For Tom himself the smart people who forever dined and drove and yachted and gave incessant dinners had no attraction. Mrs. Oliver, a devotee of the gay world, and Charlotte, her older daughter, who followed in the mother’s footsteps, had ceased chiding their recreant brother, and were rather inclined to hustle him out of the observation of their all-important circle. Eunice, the younger girl, who adored Tom, used often to fall behind in the fashionable procession for the pleasure of sharing her brother’s pastimes. In athletics Tom had trained her well, and here Ash Carmichael had first elicited her girlish admiration, for he was an adept in all sports requiring grace and activity.
But then even Mrs. Oliver told her son that his chum was the only “possible” college-mate he had ever brought under the patrimonial roof-tree!
When the crash of Tom’s prospects came as to finances Carmichael was disagreeably taken by surprise. The manifestation to his friend of the exact condition of his feelings on this subject was, on the whole, more trying to Tom than the original blow.
The first public move in the disintegration of their friendship was Tom’s withdrawal from the expensive rooms they had occupied together since freshman year into much cheaper lodgings.
Ash promptly installed in his place a wealthy and inane classmate whom the “crowd” had antecedently styled “Miss Willie.” There was a groan of derision among the fellows for this substitute for Tom; and at an impromptu meeting of leading spirits in Tom’s new rooms, in an old and shabby quarter, it was voted to give Carmichael henceforth what they called the “icy nod.”
After the Christmas holidays, which Ash spent with “Miss Willie’s” family, something occurred to bring upon Tom’s former chum a ban more serious than what had preceded it. The offense, the discovery of it, the discussion, and the verdict were known to only a few of Tom Oliver’s most devoted henchmen. Outsiders, aware of some dark mystery in process of solution, talked of it—speculated curiously—but got no farther. That Carmichael had done something awfully shady was generally believed. What that something was nobody could find out. But during the whole time of the agitation Tom went about black as a thunder-cloud and silent as the grave.
If the Faculty knew anything of these proceedings it was based upon vague rumor only, or came by intuition. They had nothing to take hold of, on which to condemn Carmichael. It was generally believed, among them and the undergraduates, that a few men under Oliver’s leadership had rectified whatever wrong was done; had saved Carmichael from disgrace and exposure; and had then agreed to hush the matter up.
Before graduating, Carmichael took a prize for an uncommonly clever essay, which he delivered with ease and distinction before an audience of whom the strangers applauded him to the echo. When he took his degree, and the class was about to scatter, he was so much alone that nobody thought of asking what he meant to do in the future. When next heard from by his late associates Mr. Carmichael had set out on a journey to Europe to end in the circuit of the globe, as the companion of “Miss Willie,” whose family defrayed all expenses.
About this time Tom Oliver, in a suit of greasy overalls, was beginning his labors in the repair-shops of a great railway in a little Pennsylvania town, to obtain intimate personal knowledge of all parts of the mighty motor that was henceforward to control his destiny. For, at the advice of a friend of his father, he had determined to work up from the bottom of the railroad business to as near the top as ambition and energy might ultimately carry him. Tom had need of all his pluck during the summer of this first apprenticeship to toil. His father, overworried and outworn, was stricken with apoplexy in New York, and suddenly passed away. Simply because he could not tell what better to do for them, Tom transferred his mother and sisters to live in a cottage in the suburbs of the town where he was employed.
Oh, the tragedy of life when small souls meet larger ones in everyday friction! Mrs. Oliver and Charlotte, banded against Tom and Eunice, made those summer days in the hot little house twice their ordinary length. And Tom saw, in spite of her persistent effort to make the best of things, that little Eunice was carrying a burden more heavy for her shoulders than the loss of a great house, a troop of friends, servants, and finery. Nor was it her mourning for the father she had loved tenderly that oppressed her. Of him she and Tom talked together frequently, and with honest feeling. But there was something else—something she hugged to her heart in silence, that grew worse as the summer waned.