John Bogardus

Front matter

A NOVEL

GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN

2''/-'^^

Chapter I

IN the summer of 1902 James Bogardiis, university professor of Romance languages, stood in a crowd on a New York pier and watched his son John, an inconsiderable individual in the flood of passengers, come down the gangway of an arriving liner.

American crowds are monotonously uniform, and this one was no exception save for the erect professor himself. He was distinguished by a mustache and pointed, iron-gray beard, a w^ell-fitted frock coat, buttoned down the front, a tightly rolled umbrella, and, last and most remarkable, a glossy top hat.

Ever since Junior year at college had conferred on him the right to sport a high hat, James Bogardus had done so on every suitable occasion, guided no less by a sense of independence and dignity than by the instincts of all short men for anything that appears to add a cubit to their stature.

However, in spite of his garb, perhaps by reason of his manner of wearing it, no one could fail to mark him for an American of the Americans, nor to bestow in addition the flattering concession that he must be a distinguished American. Less could be said in this regard for his son John, whose deliberate patience in waiting till everybody who was in a hurry had pushed down the gangway before him seemed to brand him either a foreigner or, at the best, a thoroughly denatured home product.

At this time John Bogardus was twenty years old and looked at least twenty-four in his somber, oddly cut, continental clothes. The straight-brimmed felt hat, high waistcoat, close-fitting jacket, and the trousers that were too wide just below the hips and too narrow just above the long pointed shoes, seemed to imprison his spirit as well as his body in a strait-jacket of propriety. Just as Bogardus the elder dominated his clothes, his son was dominated by his.

A keen-witted young lady on board had said that when she first saw him without a hat it had given her as much of a shock as catching any other man in his undershirt, and James Bogardus had an allied sensation when his son uncovered before him, disclosing a wavy crop of dark hair that looked what it was: the shining crown of youth. The professor gripped the boy's extended hand with both of his own and shook it so heartily that he dropped his umbrella. John was quick to pick it up for him.

" Now for the customs people," said the professor, in the despairing tones of every American face to face with the collectors of tribute at his country's gates. " I don't know why it is," he went on, " but I never pass my baggage except to the accompaniment of shivers in the spine. You know you 've a right to everything you saw go into your trunks, but you always have a feeling that somebody may have slipped in something while you were n't looking ; a string of pearls so famous that nobody could sell it but the real owner, or — or a dead body.''

John laughed. " Don't worry," he said. " You forget that I 've been running a gauntlet of customs regularly for eight years in as many languages."

The professor stood back and watched with admiration the ease and calm assurance with which his leisurely son passed all barriers. They were in a cab and rolling away from the pier so quickly that John's last words still hung in his mind. Sitting very erect to save his glossy hat from a rub, his thin hands locked over the handle of his umbrella, he glanced questioningly at his boy's profile. " Eight years is a long time," he said, ^^ but you 've accomplished more than you could over here in seven times seven."

John scarcely heard his father. He was staring out of the open cab window on the dead ugliness of ISTew York's west front. The city's East Side is unwashed, ragged, sordid, but it teems with life. It is gay in comparison with the decayed solitudes of the lower western side streets that seem to take painfully long strides toward the mighty artery of Broadway, pulsing with the life blood of the city.

John was inevitably depressed by this first view of the metropolis, so depressed that even the eventual plunge through the maelstrom of Broadway into the steadily flowing stream of Fifth Avenue did not quite revive his spirits, never ebullient at the best. He was silent and so was his father, sensitive to his boy's mood and, though he would never have admitted it, somewhat abashed as well by the young man's grave poise.

This reunion meant much to James Bogardus. It made him feel not only happy but boyish in his happiness, and his silence, preposterous as it may seem, was very much akin to the sulks of an urchin repressed by the presence of an elder. A paradox is a paradox only to those too lazy to look for an explanation. There was really no mystery about John Bogardus nor were the present relations between him and his father at all illogical. Belations between personalities never are illogical under the surface ; they depend ultimately on points of contact.

Between John Bogardus and his father the points of contact had been tampered with, arbitrarily thrown out of circuit during many years. It happened in this wise. James Bogardus had always looked upon himself as a makeshift for a professor of Romance languages. His university, which happened to be his alma mater as well, considered him the best available, and keenly aware of his own shortcomings he genuinely regretted that an institution so powerful and so linked almost from the inception of nationality with the intellectual progress of the country, should be forced to avail itself of makeshifts.

He wondered how many of his colleagues held their chairs by an equal sufferance and gradually there sprang up in him the ambition to prepare at least one exponent of Romance languages who would never have to depend on the subterfuges of a smattering of knowledge, but could face inquiring minds with a reservoir filled to the brim from tlie live sources of the tongues that had heralded the birth of humanism and propagated the Renaissance.

This ambition served him as a unique solace when his wife, whom he had passionately adored, died and left their only child, then twelve years of age, to his sole care. Maternity has been studied again and again in all its phases but laic literature is peculiarly silent on the constituent elements of fathers in general. An overflow of mother's love drowns everything else including ambition, but ambition, at least for his male offspring, is commonly the measure of a father's affection, especially in those cases where he happens to have regarded his wife with the continuing adoration of a faithful lover.

James Bogardus would have been genuinely shocked had any one impugned the love he bore for his child by measuring it with the cold rule of ambition, but had his affection been even colored with the passion with which he had worshiped the boy's mother it is doubtful whether he could have taken him to Europe within a few months of his mother's death and left him there for eight years. To the professor, the mere fact that he had crossed four times during the eight years to spend his long holidays with his son would have seemed ample refutation of any suggestion of neglect.

John Bogardus as a student had more than fulfilled his father's most sanguine hopes. He had traveled ahead of his schedule. Two years in Italy, two in France, and one in Spain had given him a vernacular facility which had been welded into a co-related whole in a course at Bonn, followed by a year divided between Provence, Portugal, and a certain amount of general though restricted travel. By the time he was twenty he had absorbed the Romance languages into his mental system as naturally as humanity absorbs milk, and just as naturally, and logically, he had grown away from his father.

On this long-awaited day of reunion, the two were far apart. A wall was between them. ^Neither father nor son actually sensed it, but both walked, unknowing, in its shadow.

The professor was restless and showed it by the time the cab drew up at the portals of the quiet but renowned hotel he patronized. " Here we are ! '' he cried, with an exploded sigh of relief, and busied himself with paying the cabman and giving orders as to the disposal of the luggage. As they passed up the lobby together his quick eyes noted the friendly but amused glances cast on him and his son. He was at no loss to read them. He had reason to know that his fellow countrymen are intolerant of the slightest idiosyncrasy of dress and that a Hindu who could walk the streets of any European capital unmolested and almost unremarked would probably be jeered out of stolid countenance if he attempted to saunter along Canal Street in his native garb, unless protected before and behind by the conventional boards of the sandwich-man.

Already uneasy, he found that the comfortless bedrooms and the much frequented lounges of the hotel presented an unfriendly atmosphere for the long talks

JOHK BOGAKDUS 9

lie had looked forward to having with his son. He decided to flee the city as quickly as possible and on the morning after John's arrival, having carefully packed away his own high hat and frock coat, he took his son to a large establishment and outfitted him completely with linen and ready-made clothes.

This morning held one moment that brought a kindling to John's eyes and a warm glow to his cheeks. He was standing arrayed in a new hat and the last suit purchased when his father said,

" Wliy not keep those on ? They can send up your old things."

John felt a strange and disproportionate thrill.

" May I ? " he said, flushing with sudden pleasure. The color in his cheeks made him look, for the first time since his arrival, as young as his years. It made him look so young that the professor felt a twinge of dismay, a twinge so slight that it passed practically unremarked.

John stepped out of the enormous building bravely as though by assuming the regulation garb of those about him he had suddenly become linked to the new life which only yesterday he had looked upon as a distant estate, hard of access.

But this feeling was not to last. James Bogardus was too intent on learning at first hand the measure of the glowing reports that had come to him in regard to his son's unusual accomplishments to apply the least penetration or attach the slightest importance to the signs, faint as they were, that might have led him to an understanding of the mental confusion that possessed the boy, assailed by the inevitable yearnings of one who had too long dreamed of a final return to his native land.

Instead of taking John to the neighborhood of their old summer home, long since sold, where he could have picked up the threads of family friendships and had the chance to come back in spirit as well as in flesh, he carried him off to the crowded solitudes of a lake resort and purposely isolated him among strangers, thus thrusting into the years all hopes of a genuine reunion.

John was a handsome lad, taller than his father and darker. His hair was almost black, his eyes a rich brown, and his cheeks had a smooth, un-American tinge of olive as though the long years he had spent in the south of Europe had marked him skin deep. His frame was well set up but undeveloped by sports or any exercise save walking. His father chided him for not standing quite erect.

Father and son occupied two beds in the same room, adjoining a little veranda of which they had the sole use. Here they would sit for hours day after day and talk. Toward evening or sometimes in the cool of the early morning, they would go for long walks over the hills or through the woods that skirted the lake. As they walked they talked, and the talk always swung on the single pivot of Neo-Latin and its variations.

They discussed the Italic, Gallic, and Iberian tongues in all their relations, and the elder Bogardus impressed upon the younger that this flourishing branch alone of Average-Latin would be his care in a country given over to utilitarianism even among its intellectuals. At

JOHIT BOGAEDUS 11

the start James Bogardus was didactic, soon he spoke as to a confrere, but from the moment he drew his son into a dissertation on the Germanic taint running solely through the division his father had just specified, the elder man became a pupil and, scholastically at least, sat henceforth at the feet of the younger.

He gave a sigh of satisfaction as he realized how far beyond his dreams his son had gone, and more than once, his thoughts fixed on the assistant professorship that had long been promised for the day of fulfilment, he said to himself, " If only he were older ! If only he were as old as he looked when he got off the ship ! "

Little did he guess that in these moments of his own unvoiced aspirations, John's thoughts were equally fixed not on a distant chair in Romance languages but on chewing gum.

Chapter II

WHILE his tongue had been answering questions and propounding theories almost automatically, John's mind and his eyes had been busy with lesser things. The popular lake resort was overcrowded with youth. Boys in shirt-sleeves, in khaki, in flannels, even in bathing suits, swarmed out to manifold amusements. They swam, they canoed, they played tennis, went camping and chewed gum. So did the girls.

Brought up among youths who from the early day they put on long trousers feel naked without a waistcoat, this accepted variety and lack of clothing might have appealed to John as the emblem of his native freedom, the open recall to an inherited democracy. But it did not. It failed because it struck no chord of memory in a boy whose ISlew England summer garb in distant days had been a shirt, open at the throat, a wide straw hat, and knee-length pants above sunburned bare legs.

But the rhythmic motion of young jaws — here was a thing he remembered. It swept across his heartstrings not for itself but for the memories it conjured. When his father sent him to buy a paper, his errand done, he glanced at the big glass jar full of packets of

gum, started to speak, and then flushed and hurried

JOHI^ BOGAEDUS 13

out only to march back a moment later. The color still in his cheeks, he said, a trifle louder than necessary, " I would like a package of chewing gum, please."

" What flavor ? " asked the busy clerk.

Por a second John paused, then memory spoke for him. " Wintergreen."

On the way back to the hotel and their veranda he opened the package and drew out a slip of gum. The feel of its covering of soft powder, of the smooth gum itself, its odor of wintergreen, were talisman and incense to recollection. He popped the gum into his mouth and chewed, his deep brown eyes fixed afar on memories of barefoot days, of a swimming hole, of apple, chestnut, and blackberry raids, of a raft on the overflow in a meadow, or of the view from the top of a smooth knoll, crowned with firs and carpeted with slippery pine-needles.

As he approached his father he took the gum, already almost tasteless, from his mouth, and rolling it into a wad pressed it under the lapel of his coat. All his later instincts rose up in arms against this outrage to the dignity of his new clothes, but they were powerless before the surge of memory reminding him that just so did the boy of other years guard a comparatively new wad of gum through the long school hours.

It is diflicult for fathers to understand surreptitious rebellion in their children. Years later, the years that it almost always takes to bring regret, James Bogardus's spirit was to call back to the spirit of his son, "Why didn't you tell me that I was boring you to tears, that you were longing to chew gum, to finish learning to swim, to crowd to the station at train time with a lot of chattering boys and girls, to dance at night and frivol away time in the day? I might not have understood why you wanted these things but I would have understood you, I would not have builded on sand a house for disillusion." And the boy's spirit was to reply, " Why in your turn did n't you blurt out to your father before you the hidden things that are never hidden to the eyes of love ? "

Once, when his father had fallen into a doze after lunch, John stole softly from the veranda and went for a walk by himself. He chose the embowered paths by the lake side. At moments he walked rapidly, his head held high, his arms swinging free. At other moments he walked slowly, his head and his eyes fallen in dreams. For quite half an hour he sat upon a mossy log and then jumped up to throw stones at a squirrel, only to feel the next instant a throb of thanksgiving that he had n't hit the little chap.

On his way back he stood on a lonely, rocky point that ran out into the lake and watched a catboat swoop down upon him. His blood surged with the surge at its foaming bow. On it came, courting disaster, laughing at it. Suddenly it jibed, the broad sail slatted, went over with a slap and a creaking of stays, filled and drew away.

John gasped as he saw the boat's sole occupant, a bare-armed, bare-headed girl, sitting alone at the helm, her loose hair blown before the wind. She caught the look in his eyes, smiled, and more out of mischief than impudence waved her hand at him as she headed her little craft into the safe distance.

John stood for long and stared. To what far nook of the wide lake was she bound? What lamplit room would hold her to-night? On what paths would she wander to-morrow? The yearning of youth for youth swelled in his bosom. He dreamed dreams. He saw himself coming upon her in some shaded wood, speaking to her, touching her hand. Then, with the fantastic leaps of boyhood's imagination, he saw himself saving her from disaster, from fire, a runaway, or shipwreck.

It was at this moment that his father found him. " Where have you been, my boy ? I 've been looking for you for an hour."

^' Oh, just for a walk," said John, as he turned to leave his point of rock and his dreams.

A puzzled look came into his father's face. "But why did n't you wake me ? You know I 'm always ready for a walk with you."

" I did n't want to wake you. I thought the sleep was doing you good," said John, coloring slightly at the lie.

" Oh, I get enough sleep," said his father easily. " !N^ever worry about that. There are such loads of things to talk about that I sometimes think we sleep altogether too much at night, let alone day naps. We 've talked over the past pretty thoroughly. We know where we stand to-day. 'Now, the thing to do is to settle the future."

" Yes, sir," said John,

" Our holidays are drawing to a close/' continued the elder Bogardus, " and before we go into what you 're going to do I want to sum up what you Ve done. You 've learned more, much more, than I sent you to learn. You 've laid your foundations deep and well. We need n't think any more about that. But you lack two things: years and a degree."

" Yes, sir," said John.

" The degree will be easy for you," continued his father, " but we '11 have to wait for the years. Some men never move. They stay in one place mentally and otherwise, grow old slowly, and stay old a long time. Other men grow old quickly and stay young forever. They are the travelers. I want you to be a traveler. !Now, no man has ever moved his body around the world without moving his mind at the same time. To-night I 'm going to tell you what I propose and then you can tell me what you think of it."

" All right, sir," said John.

They had come upon the hotel and John paused to watch the crowd of bathers. They dived from the wharf, from boats, and from the float. Some swam with long swirling strokes that shot them through the water, others breasted the lake ripples heavily like blunt-nosed ferry boats, still others skirted the shore as though they felt safer where an extended toe would touch bottom ; but, by hook or by crook, all swam.

" If you can't even swim what an ass you are to dream of saving a girl from drowning." It was as though a voice had spoken to John. With a quickened step he walked after his father.

JOHE" BOGARDUS 17

" Father," he said, " I think I 'd like to bathe."

" Would you ? " said the professor. " Well, why not?"

John hesitated. " I 'd have to get a bathing-suit," he said, smiling and coloring at the same time.

" Bless my soul," exclaimed the professor, thrusting his hand into his trousers' pocket, " you 've got no money ! There," he said, pressing a ten-dollar bill into his son's hand, " that 's yours. There you are. Run along."

As John hurried up the single business street of the village his father stood and stared after him, vainly trying to pin down a fleeting impression that just now he had spoken to his boy as if he were a boy for the first time since he had welcomed him back.

Half an hour later, feeling very naked in a close-fitting bathing-suit, John walked out on the wharf, paused for a moment, clenched his teeth, and plunged into deep water. In the far-off days of the swimming hole he had but barely reached the dog-paddling stage of natation. That modicum of knowledge had fortunately not forsaken him, so that when he arose spluttering from the depths of the lake he could at least keep afloat by whirling his arms and legs around like the wings of a windmill gone mad. He produced a great commotion in the water but the distance between himself and firm land remained alarmingly constant.

However, he would not let himself doubt or cry out and despite the fact that he had swallowed more of the lake than was good for him he turned with some spirit on the strong swimmer who seized him by the hair and with three powerful strokes towed him to shallow water.

" I suppose you meant well," said John as soon as he could speak, " but I wish you had let me alone."

^^ Well, of all the cheek ! " said the tall stranger. " D' you know you was goin down when I grabbed you ? "

" I know that," said John, calmly, " but I could have crawled in along the bottom."

The stranger laughed so heartily, his blue eyes crinkled up so merrily at the corners, that John could not help but laugh with him.

" Look here, son," said the tall man. " I 'd like to learn you to sw^im. Come out with me in a boat to-morrow morning at ten. One lesson will do it if nerve counts as much as it used to and I guess it does. Will ye come ? "

John nodded a quick assent. He said nothing but his eyes spoke for him. That night he could hardly tear his thoughts from the morrow to meet with courtesy, let alone enthusiasm, the generous proposal of his father.

" What I suggest is this," said James Bogardus. " There are three thousand dollars left of the fund I had determined to spend on your education. I propose to take out a letter of credit in your name for that amount and to turn you loose without conditions except, of course, that you are to pick up a European degree while you 're away."

" Of course," said John.

" It does n't much matter where you take the degree," continued his father. " Bonn, Heidelberg, Leipzig —

JOH]^ BOGARDUS 19

they all look equally well in a faculty register, and that 's all you want the degree for. Make the money last as long as you can and whether you come back soon or late, come back as old as possible so that you won't look like a child preaching in the temple and be accused of presumption by the prophets and the blind."

James Bogardus paused for a moment and then, vaguely disappointed, added, " Well, what do you say ? "

John brought himself to rise to the occasion with a wrench. " I say that you are splendidly generous and thoughtful," he answered. " I '11 — I '11 try not to disappoint you."

" And I can assure you," said his father, " you won't have to try very hard, not after what you 've done already."

Sharp at ten o'clock the next morning John was at the water side in his bathing-suit, having merely told his father that he was going for a swim. Within five minutes the tall stranger appeared with a boat and picked him up. In silence and with the short choppy stroke of a professional seaman he drove the boat out into the lake and only at half a mile from shore rested on his oars.

" Well, son," he said, " what 's your name ? "

John told him.

" An' I 'm Cap'n Ike Carr," said the stranger. " Master of the schooner Alexandrine that 's havin' her bottom scraped in between charters. Now as to swimmin'. The greatest mistake you can make in learnin' to swim is to make up your mind to try hard. Swimii min' is the gol-durnedest easiest form of loafin' ever discovered by man."

Is it ? " said John, doubtfully.

What happened to you when you jumped into deep water ? '' continued the captain. " Your muscles turned into planner wires, did n't they ? All strainin' like Billy-o an' gettin' nowheres."

John nodded. ^' That 's the way it was/' he said with a laugh.

" Well, that 's all wrong," said Captain Ike. " Swimmin' 's like lying on a feather bed only softer. All you gotta do is jest to lie all sprawled out and remember this: if there ain't a tight muscle in your body you can't sink if you try. !N^ow I 'm going over the side and don't you jump after me. Just let yourself into the water easy like and keep one hand on the gun'ale."

Captain Ike shipped the oars and stood up. He was not a young man, his temples were shot with gray, but he still possessed the high tide of vigor that makes a big man's lanky body a thing of joy to himself and to others. John watched with envy the clean, long dive from the stern of the boat and its exaggerated lolling as, without making a single stroke, the bather shot to the surface and lay there like a log for as long as he could hold his breath. Then with a slow flap of an arm and the crooking of a leg the body went into languid motion and gradually circled the boat.

" Come on," said the captain,

John let himself slowly into the water, keeping firm hold on the gunwale.

JOIIIT BOGAEDUS 21

" Draw yourself up a bit/' said tlie captain. " Now let yourself down till only your nose is showin'. Feel the water take the weight ? " he asked, as John came up.

" Yes," said John.

" Holdin' onto the gun' ale is bad for you," continued the captain. " It keeps that arm pianner-wire. Jest let yerself flop on your back and mind you don't tighten notJiiri"

John did as he was bidden. He felt the captain's hand placed lightly under his head. He lay quite relaxed and let his arms float out from his sides.

Captain Ike drew one of the oars over the side into the water and slipped it under John's head. Then he withdrew his hand and paddled noiselessly away. He swam around the boat and as he came across the bows shouted, " Well, son, been asleep ? "

John started and turned his head. The oar slipped from under it. For a moment panic threatened him, then he fastened his mind on the lolling movements of the captain rising from his dive. He pretended he was the captain. He lay still and flopped his hands lazily. The water did not drag him down; it buoyed him up.

Captain Ike was as good as his word. By the end of an hour John had not learned to swim, but he had acquired what comes to the same thing in the end, the belief that water could n't drown him.