The Vision Splendid

by Raine, William MacLeod

  It was, too, a subject which greatly interested Jeff and Sam Miller. His cousin might smile at his poses, and often did, but he never denied James qualities likely to carry him far.

  "His one best bet is his belief in himself," Sam announced one night.

  "It's a great thing to believe in yourself."

  "He's so dead sure he's cast for a big part. The egoism just oozes out of him. He doesn't know himself that he's a faker."

  "He is a long way from that," Jeff protested warmly.

  "Take his oratory," Miller went on irritably. "It's all bunk. He throws a chest and makes you feel he's a big man, but what he says won't stand analysis—just a lot of platitudes."

  "Don't forget he's young yet. James K. hasn't found himself."

  "Sure there's anything to find?"

  "There's a lot in him. He's the biggest man in the university to-day."

  "You practically wrote the oration that won the interstate contest. Think I don't know that?" Miller snorted.

  Jeff's mouth took on a humorous twist. "I gave him some suggestions. How did you know?"

  "Knew he wasn't hanging around last term for nothing. He's selfish as the devil."

  "You're all wrong about him, Sam. He isn't selfish at all at bottom."

  "Shoot the brains out of that oration and what's left would be the part he supplied. The fellow's got a gift of absorbing new ideas superficially and dressing them up smartly."

  "Then he's got us beat there," Jeff laughed goodnaturedly. He had not in his make-up a grain of envy. Even his laughter was generally genial, though often irreverent to the God-of-things-as-they-are.

  "When he won the interstate he lapped up flattery like a thirsty pup, but his bluff was that it was only for the college he cared to win."

  "Most of us have mixed motives."

  "Not J. K. Reminds me of old Johnson's 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.'"

  Jeff straightened. "That won't do, Sam. I believe in J. K. You've got nothing against him except that you don't like him."

  "Forgot you were his cousin, Jeff," Miller grumbled. "But it's a fact that he works everybody to shove him along."

  "He's only a kid. Give him time. He'll be a big help to any community."

  "James K.'s biggest achievement will always be James K."

  Jeff chuckled at the apothegm even while he protested. Sam capped it with another.

  "He's always sitting to himself for his own portrait."

  "He'll get over that when he brushes up against the world." Jeff added his own criticism thoughtfully. "The weak spot in him is a sort of flatness of mind. This makes him afraid of new ideas. He wants to be respectable, and respectability is the most damning thing on earth."

  After Miller had left Jeff buckled down to Ely's "Political Economy." He had not been at it long when James surprised him by dropping in. His host offered the easiest chair and shoved tobacco toward him.

  "Been pretty busy with the team, I suppose?" Jeff suggested.

  "It's taken a lot of my time, but I think I've put the athletic association on a paying basis at last."

  "I see by your report in the 'Verdenian' that you made good."

  "A fellow ought to do well whatever he undertakes to do."

  Jeff grinned across at him from where he lay on the bed with his fingers laced beneath his head. "That's what the copybooks used to say."

  "I want to have a serious talk with you, Jeff."

  "Aren't you having it? What can be more important than the successes of James K. Farnum?"

  The senior looked at him suspiciously. He was not strongly fortified with a sense of humor. "Just now I want to talk about the failures of Jefferson D. Farnum," he answered gravely.

  Jeff's eyes twinkled. "Is it worth while? I am unworthy of this boon, O great Cesar."

  "Now that's the sort of thing that stands in your way," James told him impatiently. "People never know when you're laughing at them. There is no reason why you shouldn't succeed. Your abilities are up to the average, but you fritter them away."

  "Thank you." Jeff wore an air of being immensely pleased.

  "The truth is that you're your own worst enemy. Now that you have taken to dressing better you are not bad looking. I find a good many of the fellows like you—or they would if you'd let them."

  "Because I'm so well connected," Jeff laughed.

  "I suppose it does help, your being my cousin. But the thing depends on you. Unless you make a decided change you'll never get on."

  "What change do you suggest? Item one, please?"

  James looked straight at him. "You lack bedrock principles, Jeff."

  "Do I?"

  "Take your habits. Two or three times you've been seen coming out of saloons."

  "Expect I went in to get a drink."

  "It's not generally known, of course, but if it reached Prexy he'd fire you so quick your head would swim."

  "I dare say."

  The senior looked at him significantly. "You're the last man that ought to go to such places. There's such a thing as an inherited tendency."

  The jaw muscles stood out like ropes under the flesh of Jeff's lean face. "We'll not discuss that."

  "Very well. Cut it out. A drinking man is handicapped too heavily to win."

  "Much obliged. Second count in the indictment, please."

  "You've got strange, unsettling notions. The profs don't like them."

  "Don't they?"

  "You know what I mean. We didn't make this world. We've got to take it as it is. You can't make it over. There are always going to be rich people and poor ones. Just because you've fed indigestibly on Ibsen and Shaw you can't change facts."

  "So you advise?"

  "Soft pedal your ideas if you must have them."

  "Hasn't a man got to see things as straight as he can?"

  "That's no reason for calling in the neighbors to rejoice with him because he has astigmatism."

  Jeff came back with a tag of Emerson, whose phrases James was fond of quoting in his speeches. "Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

  "You can push that too far. It isn't practical. We've got to make compromises, especially with established things."

  Jeff sat up on the bed. Points of light were dancing in his big eyes. "That's what the Pharisees said to Jesus when he wouldn't stand for lies because they were deep rooted and for injustice because it had become respectable."

  "Oh, if you're going to compare yourself to Christ—"

  "Verden University is supposed to stand for Christianity, isn't it? It was because Jesus whanged away at social and industrial freedom, at fraternity, at love on earth, that he had to endure the Cross. He got under the upper class skin when he attacked the traditional lies of vested interests. Now why doesn't Bland preach the things that Jesus taught?"

  "He does."

  "Yes, he does," Jeff scoffed. "He preaches good form, respectability, a narrow personal righteousness, a salvation canned and petrified three hundred years ago."

  "Do you want him to preach socialism?"

  "I want him to preach the square deal in our social life, intellectual honesty, and a vital spiritual life. Think of what this college might mean, how it might stand for democracy It ought to pour out into the state hundreds of specialists on the problems of the country. Instead, it is only a reflection of the caste system that is growing up in America."

  James shrugged his broad shoulders. "I've been through all that. It's a phase we pass. You'll get over it. You've got to if you are going to succeed."

  A quizzical grin wrinkled Jeff's lean face. "What is success?"

  "It's setting a high goal and reaching it. It's taking the world by the throat and shaking from it whatever you want." James leaned across the table, his eyes shining. "It's the journey's end for the strong, that's what it is. I don't care whether a man is gathering gilt or fame, he's got to pound away with his eye right on it. And he's got to trample do
wn the things that get in his way."

  Jeff's eye fell upon a book on the table. "Ever hear of a chap called Goldsmith?"

  "Of course. He wrote 'The School for Scandal.' What's he got to do with it?"

  Jeff smiled, without correcting his cousin. "I've been reading about him. Seems to have been a poor hack writer 'who threw away his life in handfuls.' He wrote the finest poem, the best novel, the most charming comedy of his day. He knew how to give, but he didn't know how to take. So he died alone in a garret. He was a failure."

  "Probably his own fault."

  "And on the day of his funeral the stairway was crowded with poor people he had helped. All of them were in tears."

  "What good did that do him? He was inefficient. He might have saved his money and helped them then."

  "Perhaps. I don't know. It might have been too late then. He chose to give his life as he was living it."

  "Another reason for his poverty, wasn't there?"

  Jeff flushed. "He drank."

  "Thought so." James rose triumphantly and put on his overcoat. "Well, think over what I've said."

  "I will. And tell the chancellor I'm much obliged to him for sending you."

  For once the Senior was taken aback. "Eh, what—what?"

  "You may tell him it won't be your fault that I'll never be a credit to Verden University."

  As he walked across the campus to his fraternity house James did not feel that his call had been wholly successful. With him he carried a picture of his cousin's thin satiric face in which big expressive eyes mocked his arguments. But he let none of this sense of futility get into the report given next day to the Chancellor.

  "Jeff's rather light-minded, I'm afraid, sir. He wanted to branch off to side lines. But I insisted on a serious talk. Before I left him he promised to think over what I had said."

  "Let us hope he may."

  "He said it wouldn't be my fault if he wasn't a credit to the University."

  "We can all agree with him there, Farnum."

  "Thank you, sir. I'm not very hopeful about him. He has other things to contend with."

  "I'm not sure I quite know what you mean."

  "I can't explain more fully without violating a confidence."

  "Well, we'll hope for the best, and remember him in our prayers."

  "Yes, sir," James agreed.

  CHAPTER 4

  "I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi, and they were all

  my brothers."—Old Proverb.

  THE REBEL FLUNKS IN A COURSE ON HOW TO GET ON IN LIFE

  Part 1

  It would be easy to overemphasize Jeff's intellectual difficulties at the expense of the deep delight he found in many phases of his student life. The daily routine of the library, the tennis courts, and the jolly table talk brought out the boy in him that had been submerged.

  There developed in him a vagabond streak that took him into the woods and the hills for days at a time. About the middle of his Sophomore year he discovered Whitman. While camping alone at night under the stars he used to shout out,

  "Strong and content, I travel the open road," or

  "Allons! The road is before us!

  "It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well."

  Through Stevenson's essay on Whitman Jeff came to know the Scotch writer, and from the first paragraph of him was a sealed follower of R. L. S. In different ways both of these poets ministered to a certain love of freedom, of beauty, of outdoor spaces that was ineradicably a part of his nature. The essence of vagabondage is the spirit of romance. One may tour every corner of the earth and still be a respectable Pharisee. One may never move a dozen miles from the village of his birth and yet be of the happy company of romantics. Jeff could find in a sunset, in a stretch of windswept plain, in the sight of water through leafless trees, something that filled his heart with emotion.

  Perhaps the very freedom of these vacation excursions helped to feed his growing discontent. The yeast of rebellion was forever stirring in him. He wanted to come to life with open mind. He was possessed of an insatiable curiosity about it. This took him to the slums of Verden, to the redlight district, to Socialist meetings, to a striking coal camp near the city where he narrowly escaped being killed as a scab. He knew that something was wrong with our social life. Inextricably blended with success and happiness he saw everywhere pain, defeat, and confusion. Why must such things be? Why poverty at all?

  But when he flung his questions at Pearson, who had charge of the work in sociology, the explanations of the professor seemed to him pitifully weak.

  In the ethics class he met the same experience. A chance reference to Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual world" introduced him to that stimulating book. All one night he sat up and read it—drank it in with every fiber of his thirsty being.

  The fire in his stove went out. He slipped into his overcoat. Gray morning found him still reading. He walked out with dazed eyes into a world that had been baptized anew during the night to a miraculous rebirth.

  But when he took his discovery to the lecture room Dawson was not only cold but hostile. Drummond was not sound. There was about him a specious charm very likely to attract young minds. Better let such books alone for the present. In the meantime the class would take up with him the discussion of predeterminism as outlined in Tuesday's work.

  There were members of the faculty big enough to have understood the boy and tolerant enough to have sympathized with his crude revolt, but Jeff was diffident and never came in touch with them.

  His connection with the college ended abruptly during the Spring term of his Sophomore year.

  A celebrated revivalist was imported to quicken the spiritual life of the University. Under his exhortations the institution underwent a religious ferment. An extraordinary excitement was astir on the campus. Class prayer meetings were held every afternoon, and at midday smaller groups met for devotional exercises. At these latter those who had made no profession of religion were petitioned for by name. James Farnum was swept into the movement and distinguished himself by his zeal. It was understood that he desired the prayers of friends for that relative who had not yet cast away the burden of his sins.

  It became a point of honor with his cousin's circle to win Jeff for the cause. There was no difficulty in getting him to attend the meetings of the revivalist. But he sat motionless through the emotional climax that brought to an end each meeting. To him it seemed that this was not in any vital sense religion, but he was careful not to suggest his feeling by so much as a word.

  One or two of his companions invited him to come to Jesus. He disconcerted them by showing an unexpected familiarity with the Scriptures as a weapon of offense against them.

  James invited him to his rooms and labored with him. Jeff resorted to the Socratic method. From what sins was he to be saved? And when would he know he had found salvation?

  His cousin uneasily explained the formula. "You must believe in Christ and Him crucified. You must surrender your will to His. Shall we pray together?"

  "I'd rather not, J. K. First, I want to get some points clear. Do you mean that I'm to believe in what Jesus said and to try to live as he suggested?"

  "Yes."

  Jeff picked up his cousin's Bible and read a passage. "'We know that we have passed from death unto life, BECAUSE WE LOVE THE BRETHREN. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.' That's the test, isn't it?"

  "Well, you have to be converted," James said dubiously.

  "Isn't that conversion—loving your brother? And if a man is willing to live in plenty while his brother is in poverty, if he exploits those weaker than himself to help him get along, then he can't be really converted, can he?"

  "Now see here, Jeff, you've got the wrong idea. Christ didn't come into the world to reform it, but to save it from its sins. He wasn't merely a man, but the Divine Son of God."

  "I don't understand the dual nature of Jesus. But when one reads His life it is easy to believe in His divini
ty." After a moment the young man added: "In one way we're all divine sons of God, aren't we?"

  James was shocked. "Where do you get such notions? None of our people were infidels."

  "Am I one?"

  "You ought to take advantage of this chance. It's not right to set your opinion up against those that know better."

  "And that's what I'm doing, isn't it?" Jeff smiled. "Can't help it. I reckon I can't be saved by my emotions. It's going to be a life job."

  James gave him up, but he sent another Senior to make a last attempt. The young man was Thurston Thomas and he had never exchanged six sentences with Jeff in his life. The unrepentant sinner sent him to the right about sharply.

  "What the devil do you mean by running about officiously and bothering about other people's souls? Better look out for your own."

  Thomas, a scion of one of the best families in Verden, looked as if he had been slapped in the face.

  "Why Farnum, I—I spoke for your good."

  "No, you didn't," contradicted Jeff flatly. "You don't care a hang about me. You've never noticed me before. We're not friends. You've always disliked me. But you want the credit of bringing me into the fold. It's damned impertinent of you."

  The Senior retired with a white face. He was furious, but he thought it due himself to turn the other cheek by saying nothing. He reported his version to a circle of friends, and from them it spread like grass seed in the wind. Soon it was generally known that Jeff Farnum had grossly insulted with blasphemy a man who had tried to save his soul.

  Two days later Miller met Jeff at the door of Frome 15.

  "You're in bad! Jeff. What the deuce did you do to Sissy Thomas?"

  "Gave him some good advice."

  Miller grinned. "I'll bet you did. The little cad has been poisoning the wells against you. Look there."

  A young woman of their class had passed into the room. Her glance had fallen upon Farnum and been quickly averted.

  "That's the first time Bessie Vroom ever cut you," Sam continued angrily. "Thomas is responsible. I've heard the story a dozen times already."