In 1915 Horace Tarbox was thirteen years old. In that year he
took the examinations for entrance to Princeton University and
received the Grade A--excellent--in Caesar, Cicero, Vergil,
Xenophon, Homer, Algebra, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry, and
Chemistry.
Two years later while George M. Cohan was composing "Over There,"
Horace was leading the sophomore class by several lengths and
digging out theses on "The Syllogism as an Obsolete Scholastic
Form," and during the battle of Chateau-Thierry he was sitting at
his desk deciding whether or not to wait until his seventeenth
birthday before beginning his series of essays on "The Pragmatic
Bias of the New Realists."
After a while some newsboy told him that the war was over, and he
was glad, because it meant that Peat Brothers, publishers, would
get out their new edition of "Spinoza's Improvement of the
Understanding." Wars were all very well in their way, made young
men self-reliant or something but Horace felt that he could never
forgive the President for allowing a brass band to play under
his window the night of the false armistice, causing him to leave
three important sentences out of his thesis on "German
Idealism."
The next year he went up to Yale to take his degree as Master of
Arts.
He was seventeen then, tall and slender, with near-sighted gray
eyes and an air of keeping himself utterly detached from the mere
words he let drop.
"I never feel as though I'm talking to him," expostulated
Professor Dillinger to a sympathetic colleague. "He makes me feel
as though I were talking to his representative. I always expect
him to say: 'Well, I'll ask myself and find out.'"
And then, just as nonchalantly as though Horace Tarbox had been
Mr. Beef the butcher or Mr. Hat the haberdasher, life reached in,
seized him, handled him, stretched him, and unrolled him like a
piece of Irish lace on a Saturday-afternoon bargain-counter.
To move in the literary fashion I should say that this was all
because when way back in colonial days the hardy pioneers had
come to a bald place in Connecticut and asked of each other,
"Now, what shall we build here?" the hardiest one among 'em had
answered: "Let's build a town where theatrical managers can try
out musical comedies!" How afterward they founded Yale College
there, to try the musical comedies on, is a story every one
knows. At any rate one December, "Home James" opened at the
Shubert, and all the students encored Marcia Meadow, who sang a
song about the Blundering Blimp in the first act and did a shaky,
shivery, celebrated dance in the last.
Marcia was nineteen. She didn't have wings, but audiences agreed
generally that she didn't need them. She was a blonde by natural
pigment, and she wore no paint on the streets at high noon.
Outside of that she was no better than most women.
It was Charlie Moon who promised her five thousand Pall Malls if
she would pay a call on Horace Tarbox, prodigy extraordinary.
Charlie was a senior in Sheffield, and he and Horace were first
cousins. They liked and pitied each other.
Horace had been particularly busy that night. The failure of the
Frenchman Laurier to appreciate the significance of the new
realists was preying on his mind. In fact, his only reaction to a
low, clear-cut rap at his study was to make him speculate as to
whether any rap would have actual existence without an ear there
to hear it. He fancied he was verging more and more toward
pragmatism. But at that moment, though he did not know it, he was
verging with astounding rapidity toward something quite
different.
The rap sounded--three seconds leaked by--the rap sounded.
"Come in," muttered Horace automatically.
He heard the door open and then close, but, bent over his book in
the big armchair before the fire, he did not look up.
"Leave it on the bed in the other room," he said absently.
"Leave what on the bed in the other room?"
Marcia Meadow had to talk her songs, but her speaking voice was
like byplay on a harp.
"The laundry."
"I can't."
Horace stirred impatiently in his chair.
"Why can't you?"
"Why, because I haven't got it."
"Hm!" he replied testily. "Suppose you go back and get it."
Across the fire from Horace was another easychair. He was
accustomed to change to it in the course of an evening by way of
exercise and variety. One chair he called Berkeley, the other he
called Hume. He suddenly heard a sound as of a rustling,
diaphanous form sinking into Hume. He glanced up.
"Well," said Marcia with the sweet smile she used in Act Two
("Oh, so the Duke liked my dancing!") "Well, Omar Khayyam, here I
am beside you singing in the wilderness."
Horace stared at her dazedly. The momentary suspicion came to him
that she existed there only as a phantom of his imagination.
Women didn't come into men's rooms and sink into men's Humes.
Women brought laundry and took your seat in the street-car and
married you later on when you were old enough to know fetters.
This woman had clearly materialized out of Hume. The very froth
of her brown gauzy dress was art emanation from Hume's leather
arm there! If he looked long enough he would see Hume right
through her and then be would be alone again in the room. He
passed his fist across his eyes. He really must take up those
trapeze exercises again.
"For Pete's sake, don't look so critical!" objected the emanation
pleasantly. "I feel as if you were going to wish me away with
that patent dome of yours. And then there wouldn't be anything
left of me except my shadow in your eyes."
Horace coughed. Coughing was one of his two gestures. When he
talked you forgot he had a body at all. It was like hearing a
phonograph record by a singer who had been dead a long time.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"I want them letters," whined Marcia melodramatically--"them
letters of mine you bought from my grandsire in 1881."
Horace considered.
"I haven't got your letters," he said evenly. "I am only
seventeen years old. My father was not born until March 3, 1879.
You evidently have me confused with some one else."
"You're only seventeen?" repeated March suspiciously.
"Only seventeen."
"I knew a girl," said Marcia reminiscently, "who went on the
ten-twenty-thirty when she was sixteen. She was so stuck on
herself that she could never say 'sixteen' without putting the
'only' before it. We got to calling her 'Only Jessie.' And she's
just where she was when she started--only worse. 'Only' is a bad
habit, Omar--it sounds like an alibi."
"My name is not Omar."
"I know," agreed Marcia, nodding--"your name's Horace. I just
call you Omar because you remind me of a smoked cigarette."
"And I haven't your letters. I doubt if I've ever met your
grandfather. In fact, I think it very improbable that you
yourself were alive in 1881."
Marcia stared at him in wonder.
"Me--1881? Why sure! I was second-line stuff when the Florodora
Sextette was still in the convent. I was the original nurse to
Mrs. Sol Smith's Juliette. Why, Omar, I was a canteen singer
during the War of 1812."
Horace's mind made a sudden successful leap, and he grinned.
"Did Charlie Moon put you up to this?"
Marcia regarded him inscrutably.
"Who's Charlie Moon? "
"Small--wide nostrils--big ears."
She grew several inches and sniffed.
"I'm not in the habit of noticing my friends' nostrils.
"Then it was Charlie?"
Marcia bit her lip--and then yawned. "Oh, let's change the
subject, Omar. I'll pull a snore in this chair in a minute."
"Yes," replied Horace gravely, "Hume has often been considered
soporific---"
"Who's your friend--and will he die?"
Then of a sudden Horace Tarbox rose slenderly and began to pace
the room with his hands in his pockets. This was his other
gesture.
"I don't care for this," he said as if he were talking to
himself--"at all. Not that I mind your being here--I don't.
You're quite a pretty little thing, but I don't like Charlie
Moon's sending you up here. Am I a laboratory experiment on which
the janitors as well as the chemists can make experiments? Is my
intellectual development humorous in any way? Do I look like the
pictures of the little Boston boy in the comic magazines? Has
that callow ass, Moon, with his eternal tales about his week in
Paris, any right to---"
"No," interrupted Marcia emphatically. "And you're a sweet boy.
Come here and kiss me."
Horace stopped quickly in front of her.
"Why do you want me to kiss you?" he asked intently, "Do you just
go round kissing people?"
"Why, yes," admitted Marcia, unruffled. "'At's all life is. Just
going round kissing people."
"Well," replied Horace emphatically, "I must say your ideas are
horribly garbled! In the first place life isn't just that, and in
the second place. I won't kiss you. It might get to be a habit
and I can't get rid of habits. This year I've got in the habit of
lolling in bed until seven-thirty---"
Marcia nodded understandingly.
"Do you ever have any fun?" she asked.
"What do you mean by fun?"
"See here," said Marcia sternly, "I like you, Omar, but I wish
you'd talk as if you had a line on what you were saying. You
sound as if you were gargling a lot of words in your mouth and
lost a bet every time you spilled a few. I asked you if you ever
had any fun."
Horace shook his head.
"Later, perhaps," he answered. "You see I'm a plan. I'm an
experiment. I don't say that I don't get tired of it sometimes--I
do. Yet--oh, I can't explain! But what you and Charlie Moon call
fun wouldn't be fun to me."
"Please explain."
Horace stared at her, started to speak and then, changing his
mind, resumed his walk. After an unsuccessful attempt to
determine whether or not he was looking at her Marcia smiled at
him.
"Please explain."
Horace turned.
"If I do, will you promise to tell Charlie Moon that I wasn't
in?"
"Uh-uh."
"Very well, then. Here's my history: I was a 'why' child. I
wanted to see the wheels go round. My father was a young
economics professor at Princeton. He brought me up on the system
of answering every question I asked him to the best of his
ability. My response to that gave him the idea of making an
experiment in precocity. To aid in the massacre I had ear
trouble--seven operations between the age of nine and twelve. Of
course this kept me apart from other boys and made me ripe for
forcing. Anyway, while my generation was laboring through Uncle
Remus I was honestly enjoying Catullus in the original.
"I passed off my college examinations when I was thirteen because
I couldn't help it. My chief associates were professors, and I
took a tremendous pride in knowing that I had a fine
intelligence, for though I was unusually gifted I was not
abnormal in other ways. When I was sixteen I got tired of being a
freak; I decided that some one had made a bad mistake. Still as
I'd gone that far I concluded to finish it up by taking my degree
of Master of Arts. My chief interest in life is the study of
modern philosophy. I am a realist of the School of Anton
Laurier--with Bergsonian trimmings--and I'll be eighteen years
old in two months. That's all."
"Whew!" exclaimed Marcia. "That's enough! You do a neat job with
the parts of speech."
"Satisfied?"
"No, you haven't kissed me."
"It's not in my programme," demurred Horace. "Understand that I
don't pretend to be above physical things. They have their place,
but---"
"Oh, don't be so darned reasonable!"
"I can't help it."
"I hate these slot-machine people."
"I assure you I---" began Horace.
"Oh shut up!"
"My own rationality---"
"I didn't say anything about your nationality. You're Amuricun,
ar'n't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's O.K. with me. I got a notion I want to see you do
something that isn't in your highbrow programme. I want to see if
a what-ch-call-em with Brazilian trimmings--that thing you said
you were--can be a little human."
Horace shook his head again.
"I won't kiss you."
"My life is blighted," muttered Marcia tragically. "I'm a beaten
woman. I'll go through life without ever having a kiss with
Brazilian trimmings." She sighed. "Anyways, Omar, will you come
and see my show?"
"What show?"
"I'm a wicked actress from 'Home James'!"
"Light opera?"
"Yes--at a stretch. One of the characters is a Brazilian
rice-planter. That might interest you."
"I saw 'The Bohemian Girl' once," reflected Horace aloud. "I
enjoyed it--to some extent---"
"Then you'll come?"
"Well, I'm--I'm---"
"Oh, I know--you've got to run down to Brazil for the week-end."
"Not at all. I'd be delighted to come---"
Marcia clapped her hands.
"Goodyforyou! I'll mail you a ticket--Thursday night?"
"Why, I---"
"Good! Thursday night it is."
She stood up and walking close to him laid both hands on his
shoulders.
"I like you, Omar. I'm sorry I tried to kid you. I thought you'd
be sort of frozen, but you're a nice boy."
He eyed her sardonically.
"I'm several thousand generations older than you are."
"You carry your age well."
They shook hands gravely.
"My name's Marcia Meadow," she said emphatically. "'Member it--
Marcia Meadow. And I won't tell Charlie Moon you were in."
An instant later as she was skimming down the last flight of
stairs three at a time she heard a voice call over the upper
banister: "Oh, say---"
She stopped and looked up--made out a vague form leaning over.
"Oh, say!" called the prodigy again. "Can you hear me?"
"Here's your connection Omar."
"I hope I haven't given you the impression that I consider
kissing intrinsically irrational."
"Impression? Why, you didn't even give me the kiss! Never
fret--so long.
Two doors near her opened curiously at the sound of a feminine
voice. A tentative cough sounded from above. Gathering her
skirts, Marcia dived wildly down the last flight, and was
swallowed up in the murky Connecticut air outside.
Up-stairs Horace paced the floor of his study. From time to time
he glanced toward Berkeley waiting there in suave dark-red
reputability, an open book lying suggestively on his cushions.
And then he found that his circuit of the floor was bringing him
each time nearer to Hume. There was something about Hume that was
strangely and inexpressibly different. The diaphanous form still
seemed hovering near, and had Horace sat there he would have
felt as if he were sitting on a lady's lap. And though Horace
couldn't have named the quality of difference, there was such a
quality--quite intangible to the speculative mind, but real,
nevertheless. Hume was radiating something that in all the two
hundred years of his influence he had never radiated before.
Hume was radiating attar of roses.
Read next: Head and Shoulders#Chapter II
Read previous: The Ice Palace#Chapter VI
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