I
It will serve us best to see Elim Meikeljohn first as he walked across Winthrop Common. It was very early in April and should have been cool, but it was warm—already there were some vermilion buds on the maples—and Elim's worn shad-belly coat was uncomfortably heavy. The coat was too big for him—his father had worn it for twenty years before he had given it to Elim for college—and it hung in somber greenish folds about his tall spare body. He carried an equally oppressive black stiff hat in a bony hand and exposed a gaunt serious countenance.
Other young men passing, vaulting lightly over the wooden rail that enclosed the common, wore flowing whiskers, crisply black or brown like a tobacco leaf; their luxuriant waistcoats were draped with a profusion of chains and seals; but Elim's face was austerely shaved, he wore neither brocade nor gold, and he kept seriously to the path.
He was, even more than usual, absorbed in a semi-gloom of thought. It was his birthday, he was twenty-six, and he had been married more than nine years. Already, with his inherited dark temperament, he was middle-aged in situation and feeling. He had been assistant to the professor of philosophy and letters for three of those married years; yes—he had been graduated when he was twenty-three. He arrived at an entrance to the common that faced the row of houses where he had his room, and saw that something unusual was in progress.
The front of his boarding house was literally covered with young men: they hung over the small portico from steps to ridge, they bulged from every window and sat astride of the dormer windows in the roof. Before them on the street a camera had been set up and was covered, all save the snout, by a black rubber cloth, backward from which projected the body and limbs of the photographer.
The latter, Elim realized, was one of a traveling band that took pictures of whatever, on their way, promised sufficient pecuniary return. Here the operator had been in luck—he would sell at least thirty photographs at perhaps fifty cents each. Harry Kaperton, a great swell, was in his window with his setter, Spot; his legs, clad in bags with tremendous checks and glossy boots, hung outward. On the veranda were Hinkle and Ben Willing, the latter in a stovepipe hat; others wore stovepipes set at a rakish angle on one ear. They were all irrepressibly gay, calling from roof to ground, each begging the photographer to focus on his own particular charm.
Perhaps fifty cents—Elim Meikeljohn would have liked a place in the picture; he would like to possess one, to keep it as a memento of the youthful life that flowed constantly about him, but the probable cost was prohibitive. He even wished, as he paused before making his way up the crowded veranda steps, that some one would ask him to stay and have his picture taken with the rest. He delayed, hoping for the mere formality of this friendliness. But it was not forthcoming. He had felt that it wouldn't be; he had divined the careless silence with which the men moved aside for him to mount. There was even a muttered allusion to his famous Scotch thrift, contained in a sharper word. Elim didn't mind—actively. He had been accustomed to the utmost monetary caution since the first dawn of his consciousness. He had come to regard the careful weighing of pennies as an integral part of his being. It had always been necessary for the Meikeljohns, father and son, on their rocky pastures. He didn't mind, but at the same time he bore a faint resentment at the injustice of the marked and perceptible disdain of the majority of his fellows.
They didn't understand, he told himself, still ascending to his room in the third floor back. Every cent that he could squeeze from his small salary must go back to the support of the invalid, his wife. He had never, of course, explained this to any one in Cambridge. They wouldn't be particularly interested and, in addition, his daily companions seemed far too young for such serious confidences. In reality Harry Kaperton was three years older than Elim; and Kaperton had been pleasantly at college, racing horses, for seven years; many others were Elim's age, but the maturity of the latter's responsibility separated them.
In his room he took off his formal coat and nankeen waistcoat and hung them on a pegged board. The room was bare, with two uncurtained windows that afforded a glimpse of the shining river; it contained a small air-tight stove, now cold and black, and a wood box, a narrow bed, a deal table with a row of worn text-books and neatly folded papers, a stand for water pitcher and basin, and two split-hickory Windsor chairs. Now it was filled with an afternoon glow, like powdered gold, and the querulously sweet piping of an early robin.
He dipped his face and hands in cooling water and, at the table, with squared elbows, addressed himself to a set task.