Haydock had taken the fellow’s measure when he said that of him. The tutor was thoroughly “human.” He was inclined to like most of the men he had met at the Signet in a frank, simple way that demanded nothing, and ended by getting much; with corresponding naturalness, he liked being liked by them. Moreover, the dreariness of his first two years left no more permanent effect on him than the horrors of a January passage leave on a traveller who at length reaches port. McGaw proved himself a normal young person, by the comfortable manner in which the general hopelessness of his past situation receded from his memory, and left behind it one or two sharp details of a purely personal nature. He didn’t, for instance, recall very vividly how it felt to go more or less hungry for several days at a time; but, on the other hand, he couldn’t pass Wolcott on the street without tingling all over with anger and contempt. The recollection of Wolcott’s treatment of him refused to soften and fade; the sound of Wolcott’s insolent laughter never grew faint. McGaw still felt bitterly toward Wolcott. The tutor was human enough; and he hadn’t begun to show how human he could be. He was something like the little girl who, on being told that she had big eyes, answered, “Well, if you think they’re big now, you just ought to see me open them really wide once.” Whenever McGaw came across Wolcott, he thought of a remark a certain terrible old man used to make to his enemies:—
“You’ll all have a chance to get back at me if you live long enough,” this terrible old man was in the habit of saying encouragingly. “The only trouble is, so many of you seem to die at seventy.” McGaw often hoped that he wouldn’t be cut off at that age without having had a slap of some kind at Wolcott. So, although he didn’t exactly seek an opportunity, he was by no means blind to it when it presented itself, which it did with gratifying despatch.
There was the usual delay that year in electing the third and last seven of the Signet. The first two sevens had met three or four times, ostensibly for that purpose; but either there wasn’t a quorum, or some one had always played the piano, or read Kipling, or Maupassant, or Catulle Mendes aloud, or given a lively rendering of the dramas then playing at the Bowdoin Square Theatre, or the Grand Opera House, until no one felt particularly business-like. It was pleasanter to drink beer, and smoke, and “listen to something,” than to squabble over seven men far into the night, until you began to yawn, and discovered that you didn’t care whether they or any one else ever got into the Signet. As time went on, Ellis and Haviland, the president, made several attempts to impress upon the society what Ellis called, “the gravity of the situation.” But almost every one knew the president too well to be in the least impressed, and Ellis’s gravity was never very infectious; so the Signet took its own time. When, at last, fourteen men turned up in the long, dingy room of the society one rainy night in May, and no one had brought anything to read, and the fellows who played the piano were disobliging, Haviland called them to order, at the earnest request of Ellis, secretary and treasurer, and declared that the first business to come before the meeting was the election of the Third Seven. Ellis looked conscious and aggrieved; he had written several pages of minutes in rhyme, and wanted to read them.
“You look rather well behind that desk, Haviland,” drawled a fellow named Baxford; “but you make a rotten president. The first business is the reading of the minutes.” Ellis smiled again.
“Not at all, not at all,” answered Haviland, unabashed, glancing at the secretary’s book; “I am only too well aware that Mr. Ellis has written a yard and a half of poetry for the occasion. I merely hesitated to classify so delightful a prospect under the head of business. If Mr. Ellis will give us the pleasure—”
“I move we adjourn,” interrupted Haydock and Dickey Dawson and Bigelow and a tall man every one called Tommy, all rising at once.
“I’m going to get a cup of chocolate,” announced some one else. “Ellis’s poetry is always so sensual, I can’t listen to it unless I quaff thick, sweet, ’lucent syrups tinct with’ granulated sugar.”
“Have the things come?” asked Haviland, abruptly dropping what he considered his parliamentary manner.
“Yes, and there’s beer,” answered Baxford, who was sitting where he could lift the faded red portière and look into the other room. The meeting, led by the president, stampeded, leaving Ellis pounding on the table, and endeavouring to make himself heard above the uproar. He was imploring them to “be serious just for a few minutes.” Haydock stuck his head between the curtains.
“That’s what they call ‘Harvard indifference,’” he said, and disappeared.