And a bird he was! The big sweater engulfed him, swallowed him like an enormous blanket: the sleeves came out a good four inches longer than the sleeves of his own coat, the sweater hit him midway between his buttocks and his knees and projected shockingly below the coat. It was not a good fit but it was a warm one, and Jim, after looking at him again and slowly shaking his head with the remark, “Damned if you aren’t a bird!” seized his valise and put on his hat. (He wore a black or grey felt hat with a wide brim, not quite the slouch hat of a Southern politician, for Jim was always neat and dignified in dress, but a hat that, like all his other garments, contributed to his appearance a manlike strength and maturity.) Then, turning to the boy, he said sternly:
“All right, freshman. You wear that sweater when you go to Richmond. If I catch you up there running around in the cold with that little shavetail coat of yours, I’ll beat yo’——till you can’t sit down.” And suddenly he laughed, a quiet, husky, tender, and immensely winning laugh. “Good-bye, son,” he said. He put his big hand on Monk’s shoulder. “Go ahead and wear the sweater. Don’t mind how it looks. You keep warm. I’ll see you after the game.” Then he was gone.
Wear it! From that time on Monk lived in it. He clung to it, he cherished it, he would have fought and bled and died for it as a veteran in Lee’s army would have fought for his commander’s battle flag. It was not only Jim’s sweater. It was Jim’s sweater initialed with the great white “P R” that had been won and consecrated upon the field of many a glorious victory. It was not only Jim’s sweater. It was Jim’s great sweater, the most famous sweater in the whole school—it seemed to Monk, the most famous sweater on earth. If the royal ermine of His Majesty the King-Emperor of Great Britain and India had been suddenly thrown around his shoulders, he could not have been more powerfully impressed by the honor of his investiture.
And everyone else felt the same way. All the freshmen did, at any rate. There was not a boy among them who would not have cheerfully and instantly torn off his overcoat and thrust it at Monk if he thought Monk would have swapped the sweater with him.
And that was the way he went to Richmond.
BUT HOW TO tell the wonder and glory of that trip? George Webber has been wide and far since then. He has pounded North and South and East and West across the continent on the crack trains of the nation. He has lain on his elbow in the darkness in his berth, time and again, and watched the haunted and the ghost-wan visage of Virginia stroke by in the passages of night. So, too, he has crossed the desert, climbed through the Sierras in the radiance of blazing moons, has crossed the stormy seas a dozen times and more and known the racing slant and power of great liners, has pounded down to Paris from the Belgian frontiers at blind velocities of speed in the rocketing trains, has seen the great sweep and curve of lights along the borders of the Mediterranean on the coasts of Italy, has known the old, time-haunted, elfin magic of the forests of Germany, in darkness also. He has gone these ways, has seen these things and known these dark wonders, but no voyage he ever made, whether by nighttime or by day, had the thrill, the wonder, and the ecstasy of that trip when they went up to Richmond twenty years ago.
The bonfire and the leaping flames, the students cheering, weaving, dancing, the red glow upon the old red brick, the ivy sere and withered by November, the wild, young faces of eight hundred boys, the old bell tolling in the tower. And then the train. It was a desolate little train. It seemed to be a relic of the lost Confederacy. The little, wheezing engine had a fan-shaped funnel. The old wooden coaches were encrusted with the cinders and the grime of forty years. Half of the old red seats of smelly plush were broken down. They jammed into it till the coaches bulged. They hung onto the platforms, they jammed the aisles, they crawled up on the tender, they covered the whole grimy caravan like a swarm of locusts. And finally the old bell tolled mournfully, the whistle shrieked, and, to the accompaniment of their lusty cheers, the old engine jerked, the rusty couplings clanked and jolted—they were on their way.