The Freshman (Holman)/Chapter 4
Came, as the sub-titles in "The College Hero" had succinctly put it, the first of August. Came, furthermore, the day on which Harold, having resigned his perch in the bookkeeping department of the First National, was to journey to Cleveland and interview his Uncle Peter Thatcher. Toward this interview he looked forward with about as much pleasure as a turkey awaits Thanksgiving.
However, since the debacle in the office of President Walter Coburn, Harold had become as resigned as he felt he ever would be to the prospect of never being able to enter the sacred portals of Good Old Tate. His future career would be devoted to drop forgings rather than drop kicks. And, though he might in time develop into a millionaire and sign magazine articles about how he did it and might break a hundred at golf, still, he gloomily assured himself, life would be but an empty shell.
Henry Lamb took a grudged fifteen minutes off from his toil that sweltering August morning to accompany Mrs. Lamb to the Sanford railroad station to watch their offspring depart for his entrance into the world of iron and steel. Harold carried a heavily loaded suitcase and many admonitions from his mother regarding his underwear. For the Lambs were not people to waste good carfare money and it had been agreed, if Uncle Peter assented, that Harold was to remain in Cleveland and go to work at once. So Mrs. Lamb wept a little as the train rolled into the station. And Henry Lamb had a difficult time looking cheerful, though he was helped by the satisfaction of, at last, seeing his son starting out upon a sensible enterprise rather than for some fool college. As for Harold, he looked the epitome of gloom. His forlornness was not assisted by the completely wilted collar he wore, a collar that had been straight as a guardsman when he left home, but which the early morning Ohio heat had already done for.
So the smoky local chugged out of the station bearing at least one passenger who looked as if he had just buried his best friend. As, indeed, perhaps he had, for what more cheerful comrades are there than the hopes and ambitions of youth?
Though he did not smoke, Harold decided that he might be excused for at least treating himself to the adventure of riding in the smoking car. He entered that stygian region of haze and expectoration. Swinging his bulky suitcase up into the rack, he slumped into an empty seat and stared out of the window at the flat farming country flitting by. At length he summoned forth sufficient interest in his mundane surroundings to look about him. His exploration was almost at once rewarded, for a familiar bulk loomed in the seat across the aisle. The young man over there was smoking a bulldog pipe and reading a cowboy magazine. He wore the soft shirt with collar attached and the always-at-home air of the finished collegian. Harold did not have to look at him twice to assure himself that his carmate was none other than the famous "Dusty" Rhoades.
After some hesitation, Harold slid across the aisle and into the seat beside Tate's ex-football captain. Rhoades turned toward the newcomer, mild interest showing in his light blue eyes.
"You're Mr. Rhoades, aren't you?" Harold asked.
The celebrated athlete nodded.
"Well, I'm Harold Lamb," Harold pursued. "I met you at the alumni meeting at Cleveland last March, the one where you and Chester Trask spoke."
Rhoades remembered the meeting, if not Harold Lamb. They shook hands.
"Are you on your way to enter Tate now?" "Dusty" asked.
Harold shook his head.
"That's too bad," continued Tate's distinguished alumnus. "If you were, we could travel all the way together. I'm on my way to take up my job with the football coaching staff. What happened? Something the matter with the college entrance certificate from your prep school?"
Harold admitted that this was not the reason. Finally, having long awaited a sympathetic ear into which to pour the sad story, he told of his dashed hopes.
"Well, that's too bad," Rhoades agreed, when at last Harold had completed his lament. "You know, you really don't have to worry about money at Tate. That is, not much. I worked my way through. I even shined shoes for a while to get by. I started a bootblack stand on the campus, and another self-help student and I did the shining ourselves. But it was a flop that way. The boys didn't like having their shoes shined by classmates. It made them feel cheap somehow. So the other chap and I hired a couple of professional bootblacks, and then business was fine. We paid our help their wages and the rest was all velvet. The stunt went over so well that pretty soon we had to put in two more chairs. Now the Student Shoe Shine Parlor has been taken over by the Undergraduate Self-Help Bureau and is putting four or five of the boys through college. There are all sorts of ways like that of getting through Tate on nothing a year."
"And you found time to be football captain too," Harold marveled.
"Yes, football is what makes anything else tough, though," Rhoades declared. "When you're playing football, you haven't got time to do much else—even study. The profs kick because the boys on the team don't keep up their work. But it isn't the boys' fault. Not that football takes up a lot of time in itself. But you practice football every afternoon from two until dark, and then see how much you feel like studying at night. You're tired and sore and your head is full of coaching and signals. No, sir, athletes don't fail in their work because they're dumb or not interested. They're just tired. I used to take out my books after dinner in football season and I'd be so doggoned sleepy by nine o'clock that I would doze off right at my study table. My roommate would have to pound my back off to wake me up and get me to bed. For a fellow who is tending furnaces on the side or delivering Tate 'Tattlers' doing anything else to work his way through, it's next to impossible to play football too."
"I'd want to play football," Harold mused, fascinated by these expert comments from his Olympian seatmate.
"Well, it's too bad you aren't to have the chance," Rhoades agreed politely, though the private glance he gave Harold seemed to indicate that he did not consider Harold's chances of making the Tate team too sure-fire.
They parted at the Cleveland station, Rhoades was to catch an express train on another railroad.
"Maybe I'll see you at Tate, after all, some time," was the assistant coach's last cheerful prophecy.
"There's not a chance, I'm afraid," said Harold, and tried to smile.
Then the visitor from Sanford consulted the memorandum book in which he had written his Uncle Peter's address. He strove to recall the explicit and many times repeated directions he had received from his father as to how the Thatcher Steel Works were to be reached. Having, with difficulty, turned his mind from thoughts of Tate shoe-shining stands and football to drop forgings, he discovered what trolley car he was to take and walked out of the station to the street.
A half hour of jolty riding in the street car brought him to a region of smoking chimneys, blast furnaces and grimy, squatty brick factory buildings. It was the noon hour, and sweaty, sooty men, with exposed hairy chests roamed the streets. Harold felt rather small and timid as he passed them on his way from the trolley to the Thatcher Works. As he turned a corner, he read the name he was seeking on a plaque set in the darkened brick cornerstone of probably the most uninviting-looking of all the factories in the neighborhood. It was sprawled over two blocks. Blast furnace fires were belching. Cranes were clanging. Bells were ringing. A donkey engine wheezed and puffed at its job of pushing flat cars around. A haze of bituminous coal smoke hung in the air. Harold stopped at a door into the glass of which was stuck a placard reading: "Office. Unless You Have Business Here—Keep Out!"
It had long been a secret grievance of Henry Lamb's that, though all of his wife's folks had money, they had never made any overtures to share it with him. Not that he would have accepted any of it if they had. But still it was only common decency that some sort of arrangement should have been suggested. He was an excellent bookkeeper. Why had, for instance, not Peter Thatcher made hini head of the accounting department at the Works? It was because he thought the Thatchers should long ago have done something for the Lambs that Henry had had no qualms in approaching Peter Thatcher in regard to giving Harold a start in business. Perhaps Peter would take a notion to the boy and do handsomely by him.
It was true that the Thatchers seemed to have mastered the peculiarly American knack of starting with nothing and finishing with a great deal. Peter had started as a wheel-barrow boy in the very plant which he now owned and which had made him a fortune. Peter Thatcher was self-made and was very proud of it. John Thatcher, his brother, had entered a Cleveland bank as an office boy and was now its president. Another brother, James, was head of a dye works near New York, having entered the city as a youth with all his belongings in his pocket handkerchief.
Yes, the Thatchers had made money. And now Peter Thatcher, at the age of sixty-three, was endeavoring to abandon gradually his life-long toil and enjoy some of the fruits of his labors. And he was finding it rather difficult. The Winter previous, he had journeyed to Palm Beach and had sickened of the gilded Florida resort in a week. He missed the furnace back in Cleveland. He fretted because he honestly believed his very efficient general manager would fall down on the job if he did not have Peter Thatcher at his elbow. In June of this year, he had journeyed to Europe, at the earnest behest of his wife and his physician, intending to remain until September, and the first of August had seen him back on the job again. Now Peter had resigned himself to dying in harness. He was too old and too inexperienced at anything but work, to play. In his heart he regretted this. He was beginning to question seriously whether working hard and amassing millions was the sole object in life.
He began to envy men with much less money than himself but with much more variegated interests. Cultured men. Well dressed men with carefully modulated voices speaking perfect English. Men who talked of golf and yachts and the opera. Peter Thatcher was beginning to wonder if being a gentleman were not a worthier object in life than being a millionaire.
It was such a Peter Thatcher that Harold Lamb, very young and innocent and gloomy and somewhat quaking as to knees, came to interview that hot August noon.
A hard-faced young lady industriously chewing gum sat at the combination telephone switchboard and information desk in the outer room of Peter Thatcher's offices. An army of empty typewriters loomed between this railedoff reception room and the private sanctums beyond. The Thatcher stenographic force was out to lunch. Mr. Thatcher, however, might possibly be in, the hard-faced lady grudgingly admitted. She sent Harold's note, prepared by his father before leaving Sanford, in by a red-headed messenger boy, reluctant to rise from his perusal of a flamboyant magazine called "Secret Society Scandals."
A few minutes later the boy reappeared with the information, very surprising to the telephone lady, that Mr. Thatcher would see the young gentleman at once. The office boy leading the way, Harold wove back through the empty typewriter desks to the center of the three private offices in the rear. His guide, turned very angelic and respectful, held the door open and Harold passed through.
He had met his uncle only twice before in his life, the last meeting having occurred five years previously on the occasion of Harold's Grandpa Amos Thatcher's death in Xenia, Ohio, at the age of ninety-three.
Peter Thatcher, a short man, but very stocky of body and rugged of face, arose from his chair and, greeting his nephew cordially, invited him to take the visitor's chair by the big, bare, shiny flat-top desk. This came as somewhat of a shock to Harold. He had been led by his father to believe that Uncle Peter was somewhat of an ogre, a ferocious old man to be handled very cagily.
Uncle Peter drew a humidor of black cigars from his desk drawer. He offered one to Harold, who declined it. The steel magnate nodded approvingly, bit the end from one of the weeds and lighted the other extremity. He blew a cloud of expensively smelling smoke into the air. He sighed.
Then he said in a crisp, clipped voice: "You've grown to be quite a boy, Harold, since I saw you last. How's your mother—and father?"
Harold said nervously that he had left them very well indeed.
"'S good," agreed Uncle Peter. He took another long puff of his cigar and shot Harold a glance from under shrewd, bushy gray eyebrows. "How about you, eh?" asked Peter Thatcher. "Ready to go to work here, are you? Think you'll like the steel business, do you?"
For the life of him Harold could not force himself to be anything but truthful even at that moment. He knew that if he followed his father's advice, he would now lie diplomatically. But he couldn't. He was, instead, quite silent and embarrassed.
Peter Thatcher sensed the situation at once. "Not too keen for it, eh? Feel like a crook about to go to jail, don't you? Well, well. That's a pretty howdy-do. I understood from your father that you were anxious to start at the bottom here and learn the steel industry inside out. He said you just tormented him all the time to be allowed to come here and work. I guess that was just one of Henry's pipe dreams, eh?"
Harold rebelled. "I never told my father I wanted to work here," he blurted out. Then, realizing that this was a little tough on Uncle Peter, he added quickly, "I don't want to work anywhere for a while. I want to go to college—to Tate."
The steel man started in surprise. He puffed on his cigar and studied this surprising situation. He ventured, "So you want to go to college, eh? Where did you get that idea?"
Harold got up steam at once, thus encouraged. Here, of all places, he was encountering tolerance for his cherished ambition! He had expected to be handled very gruffly by Uncle Peter. He had had visions of himself in overalls pushing a wheelbarrow full of coke a half hour after passing through the door of the Thatcher Steel Works. He thought any mention of college on these premises would result in his being boiled in molten steel or something equally terrible. And now Uncle Peter seemed to think wanting to go to college was a perfectly natural wish! Uncle Peter was urging him to talk about it!
Harold talked. He told in infinite detail about his conversation with Professor Harlow Gaines, the alumni meeting here in Cleveland. "The College Hero," Chester Trask and "Dusty" Rhoades, the Tate "Tattler," Dean Pennypacker's speech, everything. And Peter Thatcher listened intently. He was getting in his mind a glimpse of a world he had never known at first hand. The world that Pinckney Parsons Young, President of the Indemnity Bank, for instance, had dwelt in for a while. The world that made Young and other men like him different from Peter Thatcher, though Peter had more money than they and served on the same boards of directors.
When Harold, breathless, had at last finished, Peter was silent for a moment, staring at his nephew. Then he asked quietly, "If you are so crazy to go to college, why don't you go?"
"Dad says he hasn't the money to send me and that he wouldn't send me if he had it," Harold explained.
"Is that so? Henry is pretty positive," Peter said dryly. He added, "How much would it cost to go to this Tate?"
Harold caught his breath. He looked at lis uncle hopefully, incredibly. "Well, I have $485 saved. That would pay my railroad fare and give me spending money for a year. If I could only get together about $500 more for tuition and room rent, I'd be all right. That would be for just the first year. I wouldn't need outside help after that. I'd work hard Summers and do odd jobs around the campus and—"
Peter Thatcher broke in, "You say you've saved $485. How did you get it?"
"I sold the Acme Washing Machine the last three Summers in Sanford."
"H'mm," mused Uncle Peter. He did not want to help his nephew unless he deserved it. He would not spoil the boy by sending him through college like a prince. Peter Thatcher believed that we enjoy only that which we earn. He was anxious to discover whether or not Harold wanted to go to college badly enough to work for it. The washing machine money augured well. But—
Suddenly Peter's face softened. He seemed to be talking beyond his young listener, to be even talking largely to himself as he said, "I've been thinking things over, Harold, and I've come to the conclusion that there is something to this college business. None of the Lambs or Thatchers have ever been to college. And they've missed something—something that money can't buy. So I've decided that maybe I'll help you go to this Tate and see what happens."
Harold's mouth was half-open in utter surprise. He kept his wide eyes fixedly upon his uncle, fearful that he was not seeing and hearing aright.
"Now, what I propose to do," Peter Thatcher went on, assuming a crisp, businesslike air, "is first to see whether or not you think enough of college to work for the right to go. By the way, could you still get into this Tate place? You graduated from High School, didn't you? Isn't too late, is—"
"Oh, no!" Harold broke in. "My high school graduation certificate will admit me to Tate all right, Professor Gaines says. Any time up to the tenth of September is early enough to send it in. They've built a lot of new dormitories and other improvements there, the Tate 'Tattler' says, and are ready for everybody that wants to come."
"H'mm. Don't sound very exclusive," commented the steel manufacturer. Then he got down to business again. "Now, looka here, Harold: I like this washing machine idea. That takes salesmanship and anybody who can sell has something to him. Have you still got the Sanford agency for the Acme people?"
"Why, yes. I wrote for it last May. But dad wouldn't let me take it up. He made me go to work in the bank."
"Well, here's what you do," said Uncle Peter. "You go back and tell Henry you're through at the bank. And you hustle out and start selling these washing machines again. And for every dollar that you earn between now and the tenth of September, I'll advance you two. See? If you earn a hundred and fifty dollars commissions, you'll get three hundred from me. That's fair enough, isn't it? I figure you ought to make $150 at least, seeing that the field hasn't been worked since last Summer."
"I could make that much," Harold promised. "I'll work hard!"
"Go to it then," encouraged Uncle Peter. "You tell Henry and Carrie I mean business. Tell them I won't take you in the foundry here till you get yourself a college education. Then I'll give you a job worth while. If you have any trouble with your father, just let me know. I'll write him a letter. I'll even run down and talk to him if necessary."
Peter Thatcher smiled. Mingled with his honest desire to help Harold was the mischievous satisfaction of thwarting the stubborn Henry Lamb, for whom he had never entertained any high degree of esteem.
"It's wonderful! I can't begin to thank you, Uncle Peter," stammered Harold, red of face, shining of eye.
"Don't try then," Peter suggested. "Remember—it all depends on yourself. Show me you've got the stuff by selling these machines and I'll help you to the extent that you'll be able to squeeze through this Tate place. You won't be able to fling the money around like John Trask's boy. You'll have to mind the nickels and dimes, keep away from the speed boys. But you'll be able to go to college."
Peter pushed himself out of his swivel chair and held out his hand, indicating that the interview was over. At the door the steel magnate added, "I know you'll make good. You won't let a chance like this slip, will you?"
"You bet I won't! I'll put Acme Washing Machines all over Sanford County!" cried Harold fervently.
He walked on air to the door.