the constant moments of crisis at Gant’s and Eliza’s had him keyed to their stimulation. The order and convention of domestic life he had never known. He was desperately afraid of regularity. It meant dullness and inanition to him. He loved the hour of midnight.
But obediently he promised her that he would be regular—regular in eating, sleeping, studying, and exercising.
But he had not yet learned to play with the crowd. He still feared, disliked and distrusted them.
He shrank from the physical conflict of boy life, but knowing her eye was upon him he plunged desperately into their games, his frail strength buffeted in the rush of strong legs, the heavy jar of strong bodies, picking himself up bruised and sore at heart to follow and join again the mill of the burly pack. Day after day to the ache of his body was added the ache and shame of his spirit, but he hung on with a pallid smile across his lips, and envy and fear of their strength in his heart. He parroted faithfully all that John Dorsey had to say about the “spirit of fair play,” “sportsmanship,” “playing the game for the game’s sake,” “accepting defeat or victory with a smile,” and so on, but he had no genuine belief or understanding. These phrases were current among all the boys at the school—they had been made somewhat too conscious of them and, as he listened, at times the old, inexplicable shame returned—he craned his neck and drew one foot sharply off the ground.
And Eugene noted, with the old baffling shame again, as this cheap tableau of self-conscious, robust, and raucously aggressive boyhood was posed, that, for all the mouthing of phrases, the jargon about fair play and sportsmanship, the weaker, at Leonard’s, was the legitimate prey of the stronger. Leonard, beaten by a boy in a play of wits, or in an argument for justice, would assert the righteousness of his cause by physical violence. These spectacles were ugly and revolting: Eugene watched them with sick fascination.
Leonard himself was not a bad man—he was a man of considerable character, kindliness, and honest determination. He loved his family, he stood up with some courage against the bigotry in the Methodist church, where he was a deacon, and at length had to withdraw
