Suddenly, as though realizing for the first time what he had said, he burst out: "Good God, I never meant to tell. See here, you men, that's sacred—you understand."
And Dink and Joe, looking on his face, realized all at once why a certain gentler side of life was shut out to him, and why he had never gone to the Storys'.
CHAPTER XXVII
One result of Stover's sobering experience with Fanny Le Roy was that he met the problem of the senior elections with directness and honesty. What Brockhurst had said of the injurious effect of secrecy and ceremony on the imagination had always been with him. Yet in his desire to stand high in the eyes of Jean Story, to win the honors she prized, he had quibbled over the question. Now the glimpse he had had into the inscrutable verities of human tragedy had all at once lifted him above the importance of local standards, and left him with but one desire—to be true to himself.
The tests that had come to him in his college life had brought with them a maturity of view beyond that of his fellows. Now that he seriously debated the question, he said to himself that he saw great evils in the system: that on the average intelligence this thraldom to formula and awe at the assumption of mystery had undeniably a narrowing effect, unworthy of a great university dedicated to liberty of thought and action. He saw that while certain individuals, such as Hungerford and Regan, laughed at the bugbear of secrecy, and went their way unconcerned, a great number, more impressionable, had been ruled from the beginning by fear alone.
With the aims and purposes of Skull and Bones he was in thorough sympathy—their independence of judgment, their seeking out of men who had to contend with poverty, their desire to reward ambition and industry and character—but the more he freely acknowledged their influence for democracy and simplicity at Yale, the more he revolted at the unnecessary fetish of it all.
"They should command respect and not fear. By George, that's where I stand. All this rigmarole is ridiculous, and it's ridiculous that it ever affected me; it is of the middle ages—outgrown."
Then a problem placed itself before him. Admitting that he had even the ghost of a chance of being tapped, ought he to go into a senior society feeling as he did about so many of its observances, secretly resolved on their elimination? Finally, a week before Tap Day, he decided to go to Judge Story and frankly state his case, letting him know that he preferred thus to give notice of his beliefs.