CHAPTER XVIII
Sanford's virtues were hard for Hugh to find, and they grew more inconspicuous as the term advanced. For the time being nothing seemed worth while: he was disgusted with himself, the undergraduates, and the fraternity; he felt that the college had bilked him. Often he thought of the talk he had had with his father before he left for college. Sometimes that talk seemed funny, entirely idiotic, but sometimes it infuriated him. What right had his father to send him off to college with such fool ideas in his head? Nu Delta, the perfect brotherhood! Bull! How did his father get that way, anyhow? Hugh had yet to learn that nearly every chapter changes character at least once a decade and that Nu Delta thirty years earlier had been an entirely different organization from what it was at present. At times he felt that his father had deliberately deceived him, but in quieter moments he knew better; then he realized that his father was a dreamer and an innocent, a delicately minded man who had never really known anything about Sanford College or the world either. Hugh often felt older and wiser than his father; and in many ways he was.
In March he angered his fraternity brothers again by refusing a part in the annual musical comedy, which was staged by the Dramatic Society during Prom week. Hugh's tenor singing voice and rather small features made him an excellent possibility for a woman's part. But he was not a good actor, and he knew it. His attempts at acting in a high-school play had resulted in a flat failure, and he had no intention of publicly making a fool of himself again. Besides, he did not like the idea of appearing on the stage as a girl; the mere idea was offensive to him. Therefore, when the Society offered him a part he declined it.
Bob Tucker took him severely to task. "What do you mean, Hugh," he demanded, "by turning down the Dramat? Here you've got a chance for a lead, and you turn up your nose at it as if you were God Almighty. It seems to me that you are getting gosh-awful high-hat lately. You run around with a bunch of thoroughly wet ones; you never come to fraternity meetings if you can help it; you aren't half training down at the track; and now you give the Dramat the air just as if an activity or two wasn't anything in your young life."
"The Dramat isn't anything to me," Hugh replied, trying to keep his temper. Tucker's arrogance always made him angry. "I can't act worth a damn. Never could. I tried once in a play at home and made a poor fish of myself, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I'm not going to again."
"Bunk!" Tucker ejaculated contemptuously. "Hooey! Anybody can act good enough for the Dramat. I tell you right now that you're turning the fraternity down; you're playing us dirt. What have you done in college? Not a goddamn thing except make the Glee Club. I don't care about track. I suppose you did your best last year, though I know damn well that you aren't doing it this year. What would become of the fraternity if all of us parked ourselves on our tails and gave the activities the air the way you do? You're throwing us down, and we don't like it."
"Well, I'm not going out for the Dramat," Hugh mumbled sullenly; "you can just bet on that. I'll admit that I haven't trained the way I ought to, but I have made the Glee Club, and I have promised to join the Banjo Club, and I am still on the track squad, and that's more than half the fellows in this fraternity can say. Most of 'em don't do anything but go on parties and raise hell generally. How come you're picking on me? Why don't you ride some of them for a while? I don't see where they're so hot."
"Never mind the other fellows." Tucker's black eyes flashed angrily. He was one of the "hell-raisers" himself, good looking; always beautifully dressed, and proud of the fact that he was "rated the smoothest man on the campus." His "smoothness" had made him prominent in activities—that and his estimate of himself. He took it for granted that he would be prominent, and the students accepted him at his own valuation; and powerful Nu Delta had been behind him, always able to swing Votes when votes were needed.
"Never mind the other fellows," he repeated. "They're none of your party. You've got talents, and you're not making use of them. You could be as popular as the devil if you wanted to, but you go chasing around with kikes and micks."