I The Gifted Lad BY HARVEY FERGUSSON ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN S. CURRY ALWAYS knew that Jim Runyon possessed rare gifts and was destined to do unusual things. Even when he was a child his superiority was an established legend of town gossip that no sceptic could impair. He was often mentioned as a gifted lad. The word "talent" was associated with him almost as closely as his name. His subsequent prominence was to his friends no more than the inevitable climax of a long suspense. liked it. She was sometimes described as a bread-and-butter sort of person. I don't think Jim turned away from her on that account. In fact, I don't believe he ever deliberately turned away from her at all. He was simply taken away from her by his growing absorption in his work, as he was taken away from football and baseball. He had no time for a girl. He was always hurrying home from school to take a drawing lesson or a music lesson. Mrs. Runyon supervised all of his activities with a vigilant eye and parcelled out the golden time of his youth like the precious substance that it was. The only time I can remember feeling His talent had not then taken the defiequal and perhaps a little superior to him nite form that it took later. He seemed was when both of us were about ten years to be gifted in so many ways. The town old and we had a fight to decide who heard that his drawing was considered exshould walk home with Annie Cooper. I traordinary for a boy of his age, that he beat him and he ran away crying. But had a marked gift for the violin and even then he triumphed. Instead of com- wrote verses with facility. This news was ing to the arms of the victor, Annie chose spread chiefly by his instructors and by to comfort the vanquished, as some wo- Mrs. Runyon, for Jim was a modest felmen always do. They went away hand in low. hand, Annie drying his tears and mopping blood off his nose. For several years thereafter she was known as his girl. Circumstances were all against the survival of that childhood attachment. By the time they had both reached high school, it was apparent-even, I believe, to Annie herself that she was not the type of girl for Jim. Good-looking in a plump, robust fashion, full of common sense and good humor, she was without a trace of talent for anything more artistic than making pie. She was easy to get along with, but a failure as a flirt, because she had such a literal and honest mind. If you told her you loved her, she took you at your word, making no allowance for moonlight and other such adventitious circumstances. She had obvious limitations, but no faults except the habit of chewing gum. She would cheerfully explain that she knew it was bad form but Like so many gifted youth, he owed nearly all of his early encouragement and training to his mother. His father wanted the boy to go into his office and seemed to take no interest in his talent. Jake Runyon was an unimaginative man, bluff and stocky, who had made a comfortable competence dealing in timber lands. Fond of poker, duck-hunting, and fried chicken, he was one who took life as he found it, and he seemed to find it good enough for himself. For his remarkable wife he had an admiration that he often expressed in public, but it must have been tempered in private by a good deal of mutual irritation and bewilderment. Mrs. Runyon was just as ambitious as he was easy-going. He grew fat in a placid acceptance of things as they were while she grew thin and nervous in a desperate struggle to better them. They went away hand in hand, Annie drying his tears and mopping blood off his nose.-Page 650. nearly all the many addresses she made before the Woman's Club, the Ladies' Aid Society, the Library Committee, and all the other cultural and philanthropic organizations which she formed, officered, and led in their brave crusades against vice and stupidity. When it was discovered that several low resorts were maintained on the fringe of the town, selling bootleg whiskey and suspected of worse advise in the buying of books. She was the chief organizer of a community centre, where plays were presented by amateur talent and papers on cultural subjects were read. In none of her high undertakings was she wholly successful. She certainly made the politicians jump with her purity campaign, but it was still possible to buy a drink in town a week or so after it was over. The new library was built, but her design for it was voted down in council, and what ultimately arose was a commonplace brick structure instead of the Greek temple of learning she had envisioned. Moreover, the classics and the best modern poets were allotted a much smaller place on its shelves than she had claimed for them, and popular fiction and books on radio and automotive engineering a much larger one. The community centre was erected, but the only occasions when it drew any considerable percentage of the community were dances and political rallies. None of her dreams was wholly realized, but neither was any of them wholly in vain. She gave the town a periodical shaking up which it needed. She flaunted before it always the bright banner of her vision. I remember, as a cub reporter for The Herald, hearing one of the last of her public speeches, which was also one of her best. She first scolded the town for all its faults and failures, and then drew a picture of it as it should have been. It was in this description of the ideal city that she rose to the height of her powers. With simple vividness she held before her hearers the vision of a city beautiful and symmetrical, where every house was part of a pattern-and every life, too. Vice and hatred and ugliness had no place in it, because all of its energies were perfectly absorbed into a community life that served every need of the spirit. All human discord, she proclaimed, was simply a failure to live freely and beautifully, as every one would if he had the chance. There was passion in her shrill, gasping voice, and her pale-blue eyes looked over our heads with the intense abstracted expression of a seer. To at least one young hearer she carried absolute conviction for the moment. I remember that I went away thinking if Jim Runyon had genius, it was easy to see whence it had come. Disappointment over the town's stupidity and ingratitude was doubtless one of the reasons for Mrs. Runyon's withdrawal from public life, but a growing absorption in her son's career was a greater one. Jake Runyon died when Jim was about twelve years old, leaving his widow a substantial income. From that time on, Jim's home life was all incentive toward artistic achievement. All of his mother's will and imagination were poured into him. It was his future she talked of now, and with even more vividness and glow than she had once put into her pictures of the ideal city. Those who came to her with complaints of corruption in local politics went away with the latest news of Jim's career. That career, it soon became known, was to be a musical one. Jim had been studying the violin since the age of five, and his development was such that no one in the town could teach him anything more. He was going to New York for a year and then abroad to complete his education. It was no more than every one had been led to expect, and the whole town showed an interest in the future of its prodigy which visibly delighted his mother. A large crowd saw Jim off at the station. His old schoolmates gave the high-school yell with his name at the end of it. The Herald had a first-page story the next morning about his abilities and his plans, which was an enthusiastic collaboration between Mrs. Runyon and myself. At frequent intervals during the years of his absence the local press contained bulletins of his progress, and it also published some letters from him to his mother in which he modestly said nothing about himself but described with conscientious exactness such wonders of Paris and Vienna as he thought would interest her. All of this contributed to his growth as a legendary figure in the eyes of his friends. He had always stood somewhat apart from the rest of us, and now he was definitely removed to a remote and a higher sphere of life. All of us who knew him felt a certain pride in the mere fact that our town, with all its absurdities and imperfections, had produced an artist and a cosmopolite. Everything led up, like the preliminary scenes of a drama, to the great day of his return and his first public recital in the community auditorium, which had been built largely through the efforts of his mother. Just as much of the town went to that recital as could get inside the door, and when Jim stepped upon the stage it gave him an ovation that had not been equalled since the one time when Roosevelt spoke She certainly made the politicians jump with her purity campaign, but it was still possible to buy a drink in town a week or so after it was over.-Page 651. two, for he was only seventeen when he left, but his thinness and his carriage emphasized his height, just as his pallor and his long hair seemed to have changed the shape of his face, so that it looked longer, more pensive and spiritual. Grave and patient, he towered above us in the spotlight, waiting for our noisy greeting to abate the very image of man driven by the creative will, worn but unbeaten, filled with the dignity of high endeavor. The applause died down. For a moment he faced the expectant hush-then lifted his bow and played. Probably no one there was competent to appreciate his playing or to criticise it. Certainly I was not. I was deeply im I remember most clearly that as he played I could see his tongue writhing against his cheek in an agony of concentration, threatening to pop out of his mouth, just as it used to do when we were both in the second grade at school and he was practising penmanship. For this familiar and humanizing touch I was grateful. The applause when he had finished was even greater than that which had greeted him. Again and again he left the stage only to be called back, bowing and blushing. Whatever struggles might lie before him or behind him, there was no doubt that he had triumphed here. As a representative of the press I was seated up front, where I had a good view of the audience. The prolonged applause became a bore, and I turned away from the celebrity to survey the faces of his hearers. Two of them held my attention. Mrs. Runyon's expression was nothing less than ecstatic. She did not join in the applause, but leaned forward in her seat, gripping its arms, her eyes fixed upon her son and filled with tears, so that she must have seen him through a bright nimbus. Beyond a doubt it was the great moment of her life-possibly the only moment of complete fulfilment and pure joy that she had ever known. As a wife and as a civic leader she had certainly endured much of disappointment, but now as a mother she had triumphed wholly. At last she had done something that was complete and perfect in her eyes. At last she had given the world beauty. It was only by chance that I glimpsed Annie Cooper, for she sat far back in the shadow of the gallery, but I could see her expression, and it confirmed a fear I had long entertained that Annie was still in love with her childhood sweetheart. She was not one to play a lovelorn part nor yet to confide her sorrows to others. After high school she had gone to business college and then had taken a job with a wholesale concern. Her common sense and energy had won her rapid promotion and she was now a private secretary on a good salary. She went about her business cheerfully and she still chewed gum when she worked. My belief in her romantic and futile devotion to Jim was based on the fact that she had not married, although I knew she had not lacked opportunities, and also upon the expression I had noticed in her eyes now and then, when Jim's name was mentioned in her presence. Her eyes had given a hint on those occasions, but now her whole face was a revelation. She had forgotten herself completely. Her look was fixed upon Jim just as intently as was his mother's, but with an emotion wholly different-a look of tender, hopeless, worshipful yearning. That glimpse of her face somehow changed the whole mood of the occasion for me. It made me realize that all human triumph is bought with tears, and that a man may not rise in the world without breaking ties and bruising tender hands. After his famous recital Jim was in town only a few days. He and his mother presently departed for New York, Jim to consider professional engagements and Mrs. Runyon to consult specialists. She had been suffering for several years from an affection of the heart, and the excitement of her son's return had made it worse. She was soon back, happy and excited over Jim's prospects, but obviously a very sick woman. A few months later Jim came home again, in response to a telegram, just in time to be with her when she died. His mother's death was undoubtedly a deep affliction to Jim Runyon. His relationship with her had always been unusually close, and even during the years he was abroad her influence upon him had been strong and constant. For some weeks he did not appear in public at all. When he finally emerged, it was plain to see that he had suffered deeply and also that his suffering was mitigated by the fact that he walked among old friends and familiar surroundings again. The town had been unable to give him the education an artist requires, but it was able now to give him homely sympathy and understanding, and after his long years of exile he was almost pathetically appreciative of these. He was also comforted, no doubt, by the realization that his mother had lived to see his triumphant return and had died a happy woman. His career was necessarily interrupted for some months both by his grief and by the settlement of family affairs. But when a proper interval had elapsed and Jim was for the first time in full control of his own destiny, its development was swift, decisive, and surprising. His first move was to rent a groundfloor office on Centre Avenue, and to have embossed upon its window in gold letters ten inches high the legend: "James Runyon. Real Estate and Insurance." Next the papers recorded that he had purchased a property on Orchard Street, consisting of a neat little bungalow with a lawn, a garage, and a roomy backyard suitable for gardening and poultry raising. Having provided himself a home and an office, he married Annie Cooper so suddenly and quietly that every one was taken by surprise. Naturally, there was a good deal of talk about all this, and some of it had a rather |