IV
Arriving early at the ball park they found their seats and John continued talking as the crowd assembled. On many Sunday afternoons they had taken long tramps, discussing all manner of things. Moore was a prodigious reader of poetry and made it his practice to commit to memory a certain number of lines every day. Politics, too, interested him seriously. He always spoke with deepest reverence of the founders of the republic, referring to them familiarly as though they were still living. Between the cheers to which he vociferously contributed his own voice, he rambled on comfortably and happily, satisfied that he had a sympathetic auditor.
“There’s Bill Trumbull—hello there, Bill! Well, to tell the truth, Grace, I don’t get much out of this new poetry. Flimsy stuff; doesn’t satisfy you somehow. The times call for another old Walt Whitman. That bird had ideas. He certainly hit some grand old truths. ‘Produce great men,’ he says; ‘the rest follows.’ Just as easy! Wow! There’s our team coming out now!” (prolonged cheering) “Well, there’s the old saying that the time brings the man. Can’t tell but there’s a future president right here in this crowd!”
“It might be you, John!” remarked Grace, laughing at the serenity with which he returned to his subject after joining in the uproar.
“No, Grace; I’ve chosen the chief justiceship!” he said, swinging round at her. “Isn’t that Daisy Martin?—Fred Ragsdale with her. Hello, Fred! and if, there ain’t old Pop Streeter! Greetings Pop! No, sir; the times call for men and we’re going to produce a fine new crop right out of this generation here present.”
Moore was enjoying himself; there was no question of it. And Grace was experiencing a grateful sense of security in John’s company. He was paying her his highest compliment, and she knew that the money for his excursion to the capital had been earned by his own labor. Her girl friends at the university had tormented her a good deal about John’s attentions, which were marked by the shy deference and instinctive courtesy with which he treated all women. He was not a person to be flirted with; Grace had never in the prevalent phrase “teased him along.” She respected him too much for that, and, moreover, he was not fair game. Any attempt to practice on him the usual cajoleries and coquetries would have sent him away running. When a girl visitor at the university, meeting John at a dance, had referred to him as a hick, Grace had resented it on the spot, informing the surprised offender that John Moore was the finest gentleman on the campus.
John was not wholly silenced by the spirited opening of the game.
“Too bad Crump’s not here. Hurt his leg last week in practice. Thought he’d make it. Break his heart not to be in the game. Thompson in his place. You know Thompy? He’s a wonder on the trap drum. Wow! Illinois got the ball. Where was I? Oh, yes! I read Landor last summer—Walter Savage; a theological student from New York, working along with me out in Kansas, put me on to Landor. Quite a man—Landor, I mean. The theolog’s a bully chap, too, for that matter. Look at that! No; sending ’em back. Wow! That’s first blood for us! Well, you might like Landor if you took a whack at him. That referee’s awful fussy. Wonder where they got him. Remember that day we read ‘The Passing of Arthur,’ sitting on a log by that gay little creek in the woods? I’ve thought a lot about that and the way you cried. Yes; you did, Grace; and I guess I shed a few tears myself!...”
In moments of despair when Indiana’s fortunes were low, John’s optimism evoked laughter from his neighbors, for he possessed in good measure the homely humor which is indigenous to the corn-belt.
Before the game ended it had occurred to Grace to ask John to go home with her for supper. After they had joined in the demonstration for the victorious Hoosier team and had made their way to the street she went into a drugstore and called her mother on the telephone. Mrs. Durland replied cordially that she would be delighted to see John; it was too late to put on any extras but any friend of Grace’s was always welcome. It would serve to ease the situation she had left behind her to take John home, Grace reflected, and moreover, she was glad of an excuse for seeing more of him.
“Of course I’ll be glad to break bread with you. I’ll be glad to see your folks again. If you’re not too tired, let’s walk. Fine zippy air! Well, that was sure some game! I nearly died an unnatural death about seven times in the last quarter, but we managed to pull through. Let’s see, what were we talking about?”
He let her into a great secret as they crossed the park toward the Durland house. He had seen Judge Sanders, the senior member of one of the best law firms in the capital and a university trustee, who had offered to take him into his office.
“Wants me to come in January,” John explained. “Says they’ll guarantee my board and keep for running errands and attending to collections; and I can go on studying and be ready for my exams in the spring just the same. So I’ll be in the city for keeps after Christmas. Grand man, the Judge. Found I was washing automobiles at night to pay for my room over Westlake’s garage and he just couldn’t stand it. There’s a friend, I say!”
He waited for her to laugh and laughed with her. It was enormously funny that among other jobs he washed automobiles on his way to the chief justiceship!
“Nothing can keep you back, John. You’re like the men we read about, who strike right out for the top and get there and plant their flag on the battlements.”
“Don’t say a word! There’s luck as well as hard work in this business of getting on. All summer I used to think about it—out in the fields in Kansas. A big, hot harvest field’s a grand place for healthy thought. I say, Grace, life’s a lot more complicated than it used to be. Things all sort o’ mixed up since the war.”
“You really believe the world’s so different, John? Everybody’s saying that and the papers and magazines are full of stuff about the changes and knocking our generation.”
“Don’t let that talk throw you! It’s up to all of us to sit tight on the toboggan and wait till she slows down. There’s a lot of good in this grand old world yet. By the way, it was hard luck you had to quit college. Excuse me for mentioning it, but I just wanted you to know I was sorry you left.”
“Oh, it’s all right, John. I miss the good times but there’s no use crying. I’m ashamed now, though, to think how I just fooled along. I ought to have got more out of it than I did.”
“You don’t know how much you got,” he replied quickly. “Kind of a mystery what we get and what we don’t. We got to keep braced for anything we bump into. When the war came along I thought that was the end of me so far as going into the law was concerned, but being shot at by the Kaiser sort o’ made me mad. I wasn’t going to let a little thing like that stop me; so my life being providentially spared, I thought it all out on the ship coming home—on the deck at night with the stars blinking at me. I’ve got health and a fair second-rate head and I’m going to give the world a good wrestle before I quit.”
“Fine!” she exclaimed, noting the lifting of his head as he swung along in the gathering dusk. “You make me ashamed of myself, John. I think I’ve begun to drift—I don’t know what I’m headed for.”
“We all think we’re drifting when we’re not! It’s in the back of our minds all the time that we’re aiming for something,” he replied; “we don’t fool ourselves there!”
“I hope you’re right,” she said, pensively. “But I’ve wondered a lot lately about myself. Do you suppose there’s anything wrong with me—lack of ambition, maybe?”
He paused abruptly the more emphatically to dispose of her question, which had a deeper meaning than he knew.
“Don’t be foolish, Grace! You could keep up your college work if you wanted to—there’s a way of doing that, and get your degree. Suppose you thought of that—and teaching?”
“Yes. But I don’t feel any strong pull that way. I’m in a French class and I mean to keep that up. But before I was off the campus I was all keyed up to jump right into things. I want experiences—not teaching or anything like that—but to be as close to the heart of things as I can get!”
“Not a bit of fault with that! I’d trust you to find yourself anywhere. You’re too fine a girl ever to get lost in the shuffle. I guess you’ll learn a lot in Shipley’s; you see all kinds of people there every day, and as Aleck Pope says the proper study of mankind is man—also woman!”
In spite of herself the unhappiness with which the day had begun had stolen into her heart again. It had betrayed itself in her speech, the eagerness with which she appealed to Moore for approval and sympathy. She was contrasting what he was saying with what Trenton had said the previous night. No two men could be more unlike—Trenton the man of the world, with a hint of cynicism in his attitude toward life; John Moore, a son of the soil, with all his ideals intact, viewing life with hope and confidence.