Pullman. He was remaining for a few days to gather his belongings— the clutter of four years, letters, books, old manuscript, worthless rubbish of every description, for he seemed to inherit Eliza’s mania for blind accumulation. Extravagant with money, and unable to husband it, he saved everything else even when his spirit grew sick at the stale and dusty weariness of the past.
“Well, son,” said Eliza, in the quiet moment before departure. “Have you thought yet of what you’re going to do?”
“Yes,” said Gant, wetting his thumb, “for you’ve got to shift for yourself from now on. You’ve had the best education money can buy. The rest is up to you.”
“I’ll talk to you in a few days when I see you at home,” said Eugene. “I’ll tell you about it then.”
Mercifully the train began to move: he kissed them quickly and ran down the aisle.
He had nothing to tell them. He was nineteen; he had completed his college course; but he did not know what he was going to do. His father’s plan that he should study law and “enter politics” had been forgotten since his sophomore year, when it became apparent that the impulse of his life was not toward law. His family felt obscurely that he was an eccentric—“queer,” they called it—and of an impractical or “literary” turn.
Without asking sharply why, they felt the absurdity of clothing this bounding figure, with the wild dark face, in a frock-coat and string tie: he did not exist in business, trade, or law. More vaguely, they classified him as bookish and a dreamer—Eliza referred to him as “a good scholar,” which, in fact, he had never been. He had simply performed brilliantly in all things that touched his hunger, and dully, carelessly, and indifferently in all things that did not. No one saw very clearly what he was going to do—he, surely, least of all—but his family, following the tack of his comrades, spoke vaguely and glibly of “a career in journalism.” This meant newspaper work. And, however unsatisfactory this may have been, their inevitable question was drugged for the moment by the glitter of success that had surrounded his life at the university.
But Eugene was untroubled by thought of a goal. He was mad
