To have been captain of the foot-ball team, which some student of
sociology has called the highest office in the free gift of the American
people, might seem glory enough for one life; but Richard Percival was
of such stuff that all past triumphs became dust and ashes. He was
greedy of the future. Now that the doors of college were fairly closed,
that career became to him but as a half-dreaming condition, before one
wakes.
On this summer evening, however, it was easy to prolong the dream, since
the hour was one for quiet of body and for wandering visions. The room
was large and suffused with that restfulness which comes to homes where
serene and thoughtful lives have been lived. There were long straight
lines; there was a scarcity of knickknacks; there were pictures gathered
because they were loved and not to fill a bare space on the wall; there
were books and books and books, many of them with the worn covers of
old friends. Here, clasped in the arms of another old friend of a chair,
half-sat, half-lay his mother, and near her lounged Ellery Norris, the
friend whose delicate mingling of love and admiration was as fragrant
wine to Dick, who believed in himself because others had always believed
in him. The dying twilight, laden with rose-spiciness and with the first
shrill notes of the warm night, came in through high narrow windows.
Everywhere was the sweet repose that comes after sweet activity, and the
center of it was the fragile woman who lay back in her chair, caressing
with light hand the head of the young man who sat upon the rug and
leaned against her knee.
Norris was looking at Mrs. Percival with a kind of wondering admiration
which the son saw with a touch of pity. Poor old Norris! It must have
been tough to grow up without a home. As for this fragrant type of
femininity, young Percival took it for granted--at least in the women
that belong to a man; and the other women hardly count.
Everything made Dick feel very tender toward his past, very well
satisfied with his present, very secure about his future. All would be
good. That was the natural order of the universe. He had always found it
easy to do things and to be a good deal of a personage.
He stared up silently at the space above the mantel where hung a
portrait that gazed back at him, with features pale in the fading light.
Singularly alike were the boyish face that looked up and the boyish face
that looked down, though the painted Percival, a little idealistic about
the eyes, wholly firm about the mouth, appeared the more determined of
the two. Perhaps this came from the shoulder-straps, the blue uniform,
and the military squareness of the shoulders.