On the nights when our teacher was called out to a patient, as he often was, George Bolingbroke and I would push back the chairs for a game of checkers, or step outside into the garden for a wrestling match, in which I was always the victor. The physical proportions which the doctor lamented, were, I believe, the strongest hold I had upon the admiration of young George. Latin he treated with the same half-playful, half-contemptuous courtesy that I had observed in General Bolingbroke's manner to "the ladies," and even the doctor he regarded as a mixture of a scholar and a mollycoddle. It was perfectly characteristic that one thing, and one thing only, should command his unqualified respect, and this was the possession of the potential power to knock him down.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH I GROW UP
In my eighteenth year, when I had achieved a position and a salary in the tobacco factory, I left the Old Market forever, and moved into a room, which Mrs. Clay had offered to rent to me, in the house of Dr. Theophilus. During the next twelve months my intimacy with young George, who was about to enter the University, led to an acquaintance, though a slight one, with that great man, the General. As the years passed my dream of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad, instead of evaporating, had become fixed in my mind as the fruition of all my toil, the end of all my ambition. I saw in it still, as I had seen in it that afternoon against the rosy sunset and the anchored vessel, the one glorious possibility, the great adventure. The General's plethoric figure, with his big paunch and his gouty toe, had never lost in my eyes the legendary light in which I had enveloped it; and when George suggested to me carelessly one spring afternoon that I should stop by his house and have a look at his uncle's classical library, I felt my cheeks burn, while my heart beat an excited tattoo against my ribs. The house I knew by sight, a grave, low-browed mansion, with a fringe of purple wistaria draping the long porch; and it was under a pendulous shower of blossoms that we found the General seated with the evening newspaper in his hand and his bandaged foot on a wicker stool. As we entered the gate he was making a face over a glass of water, while he complained fretfully to Dr. Theophilus, who sat in a rocking-chair, with Robin, the pointer, stretched on a rug at his feet.
"I'll never get used to the taste of water, if I live to be a hundred," the great man was saying peevishly. "To save my soul I can't understand why the Lord made anything so darn flat!"
A single lock of hair, growing just above the bald spot on his head, stirred in the soft wind like a tuft of bleached grass, while his lower, slightly protruding lip pursed itself into an angry and childish expression. He was paying the inevitable price, I gathered, for his career as "a gay old bird"; but even in the rebuking glance which Dr. Theophilus now bent upon him, I read the recognition that the president of the Great South Midland and Atlantic Railroad must be dosed more sparingly than other men. Under his loose, puffy chin he wore a loose, puffy tie of a magenta shade, in the midst of which a single black pearl reposed; and when he turned his head, the creases in his neck looked like white cords sunk deep in the scarlet flesh.
"There's no use, Theophilus, I can't stand it," he protested. "Delilah, bring me a sip of whiskey to put a taste in my mouth."
"No whiskey, Delilah, not a drop," commanded the doctor sternly. "It's the result of your own imprudence, George, and you've got to pay for it. You've been eating strawberries, and I told you not to touch one with a ten-foot pole."
"You didn't say a word about strawberry shortcake," rejoined the General, like a guilty child, "and this attack is due to an entirely different cause. I dined at the Blands' on Sunday, and Miss Mitty gave me mint sauce on my lamb. I never could abide mint sauce."