§ 7
Behold now a new “Lady Sunshine,” in a clean white apron which her hosts had provided for the occasion, stirring mushrooms in cream and superintending stewed chicken, while Frank washed salad in the bathroom, and Jack Colton was half way up to his elbows in mayonnaise. This was the first time that Sylvia had met Frank’s room-mate, with whom she had intended to be very stern, because of his “wildness.” Although she was used to wild boys, and had helped to tame a number of them, she did not approve of such qualities in a companion of her lover.
Jack, however, was a boy with what the Irish call “a way with him.” He had curly brown hair and a winning countenance, and such a laugh that it was not easy to disagree with him. Moreover a halo of romance hung about him, owing to the fact that Frank had first met him after a railroad wreck, sitting in the snow and holding in his lap a baby whose mother had been killed. Jack had engaged a nurse and sent the child all the way out to his own mother in Wyoming; and how could any girl object to a friendship begun under such auspices? If his mother was indulgent and sent him more pocket money than he could decently spend, might not one regard that as the boy’s misfortune rather than his fault?
There was Dennis Dulanty, a fair-haired young Irishman who wrote poems, and was Sylvia’s slave from the first moment she entered the room. There was Tom Firmin, a heavily built man with a huge head made bigger by thick, black hair. Firmin was working his way through college and had no time for luncheon parties, but he had come this once to meet Sylvia. The girl listened to him with some awe, because Frank had said he had the best mind in the class. Finally there was Jack’s married sister, who lived in Boston, and was chaperone.
There were four little tables with four chafing dishes, and two study tables put together and covered with a spread of linen and silver. There were strawberries which Dulanty had dropped upon the floor; there were sandwiches which Tom Firmin had tried in vain to cut thin, and wine about which Jack Colton talked far too wisely, for one so young. Jack had been round the world, and had tasted the vintage of many countries, and told such interesting adventures that one forgot one’s disapproval.
Sylvia found herself happy here, and decided that Frank’s crowd was far more interesting than Thurlow’s. All these men were outsiders, holding themselves aloof from the social life of the University and resentful of the conditions they had found there. After awhile it occurred to Sylvia that it would be entertaining to hear what these men would have to say upon a subject which had been occupying her mind; so, by a few deft touches, she brought the conversation to a point where some one else was moved to mention the name of Douglas van Tuiver.
Immediately she discovered that she had touched a live wire. There was Tom Firmin, frowning under his thick black eyebrows. “For my part, I have just one thing to say: a man who has any pretense at self-respect cannot even know him.”
“Is he as bad as all that?” Sylvia asked.
“It’s not a question of personality—it’s a question of the amount of his wealth.”
Sylvia would have appreciated this if it had been a jest. But apparently the speaker was serious, and so she gazed at him in perplexity. “Is a very rich man to have no friends?” she asked.
“Never fear,” laughed Jack, “there are plenty of tuft-hunters who will keep him company.”
“But why should you sentence him to the company of tuft-hunters, just because he happens to be born with a lot of money?”
“It isn’t I that sentence him,” said Firmin—“it’s the nature of things.”
“But,” exclaimed the girl, “I’ve had millionaires for friends—and I hope I’m not the dreadful thing you say.”
The other smiled for the first time. “Frank Shirley insists that there are angels upon earth,” he said. “But if you don’t mind, Miss Castleman, I’d prefer to illustrate this argument by every-day mortals like myself. I’m willing to admit, as a theoretical proposition, that there might be a disinterested friendship between a poor man and a multimillionaire; but only if the poor man is a Diogenes and stays in his tub. I mean, if he has no business affairs of any sort, and takes no part in social life; if he never lets the multimillionaire take him automobiling or invite him to dinner; if he has no marriageable sisters, and the multimillionaire has none either. But all these, you must admit, make a difficult collection of circumstances.”
“Miss Castleman,” said Jack, “you can see why we call Tom Firmin our Anarchist.”
But Sylvia was not to be diverted. She had never heard such ideas as this, and she wanted to understand them. “You must think hardly of human nature!” she objected.
“As I said before, it has nothing whatever to do with personality, it’s the automatic effect of a huge sum of money. Take my own case, for example—so I can talk brutally and not hurt anyone. I want to be a lawyer, but meanwhile I have to earn my living. I love a girl, but I’ve no hope of marrying, because I’m poor and she’s poor. If I struggle along in the usual way, it’ll be five years—maybe ten years—before we can marry. But here I am in college, and here’s Douglas van Tuiver; if by any device of any sort I can manage to penetrate his consciousness—if I can make him think me a wit or a scholar, a boon companion or a great soul, the best halfback in college or an amusing old bull in the social china shop—why, then right away things are easier for me. You’ve heard what Thackeray said about walking down Piccadilly with a duke on each arm? If I can walk across the Yard with Douglas van Tuiver, then a lot of important men suddenly realize that I exist; the first thing you know I make a club, and so when I come out of college I’m the chum of some of the men who are running the country, and I have a salary of five thousand a year at the start, and ten thousand in a year or two, a hundred thousand before I’m forty, and a go at a rich marriage into the bargain. Do you think there are many would-be lawyers to whom all that would be no temptation? Let me tell you, it’s the temptation which has turned many a man in this college into a boot-licker!”
“But, Mr. Firmin!” cried Sylvia, in dismay. “What is your idea? Would you forbid rich men coming to college?”
To which the other replied, “I’d go much farther back than that, Miss Castleman—I’d forbid rich men existing.”
Sylvia was genuinely shocked. She had never heard such words even in jest, and she thought Tom Firmin a terrifying person. “You see,” laughed Jack, “he really is an Anarchist!” And Sylvia believed him, and resolved to remonstrate with Frank about having such friends. But nevertheless she went out from that breakfast party with something new to think about in connection with Douglas van Tuiver—and with her mind made up that Mr. “Tubby” Bates would have to die of starvation!