The Cost [10]
every one except Hampden's gentle-voiced mother.
"No, sir." The son's voice was clear.
"Is your mother?"
"No, sir."
"Have you got money put by?"
"Four hundred dollars."
"Is that enough?"
"It'll give me time for a long look around."
The old man drew a big, rusty pocketbook from the inside pocket of the old-fashioned, flowered-velvet waistcoat he wore even when he fed the pigs. He counted out upon his knee ten one-hundred-dollar bills. He held them toward his son. "That'll have to do you," he said. "That's all you'll get."
"No, thank you," replied Hampden. "I wish no favors from anybody."
"You've earned it over and above your keep," retorted his father. "It belongs to you."
"If I need it I'll send for it," said Hampden, that being the easiest way quickly to end the matter.
But he did tell Pauline that he purposed to pay his own way through college.
"My father has a notion," said he, "that the things one works for and earns are the only things worth having. And I think one can't begin to act on that notion too early. If one is trying to get an education, why not an all-round education, instead of only lessons out of books?"
From that moment Pauline ceased to regard dress or any other external feature as a factor in her estimate of Hampden Scarborough.
"But your plan might make a man too late in getting a start--some men, at least," she suggested.
"A start--for what?" he asked.
"For fame or fortune or success of any kind."
Scarborough's eyes, fixed on the distance, had a curious look in them--he was again exactly like that first view she had had of him.
"But suppose one isn't after any of those things," he said. "Suppose he thinks of life as simply an opportunity for self-development. He starts at it when he's born, and the more of it he does the more he has to do. And--he can't possibly fail, and every moment is a triumph--and----" He came back from his excursion and smiled apologetically at her.
But she was evidently interested.
"Don't you think a man ought to have ambition?" she asked. She was thinking of her lover and his audacious schemes for making himself powerful.
"Oh--a man is what he is. Ambition means so many different things."
"But shouldn't you like to be rich and famous and--all that?"
"It depends----" Scarborough felt that if he said what was in his mind it might sound like cant. So he changed the subject. "Just now my ambition is to get off that zoology condition."
IV.
A DUMONT TRIUMPH.
But in the first week of her second month Pauline's interest in her surroundings vanished. She was corresponding with Jennie Atwater and Jennie began to write of Dumont--he had returned to Saint X; Caroline Sylvester, of Cleveland, was visiting his mother; it was all but certain that Jack and Caroline would marry. "Her people want it," Jennie went on--she pretended to believe that Jack and Pauline had given each the other up--"and Jack's father is determined on it. They're together morning, noon and evening. She's really very swell, though _I_ don't think she's such a raving beauty." Following this came the Saint X News-Bulletin with a broad hint that the engagement was about to be announced.
"It's ridiculously false," said Pauline to herself; but she tossed for hours each night, trying to soothe the sick pain in her heart. And while she scouted the possibility of losing him, she was for the first time entertaining it--a cloud in the great horizon of her faith in the future; a small cloud, but black and bold against the blue. And she had no suspicion that he had returned from Chicago deliberately to raise that cloud.
A few days later another letter from Jennie, full of gossip about Jack and Caroline, a News-Bulletin with a long article about Caroline, ending with an even broader hint of her approaching marriage--and Dumont sent Pauline a note from the hotel in Villeneuve, five miles from Battle Field: "I must see you. Do not deny me. It means everything to both of us--what I want to say to you." And he asked
"No, sir." The son's voice was clear.
"Is your mother?"
"No, sir."
"Have you got money put by?"
"Four hundred dollars."
"Is that enough?"
"It'll give me time for a long look around."
The old man drew a big, rusty pocketbook from the inside pocket of the old-fashioned, flowered-velvet waistcoat he wore even when he fed the pigs. He counted out upon his knee ten one-hundred-dollar bills. He held them toward his son. "That'll have to do you," he said. "That's all you'll get."
"No, thank you," replied Hampden. "I wish no favors from anybody."
"You've earned it over and above your keep," retorted his father. "It belongs to you."
"If I need it I'll send for it," said Hampden, that being the easiest way quickly to end the matter.
But he did tell Pauline that he purposed to pay his own way through college.
"My father has a notion," said he, "that the things one works for and earns are the only things worth having. And I think one can't begin to act on that notion too early. If one is trying to get an education, why not an all-round education, instead of only lessons out of books?"
From that moment Pauline ceased to regard dress or any other external feature as a factor in her estimate of Hampden Scarborough.
"But your plan might make a man too late in getting a start--some men, at least," she suggested.
"A start--for what?" he asked.
"For fame or fortune or success of any kind."
Scarborough's eyes, fixed on the distance, had a curious look in them--he was again exactly like that first view she had had of him.
"But suppose one isn't after any of those things," he said. "Suppose he thinks of life as simply an opportunity for self-development. He starts at it when he's born, and the more of it he does the more he has to do. And--he can't possibly fail, and every moment is a triumph--and----" He came back from his excursion and smiled apologetically at her.
But she was evidently interested.
"Don't you think a man ought to have ambition?" she asked. She was thinking of her lover and his audacious schemes for making himself powerful.
"Oh--a man is what he is. Ambition means so many different things."
"But shouldn't you like to be rich and famous and--all that?"
"It depends----" Scarborough felt that if he said what was in his mind it might sound like cant. So he changed the subject. "Just now my ambition is to get off that zoology condition."
IV.
A DUMONT TRIUMPH.
But in the first week of her second month Pauline's interest in her surroundings vanished. She was corresponding with Jennie Atwater and Jennie began to write of Dumont--he had returned to Saint X; Caroline Sylvester, of Cleveland, was visiting his mother; it was all but certain that Jack and Caroline would marry. "Her people want it," Jennie went on--she pretended to believe that Jack and Pauline had given each the other up--"and Jack's father is determined on it. They're together morning, noon and evening. She's really very swell, though _I_ don't think she's such a raving beauty." Following this came the Saint X News-Bulletin with a broad hint that the engagement was about to be announced.
"It's ridiculously false," said Pauline to herself; but she tossed for hours each night, trying to soothe the sick pain in her heart. And while she scouted the possibility of losing him, she was for the first time entertaining it--a cloud in the great horizon of her faith in the future; a small cloud, but black and bold against the blue. And she had no suspicion that he had returned from Chicago deliberately to raise that cloud.
A few days later another letter from Jennie, full of gossip about Jack and Caroline, a News-Bulletin with a long article about Caroline, ending with an even broader hint of her approaching marriage--and Dumont sent Pauline a note from the hotel in Villeneuve, five miles from Battle Field: "I must see you. Do not deny me. It means everything to both of us--what I want to say to you." And he asked