CHAPTER 2. Spires and Gargoyles 7 page

next recollected himself he had paid the hotel bill and was stepping

into a taxi at the door. It was raining torrents.

On the train for Princeton he saw no one he knew, only a crowd of

fagged-looking Philadelphians. The presence of a painted woman across

the aisle filled him with a fresh burst of sickness and he changed to

another car, tried to concentrate on an article in a popular magazine.

He found himself reading the same paragraphs over and over, so he

abandoned this attempt and leaning over wearily pressed his hot forehead

against the damp window-pane. The car, a smoker, was hot and stuffy with

most of the smells of the state's alien population; he opened a window

and shivered against the cloud of fog that drifted in over him. The two

hours' ride were like days, and he nearly cried aloud with joy when the

towers of Princeton loomed up beside him and the yellow squares of light

filtered through the blue rain.

Tom was standing in the centre of the room, pensively relighting a

cigar-stub. Amory fancied he looked rather relieved on seeing him.

"Had a hell of a dream about you last night," came in the cracked voice

through the cigar smoke. "I had an idea you were in some trouble."

"Don't tell me about it!" Amory almost shrieked. "Don't say a word; I'm

tired and pepped out."

Tom looked at him queerly and then sank into a chair and opened his

Italian note-book. Amory threw his coat and hat on the floor, loosened

his collar, and took a Wells novel at random from the shelf. "Wells is

sane," he thought, "and if he won't do I'll read Rupert Brooke."

Half an hour passed. Outside the wind came up, and Amory started as

the wet branches moved and clawed with their finger-nails at the

window-pane. Tom was deep in his work, and inside the room only the

occasional scratch of a match or the rustle of leather as they shifted

in their chairs broke the stillness. Then like a zigzag of lightning

came the change. Amory sat bolt upright, frozen cold in his chair. Tom

was looking at him with his mouth drooping, eyes fixed.

"God help us!" Amory cried.

"Oh, my heavens!" shouted Tom, "look behind!" Quick as a flash Amory

whirled around. He saw nothing but the dark window-pane. "It's gone

now," came Tom's voice after a second in a still terror. "Something was

looking at you."

Trembling violently, Amory dropped into his chair again.

"I've got to tell you," he said. "I've had one hell of an experience.

I think I've--I've seen the devil or--something like him. What face did

you just see?--or no," he added quickly, "don't tell me!"

And he gave Tom the story. It was midnight when he finished, and after

that, with all lights burning, two sleepy, shivering boys read to each

other from "The New Machiavelli," until dawn came up out of Witherspoon

Hall, and the Princetonian fell against the door, and the May birds

hailed the sun on last night's rain.

CHAPTER 4. Narcissus Off Duty

During Princeton's transition period, that is, during Amory's last

two years there, while he saw it change and broaden and live up to its

Gothic beauty by better means than night parades, certain individuals

arrived who stirred it to its plethoric depths. Some of them had been

freshmen, and wild freshmen, with Amory; some were in the class below;

and it was in the beginning of his last year and around small tables at

the Nassau Inn that they began questioning aloud the institutions that

Amory and countless others before him had questioned so long in secret.

First, and partly by accident, they struck on certain books, a definite

type of biographical novel that Amory christened "quest" books. In the

"quest" book the hero set off in life armed with the best weapons and

avowedly intending to use them as such weapons are usually used, to push

their possessors ahead as selfishly and blindly as possible, but the

heroes of the "quest" books discovered that there might be a more

magnificent use for them. "None Other Gods," "Sinister Street," and "The

Research Magnificent" were examples of such books; it was the latter

of these three that gripped Burne Holiday and made him wonder in the

beginning of senior year how much it was worth while being a diplomatic

autocrat around his club on Prospect Avenue and basking in the high

lights of class office. It was distinctly through the channels of

aristocracy that Burne found his way. Amory, through Kerry, had had a

vague drifting acquaintance with him, but not until January of senior

year did their friendship commence.

"Heard the latest?" said Tom, coming in late one drizzly evening with

that triumphant air he always wore after a successful conversational

bout.

"No. Somebody flunked out? Or another ship sunk?"

"Worse than that. About one-third of the junior class are going to

resign from their clubs."

"What!"

"Actual fact!"

"Why!"

"Spirit of reform and all that. Burne Holiday is behind it. The club

presidents are holding a meeting to-night to see if they can find a

joint means of combating it."

"Well, what's the idea of the thing?"

"Oh, clubs injurious to Princeton democracy; cost a lot; draw social

lines, take time; the regular line you get sometimes from disappointed

sophomores. Woodrow thought they should be abolished and all that."

"But this is the real thing?"

"Absolutely. I think it'll go through."

"For Pete's sake, tell me more about it."

"Well," began Tom, "it seems that the idea developed simultaneously in

several heads. I was talking to Burne awhile ago, and he claims that

it's a logical result if an intelligent person thinks long enough

about the social system. They had a 'discussion crowd' and the point of

abolishing the clubs was brought up by some one--everybody there leaped

at it--it had been in each one's mind, more or less, and it just needed

a spark to bring it out."

"Fine! I swear I think it'll be most entertaining. How do they feel up

at Cap and Gown?"

"Wild, of course. Every one's been sitting and arguing and swearing and

getting mad and getting sentimental and getting brutal. It's the same at

all the clubs; I've been the rounds. They get one of the radicals in the

corner and fire questions at him."

"How do the radicals stand up?"

"Oh, moderately well. Burne's a damn good talker, and so obviously

sincere that you can't get anywhere with him. It's so evident that

resigning from his club means so much more to him than preventing it

does to us that I felt futile when I argued; finally took a position

that was brilliantly neutral. In fact, I believe Burne thought for a

while that he'd converted me."

"And you say almost a third of the junior class are going to resign?"

"Call it a fourth and be safe."

"Lord--who'd have thought it possible!"

There was a brisk knock at the door, and Burne himself came in. "Hello,

Amory--hello, Tom."

Amory rose.

"'Evening, Burne. Don't mind if I seem to rush; I'm going to Renwick's."

Burne turned to him quickly.

"You probably know what I want to talk to Tom about, and it isn't a bit

private. I wish you'd stay."

"I'd be glad to." Amory sat down again, and as Burne perched on a table

and launched into argument with Tom, he looked at this revolutionary

more carefully than he ever had before. Broad-browed and strong-chinned,

with a fineness in the honest gray eyes that were like Kerry's,

Burne was a man who gave an immediate impression of bigness and

security--stubborn, that was evident, but his stubbornness wore no

stolidity, and when he had talked for five minutes Amory knew that this

keen enthusiasm had in it no quality of dilettantism.

The intense power Amory felt later in Burne Holiday differed from the

admiration he had had for Humbird. This time it began as purely a

mental interest. With other men of whom he had thought as primarily

first-class, he had been attracted first by their personalities, and

in Burne he missed that immediate magnetism to which he usually

swore allegiance. But that night Amory was struck by Burne's intense

earnestness, a quality he was accustomed to associate only with the

dread stupidity, and by the great enthusiasm that struck dead chords in

his heart. Burne stood vaguely for a land Amory hoped he was drifting

toward--and it was almost time that land was in sight. Tom and Amory and

Alec had reached an impasse; never did they seem to have new experiences

in common, for Tom and Alec had been as blindly busy with their

committees and boards as Amory had been blindly idling, and the things

they had for dissection--college, contemporary personality and the

like--they had hashed and rehashed for many a frugal conversational

meal.

That night they discussed the clubs until twelve, and, in the main, they

agreed with Burne. To the roommates it did not seem such a vital subject

as it had in the two years before, but the logic of Burne's objections

to the social system dovetailed so completely with everything they had

thought, that they questioned rather than argued, and envied the sanity

that enabled this man to stand out so against all traditions.

Then Amory branched off and found that Burne was deep in other things

as well. Economics had interested him and he was turning socialist.

Pacifism played in the back of his mind, and he read The Masses and

Lyoff Tolstoi faithfully.

"How about religion?" Amory asked him.

"Don't know. I'm in a muddle about a lot of things--I've just discovered

that I've a mind, and I'm starting to read."

"Read what?"

"Everything. I have to pick and choose, of course, but mostly things to

make me think. I'm reading the four gospels now, and the 'Varieties of

Religious Experience.'"

"What chiefly started you?"

"Wells, I guess, and Tolstoi, and a man named Edward Carpenter. I've

been reading for over a year now--on a few lines, on what I consider the

essential lines."

"Poetry?"

"Well, frankly, not what you call poetry, or for your reasons--you two

write, of course, and look at things differently. Whitman is the man

that attracts me."

"Whitman?"

"Yes; he's a definite ethical force."

"Well, I'm ashamed to say that I'm a blank on the subject of Whitman.

How about you, Tom?"

Tom nodded sheepishly.

"Well," continued Burne, "you may strike a few poems that are tiresome,

but I mean the mass of his work. He's tremendous--like Tolstoi. They

both look things in the face, and, somehow, different as they are, stand

for somewhat the same things."

"You have me stumped, Burne," Amory admitted. "I've read 'Anna Karenina'

and the 'Kreutzer Sonata' of course, but Tolstoi is mostly in the

original Russian as far as I'm concerned."

"He's the greatest man in hundreds of years," cried Burne

enthusiastically. "Did you ever see a picture of that shaggy old head of

his?"

They talked until three, from biology to organized religion, and when

Amory crept shivering into bed it was with his mind aglow with ideas

and a sense of shock that some one else had discovered the path he might

have followed. Burne Holiday was so evidently developing--and Amory

had considered that he was doing the same. He had fallen into a deep

cynicism over what had crossed his path, plotted the imperfectability of

man and read Shaw and Chesterton enough to keep his mind from the edges

of decadence--now suddenly all his mental processes of the last year and

a half seemed stale and futile--a petty consummation of himself... and

like a sombre background lay that incident of the spring before, that

filled half his nights with a dreary terror and made him unable to pray.

He was not even a Catholic, yet that was the only ghost of a code that

he had, the gaudy, ritualistic, paradoxical Catholicism whose prophet

was Chesterton, whose claqueurs were such reformed rakes of literature

as Huysmans and Bourget, whose American sponsor was Ralph Adams Cram,

with his adulation of thirteenth-century cathedrals--a Catholicism which

Amory found convenient and ready-made, without priest or sacraments or

sacrifice.

He could not sleep, so he turned on his reading-lamp and, taking down

the "Kreutzer Sonata," searched it carefully for the germs of Burne's

enthusiasm. Being Burne was suddenly so much realler than being clever.

Yet he sighed... here were other possible clay feet.

He thought back through two years, of Burne as a hurried, nervous

freshman, quite submerged in his brother's personality. Then he

remembered an incident of sophomore year, in which Burne had been

suspected of the leading role.

Dean Hollister had been heard by a large group arguing with a

taxi-driver, who had driven him from the junction. In the course of the

altercation the dean remarked that he "might as well buy the taxicab."

He paid and walked off, but next morning he entered his private office

to find the taxicab itself in the space usually occupied by his desk,

bearing a sign which read "Property of Dean Hollister. Bought and Paid

for."... It took two expert mechanics half a day to dissemble it into

its minutest parts and remove it, which only goes to prove the rare

energy of sophomore humor under efficient leadership.

Then again, that very fall, Burne had caused a sensation. A certain

Phyllis Styles, an intercollegiate prom-trotter, had failed to get her

yearly invitation to the Harvard-Princeton game.

Jesse Ferrenby had brought her to a smaller game a few weeks before,

and had pressed Burne into service--to the ruination of the latter's

misogyny.

"Are you coming to the Harvard game?" Burne had asked indiscreetly,

merely to make conversation.

"If you ask me," cried Phyllis quickly.

"Of course I do," said Burne feebly. He was unversed in the arts of

Phyllis, and was sure that this was merely a vapid form of kidding.

Before an hour had passed he knew that he was indeed involved. Phyllis

had pinned him down and served him up, informed him the train she was

arriving by, and depressed him thoroughly. Aside from loathing Phyllis,

he had particularly wanted to stag that game and entertain some Harvard

friends.

"She'll see," he informed a delegation who arrived in his room to josh

him. "This will be the last game she ever persuades any young innocent

to take her to!"

"But, Burne--why did you _invite_ her if you didn't want her?"

"Burne, you _know_ you're secretly mad about her--that's the _real_

trouble."

"What can _you_ do, Burne? What can _you_ do against Phyllis?"

But Burne only shook his head and muttered threats which consisted

largely of the phrase: "She'll see, she'll see!"

The blithesome Phyllis bore her twenty-five summers gayly from the

train, but on the platform a ghastly sight met her eyes. There were

Burne and Fred Sloane arrayed to the last dot like the lurid figures

on college posters. They had bought flaring suits with huge peg-top

trousers and gigantic padded shoulders. On their heads were rakish

college hats, pinned up in front and sporting bright orange-and-black

bands, while from their celluloid collars blossomed flaming orange ties.

They wore black arm-bands with orange "P's," and carried canes

flying Princeton pennants, the effect completed by socks and peeping

handkerchiefs in the same color motifs. On a clanking chain they led a

large, angry tom-cat, painted to represent a tiger.

A good half of the station crowd was already staring at them, torn

between horrified pity and riotous mirth, and as Phyllis, with her

svelte jaw dropping, approached, the pair bent over and emitted a

college cheer in loud, far-carrying voices, thoughtfully adding the

name "Phyllis" to the end. She was vociferously greeted and escorted

enthusiastically across the campus, followed by half a hundred village

urchins--to the stifled laughter of hundreds of alumni and visitors,

half of whom had no idea that this was a practical joke, but thought

that Burne and Fred were two varsity sports showing their girl a

collegiate time.

Phyllis's feelings as she was paraded by the Harvard and Princeton

stands, where sat dozens of her former devotees, can be imagined. She

tried to walk a little ahead, she tried to walk a little behind--but

they stayed close, that there should be no doubt whom she was with,

talking in loud voices of their friends on the football team, until she

could almost hear her acquaintances whispering:

"Phyllis Styles must be _awfully hard up_ to have to come with _those

two_."

That had been Burne, dynamically humorous, fundamentally serious. From

that root had blossomed the energy that he was now trying to orient with

progress....

So the weeks passed and March came and the clay feet that Amory looked

for failed to appear. About a hundred juniors and seniors resigned

from their clubs in a final fury of righteousness, and the clubs in

helplessness turned upon Burne their finest weapon: ridicule. Every one

who knew him liked him--but what he stood for (and he began to stand for

more all the time) came under the lash of many tongues, until a frailer

man than he would have been snowed under.

"Don't you mind losing prestige?" asked Amory one night. They had taken

to exchanging calls several times a week.

"Of course I don't. What's prestige, at best?"

"Some people say that you're just a rather original politician."

He roared with laughter.

"That's what Fred Sloane told me to-day. I suppose I have it coming."

One afternoon they dipped into a subject that had interested Amory for

a long time--the matter of the bearing of physical attributes on a man's

make-up. Burne had gone into the biology of this, and then:

"Of course health counts--a healthy man has twice the chance of being

good," he said.

"I don't agree with you--I don't believe in 'muscular Christianity.'"

"I do--I believe Christ had great physical vigor."

"Oh, no," Amory protested. "He worked too hard for that. I imagine that

when he died he was a broken-down man--and the great saints haven't been

strong."

"Half of them have."

"Well, even granting that, I don't think health has anything to do with

goodness; of course, it's valuable to a great saint to be able to stand

enormous strains, but this fad of popular preachers rising on their

toes in simulated virility, bellowing that calisthenics will save the

world--no, Burne, I can't go that."

"Well, let's waive it--we won't get anywhere, and besides I haven't

quite made up my mind about it myself. Now, here's something I _do_

know--personal appearance has a lot to do with it."

"Coloring?" Amory asked eagerly.

"Yes."

"That's what Tom and I figured," Amory agreed. "We took the year-books

for the last ten years and looked at the pictures of the senior council.

I know you don't think much of that august body, but it does represent

success here in a general way. Well, I suppose only about thirty-five

per cent of every class here are blonds, are really light--yet

_two-thirds_ of every senior council are light. We looked at pictures

of ten years of them, mind you; that means that out of every _fifteen_

light-haired men in the senior class _one_ is on the senior council, and

of the dark-haired men it's only one in _fifty_."

"It's true," Burne agreed. "The light-haired man _is_ a higher type,

generally speaking. I worked the thing out with the Presidents of

the United States once, and found that way over half of them were

light-haired--yet think of the preponderant number of brunettes in the

race."

"People unconsciously admit it," said Amory. "You'll notice a blond

person is _expected_ to talk. If a blond girl doesn't talk we call her a

'doll'; if a light-haired man is silent he's considered stupid. Yet

the world is full of 'dark silent men' and 'languorous brunettes' who

haven't a brain in their heads, but somehow are never accused of the

dearth."

"And the large mouth and broad chin and rather big nose undoubtedly make

the superior face."

"I'm not so sure." Amory was all for classical features.

"Oh, yes--I'll show you," and Burne pulled out of his desk a

photographic collection of heavily bearded, shaggy celebrities--Tolstoi,

Whitman, Carpenter, and others.

"Aren't they wonderful?"

Amory tried politely to appreciate them, and gave up laughingly.

"Burne, I think they're the ugliest-looking crowd I ever came across.

They look like an old man's home."

"Oh, Amory, look at that forehead on Emerson; look at Tolstoi's eyes."

His tone was reproachful.

Amory shook his head.

"No! Call them remarkable-looking or anything you want--but ugly they

certainly are."

Unabashed, Burne ran his hand lovingly across the spacious foreheads,

and piling up the pictures put them back in his desk.

Walking at night was one of his favorite pursuits, and one night he

persuaded Amory to accompany him.

"I hate the dark," Amory objected. "I didn't use to--except when I was

particularly imaginative, but now, I really do--I'm a regular fool about

it."

"That's useless, you know."

"Quite possibly."

"We'll go east," Burne suggested, "and down that string of roads through

the woods."

"Doesn't sound very appealing to me," admitted Amory reluctantly, "but

let's go."

They set off at a good gait, and for an hour swung along in a brisk

argument until the lights of Princeton were luminous white blots behind

them.

"Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid," said Burne

earnestly. "And this very walking at night is one of the things I was

afraid about. I'm going to tell you why I can walk anywhere now and not

be afraid."

"Go on," Amory urged eagerly. They were striding toward the woods,

Burne's nervous, enthusiastic voice warming to his subject.

"I used to come out here alone at night, oh, three months ago, and I

always stopped at that cross-road we just passed. There were the woods

looming up ahead, just as they do now, there were dogs howling and

the shadows and no human sound. Of course, I peopled the woods with

everything ghastly, just like you do; don't you?"

"I do," Amory admitted.

"Well, I began analyzing it--my imagination persisted in sticking

horrors into the dark--so I stuck my imagination into the dark instead,

and let it look out at me--I let it play stray dog or escaped convict

or ghost, and then saw myself coming along the road. That made it all

right--as it always makes everything all right to project yourself

completely into another's place. I knew that if I were the dog or the

convict or the ghost I wouldn't be a menace to Burne Holiday any more

than he was a menace to me. Then I thought of my watch. I'd better go

back and leave it and then essay the woods. No; I decided, it's

better on the whole that I should lose a watch than that I should turn

back--and I did go into them--not only followed the road through them,

but walked into them until I wasn't frightened any more--did it until

one night I sat down and dozed off in there; then I knew I was through

being afraid of the dark."

"Lordy," Amory breathed. "I couldn't have done that. I'd have come out

half-way, and the first time an automobile passed and made the dark

thicker when its lamps disappeared, I'd have come in."

"Well," Burne said suddenly, after a few moments' silence, "we're

half-way through, let's turn back."

On the return he launched into a discussion of will.

"It's the whole thing," he asserted. "It's the one dividing line between

good and evil. I've never met a man who led a rotten life and didn't

have a weak will."

"How about great criminals?"

"They're usually insane. If not, they're weak. There is no such thing as

a strong, sane criminal."

"Burne, I disagree with you altogether; how about the superman?"

"Well?"

"He's evil, I think, yet he's strong and sane."

"I've never met him. I'll bet, though, that he's stupid or insane."

"I've met him over and over and he's neither. That's why I think you're

wrong."

"I'm sure I'm not--and so I don't believe in imprisonment except for the

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