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

glad to room, but they all had made their arrangements by the time he spoke to them; so he was forced to accept Paul Vinton’s invitation to room with him.

Vinton was a cheerful youth with too much money and not enough sense. He wanted desperately to be thought a good fellow, a “regular guy,” and he was willing to buy popularity if necessary by standing treat to anyone every chance he got. He was known all over the campus as a “prize sucker.”

He bored Hugh excessively by his confidences and almost offensive generosity. He always had a supply of Scotch whisky on hand, and he offered it to him so constantly that Hugh drank too much because it was easier and pleasanter to drink than to refuse.

Tucker had graduated, and the new president, Leonard Gates, was an altogether different sort of man. There had been a fight in the fraternity over his election. The “regular guys” opposed him and offered one of their own number as a candidate. Gates, however, was prominent in campus activities and had his own following in the house; as a result, he was elected by a slight margin.

He won Hugh’s loyalty at the first fraternity meeting after he took the chair. “Some things are going to be changed in this house,” he said sternly, “or I will bring influence to bear that will change them.” Everyone knew that he referred to the national president of the fraternity. “There will be no more drunken brawls in this house such as we had at the last house dance. Anyone who brings a cheap woman into this house at a dance will hear from it. Both my fiancée and my sister were at the last dance. I do not intend that they shall be insulted again. This is not a bawdyhouse, and I want some of you to remember that.”

He tried very hard to pass a rule, such as many of the fraternities had, that no one could bring liquor into the house and that there should be no gambling. He failed, however. The brothers took his scolding about the dance because most of them were heartily ashamed of that occasion; but they announced that they did not intend to have the chapter turned into the S.C.A., which was the Sanford Christian Association. It would have been well for Hugh if the law had been passed. Vinton’s insistent generosity was rapidly turning him into a steady drinker. He did not get drunk, but he was taking down more highballs than were good for him.

Outside of his drinking, however, he was leading a virtuous and, on the whole, an industrious life. He was too much in love with Cynthia Day to let his mind dwell on other women, and he had become sufficiently interested in his studies to like them for their own sake.

A change had come over the campus. It was inexplicable but highly significant. There had been evidences of it the year before, but now it became so evident that even some of the members of the faculty were aware of it. Intolerance seemed to be dying, and the word “wet” was heard less often. The undergraduates were forsaking their old gods. The wave of materialism was swept back by an in-rushing tide of idealism. Students suddenly ceased to concentrate in economics and filled the English and philosophy classes to overflowing.

No one was able really to explain the causes for the change, but it was there and welcome. The “Sanford Literary Magazine,” which had been slowly perishing for several years, became almost as popular as the “Cap and Bells,” the comic magazine, which coined money by publishing risque jokes and pictures of slightly dressed women. A poetry magazine daringly made its appearance on the campus and, to the surprise of its editors, was received so cordially that they were able to pay the printer’s bill.

It became the fashion to read. Instructors in English were continually being asked what the best new books were or if such and such a book was all that it was “cracked up to be.” If the instructor hadn’t read the book, he was treated to a look of contempt that sent him hastening to the library.

Of course, not all of the undergraduates took to reading and thinking; the millennium had not arrived, but the intelligent majority began to read and discuss books openly, and the intelligent majority ruled the campus.

Hugh was one of the most enthusiastic of the readers. He was taking a course in nineteenth-century poetry with Blake, the head of the English department. His other instructors either bored him or left him cold, but Blake turned each class hour into a thrilling experience. He was a handsome man with gray hair, dark eyes, and a magnificent voice. He taught poetry almost entirely by reading it, only occasionally interpolating an explanatory remark, and he read beautifully. His reading was dramatic, almost tricky; but it made the poems live for his students, and they reveled in his classes.

Hugh’s junior year was made almost beautiful by that poetry course and by his adoration for Cynthia. He was writing verses constantly⁠—and he found “Cynthia” an exceedingly troublesome word; it seemed as if nothing would rime with it. At times he thought of taking to free verse, but the results of his efforts did not satisfy him. He always had the feeling that he had merely chopped up some rather bad prose; and he was invariably right. Cynthia wrote him that she loved the poems he sent her because they were so passionate. He blushed when he read her praise. It disturbed him. He wished that she had used a different word.

XXI

For the first term Hugh slid comfortably down a well oiled groove of routine. He went to the movies regularly, wrote as regularly to Cynthia and thought about her even more, read enormous quantities of poetry, “bulled” with his friends, attended all the athletic contests, played cards