The Fires of Spring (27 page)

“No!” Vaux shouted, and again against his will David relaxed. “It’s worse! If you thought all night you couldn’t pick a worse Queen.”

“Who is it?” David asked, needled with excitement.

“Dave?” Joe asked in deep seriousness. “Are you willing to risk your neck?”

“It depends,” David replied. “I don’t want to get mixed up …”

“But this isn’t getting mixed up, Dave. This is where you either stand for a decent college or you don’t.” Vaux paused and looked at his friend. “They’re going to choose Porterfield for Queen.” David gasped. “And it’s Askleton for Prince!”

David felt sick and ashamed. “They wouldn’t dare to do that,” he protested.

“They’re doing it,” Vaux yelled.

“What do you think we ought to do?” David asked.

“I have a letter here,” the Bostonian said. “I want you to sign it with me. I’ll take the worst end. But I want someone like you with me.”

David picked up the typed page and read the flaming words.
“Stupid and Disgusting Committee of Self-appointed Gods, Clowns and Damned Fools:”
He took a deep breath. “That’s some beginning,” he said.

“Wait till you get farther down,” Vaux replied.

David read the words he was expected to sign: “The practice of electing from among the freshmen men a May Queen and a Prince of Wails to be hauled through the streets of Dedham and held up to ridicule is a barbarous custom which only utter jackasses like you would dare to perpetuate. But for you to select Porterfield and Askleton is indecent and inhuman. The undersigned therefore volunteer to be Queen and Prince respectively and furthermore offer to fight your whole, lousy, rotten committee one by one.”

“I don’t like the fighting part,” David said.

“No!” Vaux protested. “In a thing like this you either go whole-hog or not at all.” With a great flourish he signed his
name. It looked as big as John Hancock’s. Then he thrust the pen at David, who signed in smaller letters.

Joe grabbed the paper and marched across the quadrangle to the room where the big men of the freshman class were meeting to make official the choice of Porterfield and Askleton. Vaux burst into the conclave, looked at each of the self-appointed senators, and threw his epistle at the captain of the freshman basketball team. “There! You lousy bastards!” he cried and left the room.

But the big men of the freshman class did not accept Joe and David for the golden chariot. No, as in all previous years, they selected two of the most inoffensive men on the campus. Porterfield had glandular trouble. This made him very fat, prevented a beard, and caused him to speak in a high voice. Secretly he wanted to play football, but his glands made him different and therefore a thing to be despised. His fellow students called him Poet Porterfield, and he was Queen. Askleton was a quiet boy from a small town in Delaware. He got A in every class and had a furious complexion that burst into eruption at regular intervals each month. The girls of Dedham used to say: “I’m so lonesome for a date I’d even go out with Askleton.” He was different, so he was the Prince.

At dusk the golden chariot was hauled into the quadrangle and decked with old vegetables and toilet paper. Ridiculous and funny signs were posted on it. Upon the seats of honor were placed the poet and the pimply one. Before they had time even to hide their faces, tomatoes and eggs struck them.

The leading men of the freshman class directed others to haul the chariot and its agonized cargo about the town. As dusk fell the grotesque fat boy sat bitterly erect and refused to duck any longer when old fruit was thrown at him. Askleton, on the other hand, was so terrified at the raging roar about him that he could not keep from crying, and his tears mixed with the rotten vegetables and the sour eggs.

The lights of the town came on, and the weird procession started to chant, “On to Belle Forest!” A sense of keen excitement gripped the crowd. New men stepped forward to haul the golden chariot to the exclusive girls’ school on the edge of town. “On to Belle Forest!” rose the ever more exciting cry. “The proposal! The proposal!”

At the entrance to the girls’ school the chariot almost upset. Eager hands from the freshman football team reached out to hold it up. The fat Queen, thrown off balance, slipped
from the seat and slid to the floor. Again eager men helped the Queen back to the throne. The men who helped in this way stopped to wipe their hands on the spring grass, and as they did so, they made ugly faces, for the sticky mess on their fingers was repugnant.

At Belle Forest the girls were waiting. Each year they looked forward to this serenade. Now all the lights in the fashionable school were extinguished. In nightgowns and pyjamas girls huddled in the windows. There was a strange hush upon the crowd. A man’s voice, deep and clear, began to sing the beautiful songs of college. The hidden girls sighed. Finally the singer began the rich, sweet song: “Fair Dedham, in that distant day …!” It rang out magnificently through the still spring night; but the flashlights that played upon the Queen showed that his fat lips were not moving.

The serenade ended, and from the girls’ windows began the cry: “Now the proposal I” In the courtyard the men roared back: “Yes! The proposal!”

All lights focused upon the Queen, who looked straight ahead. The last few eggs and fruit were thrown. The girls shrieked with delight when an egg actually struck the pimply Prince on the forehead. He looked funny and ridiculous.

“Silence!” the president of the freshman class commanded. “Queen! You look at the Prince! Prince! You propose!”

“The proposal!” cried the excited girls in their high voices.

But at that moment from a lower window came a girl’s piercing scream. “Oh God!” she cried. “How terrible!”

And it was this unknown girl’s cry that finally broke the spell of horror that had enveloped Joe Vaux and David Harper. That solitary voice was their conscience, returning to their bodies. All that pale and sorry evening the two freshmen had been thinking: “Well, we offered to be up there. I’m glad they didn’t take us.” But that girl’s wild cry drove thoughts of self-safety from their minds.

With a vigorous leap Joe sprang forward and knocked an especially offensive man who carried the special eggs for the coronation. He grabbed the bag and started throwing eggs wildly at the darkened windows. Horrified screams told the crowd that some of the eggs had hit the mark.

“Why, that dirty swine!” the big freshmen shouted. “That’s that Joe Vaux! Get that guy!”

But Joe and David were already streaking across the fields back to the dormitories. They arrived there breathless, and in a dumb rage they took the remaining eggs and broke them
in the bureau drawers of the president of the student body. Then they ranged through the upper-class dormitories pulling furniture down, mixing hair tonic and shaving cream in piles of fresh shirts, smearing shoe polish across clean laundry.

They were caught before they had wrecked more than a half dozen rooms. From an upper window two chairs were tossed into the quadrangle, and across them Joe and David were stretched and beaten until David thought he must either faint or scream for mercy. But he was like the fat Queen. He would not open his lips.

Vaux, on the other hand, cursed and reviled his tormentors. In his pain he dug up old scurrilities from Boston gutters and flung them at the men with the paddles. Since he was thinner than David, the wicked wood cut deeper toward his bones. He understood the frenzy in which the ashamed men of Dedham were caught, and he tormented them with words which hurt more than the paddle strokes.

Finally the head of the YMCA threatened to hit the paddlers with a chair if they didn’t stop. The YMCA man wanted to take Dave and Joe to the infirmary, but now that the beating was over David was crying and he said, “You go to hell!” And Vaux was about to say something much viler when he saw, limping across the quadrangle, the fat Queen sneaking home to his college room. “Attaboy, Porterfield!” Joe shouted. “Keep your chin up, Porterfield! You’re my man!”

A cheer went up. And then another. The quadrangle filled with students. Vaux kept on shouting, “You’re a real man, Porterfield!” Then a senior man grabbed the fat boy by the hand. Another cheer filled the darkness.

It had been Porterfield’s intention to look at no one and to go straight to bed as if nothing had happened. But the sudden cheering was too much for him. He turned and waved to the men of Dedham. He had eggs and fruit all over him and a certain proud nobility which David had helped put there.

But no one ever saw Askleton again. He did not even come back to college for his clothes.

Early the next morning there was a meeting of student government. The hall was crowded when the grim-faced chairman took his seat. The gavel hit once before Joe Vaux leaped to his feet. “Want to make a motion …”

Before he could say more the president of the senior class cried, “Second the motion!”

“Moved and seconded,” began the chairman, but before he finished there was a shout of “Aye!”

The chairman banged his gavel. “Motion carried.” He banged the table again. “Meeting adjourned.” And there was never another May Queen at Dedham.

In his room Joe said, “Think of it, Dave! They’ve been doing that for years. And see how easy it was to stop it.”

But David was thinking: “Joe and I stood there and watched until that girl couldn’t stand it any longer. We took it, all right. But she wouldn’t.” Then the thought of this girl made him jump to his feet, and the pain in his legs was great.

“Where you going?” Vaux asked.

“I almost forgot a vaudeville show!” David replied.

It was four o’clock before David reached the theatre. He had to stand in line, and his bruised legs hurt. When he finally got to his seat he fidgeted to find a comfortable way to sit. When the orchestra struck up an abbreviated
Tannhäuser Overture
he felt an indescribable excitement. He waited nervously for the curtains to part, and then fidgeted through four interminable acts.

But finally the orchestra burst into a lively potpourri of Victor Herbert’s melodies. The lights turned from pale blue to rich gold. Only the violins played, and onto the stage stepped Mary Meigs. She was twenty-four years old, tall and thin with up-swept blonde hair that made her seem extremely fragile. David leaned back into a little ball, his elbows against his ribs, his chin on his fists. “Boy!” he muttered. “Look at that!”

He saw once more the thin line of her jawbone lending a sense of brittleness. He noticed that she started singing with her hands pressed close against her sides, raising them to her bosom as she climbed effortlessly to higher and higher notes. But most of all he marked the manner in which she sang directly to him, and to every other man in the audience. “She’s breathtaking!” he said happily. “That’s what she is. And can she sing!”

When her songs were ended he saw how reluctantly she left the stage. He beat his hands together. She came onstage again and sang her first great success, the song Sousa had taught her: “Love Sends a Little Gift of Roses.” Chills ran across David’s body like catfeet upon a carelessly outstretched hand.

As soon as the singer left the stage for good—unwillingly
and with a chin-high glance at the balcony—David left the theatre and hurried around to the stage door. The tough young man stationed there laughed at him. “Then at least give her a note,” David pleaded. “For how much?” the tough doorkeeper inquired. “For … a quarter,” David blurted. He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote: “David Harper from Paradise Park would like to pay his respects. Friend of Conductor Kol’s.”

The doorkeeper disappeared, and in a moment Mary Meigs herself, wrapped in a flimsy gown, hurried to the door. “Why, it’s Dave!” she cried. “It’s wonderful to see you. Were you out there?”

She led him through a maze of people and ropes and scenery. At her dressing-room door she stopped and laughed. “No star!” she mock-pouted. “No name in gold!” She kicked open the colorless door and laughed, “No maid, either.” But the room was already rich with Mary Meigs. She had two dresses hung on wire hooks. Her make-up was scattered about in various places. She was messy, David saw, but from the mess she created a picture of cool lyric loveliness for the stage. Now she was merely going out on the street, so she took no pains. With a slap-dash she pulled off her wispy robe, and before she ducked into a thin dress David saw the white flash of her body. “You’re supposed to look the other way,” she chided. Then she caught a hat from another hook and pulled a heavy coat about her shoulders. David tried to hold it for her but she laughed and said, “Only yokels put their arms in the sleeves.”

On Market Street she looked into the spring dusk over Billy Penn’s statue and said, “We’ll go see Klementi! How would you like that?” She hailed a cab and gave directions, paying the fare when they reached the apartment.

“Klim!” she cried as she burst into a large and handsome room. “Guess who this is!” But before David saw the conductor, he saw one of Mary’s dresses lying on the bed in the next room. Kol shoved the door shut and hurried to greet his young friend.

“David!” he cried warmly. “It’s so good to see you.”

“I saw her name in lights,” David laughed. “Just like she said. She sings better than anybody I ever heard. She’s some singer, Mr. Kol.”

Mary moved deftly about the apartment in a familiar manner, getting drinks. “What have you been doing?” Kol asked.

“I’m in college,” David explained. “Dedham.” Then his eye was caught by a picture of Mary above the fireplace. “That’s a neat picture,” he said admiringly.

“You recognize it?” Kol asked. “When I first met her. Very good, too.”

“Oh, Klim!” Mary cried petulantly. “You didn’t send a telegram?” She pointed a crumpled paper at the musician.

Kol leaped to his feet. “Indeed I did!” he stormed. “I was so furious!”

“You shouldn’t have done it!” Mary insisted, handing David a drink in a tall glass. “You know that with a critic you can never win.”

“But to say a thing like that!” the musician cried. He stamped about the room and David guessed that Kol wanted to talk.

“What happened?” he asked. Behind Klementi’s back Mary shook her head vigorously “No! No!” but the angry musician had already grabbed a newspaper and thrust it at David. It contained a disparaging review of Kol’s conducting at a Boston concert. The harsh sentences looked forbidding in cold print: “No feeling for the master’s work and no attempt to attain any …”