and companions spoke to them about him, and said he would have “a brilliant career.” And Eliza and Gant were touched a little by the false golden glow of youth. They believed for a moment that all things were possible.
“Well, son,” said Gant, “the rest is up to you now. I believe you’re going to make a name for yourself.” He laid a great dry hand clumsily upon his son’s shoulder, and for a moment Eugene saw in the dead eyes the old dark of umber and unfound desire.
“Hm!” Eliza began, with a tremulous bantering smile, “your head will get turned by all the things they’re saying about you.” She took his hand in her rough warm grasp. Her eyes grew suddenly wet.
“Well, son,” she said gravely. “I want you to go ahead now and try to be Somebody. None of the others ever had your opportunity, and I hope you do something with it. Your papa and I have done the best we could. The rest is up to you.”
He took her hand in a moment of wild devotion and kissed it.
“I’ll do something,” he said. “I will.”
They looked shyly at his strange dark face, with all its passionate and naïve ardor, and they felt tenderness and love for his youth and all that was unknown to it. And a great love and pity welled up in him because of their strange and awkward loneliness, and because he felt, through some terrible intuition, that he was already indifferent to the titles and honors they desired for him, and because those which he had come to desire for himself were already beyond the scale of their value. And, before the vision of pity and loss and loneliness, he turned away, clutching his lean hand into his throat.
It was over. Gant, who under the stimulus of his son’s graduation had almost regained the vitality of his middle years, relapsed now into whining dotage. The terrible heat came down and smote him. He faced with terror and weariness the long hot trip into the hills again.
“Merciful God!” he whined. “Why did I ever come! O Jesus, how will I ever face that trip again! I can’t bear it. I’ll die before I get there! It’s fearful, it’s awful, it’s cruel.” And he wept weak snuffling sobs.
Eugene took them to Exeter and got them comfortably disposed in a
