第24章

She was only seventeen,yet she seemed the woman of thirty whose role she played.First there were murmurs,then sustained applause.I scarcely recognized her:she had taken wings and soared far above me,suggesting a sphere of power and luxury hitherto unimagined and beyond the scope of the world to which I belonged.

Her triumph was genuine.When the play was over she was immediately surrounded by enthusiastic admirers eager to congratulate her,to dance with her.I too would have gone forward,but a sense of inadequacy,of unimportance,of an inability to cope with her,held me back,and from a corner I watched her sweeping around the room,holding up her train,and leaning on the arm of Bob Lansing,a classmate whom Ralph had brought home from Harvard.Then it was Ralph's turn:that affair seemed still to be going on.My feelings were a strange medley of despondency and stimulation....

Our eyes met.Her partner now was Ham Durrett.Capriciously releasing him,she stood before me,"Hugh,you haven't asked me to dance,or even told me what you thought of the play.""I thought it was splendid,"I said lamely.

Because she refrained from replying I was farther than ever from understanding her.How was I to divine what she felt?or whether any longer she felt at all?Here,in this costume of a woman of the world,with the string of pearls at her neck to give her the final touch of brilliancy,was a strange,new creature who baffled and silenced me....

We had not gone halfway across the room when she halted abruptly.

"I'm tired,"she exclaimed."I don't feel like dancing just now,"and led the way to the big,rose punch-bowl,one of the Durretts'most cherished possessions.Glancing up at me over the glass of lemonade Ihad given her she went on:"Why haven't you been to see me since I came home?I've wanted to talk to you,to hear how you are getting along."Was she trying to make amends,or reminding me in this subtle way of the cause of our quarrel?What I was aware of as I looked at her was an attitude,a vantage point apparently gained by contact with that mysterious outer world which thus vicariously had laid its spell on me;I was tremendously struck by the thought that to achieve this attitude meant emancipation,invulnerability against the aches and pains which otherwise our fellow-beings had the power to give us;mastery over life,--the ability to choose calmly,as from a height,what were best for one's self,untroubled by loves and hates.Untroubled by loves and hates!At that very moment,paradoxically,I loved her madly,but with a love not of the old quality,a love that demanded a vantage point of its own.

Even though she had made an advance--and some elusiveness in her manner led me to doubt it I could not go to her now.I must go as a conqueror,--a conqueror in the lists she herself had chosen,where the prize is power.

"Oh,I'm getting along pretty well,"I said."At any rate,they don't complain of me.""Somehow,"she ventured,"somehow it's hard to think of you as a business man."I took this for a reference to the boast I had made that I would go to college.

"Business isn't so bad as it might be,"I assured her.

"I think a man ought to go away to college,"she declared,in what seemed another tone."He makes friends,learns certain things,--it gives him finish.We are very provincial here."Provincial!I did not stop to reflect how recently she must have acquired the word;it summed up precisely the self-estimate at which Ihad arrived.The sting went deep.Before I could think of an effective reply Nancy was being carried off by the young man from the East,who was clearly infatuated.He was not provincial.She smiled back at me brightly over his shoulder....In that instant were fused in one resolution all the discordant elements within me of aspiration and discontent.It was not so much that I would show Nancy what I intended to do--I would show myself;and I felt a sudden elation,and accession of power that enabled me momentarily to despise the puppets with whom she danced....From this mood I was awakened with a start to feel a hand on my shoulder,and I turned to confront her father,McAlery Willett;a gregarious,easygoing,pleasure-loving gentleman who made only a pretence of business,having inherited an ample fortune from his father,unique among his generation in our city in that he paid some attention to fashion in his dress;good living was already beginning to affect his figure.His mellow voice had a way of breaking an octave.

"Don't worry,my boy,"he said."You stick to business.These college fellows are cocks of the walk just now,but some day you'll be able to snap your fingers at all of 'em."The next day was dark,overcast,smoky,damp-the soft,unwholesome dampness that follows a spell of hard frost.I spent the morning and afternoon on the gloomy third floor of Breck and Company,making a list of the stock.I remember the place as though I had just stepped out of it,the freight elevator at the back,the dusty,iron columns,the continuous piles of cases and bags and barrels with narrow aisles between them;the dirty windows,spotted and soot-streaked,that looked down on Second Street.I was determined now to escape from all this,and I had my plan in mind.

No sooner had I swallowed my supper that evening than I set out at a swift pace for a modest residence district ten blocks away,coming to a little frame house set back in a yard,--one of those houses in which the ringing of the front door-bell produces the greatest commotion;children's voices were excitedly raised and then hushed.After a brief silence the door was opened by a pleasant-faced,brown-bearded man,who stood staring at me in surprise.His hair was rumpled,he wore an old house coat with a hole in the elbow,and with one finger he kept his place in the book which he held in his hand.

"Hugh Paret!"he exclaimed.