Part 9 (1/2)
This came to her slowly, and slowly sank into her, like still, deep cold.
Two days after this, as Jeanne was brus.h.i.+ng her hair, she said to Marise, ”Our cat will be brought back to us to-morrow. She is all right now, M. Bergeret says.”
Marise waited until the wave of sickness pa.s.sed and she felt she could make her voice sound as usual. Then she said casually, ”I've changed my mind. I don't want a cat now. It would bother Maman too much.”
Jeanne was relieved. ”Oh, very well. I don't ask anything better. I hate cats around the house anyhow.” She went on brus.h.i.+ng Marise's hair, with careful, loving skill, proud of its thickness, its sheen, its silky blackness. She thought to herself, ”What a beautiful child our Marise is. And how I love her! There isn't anything I wouldn't do for her! May the Holy Virgin guard her and keep her safe always, Amen.” She never thought again of the cat.
_NEALE BEGINS TO BE NEALE_
CHAPTER XI
On Neale's thirteenth birthday, his mother gave him a little silver watch and his father, a bicycle. In addition to the excitement of getting into his teens and of owning these visible and outward symbols of advancement, he was told that he would now be sent to a real school, with no girls in the cla.s.ses, where he would really learn something; that is to say where he would be prepared for college.
Hadley Prep. was an excellent school, a sort of model school, an information factory. You fed a small boy into it and at the end of four years the school turned him out completely filled with cla.s.sified information. Boys entered with all sorts of hazy disorders of learning; they were ground out, possessed of a chain of facts, every link s.h.i.+ning, polished and joined by flawless welding to the preceding and consequent facts. The curriculum took no count of modern educational fads; ”spiritual awakening, character building, intellectual growth” had no place there. What would you have? Four years is a short enough time to prepare boys for their college entrance examinations. The non-essentials had to be cut out. The great point was that when the Princ.i.p.al signed a certificate of graduation he knew that the boy in question could produce any piece of information required of him, from the preterit of recevoir to the formula for accelerated motion of falling bodies, at any college entrance examination in the United States.
Into the hopper of this mental polis.h.i.+ng-machine, Neale was poured with fifty other little boys and began painfully to adapt himself to its rigorous codes. It was a process trying to the most robust among them, and devastating to the weaker ones. The devastating quality was not only recognized and admitted but sedulously fostered by the faculty and Princ.i.p.al. It was part of their business to see that the weaklings fell by the wayside long before the flock was led up to the narrow gate of the college entrance examinations. And as some hospitals achieve a miraculously low death-rate by the simple process of never admitting a patient whom they are not sure they can cure, so Hadley Prep. achieved the miraculously low rate of examination mortality for which it was famous the country over, by the simple process of knocking on the head and throwing out on the sc.r.a.p-heap any boy whose brains seemed reluctant to admit college-entrance examination facts.
Those whose heads were hard enough to resist the knocking, found themselves completely absorbed by the mental gymnastics which filled their days. The first two years of his life at Hadley Prep. had almost nothing in them for Neale except his over-time struggle to make up for the omissions of Miss Vanderwater's haphazard tuition. Everything else, even the a.s.suming of long trousers, even the summers in the country, _even games_, were banished to the fringe of consciousness, like things seen out of the corner of your eye while you are gazing with all your might at something else. The life of his personality, his inner self, during those two years, realized the ideal of the eighteenth century educator who felt that the only safe up-bringing for boys would be to shut them up in a barrel, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, and feed them through the bung-hole. The record of what was fed through the Hadley bung-hole was set down on Neale's report cards, which he dutifully brought home to his parents. They glanced up from their absorption in each other, read, and smiled over the mathematical accuracy of the Hadley information about the state of Neale's mind (the Hadley professor often marked a boy as 87.75 proficient in American history, or 90.3 learned in German). At times they wondered if Hadley were the best place for him. But they were exactly like all other parents: they really had no idea what else to do with Neale. His health continued good and he did not seem rebellious, so they confined their supervision of his education to paying his rather expensive tuition, signing his report cards, and handing them back to him.
Towards the end of the second year Neale began to master the new technique. He memorized the magic pa.s.s-words which are accepted as a proof of understanding many subjects. He began to draw breath, to tread water less frantically and still not to fear the closing over his head of smothering floods. The third year he felt earth beneath his feet again, and relaxed enough from his mental concentration to spend occasionally an hour or two on the school athletic field. He was fifteen years old now, wore long trousers and suits with vests, a stand-up collar, ties he tied himself, and carried a fountain pen. Underneath all this grown-up bravery of exterior, there was a brain that had learned to acquire and pigeon-hole information, and a perfectly dormant personality.
Life at the Crittenden home was, as far as he was concerned, exactly the same life he had always known, except that instead of playing on the streets, he went out on the school athletic-field, and instead of playing with his tin soldiers, he usually went up to his room to grind over his lessons. At breakfast and supper his father and mother talked peaceably to one another just as they always had, and although Neale was able now to understand the subjects of their chat, their talk was, as a matter of fact, often quite as incomprehensible to him as it had been when he was a small boy. They had grown so much together, had so shared life with each other and no one else, that they possessed almost a language of their own, made up of references, only half-expressed, to things they had said long ago, or to experiences they had had together, or to opinions they both knew so well there was no need to formulate them in words. Neale was not surprised at this, nor yet resentful. On his side he was absorbed in his studies and the life at school. It was true that every once in a while they talked directly to Neale; asked him questions--what studies he liked best--how the teachers treated him--what he had to eat at lunch. Whatever they asked Neale always tried to answer in accordance with the facts; that he was getting along all right he guessed, that everything was satisfactory as far as he could see, that he hadn't any idea what he should like to do later on to earn his living.
Occasionally, instead of taking the trolley cars, Father and Neale walked together down the long steps to Hoboken and along 6th Street to Hudson, where his father turned south and Neale went to the school. Then talk was harder to dodge--not that Neale ever consciously dodged. They would walk a dozen blocks. Father would ask a question, Neale would answer it. Another dozen blocks, and another question. Once Father asked if Neale wasn't sticking indoors too much. Couldn't he manage to get a little more exercise? Neale explained the seriousness of his studies and pointed out that he still rode his wheel on Sat.u.r.days. But the suggestion took root. Neale bought a pair of Indian clubs and an instruction book, and took to swinging the clubs fifteen minutes night and morning with the windows open.
Another time Father said, ”Look here, Neale, haven't you any friends?”
Neale was astonished, ”Why, yes, I'm friends with the whole cla.s.s.”
”Yes, I suppose so, but you never seem to be with them outside of school. When I went to school we were always playing around in each other's yards and barns.”
”You went to school in the country,” Neale reminded him. ”We haven't any yards or barns here. We have the athletic field at school.”
”Yes, that's so,” his father admitted. After a time he made a further admission, ”Athletics are all right, too.” But something in his tone intimated that he was baffled rather than convinced. Since Neale considered that athletics were not only all right, but all there was to life, he found no comment to make.
A moment later, ”But, great Scott,” began his father with some heat as though struck afresh with some aspect of Neale's life. He seemed to hear the too-great vivacity of his accent and to wait until he could ask quite casually, ”Aren't there any of your school-mates you'd like to have visit you?”
Neale considered. It hadn't struck him before, but it was a fact that after school and athletic practice, all the boys vanished to their various homes. Never having known any other than this city relation with school-mates it seemed to him obvious and natural. ”Visit me?” he said, trying to imagine one of his cla.s.smates sitting at the Crittenden dinner-table, and then, ”No, I don't believe I do. There wouldn't be anything special to do at home, would there?”
His father drew on his cigar thoughtfully, and walked on in silence.
But he had a long talk with Neale's mother that evening, the two country and village-bred parents putting their heads together, earnestly though helplessly. The only course which occurred to them was proposed to Neale, a week later, when Mother asked him if he would do something to please her. Incautiously Neale said, of course, yes, he would. He was always willing enough to please Mother, and he had never made the slightest objection to anything his parents planned for him. But this plan turned out to be something very alarming. It was all arranged, Mother told him, that he was to go to dancing-school in the Germania Club ball-room on Tuesday afternoons. Mother pointed out that, now he was fifteen years old, and half-way through prep.-school, he ought to learn to dance. Neale had no theoretic objections to offer and had given his word that he would not object. So hiding, except for his first wild look of dismay, the terror and repugnance which filled him, he wrapped up the newly bought patent-leather oxfords and started. There were limits even to the Iroquois stoicism of his acceptance of what Fate brought him. No power on earth could have made him walk through the streets in those patent-leather shoes. But Mother never pushed him anywhere near one of those limits. She did not even suggest that he wear his dancing shoes. She helped him find the paper and string to wrap them up. Also she did not fuss over him ... not much. She looked at him hard, picked a thread off the sleeve of the blue serge which was his dress-up costume, and called his attention to the fact that a b.u.t.ton of his vest was unb.u.t.toned. She did not offer to b.u.t.ton it herself, or handle him in any way. Mother was all right, if she did want him to go to dancing-school.
So he went. And it was not so bad, not nearly so bad as he feared, the rea.s.suring factor being that everybody else there was in the same boat.
You could see how they all despised it. Except, of course, the girls.
While he was changing his shoes in silent alarm and disgust in the cloak-room, who should come in but Jenkins, a ”Lower Middle” at school.
Neale didn't know Jenkins except by name, but at least he was some one to lean on. Neale was at once very cordial and Jenkins, surprised and flattered by this attention from an upper-cla.s.s man, promised to show him how everything was done. They went into the ball-room, Neale clinging morally for dear life to Jenkins. A number of other young men of fifteen and sixteen, and girls who looked almost like young ladies, were sitting on opposite sides of the room. A bald-headed man to whom Jenkins referred as ”One Lung” sat at the piano. The dancing master was young, German, energetic and thorough. He called the cla.s.s to their feet, explained and ill.u.s.trated the step and made them all practice it en ma.s.se, ”_One_ and _two_! _One_ and _two_!” Then after a few minutes the music struck up and he left them to choose partners and dance.