It was the Representative who revealed to Billy at last that the thing he needed before he would ever be satisfied with anything else was more education. Billy knew that he wanted an education, but he also wanted the fields, the steady quieting toil of seed time and harvest, the care of the cattle, the directing of life and growth with all their mysteries and miracles, and their unfailing obediences to natural laws. He was a born farmer, but he would never be content to farm blindly, mechanically, as an animal follows prey, for an existence. The best solution for his case seemed to be the agricultural college.
A college year leaves considerable free time in the twelve months, and Billy managed somehow to keep the tillable acres of the farm under crop and to harvest what he planted. The first year initiated him into a dozen phases of learning that he had never heard of before. In the second year, partly by accident, partly through the insight of a few semi-professionals, it was discovered that he had some unusual athletic possibilities, and Billy loosened up from his grind
sufficiently to learn the hard, clean strain of rugby and hockey, and to warm up daily in the gymnasium. It opened up a new world for him. In his whole life he had never before learned to play, and as it put a new spring in his muscles, a new physical joy of living in his existence, it began to clear away the cloud that had sobered and darkened his outlook. It was in his third year, at the term’s closing dance before Christmas, that he had another awakening.
Up to this time, every attempt of his classmates to draw him across the girls’ campus had failed. The magic force had come to him on the rink that afternoon. A gay little figure in a white wool skating outfit, with a brave dash of crimson here and there, chasing a hockey puck down the ice, skated very close to him, lost the puck around his skates somehow, and as he returned it, she turned in his direction for a moment the most naive, childish gaze from a pair of wonderful blue eyes. At night, to the amazement of his friends, he went to the dance. The girl might be as unattainable as a royal princess—he was quite sure she was; yet, as millions of men had done before him, he took the trail of the impossible with a hope that really promised nothing.
She made the first picture he saw when he went in, standing like a rare bit of Italian china on a space of polished floor, the magnet of a train of sleekly-groomed, linen-bosomed young men.
Absently Billy was having a programme thrust upon him. Dazedly the admonition was being borne in on him that he would be expected to do his duty to the end, and distribute himself around well. Already he was entangled, introduced to a girl wearing a committee badge, and his escort deserted him.
The committee girl didn’t disturb his equilibrium at all. It wasn’t necessary to pay much attention to her; she didn’t seem to expect it. She was there for a purpose, to put people at ease, the rare individuals of the twentieth century youth who needed this ministration—and to shuffle them. She handled Billy’s case by reassuring him from the frankest and friendliest eyes he had ever looked into, then following the direction of his gaze, she led him directly to the regal little figure with its buzzing circle of attendants.
Miss Evison’s greeting was not so alluring as her wide baby stare in the afternoon. She turned her meaningless, drawing-room gaze toward him with the indifference due one of her innumerable courtiers, and even glanced with immovable correctness at his hand extended half way across the distance between them. Billy brought the hand back painfully. He had known better, of course, but it seemed such a humanly natural thing to do. Come to think of it, he had shaken hands with the committee girl too, but she must have met him half way, or something, because
he had never thought of it until now. There was something decidedly chilling, too, in Miss Evison’s clear, blase, very “nice girl,” how-do-you-do, and not being a connoisseur in the ways of women, he took it for a dismissal and turned to go.
Miss Evison had not anticipated this danger. He was walking right away from her, with his rare six feet of athlete, his good looks, and his whole unique farmerish appearance that would make such a striking background for the evening.