CHAPTER VII

HOMEGOING

At ten o'clock the next morning Rudy had his belongings stacked in the middle of a denuded room. The walls were bare, the window seat had been shorn of its pillows, and the study table looked strange and forlorn minus its customary cargo of books and papers.

So this was the end of his college life! A far less spectacular departure than he had imagined. Those old dreams came back momentarily to haunt him--the Rudy Bronson he had pictured before entering the University, leaving in a blaze of glory on the shoulders of admiring classmates. Bells ringing, whistles shrilling, cheer-leaders leaping about with writhing arms as they cried: "Three big ones for the greatest hero the school has ever known. All right now--Bronson! Bronson! Bronson!"

He sighed. Quite different, this. With a last glance about the bare walls, he loaded himself with his meager possessions and went out the door and down the stairs.

The landlord appeared from his subterranean retreat as he was dumping his bags in the back of his flivver. "Sorry to see you go, Mr. Bronson. Heaven knows you've been a lot better tenant than most of the boys I get here. You've been quiet, and haven't broken a thing."

Rudy's mouth bent in a small smile. "Pretty model sort, eh? And yet the University says I better get out and stay out."

"You wouldn't have flunked if you had paid more attention to your studies and less to that saxophone," the old man told him. "Land sakes, the way you went at that thing a body would think you intended to take it up professionally."

"And that," Rudy answered coolly, "is just what I intend to do."

"But I thought you couldn't even make the school band!"

"That's true. But that was because I wasn't ready yet. I'm taking a course of lessons from Ted Grant, the greatest saxophonist in the world, and--" his hands clenched--"some time I'll show all these guys here that I'm a real musician! I haven't got very far along in my course yet--but when I've finished it, I bet there isn't an orchestra in the country but will be glad to have me in it!"

The landlord shook his head rather dolefully. "Well, ambition is a good thing, I guess. But never let it run away with you, says I. That's a rule I've always followed."

"Apparently," Rudy answered with a smile. He climbed beneath the wheel and tramped on the starter. "Good-by, Mr. Justin. Watch for my name in the papers."

The old man moved back into his house without a reply. But it was apparent what he was thinking.

Spinning in the direction of Sport O'Malley's fraternity house, Rudy's face was grim. Why was it that none of them were willing to credit him with any skill? Had he been so rotten that they thought he never could be any better? But he'd show them! He'd stick at his practise until one and all would be forced to admit they had been wrong about his natural ability. He would make good if he had to blow his heart out to do so!

Sport was, strangely enough, ready to leave when Rudy pulled up before the colonial front of his fraternity home. He came down the walk with two bulging suit cases. These he dropped unceremoniously in the tonneau with Rudy's things. "Waterville next stop," he said briefly.

Rudy pressed down the clutch and with a roar of ancient mechanism the little car put off in the direction of the small Connecticut town which the two boys called home.

"Like to stop at Bland's before we hit the highway?" Rudy asked.

Sport shook his head. "I said good-by on the telephone," he said. "Thanks to you, the old man's got a pretty good opinion of me now. If I went over there I might get sentimental, saying fond farewells to Molly, and get tossed out on my ear."

He spoke with his usual lightness, but there was a troubled and unhappy note in his voice which told Rudy that his casualness was mere pretense. "You'll be back next semester, Sport," he said comfortingly. "Don't take it so hard. You look as if you'd been drawn through a knot-hole."

Sport grinned. "Oh, I hate to leave all right. But that's only part of the reason I look tough. It's those examinations. I let everything go until the last minute, and then tried to crowd all my studying into a few nights. Gee! cramming like that is enough to sour you on the whole of college. And then you're not sure until the last minute whether or not you sopped up enough facts to get you through."

They rode for a few minutes in silence. Then Rudy suddenly asked. "Do you really think college is worth while, Sport?"

Sport shrugged. "Who can tell?"

"You can, of course!"

Sport did not answer for a time. "Really," he said at length, "I can't say. I like it, that's true enough. But if I should quit and go to work, whether I'd eventually be a better business man or barber or something else--well, that's something else. And as I see it that's not the important thing. College doesn't seem to me to fit you for the particular thing you want to do, but to, well, grease you so that you'll slip a little more readily through all of life."

"But what has it done for you thus far, Sport? Here you've been dashing about for two years, making whoopee, having a good time. And you'll probably do the same for two more, unless Molly takes you in hand. What if you'd stop now--or get stopped, like I did. Don't you think that you'd get a two years earlier start?"

"I guess that would be so if you're meaning the ordinary business routine, with the automatic method of advancing employees--one goes out and one goes up. But even if I did want to enter that kind of a business--which I don't!--what if some other industrious lad had hopped onto the adding machine sooner than I? Ye gods, you only work eight hours out of the twenty-four--what about the rest of the time?"

Rudy thought of his saxophone. "He might know that he was missing something, and study all the harder in his spare time."

But Sport's mind was fixed firmly on a different type of livelihood than that in Rudy's. "Maybe," he admitted, "but the chances are that while the boy who went to work was associating with his fellow clerks and salesmen, the one who didn't would be associating with people who happily didn't know an invoice from a bank messenger. On the other hand, they do know, perhaps, a great deal concerning the art of living."

"But are those people real? And is what they have to teach of any real value to you?"

Sport moved his shoulders negligently. "Outside of one or two or three, it will make little difference--either to them or to me--if our paths never cross again. But here's the point: we did learn from each other. Forbes and Morton and I, for instance, have traded contacts. If we never see each other again in all our lives, we will have gained that. We've taught each other to sharpen our social senses. And believe you me, that's no little thing!"

Rudy looked down the road. "That's pretty unsentimental talk from a fellow who has just walked out of his fraternity house."

"You're a nice kid, Rudy," Sport laughed, "but you take things too seriously. This fraternity brotherhood chatter is a lot of bunk. We're in fraternities because that's the nicest way to live while we're in college. But we don't join them because of any great and over-powering desire to become banded with a lot of men who, a week before we enter the University, we've never seen!"

"Maybe you'll think differently when September rolls around. But about this summer. Are you going to hit the ball? I should think you'd be a little tired of resting."

"Resting my eye! A fine lot of resting I've done in this past year! I don't know where all my time went--but I don't recall that much of it was spent in resting. Or studying or meditating or exercising, either, so far as that goes."

"Still, you're not sorry you went through it."

"Not in the least. There's plenty of time for me to do the things I should do. Maybe I'll do them next year." He stretched expansively. "College is a little bit of all right, Rudy. I'll be back next year, you can bet."

"Surely you will," Rudy agreed. "Everybody does--who can. A college career is sort of a modern need, like food. But I've been doing a lot of thinking since I rolled out. And I'm not so sorry as I was that I'm going to get started on my life's work sooner than I would have otherwise. Just think, Sport--can you put your finger on any actual good that you've gained during these past two years?"

"One of the James boys," Sport said, squinting at the sun, "I think it was William, cracked wise to the effect that college teaches you to know a good man when you see one. I think it did that for me; I think I can tell one. I think I can see through the sham and hocus-pocus of most characters pretty well now. Maybe I would have gained that anyway. I don't know. But somehow, somewhere during these two years at the University, I've gained an idea of what the word 'genuine' means. I sensed it in Molly Bland."

He hesitated momentarily. "And I might add, Rudy, my boy, that said qualification was the one which caused me to be attracted to you."

Immediately, however, as if fearful lest he be open to that most dreaded charge, sentiment, he burst into a shout of laugher. "But you wanted something definite, concrete, that I've gained. Very well! I'll tell you the one definite thing I've learned, my cross-examining friend! And the only thing of importance that I can admit having gained without seeming a rummy. And that is this--that youth is a time to be lived, and life a time to be loved! And with that the sage of Waterville craves to cease talking generalities and get down to the more actual business of wondering if the old home town has enough good musicians to form a first rate band?"

Rudy frowned--but not because he was worried over any lack on the part of Waterville in regard to prospective members of Sport's orchestra. To the contrary, he knew that the summer before, during the time Sport had spent in session at the University, there had been organized a small but very good jazz orchestra which had failed to continue only because of poor management.

Sport would not be long in learning of this defunct organization and reassembling it. Under his dynamic leadership there was little question of its success, and chance of attracting other good musicians. Musicians so good, in fact, that there would be no place in its personnel for Rudy Bronson.

But even with this knowledge, his sense of honesty compelled him to impart the information to Sport. This he did, hesitantly, but as fully as he was able.

Sport whistled gleefully. "Holy cow, the makings of a band all set up and ready to go! Can you imagine a break like that? But who are some of the boys, Rudy?"

"Oh, Sam McMahon, Swiftie Clarke, Al Monroe, Pete Heflin. They'll be able to tell you the others. They were strangers to me."

"But you forgot one who isn't a stranger to you."

"I did?" Rudy asked. "Who's that?"

"None other than Rudy Bronson."

"Sport! Do you mean--do you mean you'll give me a chance with your outfit?"

"Sure as my name is O'Malley," Sport informed him, "the first saxophonist who goes down on the list is thyself. Of course," he said more slowly, "whether or not you stay there depends on you. But----"

"That's all I want!" Rudy interrupted hastily. "Give me a break--and I'll show you that when Ted Grant teaches them, they stay taught!"

"Well, now that that's settled, how about the rest of the gang. I remember that Sam and Al and Pete used to be pretty clever when we were kids. But I don't remember any of them being able to sing for sour apples. And nowadays that's just about as important as the rest of the orchestra combined."

"Don't you remember that I used to sing in the choir?" Rudy asked. "I've been studying singing with syncopated music in sort of a new way. And I think it's pretty good."

Sport laughed. "Gee, Rudy, I don't know whether I should be afraid of you in that band or not. If you turn out to be as good as you seem to think you are, it's liable to be your band before long!"

"That," said Rudy sagely, "is the risk any orchestra leader takes when he hires a first-class performer."

"Bull's-eye!" Sport cried. "Let's go!"