We were more decorous,or rather more awkward now,and the party began with a formal period when the boys gathered in a group and pretended indifference to the girls.The girls were cleverer at it,and actually achieved the impression that they were indifferent.We kept an eye on them,uneasily,while we talked.To be in Nancy's presence and not alone with Nancy was agonizing,and I wondered at a sang-froid beyond my power to achieve,accused her of coldness,my sufferings being the greater because she seemed more beautiful,daintier,more irreproachable than Ihad ever seen her.Even at that early age she gave evidence of the social gift,and it was due to her efforts that we forgot our best clothes and our newly born self-consciousness.When I begged her to slip away with me among the currant bushes she whispered:--"I can't,Hugh.I'm the hostess,you know."I had gone there in a flutter of anticipation,but nothing went right that day.There was dancing in the big rooms that looked out on the garden;the only girl with whom I cared to dance was Nancy,and she was busy finding partners for the backward members of both sexes;though she was my partner,to be sure,when it all wound up with a Virginia reel on the lawn.Then,at supper,to cap the climax of untoward incidents,an animated discussion was begun as to the relative merits of the various colleges,the girls,too,taking sides.Mac Willett,Nancy's cousin,was going to Yale,Gene Hollister to Princeton,the Ewan boys to our State University,while Perry Blackwood and Ralph Hambleton and Ham Durrett were destined for Harvard;Tom Peters,also,though he was not to graduate from the Academy for another year.I might have known that Ralph would have suspected my misery.He sat triumphantly next to Nancy herself,while I had been told off to entertain the faithful Sophy.
Noticing my silence,he demanded wickedly:--"Where are you going,Hugh?""Harvard,I think,"I answered with as bold a front as I could muster.
"I haven't talked it over with my father yet."It was intolerable to admit that I of them all was to be left behind.
Nancy looked at me in surprise.She was always downright.
"Oh,Hugh,doesn't your father mean to put you in business?"she exclaimed.
A hot flush spread over my face.Even to her I had not betrayed my apprehensions on this painful subject.Perhaps it was because of this very reason,knowing me as she did,that she had divined my fate.Could my father have spoken of it to anyone?
"Not that I know of,"I said angrily.I wondered if she knew how deeply she had hurt me.The others laughed.The colour rose in Nancy's cheeks,and she gave me an appealing,almost tearful look,but my heart had hardened.As soon as supper was over I left the table to wander,nursing my wrongs,in a far corner of the garden,gay shouts and laughter still echoing in my ears.I was negligible,even my pathetic subterfuge had been detected and cruelly ridiculed by these friends whom I had always loved and sought out,and who now were so absorbed in their own prospects and happiness that they cared nothing for mine.And Nancy!I had been betrayed by Nancy!...Twilight was coming on.I remember glancing down miserably at the new blue suit I had put on so hopefully for the first time that afternoon.
Separating the garden from the street was a high,smooth board fence with a little gate in it,and I had my hand on the latch when I heard the sound of hurrying steps on the gravel path and a familiar voice calling my name.
"Hugh!Hugh!"
I turned.Nancy stood before me.
"Hugh,you're not going!"
"Yes,I am."
"Why?"
"If you don't know,there's no use telling you.""Just because I said your father intended to put you in business!Oh,Hugh,why are you so foolish and so proud?Do you suppose that anyone--that I--think any the worse of you?"Yes,she had read me,she alone had entered into the source of that prevarication,the complex feelings from which it sprang.But at that moment I could not forgive her for humiliating me.I hugged my grievance.
"It was true,what I said,"I declared hotly."My father has not spoken.
It is true that I'm going to college,because I'll make it true.I may not go this year."She stood staring in sheer surprise at sight of my sudden,quivering passion.I think the very intensity of it frightened her.And then,without more ado,I opened the gate and was gone....
That night,though I did not realize it,my journey into a Far Country was begun.
The misery that followed this incident had one compensating factor.
Although too late to electrify Densmore and Principal Haime with my scholarship,I was determined to go to college now,somehow,sometime.Iwould show my father,these companions of mine,and above all Nancy herself the stuff of which I was made,compel them sooner or later to admit that they had misjudged me.I had been possessed by similar resolutions before,though none so strong,and they had a way of sinking below the surface of my consciousness,only to rise again and again until by sheer pressure they achieved realization.
Yet I might have returned to Nancy if something had not occurred which Iwould have thought unbelievable:she began to show a marked preference for Ralph Hambleton.At first I regarded this affair as the most obvious of retaliations.She,likewise,had pride.Gradually,however,a feeling of uneasiness crept over me:as pretence,her performance was altogether too realistic;she threw her whole soul into it,danced with Ralph as often as she had ever danced with me,took walks with him,deferred to his opinions until,in spite of myself,I became convinced that the preference was genuine.I was a curious mixture of self-confidence and self-depreciation,and never had his superiority seemed more patent than now.His air of satisfaction was maddening.
