Crossroads.
"Oh see ye not yon narrow road
So thick beset wi' thorns and briers?
That is the Path of Righteousness,
Though after it but few inquires.
"And see ye not yon braid, braid road,
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call that the road to Heaven."
Thomas the Rhymer.
I.
The regular after-dinner crowd was smoking in Frank Lyman's Encina boudoir, lolling over his sofa, their feet on his table, their legs tangled on his iron bedstead. The steam heat was coming "Clank! clank!" into the radiators, for it was a cold, clear evening in the time between rains. Outside the fog was thick upon the hills, sending gray ghost-fingers over toward the valley. You could lean from the window and smell its clean moisture, mingling with the scent of young plants in the fresh-turned earth. Frank himself sat close to the window and looked out toward the gymnasium, because he had discovered a new amusement. There was a section of the board walk between Encina and the gym which was flooded just to its top by a pool from the late rain, so that if you stepped heavily thereon the plank gave a bit and dropped you into the water. The diversion consisted in betting with "Pegasus" Langdon on the style of crossing adopted by chance wayfarers. The stakes were five cents a corner. Frank backed the class who took the thing at one bound; "Peg" laid his coin on those who went over on their tiptoes, trying not to spring the plank into the water. For every one who did neither, but walked around the puddle, five cents a corner went into the tobacco fund. It was just as good as matching nickels and involved less exertion.
There is a theory in the Hall that you can tell a man's habits by the rooms he occupies there. The nearer he gets to the corner fronting on the baseball field, the more sociable is his nature. Those who hold the rooms at that corner or on the second or third floors, so as to be in easy hail of anyone coming in at the back entrance, are Public Characters. Their apartments are reception rooms in very truth. It has never been explained why Encina does not sag at that end, like an excursion steamer on the side toward a boat race. If, on the other hand, you believe you have a Mission, or if you are a Dig, rooming in the Hall because it is convenient to the Quad, then you dwell in "Faculty Row," away off to the east, where the early sun pulls you out in time to put the finishing touches to your Latin, and where there is no trafficking to and from the Quad to disturb your evening study.
It was said that Frank Lyman was the only man at the Quadrangle end of the Hall who ever made much pretense of studying. By the same token the keepers of the college tradition alleged that he alone of all the gang stood high in the opinion of the Faculty. It was a way he had. He stood well with everybody.
If they had taken the trouble to investigate, those who wondered at his ability both to loaf much and to study much, at his scholarship dwelling alongside of his popularity, they might have found that he kept the two things in harmony by a marvelous system. The gang dwelt in his room, made it their hang-out, but only just so long; when the hour arrived for Lyman's study-time, they vanished away mysteriously, took the hint conveyed in some fashion, no one ever knew how, and were gone.
To the under-classmen, Lyman was an object of healthy awe. Older than the average senior, he had been already in the larger world. His opinion of things had especial value even in his Junior year. After the football season, when he had been acknowledged the keenest manager the college had ever found, the under-classmen had a blind faith in his infallibility. The older students relied on him in much the same way, though there were some who said that self lay at the bottom of Lyman's system of morals, that the watchword of his philosophy was "Does it pay?" These men were sentimentalists who had ideals. Langdon, the Sequoia editor, would have told you that he thought more of Lyman than of any two men in the class; it is a question, though, whether he would have recommended Lyman's advice in everything. Frank was a good man to keep a Freshman's money for him, to listen to his class-room troubles or to stand between the luckless youngster and Faculty wrath; but when it was a case into which something deeper entered, perhaps the Senior's worldly philosophy was not of the best sort. This was the idea of dreamers like "Pegasus" Langdon, who said things about "sentiment" and to whom Freshmen seldom came for advice. But Lyman continued to hold his after-dinner receptions, and his admirers piled themselves comfortably on his bed and believed in him implicitly.