The mother, shrewd, ambitious, and far-seeing, was
staking everything against the future, and was wise enough to
sacrifice the present in order to launch her son into a
profession. In those days fresh air had not been discovered.
Athletics, then in their infancy, were regarded much as we now do
prize-fighting. The ideal student was a pale individual who wore
out the night with cold towels around his head, and who had a
bigger appetite for books than for meat. Docile, unquestioning,
knowing no law but his mother's wish; eager to earn her
commendation and to repay with usury the immense sacrifices she
had made for him, Raymond worked himself to a shadow with study,
and at nineteen was a tall, thin, narrow-shouldered young man with
sunken cheeks and a preternatural whiteness of complexion.
He was far from being a bad-looking fellow, however. He had
beautiful blue eyes, more like a girl's than a man's, and there
was something earnest and winning in his face that often got him a
shy glance on the street from passing women. His acquaintance in
this direction went no further. Many times when a college
acquaintance would have included him in some little party, his
mother had peremptorily refused to let him go. Her face would
darken with jealousy and anger, nor was she backward with a string
of reasons for her refusal. It would unsettle him; he had no money
to waste on girls; he would be shamed by his shabby clothes and
ungloved hands; they would laugh at him behind his back; was he
tired, then, of his old mother who had worked so hard to bring him
up decently? And so on and so on, until, without knowing exactly
why, Raymond would feel himself terribly in the wrong, and was
glad enough at last to be forgiven on the understanding that he
would never propose such a reprehensible thing again.
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