The Plastic Age Percy Marks (read full novel txt) 📖

often gave was, “Strip, freshman.” Just why the freshmen had to be naked before they performed, Hugh did not know, but there was something phallic about the proceedings that disgusted him. Like every athlete, he thought nothing of nudity, but he soon discovered that some of the freshmen were intensely conscious of it. True, a few months in the gymnasium cured them of that consciousness, but at first many of them were eternally wrapping towels about themselves in the gymnasium, and they took a shower as if it were an act of public shame. The sophomores recognized the timidity that some of the freshmen had in revealing their bodies, and they made full capital of it. The shyer the freshman, the more pointed their remarks, the more ingeniously nasty their tricks.

“I don’t mind the razzing myself,” Hugh told Carl after one particularly strenuous evening, “but I don’t like the things they said to poor little Wilkins. And when they stripped ’em and made Wilkins read that dirty story to Culver, I wanted to fight.”

“It was kinda rotten,” Carl agreed, “but it was funny.”

“It wasn’t funny at all,” Hugh said angrily.

Carl looked at him in surprise. It was the first time that he had seen him aroused.

“It wasn’t funny at all,” Hugh repeated; “it was just filthy. I’d ’a’ just about died if I’d ’a’ been in Wilkins’s place. The poor kid! They’re too damn dirty, these sophomores. I didn’t think that college men could be so dirty. Why, not even the bums at home would think of such things. And I’m telling you right now that there are three of those guys that I’m layin’ for. Just wait till the class rush. I’m going to get Adams, and then I’m going to get Cooper⁠—yes, I’m going to get him even if he is bigger’n me⁠—and I’m going to get Dodge. I didn’t say anything when they made me wash my face in the toilet bowl, but, by God! I’m going to get ’em for it.”

Three weeks later he made good this threat. He was a clever boxer, and he succeeded in separating each of the malefactors from the fighting mob. He would have been completely nonplussed if he could have heard Adams and Dodge talking in their room after the rush.

“Who gave you the black eye?” Adams asked Dodge.

“That freshman Carver,” he replied, touching the eye gingerly. “Who gave you that welt on the chin?”

“Carver! And, say, he beat Hi Cooper to a pulp. He’s a mess.”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Lord,” said Dodge, “I’m going to pick my freshmen next time. Who’d take a kid with a smile like his to be a scrapper? He’s got the nicest smile in college. Why, he looks meek as a lamb.”

“You never can tell,” remarked Adams, rubbing his chin ruefully.

Dodge was examining his eye in the mirror. “No, you never can tell.⁠ ⁠… Damn it, I’m going to have to get a beefsteak or something for this lamp of mine.”

“Say, he ought to be a good man for the fraternity,” Adams said suddenly.

“Who?” Dodge’s eye was absorbing his entire attention.

“Carver, of course. He ought to make a damn good man.”

“Yeah⁠—you bet. We’ve got to rush him sure.”

VIII

The dormitory initiations had more than angered Hugh; they had completely upset his mental equilibrium: his every ideal of college swayed and wabbled. He wasn’t a prig, but he had come to Sanford with very definite ideas about the place, and those ideas were already groggy from the unmerciful pounding they were receiving.

His father was responsible for his illusions, if one may call them illusions. Mr. Carver was a shy, sensitive man well along in his fifties, with a wife twelve years his junior. He pretended to cultivate his small farm in Merrytown, but as a matter of fact he lived off of a comfortable income left him by his very capable father. He spent most of his time reading the eighteenth-century essayists, John Donne’s poetry, the “Atlantic Monthly,” the “Boston Transcript,” and playing Mozart on his violin. He did not understand his wife and was thoroughly afraid of his son; Hugh had an animal vigor that at times almost terrified him.

At his wife’s insistence he had a talk with Hugh the night before the boy left for college. Hugh had wanted to run when he met his father in the library after dinner for that talk. He loved the gentle, gray-haired man with the fine, delicate features and soft voice. He had often wished that he knew his father. Mr. Carver was equally eager to know Hugh, but he had no idea of how to go about getting acquainted with his son.

They sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, and Mr. Carver gazed thoughtfully at the boy. Why hadn’t Betty had this talk with Hugh? She knew him so much better than he did; they were more like brother and sister than mother and son. Why, Hugh called her Betty half the time, and she seemed to understand him perfectly.

Hugh waited silently. Mr. Carver ran a thin hand through his hair and then sharply desisted; he mustn’t let the boy know that he was nervous. Then he settled his horn-rimmed pince-nez more firmly on his nose and felt in his waistcoat for a cigar. Why didn’t Hugh say something? He snipped the end of the cigar with a silver knife. Slowly he lighted the cigar, inhaled once or twice, coughed mildly, and finally found his voice.

“Well, Hugh,” he said in his gentle way.

“Well, Dad.” Hugh grinned sheepishly. Then they both started; Hugh had never called his father Dad before. He thought of him that way always, but he could never bring himself to dare anything but the more formal Father. In his embarrassment he had forgotten himself.

“I⁠—I⁠—I’m sorry, sir,” he stuttered, flushing painfully.

Mr. Carver laughed to hide his own embarrassment. “That’s all right, Hugh.” His smile was very kindly. “Let it be Dad. I think I like it better.”

“That’s fine!” Hugh exclaimed.

The