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

teachers call him sweet. Sweet! Cripes, that old hen made him sick. She was always pawing him and sticking her skinny hands in his hair. He was darn glad to get to college where there were only men teachers.

Women always wanted to get their hands into his hair, and boys liked him on sight. Many of those who were streaming up the hill before and behind him, who passed him or whom he passed, glanced at his eager face and thought that there was a guy they’d like to know.

An experienced observer would have divided those boys into three groups: preparatory school boys, carelessly at ease, well dressed, or, as the college argot has it, “smooth”; boys from city schools, not so well dressed perhaps, certainly not so sure of themselves; and country boys, many of them miserably confused and some of them clad in Kollege Kut Klothes that they would shamefacedly discard within a week.

Hugh finally reached the top of the hill, and the campus was before him. He had visited the college once with his father and knew his way about. Eager as he was to reach Surrey Hall, he paused to admire the pseudo-Gothic chapel. He felt a little thrill of pride as he stared in awe at the magnificent building. It had been willed to the college by an alumnus who had made millions selling rotten pork.

Hugh skirted two of the factory laboratories, hurried between the Doric temple and Byzantine mosque, paused five times to direct confused classmates, passed a dull red colonial building, and finally stood before Surrey Hall, a large brick dormitory half covered by ivy.

He hurried upstairs and down a corridor until he found a door with 19 on it. He knocked.

“What th’ hell! Come in.” The voice was impatiently cheerful.

Hugh pushed open the door and entered the room to meet wild confusion⁠—and his roommate. The room was a clutter of suitcases, trunks, clothes, banners, unpacked furniture, pillows, pictures, golf-sticks, tennis-rackets, and photographs⁠—dozens of photographs, all of them of girls apparently. In the middle of the room a boy was on his knees before an open trunk. He had sleek black hair, parted meticulously in the center, a slender face with rather sharp features and large black eyes that almost glittered. His lips were full and very red, almost too red, and his cheeks seemed to be colored with a hard blush.

“Hullo,” he said in a clear voice as Hugh came in. “Who are you?”

Hugh flushed slightly. “I’m Carver,” he answered, “Hugh Carver.”

The other lad jumped to his feet, revealing, to Hugh’s surprise, golf knickers. He was tall, slender, and very neatly built.

“Hell!” he exclaimed. “I ought to have guessed that.” He held out his hand. “I’m Carl Peters, the guy you’ve got to room with⁠—and God help you.”

Hugh dropped his suitcases and shook hands. “Guess I can stand it,” he said with a quick laugh to hide his embarrassment. “Maybe you’ll need a little of God’s help yourself.” Diffident and unsure, he smiled⁠—and Peters liked him on the spot.

“Chase yourself,” Peters said easily. “I know a good guy when I see one. Sit down somewhere⁠—er, here.” He brushed a pile of clothes off a trunk to the floor with one sweep of his arm. “Rest yourself after climbing that goddamn hill. Christ! It’s a bastard, that hill is. Say, your trunk’s downstairs. I saw it. I’ll help you bring it up soon’s you’ve got your wind.”

Hugh was rather dazzled by the rapid, staccato talk, and, to tell the truth, he was a little shocked by the profanity. Not that he wasn’t used to profanity; he had heard plenty of that in Merrytown, but he didn’t expect somehow that a college man⁠—that is, a prep-school man⁠—would use it. He felt that he ought to make some reply to Peters’s talk, but he didn’t know just what would do. Peters saved him the trouble.

“I’ll tell you, Carver⁠—oh, hell, I’m going to call you Hugh⁠—we’re going to have a swell joint here. Quite the darb. Three rooms, you know; a bedroom for each of us and this big study. I’ve brought most of the junk that I had at Kane, and I s’pose you’ve got some of your own.”

“Not much,” Hugh replied, rather ashamed of what he thought might be considered stinginess. He hastened to explain that he didn’t know what Carl would have; so he thought that he had better wait and get his stuff at college.

“That’s the bean,” exclaimed Carl, He had perched himself on the window-seat. He threw one well shaped leg over the other and gazed at Hugh admiringly. “You certainly used the old bean. Say, I’ve got a hell of a lot of truck here, and if you’d a brought much, we’d a been swamped.⁠ ⁠… Say, I’ll tell you how we fix this dump.” He jumped up, led Hugh on a tour of the rooms, discussed the disposal of the various pieces of furniture with enormous gusto, and finally pointed to the photographs.

“Hope you don’t mind my harem,” he said, making a poor attempt to hide his pride.

“It’s some harem,” replied Hugh in honest awe.

Again he felt ashamed. He had pictures of his father and mother, and that was all. He’d write to Helen for one right away. “Where’d you get all of ’em? You’ve certainly got a collection.”

“Sure have. The album of hearts I’ve broken. When I’ve kissed a girl twice I make her give me her picture. I’ve forgotten the names of some of these janes. I collected ten at Bar Harbor this summer and three at Christmas Cove. Say, this kid⁠—” he fished through a pile of pictures⁠—“was the hottest little devil I ever met.” He passed to Hugh a cabinet photograph of a standard flapper. “Pet? My God!” He cast his eyes ceilingward ecstatically.

Hugh’s mind was a battlefield of disapproval and envy. Carl dazzled and confused him. He had often listened to the recitals of their exploits by the Merrytown Don Juans, but this good-looking, sophisticated