CHAPTER VI
INFINITE PATIENCE
I
It was the day of the Harvard-Pennsylvania boat race. Madelaine Theddon had come from Boston to cheer for the crimson. Gordon met her and after the races off Court Square they went to The Worthy for dinner.
Springfield was holding open house whether it wanted to hold open house or no. Groups of college boys paraded the streets. Banners were rampant; bands played. In early evening large numbers of Harvard undergrads descended upon The Worthy dining room and commandeered the place for their personal mess hall. It was a hilarious, happy, boisterous crowd,—and atmosphere. In another year the grim hand of war would grip the vitals of the nation. Let academic masculinity eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow most of it would be slopping in trench water or dodging shrapnel.
Madelaine and Gordon had entered the room early. They had secured a table beside one of the Worthington Street windows. The day died and evening came. The air was balmy and the windows were open. Madelaine felt light-hearted. The vacation was welcome and she abandoned herself to that carnival spirit.
Gordon had “straightened out.” There was no doubt about it. He had likewise straightened up. He was sleekly barbered at the moment, almost distinguished in his dinner clothes. He acted and talked like a man with a great life purpose. He spoke of the iron works, swollen with munitions orders, as he spoke of his pocket. Yet not in conceit or brag. He had been placed in charge of an important department and was pursuing that business as though it were his own. And the end was not yet. Gordon so contended, and had found the biggest thrill of all in building, creating, producing, doing some great, useful thing, the results from which he could see with his eyes and touch with his hands.
In the interim between race and dinner, Madelaine had hurried home and changed her frock. She was now a dream—a vision—in black tulle lightened with silver, her cheeks flushed, her calm eyes unusually merry, the inverted lights of the big dining room shining on raven hair massed high above a wide, brainy forehead. With Gordon in his new incarnation across the snowy linen and a tiny candle-lamp with a red-mulled shade at her right wrist making the dinner rendezvous cozy, despite the noise going on in the room, Madelaine almost fancied she was in love with Gord and the world a bit nebulous with glorified mist.
Wine flowed freely at the college tables. Glitter went in hand with horseplay. A big tin horn was much in evidence. At intervals, its blare cleft the tumult with nerve-jolting suddenness. Ever and anon, amid the tinkle of tableware and the popping of corks, there was song.
The boys sang “Fair Harvard”, “There’s a Tavern in the Town”, “Little Brown Jug”, and that latter-day classic, “Mary Ann McCarty, She Went Out to Dig Some Clams”, and they kept time to Mary Ann McCarty’s vicissitudes in the clam-digging vocation with cutlery, wine bottles and feet. An especially hilarious group of fat boys off in a corner originated new yells. Colored waiters sweated and hurried and dodged bits of food hurled at them and made themselves as agreeable as possible at the prospect of many bowls filled with tip money to be left behind for distribution when the festivities were over.