The Plastic Age Part 24

"You're right," said Winsor, stretching mightily. "It can't be bad all night, but I can't hang around all night to watch it change. You're welcome to the hundred and fifty, Ted, but some night soon I'm coming over and take it away from you."

Allen laughed. "Any time you say, George."

Hugh and Winsor settled their accounts, then stood up, aching and weary, their muscles cramped from three hours of sitting and nervous tension.

They said brief good nights, unlocked the door--they heard Allen lock it behind them--and left their disgruntled friends, glad to be out of the noisome odor of the room.

"G.o.d, what luck!" Winsor exclaimed as they started down the hall. "I'm off Allen for good. That boy wins big pots too regularly and always loses the little ones. I bet he's a cold-deck artist or something."

"He's something all right," Hugh agreed. "Cripes, I feel dirty and stinko. I feel as if I'd been in a den."

"You have been. Say, what's that?" They had almost traversed the length of the long hall when Winsor stopped suddenly, taking Hugh by the arm. A door was open, and they could hear somebody reading.

"What's what?" Hugh asked, a little startled by the suddenness of Winsor's question.

"Listen. That poem, I've heard it somewhere before. What is it?"

Hugh listened a moment and then said: "Oh, that's the poem Prof Blake read us the other day--you know, 'marpessa.' It's about the shepherd, _Apollo_, and _Marpessa_. It's great stuff. Listen."

They remained standing in the deserted hall, the voice coming clearly to them through the open doorway. "It's Freddy Fowler," Winsor whispered.

"He can sure read."

The reading stopped, and they heard Fowler say to some one, presumably his room-mate: "This is the part that I like best. Get it," Then he read _Idas's_ plea to _Marpessa_:

"'After such argument what can I plead?

Or what pale promise make? Yet since it is In women to pity rather than to aspire, A little I will speak. I love thee then Not only for thy body packed with sweet Of all this world, that cup of br.i.m.m.i.n.g June, That jar of violet wine set in the air, That palest rose sweet in the night of life; Nor for that stirring bosom, all besieged By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair; Nor for that face that might indeed provoke Invasion of old cities; no, nor all Thy freshness stealing on me like strange sleep.'"

Winsor's hand tightened on Hugh's arm, and the two boys stood almost rigid listening to the young voice, which was trembling with emotion, rich with pa.s.sion:

"'Not only for this do I love thee, but Because Infinity upon thee broods; And thou are full of whispers and of shadows.

Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell; Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, What the still night suggesteth to the heart.

Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; Thy face remembered is from other worlds, It has been died for, though I know not when, It has been sung of, though I know not where.'"

"G.o.d," Winsor whispered, "that's beautiful."

"Hush. This is the best part."

"'It has the strangeness of the luring West, And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee I am aware of other times and lands, Of birth far back, of lives in many stars.

O beauty lone and like a candle clear In this dark country of the world! Thou art My woe, my early light, my music dying.'"

Hugh and Winsor remained silent while the young voice went on reading _Maressa's_ reply, her gentle refusal of the G.o.d and her proud acceptance, of the mortal. Finally they heard the last words:

"When she had spoken, Idas with one cry Held her, and there was silence; while the G.o.d In anger disappeared. Then slowly they, He looking downward, and she gazing up, Into the evening green wandered away."

When the voice paused, the poem done, the two boys walked slowly down the hall, down the steps, and out into the cool night air. Neither said a Word until they were half-way across the campus. Then Winsor spoke softly:

"G.o.d! Wasn't that beautiful?"

"Yes--beautiful." Hugh's voice was hardly more than a whisper.

"Beautiful.... It--it--oh, it makes me--kinda ashamed."

"Me, too. Poker when we can have that! We're awful fools, Hugh."

"Yes--awful fools."

CHAPTER XXII

Prom came early in May, and Hugh looked forward to it joyously, partly because it would be his first Prom and partly because Cynthia was coming. Cynthia! He thought of her constantly, dreamed of her, wrote poems about her and to her. At times his longing for her swelled into an ecstasy of desire that racked and tore him. He was lost in love, his moods sweeping him from lyric happiness to black despair. He wrote to her several times a week, and between letters he took long walks composing dithyrambic epistles that fortunately were never written.

When he received her letter saying that she would come to Prom, he yelled like a lunatic, pounded the astonished Vinton on the back, and raced down-stairs to the living-room.

"She's coming!" he shouted.

There were several men in the room, and they all turned and looked at him, some of them grinning broadly.

"What th' h.e.l.l, Hugh?" Leonard Gates asked amiably. "Who's coming? Who's she?"

Hugh blushed and shuffled his feet. He knew that he had laid himself open to a "royal razzing," but he proceeded to bluff himself out of the dilemma.

"She? Oh, yes, she. Well, she is she. Altogether divine, Len." He was trying hard to be casual and flippant, but his eyes were dancing and his lips trembled with smiles.

Gates grinned at him. "A poor bluff, old man--a darn poor bluff. You're in love, _pauvre enfant_, and I'm afraid that you're in a very bad way.

Come on, tell us the lady's name, her pedigree, and list of charms."

Hugh grinned back at Gates. "Chase yourself," he said gaily. "I won't tell you a blamed thing about her."

"You'd better," said Jim Saunders from the depths of a leather chair.

"Is she the jane whose picture adorns your desk?"

"Yeah," Hugh admitted. "How do you like her?"

"Very fair, very fair." Saunders was magnificently lofty. "I've seen better, of course, but I've seen worse, too. Not bad--um, not very bad."

The "razzing" had started, and Hugh lost his nerve.

"Jim, you can go to h.e.l.l," he said definitely, prepared to rush up-stairs before Saunders could reply. "You don't know a queen when you see one. Why, Cynthia--"