第22章

Bladen Scarborough had used his surplus to improve and extend his original farm.But farms were now practically unsalable, and Hampden and Arabella were glad to let their cousin Ed--Ed Warfield--stay on, rent free, because with him there they were certain that the place would be well kept up.Hampden, poor in cash, had intended to spend the summer as a book agent.Instead, he put by a thousand dollars of his winnings to insure next year's expenses and visited Pierson at his family's cottage in the summer colony at Mackinac.He won at poker there and went on East, taking Pierson.He lost all he had with him, all Pierson could lend him, telegraphed to Battle Field for half his thousand dollars, won back all he had lost and two thousand besides.

When he reappeared at Battle Field in September he was dazzling to behold.His clothes were many and had been imported for him by the Chicago agent of a London tailor.His shirts and ties were in patterns and styles that startled Battle Field.He had taken on manners and personal habits befitting a "man of the world"--but he had not lost that simplicity and directness which were as unchangeably a part of him as the outlines of his face or the force which forbade him to be idle for a moment.He and Pierson--Pierson was pupil, now--took a suite of rooms over a shop in the town and furnished them luxuriously.They had brought from New York to look after them and their belongings the first English manservant Battle Field had seen.

Scarborough kept up his college work; he continued regularly to attend the Literary Society and to be its most promising orator and debater; he committed no overt act--others might break the college rules, might be publicly intoxicated and noisy, but he was always master of himself and of the situation.Some of the fanatical among the religious students believed and said that he had sold himself to the devil.He would have been expelled summarily but for Pierson--Pierson's father was one of the two large contributors to the support of the college, and it was expected that he would will it a generous endowment.To entrap Scarborough was to entrap Pierson.To entrap Pierson-- The faculty strove to hear and see as little as possible of their doings.

In the college Y.M.C.A.prayers were offered for Scarborough--his name was not spoken, but every one understood.A delegation of the religious among his faithful fellow barbs called upon him to pray and to exhort.They came away more charmed than ever with their champion, and convinced that he was the victim of slander and envy.Not that he had deliberately deceived them, for he hadn't; he was simply courteous and respectful of their sincerity.

"The fraternities are in this somewhere," the barbs decided.

"They're trying to destroy him by lying about him." And they liked it that their leader was the brilliant, the talked-about, the sought-after person in the college.When he stood up to speak in the assembly hall or the Literary Society they always greeted him with several rounds of applause.

To the chagrin of the faculty and the irritation of the fraternities a jury of alumni selected him to represent Battle Field at the oratorical contest among the colleges of the state.

And he not only won there but also at the interstate contest--a victory over the orators of the colleges of seven western states in which public speaking was, and is, an essential part of higher education.His oratory lacked style, they thought at Battle Field.It was the same then, essentially, as it was a few years later when the whole western country was discussing it.He seemed to depend entirely upon the inherent carrying power of his ably constructed sentences--like so many arrows, some flying gracefully, others straight and swift, all reaching the mark at which they were aimed.In those days, as afterward, he stood upon the platform almost motionless; his voice was clear and sweet, never noisy, but subtly penetrating and, when the sense demanded it, full of that mysterious quality which makes the blood run more swiftly and the nerves tingle."Merely a talker, not an orator," declared the professor of elocution, and few of those who saw him every day appreciated his genius then.It was on the subject-matter of his oration, not on his "delivery,"that the judges decided for him--so they said and thought.

In February of this resplendent sophomore year there came in his mail a letter postmarked Battle Field and addressed in printed handwriting.The envelope contained only a newspaper cutting--from the St.Christopher Republic:

At four o'clock yesterday afternoon a boy was born to Mr.and Mrs.John Dumont.It is their first child, the first grandchild of the Dumont and Gardiner families.Mother and son are reported as doing well.