The Freshman (Holman)/Chapter 3
Harold awoke the next morning still drowsy but with this thought resounding through his mind: Civilization's crowning achievement was a Tate-bred man and he would be one, or perish in the attempt.
At the breakfast table he endeavored to convey this mature reflection to his father, who was in a particularly unsympathetic mood owing to the fact that his coffee had been served to him in a tepid and unappetizing condition. After Harold had been seeking for five minutes or more to describe the marvelous and inspiring entertainment he had witnessed the previous evening, Henry Lamb turned upon him irascibly and snapped, "Now, looka here, Harold. I let you go to that fool thing, but don't talk to me about it! I ain't interested. Colleges ain't for folks like us. I don't purpose to have you waste four years of your life at one of them country clubs like Tate. And that's all there is to that."
Harold found, in the ensuing weeks, just two sympathetic souls to whom he might confide his ambition: Harlow Gaines and Mrs. Henry Lamb. Gaines pleased him inexpressibly by lending him the Tate Year Book for 1914, a volume which Harold consulted dutifully every night before retiring and often in the hours when he was supposed to be up in his room doing home work assigned by Gaines. Moreover, all the prep school students present at the Cleveland alumni gathering had been placed upon the subscription list for the Tate "Tattler." Harold looked forward to the coming of this scrubby little four-page newspaper as a frozen polar expedition keeps eyes peeled for the relief expedition from the South.
It was a picture in the "Tattler" that had led to the purchase of the turtle-necked white sweater. As the captain-elect of Tate's football forces, Chester Trask had been photographed resting nonchalantly upon the famous sundial sacred to the memory of Tate athletic leaders. The aristocratic body of Chester was encased in a huge and spotless high-necked sweater with a large block "T" upon the chest. Harold recalled that such a sweater was in the stock of Klein's Kollege Klothes Emporium, on Main Street, Sanford. For several days he hesitated, and then he took several dollars out of the store of his summer earnings. Entering the disorderly interior of Jacob Klein's store, Harold made inquiry about the sweater, which he had seen in the window a few weeks previously. The short, bulbous-nosed proprietor produced it. Harold tried it on. It fit. He bought it and smuggled it past his parents up into the privacy of his bedroom. There in front of the mirror he again donned it. He smiled. He clasped his hands in front of him and shook them at an imaginary audience as Chester Trask had done. The result was quite satisfactory. Though somewhat more narrow of chest than Trask and handicapped a bit by the thick-lensed glasses he wore, Harold felt that he looked the rôle of the collegian perfectly.
One little detail had been neglected. Harold took a chance and appealed to his mother about this. After some grumbling, she consented to cut out a large red block "T" and sew it upon the sweater. Harold knew that no one who had not been received into the exalted ranks of a Tate varsity team was eligible to wear the coveted "T." But since he did not purpose to exhibit the insignia outside of his own chambers, there would be no harm. Some day, he eagerly told himself, he would go to Tate and earn the right to sport the coveted "T," just like Chester Trask!
As slushy March wore on into rainy April and thence into fragrant May, the subject of the hour in the Lamb household became the disposal of Harold after his graduation from high school in June. Plans for the boy's future were fixed as far as Henry Lamb was concerned. He had ventured to approach Peter Thatcher, his brother-in-law regarding his son several months previously on the occasion of a trip to Cleveland. Peter, the steel magnate, had good-naturedly agreed to start Harold at the bottom in his foundry and give him a chance to make good. Henry Lamb thought this a very generous concession and a marvelous opportunity for his son. The older Lamb declined to be moved in the slightest by Harold's protests and by the boy's foolish ideas about going to college. Look at Uncle Peter! He had started as a water boy in a steel plant, and now he owned the business! One of the leading steel magnates of the country. Director in several banks. A leading citizen.
As June arrived, however, word came from Uncle Peter that business was in a slump, men were being laid off by the wholesale and he would be unable to use his nephew's services before the first of August at the earliest. This annoyed Henry Lamb only temporarily. He girded up his courage, approached Walter Coburn, president of the First National Bank of Sanford (where Henry was the oldest bookkeeper) and gained the boon of a minor clerkship for Harold during the Summer.
Whereupon the exasperating Harold countered by suggesting that he would rather go back to his old Summer job of selling washing machines!
Harold had been for the past three Summers Sanford agent for the Acme Washing Machine and had done rather well with it. Sanford was inhabited in great part by retired farmers and their families. The housewives were in most cases elderly ladies not quite ready to accede to the modern custom of sending out the family washes, but willing to listen to new-fangled schemes for easing their toil.
Harold canvassed the town thoroughly. He distributed the little Acme booklets, featuring the slogan, "It saves your back—or your money back," at every door. He was polite, nice-looking, eager and honest. He was quite willing to set up his sample Acme machine in a kitchen and give a practical demonstration of its capabilities. Elderly women instinctively liked him and bought his wares. Only when the daughters of his prospects answered the doorbells was Harold's selling talk impaired. He was very shy with young ladies.
Harold's commissions for the three Summers he had been selling washing machines were carefully deposited in the bank that employed his father. Mrs. Lamb kept the bank book. The deposits, as she had proudly shown Henry Lamb, amounted to $485. This money, earned by the honest sweat of his brow, Harold wistfully told himself was for use at college.
But Henry Lamb impatiently disposed of the washing machine idea for the present Summer. What Harold needed for his future work in Cleveland, Henry declared, was a grounding in finance. He would get him into the bank with him, where he, as an expert bookkeeper, could give his son the benefit of his long experience in money matters.
Henry spoke to Walter Coburn, of whom he was terribly afraid. The bank president grudgingly indicated his willingness to employ young Lamb.
"As long as my boy is coming to work here this Summer," growled Walter Coburn, "I suppose another beginner or so around won't do any harm. Tell him not to upset the inkwells or get in the way of the real workers."
Harold went to work the Monday morning following the memorable night when he received his High School diploma. He had hugged this valuable piece of parchment to his breast and tucked it safely away in the back of his bedroom dresser drawer. Harlow Gaines had told him that a diploma from Sanford High School would admit him to Tate University without entrance examinations!
But he seemed very far from Tate when he walked into the drab First National that Monday morning and was assigned to a high stool near Henry Lamb.
Three weeks after Harold took up his unwilling and temporary labors at the bank, the president, a fat, fussy little man, waddled out of his private office one morning accompanied by a tall, dark, sulky-looking youth. The pair paused at Harold's stool and President Coburn frettily introduced the younger man as "my son, Walter Coburn, Jr." Knowing Walter, Jr., to be also a son of Union State, as well as of several other colleges from which he had been duly expelled, Harold favored him with the Chester Trask swooping handshake. It did not, however, get over very well. Walter, Jr., stared at him with his small, sleepy eyes as if Harold and his handshake were freaks. The shake of the president's son was very feeble, and he withdrew his white digits quickly as if afraid they would be maltreated. He muttered something that sounded like "pleeztameetcha," which he obviously wasn't.
Then the two Coburns passed on to the perch of Henry Lamb, where the bank official explained that his son was to work beside the veteran bookkeeper for a while. The elder Coburn having departed, his heir climbed upon a stool and made vague motions with a pen for the rest of the morning, interrupting his arduous labors with three long-distance telephone calls to Cleveland. He showed surprising signs of life while speaking over the wire. He addressed the party at the other end as "Peaches."
In the middle of the afternoon, Harold summoned courage to approach the unsociable Walter, Jr., on the subject nearest to his heart. Henry Lamb had vacated his stool temporarily to transact some business in the teller's cage. Harold slid down to the floor and sauntered as carelessly as possible over to the other new clerk.
"Are you aiming to go into the banking business?" asked Harold amiably.
"Not if I can help it," grumbled Walter, quite evidently displeased at his father's employee's advances.
"I'm not either," Harold went on cheerfully. "I want to go to college. You're at Union State, aren't you? Is that a Phi Beta Kappa key on your vest?"
"Phi Beta? Heaven forbid! Say, do I look like one of those greasy bookworms?" Walter showed signs of being deeply insulted.
"Mr. Gaines, the principal at the high school, says a Phi Beta Kappa key is the highest honor you can win at college. He has one," Harold retorted.
"He must be a swell freak of nature then," Walter laughed unpleasantly.
To get even, Harold started on a new tack. "If I went to college," he said argumentatively, "I'd go to Tate."
Walter chuckled as if this were the most absurd statement of all. "Tate?" he snorted. "Say, I was there for six months and it's the last place the Lord made. Positively the worst excuse for a college in the world. Why, they don't even let the students own automobiles and they make 'em go to compulsory Sunday chapel. And classes as early as eight-thirty in the morning. Say, on the level, that joint's the limit. I couldn't stand it."
Walter neglected to state that feeling between Tate and himself had been mutual.
"Still they got some good teams. They beat Union State at football last Fall, 9 to 7."
"Yeh, that was a lucky break all right. This fellow Chester Trask grabbing up a fumble and running darned near the length of the field for a touchdown in the last quarter."
"I met Trask up in Cleveland last March," Harold rushed in to explain. "He's a peach, isn't he?"
"Where do you get that stuff? He's the biggest stiff in the intercollegiate world. Ask anybody. He's one fine pill. Why, they wouldn't have a guy like that at Union State. Wait till we get a crack at Chesty's team this Fall. We'll mop the earth up with 'em."
"I didn't know you played football," Harold suggested innocently.
"Not a chance. Say, I was going out for the team, but our fraternity doesn't figure this year. The Captain of Union State is a Psi Lambda, so none of us Phi Delts has got a chance. The fact is, I don't know that I'm going back to college in the Fall. But you can keep that under your straw kelly—see!" He cast a significant glance at Harold from under his slightly bloodshot brown eyes.
Harold retreated back to his stool convinced that there was little to be learned to the glory of the American college from Walter Coburn, Jr.
If he had been in the slightest dismayed by Walter's pessimistic account of the higher education, Harold's optimism came back with a rush a day or two later when the three billboards in Sanford blazed forth with advertisements of Lester Laurel in "The College Hero"—"Glorifying the American College Man." Harold had heard of Lester Laurel. He was one of the leading motion picture stars of the day. Harold was delighted to find the famous. Thespian lending his handsome face and distinguished talents to a film devoted to the higher education.
On one billboard he glimpsed the familiar Laurel face and form encased in a football uniform, including shin guards and nose mask, hurdling twenty-one prostrate gridiron warriors in direct violation of the present rules of the game. Another advertisement portrayed Lester with smiling face and extended hand of welcome. According to the caption on the poster, Lester was inviting, "I'm just a regular fellow. Step right up and call me 'Speedy.'" The third vivid billboard brought in the inevitable love interest. Lester, in a form-fitting dress suit, was standing with his arm around a beautiful damsel in evening dress, while at the feet of the famous star writhed an evil-looking, dress-suited chap who had evidently just been felled by the steely Laurel fist. The scene was seemingly a college dance, for pennants decorated the room and a jazz band was playing.
A date sheet attached to the advertisements announced that this educational epic was coming to Horowitz's Palace Theater for two days the week following. Harold resolved to go at any cost. If Lester Laurel was the star, the picture was sure to be artistic and authentic in every way. For Harold had just read an interview with Mr, Laurel in "Screen Scrapbook," in which the lens luminary stated that it was his creed of art to present only the true and the beautiful, vigorously stamping out anything of the meretricious—anything that would not keep faith with his public. As if to confirm this, the press stories regarding "The College Hero" in the Sanford "Chronicle" stated that no efforts had been spared to make the picture "a true epic production of the American college, luxuriously produced and splendidly acted by Lester Laurel and a superb all-star cast of artists." The bulk of the scenes, the stories declared, had been photographed upon the campus of a well-known American college, with the undergraduates acting as extras.
His faith thus fortified, Harold was the first person in Horowitz's Palace Theater at the first show on the first evening of "The College Hero." To make sure of this distinction, he had bolted his supper, to the disgust of his father and mild protesting of his patient mother. Ten minutes after taking his seat in the theater, into which the rest of the audience was now straggling, he was feeling a slight distress in the region of his digestive organs. However, he forgot this and other unimportant temporal matters when, after an hour's endurance of slapstick comedies, news reels and the tinpanny Horowitz automatic piano, the main title of the feature picture flashed on.
The first scene disclosed Lester Laurel, wearing a huge white sweater with a large block "Y" on it and bearing golf sticks, a tennis racket, a mandolin and a suitcase, in the act of alighting from the train to begin his career at Yates College. The attire of the hero was vaguely disturbing to Harold, for it struck him as a trifle immodest for an entering man. Moreover, Laurel looked some ten years older than a Freshman should, as did the crowd of students who rushed up the station platform to greet him. But these doubts passed as Harold gazed, fascinated, at the novel and refreshing manner in which Lester met the onslaught of the mob. Executing a neat little jig dancing step in front of the reception committee, Lester concluded by smiling, holding out his hand in friendly fashion and reciting, "I'm just a regular fellow. Step right up and call me 'Speedy.'" This, according to the sub-title flashing on the screen, captured all hearts at once, and "Speedy" quickly became the most popular man in college, slightly aided by the fact that he was a millionaire's son.
There followed in rapid succession scenes of action that held Harold enthralled. Scenes in the classroom, where the students all dressed in turtle-necked sweaters and performed katzenjammer tricks upon the professors. Scenes upon the football and baseball field, with "Speedy," impersonated by Lester Laurel, always the last-minute hero. There was, of course, a girl, the daughter of the university's president, a beautiful and very serene blonde. She was beloved by "Speedy." The college villain, the wretch who had tried to steal the football signals to sell to Yates' rivals and who had doctored "Speedy's" baseball bat to make it hit only foul balls, was the hero's rival in love. When Ethelda, for that was her name, refused the villain's advances, he locked her in a shack many miles from Poughkeepsie and the silvery Hudson, where the Yates crew, with "Speedy" as captain, was about to compete in the intercollegiate races.
Nothing was to be done, of course, save that "Speedy" must rescue the damsel in distress, at the risk of missing the race and losing it for his alma mater. For what was the Yates crew without "Speedy?" A Leviathan without its engine! So there were flashes from the villain striving to beat down the thin door that separated the fair Ethelda from his fiendish purposes to "Speedy" speeding to the rescue in an incredibly high-powered roadster, and back and forth until Harold was ready to scream with excitement. But "Speedy," in his cute running pants and cutaway gym shirt, exposing his mighty torso, was fortunately in time. Ethelda was rushed into the car, the villain expunged by a blow of the Laurel fist. Then came the ride back to the starting point of the race, "the desperate, heart-breaking struggle against that inscrutable enemy—Time," as the sub-title put it, with a grouchy little figure of a scythe-bearing Father Time for a decoration. The referee had raised his gun aloft to bark out the starting signal when "Speedy" dashed breathlessly upon the scene. His seat in the Yates shell, strangely enough, was vacant. Yates was about to start the race with seven men, there being presumably not another undergraduate in the university capable of pulling an oar.
It was a bit confusing, but Harold forgot this minor criticism in the thrill of watching the race. The close-ups posed by the actors had been cleverly spliced with actual distant scenes of an intercollegiate race upon the Hudson. The result was a real triumph of the film-cutter's art. Harold was one with the rest of the audience in being duped. As the winning shell flashed down through the lane of gay launches and yachts and there followed a near shot of the Yates boat, cheers arose from the delighted Sanford movie fans. Harold Lamb's voice was the loudest of all. The close-up showed that every oarsman in the Yates craft had collapsed after crossing the finishing line except "Speedy," who sat upright and smiling. Indeed he had enough energy in reserve to spring up and leap over upon the deck of the Yates president's yacht as it drew close and to clasp the fair Ethelda in his arms while "Prexy" beamed upon them through his beard.
Harold wandered out of Horowitz's Palace in a daze. It was all too wonderful to be true. College was even more of a Paradise than he had imagined. His determination was fixed. Life held nothing for him if he could not go to college.
He donned his white sweater and reenacted the rôle of "Speedy"—this time "Speedy" Lamb of Tate—in front of his mirror in the privacy of his bedroom. Only to be interrupted by his prosaic and unsympathetic father, as related in all too melancholy detail elsewhere in this volume. Following the unsatisfactory breakfast conversation with the elder Lamb the next morning, Harold formed a resolution. He would go to college anyway, whether his father liked it or not. Since money was the chief necessity for this course of rebellion, he would get it elsewhere. Unfortunately Harlow Gaines had departed upon one of Chamberlain's Educational Tours of Europe for University Students and Professors—All Expenses, $234.75. Gaines might have told him how to get into Tate with the minimum of expense. Harold's own savings were far from enough. He must get money elsewhere. For several days he thought over this problem. Then an inspiration struck him. Why not borrow it from President Coburn, of the First National Bank? That executive had a son in college. He would be sympathetic to the idea.
Harold resolved to approach his employer with the view of a loan of $1,000, to be repaid in installments over a period of four years, in Summer labor at the bank.
The next morning he seized the opportunity when Henry Lamb was again busy in the teller's cage to knock upon the door of Walter Coburn's private office. The President's secretary, Harold noted, had departed temporarily from her sanctum and was conversing with two of the stenographers in the front office. The coast was clear. At the door of the President's room, Harold paused. Through the thick wood he had seemed to hear a voice ranting within. However, he told himself after a moment, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Maybe the banker was merely talking over the telephone. He pushed open the door and walked in.
It was not before he had closed the door behind him that he turned to face this unexpected vision: President Coburn, very red of face and angry of mien, was pounding his desk and shouting in his loudest voice. Before the angry financier stood Walter, Jr., flushed and defiant. And beside Walter stood a petite, rouged, loudly dressed and very blonde young lady, a smile upon her coarsely pretty face that resembled somewhat a sneer. Her name was "Peaches" Pendleton, of the Olympia Burlesque Wheel, and Walter Coburn, Jr., had married her the night before in Cleveland.
The new Mrs. Coburn's father-in-law was in the act of telling her and her slightly frazzled-looking husband what he thought of them. He staunched the flow of his profanity for an instant at the sight of the newcomer. Harold hesitated, swallowed hard, made a motion to leave.
"Well, what do you want?" roared his employer.
Harold could think of nothing better to do, in his confusion, than to approach the desk and state his business. Mr. and Mrs. Walter.
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"Brack ko-ak, brack ko-ak, Tate! Tate! Tate!"
Jr., glad of the respite, watched him wonderingly.
"Mr. Coburn, sir," stammered Harold, "I came in to see you about the—er—possibility of a slight loan to enable me to go to college. I am—"
"College!" the elder Coburn snorted like two elephants at once. "College! You ought to go down on your knees and be thankful your father has sense enough not to send you to college. This young fool went to college—and now look at him! Sunk. Disgrace to his family. All through the ideas he got in college. College—pffhui! Now get out of here and don't come back! And if you ever mention the word 'college' to me again, I'll fire you and your whole family."
Harold left.