Читать книгу The Restless Sex - Robert William Chambers - Страница 4

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On the Christmas-tide train which carried homeward those Saint James schoolboys who resided in or near New York, Cleland Junior sat chattering with his comrades in a drawing-room car entirely devoted to the Saint James boys, and resounding with the racket of their interminable gossip and laughter.

The last number of their school paper had come out on the morning of their departure for Christmas holidays at home; every boy had a copy and was trying to read it aloud to his neighbour; shrieks of mirth resounded, high, shrill arguments, hot disputes, shouts of approval or of protest.

"Read this! Say, did you get this!" cried a tall boy named Grismer. "Jim Cleland wrote it! What do you know about our own pet novelist——"

"Shut up!" retorted Cleland Junior, blushing and abashed by accusation of authorship.

"He wrote it all right!" repeated Grismer exultantly. "Oh, girls! Just listen to this mush about the birds and the bees and the bright blue sky——"

"Jim, you're all right! That's the stuff!" shouted another. "The girl in the story's a peach, and the battle scene is great!"

"Say, Jim, where do you get your battle stuff?" inquired another lad respectfully.

"Out of the papers, of course," replied Cleland Junior. "All you have to do is to read 'em, and you can think out the way it really looks."

The only master in the car, a young Harvard graduate, got up from his revolving chair and came over to Cleland Junior.

The boy rose immediately, standing slender and handsome in the dark suit of mourning which he still wore after two years.

"Sit down, Jim," said Grayson, the master, seating himself on the arm of the boy's chair. And, as the boy diffidently resumed his seat: "Nice little story of yours, this. Just finished it. Co you still think of making writing your profession?"

"I'd like to, sir."

"Many are called, you know," remarked the master with a smile.

"I know, sir. I shall have to take my chance."

Phil Grayson, baseball idol of the Saint James boys, and himself guilty of several delicate verses in the Century and Scribner's, sat on the padded arm of the revolving chair and touched his slight moustache thoughtfully.

"One's profession, Jim, ought to be one's ruling passion. To choose a profession, choose what you most care to do in your leisure moments. That should be your business in life."

The boy said:

"I like about everything, Mr. Grayson, but I think I had rather write than anything else."

John Belter, a rotund youth, listening and drawing caricatures on the back of the school paper, suggested that perhaps Cleland Junior was destined to write the Great American Novel.

Grayson said pleasantly:

"It was the great American ass who first made inquiries concerning the Great American Novel."

"Oh, what a knock!" shouted Oswald Grismer, delighted.

But young Belter joined in the roars of laughter, undisturbed, saying very coolly:

"Do you mean, sir, that the Great American Novel will never be written, or that it has already been written several times, or that there isn't any such thing?"

"I mean all three, Jack," explained Grayson, smiling. "Let me see that caricature you have been so busy over."

"It's—it's you, sir."

"What of it?" retorted the young master. "Do you think I can't laugh at myself?"

He took the paper so reluctantly tendered:

"Jack, you are a terror! You young rascal, you've made me look like a wax-faced clothing dummy!"

"Tribute to your faultless apparel, sir, and equally faultless features——"

A shriek of laughter from the boys who had crowded around to see; Grayson himself laughing unfeignedly and long; then the babel of eager, boyish voices again, loud, emphatic, merciless in discussion of the theme of the moment.

Into the swaying car and down the aisle came a negro in spotless white, repeating invitingly:

"First call for luncheon, gentlemen! Luncheon served in the dining car forward!"

His agreeable voice was drowned in the cheering of three dozen famished boys, stampeding.

Cleland Junior came last with the master.

"I hope you'll have a happy holiday, Jim," said Grayson, with quiet cordiality.

"I'm crazy to see father," said the boy. "I'm sure I'll have a good time."

At the vestibule he stepped aside, but the master bade him precede him.

And as the fair, slender boy passed out into the forward car, the breeze ruffling his blond hair, and his brown eyes still smiling with the anticipation of home coming, he passed Fate, Chance, and Destiny, whispering together in the corner of the platform. But the boy could not see them; could not know that they were discussing him.