The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 33/212

It was the happiest of those last irresponsible days before he struck into

his work in the world and became a failure. To-night he saw the picture as

plainly as if it were yesterday; no reminiscence had risen so keenly

before his eyes for years: pretty Mrs. Van Skuyt sitting beside him--

pretty Mrs. Van Skuyt and her roses! What had become of her? He saw the

crowd of friends waiting on the pier for their arrival, and the dozen or

so emblazoned classmates (it was in the time of brilliant flannels) who

suddenly sent up a volley of college cheers in his honor--how plainly the

dear, old, young faces rose up before him to-night, the men from whose

lives he had slipped! Dearest and jolliest of the faces was that of Tom

Meredith, clubmate, classmate, his closest friend, the thin, red-headed

third baseman; he could see Tom's mouth opened at least a yard, it seemed,

such was his frantic vociferousness. Again and again the cheers rang out,

"Harkless! Harkless!" on the end of them. In those days everybody

(particularly his classmates) thought he would be minister to England in a

few years, and the orchestra on the Casino porch was playing "The

Conquering Hero," in his honor, and at the behest of Tom Meredith, he

knew.

There were other pretty ladies besides Mrs. Van Skuyt in the launch-load

from the yacht, but, as they touched the pier, pretty girls, or pretty

women, or jovial gentlemen, all were overlooked in the wild scramble the

college men made for their hero. They haled him forth, set him on high,

bore him on their shoulders, shouting "Skal to the Viking!" and carried

him up the wooded bluff to the Casino. He heard Mrs. Van Skuyt say, "Oh,

we're used to it; we've put in at several other places where he had

friends!" He struggled manfully to be set down, but his triumphal

procession swept on. He heard bystanders telling each other, "It's that

young Harkless, 'the Great Harkless,' they're all so mad about"; and while

it pleased him a little to hear such things, they always made him laugh a

great deal. He had never understood his popularity: he had been chief

editor of the university daily, and he had done a little in athletics, and

the rest of his distinction lay in college offices his mates had heaped

upon him without his being able to comprehend why they did it. And yet,

somehow, and in spite of himself, they had convinced him that the world

was his oyster; that it would open for him at a touch. He could not help

seeing how the Freshmen looked at him, how the Sophomores jumped off the

narrow campus walks to let him pass; he could not help knowing that he was

the great man of his time, so that "The Great Harkless" came to be one of

the traditions of the university. He remembered the wild progress they

made for him up the slope that morning at Winter Harbor, how the people

baked on, and laughed, and clapped their hands. But at the veranda edge he

had noticed a little form disappearing around a corner of the building; a

young girl running away as fast as she could.