The Vision Splendid | Page 6

showing. Look at me. I'm no John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Athletics bore me. I can't sing. I don't grind. But I'm in everything. Best frat. Won the oratorical contest. Manager of the football team next season. President of the Dramatic Club. Why?"
He did not wait for Jeff to guess the reason. "Because our set runs things and I go after the honors."
"But a college ought to be a democracy," Jeff protested.
"Tommyrot! It's an aristocracy, that's what it is, just like the little old world outside, an aristocracy of the survival of the fittest. You get there if you're strong. You go to the wall if you're weak. That's the law of life."
The freshman came to this squint of pragmatism with surprise. He had thought of Verden University as a splendid democracy of intellectual brotherhood that was to leaven the world with which it came in touch.
"Do you mean that a fellow has to have money enough to make a good showing before he can win any of the prizes?"
James K. nodded with the sage wisdom of a man of the world. "The long green is a big help, but you've got to have the stuff in you. Success comes to the fellow who goes after it in the right way."
"And suppose a fellow doesn't care to go after it?"
"He stays a nobody."
James was in evening dress, immaculate from clean-shaven cheek to patent leather shoes. He had a well-filled figure and a handsome face with a square, clean-cut jaw. His cousin admired the young fellow's virile competency. It was his opinion that James K. Farnum was the last person he knew likely to remain a nobody. He knew how to conform, to take the color of his thinking from the dominant note of his environment, but he had, too, a capacity for leadership.
"I'm not going to believe you if I can help it," Jeff answered with a smile.
The upper classman shrugged. "You'd better take my advice, just the same. At college you don't get a chance to make two starts. You're sized up from the crack of the pistol."
"I haven't the money to make a splurge even if I wanted to."
"Borrow."
"Who from?" asked Jeff ungrammatically.
"You can rustle it somewhere. I'm borrowing right now."
"It's different with you. I'm used to doing without things. Don't worry about me. I'll get along."
James came with a touch of embarrassment to the real object of his visit. "I say, Jeff. I've had a tough time to win out. You won't-- you'll not say anything--let anything slip, you know--something that might set the fellows guessing."
His cousin was puzzled. "About what?"
"About the reason why Mother and I left Shelby and came out to the coast."
"What do you take me for?"
"I knew you wouldn't. Thought I'd mention it for fear you might make a slip."
"I don't chatter about the private affairs of my people."
"Course not. I knew you didn't." The junior's hand rested caressingly on the shoulder of the other. "Don't get sore, Jeff. I didn't doubt you. But that thing haunts me. Some day it will come out and ruin me when I'm near the top of the ladder."
The freshman shook his head. "Don't worry about it, James. Just tell the plain truth if it comes out. A thing like that can't hurt you permanently. Nothing can really injure you that does not come from your own weakness."
"That's all poppycock," James interrupted fretfully. "Just that sort of thing has put many a man on the skids. I tell you a young fellow needs to start unhampered. If the fellows got onto it that my father had been in the pen because he was a defaulting bank cashier they would drop me like a hot potato."
"None but the snobs would. Your friends would stick the closer."
"Oh' friends!" The young man's voice had a note of angry derision.
Jeff's affectionate grin comforted him. "Don't let it get on your nerves, J. K. Things never are as bad as we expect at their worst."
The junior set his teeth savagely. "I tell you, sometimes I hate him for it. That's a fine heritage for a father to give his son, isn't it? Nothing but trouble and disgrace."
His cousin spoke softly. "He's paid a hundred times for it, old man."
"He ought to pay. Why shouldn't he? I've got to pay. Mother had to as long as she lived." His voice was hard and bitter.
"Better not judge him. You're his only son, you know."
"I'm the one he's injured most. Why shouldn't I judge him? I've been a pauper all these years, living off money given us by my mother's people. I had to leave our home because of what he did. I'd like to know why I shouldn't judge him."
Jeff was silent.
Presently James rose. "But there's no use talking about it. I've got to be