I
“IN some way or other it came to the notice of Barrows, the Recording Secretary, that Ernest McGaw was literally starving. The Secretary, being a person of appreciation, immediately gave the man food.
“I’m a horribly busy creature,” he said to McGaw; “but if you’ll come round to dinner with me at the Colonial Club this evening, we can talk about things.” Of course McGaw went and dined—for the first time in months; for two weeks he had been keeping himself half alive on oatmeal that he cooked in a shallow tin apparatus, over the lamp he studied by.
The Secretary had ridden a bicycle that afternoon, and seemed half famished himself, which soothed McGaw’s raw, quivering sensibilities from the first. Then, besides, Barrows was probably the most genial, natural, receptive, unacademic person that ever answered to an official name. So afterwards, when they went into an unoccupied room upstairs, and the Secretary smoked a cigar, it was more than easy—it was comforting—for McGaw to tell him the whole squalid little tragedy. There was nothing particularly new in it to the Secretary, since he was a gentleman who spent his life in making the struggle easier for men who tried to go through college with a capital consisting of fourteen cents and a laudable ambition. Youth and bitterness in combination were some of the materials he dealt in. Barrows could have told the story of McGaw’s pinched, colourless existence much better than McGaw could; yet for an hour or more he listened, questioned, discussed, and was moved. Later, when he and McGaw parted in the Yard, the Secretary, before going to bed, wrote a carefully thought-out letter to Sears Wolcott 2nd, of the sophomore class.
Sears Wolcott got the letter the next evening, when he stopped a moment in Claverly, on his way from the training table to his club,—that is to say, to one of his clubs. He was a member of two, besides, naturally, the Institute, of whose privileges, by the way, he rarely availed himself. After dining at the training table with his class crew, he usually dropped in at his nearest club to smoke the one pipeful allowed him by his captain. To-night, however, Barrows’ letter put him in such a bad temper that he forgot about his pipe, looked sullen, and spoke to no one. Wolcott was a very big boy; when he was angry, he seemed to swell and swell until everything in the vicinity got out of drawing. Nobody but Haydock had even noticed him come in; the others were too absorbed in drinking their coffee and chattering about the class races. Haydock’s greeting, “How is The Magnificent One this evening?” did not meet with the reception that encourages further pleasantries. Haydock was the only other man in the club who was not talking as fast and as loud as he knew how. But his quiet was as different from The Magnificent One’s as the placid stillness of a summer evening differs from the awful silence in which one waits for a funnel-shaped cloud to mature. Haydock had a big cigar in one hand and a little coffee-cup in the other. He was thinking that a good room in a good club, with its dark walls, and all its leather chairs and divans and rugs, with its magazines and convenient lights to read them by, with its absence of personal individuality, was, especially just after dinner, the most satisfactory spot in the world. Even the background of cheerful noise was agreeable. “As long as you’re not called on to help make it,” added Haydock to himself, as one of the talkers detached himself from the others, and, flourishing a paper in his face, called out:—
“Who wants to subscribe to the Prospect Union?”
Wolcott reached for the nearest newspaper, and buried himself in it; he couldn’t endure Ellis.
“Who wants to subscribe to the Prospect Union? Only a dollar,” repeated Ellis, wiggling his subscription list before Wolcott’s eyes.
“What the devil is the Prospect Union?” growled Wolcott. He crumpled the “Transcript” and tossed it back on the table.
“Why, don’t you know?” asked Ellis, in genuine surprise. “I’ve taught geography there for two years.”