You can see him if you attend the next production of the Dramatic Association.
HERO WORSHIP
Near Old Chapel he used to linger on the way from recitations, buying things from old black Jimmie and pretending to be amused by his stuttering conversation while he watched the passers-by. And when The One came along for whom he waited, he said to himself, "Oh, he's wearing his brown shooting-coat to-day," and turned and gazed after him until out of sight, wondering what lecture he had at that hour and how he would get along at it. Then passing on slowly across the campus he turned out upon the street.
When he reached his room, Darnell said to another freshman that lived in the house, "I saw Lawrence to-day. He was walking with his arm around Nolan. He passed right by me." And he could also have told just how he nodded to the fellows along the walk and how he swung his legs. Darnell thought that Lawrence's gait was just right. So was his manner of dressing. Somehow Darnell could not make his corduroy coat hang in that way. It lay back all right, but it would not stay snugly up on his shoulders as Lawrence's did.
He used to see him quite often now, for by this time he had learned at what hours Lawrence's lectures came. Which was more than the senior himself knew, for he had always to look at the schedule tacked up on the back of the door over the faculty and absence committee summonses.
Darnell remembered the first time he saw Lawrence. It was on the morning of the first day of the term, while he was sitting in the office of the old Nassau Hotel, quietly waiting for his mother and trying not to appear green and thinking that everyone who came in was a sophomore and wanted him. It was raining, he remembered, and people came scurrying in with their trousers turned up and mackintoshes on. Lawrence came in alone.
He came with his impressive stride and a very long paddock coat and a new kind of shooting-cap which he brought back with him from Piccadilly the first of the month. He frowned and glanced about the room. And when he found the two faces he was looking for and strode across to where a worried-faced gentleman in a silk hat was reading the paper beside a freshman with a grinning face, he said, holding out his hand, "So you have arrived." It was just the patrician tone of voice that Darnell had expected when he saw the face.
When Lawrence stretched out his hand his long coat fell open and disclosed an orange monogram of many closely intertwined letters shining against the black of his undercoat. It was worked upon the breast-pocket, and the freshman wondered what that mysterious insignia might mean.
He watched him as he jerked his head and blew smoke in the damp air. The way he tossed the ashes away was perfect. And when Lawrence suddenly turned and, looking frankly in the freshman's father's eyes, said with a reserved smile, "You need not worry about that, Mr. Jansen," and stretched an arm about the freshman's shoulder, Darnell thought he would rather be that freshman than anyone in the world—except the owner of the arm.
Then he began to speak again, and Darnell found himself leaning forward a little. He remembered thinking, "I don't care if it is impolite to listen."