Hugo loved her for two weeks after that, and then his emotions wearied and he was able to see what she had done and why she did not answer his letters. His subdued fierceness was a vehement fire to women. His fiercer appetite was the cause of his early growth in a knowledge of them. When most of his companions were finding their way into the mysteries of sex both unhandily and with much turmoil, he learned well and abnormally. It became a part of his secret self. Another barrier to the level of the society that surrounded him. When he changed the name of Iris to Isis in his thoughts, he moved away from the Psi Deltas, who would have been incapable of the notion. In person he stayed among them, but in spirit he felt another difference, which he struggled to reconcile.
In March the thaws came, and under the warming sun Hugo made a deliberate attempt to fall in love with Janice, who was the daughter of his French professor. She was a happy, innocent little girl, with gold hair, and brown eyes that lived oddly beneath it. She worshipped Hugo. He petted her, talked through long evenings to her, tried to be faithful to her in his most unfettered dreams, and once considered proposing to her. When he found himself unable to do that, he was compelled to resist an impulse to seduce her. Ashamed, believing himself unfit for a nice girl, he untangled that romance as painlessly as he could, separating himself from Janice little by little and denying every accusation of waning interest.
Then for a month he believed that he could never be satisfied by any woman, that he was superior to women. He read the lives of great lovers and adulterers and he wished that he could see Bessie, who had taken his money long before in New York City. She appealed to him then more than all the others—probably, he thought, because he was drunk and had not viewed her in sharp perspective. For hours he meditated on women, while he longed constantly to possess a woman.
But the habitual routine of his life did not suffer. He attended his classes and lectures, played on the basketball team, tried tentatively to write for the campus newspaper, learned to perform indifferently on the mandolin, and made himself into the semblance of an ideal college man. His criticism of college then was at its lowest ebb. He spent Christmas in New York at Lefty Foresman's parents' elaborate home, slightly intoxicated through the two weeks, hastening to the opera, to balls and parties, ill at ease when presented to people whose names struck his ears familiarly, seeing for the first time the exaggeration of scale on which the very rich live and wondering constantly why he never met Iris, wishing for and fearing that meeting while he wondered.
When his first year at college was near to its end, and that still and respectful silence that marks the passing of a senior class had fallen over the campus, Hugo realized with a shock that he would soon be on his way back to Indian Creek. Then, suddenly, he saw what an amazing and splendid thing that year at college had been. He realized how it had filled his life to the brim with activities of which he had not dreamed, how it had shaped him so that he would be almost a stranger in his own home, how it had aged and educated him in the business of living. When the time of parting with his new friends drew near, he understood that they were valuable to him, in spite of his questioning. And they made it clear that he would be missed by them. At last he shared a feeling with his classmates, a fond sadness, an illimitable poignancy that was young and unadulterated by motive. He was perversely happy when he became aware of it. He felt somewhat justified for being himself and living his life.
A day or two before college closed, he received a letter from his father. It was the third he had received during the year. It said:
Dear Son—
Your mother and I have decided to break the news to you before you leave for home, because there may be better opportunities for you in the East than here at Indian Creek. When you went away to Webster University, I agreed to take care of all your expenses. It was the least I could do, I felt, for my only son. The two thousand dollars your mother and I had saved seemed ample for your four years. But the bills we have received, as well as your own demands, have been staggering. In March, when a scant six hundred dollars of the original fund remained, I invested the money in a mine stock which, the salesman said, would easily net the six thousand dollars you appeared to need. I now find to my chagrin that the stock is worthless. I am unable to get back my purchase money.
It will be impossible during the coming year for me to let you have more than five hundred dollars. Perhaps, with what you earn this summer and with the exercise of economy, you can get along. I trust so. But, anxious as we are to see you again, we felt that, in the light of such information, you might prefer to remain in the East to earn what you can.
We are both despondent over the situation and we wish that we could do more than tender our regrets. But we hope that you will be able to find some solution to this situation. Thus, with our very warmest affection and our fondest hope, we wish you good fortune.
Your loving father,
Abednego Danner.
Hugo read the letter down to the last period after the rather tremulous signature. His emotions were confused. Touched by the earnest and pathetically futile efforts of his father and by the attempt of that lonely little man to express what was, perhaps, a great affection, Hugo was nevertheless aghast at a prospect that he had not considered. He was going to be thrown into the world on his own resources. And, resting his frame in his worn chair—a frame capable of smashing into banks and taking the needed money without fear of punishment—Hugo began to wonder dismally if he was able even to support himself. No trade, no occupation, suggested itself. He had already experienced some of the merciless coldness of the world. The boys would all leave soon. And then he would be alone, unprovided for, helpless.
Hugo was frightened. He read the letter again, his wistful thoughts of his parents diminishing before the reality of his predicament. He counted his money. Eighty dollars in the bank and twelve in his pockets. He was glad he had started an account after his experience with Bessie. He was glad that he had husbanded more than enough to pay his fare to Indian Creek. Ninety-two dollars. He could live on that for a long time. Perhaps for the summer. And he would be able to get some sort of job. He was strong, anyway. That comforted him. He looked out of his window and tried to enumerate the things that he could do. All sorts of farm work. He could drive a team in the city. He could work on the docks. He considered nothing but manual labor. It would offer more. Gradually his fear that he would starve if left to his own devices ebbed from him, and it was replaced by grief that he could not return to Webster. Fourteen hundred dollars—that was the cost of his freshman year. He made a list of the things he could do without, of the work he could do to help himself through college. Perhaps he could return. The fear slowly diminished. He would be a working student in the year to come. He hated the idea. His fraternity had taken no members from that class of humble young men who rose at dawn and scrubbed floors and waited on tables to win the priceless gem of education. Lefty and Chuck would be chilly toward such a step. They would even offer him money to avoid it. It was a sad circumstance, at best.
When that period of tribulation passed, Hugo became a man. But he suffered keenly from his unwonted fears for some time. The calm and suave youth who had made love to Iris was buried beneath his frightened and imaginative adolescence. It wore out the last of his childishness. Immediately afterwards he learned about money and how it is earned. He sat there in the dormitory, almost trembling with uncertainty and used mighty efforts to do the things he felt he must do. He wrote a letter to his father which began: "Dear Dad—Why in Sam Hill didn't you tell me you were being reamed so badly by your nit-witted son and I'd have shovelled out and dug up some money for myself long ago?" On rereading that letter he realized that its tone was false. He wrote another in which he apologized with simple sincerity for the condition he had unknowingly created, and in which he expressed every confidence that he could take care of himself in the future.