have a bite with us."

"All right."

At the Kenilworth Amory met Burne Holiday--he of the gray eyes was

Kerry--and during a limpid meal of thin soup and anaemic vegetables they

stared at the other freshmen, who sat either in small groups looking

very ill at ease, or in large groups seeming very much at home.

"I hear Commons is pretty bad," said Amory.

"That's the rumor. But you've got to eat there--or pay anyways."

"Crime!"

"Imposition!"

"Oh, at Princeton you've got to swallow everything the first year. It's

like a damned prep school."

Amory agreed.

"Lot of pep, though," he insisted. "I wouldn't have gone to Yale for a

million."

"Me either."

"You going out for anything?" inquired Amory of the elder brother.

"Not me--Burne here is going out for the Prince--the Daily Princetonian,

you know."

"Yes, I know."

"You going out for anything?"

"Why--yes. I'm going to take a whack at freshman football."

"Play at St. Regis's?"

"Some," admitted Amory depreciatingly, "but I'm getting so damned thin."

"You're not thin."

"Well, I used to be stocky last fall."

"Oh!"

After supper they attended the movies, where Amory was fascinated by the

glib comments of a man in front of him, as well as by the wild yelling

and shouting.

"Yoho!"

"Oh, honey-baby--you're so big and strong, but oh, so gentle!"

"Clinch!"

"Oh, Clinch!"

"Kiss her, kiss 'at lady, quick!"

"Oh-h-h--!"

A group began whistling "By the Sea," and the audience took it up

noisily. This was followed by an indistinguishable song that included

much stamping and then by an endless, incoherent dirge.

"Oh-h-h-h-h

She works in a Jam Factoree

And--that-may-be-all-right

But you can't-fool-me

For I know--DAMN--WELL

That she DON'T-make-jam-all-night!

Oh-h-h-h!"

As they pushed out, giving and receiving curious impersonal glances,

Amory decided that he liked the movies, wanted to enjoy them as the row

of upper classmen in front had enjoyed them, with their arms along the

backs of the seats, their comments Gaelic and caustic, their attitude a

mixture of critical wit and tolerant amusement.

"Want a sundae--I mean a jigger?" asked Kerry.

"Sure."

They suppered heavily and then, still sauntering, eased back to 12.

"Wonderful night."

"It's a whiz."

"You men going to unpack?"

"Guess so. Come on, Burne."

Amory decided to sit for a while on the front steps, so he bade them

good night.

The great tapestries of trees had darkened to ghosts back at the last

edge of twilight. The early moon had drenched the arches with pale blue,

and, weaving over the night, in and out of the gossamer rifts of moon,

swept a song, a song with more than a hint of sadness, infinitely

transient, infinitely regretful.

He remembered that an alumnus of the nineties had told him of one of

Booth Tarkington's amusements: standing in mid-campus in the small hours

and singing tenor songs to the stars, arousing mingled emotions in the

couched undergraduates according to the sentiment of their moods.

Now, far down the shadowy line of University Place a white-clad phalanx

broke the gloom, and marching figures, white-shirted, white-trousered,

swung rhythmically up the street, with linked arms and heads thrown

back:

"Going back--going back,

Going--back--to--Nas-sau--Hall,

Going back--going back--

To the--Best--Old--Place--of--All.

Going back--going back,

From all--this--earth-ly--ball,

We'll--clear--the--track--as--we--go--back--

Going--back--to--Nas-sau--Hall!"

Amory closed his eyes as the ghostly procession drew near. The song

soared so high that all dropped out except the tenors, who bore the

melody triumphantly past the danger-point and relinquished it to the

fantastic chorus. Then Amory opened his eyes, half afraid that sight

would spoil the rich illusion of harmony.

He sighed eagerly. There at the head of the white platoon marched

Allenby, the football captain, slim and defiant, as if aware that this

year the hopes of the college rested on him, that his hundred-and-sixty

pounds were expected to dodge to victory through the heavy blue and

crimson lines.

Fascinated, Amory watched each rank of linked arms as it came abreast,

the faces indistinct above the polo shirts, the voices blent in a paean

of triumph--and then the procession passed through shadowy Campbell

Arch, and the voices grew fainter as it wound eastward over the campus.

The minutes passed and Amory sat there very quietly. He regretted the

rule that would forbid freshmen to be outdoors after curfew, for he

wanted to ramble through the shadowy scented lanes, where Witherspoon

brooded like a dark mother over Whig and Clio, her Attic children, where

the black Gothic snake of Little curled down to Cuyler and Patton, these

in turn flinging the mystery out over the placid slope rolling to the

lake.

*****

Princeton of the daytime filtered slowly into his consciousness--West

and Reunion, redolent of the sixties, Seventy-nine Hall, brick-red and

arrogant, Upper and Lower Pyne, aristocratic Elizabethan ladies not

quite content to live among shopkeepers, and, topping all, climbing with

clear blue aspiration, the great dreaming spires of Holder and Cleveland

towers.

From the first he loved Princeton--its lazy beauty, its half-grasped

significance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome,

prosperous big-game crowds, and under it all the air of struggle that

pervaded his class. From the day when, wild-eyed and exhausted, the

jerseyed freshmen sat in the gymnasium and elected some one from Hill

School class president, a Lawrenceville celebrity vice-president, a

hockey star from St. Paul's secretary, up until the end of sophomore

year it never ceased, that breathless social system, that worship,

seldom named, never really admitted, of the bogey "Big Man."

First it was schools, and Amory, alone from St. Regis', watched the

crowds form and widen and form again; St. Paul's, Hill, Pomfret, eating

at certain tacitly reserved tables in Commons, dressing in their own

corners of the gymnasium, and drawing unconsciously about them a barrier

of the slightly less important but socially ambitious to protect them

from the friendly, rather puzzled high-school element. From the

moment he realized this Amory resented social barriers as artificial

distinctions made by the strong to bolster up their weak retainers and

keep out the almost strong.

Having decided to be one of the gods of the class, he reported

for freshman football practice, but in the second week, playing

quarter-back, already paragraphed in corners of the Princetonian, he

wrenched his knee seriously enough to put him out for the rest of the

season. This forced him to retire and consider the situation.

"12 Univee" housed a dozen miscellaneous question-marks. There were

three or four inconspicuous and quite startled boys from Lawrenceville,

two amateur wild men from a New York private school (Kerry Holiday

christened them the "plebeian drunks"), a Jewish youth, also from New

York, and, as compensation for Amory, the two Holidays, to whom he took

an instant fancy.

The Holidays were rumored twins, but really the dark-haired one, Kerry,

was a year older than his blond brother, Burne. Kerry was tall, with

humorous gray eyes, and a sudden, attractive smile; he became at once

the mentor of the house, reaper of ears that grew too high, censor of

conceit, vendor of rare, satirical humor. Amory spread the table of

their future friendship with all his ideas of what college should and

did mean. Kerry, not inclined as yet to take things seriously, chided

him gently for being curious at this inopportune time about the

intricacies of the social system, but liked him and was both interested

and amused.

Burne, fair-haired, silent, and intent, appeared in the house only as a

busy apparition, gliding in quietly at night and off again in the

early morning to get up his work in the library--he was out for the

Princetonian, competing furiously against forty others for the coveted

first place. In December he came down with diphtheria, and some one

else won the competition, but, returning to college in February,

he dauntlessly went after the prize again. Necessarily, Amory's

acquaintance with him was in the way of three-minute chats, walking

to and from lectures, so he failed to penetrate Burne's one absorbing

interest and find what lay beneath it.

Amory was far from contented. He missed the place he had won at St.

Regis', the being known and admired, yet Princeton stimulated him, and

there were many things ahead calculated to arouse the Machiavelli latent

in him, could he but insert a wedge. The upper-class clubs, concerning

which he had pumped a reluctant graduate during the previous summer,

excited his curiosity: Ivy, detached and breathlessly aristocratic;

Cottage, an impressive milange of brilliant adventurers and well-dressed

philanderers; Tiger Inn, broad-shouldered and athletic, vitalized by

an honest elaboration of prep-school standards; Cap and Gown,

anti-alcoholic, faintly religious and politically powerful; flamboyant

Colonial; literary Quadrangle; and the dozen others, varying in age and

position.

Anything which brought an under classman into too glaring a light was

labelled with the damning brand of "running it out." The movies thrived

on caustic comments, but the men who made them were generally running

it out; talking of clubs was running it out; standing for anything

very strongly, as, for instance, drinking parties or teetotalling,

was running it out; in short, being personally conspicuous was not

tolerated, and the influential man was the non-committal man, until at

club elections in sophomore year every one should be sewed up in some

bag for the rest of his college career.

Amory found that writing for the Nassau Literary Magazine would get him

nothing, but that being on the board of the Daily Princetonian would

get any one a good deal. His vague desire to do immortal acting with

the English Dramatic Association faded out when he found that the most

ingenious brains and talents were concentrated upon the Triangle Club, a

musical comedy organization that every year took a great Christmas trip.

In the meanwhile, feeling strangely alone and restless in Commons, with

new desires and ambitions stirring in his mind, he let the first term go

by between an envy of the embryo successes and a puzzled fretting with

Kerry as to why they were not accepted immediately among the elite of

the class.

Many afternoons they lounged in the windows of 12 Univee and watched

the class pass to and from Commons, noting satellites already attaching

themselves to the more prominent, watching the lonely grind with his

hurried step and downcast eye, envying the happy security of the big

school groups.

"We're the damned middle class, that's what!" he complained to Kerry one

day as he lay stretched out on the sofa, consuming a family of Fatimas

with contemplative precision.

"Well, why not? We came to Princeton so we could feel that way toward

the small colleges--have it on 'em, more self-confidence, dress better,

cut a swathe--"

"Oh, it isn't that I mind the glittering caste system," admitted Amory.

"I like having a bunch of hot cats on top, but gosh, Kerry, I've got to

be one of them."

"But just now, Amory, you're only a sweaty bourgeois."

Amory lay for a moment without speaking.

"I won't be--long," he said finally. "But I hate to get anywhere by

working for it. I'll show the marks, don't you know."

"Honorable scars." Kerry craned his neck suddenly at the street.

"There's Langueduc, if you want to see what he looks like--and Humbird

just behind."

Amory rose dynamically and sought the windows.

"Oh," he said, scrutinizing these worthies, "Humbird looks like a

knock-out, but this Langueduc--he's the rugged type, isn't he? I

distrust that sort. All diamonds look big in the rough."

"Well," said Kerry, as the excitement subsided, "you're a literary

genius. It's up to you."

"I wonder"--Amory paused--"if I could be. I honestly think so sometimes.

That sounds like the devil, and I wouldn't say it to anybody except

you."

"Well--go ahead. Let your hair grow and write poems like this guy

D'Invilliers in the Lit."

Amory reached lazily at a pile of magazines on the table.

"Read his latest effort?"

"Never miss 'em. They're rare."

Amory glanced through the issue.

"Hello!" he said in surprise, "he's a freshman, isn't he?"

"Yeah."

"Listen to this! My God!

"'A serving lady speaks:

Black velvet trails its folds over the day,

White tapers, prisoned in their silver frames,

Wave their thin flames like shadows in the wind,

Pia, Pompia, come--come away--'

"Now, what the devil does that mean?"

"It's a pantry scene."

"'Her toes are stiffened like a stork's in flight;

She's laid upon her bed, on the white sheets,

Her hands pressed on her smooth bust like a saint,

Bella Cunizza, come into the light!'

"My gosh, Kerry, what in hell is it all about? I swear I don't get him

at all, and I'm a literary bird myself."

"It's pretty tricky," said Kerry, "only you've got to think of hearses

and stale milk when you read it. That isn't as pash as some of them."

Amory tossed the magazine on the table.

"Well," he sighed, "I sure am up in the air. I know I'm not a regular

fellow, yet I loathe anybody else that isn't. I can't decide whether to

cultivate my mind and be a great dramatist, or to thumb my nose at the

Golden Treasury and be a Princeton slicker."

"Why decide?" suggested Kerry. "Better drift, like me. I'm going to sail

into prominence on Burne's coat-tails."

"I can't drift--I want to be interested. I want to pull strings, even

for somebody else, or be Princetonian chairman or Triangle president. I

want to be admired, Kerry."

"You're thinking too much about yourself."

Amory sat up at this.

"No. I'm thinking about you, too. We've got to get out and mix around

the class right now, when it's fun to be a snob. I'd like to bring a

sardine to the prom in June, for instance, but I wouldn't do it unless

I could be damn debonaire about it--introduce her to all the prize

parlor-snakes, and the football captain, and all that simple stuff."

"Amory," said Kerry impatiently, "you're just going around in a circle.

If you want to be prominent, get out and try for something; if you

don't, just take it easy." He yawned. "Come on, let's let the smoke

drift off. We'll go down and watch football practice."

*****

Amory gradually accepted this point of view, decided that next fall

would inaugurate his career, and relinquished himself to watching Kerry

extract joy from 12 Univee.

They filled the Jewish youth's bed with lemon pie; they put out the gas

all over the house every night by blowing into the jet in Amory's room,

to the bewilderment of Mrs. Twelve and the local plumber; they set up

the effects of the plebeian drunks--pictures, books, and furniture--in

the bathroom, to the confusion of the pair, who hazily discovered

the transposition on their return from a Trenton spree; they were

disappointed beyond measure when the plebeian drunks decided to take it

as a joke; they played red-dog and twenty-one and jackpot from dinner

to dawn, and on the occasion of one man's birthday persuaded him to buy

sufficient champagne for a hilarious celebration. The donor of the party

having remained sober, Kerry and Amory accidentally dropped him down two

flights of stairs and called, shame-faced and penitent, at the infirmary

all the following week.

"Say, who are all these women?" demanded Kerry one day, protesting

at the size of Amory's mail. "I've been looking at the postmarks

lately--Farmington and Dobbs and Westover and Dana Hall--what's the

idea?"

Amory grinned.

"All from the Twin Cities." He named them off. "There's Marylyn De

Witt--she's pretty, got a car of her own and that's damn convenient;

there's Sally Weatherby--she's getting too fat; there's Myra St. Claire,

she's an old flame, easy to kiss if you like it--"

"What line do you throw 'em?" demanded Kerry. "I've tried everything,

and the mad wags aren't even afraid of me."

"You're the 'nice boy' type," suggested Amory.

"That's just it. Mother always feels the girl is safe if she's with me.

Honestly, it's annoying. If I start to hold somebody's hand, they laugh

at me, and let me, just as if it wasn't part of them. As soon as I get

hold of a hand they sort of disconnect it from the rest of them."

"Sulk," suggested Amory. "Tell 'em you're wild and have 'em reform

you--go home furious--come back in half an hour--startle 'em."

Kerry shook his head.

"No chance. I wrote a St. Timothy girl a really loving letter last year.

In one place I got rattled and said: 'My God, how I love you!' She took

a nail scissors, clipped out the 'My God' and showed the rest of the

letter all over school. Doesn't work at all. I'm just 'good old Kerry'

and all that rot."

Amory smiled and tried to picture himself as "good old Amory." He failed

completely.

February dripped snow and rain, the cyclonic freshman mid-years passed,

and life in 12 Univee continued interesting if not purposeful. Once a

day Amory indulged in a club sandwich, cornflakes, and Julienne potatoes

at "Joe's," accompanied usually by Kerry or Alec Connage. The latter was

a quiet, rather aloof slicker from Hotchkiss, who lived next door and

shared the same enforced singleness as Amory, due to the fact that

his entire class had gone to Yale. "Joe's" was unaesthetic and faintly

unsanitary, but a limitless charge account could be opened there, a

convenience that Amory appreciated. His father had been experimenting

with mining stocks and, in consequence, his allowance, while liberal,

was not at all what he had expected.

"Joe's" had the additional advantage of seclusion from curious

upper-class eyes, so at four each afternoon Amory, accompanied by friend

or book, went up to experiment with his digestion. One day in March,

finding that all the tables were occupied, he slipped into a chair

opposite a freshman who bent intently over a book at the last table.

They nodded briefly. For twenty minutes Amory sat consuming bacon buns

and reading "Mrs. Warren's Profession" (he had discovered Shaw quite

by accident while browsing in the library during mid-years); the other

freshman, also intent on his volume, meanwhile did away with a trio of

chocolate malted milks.

By and by Amory's eyes wandered curiously to his fellow-luncher's book.

He spelled out the name and title upside down--"Marpessa," by Stephen

Phillips. This meant nothing to him, his metrical education having been

confined to such Sunday classics as "Come into the Garden, Maude," and

what morsels of Shakespeare and Milton had been recently forced upon

him.

Moved to address his vis-a-vis, he simulated interest in his book for a

moment, and then exclaimed aloud as if involuntarily:

"Ha! Great stuff!"

The other freshman looked up and Amory registered artificial

embarrassment.

"Are you referring to your bacon buns?" His cracked, kindly voice

went well with the large spectacles and the impression of a voluminous

keenness that he gave.

"No," Amory answered. "I was referring to Bernard Shaw." He turned the

book around in explanation.

"I've never read any Shaw. I've always meant to." The boy paused and

then continued: "Did you ever read Stephen Phillips, or do you like

poetry?"

"Yes, indeed," Amory affirmed eagerly. "I've never read much of

Phillips, though." (He had never heard of any Phillips except the late

David Graham.)

"It's pretty fair, I think. Of course he's a Victorian." They sallied

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 634