He grew cold, then hot, in an effort to control his throat. Now he tried to smile a supplication. "No," he gasped; "I-" His throat shut. He tried to smile for a stay of rebuke. In a moment he would be able to explain. "There's the tie," said Eben, gently. He waited a moment, blinking at the rigid, familiar face, his heart full of agony; then dropped the scarf and went out. Jud would be himself in a moment; it was impossible that any of this could be real. He walked slowly down-stairs, glancing back, his eyes full of tears. Judson heard the door close and writhed in dismay, his knees bending. He opened his eyes and saw, amid dancing arabesques of nausea, the green scarf, knelt and picked it up in fingers as large as gate-posts. It was not even his! Another thing to beg pardon for! Sweat ran down his face as he struggled up; but he was too ill to follow. "Where 's Jud?" asked Edgar, watching Eben's hands flutter over his melon. "Dressin'," said Eben, huskily. "He'd better hurry. It's half-past eight." "Plenty of time, sir." "Ten minutes to the station. Does he know how late it is?" Edgar wanted to witness the entraining of Eben. Since Judson's silent smile he had grown to loathe him. "Late, yes," said Eben, at a loss. He ate food automatically. Edgar must not see the state of things. Poor Jud was wild with grief; that was it. He would be down in a moment. "Really," said Edgar, "he 's cutting it fine. It's quarter of." "I'll go call him, sir," said the butler. "Oh, he 'll be down," Eben protested. The poor kid might be crying. It would n't do for Simon to see that. He swallowed his coffee. Edgar lit a cigarette, staring at his wrist watch. "Thirteen." "I'll go up," said Eben. He stopped in the hall to seize his hat and trampled up-stairs, then paused in the corridor. Suppose Jud still stood there smiling, still mad? He did not want to see that. "Jud!" he called. "Hi, Juddy!" Edgar's voice cut into the silence, whip fashion. "Come, Ben, you can't stop for that!" "Jud!" Then he turned and stumbled downstairs so wretched that he did not care if Edgar saw it, the green lawn a sea of smiles. A maid was clearing the used dishes. when Judson, his bath-robe flapping, got to the dining-room. She stared politely. "They-they have n't gone?" "Why, it's five of nine, sir. Master Ben's train was nine." Quite gone, wordless, offended! Judson pressed his hands on his eyes. "You must 'ave hoverslept, sir," said the maid, cheerfully. "'Fraid so," said Judson. The scent of food was making him sick again. He left the dining-room, and threw himself on the living-room window-seat, cold and quivering, as the far train whistled. Then he wept simply as a child weeps for his great treachery and a sorrow that was plowed by shame. In the afternoon he sat on the veranda and wrote his letter carefully. It would be in New Haven next day, and that must He wrote: serve. It was not the tie. I was sicker than I ever want to be again. I suppose it was those rotten doughnuts. I woke up so sick I could not think straight and about crazy over your going away. I did think it was my tie, but the whole thing got mixed up in my head, and I went crazy. I have no idea what I said, but I did not mean any of it. I know I hurt you like the devil. I heard what you said, but I could not say anything then. This sounds footless, but it is perfectly true. I was sick, and angry at my luck, that was all, and until you write me it is all right I shall be crazy. Please forgive me. It was bad enough before. I shall be here until Tuesday. He addressed this "Eben Harland, Yale Station, New Haven, Conn.," and took it to the little post-office. Then he waited, trying to remember what he had said to Ben, and magnifying every chance-brought word into foul insults. THE letters of Yale are assorted in the special post-office under Fayerweather Hall. It is not too well lighted, and shadows from the passers-by make the clerks' task less easy than they wish. Mr. Eden Hursland, a member of the senior class, unlocked his mail-box next morning and found Judson's letter, glanced at the address, tore open the envelop, and was joined by a friend who had a story to tell. They walked across Elm Street to morning service, and Mr. Hursland, excited by the anecdote, crumpled the envelop in his hand and dropped it on the steps of Battell Chapel. In his seat he recalled the letter, and read it with amazement several times. Then he searched his pockets for the envelop. It does him credit to say that he missed a recitation hunting for the clue across Elm Street. He was a decent, well-meaning fellow, and here was an unsigned letter, rather pathetic in its brevity, that might mean a great deal to some one. At last he went back to the post-office. "I've got a letter. It was addressed Hursland; at least it looked all right, but it's not to me. What other Hurslands are there?" The clerk said there was none. He had no imagination and no list of the freshman class. Mr. Hursland was equally destitute. He worried over the matter for a day or two, read the letter once or twice, and forgot it before Eben was done with the early bruises of freshman foot-ball practice. EBEN waited for that letter in the midst of his new world. It might take Jud a day or two to get over his fit, to see that things could n't be helped. Then he began to worry. He reviewed the summer in gross and detail. Had he lorded it over Jud, criticized him unduly, swaggered? He fretted, rubbing his bruises, and slept ill, wasted a good deal of note-paper be ginning letters that he could not finish. He was in shadowy pain, novel and impossible to combat, untinctured by anger. This endured a week, while his foot-ball reputation grew and freshmen sought his acquaintance. At the week's end he was visiting the rooms of another St. Paul foot-ball-player and there met a tall, thin being, ex-Hotchkiss, who professed many odd beliefs in a slow, shrill exhalation permeated with cigarette smoke. "There is n't any such thing as friendship," he said amiably. "You like a man? All right. Wait till you have a row with him. Does n't matter who 's in the right. You 're both wrong usually. Then it 's a toss up if he does n't drop you. Unless-" he shrugged-"unless he can get something out of you by coming round. Whose deal?" Several lads laughed, but a couple of eighteen-year-old cynics wagged their heads. "Pretty near true," said one. "One real row," said the other, "and the beans are spilled." "Oh, bunk!” cried their host. "S'pose I have a row with my old man, huh? You mean we 're never goin' to get together again? My foot!" "What did I say?" yawned the exponent. "You 've got something to get out of him, he out of you. Spades." "Thank you," the host remarked, with a hot edge in his voice. The thin youth shifted the subject neatly. Eben swallowed hard, the pips of his cards melting into the image of that smile; and after a while he gave his place to some one else. That night he did not sleep well. Next day, coming back at noon from English, he caught up with Bradley, strolling around the corner of York Street. The elm-studded way was full of freshmen, swirled into groups based on school alliances, or solitary, self-conscious figures. Boys were yelling to one another from the lofty, hideous front of Pierson Hall and the expensive private dormitories. The October sun dripped upon youth its mild benediction. "What were you saying about friends last night?" he stammered, after commonplaces. Bradley sent back his memory in some haste. He was the child of a suffragist by a clergyman, and his upbringing had taught him to talk for results. He recollected his remarks clearly enough and nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid I rather offended Martin." "Well, but how did you find that out? by a self-designated arbiter of foot-ball as I mean, get the idea?" "Oh," said Bradley, with grandeur, "I've lived in a lot of places; been to three schools, you know." "I see; but-" a rising star. The journals even showed a bad picture of him, taken during the Yale-Princeton freshman game. His class forgave him his quiet gloom, and admired his sketches loudly. "The Yale Record" published several of these, and the director of the Yale Art School, seeing one, invited him to dinner. A foot-ballplayer who could draw interested him. He did not find Eben very entertaining, but supposed that the death of his uncle. was afflicting the boy, who looked extremely well in black. "What does Jud say about school?" asked Arthur Letellier. Bradley studied the handsome big lad sidelong, and saw that he had done some damage here. His conscience wriggled, but he was making a reputation as a sage of sorts and wanted to progress. "I would n't bother about it. "T is n't worth bothering about," he said kindly. "The thing is, have a good time with a fellow as long as he lasts, then forget about him." He wondered for some weeks as to just what Eben had thought, and then, like Mr. Hursland, forgot about it. During those weeks the victim squirmed on the stake with such gory results that he began to distrust his sanity, except when the turf tingled through his cleated soles and he could jar against fugitive flesh. Insidiously the thing worked. He grew somber rather than silent. It ceased to surprise him when no letter lay on his table. He said nothing. buried in Paris. His lawyer, Mr. Edwardson, happened to be in the supposedly gay city and attended to these details. He duly wrote the twins and invited them to spend Christmas with him. He was very fond of them. Both accepted. He found their letters on his arrival in New York toward mid-December, and looked forward to seeing them with great pleasure. Meanwhile Eben had been mentioned EDGAR went to Paris in early November. There was a sale at Villequier's that he wished to attend. There was a lady who wished to see him. They started back from an inn near Suresne one wet night, in the lady's motor. She chose to drive. This resulted in a collision with a beer-van at the corner of the Rue Caulaincourt; Edgar took six days to die. He regulated all his affairs perfectly, left legacies to twenty women, and the residue of his estate to the twins, with directions that everything be sold and that he be "Nothing much," said Eben. "Both of you come out to St. Louis for Christmas?" "Thanks a lot. We 're going to our lawyer's." "Think it over," Arthur begged. He would have rolled naked in hot coals for Eben. Judson he did not care for so greatly. He repeated his invitation several times, but Eben was submerged in a new wave of feeling. The autumn was done. He had waited for Jud to write, even grown to believe that Judson did not trouble over their terrible scene. But the approach of reunion cured all this. At the worst, one touch, one grin, and the ugly edifice of grief would clatter down; they would laugh at it together. He avoided Bradley, and walked a good deal in the misty evenings alone, smiling happily at the stark trees. His heart swelled toward his brother; he became gay, and his classmates liked him much more than before. It came to the day of departure, and he made the afternoon journey to New York with Arthur in a sort of royal state, wandering up the train to see if Judson was on it. "I'm going to be in town till noon tomorrow," said Arthur. "You see Jud and fix it up to come on out with me." "Don't see how we could. It 's mighty good of you," Eben assured him, staring into the violet-lit suburbs of New York. At the ramshackle, confused station of that year he lost Arthur by the baggage counter and found Bradley. They walked through the wooden passages chatting about nothing, and came to a chilly flight of six steps, where they slowed while a crowd melted up ahead of them under a frosty arc light. Near the foot of the steps one man remained, lagging to look at his watch, and the gold flash took Eben's eye as he approached. Then he saw that it was Judson. His suitcase swung against a man and made him swerve. His breath stopped with sheer gladness. He halted. Judson put away his watch, and, somehow attracted, looked at Eben. His hands paused on the buttons of his overcoat. He turned the least bit white; then he tilted back his head and smiled. He smiled, and Eben's feet moved of themselves. He followed Bradley on, wondering if his heart would stop entirely. "What were you sayin'?" he asked. "I did n't get it." Jud hated him; he knew this surely now. For a miserable necktie and a word or two of advice Jud could turn on him that horrible childish smile. He left Bradley and walked, rain falling on him, to a hotel near the station, using only that part of his brain that told him small necessary things to ask for a room and bath and fee the page. Then he wrote a coherent letter to Mr. Edwardson explaining that he had accepted Arthur's invitation, forgotten it, and that the Letelliers were deeply offended. After this he lay on the ornate hotel bed and wished that he could cry himself to sleep. Next morning he went to St. Louis with Arthur, saying nothing. The Letelliers had a spacious, comfortable house on Lindell Boulevard. They were in He half-mourning, which did not forbid them to give pleasant little dinners, and Eben, resolved to forget Judson forever, tried to be an obliging guest. He made sketches on bridge-scores and dinner-cards. talked to strange girls about all things, and practised the new form of waltz with Marie Letellier. He managed to get out of the room when Arthur's small, lame brother came to be told good night. He developed a liking for claret, and wondered, being seventeen, if it was worth. while to drink himself to death. "You 're changing pretty rapidly," said Mr. Edwardson on an afternoon in May when he had come up to see him. "Am I? Into-" "A man, I suppose. You 're pretty old for a boy without a solitary whisker on his face. You the E. Harland who had a cartoon in 'Life' last week?" "Yes. I sent it on a bet," said Eben, dryly, so that Mr. Edwardson did not continue the topic. "Where are you going this summer?" he asked instead. "England and France with some friends from the West." "This is a funny dodge of Juddy's," said the trustee, "changing to Princeton. Can't you stop it?" After Eben had controlled his muscles he shook his head. "I'm afraid not. When Jud wants to do anything he goes ahead and does it. We'd better go get some dinner." When he had seen Mr. Edwardson on the train he went back to his rooms and began a letter, but did not go very far. Pride made the pen heavy, and sorrow spoiled the sheet. Let Jud go his way, he said at last; if he wanted Princeton, utter separation, let him have it. Eben had been reading "Cyrano," and a phrase rang out of it-"Poor Lazarus at the feast of Love." He could not beg, as he might have done six months ago. He tore up the letter, and went to sing in the garden behind his lodgings. In the autumn he played foot-ball up to the Princeton game and was used steadily on the university team. He was not a brilliant player, but so reliable that coaches and trainers spoke of him as a possible future captain, and two fraternities waited on his choice with smiles more than inviting. "What 's Jud's address at Princeton?" Arthur asked when the great gala was near. "I'm going to have lunch here in these rooms the day of the game." "Huh? Oh, just Princeton 'll get him." "It might n't. I've sent letters there before." Eben took his eyes off the sketch he was filling in and looked at Arthur wearily. "I might as well tell you the truth, Let. I don't know his address. We 've not spoken or met in over a year-a year and two months. He does n't care about me any more." He glanced around their red burlap sitting-room and went on charcoaling the paper, shuddering before the advent of questions. "I ought to have known," said Arthur. "All right, Ben; I won't say anything." After this, and while Eben lay in the infirmary with the broken shoulder he got during the last second of play, Arthur gave him a new and far-seeing kindness that compensated a little for many things. The Letelliers had been driven to moving East. They now owned a house at Mamaroneck, and Eben spent Christmas there. He met a girl who had encountered Judson at Pasadena the previous summer as a friend of one Alan Kay. Eben resigned her to Arthur for the rest of his dance, and haunted Marie Letellier's wake for the remainder of the party. She was a gentle, timid girl a month younger than himself, and Eben grew very fond of her, to Arthur's delight. He knew gradually that Mr. Edwardson realized a breach, and was sorry, silently. As time passed the St. Paul's coterie in his class forgot about Judson except when his name appeared on the list of the Princeton base-ball team the ensuing year, filling Eben with pride. foot-ball career was done; the surgeons insisted on that. He took to spasmodic running and left-handed tennis. But all the glory of open field, the thunder of crowds, he wanted for Judson. He never saw him play, avoided the games, quite certain that in some way he must come near his beloved and get that horrible smile to burn him again, to render nights odious. He was drawing with regularity for several magazines, and people spoke of his happy treatment of boys or young athletes. He got sizable checks before his graduation, and could give Marie a large cluster of diamonds as a wedding present. They were married three days after his commencement, and lived for eight months in Paris, while he studied under Roll. Marie's uncle, a Mr. Rand, was attached to the American embassy, and had a house in the Avenue François Premier. He asked the couple to Christmas luncheon, and there, entering the drawing-room, Eben was hailed from the fireside as "Jud" in a broken young voice. This had overtaken him before, but never so poignantly. It was a thin fellow of twenty or so, with a lambent, doomed face, who hurried over, pausing only as Eben colored. "I'm not Jud. I'm his brother," he said swiftly. "Oh, yes, the other twin? I'm so sorry. I'm rather a friend of his-Alan Kay. Perhaps you 've heard him speak of me?" he said wistfully, coughing. "You-you live in Pasadena?" Eben remembered. The consumptive beamed. "Yes. I-I 'm on my way to San Moritz. Had a little throat trouble. Jud saw me off.". "How awfully stupid of me!" said Mrs. Rand. "Here Alan 's been writing me ever since he was a freshman—” "Before, Aunt Jess," coughed Alan. "Met him out home." "-about his wonderful Jud Harland, and I never thought to ask. Sit down, Alan dear. This is your Jud's sister-inlaw." Marie murmured; Eben could see her olive face quiver, and wondered how much she felt while he grinned at Jud's poor friend. He sat down beside the boy and sought a bitter Christmas gift. |