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 blasé 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
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