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diff --git a/old/rmsym10.txt b/old/rmsym10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..87c343d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rmsym10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5115 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Ramsey Milholland, by Tarkington +#10 in our series by Booth Tarkington + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Digitized for Project Gutenberg by Earle Beach, e_beach@hotmail.com +Italicized text is enclosed by '~'s. + + + + + +Ramsey Milholland + +by Booth Tarkington + + + + +To the Memory of Billy Miller +(William Henry Harrison Miller II) +1908 - 1918 +Little Patriot, Good Citizen +Friend of Mankind + + + + +Chapter I + + When Johnnie comes marching home again, + Hurrah! Hurrah! + We'll give him a hearty welcome then, + Hurrah! Hurrah! + The men with the cheers, the boys with shouts, + The ladies they will all turn out, + And we'll all feel gay, when Johnnie comes marching home again! + +The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the +shade of the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the +"Decoration Day Parade," as it passed up the long street; and when +the last of the veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured +the words of the tune that came drifting back from the now distant +band at the head of the procession. + +"Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again," +he finished, with a musing chuckle. + +"Did you, Grandpa?" the boy asked. + +"Did I what?" + +"Did you all feel gay when the army got home?" + +"It didn't get home all at once, precisely," the grandfather +explained. "When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more +than anything else." + +"You didn't feel so gay when the war ~was~, though, I guess!" the boy +ventured. + +"I guess we didn't." + +"Were you scared, Grandpa? Were you ever scared the Rebels would +win?" + +"No. We weren't ever afraid of that." + +"Not any at all?" + +"No. Not any at all." + +"Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you +were in a battle." + +"Oh, yes; ~then~ I was." The old man laughed. "Scared plenty!" + +"I don't see why," the boy said promptly. "I wouldn't be scared in +a battle." + +"Wouldn't you?" + +"'Course not! Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day +Parade? Wouldn't they let you?" + +"I'm not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky +in the legs and too blind." + +"I wouldn't care," said the boy. "I'd be in the parade anyway, if +I was you. They had some sittin' in carriages, 'way at the tail end; +but I wouldn't like that. If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and +they'd let me be in that parade, I'd been right up by the band. +Look, Grandpa! Watch me, Grandpa! This is the way I'd be, Grandpa." + +He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex +imitation of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the +procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the +grand marshal, while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles +of the band, as well as the officers and privates of the militia +company which had been a feature of the parade. The only thing he +left out was the detachment of veterans. + +"Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!" he vociferated, as +the drums--and then as the bugles: "Ta, ta, ra, tara!" He addressed +his restive legs: "~Whoa~, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!" +Then, waving an imaginary sword: "Col-lumn right! Farwud ~March!~ +Halt! Carry ~harms!~ He "carried arms." "Show-dler ~harms!~" He +"shouldered arms," and returned to his seat. + +"That'd be me, Grandpa. That's the way I'd do." And as the +grandfather nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed +returned to the mind of the composite procession and he asked: + +"Well, ~why~ weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the +Unions, Grandpa?" + +"Oh, we knew they couldn't." + +"I guess so." The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his +question satisfactorily asnwered. "I guess those ole Rebels couldn't +whipped a flea! They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they, +Grandpa?" + +"Oh, yes, they did!" + +"What?" The boy was astounded. "Weren't they all just reg'lar ole +cowards, Grandpa?" + +"No," said the grandfather. "They were pretty fine soldiers." + +"They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em, +didn't they?" + +"Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't. Sometimes they +fought like wildcats--and sometimes we were the ones that ran away." + +"What for?" + +"To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting +captured." + +"But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?" + +"No." + +The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical +shadows, produced by a struggle to think. "Well, but--" he began, +slowly. "Listen, Grandpa, listen here!" + +"Well?" + +"Listen! Well, you said--you said you never got scared the ole +Rebels were goin' to win." + +"They did win pretty often," said the grandfather. "They won a good +many battles." + +"I mean, you said you never got scared they'd win the war." + +"No, we were never afraid of that." + +"Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, +and kep' winning battles and everything, how could that be? How +could you ~help~ bein' scared they'd win the war?" + +The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly. "Why, we ~knew~ they +couldn't, Ramsey." + +At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more +pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking. "Well, ~they~ didn't +know they couldn't, did they?" he argued. "They thought they were +goin' to win, didin't they?" + +"Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they +probably did. But you see they were wrong." + +"Well, but--" Ramsey struggled. "Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! +Well, anyway, if they never got scared ~we'd~ win, and nobody got +scared ~they'd~ win--well, I don't see--" + +"You don't see what?" + +But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he +slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to +its more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new +butterfly fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket +fence at the south side of the yard. "Oh, nothin' much," he +murmured. + +"I see." And his grandfather laughed again. "You mean: If the +Rebels felt just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept +winning battles why shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we +were going to win? That's it, isn't it?" + +"I guess so, Grandpa." + +"Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were +right." + +"I see," said Ramsey. "The Rebels knew they were on the side of the +Devil." But at this, the grandfather's laugh was louder than it had +been before, and Ramsey looked hurt. "Well, you can laugh if you +want to!" he objected in an aggrieved voice. "Anyway, the Sunday- +school sup'intendent told us when people knew they were on the +Devil's side they always--" + +"I dare say, I dare say," the old man interrupted, a little +impatiently. "But in this world mighty few people think they're on +the Devil's side, Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; +he said people were crazy because, though they couldn't even make +worms, they believed they could make gods. And so whenever countries +or parts of a country get into a war, each side makes a god and a +devil, and says: "God's on our side and the Devil's on the other." +The South thought the Devil was on our side, you see." + +"Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever." + +"Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. +When some people told him that God was on our side, he said the +important thing was to find out if we were on God's side. That was +the whole question, you see; because either side could make up a god, +the kind of a god they liked and wanted; and then they'd believe in +him, too, and fight for him--but if he was only a made-up god they'd +lose. President Lincoln didn't want to have a made-up god on his +side; he wanted to find God Himself and find out what he wanted, and +then do it. And that's what Lincoln did." + +"Well, I don't understand much of all ~that~!" + +"No?" Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting +for what it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for +our rights; we were fighting for the right. The South was fighting +for what it believed to be its right to split the Union and be a +country by itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now +and forever, one and inseparable.' It wasn't only the Union we +fought for; it was Freedom. The South wanted freedom to leave the +Union; but the reason the South wanted that freedom to separate from +us was because ~we~ wanted the Freedom of Man. ~There's~ the reason +we had the certain knowledge that we were going to win the war. How +plain and simple it is!" + +Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the +conversation, and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in +school; yet he took a little interest in the inexplicable increase of +fervour with which his grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine +which somehow got through the foliage of the walnut tree and made a +bedazzlement of glinting fine lines in one spot, about the size of +a saucer, upon the old man's head of thick white hair. Half closing +his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that this sunshine spot was a white +bird's-next and, and he had a momentary half dream of a glittering +little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue soldier cap on its head. +The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a sound in the boy's +ears. + +"Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often +think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and never +doubted. We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and +grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew +that all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste +such great things--we knew that such a country couldn't have been +building up just to be wasted. But, more than that, we knew that +armies fighting for the Freedom of Man ~had~ to win, in the long run, +over armies that fought for what they considered their rights. + +"We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our +being against slavery was what made the war, and we had the +consciousness that we were on the side of God's plan, because His +plan is clearly the Freedom of Man. Long ago we began to see the +hints of His plan--a little like the way you can see what's coming +in August from what happens in April. but man has to win his freedom +from himself--men in the light have to fight against men in the dark +of their own shadow. That light is the answer; we had the light that +made us never doubt. Ours was the true light, and so we--" + + +"Boom--" The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest +of the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the +street came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played +execrably. A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came +marching importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and +in advance, upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, +shrieking incessant commands but not concerning himself with whether +or not any military obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a +revivifying effect upon young Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened +electrically; he leaped to his feet and, abandoning his grandfather +without preface or apology, sped across the lawn and out of the gate, +charging headlong upon the commander of the company. + +"You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!" he bellowed. "You gimme +that sword! What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd +like to know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to +know! I did, myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or +I won't let you b'long to it at all!" + +The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted +and overawed. On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey +became sternly vociferous. "In-tention, company! Farwud ~march~! +Col-lumn ~right~! Right-showdler ~harms~! Halt! Far-wud ~march~. +Carry harms--" + +The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheed fire of +orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran +chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty +street. All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped +from the grandson's mind; but memory has curious ways. Ramsey had +understood not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and +already he had "forgotten" all of it--yet not only were there many, +many times in the boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause, +he would remember the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, +to make that semblance of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with +the picture came recollections of words and sentences spoken by the +grandfather, though the listener, half-drowsily, had heard but the +sound of an old, earnest voice--and even the veteran's meaning +finally took on a greater definiteness till it became, in the +grandson's thoughts, something clear and bright and beautiful that +he knew without being just sure where or how he had learned it. + + + + + +Chapter II + +Ramsey Milholland sat miserably in school, his conscious being +consisting principally of a dull hate. Torpor was a little dispersed +during a fifteen-minute interval of "Music," when he and all the +other pupils in the large room of the "Five B. Grade" sang repeated +fractions of what they enunciated as "The Star Span-guh-hulled +Banner"; but afterward he relapsed into the low spirits and animosity +natural to anybody during enforced confinement under instruction. No +alleviation was accomplished by an invader's temporary usurpation of +the teacher's platform, a brisk and unsympathetically cheerful young +woman mounting thereon to "teach German." + +For a long time mathematics and German had been about equally +repulsive to Ramsey, who found himself daily in the compulsory +presence of both; but he was gradually coming to regard German with +the greater horror, because, after months of patient mental +resistance, he at last began to comprehend that the German language +has sixteen special and particular ways of using the German article +corresponding to that flexible bit of a word so easily managed +English--~the~. What in the world was the use of having sixteen ways +of doing a thing that could just as well be done in one? If the +Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon sixteen useless +variations for infrequent words, such as ~hippopotamus~, for instance, +Ramsey might have thought the affair unreasonable but not necessarily +vicious--it would be easy enough to avoid talking about a +hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany. But the fact that the +Germans picked out ~a~ and ~the~ and many other little words in use +all the time, and gave every one of them sixteen forms, and expected +Ramsey Milholland to learn this dizzying uselessness down to the last +crotchety detail, with "When to employ Which" as a nausea to prepare +for the final convulsion when one ~didn't~ use Which, because it was +an "Exception"--there was a fashion of making easy matters hard that +was merely hellish. + +The teacher was strict but enthusiastic; she told the children, over +and over, that German was a beautiful language, and her face always +had a glow when she said this. At such times the children looked +patient; they supposed it must be so, because she was an adult and +their teacher; and they believed her with the same manner of +believing which those of them who went to Sunday-school used there +when the Sunday-school teachers were pushed into explanations of +various matters set forth in the Old Testament, or gave reckless +descriptions of heaven. That is to say, the children did not +challenge or deny; already they had been driven into habits of +resignation and were passing out of the age when childhood is able +to reject adult nonsense. + +Thus, to Ramsey Milholland, the German language seemed to be a +collection of perverse inventions for undeserved torment; it was +full of revolting surprises in the way of genders; vocally it often +necessitated the employment of noises suggestive of an incompletely +mastered knowledge of etiquette; and far inside him there was +something faintly but constantly antagonistic to it--yet, when the +teacher declared that German was incomparably the most beautiful +language in the world, one of the many facets of his mind submissively +absorbed the statement as light to be passed inward; it was part of +the lesson to be learned. He did not know whether the English +language was beautiful or not; he never thought about that, and no one +ever said anything to him about it. Moreover, though his deeper +inward hated "German," he liked his German teacher, and it was +pleasant to look at her when that glow came upon her face. + +Sometimes, too, there were moments of relaxation in her class, when +she would stop the lesson and tell the children about Germany: what +a beautiful, good country it was, so trim and orderly, with such +pleasant customs, and all the people sensible and energetic and +healthy. There was "Music" again in the German class, which was +another alleviation; though it was the same old "Star Spangled +Banner" over again. Ramsey was tired of the song and tired of "My +Country 'Tis of Thee"; they were bores, but it was amusing to sing +them in German. In German they sounded "sort o' funny," so he didn't +mind this bit of the day's work. + +Half an hour later there arrived his supreme trial of this particular +morning. Arithmetic then being the order of business before the +house, he was sent alone to the blackboard, supposedly to make lucid +the proper reply to a fatal conundrum in decimals, and under the +glare and focus of the whole room he breathed heavily and itched +everywhere; his brain at once became sheer hash. He consumed as much +time as possible in getting the terms of the problem stated in chalk; +then, affecting to be critical of his own handiwork, erased what he +had done and carefully wrote it again. After that, he erased half of +it, slowly retraced the figures, and stepped back as if to see +whether perspective improved their appearance. Again he lifted the +eraser. + +"Ramsey Milholland!" + +"Ma'am?" + +"Put down that eraser!" + +"Yes'm. I just thought--" + +Sharply bidden to get forward with his task, he explained in a feeble +voice that he had first to tie a shoe string and stooped to do so, +but was not permitted. Miss Ridgely tried to stimulate him with +hints and suggestion; found him, so far as decimals went, mere +protoplasm, and, wondering how so helpless a thing could live, +summoned to the board little Dora Yocum, the star of the class, +whereupon Ramsey moved toward his seat. + +"Stand still, Ramsey! You stay right where you are and try to learn +something from the way Dora does it." + +The class giggled, and Ramsey stood, but learned nothing. His +conspicuousness was unendurable, because all of his schoolmates +naturally found more entertainment in watching him than in following +the performance of the capable Dora. He put his hands in and out of +his pockets; was bidden to hold them still, also not to shuffle his +feet; and when in a false assumption of ease he would have scratched +his head Miss Ridgely's severity increased, so that he was compelled +to give over the attempt. + +Instructed to watch every figure chalked up by the mathematical +wonder, his eyes, grown sodden, were unable to remove themselves from +the part in her hair at the back of her head, where two little braids +began their separate careers to end in a couple of blue-and-red +checked bits of ribbon, one upon each of her thin shoulder blades. +He was conscious that the part in Dora's shining brown hair was +odious, but he was unconscious of anything arithmetical. His +sensations clogged his intellect; he suffered from unsought notoriety, +and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he hated her busy little shoulder +blades. + +He had to be "kept in" after school; and when he was allowed to go +home he averted his eyes as he went by the house where Dora lived. +She was out in the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he +had passed the age when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at +a girl as at a boy; and stifling his normal inclinations, he walked +sturdily on, though he indulged himself so far as to engage in a +murmured conversation with one of the familiar spirits dwelling +somewhere within him. "Pfa!" said Ramsey to himself--or himself to +Ramsey, since it is difficult to say which was which. "Pfa! Thinks +she's smart, don't she?"... "Well, I guess she does, but she ain't!" +... "I hate her, don't you?"... "You bet your life I hate her!"... +"Teacher's Pet, that's what ~I~ call her!"... "Well, that's what ~I~ +call her, too, don't I?" "Well, ~I~ do; that's all she is, anyway +--dirty ole Teacher's Pet!" + + + + + +Chapter III + +He had not forgiven her four years later when he entered high school +in her company, for somehow Ramsey managed to shovel his way through +examinations and stayed with the class. By this time he had a long +accumulation of reasons for hating her: Dora's persistent and +increasing competency was not short of flamboyant, and teachers +naturally got the habit of flinging their quickest pupil in the face +of their slowest and "dumbest." Nevertheless, Ramsey was unable to +deny that she had become less awful lookin' than she used to be. At +least, he was honest enough to make a partial retraction when his +friend and classmate, Fred Mitchell, insisted that an amelioration of +Dora's appearance could be actually proven. + +"Well, I'll take it back. I don't claim she's every last bit as +awful lookin' as she always has been," said Ramsey, toward the +conclusion of the argument. "I'll say this for her, she's awful +lookin', but she may not be as awful lookin' as she was. She don't +come to school with the edge of some of her underclo'es showin' below +her dress any more, about every other day, and her eyewinkers have +got to stickin' out some, and she may not be so abbasa~loot~ly +skinny, but she'll haf to wait a mighty long while before ~I~ want +to look at her without gettin' sick!" + +The implication that Miss Yocum cared to have Ramsey look at her, +either with or without gettin' sick, was mere rhetoric, and +recognized as such by the producer of it; she had never given the +slightest evidence of any desire that his gaze be bent upon her. +What truth lay underneath his flourish rested upon the fact that he +could not look at her without some symptoms of the sort he had +tersely sketched to his friend; and yet, so pungent is the +fascination of self-inflicted misery, he did look at her, during +periods of study, often for three or four minutes at a stretch. His +expression at such times indeed resembled that of one who has dined +unwisely; but Dora Yocum was always too eagerly busy to notice it. +He was almost never in her eye, but she was continually in his; +moreover, as the banner pupil she was with hourly frequency an exhibit +before the whole class. + +Ramsey found her worst of all when her turn came in "Declamation," on +Friday afternoons. When she ascended the platform, bobbed a little +preliminary bow and began, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear," +Ramsey included Paul Revere and the Old North Church and the whole +Revolutionary War in his antipathy, since they somehow appeared to +be the property of the Teacher's Pet. For Dora held this post in +"Declamation" as well as in everything else; here, as elsewhere, +the hateful child's prowess surpassed that of all others; and the +teacher always entrusted her with the rendition of the "patriotic +selections": Dora seemed to take fire herself when she declared: + + "The fate of a nation was riding that night; + And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight, + Kindled the land into flame with its heat." + +Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed +next--a ghastly contrast. He gave a "selection from Shakespeare," +assigned by the teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by +stumbling violently as he ascended the platform, which stimulated a +general giggle already in being at the mere calling of his name. All +of the class were bright with happy anticipation, for the miserable +Ramsey seldom failed their hopes, particularly in "Declamation." +He faced them, his complexion wan, his expression both baleful and +horrified; and he began in a loud, hurried voice, from which every +hint of intelligence was excluded: + +"Most pottent, grave, and rev--" + +The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. "You've +forgotten to bow," she said. "And don't say 'pottent.' The word is +'potent'." + +Ramsey flopped his head at the rear wall of the room, and began +again: + +"Most pottent potent grav and revenerd signers my very nobe and +approve good masters that I have tan away this sole man's dutter it is +mose true true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending +hath this extent no more rude am I in speech--in speech--rude am I in +speech--in speech--in speech--in speech--" + +He had stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some +sense of its applicability to the occasion had interfered with +the mechanism which he had set in operation to get rid of the +"recitation" for him. At all events, the machine had to run off +its job all at once, or it wouldn't run at all. Stopped, it stayed +stopped, and backing off granted no new impetus, though he tried, +again and again. "Hath this extent no more rude am I in speech--" +He gulped audibly. "Rude rude rude am I--rude am I in speech--in +speech--in speech. Rude am I in speech--" + +"Yes," the irritated teacher said, as Ramsey's failing voice +continued huskily to insist upon this point. "I think you are!" +And her nerves were a little soothed by the shout of laughter from +the school--it was never difficult for teachers to be witty. "Go sit +down, Ramsey, and do it after school." + +His ears roaring, the unfortunate went to his seat, and, among all +the hilarious faces, one stood out--Dora Yocum's. Her laughter was +precocious; it was that of a confirmed superior, insufferably adult +--she was laughing at him as a grown person laughs at a child. +Conspicuously and unmistakably, there was something indulgent in her +amusement. He choked. Here was a little squirt of a high-school +girl who would trot up to George Washington himself and show off +around him, given the opportunity; and George Washington would +probably pat her on the head, or give her a medal--or something. +Well, let him! Ramsey didn't care. He didn't care for George +Washington, or Paul Revere, or Shakespeare, or any of 'em. They +could all go to the dickens with Dora Yocum. They were all a lot +of smarties anyway and he hated the whole stew of 'em! + +There was one, however, whom he somehow couldn't manage to hate, even +though this one officially seemed to be as intimately associated with +Dora Yocum and superiority as the others were. Ramsey couldn't hate +Abraham Lincoln, even when Dora was chosen to deliver the "Gettysburg +Address" on the twelfth of February. Vaguely, yet reassuringly, +Ramsey felt that Lincoln had resisted adoption by the intellectuals. +Lincoln had said "Government of the people, by the people, for the +people," and that didn't mean government by the teacher and the +Teacher's Pet and Paul Revere and Shakespeare and suchlike; it meant +government by everybody, and therefore Ramsey had as much to do with +it as anybody else had. This was friendly; and he believed that if +Abraham Lincoln could have walked into the schoolroom, Lincoln would +have been as friendly with him as with Dora and the teacher herself. +Beyond a doubt, Dora and the teacher ~thought~ Lincoln belonged to +them and their crowd of exclusives; they seemed to think they owned +the whole United States; but Ramsey was sure they were mistaken about +Abraham Lincoln. + +He felt that it was just like this little Yocum snippet to assume +such a thing, and it made him sicker than ever to look at her. + +Then, one day, he noticed that her eye-winkers were stickin' out +farther and farther. + + + + + +Chapter IV + +His discovery irritated him the more. Next thing, this ole Teacher's +Pet would do she'd get to thinkin' she was pretty! If ~that~ +happened, well, nobody ~could~ stand her! The long lashes made her +eyes shadowy, and it was a fact that her shoulder blades ceased to +insist upon notoriety; you couldn't tell where they were at all, any +more. Her back seemed to be just a regular back, not made up of a lot +of implements like shoulder blades and things. + +A contemptible thing happened. Wesley Bender was well known to be +the most untidy boy in the class and had never shown any remorse for +his reputation or made the slightest effort either to improve or to +dispute it. He was content: it failed to lower his standing with +his fellows or to impress them unfavourably. In fact, he was treated +as one who has attained a slight distinction. At least, he owned one +superlative, no matter what its quality, and it lifted him out of the +commonplace. It helped him to become better known, and boys liked to +be seen with him. But one day, there was a rearrangement of the +seating in the schoolroom: Wesley Bender was given a desk next in +front of Dora Yocum's; and within a week the whole room knew that +Wesley had begun voluntarily to wash his neck--the back of it, +anyhow. + +This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and +Wesley Bender, and the diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding +hostilities were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite +as mixed-up and off-the-issue as if they had been prepared by +professional foreign office men. Ramsey and Fred Mitchell and four +other boys waylaid young Bender on the street after school, intending +jocosities rather than violence, but the victim proved sensitive. +"You take your ole hands off o' me!" he said fiercely, as they began +to push him about among them. + +"Ole dirty Wes!" they hoarsely bellowed and squawked, in their +changing voices. "Washes his ears!"... "Washes his ~neck!~"... +"Dora Yocum told his mama to turn the hose on him~"... "Yay-ho! +Ole dirty Wes tryin to be a duke!" + +Wesley broke from them and backed away, swinging his strapped books +in a dangerous circle. "You keep off!" he warned them. "I got as +much right to my pers'nal appearance as anybody!" + +This richly fed their humour, and they rioted round him, keeping +outside the swinging books at the end of the strap. "Pers'nal +appearance!"... "Who went and bought it for you, Wes?"... "Nobody +bought it for him. Dora Yocum took and give him one!" + +"You leave ladies' names alone!" cried the chivalrous Wesley. "You +ought to know better, on the public street, you--pups!" + +Here was a serious affront, at least to Ramsey Milholland's way of +thinking; for Ramsey, also, now proved sensitive. He quoted his +friends--"Shut up!"--and advanced toward Wesley. "You look here! +Who you callin' 'pups'?" + +"Everybody!" Wesley hotly returned. "Everybody that hasn't got any +more decency than to go around mentioning ladies' names on the public +streets. Everybody that goes around mentioning ladies' names on the +public streets are pups!" + +"They are, are they?" Ramsey as hotly demanded. "Well, you just look +here a minute; my own father mentions my mother's name on the public +streets whenever he wants to, and you just try callin' my father a +pup, and you won't know what happened to you!" + +"What'll ~you~ do about it?" + +"I'll put a new head on you," said Ramsey. "That's what I'll do, +because anybody that calls my father or mother a pup--" + +"Oh, shut up! I wasn't talking about your ole father and mother. I +said everybody that mentioned Dora Yocum's name on the public streets +was a pup, and I mean it! Everybody that mentions Dora Yocum's name +on the pub--" + +"Dora Yocum!" said Ramsey. "I got a perfect right to say it anywhere +I want to. Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum!--" + +"All right, then you're a pup!" + +Ramsey charged upon him and received a suffocating blow full in the +face, not from Mr. Bender's fist but from the solid bundle of books +at the end of the strap. Ramsey saw eight or ten objectives +instantly: there were Wesley Benders standing full length in the +air on top of other Wesley Benders, and more Wesley Benders zigzagged +out sideways from still other Wesley Benders; nevertheless, he found +one of these and it proved to be flesh. He engaged it wildly at +fisticuffs; pounded it upon the countenance and drove it away. Then +he sat down upon the curbstone, and, with his dizzy eyes shut, leaned +forward for the better accomodation of his ensanguined nose. + +Wesley had retreated to the other side of the street holding a grimy +handkerchief to the midmost parts of his pallid face. "There, you ole +damn pup!" he shouted, in a voice which threatened to sob. "I guess +~that'll~ teach you to be careful how you mention Dora Yocum's name +on the public streets!" + +At this, Ramsey made a motion as if to rise and pursue, whereupon +Wesley fled, wailing back over his shoulder as he ran, "You wait till +I ketch you out alone on the public streets and I'll--" + +His voice was lost in an outburst of hooting from his former friends, +who sympathetically surrounded the wounded Ramsey. But in a measure, +at least, the chivalrous fugitive had won his point. He was routed +and outdone, yet what survived the day was a rumour, which became a +sort of tenuous legend among those interested. There had been a +fight over Dora Yocum, it appeared, and Ramsey Milholland had +attempted to maintain something derogatory to the lady, while Wesley +defended her as a knightly youth should. The something derogatory +was left vague; nobody attempted to say just what it was, and the +effects of the legend divided the schoolroom strictly according to +gender. + +The boys, unmindful of proper gallantry, supported Ramsey on account +of the way he had persisted in lickin' the stuffin' out of Wesley +Bender after receiving that preliminary wallop from Wesley's +blackjack bundle of books. The girls petted and championed Wesley; +they talked outrageously of his conqueror, fiercely declaring that +he ought to be arrested; and for weeks they maintained a new manner +toward him. They kept their facial expressions hostile, but perhaps +this was more for one another's benefit than for Ramsey's; and +several of them went so far out of their way to find even private +opportunities for reproving him that an alert observer might have +suspected them to have been less indignant than they seemed--but not +Ramsey. He thought they all hated him, and said he was glad of it. + +Dora was a non-partisan. The little prig was so diligent at her +books she gave never the slightest sign of comprehending that there +had been a fight about her. Having no real cognizance of Messrs. +Bender and Milholland except as impediments to the advance of +learning, she did not even look demure. + + + + + +Chapter V + +With Wesley Bender, Ramsey was again upon fair terms before the +winter had run its course; the two were neighbours and, moreover, +were drawn together by a community of interests which made their +reconciliation a necessity. Ramsey played the guitar and Wesley +played the mandolin. + +All ill feeling between them died with the first duet of spring, yet +the twinkling they made had no charm to soothe the savage breast of +Ramsey whenever the Teacher's Pet came into his thoughts. He +daydreamed a thousand ways of putting her in her place, but was +unable to carry out any of them, and had but a cobwebby satisfaction +in imagining discomfitures for her which remained imaginary. With a +yearning so poignant that it hurt, he yearned and yearned to show her +what she really was. "Just once!" he said to Fred Mitchell. "That's +all I ask, just once. Just gimme one chance to show that girl what +she really is. I guess if I ever get the chance she'll find out +what's the matter with her, for ~once~ in her life, anyway!" Thus it +came to be talked about and understood and expected in Ramsey's +circle, all male, that Dora Yocum's day was coming. The nature of the +disaster was left vague, but there was no doubt in the world that +retribution merely awaited its ideal opportunity. "You'll see!" said +Ramsey. "The time'll come when that ole girl'll wish she'd moved o' +this town before she ever got appointed monitor of ~our~ class! Just +you wait!" + +They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable +indefinitely. Perhaps the great opportunity might have arrived if +Ramsey had been able to acheive a startling importance in any of +the "various divergent yet parallel lines of school endeavour"--one +of the phrases by means of which teachers and principal clogged the +minds of their unarmed auditors. But though he was far from being +the dumb driven beast of misfortune that he seemed in the schoolroom, +and, in fact, lived a double life, exhibiting in his out-of-school +hours a remarkable example of "secondary personality"--a creature +fearing nothing and capable of laughter; blue-eyed, fairly robust, +and anything but dumb--he was nevertheless without endowment or +attainment great enough to get him distinction. + +He "tried for" the high-school eleven, and "tried for" the nine, but +the experts were not long in elminiating him from either of these +competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of +getting cheered. He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or +enough of anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place, and so he +and the great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of +the second year of high school, when the class, now the "10 A," +reverted to an old fashion and decided to entertain itself with a +woodland picnic. + +They gathered upon the sandy banks of a creek, in the blue shade of +big, patchy-barked sycamores, with a dancing sky on top of everything +and gold dust atwinkle over the water. Hither the napkin-covered +baskets were brought from the wagons and assembled in the shade, +where they appeared as an attractive little meadow of white napery, +and gave both surprise and pleasure to communities of ants and to +other original settlers of the neighbourhood. + +From this nucleus or headquarters of the picnic, various expeditions +set forth up and down the creek and through the woods that bordered +it. Camera work was constant; spring wild flowers were accumulated +by groups of girls who trooped through the woods with eager eyes +searching the thickets; two envied boy fishermen established +themselves upon a bank up-stream, with hooks and lines thoughtfully +brought with them, and poles which they fashioned from young +saplings. They took mussels from the shallows, for bait, and having +gone to all this trouble, declined to share with friends less +energetic and provident the perquisites and pleasures secured to +themselves. + +Albert Paxton was another person who proved his enterprise. Having +visited the spot some days before, he had hired for his exclusive use +throughout the duration of the picnic an old rowboat belonging to a +shanty squatter; it was the only rowboat within a mile or two and +Albert had his own uses for it. Albert was the class lover and, +after first taking the three chaperon teachers "out for a row," an +excursion concluded in about ten minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie +Clews stepped into the boat, a pocket camera in one hand, a tennis +racket in the other; and the two spent the rest of the day, except +for the luncheon interval, solemnly drifting along the banks or +grounded on a shoal. Now and then Albert would row a few strokes, +and at almost any time when the populated shore glanced toward them, +Sadie would be seen photographing Albert, or Albert would be seen +photographing Sadie, but the tennis racket remained an enigma. +Oarsman and passenger appeared to have no conversation whatever--not +once was either seen or heard to address a remark to the other; and +they looked as placid as their own upside-down reflections in one of +the still pools they slowly floated over. They were sixteen, and had +been "engaged" more than two years. + +On the borders of the little meadow of baskets there had been +deposited two black shapes, which remained undisturbed throughout +the day, a closed guitar case and a closed mandolin case, no doubt +containing each its proper instrument. So far as any use of these +went they seemed to be of the same leisure class to which Sadie's +tennis racket belonged, for when one of the teachers suggested music, +the musicians proved shy. Wesley Bender said they hadn't learned to +play anything much and, besides, he had a couple o' broken strings +he didn't know as he could fix up; and Ramsey said he guessed it +seemed kind o' too hot to play much. Joining friends, they organized +a contest in marksmanship, the target being a floating can which they +assailed with pebbles; and after that they "skipped" flat stones upon +the surface of the water, then went to join a group gathered about +Willis Parker and Heinie Krusemeyer. + +No fish had been caught, a lack of luck crossly attributed by the +fishermen to the noise made by constant advice on the part of their +attendant gallery. Messrs. Milholland, Bender, and the other rock +throwers came up shouting, and were ill received. + +"For heaven's sakes," Heinie Krusemeyer demanded, "can't you shut up? +Here we just first got the girls to keep their mouths shut a minute +and I almost had a big pickerel or something on my hook, and here you +got to up and yell so he chases himself away! Why can't nobody show +a little sense sometimes when they ought to?" + +"I should say so!" his comrade exclaimed. "If people would only just +take and think of all the trouble we been to, it seems funny somebody +couldn't let us have half a chance to get a few good fish. What +chance they got to bite with a lot o' ~girls~ gabbin' away, and then, +just as we get 'em quieted down, all you men got to come bustin' up +here yellin' your heads off. A fish isn't goin' to bite when he +can't even hear himself think! Anybody ought to know that much." + +But the new arrivals hooted. ~"Fish!"~ Ramsey vociferated. "I'll +bet a hundred dollars there hasn't been even a minny in this creek +for the last sixty years!" + +"There is, too!" said Heinie, bitterly. "But I wouldn't be supprised +there wouldn't be no longer if you got to keep up this noise. If +you'd shut up just a minute you could see yourself there's fish +here." + +In whispers several of the tamed girls at once heartily corroborated +this statement, whereupon the newcomers ceased to gibe and consented +to silence. Ramsey leaned forth over the edge of the overhanging +bank, a dirt precipice five feet above the water, and peered into the +indeterminable depths below. The pool had been stirred, partly by +the inexpert pokings of the fishermen and partly by small clods and +bits of dirt dislodged from above by the feet of the audience. The +water, consequently, was but brownly translucent and revealed its +secrets reluctantly; nevertheless certain dim little shapes had been +observed to move within it, and were still there. Ramsey failed to +see them at first. + +"Where's any ole fish?" he inquired, scornfully. + +"Oh, my goodness!" Heinie Krusemeyer moaned. "~Can't~ you shut up?" + +"Look!" whispered the girl who stood nearest to Ramsey. She pointed. +"There's one. Right down there by Willis's hook. Don't you see +him?" + +Ramsey was impressed enough to whisper. "Is there? I don't see him. +I can't--" + +The girl came closer to him, and, the better to show him, leaned +out over the edge of the bank, and, for safety in maintaining her +balance, rested her left hand upon his shoulder while she pointed +with her right. Thereupon something happened to Ramsey. The touch +upon his shoulder was almost nothing, and he had never taken the +slightest interest in Milla Rust (to whom that small warm hand +belonged), though she was the class beauty, and long established in +the office. Now, all at once, a peculiar and heretofore entirely +unfamiliar sensation suddenly became important in the upper part of +his chest. For a moment he held his breath, an involuntary action; +--he seemed to be standing in a shower of flowers. + +"Don't you see it, Ramsey?" Milla whispered. "It's a great big one. +Why, it must be as long as--as your shoe! Look!" + +Ramsey saw nothing but the thick round curl on Milla's shoulder. +Milla had a group of curls on each of her shoulders, for she got her +modes at the Movies and had that sort of prettiness: large, gentle, +calculating eyes, and a full, softly modelled face, implacably sweet. +Ramsey was accustomed to all this charm, and Milla had never before +been of more importance to him than an equal weight of school +furniture--but all at once some magic had enveloped her. That curl +upon the shoulder nearest him was shot with dazzling fibres of +sunshine. He seemed to be trembling. + +"I don't see it," he murmured, huskily, afraid that she might remove +her hand. "I can't see any fish, Milla." + +She leaned farther out over the bank. "Why, there, goosie!" she +whispered. "Right there." + +"I can't see it." + +She leaned still farther, bending down to point. "Why right th--" + +At this moment she removed her hand from his shoulder, though +unwillingly. She clutched at him, in fact, but without avail. She +had been too amiable. + +A loud shriek was uttered by throats abler to vocalize, just then, +than Milla's, for in her great surprise she said nothing whatever-- +the shriek came from the other girls as Milla left the crest of the +overhanging bank and almost horizontally disappeared into the brown +water. There was a tumultuous splash, and then of Milla Rust and her +well-known beautifulness there was nothing visible in the superficial +world, nor upon the surface of that creek. The vanishment was total. + +"~Save~ her!" + +Several girls afterward admitted having used this expression, and +little Miss Floy Williams, the youngest and smallest member of the +class, was unable to deny that she had said, "Oh, God!" Nothing +could have been more natural, and the matter need not have been +brought before her with such insistence and frequency, during the +two remaining years of her undergraduate career. + +Ramsey was one of those who heard this exclamation, later so famous, +and perhaps it was what roused him to heroism. He dived from the +bank, headlong, and the strange thought in his mind was "I guess +~this~'ll show Dora Yocum!" He should have been thinking of Milla, +of course, at such a time, particularly after the little enchantment +just laid upon him by Milla's touch and Milla's curls; and he knew +well enough that Miss Yocum was not among the spectators. She was +half a mile away, as it happened, gathering "botanical specimens" +with one of the teachers--which was her idea of what to do at a +picnic! + +Ramsey struck the water hard, and in the same instant struck +something harder. Wesley Bender's bundle of books had given him no +such shock as he received now, and if the creek bottom had not been +of mud, just there, the top of his young head might have declined the +strain. Half stunned, choking, spluttering he somehow floundered to +his feet; and when he could get his eyes a little cleared of water +he found himself wavering face to face with a blurred vision of Milla +Rust. She had risen up out of the pod and stood knee deep, like a +lovely drenched figure in a fountain. + +Upon the bank above them, Willis Parker was jumping up and down, +gesticulating and shouting fiercely. "Now I guess you're satisfied +our fishin' ~is~ spoilt! Whyn't you listen me? I ~told~ you it +wasn't more'n three feet deep! I and Heinie waded all over this +creek gettin' our bait. You're a pretty sight!" + +Of Milla he spoke unwittingly the literal truth. Even with her hair +thus wild and sodden, Milla rose from immersion blushing and prettier +than ever; and she was prettiest of all when she stretched out her +hand helplessly to Ramsey and he led her up out of the waters. They +had plenty of assistance to scramble to the top of the bank, and +there Milla was surrounded and borne away with a great clacketing and +tumult. Ramsey gave his coat into the hands of friends, who twisted +the water out of it for him, while he sat upon the grass in the sun, +rubbed his head, and experimented with his neck to see if it would +"work." The sunshine was strong and hot; in half an hour he and his +clothes were dry--or at least "dry enough," as he said, and except +for some soreness of head and neck, and the general crumpledness of +his apparel, he seemed to be in all ways much as usual when shouts +and whistlings summoned all the party to luncheon at the rendezvous. +The change that made him different was invisible. + + + + + +Chapter VI + +The change in Ramsey was invisible, and yet something must have been +seen, for everyone appeared to take it for granted that he was to +sit next to Milla at the pastoral meal. She herself understood it, +evidently, for she drew in her puckered skirts and without any words +make a place for him beside her as he driftingly approached her, +affecting to whistle and keeping his eyes on the foliage overhead. +He still looked upward, even in the act of sitting down. + +"Squirrel or something," he said, feebly, as if in explanation. + +"Where?" Milla asked. + +"Up there on a branch." He accepted a plate from her (she had +provided herself with an extra one), but he did not look at it or +her. "I'm not just exactly sure it's a squirrel," he said. "Kind of +hard to make out exactly what it is." He continued to keep his eyes +aloft, because he imagined that all of the class were looking at him +and Milla, and he felt unable to meet such publicity. It was to him +as if the whole United States had been scandalized to attention by +this act of his in going to sit beside Milla; he gazed upward so long +that his eyeballs became sensitive under the strain. He began to +blink. "I can't make out whether it's a squirrel or just some leaves +that kind o' got fixed like one," he said. "I can't make out yet +which it is, but I guess when there's a breeze, if it's a squirrel +he'll prob'ly hop around some then, if he's alive or anything." + +It had begun to seem that his eyes must remain fixed in that upward +stare forever; he wanted to bring them down, but could not face the +glare of the world. So the fugitive ostrich is said to bury his head +in the sand; he does it, not believing himself thereby hidden but +trying to banish from his own cognizance terrible facts which his +unsheltered eyes have seemed to reveal. So, too, do nervous children +seek to bury their eyes under pillows, and nervous statesmen theirs +under oratory. Ramsey's ostrichings can happen to anybody. But +finally the brightness of the sky between the leaves settled matters +for him; he sneezed, wept, and for a little moment again faced his +fellowmen. No one was looking at him; everybody except Milla had +other things to do. + +Having sneezed involuntarily, he added a spell of coughing for which +there was no necessity. "I guess I must be wrong," he muttered +thickly. + +"What about, Ramsey?" + +"About it bein' a squirrel." With infinite timidity he turned +his head and encountered a gaze so soft, so hallowed, that it +disconcerted him, and he dropped a "drumstick" of fried chicken, well +dotted with ants, from his plate. Scarlet he picked it up, but did +not eat it. For the first time in his life he felt that eating fried +chicken held in the fingers was not to be thought of. He replaced +the "drumstick" upon his plate and allowed it to remain there +untouched, in spite of a great hunger for it. + +Having looked down, he now found difficulty in looking up, but gazed +steadily at his plate, and into this limited circle of vision came +Milla's delicate and rosy fingers, bearing a gift. "There," she said +in a motherly little voice. "It's a tomato mayonnaise sandwich and +I made it myself. I want you to eat it, Ramsey." + +His own fingers approached tremulousness as he accepted the thick +sandwich from her and conveyed it to his mouth. A moment later his +soul filled with horror, for a spurt of mayonnaise dressing had +caused a catastrophe the scene of which occupied no inconsiderable +area of his right cheek; which was the cheek toward Milla. He groped +wretchedly for his handkerchief but could not find it; he had lost +it. Sudden death would have been relief; he was sure that after such +grotesquerie Milla could never bear to have anything more to do with +him; he was ruined. + +In his anguish he felt a paper napkin pressed gently into his hand; a +soft voice said in his ear, "Wipe it off with this, Ramsey. Nobody's +noticing." + +So this incredibly charitable creature was still able to be his +friend, even after seeing him mayonnaised! Humbly marvelling, he did +as she told him, but avoided all further risks. He ate nothing more. + +He sighed his first sigh of inexpressibleness, had a chill or so +along the spine, and at intervals his brow was bedewed. + +Within his averted eyes there dwelt not the Milla Rust who sat +beside him, but an iridescent, fragile creature who had beome +angelic. + +He spent the rest of the day dawdling helplessly about her; wherever +she went he was near, as near as possible, but of no deliberate +volition of his own. Something seemed to tie him to her, and Milla +was nothing loth. He seldom looked at her directly, or for longer +than an instant, and more rarely still did he speak to her except as +a reply. What few remarks he ventured upon his own initiative nearly +all concerned the landscape, which he commended repeatedly in a weak +voice, as "kind of pretty," though once he said he guessed there +might be bugs in the bark of a log on which they sat; and he became +so immoderately personal as to declare that if the bugs had to get on +anybody he'd rather they got on him than on Milla. She said that was +"just perfectly lovely" of him, asked where he got his sweet nature, +and in other ways encouraged him to continue the revelation, but +Ramsey was unable to get forward with it, though he opened and closed +his mouth a great many times in the effort to do so. + +At five o'clock everybody was summoned again to the rendezvous for a +ceremony preliminary to departure: the class found itself in a large +circle, standing, and sang "The Star Spangled Banner." Ordinarily, +on such an open-air and out-of-school occasion, Ramsey would have +joined the chorus uproariously with the utmost blatancy of which his +vocal apparatus was capable; and most of the other boys expressed +their humour by drowning out the serious efforts of the girls; but he +sang feebly, not much more than humming through his teeth. Standing +beside Milla, he was incapable of his former inelegancies and his +voice was in a semi-paralyzed condition, like the rest of him. + + +Opposite him, across the circle, Dora Yocum stood a little in advance +of those near her, for of course she led the singing. Her clear and +earnest voice was distinguishable from all others, and though she did +not glance toward Ramsey he had a queer feeling that she was assuming +more superiority than ever, and that she was icily scornful of him +and Milla. The old resentment rose--he'd "show" that girl yet, some +day! + +When the song was over, cheers were given for the class, "the good ole +class of Nineteen Fourteen," the school, the teachers, and for the +picnic, thus officially concluded; and then the picnickers, carrying +their baskets and faded wild flowers and other souvenirs and burdens, +moved toward the big "express wagons" which were to take them back +into the town. Ramsey got his guitar case, and turned to Milla. + +"Well--" he said. + +"Well what, Ramsey?" + +"Well--g'bye." + +"Why, no," said Milla. "Anyways not yet. You can go back in the +same wagon with me. It's going to stop at the school and let us out +there, and then you could walk home with me if you felt like it. You +could come all the way to our gate with me, I expect, unless you'd be +late home for your supper." + +"Well--well, I'd be perfectly willing," Ramsey said. "Only I heard +we all had to go back in whatever wagon we came out in, and I didn't +come in the same wagon with you, so--" + +Milla laughed and leaned toward him a little. "I already 'tended to +that," she said confidentially. "I asked Johnnie Fiske, that came +out in my wagon, to go back in yours, so that makes room for you." + +"Well--then I guess I could do it." He moved toward the wagon with +her. "I expect it don't make much difference one way or the other." + +"And you can carry my basket if you want to," she said, adding +solicitously, "Unless it's too heavy when you already got your guitar +case to carry, Ramsey." + +This thoughtfulness of hers almost overcame him; she seemed divine. +He gulped, and emotion made him even pinker than he had been under +the mayonnaise. + +"I--I'll be glad to carry the basket, too," he faltered. "It-it +don't weigh anything much." + +"Well, let's hurry, so's we can get places together." + +Then, as she manoeuvred him through the little crowd about the wagon, +with a soft push this way and a gentle pull that, and hurried him up +the improvised steps and found a place where there was room for them +to sit, Ramsey had another breathless sensation heretofore unknown to +him. He found himself taken under a dovelike protectorship; a +wonderful, inexpressible Being seemed to have become his proprietor. + +"Isn't this just perfectly lovely?" she said cozily, close to his +ear. + +He swallowed, but found no words, for he had no thoughts; he was only +an incoherent tumult. This was his first love. + +"Isn't it, Ramsey?" she urged. The cozy voice had just the hint of +a reproach. "Don't you think it's just perfectly lovely, Ramsey?" + +"Yes'm." + + + + + +Chapter VII + +The next morning Ramsey came into his father's room while Mr. +Milholland was shaving, an hour before church time, and it became +apparent that the son had someting on his mind, though for a while +he said nothing. + +"Did you want anything, Ramsey?" + +"Well--" + +"Didn't want to borrow my razors?" + +"No, sir." + +Mr. Milholland chuckled. "I hardly supposed so, seriously! Shaving +is a great nuisance and the longer you keep away from it, the better. +And when you do, you let my razors alone, young feller!" + +"Yes, sir." (Mr. Milholland's rzaors were safe, Ramsey had already +achieved one of his own, but he practised the art in secret.) He +passed his hand thoughtfully over his cheeks, and traces of white +powder were left upon his fingers, whereupon he wiped his hand +surreptitiously, and stood irresolutely waiting. + +"What is it you really want, Ramsey?" + +"I guess I don't want anything." + +"Money?" + +"No, sir. You gay' me some Friday." + +Mr. Milholland turned from his mirror and looked over the edge of a +towel at his son. In the boy's eyes there was such a dumb agony of +interrogation that the father was a little startled. + +"Why, what is it, Ramsey? Have you--" He paused, frowning and +wondering. "You haven't been getting into some mess you want to +tell me about, have you?" + +"No, sir." + +His tone was meek, but a mute distress lurked within it, bringing +to the father's mind disturbing suspicions, and foreshadowings of +indignation and of pity. "See here, Ramsey," he said, "if there's +anything you want to ask me, or to tell me, you'd better out with +it and get it over. Now, what is it?" + +"Well--it isn't anything." + +"Are you ~sure?~" + +Ramsey's eyes fell before the severe and piercing gaze of his father. +"Yes, sir." + +Mr. Milholland shook his head doubtfully; then, as his son walked +slowly out of the room, he turned to complete his toilet in a +somewhat uneasy frame of mind. Ramsey had undoubtedly wanted to say +something to him and the boy's expression had shown that the matter +in question was serious, distressing, and, it might be, even +critical. + +In fact it was--to Ramsey. Having begun within only the last few +hours to regard haberdashery as of vital importance, and believing +his father to be possessed of the experience and authority lacking +in himself, Ramsey had come to get him to settle a question which had +been upsetting him badly, in his own room, since breakfast. What he +want to know was: Whether it was right to wear an extra handkerchief +showing out of the coat breast pocket or not, and, if it was right-- +ought the handkerchief to have a coloured border or to be plain +white? But he had never before brought any such perplexities to his +father, and found himself too diffident to set them forth. + +However, when he left the house, a few minutes later, he boldly +showed an inch of purple border above the pocket; then, as he was +himself about to encounter several old lady pedestrians, he blushed +and thrust the handkerchief down into deep concealment. Having gone +a block farther, he pulled it up again; and so continued to operate +this badge of fashion, or unfashion, throughout the morning; and +suffered a great deal thereby. + +Meantime, his father, rather relieved that Ramsey had not told his +secret, whatever it was, dismissed the episode from his mind and +joined Mrs. Milholland at the front door, ready for church. + +"Where's Ramsey?" he asked. + +"He's gone ahead," she answered, buttoning her gloves as they went +along. "I heard the door quite a little while ago. Perhaps he went +over to walk down with Charlotte and Vance. Did you notice how neat +he looks this morning?" + +"Why, no, I didn't; not particularly. Does he?" + +"I never saw anything like it before," said Mrs. Milholland. "He +went down in the cellar and polished his own shoes." + +"What!" + +"For about an hour, I think," she said, as one remaining calm before +a miracle. "And he only has three neckties, but I saw him several +times in each of them. He must have kept changing and changing. +I wonder--" She paused. + +"I'm glad he's begun to take a little care of his appearance at +last. Business men think a good deal about that, these days, when +he comes to make his start in the world. I'll have to take a look +at him and give him a word of praise. I suppose he'll be in the pew +when we get there." + +But Ramsey wasn't in the pew; and Charlotte, his sister, and her +husband, who were there, said they hadn't seen anything of him. It +was not until the members of the family were on their way home after +the services that they caught a glimpse of him. + +They were passing a church a little distance from their own; here +the congregation was just emerging to the open, and among the sedate +throng descending the broad stone steps appeared an accompanied +Ramsey--and a red, red Ramsey he was when he beheld his father and +mother and sister and brother-in-law staring up at him from the +pavement below. They were kind enough not to come to an absolute +halt, but passed slowly on, so that he was just able to avoid +parading up the street in front of them. The expressions of his +father, mother, and sister were of a dumfoundedness painful to bear, +while such lurking jocosity as that apparent all over his brother- +in-law no dignified man should either exhibit or be called upon to +ignore. + +In hoarse whispers, Mrs. Milholland chided her husband for an +exclamation he had uttered. "John! On Sunday! You ought to be +ashamed." + +"I couldn't help it," he exclaimed. "Who on earth is his clinging +vine? Why, she's got ~lavender~ tops on her shoes and--" + +"Don't look round!" she warned him sharply. "Don't--" + +"Well, what's he doing at a Baptist church? What's he fidgeting at +his handkerchief about? Why can't he walk like people? Does he +think it's obligatory to walk home from church anchored arm-in-arm +like Swedes on a Sunday Out? Who ~is~ this cow-eyed fat girl that's +got him, anyhow?" + +"Hush! Don't look round again, John." + +"Never fear!" said her husband, having disobeyed. "They've turned +off; they're crossing over to Bullard Street. Who is it?" + +"I think her name's Rust," Mrs. Milholland informed him. "I don't +know what her father does. She's one of the girls in his class at +school." + +"Well, that's just like a boy; pick out some putty-faced flirt to +take to church!" + +"Oh, she's quite pretty--in that way!" said his wife, deprecatingly. +"Of course that's the danger with public schools. It would be +pleasanter if he'd taken a fancy to someone whose family belongs +to our own circle." + +"'Taken a fancy'!" he echoed, hooting. "Why, he's terrible! He +looked like a red-gilled goldfish that's flopped itself out of the +bowl. Why, he--" + +"I ~say~ I wish if he felt that he had to take girls anywhere," said +Mrs. Milholland, with the primmest air of speaking to the point--"if +this sort of thing ~must~ begin, I wish he might have selected some +nice girl among the daughters of our own friends, like Dora Yocum, +for instance." + +Upon the spot she began to undergo the mortification of a mother who +has expected her son, just out of infancy, to look about him with the +eye of a critical matron of forty-five. Moreover, she was indiscreet +enough to express her views to Ramsey, a week later, producing thus a +scene of useless great fury and no little sound. + +"I do think it's in ~very~ poor tast to see so much of any one girl, +Ramsey," she said, and, not heeding his protest that he only walked +home from school with Milla, "about every other day," and that it +didn't seem any crime to him just to go to church with her a couple +o' times, Mrs. Milholland went on: "But if you think you really +~must~ be dangling around somebody quite this much--though what in +the world you find to ~talk~ about with this funny little Milla Rust +you poor father says he really cannot see--and of course it seems +very queer to us that you'd be willing to waste so much time just now +when your mind ought to be entirely on your studies, and especially +with such an absurd ~looking~ little thing-- + +"No, you must listen, Ramsey, and let me speak now. What I meant +was that we shouldn't be ~quite~ so much distressed by your being +seen with a girl who dressed in better taste and seemed to have +some notion of refinement, though of course it's only natural she +~wouldn't~, with a father who is just a sort of ward politician, I +understand, and a mother we don't know, and of course shouldn't care +to. But, oh, Ramsey! if you ~had~ to make yourself so conspicuous +why couldn't you be a little ~bit~ more fastidious? Your father +wouldn't have minded nearly so much if it had been a self-respecting, +intellectual girl. We both say that if you ~must~ be so ridiculous +at your age as to persist in seeing more of one girl than another, +why, oh why, don't you go and see some really nice girl like Dora +Yocum?" + +Ramsey was already dangerously distended, as an effect of the earlier +part of her discourse, and the word "fastidious" almost exploded him; +but upon the climax, "Dora Yocum," he blew up with a shattering +report and, leaving fragments of incoherence ricochetting behind him, +fled shuddering from the house. + +For the rest of the school term he walked home with Milla every +afternoon and on sundays appeared to have become a resolute Baptist. +It was supposed (by the interested members of the high-school class) +that Ramsey and Milla were "engaged." Ramsey sometimes rather +supposed they were himself, and the dim idea gave him a sensation +partly pleasant, but mostly apprehensive: he was afraid. + +He was afraid that the day was coming when he ought to kiss her. + + + + + +Chapter VIII + +Vacation, in spite of increased leisure, may bring inconvenience to +people in Ramsey's strange but not uncommon condition. At home his +constant air was that of a badgered captive plaintively silent under +injustice; and he found it difficult to reply calmly when asked where +he was going--an inquiry addressed to him, he asserted, every time he +touched his cap, even to hang it up! + +The amount of evening walking he did must also have been a trial to +his nerves, on account of fatigue, though the ground covered was not +vast. Milla's mother and father were friendly people but saw no +reason to "move out of house and home," as Mr. Rust said, when Milla +had "callers"; and on account of the intimate plan of their small +dwelling a visitor's only alternative to spending the evening with +Mr. and Mrs. Rust as well as with Milla, was to invite her to "go +out walking." + +Evening after evening they walked and walked and walked, usually in +company--at perhaps the distance of half a block--with Albert Paxton +and Sadie Clews, though Ramsey now and then felt disgraced by having +fallen into this class; for sometimes it was apparent that Albert +casually had his arm about Sadie's waist. This allured Ramsey +somewhat, but terrified him more. He didn't know how such matters +were managed. + +Usually the quartet had no destination; they just went "out walking" +until ten o'clock, when both girls had to be home--and the boys did, +too, but never admitted it. On Friday evenings there was a "public +open-air concert" by a brass band in a small park, and the four +were always there. A political speechmaker occupied the bandstand +one night, and they stood for an hour in the midst of the crowd, +listening vaguely. + +The orator saddled his politics upon patriotism. "Do you intend +to let this glorious country go to wrack and ruin, oh, my good +friends," he demanded, "or do you intend to save her? Look forth +upon this country of ours, I bid you, oh, my countrymen, and tell +me what you see. You see a fair domain of forest, mountain, plain, +and fertile valleys, sweeping from ocean to ocean. Look from the +sturdy rocks of old New England, pledged to posterity by the stern +religious hardihood of the Pilgrim Fathers, across the corn-bearing +midland country, that land of milk and honey, won for us by the +pluck and endurance of the indomitable pioneers, to where in +sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden California, given to +our heritage by the unconquerable energy of those brave men and +women who braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the tempest, +of Cape Horn, and the fevers of Panama, to make American soil +of El Dorado! America! Oh, my America, how glorious you stand! +Country of Washington and Valley Forge, out of what martyrdoms +hast thou arisen! Country of Lincoln in his box at Ford's theatre, +his lifeblood staining to a brighter, holier red the red, white, +and blue of the Old Flag! Always and always I see the Old Flag +fluttering the more sacredly encrimsoned in the breeze for the +martyrs who have upheld it! Always I see that Old Flag--" + +Milla gave Ramsey's arm, within her own, a little tug. "Come on," +she said. "Sade says she don't want to hang around here any longer. +It's awful tiresome. Let's go." + +He consented, placidly. The oration meant nothing to him and stirred +no one in the audience. The orator was impassioned; he shouted +himself into coughing fits, gesticulated, grew purple; he was so hot +that his collar caved in and finally swooned upon his neck in soggy +exhaustion, prostrate round his thunderings. Meanwhile, the people +listened with an air of patience, yawning here and there, and +gradually growing fewer. It was the old, old usual thing, made up +of phrases that Ramsey had heard dinning away on a thousand such +occasions, and other kinds of occasions, until they meant to him no +more than so much sound. He was bored, and glad to leave. + +"Kind o' funny," he said, as they sagged along the street at their +usual tortoise gait. + +"What is it, Ramsey?" + +"Seems kind o' funny they never have anything to say any one can +take any interest in. Always the same ole whoopety-whoop about +George Washington and Pilgrim Fathers and so on. I bet five dollars +before long we'd of heard him goin' on about our martyred Presidents, +William McKinley and James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison and all +so on, and then some more about the ole Red, White, and Blue. Don't +you wish they'd ~quit~, sometimes, about the 'Ole Flag'?" + +"I dunno," said Milla. "I wasn't listening any at all. I hate +speeches." + +"Well, I could ~stand~ 'em," Ramsey said, more generously, "if they'd +ever give anybody a little to think about. What's the use always +draggin' in George Warshington and the Ole Flag? And who wants to +hear any more ole truck about 'from ole rocky New England to golden +California,' and how big and fine the United States is and how it's +the land of the Free and all that? Why don't they ever say anything +new? That's what I'd like to know." + +Milla laughed, and when he asked why, she told him she'd never heard +him talk so much "at one stretch." "I guess that speech got you kind +of wound up," she said. "Let's talk about something different." + +"I just soon," he agreed. And so they walked on in silence, which +seemed to suit Milla. She hung weightily upon his arm, and they +dawdled, drifting from one side of the pavement to the other as +they slowly advanced. Ablert and Sadie, ahead of them, called +"good-night" from a corner, before turning down the side street +where Sadie lived; and then, presently, Ramsey and Milla were at +the latter's gate. He went in with her, halting at the front +steps. + +"Well, g'night, Milla," he said. "Want to go out walking to-morrow +night? Albert and Sadie are." + +"I can't to-morrow night," she told him with obvious regret. "Isn't +it the worst luck! I got an aunt comin' to visit from Chicago, and +she's crazy about playing 'Five Hundred,' and Mama and Papa said +I haf to stay in to make four to play it. She's liable to be here +three or four days, and I guess I got to be around home pretty much +all the time she's here. It's the worst luck!" + +He was doleful, but ventured to be literary. "Well, what can't be +helped must be endured. I'll come around when she's gone." + +He moved as if to depart, but she still retained his arm and did not +prepare to relinquish it. + +"Well--" he said. + +"Well what, Ramsey?" + +"Well--g'night." + +She glanced up at the dark front of the house. "I guess the family's +gone to bed," she said, absently. + +"I s'pose so." + +"Well, good-night, Ramsey." She said this but still did not release +his arm, and suddenly, in a fluster, he felt that the time he dreaded +had come. Somehow, without knowing where, except that it was +somewhere upon what seemed to be a blurred face too full of +obstructing features, he kissed her. + +She turned instantly away in the darkness, her hands over her cheeks; +and in a panic Ramsey wondered if he hadn't made a dreadful mistake. + +"S'cuse me!" he said, stumbling toward the gate. "Well, I guess I +got to be gettin' along back home." + + + + + +Chapter IX + +He woke in the morning to a great self-loathing: he had kissed a +girl. Mingled with the loathing was a curious pride in the very fact +that caused the loathing, but the pride did not last long. He came +downstairs morbid to breakfast, and continued this mood afterward. +At noon Albert Paxton brought him a note which Milla had asked Sadie +to ask Albert to give him. + + Dearie: I am just wondering if you thought as much about something + so sweet that happened last night as I did you know what. I think + it was the sweetest thing. I send you one with this note and I + hope you will think it is a sweet one. I would give you a real + one if you were here now and I hope you would think it was sweeter + still than the one I put in this note. It is the sweetest thing + now you are mine and I am yours forever kiddo. If you come around + about friday eve it will be all right. aunt Jess will be gone + back home by then so come early and we will get Sade and Alb and + go to the band Concert. Don't forget what I said about my putting + something sweet in this note, and I hope you will think it is a + sweet one but not as sweet as the ~real~ sweet one I would like + to-- + +At this point Ramsey impulsively tore the note into small pieces. +He turned cold as his imagination projected a sketch of his mother +in the act of reading this missive, and of her expression as she +read the sentence: "It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and +I am yours forever kiddo." He wished that Milla hadn't written +"kiddo." She called him that, sometimes, but in her warm little +voice the word seemed not at all what it did in ink. He wished, +too, that she hadn't said she was his forever. + +Suddenly he was seized with a horror of her. + +Moisture broke out heavily upon him; he felt a definite sickness, +and, wishing for death, went forth upon the streets to walk and +walk. He cared not whither, so that his feet took him in any +direction away from Milla, since they were unable to take him away +from himself--of whom he had as great a horror. Her loving face +was continually before him, and its sweetness made his flesh creep. +Milla had been too sweet. + +When he met or passed people, it seemed to him that perhaps they +were able to recognize upon him somewhere the marks of his low +quality. "Softy! Ole sloppy fool!" he muttered, addressing himself. +"Slushy ole mush!... ~Spooner!~" And he added, "Yours forever, +kiddo!" Convulsions seemed about to seize him. + +Turning a corner with his head down, he almost charged into Dora +Yocum. She was homeward bound from a piano lesson, and carried a +rolled leather case of sheet music--something he couldn't imagine +Milla carrying--and in her young girl's dress, which attempted to +be nothing else, she looked as wholesome as cold spring water. +Ramsey had always felt that she despised him and now, all at once, +he thought that she was justified. Leper that he had become, he +was unworthy to be even touching his cap to her! And as she nodded +and went briskly on, he would have given anything to turn and walk +a little way with her, for it seemed to him that this might fumigate +his morals. But he lacked the courage, and, besides, he considered +himself unfit to be seen walking with her. + +He had a long aftgernoon of anguishes, these becoming most violent +when he tried to face the problem of his future course toward Milla. +He did not face it at all, in fact, but merely writhed, and had +evolved nothing when Friday evening was upon him and Milla waiting +for him to take her to the "band concert" with "Alb and Sade." In +his thoughts, by that time, this harmless young pair shared the +contamination of his own crime, and he regarded them with aversion; +however, he made shift to seek a short interview with Albert, just +before dinner. + +"I got a pretty rotten headache, and my stomach's upset, too," +he said, drooping upon the Paxton's fence. "I been gettin' worse +every minute. You and Sadie go by Milla's, Albert, and tell her +if I'm not there by ha'-pas'-seven, tell her not to wait for me +any longer." + +"How do you mean 'wait'?" Albert inquired. "You don't expect her +to come pokin' along with Sadie and me, do you? She'll keep on +sittin' there at home just the same, because she wouldn't have +anything else to do, if you don't come like she expects you to. +She hasn't got any way to ~stop~ waitin'!" + +At this, Ramsey moaned, without affectation. "I don't expect I +~can~, Albert," he said. "I'd like to if I could, but the way it +looks now, you tell her I wouldn't be much surprised maybe I was +startin' in with typhoid fever or pretty near anything at all. +You tell her I'm pretty near as disappointed as she's goin' to be +herself, and I'd come if I could--and I ~will~ come if I get a good +deal better, or anything--but the way it's gettin' to look now, +I kind o' feel as if I might be breaking out with something any +minute." He moved away, concluding, feebly: "I guess I better +crawl on home, Albert, while I'm still able to walk some. You tell +her the way it looks now I'm liable to be right sick." + +And the next morning he woke to the chafings of remorse, picturing a +Milla somewhat restored in charm waiting hopefully at the gate, even +after half-past seven, and then, as time passed and the sound of the +distant horns came faintly through the darkness, going sadly to her +room--perhaps weeping there. It was a picture to wring him with +shame and pity, but was followed by another which electrified him, +for out of school he did not lack imagination. What if Albert had +reported his illness too vividly to Milla? Milla was so fond! What +if, in her alarm, she should come here to the house to inquire of +his mother about him? What if she told Mrs. Milholland they were +"engaged"? The next moment Ramsey was projecting a conversation +between his mother and Milla in which the latter stated that she +and Ramsey were soon to be married; that she regarded him as already +virtually her husband, and demanded to nurse him. + +In a panic he fled from the house before breakfast, going out by way +of a side door, and he crossed back yeards and climbed back fences to +reach Albert Paxton the more swiftly. This creature, a ladies' man +almost professionaly, was found exercising with an electric iron and +a pair of flannel trousers in a basement laundry, by way of stirring +his appetite for the morning meal. + +"See here, Albert," his friend said breathlessly. "I got a favour. +I want you to go over to Milla's--" + +"I'm goin' to finish pressin' these trousers," Albert interrupted. +"Then I've got my breakfast to eat." + +"Well, you could do this first," said Ramsey, hurriedly. "It +wouldn't hurt you to do me this little favour first. You just slip +over and see Milla for me, if she's up yet, and if she isn't, you +better wait around there till she is, because I want you to tell +her I'm a whole lot better this morning. Tell her I'm pretty near +practick'ly all right again, Albert, and I'll prob'ly write her a +note or something right soon--or in a week or so, anyhow. You tell +her--" + +"Well, you act pretty funny!" Albert exclaimed, fumbling in the +pockets of his coat. "Why can't you go on over and tell her +yourself?" + +"I would," said Ramsey. "I'd be perfectly willing to go only I got +to get back home to breakfast." + +Albert stared. "Well, I got to go upstairs and eat my own breakfast +in about a minute, haven't I? But just as it happens there wouldn't +be any use your goin' over there, or me, either." + +"Why not?" + +"Milla ain't there," said Albert, still searching the pockets of his +coat. "When we went by her house last night to tell her about your +headache and stomach and all, why, her mother told us Milla'd gone +up to Chicago yesterday afternoon with her aunt, and said she left +a note for you, and she said if you were sick I better take it and +give it to you. I was goin' to bring it over to your house after +breakfast." He found it. "Here!" + +Ramsey thanked him feebly, and departed in a state of partial +stupefaction, brought on by a glimpse of the instabilities of life. +He had also, not relief, but a sense of vacancy and loss; for Milla, +out of his reach, once more became mysteriously lovely. + +Pausing in an alley, he read her note. + + Dearie: Thought I ought to call you up but over the 'phone is just + nix for explations as Mama and Aunt Jess would hear everything and + thought I might seem cold to you not saying anything sweet on + account of them listening and you would wonder why I was so cold + when telling you good-by for a wile maybe weeks. It is this way + Uncle Purv wired Aunt Jess he has just taken in a big touring car + on a debt and his vacation starts to-morrow so if they were going + to take a trip they better start right way so Aunt Jess invited me. + It is going to be a big trip up around the lakes and I have always + wanted to go touring more than anything in the world stopping at + hotels and all and Mama said I ought to it would be so splend for + my health as she thinks I am failing some lately. Now dearie I have + to pack and write this in a hury so you will not be disappointed + when you come by for the B. C. to-night. Do not go get some other + girl and take her for I would hate her and nothing in this world + make me false for one second to my kiddo boy. I do not know just + when home again as the folks think I better stay up there for a + visit at Aunt Jess and Uncle Purvs home in Chicago after the trip + is over. But I will think of you all the time and you must think + of me every minute and believe your own dearie she will never no + not for one second be false. So tell Sade and Alb good-by for me + and do not be false to me any more than I would be to you and it + will not be long till nothing more will interupt our sweet + friendship. + +As a measure of domestic prudence, Ramsey tore the note into +irreparable fragments, but he did this slowly, and without +experiencing any of the revulsion created by Milla's former +missive. + +He was melancholy, aggrieved that she should treat him so. + + + + + +Chapter X + +He never saw her again. She sent him a "picture postal" from +Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, which his father disengaged from the family +mail, one morning at breakfast, and considerately handed to him +without audible comment. Upon it was written, ~"Oh, you Ramsey!"~ +This was the last of Milla. + +Just before school opened, in the autumn, Sadie Clews made some +revelations. "Milla did like you," said Sadie. "After that time +you jumped in the creek to save her she liked you better than any +boy in town, and I guess if it wasn't for her cousin Milt up in +Chicago she would of liked you the best anywhere. I guess she did, +anyway, because she hadn't seen him for about a year then. + +"Well, that afternoon she went away I was over there and took in +everything that was goin' on, only she made me promise on my word of +honour I wouldn't even tell Albert. They didn't get any wire from +her uncle about the touring car; it was her cousin Milt that jumped +on the train and came down and fixed it all up for Milla to go on the +trip, and everything. You see, Ramsey, she was turned back a couple +of times in school before she came in our class and I don't exactly +know how old she is and she don't ~look~ old yet, but I'm pretty +sure she's at least eighteen, and she might be over. Her mother +kept tellin' her all the time you were just a kid, and didn't have +anything to support her on, and lots of things like that. I didn't +think such a great deal of this Milt's looks, myself, but he's anyway +twenty-one years old, and got a good position, and all their family +seem to think he's just fine! It wasn't his father that took in the +touring car on debt, like she said she was writing to you; it was +Milt himself. He started out in business when he was only fifteen +years old, and this trip he was gettin' up for his father and mother +and Milla was the first vacation he ever took. Well, of course she +wouldn't like my tellin' you, but I can't see the harm of it, now +everything's all over." + +"All--all over? You mean Milla's going to be--to be married?" + +"She already is," said Sadie. "They got married at her Aunt Jess +and Uncle Purv's house, up in Chicago, last Thursday. Yes, sir; +that quiet little Milla's a regular old married woman by this time, +I expect, Ramsey!" + +When he got over the shock, which was not until the next day, one +predominating feeling remained: it was a gloomy pride--a pride in +his proven maturity. He was old enough, it appeared, to have been +the same thing as engaged to a person who was now a Married Woman. +His manner thenceforth showed an added trace of seriousness and +self-consideration. + +Having recovered his equipoise and something more, he entirely +forgot that moment of humble admiration he had felt for Dora Yocum +on the day of his flattest prostration. When he saw her sitting +in the classroom, smiling brightly up at the teacher, the morning +of the school's opening in the autumn, all his humility had long +since vanished and she appeared to him not otherwise than as the +scholar whose complete proficiency had always been so irksome to +him. + +"Look at her!" he muttered to himself. "Same ole Teacher's Pet!" + +Now and then, as the days and seasons passed, and Dora's serene +progress continued, never checked or even flawed, there stirred +within some lingerings of the old determination to "show" her; and +he would conjure up a day-dream of Dora in loud lamentation, while +he led the laughter of the spectators. But gradually his feelings +about her came to be merely a dull oppression. He was tired of +having to look at her (as he stated it) and he thanked the Lord +that the time wouldn't be so long now until he'd be out of that +ole school, and then all he'd have to do he'd just take care never +to walk by her house; it was easy enough to use some other street +when he had to go down-town. + +"The good ole class of Nineteen-Fourteen is about gone," he said +to Fred Mitchell, who was still his most intimate friend when they +reached the senior year. "Yes, sir; it's held together a good many +years, Fred, but after June it'll be busted plum up, and I hope +nobody starts a move to have any reunions. There's a good many +members of the ole class that I can stand and there's some I can't, +but there's one I just won't! If we ever did call a reunion, that +ole Yocum girl would start in right away and run the whole shebang, +and that's where I'd resign! You know, Fred, the thing ~I~ think +is the one biggest benefit of graduating from this ole school? +It's never seein' Dora Yocum again." + +This was again his theme as he sat by the same friend's side, in +the rear row of the class at Commencement, listening to the delivery +of the Valedictory. "Thinks she's just sooblime, don't she!" he +whispered morosely. "She wouldn't trade with the President of the +United States right now. She prob'ly thinks bein' Valedictorian is +more important than Captain of the State University Eleven. Never +mind!" And here his tone became huskily jubilant. "Never mind! +Just about a half-an-hour more and that's the last o' ~you~, ole +girl! Yes, sir, Fred; one thing we can feel pretty good over: +this is where we get through with Dora Yocum!" + +Ramsey and Fred had arranged to room together at Greenfield, the seat +of the state university, and they made the short journey in company +the following September. They arrived hilarious, anticipating +pleasurable excitements in the way of "fraternity" pledgings and +initiations, encounters with sophomores, class meetings, and +elections; and, also, they were not absolutely without interest in +the matter of Girls, for the state university was co-educational, and +it was but natural to expect in so broad a field, all new to them, a +possible vision of something rather thrilling. They whispered +cheerfully of all these things during the process of matriculation, +and signed the registrar's book on a fresh page; but when Fred had +written his name under Ramsey's, and blotted it, he took the liberty +of turning over the leaf to examine some of the autographs of their +future classmates, written on the other side. Then he uttered an +exclamation, more droll than dolorous, though it affected to be +wholly the latter; for the shock to Fred was by no means so painful +as it was to his friend. + +Ramsey leaned forward and read the name indicated by Fred's +forefinger. + +~Dora Yocum.~ + +...When they got back to their pleasant quarters at Mrs. Meig's, +facing the campus, Ramsey was still unable to talk of anything except +the lamentable discovery; nor were his companion's burlesquing +efforts to console him of great avail, though Fred did become serious +enough to point out that a university was different from a high +school. + +"It's not like havin' to use one big room as a headquarters, you +know, Ramsey. Everything's all split up, and she might happen not +to be in a single of your classes." + +"You don't know my luck!" the afflicted boy protested. "I wish +I'd gone to Harvard, the way my father wanted me to. Why, this +is just the worst nuisance I ever struck! You'll see! She'll +be in everything there is, just the way she was back home." + +He appeared to be corroborated by the events of the next day, +when they attended the first meeting to organize the new class. +The masculine element predominated, but Dora Yocum was elected +vice-president. "You see?" Ramsey said. "Didn't I tell you? +You see what happens?" + +But after that she ceased for a time to intrude upon his life, +and he admitted that his harassment was less grave than he had +anticipated. There were about five hundred students in the +freshman class; he seldom saw her, and when he did it was not more +than a distant glimpse of her on one of the campus paths, her +thoughtful head bent over a book as she hurried to a classroom. +This was bearable; and in the flattering agitations of being sought, +and even hunted, by several "fraternities" simultaneously desirous +of his becoming a sworn Brother, he almost forgot her. After a +hazardous month the roommates fell into the arms of the last "frat" +to seek them, and having undergone an evening of outrage which +concluded with touching rhetoric and an oath taken at midnight, +they proudly wore jewelled symbols on their breasts and were free +to turn part of their attention to other affairs, especially the +affairs of the Eleven. + +However, they were instructed by the older brethren of their Order, +whose duty it was to assist in the proper manoeuvring of their young +careers, that, although support of the 'varsity teams was important, +they must neglect neither the spiritual nor the intellectual +by-products of undergraduate doings. Therefore they became members +of the college Y.M.C.A. and of the "Lumen Society." + +According to the charter which it had granted itself, the "Lumen +Society" was an "Organization of male and female students"--so +"advanced" was this university--"for the development of the powers +of debate and oratory, intellectual and sociological progress, and +the discussion of all matters relating to philosophy, metaphysics, +literature, art, and current events." A statement so formidable was +not without a hushing effect upon Messrs. Milholland and Mitchell; +they went to their first "Lumen" meeting in a state of fear and came +away little reassured. + +"I couldn't get up there," Ramsey declared, "I couldn't stand up +there before all that crowd and make a speech, or debate in a debate, +to save my soul and gizzard! Why, I'd just keel right over and haf +to be carried out." + +"Well, the way I understand it," said Fred, "we can't get out of +it. The seniors in the 'frat' said we had to join, and they said we +couldn't resign, either, after we had joined. They said we just had +to go through it, and after a while we'd get used to it and not mind +it much." + +"~I~ will!" Ramsey insisted. "I couldn't any more stand up there +on my feet and get to spoutin' about sociology and the radical +metempsychorus of the metaphysical bazoozum than I could fly a +flyin' machine. Why, I--" + +"Oh, that wasn't anything," Fred interrupted. "The only one that +talked like that, he was that Blickens; he's a tutor, or something, +and really a member of the faculty. Most o' the others just kind +of blah-blahhed around, and what any of 'em tried to get off their +chests hardly amounted to terribly much." + +"I don't care. I couldn't do it at ~all!~" + +"Well, the way it looks to me," Fred observed, "we simply ~got~ to! +From what they tell me, the freshmen got to do more than anybody. +Every other Friday night, it's all freshmen and nothin' else. You +get a postal card on Monday morning in your mail, and it says +'Assignment' on it, and then it's got written underneath what you +haf to do the next Friday night--oration or debate, or maybe just +read from some old book or something. I guess we got to stand up +there and ~try~, anyway." + +"All right," said Ramsey. "If they want me to commit suicide they +can send me one o' their ole 'Assignments.' I won't need to commit +suicide, though, I guess. All I'll do, I'll just fall over in a +fit, and stay in it." + +And, in truth, when he received his first "Assignment," one Monday +morning, a month later, he seemed in a fair way to fulfil his +prophecy. The attention of his roommate, who sat at a window of +their study, was attracted by sounds of strangulation. + +"What on earth's the matter, Ramsey?" + +"Look! Look at ~this!~" + +Fred took the card and examined it with an amazement gradually +merging into a pleasure altogether too perceptible: + + ASSIGNMENT + + TWELVE-MINUTE DEBATE, CLASS OF 1918. + ~Subject, Resolved:~ That Germany is both legally and morally + justified in her invasion of Belgium. + + (Debaters are notified that each will be held strictly to the + following schedule: Affirmative, 4 min., first. Negative, 4 min., + first. Affirm, 2 min., second. Neg., 2 min., second.) + + Afirmative Negative + R. MILHOLLAND, '18 D. YOCUM, '18 + +Concluding his reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made +use of his voice in a manner of heathenish boisterousness, and +presently reclined upon a lounge to laugh the better. His stricken +comrade, meanwhile, recovered so far as to pace the floor. "I'm +goin' to pack up and light out for home!" he declared, over and over. +And even oftener he read and reread the card to make sure of the +actuality of that fatal coincidence, "D. Yocum, '18." + + + + + +Chapter XI + +"If I ~could~ do it," he vociferated, "if I ~could~ stand up there +and debate one o' their darn ole debates in the first place--if I had +the gall to even try it, why, my gosh! you don't suppose I'm goin' +to get up there and argue with ~that girl~, do you? That's a hot way +to get an education: stand up there and argue with a girl before a +couple o' hundred people! My ~gosh!~" + +"You got to!" his prostrate companion cackled, weakly. "You can't +get out of it. You're a goner, ole Buddy!" + + +"I'll be sick. I'll be sick as a dog! I'll be sick as the sickest +dog that ever--" + +"No use, ole man. The frat seniors'll be on the job. They'll know +whether you're sick or not, and they'll have you there, right on the +spot to the minute!" + +The prediction was accurate. The too fatherly "frat seniors" did all +that Fred said they would, and more. For the honour of the "frat," +they coached the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate, +told him many more things to say than could be said in six minutes, +and produced him, despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in the large hall +of the Lumen Society at eight o'clock on Friday evening. + +Four other "twelve-minute debates" preceded his and the sound of +these, in Ramsey's ears, was the sound of Gabriel practising on +his horn in the early morning of Judgment Day. The members of the +society sat, three rows deep, along the walls of the room, leaving +a clear oblong of green carpet in the centre, where were two small +desks, twenty feet apart, the rostrums of the debaters. Upon a +platform at the head of the room sat dreadful seniors, the officers +of the society, and, upon benches near the platform, the debaters +of the evening were aligned. One of the fraternal seniors sat with +sweltering Ramsey; and the latter, as his time relentlessly came +nearer, made a last miserable squirm. + +"Look here, Brother Colburn, I got to get out o' here." + +"No, you don't, young fellow." + +"Yes, I do!" Ramsey whispered, passionately. "Honest, I do. Honest, +Brother Colburn, I got to get a drink of water. I ~got~ to!" + +"No. You can't." + +"Honest, Colburn, I ~got~--" + +"Hush!" + +Ramsey grunted feebly, and cast his dilating eyes along the rows of +faces. Most of them were but as blurs, swimming, yet he was aware +(he thought) of a formidable and horrible impassive scrutiny of +himself, a glare seeming to pierce through him to the back of the +belt round his waist, so that he began to have fearful doubts about +that belt, about every fastening and adjustment of his garments, +about the expression of his countenance, and about many other things +jumbling together in his consciousness. Over and over he whispered +gaspingly to himself the opening words of the sentence with which +Colburn had advised him to begin his argument. And as the moment +of supreme agony drew close, this whispering became continuous: +"In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership +I feel constrained to say in making my first appearance before this +honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in making my first +appearance before this honor'ble mem--" + +...It had come. The chairman announced the subject of the fourth +freshman twelve-minute debate; and Dora Yocum, hitherto unperceived +by Ramsey, rose and went forward to one of the small desks in the +open space, where she stood composedly, a slim, pretty figure in +white. Members in Ramsey's neighbourhood were aware of a brief and +hushed commotion, and of Colburn's fierce whisper, "You can't! You +get up there!" And the blanched Ramsey came forth and placed himself +at the other desk. + +He stood before the silent populace of that morgue, and it seemed to +him that his features had forgotten that he was supposed to be their +owner and in control of them; he felt that they were slipping all +over his face, regardless of his wishes. His head, as a whole, was +subject to an agitation not before known by him; it desired to move +rustily in eccentric ways of its own devising; his legs alternately +limbered and straightened under no direction but their own; and his +hands clutched each other fiercely behind his back; he was not one +cohesive person, evidently, but an assembled collection of parts +which had relapsed each into its own indivuality. In spite of them, +he somehow contrived the semblance of a bow toward the chairman and +the semblance of another toward Dora, of whom he was but hazily +conscious. Then he opened his mouth, and, not knowing how he had +started his voice going, heard it as if from a distance. + +"In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I +feel restrained to say--" He stopped short, and thenceforward shook +visibly. After a long pause, he managed to repeat his opening, +stopped again, swallowed many times, produced a handkerchief and +wiped his face, an act of necessity--then had an inspiration. + +"The subject assigned to me," he said, "is resolved that Germany is +mor'ly and legally justified in Belgians--Belgiums! This subject was +assigned to me to be the subject of this debate." He interrupted +himself to gasp piteously; found breathing difficult, but faltered +again: "This subject is the subject. It is the subject that was +assigned to me on a postal card." Then, for a moment or so, he had +a miraculous spurt of confidence, and continued rather rapidly: "I +feel constrained to say that the country of Belgian--Belgium, I mean +--this country has been constrained by the--invaded I mean--invaded +by the imperial German Impire and my subject in this debate is +whether it ought to or not, my being the infernative--affirmative, +I mean--that I got to prove that Germany is mor'ly and legally +justified. I wish to state that--" + +He paused again, lengthily, then struggled on. "I have been +requested to state that the German Imp--Empire--that it certainly +isn't right for those Dutch--Germans, I mean--they haven't got any +more business in Belgium than I have myself, but I--I feel +constrained to say that I had to accept whatever side of this debate +I got on the postal card, and so I am constrained to take the side of +the Dutch. I mean the Germans. The Dutch are sometimes called--I +mean the Germans are sometimes called the Dutch in this country, but +they aren't Dutch, though sometimes called Dutch in this country. +Well, and so--so, well, the war began last August or about then, +anyway, and the German army invaded the Belgian army. After they got +there, the invasion began. First, they came around there and then +they commenced invading. Well, what I feel constrained--" + +He came to the longest of all his pauses here, and the awful gravity +of the audience almost suffocated him. "Well," he concluded, "it +don't look right to me." + +"Four minutes!" the chairman announced, for Ramsey's pauses had +worn away a great deal more of this terrible interval than had his +eloquence. "Opening statement for the negative: Miss D. Yocum. +Four minutes." + +As Dora began to speak, Ramsey experienced a little relief, but +only a little--about the same amount of relief as that felt by a +bridegroom when it is the bride's turn to "respond," not really +relief at all, but merely the slight relaxation of a continuing +strain. The audience now looked at Ramsey no more than people look +at a bridegroom, but he failed to perceive any substantial mitigation +of his frightful conspicuousness. He had not the remotest idea of +what he had said in setting forth his case for Germany, and he knew +that it was his duty to listen closely to Dora, in order to be able +to refute her argument when his two-minute closing speech fell due +but he was conscious of little more than his own condition. His legs +had now gone wild beyond all devilry, and he had to keep shifting his +weight from one to the other in order even to hope that their frenzy +might escape general attention. + +He realized that Dora was speaking rapidly and confidently, and that +somewhere in his ill-assembled parts lurked a familiar bit of him +that ojbected to her even more than usual; but she had used half of +her time, at least, before he was able to gather any coherent meaning +from what she was saying. Even then he caught only a fragment, here +and there, and for the rest--so far as Ramsey was concerned--she +might as well have been reciting the Swedish alphabet. + +In spite of the rather startling feebleness of her opponent's +statement, Dora went at her task as earnestly as if it were to +confute some monster of casuistry. "Thus, having demonstrated +that ~all~ war is wrong," she said, approaching her conclusion, +"it is scarcely necessary to point out that whatever the actual +circumstances of the invasion, and whatever the status of the case +in international law, or by reason of treaty, or the German oath +to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which of course was grossly +and dishonorably violated--all this, I say, ladies and gentlemen +of the Lumen Society, all this is beside the point of morals. Since, +as I have shown, ~all~ war is wrong, the case may be simplified +as follows: All war is morally wrong. ~Quod erat demonstrandum~. +Germany invaded Belgium. Invasion is war. Germany, therefore, +did moral wrong. Upon the legal side, as I began by pointing out, +Germany confessed in the Reichstag the violation of law. Therefore, +Germany was justified in the invasion neither morally nor legally; +but was both morally and legally wrong and evil. Ladies and +gentlemen of the Lumen Society, I await the refutation of my +opponent!" + +Her opponent appeared to be having enough trouble with his legs, +without taking any added cares upon himself in the way of +refutations. But the marvellous Dora had calculated the length of +her statement with such nicety that the chairman announced "Four +minutes," almost upon the instant of her final syllable; and all +faces turned once more to the upholder of the affirmative. +"Refutation and conclusion by the affirmative," said the chairman. +"Mr. R. Milholland. Two minutes." + +Therewith, Ramsey coughed as long as he could cough, and when he felt +that no more should be done in this way, he wiped his face--again an +act of necessity--and quaveringly began: + +"Gentlemen and ladies, or ladies and gentlemen, in making the +refutation of my opponent, I feel that--I feel that hardly anything +more ought to be said." + +He paused, looked helplessly at his uncontrollable legs, and resumed: +"I am supposed to make the reputa--the refutation of my opponent, +and I feel that I ought to say quite a good deal more. In the first +place, I feel that the invasion has taken place. I am supposed-- +anyhow I got a postal card that I am supposed to be here to-night. +Well, in talking over this matter with a couple of seniors, they told +me I was supposed to claim this invasion was mor'ly and legally all +right. Well--" Here, by some chance, the recollection of a word of +Dora's flickered into his chaotic mind, and he had a brighter moment. +"My opponent said she proved all war is wrong--or something like +that, anyhow. She said she proved it was wrong to fight, no matter +what. Well, if she wasn't a girl, anybody that wanted to get her +into a fight could prob'ly do it." He did not add that he would like +to be the person to make the experiment (if Dora weren't a girl), nor +did the thought enter his mind until an hour or so later. "Well," he +added, "I suppose there is little more to be said." + +He was so right, in regard to his own performance, at least, that, +thereupon drying up utterly, he proceeded to stand, a speechless +figure in the midst of a multitudinous silence, for an eternity +lasting forty-five seconds. He made a racking effort, and at the +end of this epoch found words again. "In making my argument in this +debate, I would state that--" + +"Two minutes!" said the chairman. "Refutation by the negative. +Miss D. Yocum. Two minutes." + +"I waive them," said Dora, primly. "I submit that the affirmative +has not refuted the argument of the negative." + +"Very well." With his gavel the chairman sharply tapped the desk +before him, "The question is now before the house. 'Resolved, that +Germany is both morally and legally justified in her invasion of +Belgium.' All those in favour of the--" + +But here there was an interruption of a kind never before witnessed +during any proceedings of the Lumen Society. It came from neither +of the debaters, who still remained standing at their desks until the +vote settling their comparative merits in argument should be taken. +The interruption was from the rear row of seats along the wall, where +sat new members of the society, freshmen not upon the program for the +evening. A loud voice was heard from this quarter, a loud but nasal +voice, shrill as well as nasal, and full of a strange hot passion. +"Mr. Chairman!" it cried. "Look-a-here, Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman, +I demand to be heard! You gotta gimme my say, Mr. Chairman! I'm +a-gunna have my ~say~! You look-a-here, Mr. Chairman!" + +Shocked by such a breach of order, and by the unseemly violence of +the speaker, not only the chairman but everyone else looked there. +A short, strong figure was on its feet, gesticulating fiercely; and +the head belonging to it was a large one with too much curly black +hair, a flat, swarthy face, shiny and not immaculately shaven; there +was an impression of ill-chosen clothes, too much fat red lip, too +much tooth, too much eyeball. Fred Mitchell, half-sorrowing, yet +struggling to conceal tears of choked mirth over his roommate's late +exhibition, recognized this violent interrupter as one Linski, a +fellow freshman who sat next to him in one of his classes. "What's +~that~ cuss up to?" Fred wondered, and so did others. Linski showed +them. + +He pressed forward, shoving himself through the two rows in front of +him till he emerged upon the green carpet of the open space, and as +he came, he was cyclonic with words. + +"You don't put no such stuff as this over, I tell you!" he shouted +in his hot, nasal voice. "This here's a free country, and you call +yourself a debating society, do you? Lemme tell you ~I~ belong to +a debating society in Chicago, where I come from, and them fellas up +there, they'd think they'd oughta be shot fer a fake like what you +people are tryin' to put over, here, to-night. I come down here to +git some more education, and pay fer it, too, in good hard money I've +made sweatin' in a machine shop up there in Chicago; but if ~this~ +is the kind of education I'm a-gunna git, I better go on back there. +You call this a square debate, do you?" + +He advanced toward the chairman's platform, shaking a frantic fist. +"Well, if you do, you got another think comin', my capitalis' frien'! +you went and give out the question whether it's right fer Choimuny +to go through Belgium; and what do you do fer the Choimun side? You +pick out this here big stiff"--he waved his passionate hand at the +paralyzed Ramsey--"you pick out a boob like that for the Choimun +side, a poor fish that gits stagefright so bad he don't know whether +he's talkin' or dead; or else he fakes it; because he's a speaker so +bum it looks more to me like he was faking. You get this big stiff +to fake the Choimun side, and then you go and stick up a goil agains' +him that's got brains and makes a pacifis' argument that wins the +case agains' the Choimuns like cuttin' through hog lard! But you +ain't a-gunna git away with it, mister! Lemme tell you right here +and now, I may be a mix blood, but I got some Choimun in me with the +rest what I got, and before you vote on this here question you gotta +hear a few woids from somebody that can ~talk!~ This whole war is +a capitalis' war, Belgium as much as Choimuny, and the United States +is sellin' its soul to the capitalis' right now, I tell you, takin' +sides agains' Choimuny. Orders fer explosives and ammanition and +guns and Red Cross supplies is comin' into this country by the +millions, and the capitalis' United States is fat already on the +blood of the workers of Europe! Yes, it is, and I'll have my ~say,~ +you boorjaw faker, and you can hammer your ole gavel to pieces at +me!" + +He had begun to shriek; moisture fell from his brow and his mouth; +the scandalized society was on its feet, nervously into groups. +Evidently the meeting was about to disintegrate. "I'll have my +~say~!" the frenzied Linski screamed. "You try to put up this +capitalis' trick and work a fake to carry over this debate agains' +Choimuny, but you can't work it on ~me~, lemme tell you! I'll have +my ~say!~" + +The outraged chairman was wholly at a loss how to deal with the +"unprecedented situation"--so he defined it, quite truthfully; and he +continued to pound upon the desk, while other clamours began to rival +Linski's; shouts of "Put him out!" "Order!" "Shut up, Freshman!" +"Turn him over to the sophomores!" + +"This meeting is ~adjourned!~" bellowed the chairman, and there was +a thronging toward the doors, while the frothing Linski asseverated: +"I'm a-gunna git my say, I tell you! I'll have my say! I'll have my +~say!~" + +He had more than that, before the hour was over. A moment after he +emerged from the building and came out, still hot, upon the cool, +dark campus, he found himself the centre of a group of his own +classmates whom he at first mistook for sophomores, such was their +manner. + +...As this group broke up, a few minutes later, a youth running to +join it, scenting somewhat of interest, detained one of those who +were departing. + +"What's up? What was that squealing?" + +"Oh, nothing. We just talked to that Linski. Nobody else touched +him, but Ramsey Milholland gave him a ~peach~ of a punch on the +snoot." + +"Whoopee!" + +Ramsey was laconic in response to inquiries upon this subject. When +someone remarked: "You served him right for calling you a boob and +a poor fish and so on before all the society, girls and all," Ramsey +only said: + +"That wasn't what I hit him for." + +He declined to explain further. + + + + + +Chapter XII + +The way I look at it, Ramsey," Fred Mitchell said, when they reached +their apartment, whither the benevolent Colburn accompanied them, +"the way I look at it, this Linski kind of paid you a compliment, +after all, when he called you a fake. He must have thought you +anyway ~looked~ as if you could make a better speech than you did. +Oh, golly!" + +And as Ramsey groaned, the jovial Mitchell gave himself up to the +divan and the mirth. "Oh, oh, oh, ~golly~!" he sputtered. + +"Never you mind, Brother Milholland," Colburn said gently. "The +Lumen is used to nervous beginners. I've seen dozens in my time, +just like you; and some of 'em got to be first rate before they +quit. Besides, this crazy Linski is all that anybody'll ever +remember about to-night's meeting, anyhow. There never was any such +outbreak as that in ~my~ time, and I guess there nver was in the +whole history of the society. We'll probably suspend him until he +apologizes to the society--I'm on the board, and I'm in favour of it. +Who is the bird, anyhow? He's in your class." + +"I never saw him before," Ramsey responded from the deep chair, where +he had moodily thrown himself; and, returning to his brooding upon +his oratory. "Oh, murder!" he moaned. + +"Well," said the senior, "you'll know him when you see him again. +You put your mark on him where you can see it, all right!" He +chuckled. "I suppose I really ought to have interfered in that, but +I decided to do a little astronomical observation, about fifty feet +away, for a few minutes. I'm 'way behind in my astronomy, anyhow. +Do you know this Linski, Brother Mitchell?" + +"I've talked to him a couple o' times on the campus," said Fred. +"He's in one of my classes. He's about the oldest in our class, I +guess--a lot older than us, anyhow. He's kind of an anarchist or +something; can't talk more'n five minutes any time without gettin off +some bug stuff about 'capitalism.' He said the course in political +economy was all 'capitalism' and the prof was bought by Wall Street." + +"Poor old Prof. Craig!" Colburn laughed. "He gets fifteen hundred +a year." + +"Yes; I'd heard that myself, and I told Linski, and he said he had +an uncle workin' in a steel mill got twice that much; but it didn't +make any difference, ole Craig was bought by Wall Street. He said +'capitalism' better look out; he and the foreign-born workmen were +goin' to ~take~ this country some day, and that was one of the +reasons he was after an education. He talked pretty strong pro- +German, too--about the war in Europe--but I sort of thought that was +more because he'd be pro-anything that he thought would help upset +the United States than because he cared much about Germany." + +"Yes," said Colburn, "that's how he sounded to-night. I guess +there's plenty more like him in the cities, too. That reminds me, +I'd better arrange a debate on immigration for the Lumen. We'll put +Brother Milholland for the negative, this time." + +Ramsey started violently. "See here--" + +But the senior reassured him. "Just wanted to see you jump," he +explained. "Don't fear; you've done your share." + +"I should think I have!" Ramsey groaned. + +"Yes, you won't be called on again this term. By the way," said +Colburn, thoughtfully, "that was a clever girl you had against you +to-night. I don't believe in pacificism much, myself, but she used +it very niftily for her argument. Isn't she from your town, this +Miss Yocum?" + +Fred nodded. + +"Well, she's a clever young thing," said the senior, still +thoughtful. And he added: "Graceful girl, she is." + +At this, the roommates looked at him with startled attention. Ramsey +was so roused as to forget his troubles and sit forward in his chair. + +"Yes," said the musing Colburn, "she's a mighty pretty girl." + +"What!" + +This exclamation was a simultaneous one; the astounded pair stared +at him in blank incredulity. + +"Why, don't you think so?" Colburn mildly inquired. "She seems to me +very unusual looking." + +"Well, yes," Fred assented, emphatically. "We're with you there!" + +"Extraordinary eyes," continued Colburn. "Lovely figure, too; +altogether a strikingly pretty girl. Handsome, I should say, +perhaps. Yes, 'handsome' rather than 'pretty'." He looked up from +a brief reverie. "You fellows known her long?" + +"You bet!" said Ramsey. + +"She made a splendid impression on the Lumen," Colburn went on. +"I don't remember that I ever saw a first appearance there that +quite equalled it. She'll probably have a brilliant career in the +society, and in the university, too. She must be a very fine sort +of person." He deliberated within himself a few moments longer, +then, realizing that his hosts and Brethren did not respond with +any heartiness--or with anything at all--to the theme, he changed +it, and asked them what they thought about the war in Europe. + +They talked of the war rather drowsily for a while; it was an +interesting but not an exciting topic: the thing they spoke of was +so far away. It was in foreign countries where they had never been +and had no acquaintances; and both the cause and the issue seemed to +be in confusion, though evidently Germany had "started" the trouble. +Only one thing emerged as absolutely clear and proved: there could +be no disagreement about Germany's "dirty work," as Fred defined +it, in violating Belgium. And this stirred Ramsey to declare with +justice that "dirty work" had likewise been done upon himself by the +official person, whoever he or she was, who had given him the German +side of the evening's debate. After this moment of fervour, the +conversation languished, and Brother Colburn rose to go. + +"Well, I'm glad you gave that Linski a fine little punch, Brother +Milholland," he said, at the door. "It won't do you any harm in the +'frat,' or with the Lumen either. And don't be discouraged about +your debating. You'll learn. Anybody might have got rattled by +having to argue against as clever and good-looking a girl as that!" + +The roommates gave each other a look of serious puzzlement as the +door closed. "Well, Brother Colburn is a mighty nice fellow," Fred +said. "He's kind of funny, though." + +Ramsey assented, and then, as the two prepared for bed, they entered +into a further discussion of their senior friend. They liked him +"all right," they said, but he certainly must be kind of queer, and +they couldn't just see how he had "ever managed to get where he was" +in the "frat" and the Lumen and the university. + + + + + +Chapter XIII + +Ramsey passed the slightly disfigured Linski on the campus next day +without betraying any embarrassment or making a sign of recognition. +Fred Mitchell told his roommate, chuckling, that Linski had sworn +to "get" him, and, not knowing Fred's affiliations, had made him the +confidant of his oath. Fred had given his blessing, he said, upon +the enterprise, and advised Linski to use a brick. "He'll hit you +on the head with it," said the light-hearted Fred, falling back upon +this old joke. "Then you can catch it as it bounces off and throw +it back at him." + +However, Linski proved to be merely an episode, not only so far as +Ramsey was concerned but in the Lumen and in the university as well. +His suspension from the Lumen was for a year, and so cruel a +punishment it proved for this born debater that he noisily declared +he would found a debating society himself, and had a poster printed +and distributed announcing the first meeting of "The Free Speech and +Masses' Rights Council." Several town loafers attended the meeting, +but the only person connected with the university who came was an +oriental student, a Chinese youth of almost intrusive amiability. +Linski made a fiery address, the townsmen loudly appluading his +advocacy of an embargo on munitions and the distribution of +everybody's "property," but the Chinaman, accustomed to see students +so madly in earnest only when they were burlesquing, took the whole +affair to be intended humour, and tittered politely without +cessation--except at such times as he thought it proper to appear +quite wrung with laughter. Then he would rock himself, clasp his +mouth with both hands and splutter through his fingers. Linski +accused him of being in the pay of "capital." + +Next day the orator was unable to show himself upon the campus +without causing demonstrations; whenever he was seen a file of +quickly gathering students marched behind him chanting repeatedly +and deafeningly in chorus: "Down with Wall Street! Hoch der Kaiser! +Who loves Linski? Who, who, who? Hoo Lun! Who loves Linski? Who, +who, who? Hoo Lun!" + +Linski was disgusted, resigned from the university, and disappeared. + +"Well, here it isn't mid-year Exams yet, and the good ole class of +Nineteen-Eighteen's already lost a member," said Fred Mitchell. "I +guess we can bear the break-up!" + +"I guess so," Ramsey assented. "That Linski might just as well +stayed here, though." + +"Why?" + +"He couldn't do any harm here. He'll prob'ly get more people to +listen to him in cities where there's so many new immigrants and all +such that don't know anything, comin' in all the time." + +"Oh, well," said Fred. "What do ~we~ care what happens to Chicago! +Come on, let's behave real wild, and go on over to the 'Teria and get +us a couple egg sandwiches and sassprilly." + +Ramsey was willing. + +After the strain of the "mid-year Exams" in February, they lived a +free-hearted life. They had settled into the ways of their world; +they had grown used to it, and it had grown used to them; there was +no longer any ignominy in being a freshman. They romped upon the +campus and sometimes rioted harmlessly about the streets of the town. +In the evenings they visited their fellows and Brethren and were +visited in turn, and sometimes they looked so far ahead as to talk +vaguely of their plans for professions or business--though to a +freshman this concerned an almost unthinkably distant prospect. "I +guess I'll go in with my father, in the wholesale drug business," +said Fred. "My married brother already is in the firm, and I suppose +they'll give me a show--send me out on the road a year or two first, +maybe, to try me. Then I'm going to marry some little cutie and +settle down. What you goin' to do, Ramsey? Go to Law School, and +then come back and go in your father's office?" + +"I don't know. Guess so." + +It was always Fred who did most of the talking; Ramsey was quiet. +Fred told the "frat seniors" that Ramsey was "developing a whole lot +these days"; and he told Ramsey himself that he could see a "big +change" in him, adding that the improvement was probably due to +Ramsey's having passed through "terrible trials like that debate." + +Ramsey kept to their rooms more than his comrade did, one reason for +this domesticity being that he "had to study longer than Fred did, +to keep up"; and another reason may have been a greater shyness than +Fred possessed--if, indeed, Fred possessed any shyness at all. For +Fred was a cheery spirit difficult to abash, and by the coming of +spring knew all of the best-looking girl students in the place--knew +them well enough, it appeared, to speak of them not merely by their +first names but by abbreviations of these. He had become fashion's +sprig, a "fusser" and butterfly, and he reproached his roommate for +shunning the ladies. + +"Well, the truth is, Fred," said Ramsey one day, responding darkly; +--"well, you see the truth is, Fred, I've had a--a--I've had an +experience--" + +So, only, did he refer to Milla. + +Fred said no more; and it was comprehended between them that the past +need never be definitely referred to again, but that it stood between +Ramsey and any entertainment to be obtained of the gentler but less +trustworthy sex. And when other Brethren of the "frat" would have +pressed Ramsey to join them in various frivolous enterprises +concerning "co-eds," or to be shared by "co-eds," Fred thought it +better to explain to them privately (all being sacred among Brethren) +how Ramsey's life, so far as Girls went, had been toyed with by one +now a Married Woman. + +This created a great deal of respect for Ramsey. It became +understood everywhere that he was a woman-hater. + + + + + +Chapter XIV + +That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren +talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the +subject was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders +and France were still of the immense, remote distance. By no stretch +of imagination could these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern +the "frat," the Lumen, or the university. Really important matters +were the doings of the "Track Team," now training in the "Gym" and on +the 'Varsity Field, and, more vital still, the prospects of the Nine. +But in May there came a shock which changed things for a time. + +The ~Lusitania~ brought to every American a revelation of what had +lain so deep in his own heart that often he had not realized it was +there. When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great +merchant ship, with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly +dying American gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys +and professors, until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof +world thousands of miles from the murder. + +Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went +quite wild. No orator, he nevertheless made a frantic speech at the +week's "frat meetings," cursing the Germans in the simple old English +words that their performance had demonstrated to be applicable, and +going on to demand that the fraternity prepare for its own share in +the action of the country. "I don't care ~how~ insignificant we few +fellows here to-night may seem," he cried; "we can do our little, +and if everybody in this country's ready to do their own little, why, +that'll be plenty! Brothers, don't you realize that all ~over~ the +United States to-night the people are feeling just the way we are +here? Millions and millions and millions of them! Wherever there's +an American he's ~with~ us--and you bet your bottom dollar there are +just a few more Americans in this country of ours than there are +big-mouthed lobsters like that fellow Linski! I tell you, if +Congress only gives the word, there could be an army of five million +men in this country to-morrow, and those dirty baby-killin' dachshunds +would hear a word or two from your Uncle Samuel! Brothers, I demand +that something be done right here and now, and by us! I move we +telegraph the Secretary of War to-night and offer him a regiment from +this university to go over and help ~hang~ their damn Kaiser." + +The motion was hotly seconded and instantly carried. Then followed +a much flustered discussion of the form and phrasing of the proposed +telegram, but, after everything seemed to have been settled, someone +ascertained by telephone that the telegraph company would not accept +messages containing words customarily defined as profane; so the +telegram had to be rewritten. This led to further amendment, and it +was finally decided to address the senators from that state, instead +of the Secretary of War, and thus in a somewhat modified form the +message was finally despatched. + +Next day, news of what the "frat" had done made a great stir in the +university; other "frats" sent telegrams, so did the "Barbarians," +haters of the "frats" but joining them in this; while a small band +of "German-American" students found it their duty to go before the +faculty and report these "breaches of neutrality." They protested +heavily, demanding the expulsion of the "breachers" as disloyal +citizens, therefore unfit students, but suffered a disappointment; +for the faculty itself had been sending telegrams of similar spirit, +addressing not only the senators and congressmen of the state but +the President of the United States. Flabbergasted, the "German- +Americans" retired; they were confused and disgusted by this +higher-up outbreak of unneutrality--it overwhelmed them that citizens +of the United States should not remain neutral in the dispute between +the United States and Germany. All day the campus was in ferment. + +At twilight, Ramsey was walking meditatively on his way to dinner +at the "frat house," across the campus from his apartment at Mrs. +Meig's. Everybody was quiet now, both town and gown; the students +were at their dinners and so were the burghers. Ramsey was late +but did not quicken his thoughtful steps, which were those of one +lost in reverie. He had forgotten that spring-time was all about +him, and, with his head down, walked unregardful of the new gayeties +flung forth upon the air by great clusters of flowering shrubs, just +come into white blossom and lavender. + +He was unconscious that somebody behind him, going the same way, +came hastening to overtake him and called his name, "Ramsey! Ramsey +Milholland!" Not until he had been called three times did he realize +that he was being hailed--and in a girl's voice! By that time, the +girl herself was beside him, and Ramsey halted, quite taken aback. +The girl was Dora Yocum. + +She was pale, a little breathless, and her eyes were bright and +severe. "I want to speak to you," she said, quickly. "I want to +ask you about something. Mr. Colburn and Fred Mitchell are the only +people I know in your 'frat' except you, and I haven't seen either +of them to-day, or I'd have asked one of them." + +Most uncomfortably astonished, Ramsey took his hands out of his +pockets, picked a leaf from a lilac bush beside the path, and put +the stem of the leaf seriously into a corner of his mouth, before +finding anything to say. "Well--well, all right," he finally +responded. "I'll tell you--if it's anything I know about." + +"You know about it," said Dora. "That is, you certainly do if you +were at your 'frat' meeting last night. Were you?" + +"Yes, I was there," Ramsey answered, wondering what in the world she +wanted to know, though he supposed vaguely that it must be something +about Colburn, whom he had several times seen walking with her. "Of +course I couldn't tell you much," he added, with an afterthought. +"You see, a good deal that goes on at a 'frat' meeting isn't supposed +to be talked about." + +"Yes," she said, smiling faintly, though with a satire that missed +him. "I've been a member of a sorority since September, and I think +I have an idea of what could be told or not told. Suppose we walk +on, if you don't mind. My question needn't embarrass you." + +Nevertheless, as they slowly went on together, Ramsey was embarrassed. +He felt "queer." They had known each other so long; in a way had +shared so much, sitting daily for years near each other and undergoing +the same outward experiences; they had almost "grown up together," +yet this was the first time they had ever talked together or walked +together. + +"Well--" he said. "If you want to ask anything it's all right for me +to tell you--well, I just as soon, I guess." + +"It has nothing to do with the secret proceedings of your 'frat'," +said Dora, primly. "What I want to ask about has been talked of all +over the place to-day. Everyone has been saying it was ~your~ 'frat' +that sent the first telegram to members of the Government offering +support in case of war with Germany. They say you didn't even wait +until to-day, but sent off a message last night. What I wanted to +ask you was whether this story is true or not?" + +"Why, yes," said Ramsey, mildly. "That's what we did." + +She uttered an exclamation, a sound of grief and of suspicion +confirmed. "Ah! I was afraid so!" + +"'Afraid so'? What's the matter?" he asked, and because she seemed +excited and troubled, he found himself not quite so embarrassed as +he had been at first; for some reason her agitation made him feel +easier. "What was wrong about that?" + +"Oh, it's all so shocking and wicked and mistaken!" she cried. +"Even the faculty has been doing it, and half the other 'frats' +and sororities! And it was yours that started it." + +"Yes, we did," he said, throughly puzzled. "We're the oldest 'frat' +here, and of course"--he chuckled modestly--"of course we think we're +the best. Do you mean you believe we ought to've sat back and let +somebody else start it?" + +"Oh, ~no~!" she answered, vehemently. "Nobody ought to have started +it! That's the trouble; don't you see? If nobody had started it +none of it might have happened. The rest mightn't have caught it. +It mightn't have got into their heads. A war thought is the most +contagious thought in the world; but if it can be kept from starting, +it can be kept from being contagious. It's just when people have got +into an emotional state, or a state of smouldering rage, that +everybody ought to be so terribly careful not to think war thoughts +or make war speeches--or send war telegrams! I thought--oh, I was so +sure I'd convinced Mr. Colburn of all this, the last time we talked +of it! He seemed to understand, and I was sure he agreed with me." +She bit her lip. "He was only pretending--I see that now!" + +"I guess he must 'a' been," said Ramsey, with admirable simplicity. +"He didn't talk about anything like that last night. He was as much +for it as anybody." + +"I've no doubt!" + +Ramsey made bold to look at her out of the side of his eye, and as +she was gazing tensely forward he continued his observation for some +time. She was obviously controlling agitation, almost controlling +tears, which seemed to threaten her very wide-open eyes; for those +now fully grown and noticeable eyewinkers of hers were subject to +fluctuations indicating such a threat. She looked "hurt," and Ramsey +was touched; there was something human about her, then, after all. +And if he had put his feeling into words at the moment, he would have +said that he guessed maybe he could stand this ole girl, for a few +minutes sometimes, better than he'd always thought he could. + +"Well," he said, "Colburn prob'ly wouldn't want to hurt your feelings +or anything. Colburn--" + +"He? He didn't! I haven't the faintest personal interest in what he +did." + +"Oh!" said Ramsey. "Well, excuse me; I thought prob'ly you were sore +because he'd jollied you about this pacifist stuff, and then--" + +"No!" she said, sharply. "I'm not thinking of his having agreed with +~me~ and fooling ~me~ about it. He just wanted to make a pleasant +impression on a girl, and said anything he thought would please her. +I don't care whether he does things like that or not. What I care +about is that the ~principle~ didn't reach him and that he mocked it! +I don't care about a petty treachery to me, personally, but I--" + +Fraternal loyalty could not quite brook this. "Brother Colburn is +a perfectly honor'ble man," said Ramsey, solemnly. "He is one of +the most honor'ble men in this--" + +"Of course! she cried. "Oh, can't I make you understand that I'm not +condemning him for a little flattery to me? I don't care two straws +for his showing that ~I~ didn't influence him. He doesn't interest +me, please understand." + +Ramsey was altogether perplexed. "Well, I don't see what makes you +go for him so hard, then." + +"I don't." + +"But you said he was treach--" + +"I don't ~condemn~ him for it," she insisted, despairingly. "Don't +you see the difference? I'm not condemning anybody; I'm only +lamenting. + +"What about? + +"About all of you that want ~war~!" + +"My golly!" Ramsey exclaimed. "You don't think those Dutchmen were +right to drown babies and--" + +"No! I think they were ghastly murderers! I think they were +detestable and fiendish and monstrous and--" + +"Well, then, my goodness! What do you want?" + +"I don't want war!" + +"You don't?" + +"I want Christianity!" she cried. "I can't think of the Germans +without hating them, and so to-day, when all the world is hating +them, I keep myself from thinking of them as much as I can. Already +half the world is full of war; you want to go to war to make things +right, but it won't; it will only make more war!" + +"Well, I--" + +"Don't you see what you've done, you boys?" she said. "Don't you +see what you've done with your absurd telegram? That started the +rest; they thought they ~all~ had to send telegrams like that." + +"Well, the faculty--" + +"Even they mightn't have thought of it if it hadn't been for the +first one. Vengeance is the most terrible thought; once you put +it into people's minds that they ought to have it, it runs away +with them" + +"Well, it isn't mostly vengeance we're after, at all. There's a lot +more to it than just getting even with--" + +She did not heed him. "You're all blind! You don't see what you're +doing; you don't even see what you've done to this peaceful place +here. You've filled it full of thoughts of fury and killing and +massacre--" + +"Why, no," said Ramsey. "It was those Dutch did that to us; and, +besides, there's more to it than you--" + +"No, there isn't," she interrupted. "It's just the old brutal spirit +that nations inherit from the time they were only tribes; it's the +tribe spirit, and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It's +those things and the love of fighting--men have always loved to fight. +Civilization hasn't taken it out of them; men still have the brute in +them that loves to fight!" + +"I don't think so," said Ramsey. "Americans don't love to fight; +I don't know about other countries, but we don't. Of course, here +and there, there's some fellow that likes to hunt around for scrapes, +but I never saw more than three or four in my life that acted that +way. Of course a football team often has a scrapper or two on it, +but that's different." + +"No," she said. "I think you all really love to fight." + +Ramsey was roused to become argumentative. "I don't see where you +get the idea. Colburn isn't that way, and back at school there +wasn't a single boy that was anything like that." + +"What!" She stopped, and turned suddenly to face him. + +"What's the matter?" he said, stopping, too. Something he said +had startled her, evidently. + +"How can you say such a thing?" she cried. "~You~ love to fight!" + +"Me?" + +"You do! You love fighting. You always have loved fighting." + +He was dumbfounded. "Why, I never had a fight in my life!" + +She cried out in protest of such prevarication. + +"Well, I never did," he insisted, mildly. + +"Why, you had a fight about ~me~!" + +"No, I didn't." + +"With Wesley Bender!" + +Ramsey chuckled. "~That~ wasn't a fight!" + +"It wasn't?" + +"Nothing like one. We were just guyin' him about--about gettin' +slicked up, kind of, because he at in front of you; and he hit me +with his book strap and I chased him off. Gracious, no; ~that~ +wasn't a fight!" + +"But you fought Linski only last fall." + +Ramsey chuckled again. "That wasn't even as much like a fight as +the one with Wesley. I just told this Linski I was goin' to give +him a punch in the sn-- I just told him to look out because I was +goin' to hit him, and then I did it, and waited to see if he wanted +to do anything about it, and he didn't. That's all there was to +it, and it wasn't any more like fighting than--than feeding chickens +is." + +She laughed dolefully. "It seems to me rather more like it than +that!" + +"Well, it wasn't." + +They had begun to walk on again, and Ramsey was aware that they had +passed the "frat house," where his dinner was probably growing cold. +He was aware of this, but not sharply or insistently. Curiously +enough, he did not think about it. He had begun to find something +pleasant in the odd interview, and in walking beside a girl, even +though the girl was Dora Yocum. He made no attempt to account to +himself for anything so peculiar. + +For a while they went slowly together, not speaking, and without +destination, though Ramsey vaguely took it for granted that Dora was +going somewhere. But she wasn't. They emerged from the part of the +small town closely built about the university and came out upon a bit +of parked land overlooking the river; and here Dora's steps slowed to +an indeterminate halt near a bench beneath a maple tree. + +"I think I'll stay here a while," she said; and as he made no +response, she asked, "Hadn't you better be going back to your 'frat +house' for your dinner? I didn't mean for you to come out of your +way with me; I only wanted to get an answer to my question. You'd +better be running back." + +"Well--" + +He stood irresolute, not sure that he wanted his dinner just then. +It would have amazed him to face the fact deliberately that perhaps +he preferred being with Dora Yocum to eating. However, he faced no +such fact, nor any fact, but lingered. + +"Well--" he said again. + +"You'd better go." + +"I guess I can get my dinner pretty near any time. I don't--" He +had a thought. "Did you--" + +"Did I what?" + +"Did you have your dinner before I met you?" + +"No." + +"Well, aren't you--" + +She shook her head. "I don't want any." + +"Why not?" + +"I don't think people have very much appetite to-day and yesterday," +she said, with the hint of a sad laugh, "all over America." + +"No; I guess that's so." + +"It's too terrible!" she said. "I can't sit and eat when I think +of the ~Lusitania~--of all those poor, poor people strangling in +the water--" + +"No; I guess nobody can eat much, if they think about that." + +"And of what it's going to bring, if we let it," she went on. "As +if this killing weren't enough, we want to add ~our~ killing! Oh, +that's the most terrible thing of all--the thing it makes within us! +Don't you understand?" + +She turned to him appealingly, and he felt queerer than ever. Dusk +had fallen. Where they stood, under the young-leaved maple tree, +there was but a faint lingering of afterglow, and in this mystery her +face glimmered wan and sweet; so that Ramsey, just then, was like one +who discovers an old pan, used in the kitchen, to be made of chased +silver. + +"Well, I don't feel much like dinner right now," he said. "We--we +could sit here awhile on this bench, prob'ly." + + + + + +Chapter XV + +Ramsey kept very few things from Fred Mitchell, and usually his +confidences were immediate upon the occasion of them; but allowed +several weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the +outlines of this adventure. + +"One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred," he said, "I didn't +know what to call her." + +Mr. Mitchell, stretched upon the window seat in their "study," and +looking out over the town street below and the campus beyond the +street, had already thought it tactful to ambush his profound +amusement by turning upon his side, so that his face was toward the +window and away from his companion. "What did you want to call her?" +he inquired in a serious voice. "Names?" + +"No. You know what I mean. I mean I had to just keep callin' her +'you'; and that gets kind of freaky when you're talkin' to anybody +a good while like that. When she'd be lookin' away from me, and I'd +want to start sayin' something to her, you know, why, I wouldn't know +how to get started exactly, without callin' her something. A person +doesn't want to be always startin' off with 'See here,' or things +like that." + +"I don't see why you let it trouble you," said Fred. "From how +you've always talked about her, you had a perfectly handy way to +start off with anything you wanted to say to her." + +"What with?" + +"Why didn't you just say, 'Oh, you Teacher's Pet!' That would--" + +"Get out! What I mean is, she called me 'Ramsey' without any bother; +it seems funny I got stumped every time I started to say 'Dora.' +Someway I couldn't land it, and it certainly would 'a' sounded crazy +to call her 'Miss Yocum' after sittin' in the same room with her +every day from the baby class clear on up through the end of high +school. That ~would~ 'a' made me out an idiot!" + +"What did you call her?" Fred asked. + +"Just nothin' at all. I started to call her something or other a +hundred times, I guess, and then I'd balk. I'd get all ready, and +kind of make a sort of a sound, and then I'd have to quit." + +"She may have thought you had a cold," said Fred, still keeping his +back turned. + +"I expect maybe she did--though I don't know; most of the time she +didn't seem to notice me much, kind of." + +"She didn't?" + +"No. She was too upset, I guess, by what she was thinkin' about." + +"But if it hadn't been for that," Fred suggested, "you mean she'd +have certainly paid more attention to who was sitting on the bench +with her?" + +"Get out! You know how it was. Everybody those few days thought we +were goin' to have war, and she was just sure of it, and it upset +her. Of course most people were a lot more upset by what those +Dutchmen did to the ~Lusitania~ than by the idea of war; and she +seemed to feel as broken up as anybody could be about the +~Lusitania~, but what got her the worst was the notion of her country +wantin' to fight, she said. She really was upset, too, Fred; there +wasn't any puttin' on about it. I guess that ole girl certainly must +have a good deal of feeling, because, doggoned, after we'd been +sittin' there a while if she didn't have to get out her handkerchief! +She kept her face turned away from me--just the same as you're doin' +now to keep from laughin'--but honestly, she cried like somebody at +a funeral. I felt like the darndest fool!" + +"I'm not laughing," said Fred, but he did not prove it by turning so +that his face could be seen. "What did she say?" + +"Oh, she didn't say such an awful lot. She said one kind o' funny +thing though: she said she was sorry she couldn't quite control +herself, but if anybody had to see her cry she minded it less because +it was an old schoolmate. What struck me so kind o' funny about that +is--why, it looks as if she never knew the way I always hated her +so." + +"Yes," said Fred. "It wasn't flattering!" + +"Well, sir, it ~isn't~, kind of," Ramsey agreed, musingly. "It +certainly isn't when you look at it that way." + +"What did you say when she said that?" Fred asked. + +"Nothin'. I started to, but I sort of balked again. Well, we kept +on sitting there, and afterwhile she began to talk again and got kind +of excited about how no war could do anything or anybody any good, +and all war was wicked, no matter what it was about, and nothin' +could be good that was founded on fear and hate, and every war that +ever was fought was always founded on fear and hate. She said if the +Germans wanted to fight us we ought to go to meet them and tell them +we wouldn't fight." + +"What did you say?" + +"Nothin'. I kind o' started to--but what's the use? She's got that +in her head. Besides, how are you goin' to argue about a thing with +a person that's crying about it? I tell you, Fred, I guess we got to +admit, after all, that ole girl certainly must have a lost of heart +about her, anyway. There may not be much ~fun~ to her--though of +course I wouldn't know hardly any way to tell about that--but there +couldn't be hardly any doubt she's got a lot of feeling. Well, and +then she went on and said old men made wars, but didn't fight; they +left the fighting to the boys, and the suffering to the boy's +mothers." + +"Yes!" Fred exclaimed, and upon that he turned free of mirth for the +moment. "That's the woman of it, I guess. Send the old men to do +the fighting! For the matter of that, I guess my father'd about a +thousand times go himself than see me and my brothers go; but +Father's so fat he can't stoop! You got to be able to stoop to dig +a trench, I guess! Well, suppose we sent our old men up against +those Dutchmen; the Dutchmen would just kill the old men, and then +come after the boys anyway, and the boys wouldn't be ready, and +they'd get killed, too; and then there wouldn't be anybody but the +Dutchmen left, and that'd be one fine world, wouldn't it?" + +"Yes," said Ramsey. "Course I thought of that." + +"Did you tell her?" + +"No." + +"What did you say?" + +"Nothin'. I couldn't get started anyway, but, besides, what was the +use? But she didn't want the old men to go; she didn't want anybody +to go." + +"What did she want the country to do?" Fred asked, impatiently. + +"Just what it has been doin', I suppose. Just let things simmer +down, and poke along, and let them do what they like to us." + +"I guess so!" said Fred. "Then, afterwhile, when they get some +free time on their hands, they'll come over and make it ~really~ +interesting for us, because they know we won't do anything but talk. +Yes, I guess the way things are settling down ought to suit Dora. +There isn't goin' to be any war." + +"She was pretty sure there was, though," Ramsey said, thoughtfully. + +"Oh, of course she was then. We all thought so those few days." + +"No. She said she thought it prob'ly wouldn't come right away, but +now it was almost sure to come sometime. She said our telegrams and +all the talk and so much feeling and everything showed her that the +war thought that was always ~in~ people somewhere had been stirred up +so it would go on and on. She said she knew from the way she felt +herself about the ~Lusitania~ that a feeling like that in her would +never be absolutely wiped out as long as she lived. But she said her +other feeling about the horribleness of war taught her to keep the +first feeling from breaking out, but with other people it wouldn't; +and even if war didn't break out right then, it would always be ready +to, all over the country, and sometime it would, though she was goin' +to do her share to fight it, herself, as long as she could stand. +She asked me wouldn't I be one of the ones to help her." + +He paused, and after a moment Fred asked, "Well? What did you say +to that?" + +"Nothin'. I started to, but--" + +Again Fred thought it tactful to turn and look out the window, while +the agitation of his shoulders betrayed him." + +"Go on and laugh! Well, so we stayed there quite a while, but before +we left she got kind of more like everyday, you know, the way people +do. It was half-past nine when we walked back in town, and I was +commencin' to feel kind of hungry, so I asked her if she wasn't, and +she sort of laughed and seemed to be ashamed of it, as if it were a +disgrace or something, but she said she guessed she was; so I left +her by that hedge of lilacs near the observatory and went on over to +the 'Teria and the fruit store, and got some stuffed eggs and olives +and half-a-dozen peanut butter sandwiches and a box o' strawberries +--kind of girl-food, you know--and went on back there, and we ate the +stuff up. So then she said she was afraid she'd taken me away from +my dinner and made me a lot of trouble, and so on, and she was sorry, +and she told me good-night--" + +"What did you say then?" + +"Noth-- Oh, shut up! So then she skipped out to her Dorm, and I +came on home." + +"When did you see her next, Ramsey?" + +"I haven't seen her next," said Ramsey. "I haven't seen her at all +--not to speak to. I saw her on Main Street twice since then, but +both times she was with some other girls, and they were across the +street, and I couldn't tell if she was lookin' at me--I kind of +thought not--so I thought it might look sort o' nutty to bow to her +if she wasn't, so I didn't." + +"And you didn't tell her you wouldn't be one of the ones to help her +with her pacifism and anti-war stuff and all that?" + +"No. I started to, but-- Shut up!" + +Fred sat up, giggling. "So she thinks you ~will~ help her. You +didn't say anything at all, and she must think that means she +converted you. Why didn't you speak up?" + +"Well, ~I~ wouldn't argue with her," said Ramsey. Then, after a +silence, he seemed to be in need of sympathetic comprehension. "It +~was~ kind o' funny, though, wasn't it?" he said, appealingly. + +"What was?" + +"The whole business." + +"What 'whole bus'--" + +"Oh, get out! Her stoppin' me, and me goin' pokin' along with her, +and her--well, her crying and everything, and me being around with +her while she felt so upset, I mean. It seems--well, it does seem +kind o' funny to me." + +"Why does it?" Fred inquired, preserving his gravity. "Why should +it seem funny to you?" + +"I don't mean funny like something's funny you laugh at," Ramsey +explained laboriously. "I mean funny like something that's out of +the way, and you wonder how it ever happened to happen. I mean it +seems funny I'd ever be sittin' there on a bench with that ole girl +I never spoke to in my life or had anything to do with, and talkin' +about the United States goin' to war. What we were talkin' about, +why, that seems just as funny as the rest of it. Lookin' back to our +class picnic, f'r instance, second year of high school, that day I +jumped in the creek after-- Well, you know, it was when I started +makin' a fool of myself over a girl. Thank goodness, I got ~that~ +out o' my system; it makes me just sick to look back on those days +and think of the fool things I did, and all I thought about that +girl. Why, she-- Well, I've got old enough to see now she was just +about as ordinary a girl as there ever was, and if I saw her now I +wouldn't even think she was pretty; I'd prob'ly think she was sort of +loud-lookin'. Well, what's passed is past, and it isn't either here +nor there. What I started to say was this: that the way it begins +to look to me, it looks as if nobody can tell in this life a darn +thing about what's goin' to happen, and the things that do happen are +the very ones you'd swear were the last that could. I mean--you look +back to that day of the picnic--my! but I was a rube then--well, I +mean you look back to that day, and what do you suppose I'd have +thought then if somebody'd told me the time would ever come when I'd +be 'way off here at college sittin' on a bench with Dora Yocum--with +~Dora Yocum~, in the first place--and her crying, and both of us +talking about the United States goin' to war with Germany! Don't it +seem pretty funny to you, Fred, too?" + +"But as near as I can make out," Fred said, "that isn't what +happened." + +"Why isn't it?" + +"You say 'and both us talking' and so on. As near as I can make out, +~you~ didn't say anything at all." + +"Well, I didn't--much," Ramsey admitted, and returned to his point +with almost pathetic persistence. "But doesn't it seem kind o' funny +to you, Fred?" + +"Well, I don't know." + +"It does to me," Ramsey insisted. "It certainly does to me." + +"Yes," said Fred cruelly. "I've noticed you said so, but it don't +look any funnier than you do when you say it." + +Suddenly he sent forth a startling shout. "~Wow!~ You're as red as +a blushing beet." + +"I am not!" + +"Y'are!" shouted Fred. "Wow! The ole woman-hater's got the flushes! +Oh, look at the pretty posy!" + +And, jumping down from the window seat, he began to dance round +his much perturbed comrade, bellowing. Ramsey bore with him for +a moment, then sprang upon him; they wrestled vigorously, broke a +chair, and went to the floor with a crash that gave the chandelier +in Mrs. Meig's parlour, below, an atack of jingles. + +"You let me up!" Fred gasped. + +"You take your solemn oath to shut up? You goin' to swear it?" + +"All right. I give my solemn oath," said Fred; and they rose, +arranging their tousled attire. + +"Well," said Fred, "when you goin' to call on her?" + +"You look here!" Ramsey approached him dangerously. "You just gave +me your sol--" + +"I beg!" Fred cried, retreating. "I mean, aside from all that, why, +I just thought maybe after such an evening you'd feel as a gentleman +you ought to go and ask about her health." + +"Now, see here--" + +"No, I mean it; you ought to," Fred insisted, earnestly, and as +his roommate glared at him with complete suspicion, he added, in +explanation. "You ought to go next Caller's Night, and send in your +card, and say you felt you ought to ask if she'd suffered any from +the night air. Even if you couldn't manage to say that, you ought +to start to say it, anyhow, because you-- Keep off o' me! I'm only +tryin' to do you a good turn, ain't I?" + +"You save your good turns for yourself," Ramsey growled, still +advancing upon him. + +But the insidious Mitchell, evading him, fled to the other end of +the room, picked up his cap, and changed his manner. "Come on, ole +bag o' beans, let's be on our way to the 'frat house'; it's time. +We'll call this all off." + +"You better!" Ramsey warned him; and they trotted out together. + +But as they went along, Fred took Ramsey's arm confidentially, and +said, "Now, honestly, Ram, ole man, when ~are~ you goin' to--" + +Ramsey was still red. "You look here! Just say one more word--" + +"Oh, ~no~," Fred expostulated. "I mean ~seriously~, Ramsey. +Honestly, I mean seriously. Aren't you seriously goin' to call on +her some Caller's Night?" + +"No, I'm not!" + +"But why not?" + +"Because I don't want to." + +"Well, seriously, Ramsey, there's only one Caller's Night before +vacation, and so I suppose it hardly will be worth while; but I +expect you'll see quite a little of her at home this summer?" + +"No, I won't. I won't see her at all. She isn't goin' to be home +this summer, and I wouldn't see anything of her if she was." + +"Where's she goin' to be." + +"In Chicago." + +"She is?" said Fred, slyly. "When'd she tell you?" + +Ramsey turned on him. "You look out! She didn't tell me. I just +happened to see in the ~Bulletin~ she's signed up with some other +girls to go and do settlement work in Chicago. Anybody could see +it. It was printed out plain. You could have seen it just as well +as I could, if you'd read the ~Bulletin~." + +"Oh," said Fred. + +"Now look here--" + +"Good heavens! Can't I even say 'oh'?" + +"It depends on the way you say it." + +"I'll be careful," Fred assured him, earnestly. "I really and +honestly don't mean to get you excited about all this, Ramsey. I can +see myself you haven't changed from your old opinion of Dora Yocum a +bit. I was only tryin' to get a little rise out of you for a minute, +because of course, seriously, why, I can see you hate her just the +same as you always did." + +"Yes," said Ramsey, disarmed and guileless in the face of diplomacy. +"I only told you about all this, Fred, because it seemed--well, it +seemed so kind o' funny to me." + +Fred affected not to hear. "What did you say, Ramsey?" + +Ramsey looked vaguely disturbed. "I said--why, I said it all seemed +kind o'--" He paused, then repeated plaintively: "Well, to me, it +all seemed kind o'--kind o' funny." + +"What did?" Fred inquired, but as he glanced in seeming naivete at +his companion, something he saw in the latter's eye warned him, and +suddenly Fred thought it would be better to run. + +Ramsey chased him all the way to the "frat house." + + + + + +Chapter XVI + +Ramsey was not quite athlete enough for any of the 'varsity teams; +neither was he an antagonist safely encountered, whether in play or +in earnest, and during the next few days he taught Fred Mitchell to +be cautious. The chaffer learned that his own agility could not +save him from Ramsey, and so found it wiser to contain an +effervescence which sometimes threatened to burst him. Ramsey as a +victim was a continuous temptation, he was so good-natured and yet +so furious. + +After Commencement, when the roommates had gone home, Mr. Mitchell's +caution extended over the long sunshiny months of summer vacation; +he broke it but once and then in well-advised safety, for the +occasion was semi-public. The two were out for a stroll on a July +Sunday afternoon; and up and down the street young couples lolled +along, young families and baby carriages straggled to and from the +houses of older relatives, and the rest of the world of that growing +city was rocking and fanning itself on its front veranda. + +"Here's a right pretty place, isn't it, Ramsey? don't you think?" +Fred remarked innocently, as they were passing a lawn of short- +clipped, bright green grass before a genial-looking house, fresh in +white paint and cool in green-and-white awnings. A broad veranda, +well populated just now, crossed the front of the house; fine trees +helped the awnings to give comfort against the sun; and Fred's +remark was warranted. Nevertheless, he fell under the suspicion +of his companion, who had begun to evince some nervousness before +Fred spoke. + +"What place do you mean?" + +"The Yocum place," said Mr. Mitchell. "I hear the old gentleman's +mighty prosperous these days. They keep things up to the mark, +don't they, Ramsey?" + +"I don't know whether they do or whether they don't," Ramsey +returned shortly. + +Fred appeared to muse regretfully. "It looks kind of ~empty~ now, +though," he said, "with only Mr. and Mrs. Yocum and their three +married daughters, and eight or nine children on the front porch!" + +"You wait till I get you where they can't see us!" Ramsey warned +him, firecely. + +"You can't do it!" said Fred, manifesting triumph. "We'll both stop +right here in plain sight of the whole Yocum family connection till +you promise not to touch me." + +And he halted, leaning back implacably against the Yocum's iron +fence. Ramsey was scandalized. + +"Come on!" he said, hoarsely. "Don't stop ~here~!" + +"I will, and if you go on alone I'll yell at you. You got to stand +right here with all of 'em lookin' at you until--" + +"I promise! My heavens, come ~on~!" + +Fred consented to end the moment of agony; and for the rest of the +summer found it impossible to persuade Ramsey to pass that house +in his company. "I won't do it!" Ramsey told him. "Your word of +honour means nothin' to me; you're liable to do anything that comes +into your head, and I'm gettin' old enough to not get a reputation +for bein' seen with people that act the idiot on the public streets. +No, sir; we'll walk around the block--at least, we will if you're +goin' with ~me~!" + +And to Fred's delight, though he concealed it, they would make this +detour. + +The evening after their return to the university both were busy +with their trunks and various orderings and disorderings of their +apartment, but Fred several times expressed surprise that his +roommate should be content to remain at home; and finally Ramsey +comprehended the implications. Mrs. Meigs's chandelier immediately +jingled with the shock of another crash upon the floor above. + +"You let me up!" Fred commanded thickly, his voice muffled by the +pile of flannels, sweaters, underwear, and raincoats wherein his +head was being forced to burrow. "You let me up, darn you! ~I~ +didn't say anything." And upon his release he complained that the +attack was unprovoked. "I didn't say anything on earth to even +hint you might want to go out and look around to see if anybody +in particular had got back to college yet. I didn't even mention +the ~name~ of Dora Yo-- Keep off o' me! My goodness, but you are +sensitive!" + +As a matter of fact, neither of them saw Dora until the first meeting +of the Lumen, whither they went as sophomores to take their pleasure +in the agony of freshmen debaters. Ramsey was now able to attend the +Lumen, not with complacence but at least without shuddering over the +recollection of his own spectacular first appearance there. He had +made subsequent appearances, far from brilliant yet not disgraceful, +and as a spectator, at least, he usually felt rather at his ease in +the place. It cannot be asserted, however, that he appeared entirely +at his ease this evening after he had read the "Programme" chalked +upon the large easel blackboard beside the chairman's desk. Three +"Freshmen Debates" were announced, and a "Sophomore Oration," this +last being followed by the name, "D. Yocum, '18." Ramsey made +immediate and conspicuous efforts to avoid sitting next to his +roommate, but was not so adroit as to be successful. However, Fred +was merciful: the fluctuations of his friend's complexion were an +inspiration more to pity than to badinage. + +The three debates all concerned the "Causes of the War in Europe," +and honours appeared to rest with a small and stout, stolidly +"pro-German" girl debater, who had brought with her and translated +at sight absa-loot proofs (so she called them), printed in German, +that Germany had been attacked by Belgium at the low instigation of +the envious English. Everybody knew it wasn't true; but she made an +impression and established herself as a debater, especially as her +opponent was quite confounded by her introduction of printed matter. + +When the debates and the verdicts were concluded, the orator +appeared, and Fred's compassion extended itself so far that he even +refrained from looking inquisitively at the boy in the seat next +to his; but he made one side wager, mentally--that if Ramsey had +consented to be thoroughly confidential just then, he would have +confessed to feeling kind o' funny. + +Dora was charmingly dressed, and she was pale; but those notable +eyelashes of hers were all the more notable against her pallor. And +as she spoke with fire, it was natural that her colour should come +back quite flamingly and that her eyes should flash in shelter of +the lashes. "The Christian Spirit and Internationalism" was her +subject, yet she showed no meek sample of a Christian Spirit herself +when she came to attakcing war-makers generally, as well as all +those "half-developed tribesmen," and "victims of herd instinct" who +believed that war might ever be justified under any circumstances +f atrocity. She was eloquent truly, and a picture of grace and +girlish dignity, even when she was most vigorous. Nothing could +have been more militant than her denunciation of militancy. + +"She's an actual wonder," Fred said, when the two had got back to +Mrs. Meigs's, afterward. "Don't you look at me like that: I'm +talkin' about her as a public character, and there's nothin' +personal about it. You let me alone." + +Ramsey was not clear as to his duty. "Well--" + +"If any person makes a public speech," Fred protested, "I got a +perfect right to discuss 'em, no matter what you think of 'em"--and +he added hastily--"or ~don't~ think of 'em!" + +"Look here--" + +"Good heavens!" Fred exclaimed. "You aren't expecting to interfere +with me if I say anything about that little fat Werder girl that +argued for Germany, are you? Or any of the other speakers? I got +a right to talk about 'em just as public speakers, haven't I? Well, +what I say is: Dora Yocum as an orator is just an actual perfect +wonder. Got any objections?" + +"N-no." + +"All right then." Fred settled himself upon the window seat with a +pipe, and proceeded, "There's something about her, when she stands +there, she stands so straight and knows just what she's up to, and +everything, why, there's something about her makes the cold chills +go down your spine--I mean ~my~ spine, not yours particularly! You +sit down--I mean ~anybody's~ spine, doggone it!" And as Ramsey +increased the manifestations of his suspicions, lifting a tennis +racket over the prostrate figure, "Oh, murder," Fred said, +resignedly. "All right, we'll change the subject. That fat little +Werder cutie made out a pretty good case for Germany, didn't she?" + +Ramsey tossed the racket away, disposed himself in an easy chair with +his feet upon the table, and presently chuckled. "You remember the +time I had the fuss with Wesley Bender, back in the ole school days?" + +"Yep." + +"All the flubdub this Werder girl got off to-night puts me in mind +of the way I talked that day. I can remember it as well as anything! +Wesley kept yelpin' that whoever mentioned a lady's name in a public +place was a pup, and of course I didn't want to hit him for that; +a boy's got a reg'lar instinct for tryin' to make out he's on the +right side in a scrap, and he'll always try to do something, or say +something, or he'll get the other boy to say someting to make it look +as if the other boy was in the wrong and began the trouble. So I +told poor ole Wes that my father spoke my mother's name in a public +place whenever he wanted to, and I dared him to say my father was a +pup. And all so on. A boy startin' up a scrap, why, half the time +he'll drag his father and mother if there's any chance to do it. +He'll fix up some way so he can say, 'Well, that's just the same as +if you called my father and mother a fool,' or something like that. +Then, afterward, he can claim he was scrappin' because he had to +defend his father and mother, and of course he'll more than half +believe it himself. + +"Well, you take a Government--it's only just some ~men~, the way +I see it, and if they're goin' to start some big trouble like this +war, why, of course they'll play just about the same ole boy trick, +because it's instinct to do it, just the same for a man as it is for +a boy--or else the principle's just the same, or something. Well, +anyhow, if you want to know who started a scrap and worked it up, +you got to forget all the ~talk~ there is about it, and all what +each side ~says~, and just look at two things: Who was fixed for +it first, or thought they were, and who hit first? When you get +the answer to those two questions everything's settled about all +this being 'attacked' business. Both sides, just the same as boys, +they'll both claim they ~had~ to fight; but if you want to know +which one ~did~ have to, why forget all the arguing and don't take +your eye off just what ~happened~. As near as I can make out, this +war began with Germany and Austria startin' in to wipe out two +little countries; Austria began shootin' up Serbia, and Germany +began shootin' up Belgium. I don't need to notice any more than +that, myself--all the Werder girls in the country can debate their +heads off, they can't change what happened and they can't excuse +it, either." + +He was silent, appearing to feel that he had concluded conclusively, +and the young gentleman on the window seat, after staring at him for +several moments of genuine thoughtfulness, was gracious enough to +observe, "Well, ole Ram, you may be a little slow in class, but when +you think things out with yourself you do show signs of something +pretty near like real horse-sense sometimes. Why don't you ever say +anything like that to--to some of your pacifist friends?" + +"What do you mean? Who you talkin' about? Whose 'pacifist +friends'?" + +"See here!" Fred exclaimed, as Ramsey seemed about to rise. "You +keep sitting just where you are, and don't look at me out of the side +of your eye like that--pretendin' you're a bad horse. I'm ~really~ +serious now, and you listen to me. I don't think argufying and +debating like that little Fraulein Werder's does much harm. She's +a right nifty young rolypoly, by the way, though you didn't notice, +of course." + +"Why didn't I?" Ramsey demanded, sharply. "Why didn't I notice?" + +"Oh, nothing. But, as I was saying, I don't think that sort of talk +does much harm: everybody knows it goes on among the pro-Germans, +and it's all hot air, anyhow. But I think Linski's sort of talk +does do harm, prob'ly among people that don't know much; and what's +more, I think Dora Yocum's does some, too. Well, you hit Linski in +the snoot, so what are you-- Sit still! My lord! You don't think +I'm askin' you to go and hit Dora, do you? I mean: Aren't you ever +goin' to talk to her about it and tell her what's what?" + +"Oh, you go on to bed!" + +"No, I'm in earnest," Fred urged. "Honestly, aren't you ever goin' +to?" + +"How could I do anything like that?" Ramsey demanded explosively. +"I never see her--to speak to, that is. I prob'ly won't happen to +have another talk with her, or anything, all the time we're in +college." + +"No," Fred admitted, "I suppose not. Of course, if you did, then +you would give her quite a talking-to, just the way you did the +other time, wouldn't you?" But upon that, another resumption of +physical violence put an end to the conversation. + + + + + +Chapter XVII + +Throughout the term Ramsey's calculation of probabilities against +the happening of another interview with Dora seemed to be well +founded, but at the beginning of the second "semester" he found her +to be a fellow member of a class in biology. More than that, this +class had every week a two-hour session in the botanical laboratory, +where the structure of plants was studied under microscopic +dissection. The students worked in pairs, a special family of +plants being assigned to each couple; and the instructor selected +the couples with an eye to combinations of the quick with the slow. +D. Yocum and R. Milholland (the latter in a strange state of mind +and complexion) were given two chairs, but only one desk and one +microscope. Their conversation was strictly botanical. + +Thenceforth it became the most pressing care of Ramsey's life to +prevent his roommate from learning that there was any conversation +at all, even botanical. Fortunately, Fred was not taking the +biological courses, though he appeared to be taking the sentimental +ones with an astonishing thoroughness; and sometimes, to Fred's +hilarious delight, Ramsey attempted to turn the tables and rally +him upon whatever last affair seemed to be engaging his fancy. +The old Victorian and pre-Victorian ~blague~ word "petticoat" had +been revived in Fred's vocabulary, and in others, as "skirt." The +lightsome sprig was hourly to be seen, even when university rulings +forbade, dilly-dallying giddily along the campus paths or the town +sidewalks with some new and pretty Skirt. And when Ramsey tried to +fluster him about such a matter Fred would profess his ardent love +for the new lady in shouts and impromptu song. Nothing could be done +to him, and Ramsey, utterly unable to defend his own sensibilities +in like manner, had always to retire in bafflement. Sometimes he +would ponder upon the question thus suggested: Why couldn't he do +this sort of thing, since Fred could? But he never discovered a +satisfying answer. + +Ramsey's watchfulness was so careful (lest he make some impulsive +admission in regard to the botanical laboratory, for instance) that +Mr. Mitchell's curiosity gradually became almost quiescent; but there +arrived a day in February when it was piqued into the liveliest +activity. It was Sunday, and Fred, dressing with a fastidiousness +ever his daily habit, noticed that Ramsey was exhibiting an unusual +perplexity about neckties. + +"Keep the black one on," Fred said, volunteering the suggestion, as +Ramsey muttered fiercely at a mirror. "It's in better taste for +church, anyhow. You're going to church, aren't you?" + +"Yes. Are you?" + +"No. I've got a luncheon engagement." + +"Well, you could go to church first, couldn't you? You better; +you've got a lot of church absences against you." + +"Then one more won't hurt. No church in mine this morning, thanks! +G'by, ole sox; see you at the 'frat house' for dinner." + +He went forth, whistling syncopations, and began a brisk trudge into +the open country. There was a professor's daughter who also was not +going to church that morning; and she lived a little more than three +miles beyond the outskirts of the town. Unfortunately, as the +weather was threatening, all others of her family abandoned the idea +of church that day, and Fred found her before a cozy fire, but +surrounded by parents, little brothers, and big sisters. The +professor was talkative; Fred's mind might have been greatly +improved, but with a window in range he preferred a melancholy +contemplation of the snow, which had begun to fall in quantity. The +professor talked until luncheon, throughout luncheon, and was well +under way to fill the whole afternoon with talk, when Fred, repenting +all the errors of his life, got up to go. + +Heartily urged to remain, for there was now something just under a +blizzard developing, he said No; he had a great deal of "cirriculum +work" to get done before the morrow, and passed from the sound of the +professor's hospitable voice and into the storm. He had a tedious +struggle against the wind and thickening snow, but finally came in +sight of the town, not long before dark. Here the road led down into +a depression, and, lifting his head as he began the slight ascent on +the other side, Fred was aware of two figures outlined upon the low +ridge before him. They were dimmed by the driving snow and their +backs were toward him, but he recognized them with perfect assurance. +They were Dora Yocum and Ramsey Milholland. + +They were walking so slowly that their advance was almost +imperceptible, but it could be seen that Dora was talking with great +animation; and she was a graceful thing, thus gesticulating, in her +long, slim fur coat with the white snow frosting her brown fur cap. +Ramsey had his hands deep in his overcoat pockets and his manner was +wholly that of an audience. + +Fred murmured to himself, "'What did you say to her?' 'Nothin'. I +started to, but'--" Then he put on a burst of speed and passed them, +sweeping off his hat with operatic deference, yet hurrying by as if +fearful of being thought a killjoy if he lingered. He went to the +"frat house," found no one downstairs, and established himself in a +red leather chair to smoke and ruminate merrily by a great fire in +the hall. + +Half an hour later Ramsey entered, stamped off the snow, hung up his +hat and coat, and sat himself down defiantly in the red leather chair +on the other side of the fireplace. + +"Well, go on," he said. "Commence!" + +"Not at all!" Fred returned, amiably. "Fine spring weather to-day. +Lovely to see all the flowers and the birds as we go a-strolling by. +The little bobolinks--" + +"You look here!" That's the only walk I ever took with her in my +life. I mean by--by asking her and her saying she would and so +forth. That other time just sort of happened, and you know it. Well, +the weather wasn't just the best in the world, maybe, but she's an +awful conscientious girl and once she makes an engagement--" + +"Why, of course," Fred finished for him, "She'd be too pious to break +it just on account of a mere little blizzard or anything. Wonder how +the weather will be next Sunday?" + +"I don't know and I don't care," said Ramsey. "You don't suppose I +asked her to go ~again~, do you?" + +"Why not?" + +"Well, for one thing, you don't suppose I want her to think I'm a +perfect fool, do you?" + +Fred mused a moment or two, looking at the fire. "What was the +lecture?" he asked, mildly. + +"What lecture?" + +"She seemed to me to be--" + +"That wasn't lecturing; she was just--" + +"Just what?" + +"Well; she thinks war for the United States is coming closer and +closer--" + +"But it isn't." + +"Well, she thinks so, anyhow," said Ramsey, "and she's all broken up +about it. Of course she thinks we oughtn't to fight and she's trying +to get everybody else she can to keep working against it. She isn't +goin' home again next summer, she's goin' back to that settlement +work in Chicago and work there among those people against our goin' +to war; and here in college she wants to get everybody she can to talk +against it, and--" + +"What did you say?" Fred asked, and himself supplied the reply: +"Nothin'. I started to, but--" + +Ramsey got up. "Now look here! You know the 'frat' passed a rule +that if we broke any more furniture in this house with our scrappin' +we'd both be fined the cost of repairs and five dollars apiece. +Well, I can afford five dollars this month better than you can, +and--" + +"I take it back!" Fred interposed, hastily. "But you just listen to +me; you look out--letting her think you're on her side like that." + +"I don't--" + +"You ~don't?~" + +Ramsey looked dogged. "I'm not goin' around always arguin' about +everything when arguin' would just hurt people's feelings about +something they're all excited about, and wouldn't do a bit o' good +in the world--and you know yourself just ~talk~ hardly ever settles +anything--so I don't--" + +"Aha!" Fred cried. "I thought so! Now you listen to me--" + +"I won't. I--" + +But at this moment they were interrupted. Someone slyly opened the +door, and a snowball deftly thrown from without caught Ramsey upon +the back of the neck and head, where it flattened and displayed +itself as an ornamental star. Shouting fiercely, both boys sprang +up, ran to the door, were caught there in a barrage of snowballs, +ducked through it in sipte of all damage, charged upon a dozen +besweatered figures awaiting them and began a mad battle in the +blizzard. Some of their opponents treacherously joined them, and +turned upon the ambushers. + +In the dusk the merry conflict waged up and down the snow-covered +lawn, and the combatants threw and threw, or surged back and forth, +or clenched and toppled over into snow banks, yet all coming to chant +an extemporized battle-cry in chorus, even as they fought the most +wildly. + +"Who? Who? Who?" they chanted. "Who? Who? ~Who~ says there ain't +goin' to be no war?" + + + + + +Chapter XVIII + +So everywhere over the country, that winter of 1916, there were +light-hearted boys skylarking--at college, or on the farms; and in +the towns the young machinists snowballed one another as they came +from the shops; while on this Sunday of the "frat" snow fight probably +several hundreds of thousands of youthful bachelors, between the two +oceans, went walking, like Ramsey, each with a girl who could forget +the weather. Yet boys of nineteen and in the twenties were not +light-hearted all the time that winter and that spring and that +summer. Most of them knew long, thoughtful moments, as Ramsey did, +when they seemed to be thinking not of girls or work or play--nor +of anything around them, but of some more vital matter or prospect. +And at such times they were grave, but not ungentle. + +For the long strain was on the country; underneath all its outward +seeming of things going on as usual there shook a deep vibration, +like the air trembling to vast organ pipes in diapasons too profound +to reach the ear as sound: one felt, not heard, thunder in the +ground under one's feet. The succession of diplomatic Notes came to +an end after the torpedoing of the ~Sussex~; and at last the tricky +ruling Germans in Berlin gave their word to murder no more, and +people said, "This means peace for America, and all is well for us," +but everybody knew in his heart that nothing was well for us, that +there was no peace. + +They said "All is well," while that thunder in the ground never +ceased--it grew deeper and heavier till all America shook with it +and it became slowly audible as the voice of the old American soil +wherein lay those who had defended it aforetime, a soil that bred +those who would defend it again, for it was theirs; and the meaning +of it--Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--was theirs, and +theirs to defend. And they knew they would defend it, and that more +than the glory of a Nation was at stake. The Freedom of Man was at +stake. So, gradually, the sacred thunder reached the ears of the +young men and gave them those deep moments that came to them whether +they sat in the classroom or the counting-room, or walked with the +plow, or stood to the machine, or behind the ribbon counter. Thus +the thunder shook them and tried them and slowly came into their +lives and changed everything for them. + +Hate of the Germans was not bred; but a contempt for what Germany +had shown in lieu of a national heart; a contempt as mighty and +profound as the resolve that the German way and the German will +should prevail in America, nor in any country of the world that +would be free. And when the German Kaiser laid his command upon +America, that no American should take his ship upon the free seas, +death being the penalty for any who disobeyed, then the German Kaiser +got his answer, not only to this new law he had made for us, but to +many other thoughts of his. Yet the answer was for some time +delayed. + +There was a bitter Sunday, and its bitterness went everywhere, to +every place in the whole world that held high and generous hearts. +Its bitterness came to the special meeting in the "Frat hall," where +there were hearts, indeed, of that right sort, and one of them became +vocal in its bitterness. This was the heart of Fred Mitchell, who +was now an authority, being president of the Junior Class, chairman +of the Prom Committee, and other things pleasant to be and to live +for at his age. + +"For me, Brothers," he said, "I'd think I'd a great deal rather +have been shot through the head than heard the news from Washington +to-day! I tell you, I've spent the meanest afternoon I ever did in +my life, and I guess it's been pretty much the same with all of us. +The worst of it is, it looks as though there isn't a thing in the +world we can do. The country's been betrayed by a few blatherskites +and boneheads that had the power to do it, and all we can do we've +just got to stand it. But there's some Americans that aren't just +standing it, and I want to tell you a lot of 'em are men from the +universities, just like us. They're ~over there~ right now; they +haven't said much--they just packed up and went. They're flying for +France and for England and for Canada; they're fighting under every +flag on the right side of the Western Front; and they're driving +ambulances at Verdun and ammunition trucks at the Somme. Well, +there's going to be a lot more American boys on all these jobs mighty +soon, on account of what those men did in Congress to-day. If they +won't give us a chance to do something under our own flag, then we'll +have to go and do it under some other flag; and I want to tell you +I'm one that's going to ~go!~ I'll stick it out in college up to +Easter, and then if there's still no chance to go under the Stars and +Stripes I'll maybe have to go under the flag my great-great- +randfather fought against in 1776, but, anyhow, I'll ~go!~" + +It was in speaking to Ramsey of this declaration that Dora said Fred +was a "dangerous firebrand." They were taking another February walk, +but the February was February, 1917; and the day was dry and sunny. +"It's just about a year ago," she said. + +"What is?" Ramsey asked. + +"That first time we went walking. Don't you remember?" + +"Oh, ~that~ day? Yes, I remember it was snowing." + +"And so cold and blowy!" she added. "It seems a long time ago. +I like walking with you, Ramsey. You're so quiet and solid--I've +always felt I could talk to you just anyhow I pleased, and you +wouldn't mind. I'll miss these walks with you when we're out of +college." + +He chuckled. "That's funny!" + +"Why?" + +"Because we've only taken four besides this: two last year, and +another week before last, and another last week. This is only the +fifth." + +"Good gracious! Is that all? It seemed to me we'd gone ever so +often!" She laughed. "I'm afraid you won't think that seems much +as if I'd liked going, but I really have. And, by the way, you've +never called on me at all. Perhaps it's because I've forgotten to +ask you." + +"Oh, no," Ramsey said, and scuffed his shoes on the path, presently +explaining rather huskily that he "never ~was~ much of a caller"; +and he added, "or anything." + +"Well, you must come if you ever care to," she said, with a big- +sister graciousness. "The Dorm chaperon sits there, of course, but +ours is a jolly one and you'd like her. You've probably met her-- +Mrs. Hustings?--when you've called on other girls at our old shop." + +"No," said Ramsey. "I never was much of a--" He paused, fearing +that he might be repeating himself, and too hastily amended his +intention. "I never liked any girl enough to go and call on her." + +"Ramsey Milholland!" she cried. "Why, when we were in school half +the room used to be talking about how you and that pretty Milla--" + +"No, no!" Ramsey protested, again too hurriedly. "I never called on +her. We just went walking." + +A moment later his colour suddenly became fiery. "I don't mean--I +mean--" he stammered. "It was walking, of course--I mean we did go +out walking but it wasn't walking like--like this." He concluded +with a fit of coughing which seemed to rack him. + +Dora threw back her head and laughed delightfully. "Don't you +apologize!" she said. "~I~ didn't when I said it seemed to me that +we've gone walking so often, when in reality it's only four or five +times altogether. I think I can explain, though: I thhink it came +partly from a feeling I have that I can rely on you--that you're a +good, solid, reliable sort of person. I remember from the time we +were little children, you always had a sort of worried, honest look +in school; and you used to make a dent in your forehead--you meant +it for a frown--whenever I caught your eye. You hated me so +honestly, and you were so honestly afraid I wouldn't see it!" + +"Oh, no--no--" + +"Oh, yes--yes!" she laughed, then grew serious. "My feeling about +you--that you were a person to be relied on, I mean--I think it began +that evening in our freshman year, after the ~Lusitania~, when I +stopped you on campus and you went with me, and I couldn't help +crying, and you were so nice and quiet. I hardly realized then that +it was the first time we'd ever really talked together--of course ~I~ +did all the talking!--and yet we'd known each other so many years. +I thought of it afterward. But what gave me such a different view +of you, I'd always thought you were one of that truculent sort of +boys, always just bursting for a fight; but you showed me you'd +really never had a fight in your life and hated fighting, and that +you sympathized with my feeling about war." She stopped speaking to +draw in her breath with a sharp sigh. "Ah, don't you remember what +I've told you all along? How it keeps coming closer and closer--and +now it's almost here! Isn't it ~unthinkable?~ And what can we do +to stop it, we poor few who feel that we ~must~ stop it?" + +"Well--" Ramsey began uncomfortably. "Of course I--I--" + +"You can't do much," she said. "I know. None of us can. What can +any little group do? There are so few of us among the undergraduates +--and only one in the whole faculty. All the rest are for war. But +we mustn't give up; we must never feel afterward that we left anything +undone; we must fight to the last breath!" + +"'Fight'?" he repeated wonderingly, then chuckled. + +"Oh, as a figure of speech," she said, impatiently. "Our language +is full of barbaric figures left over from the dark ages. But, oh, +Ramsey!"--she touched his sleeve--"I've heard that Fred Mitchell is +saying that he's going to Canada after Easter, to try to get into the +Canadian aviation corps. If it's true, he's a dangerous firebrand, +I think. Is it true?" + +"I guess so. He's been talking that way some." + +"But why do you ~let~ him talk that way?" she cried. "He's your +roommate; surely you have more influence with him than anybody else +has. Couldn't you--" + +He shook his head slowly, while upon his face the faintly indicated +modellings of a grin hinted of an inner laughter at some +surreptitious thought. "Well, you know, Fred says himself sometimes, +I don't seem to be much of a talker exactly!" + +"I know. But don't you see? That sort of thing is contagious. +Others will think they ought to go if he does; he's popular and +quite a leader. Can't you do anything with him?" + +She waited for him to answer. "Can't you?" she insisted. + +The grin had disappeared, and Ramsey grew red again. He seemed to +wish to speak, to heave with speech that declined to be spoken and +would not rouse up from his inwards. Finally he uttered words. + +"I--I--well, I--" + +"Oh, I know," she said. "A man--or a boy!--always hates to be +intruding his own convictions upon other men, especially in a case +like this, where he might be afraid of some idiot's thinking him +unmanlike. But Ramsey--" Suddenly she broke off and looked at him +attentively; his discomfort had become so obvious that suspicion +struck her. She spoke sharply. "Ramsey ~you~ aren't dreaming of +doing such a thing, are you?" + +"What such a thing?" + +"Fred hasn't influenced ~you~, has he? You aren't planning to go +with him, are you?" + +"Where?" + +"To join the Canadian aviation." + +"No; I hadn't thought of doing it." + +She sighed again, relieved. "I had a queer feeling about you just +then--that you ~were~ thinking of doing some such thing. You looked +so odd--and you're always so quiet, anybody might not really know +what you do think. But I'm not wrong about you, am I, Ramsey?" + +They had come to the foot of the steps that led up to the entrance +of her dormitory, and their walk was at an end. As they stopped and +faced each other, she looked at him earnestly; but he did not meet +the scrutiny, his eyelids fell. + +"I'm not wrong, am I, Ramsey?" + +"About what?" he murmured, uncomfortably. + +"You are my friend, aren't you?" + +"Yes." + +"Then it's all right," she said. "That relieves me and makes me +happier than I was just now, for of course if you're my friend you +wouldn't let me make any mistake about you. I believe you, and now, +just before I go in and we won't see much of each other for a week +--if you still want me to go with you again next Sunday--" + +"Yes--won't you, please?" + +"Yes, if you like. But I want to tell you now that I count on you +in all this, even though you don't 'talk much,' as you say; I count +on you more than I do on anybody else, and I trust you when you say +you're my friend, and it makes me happy. And I think perhaps you're +right about Fred Mitchell. Talk isn't everything, nobody knows that +better than I, who talk so much! and I think that, instead of talking +to Fred, a steady, quiet influence like yours would do more good than +any amount of arguing. So I trust you, you see? And I'm sorry I had +that queer doubt of you." She held out her hand. "Unless I happen +to see you on the campus for a minute, in the meantime, it's good-bye +until a week from to-day. So--well, so, good-bye until then!" + +"Wait," said Ramsey. + +"What is it?" + +He made a great struggle. "I'm not influencing Fred not to go," he +said. "I--don't want you to trust me to do anything like that." + +"What?" + +"I think it's all right for him to go, if he wants to," Ramsey said, +miserably. + +"You do? For him to go to ~fight?~" + +He swallowed. "Yes." + +"~Oh!~" she cried, turned even redder than he, and ran up the stone +steps. But before the storm doors closed upon her she looked down +to where he stood, with his eyes still lowered, a lonely-seeming +figure, upon the pavement below. Her voice caught upon a sob as she +spoke. + +"If you feel like that, you might as well go and enlist, yourself," +she said, bitterly. "I can't--I couldn't--speak to you again after +this!" + + + + + +Chapter XIX + +It was easy enough for him to evade Fred Mitchell's rallyings these +days; the sprig's mood was truculent, not toward his roommate but +toward Congress, which was less in fiery haste than he to be +definitely at war with Germany. All through the university the +change had come: athletics, in other years spotlighted at the centre +of the stage, languished suddenly, threatened with abandonment; +students working for senior honours forgot them; everything was +forgotten except that growing thunder in the soil. Several weeks +elapsed after Dora's bitter dismissal of Ramsey before she was +mentioned between the comrades. Then, one evening, Fred asked, as +he restlessly paced their study floor: + +"Have you seen your pacifist friend lately?" + +"No. Not exactly. Why?" + +"Well, for my part, I think she ought to be locked up," Fred said, +angrily. "Have you heard what she did this afternoon?" + +"No." + +"It's all over college. She got up in the class in jurisprudence and +made a speech. It's a big class, you know, over two hundred, under +Dean Burney. He's a great lecturer, but he's a pacifist--the only +one on the faculty--and a friend of Dora's. They say he encouraged +her to make this break and led the subject around so she could do it, +and then called on her for an opinion, as the highest-stand student +in the clas. She got up and claimed there wasn't any such thing as +a legitimate cause for war, either legally or morally, and said it +was a sign of weakness in a nation for it to believe that it did have +cause for war. + +"Well, it was too much for that little, spunky Joe Stansbury, and +he jumped up and argued with her. He made her admit all the Germans +have done to us, the sea murders and the land murders, the blowing up +of the factories, the propaganda, the strikes, trying to turn the +United States into a German settlement, trying to get Japan and +Mexico to make war on us, and all the rest. He even made her admit +there was proof they mean to conquer us when they get through with +the others, and that they've set out to rule the world for their own +benefit, and make whoever else they kindly allow to live, to work for +them. + +"She said it might be true, but since nothing at all could be a right +cause for war, than all this couldn't be a cause of war. Of course +she had her regular pacifist 'logic' working; she said that since war +is the worst thing there is, why, all other evils were lesser, and +a lesser evil can't be a just cause for a greater. She got terribly +excited, they say, but kept right on, anyway. She said war was +murder and there couldn't be any other way to look at it; and she'd +heard there was already talk in the university of students thinking +about enlisting, and whoever did such a thing was virtualy enlisting +to return murder for murder. Then Joe Stansbury asked her if she +meant that she'd feel toward any student that enlisted the way she +would toward a murderer, and she said, yes, she'd have a horror of +any student that enlisted. + +"Well, that broke up the class; Joe turned from her to the platform +and told old Burney that he was responsible for allowing such talk +in his lecture-room, and Joe said so far as ~he~ was concerned, he +resigned from Burney's classes right there. That started it, and +practically the whole class got up and walked out with Joe. They +said Burney streaked off home, and Dora was left alone in there, +with her head down on her desk--and I gues she certainly deserves it. +A good many have alread stopped speaking to her." + +Ramsey fidgeted with a pen on the table by which he sat. "Well, I +don't know," he said, slowly; "I don't know if they ought to do that +exactly." + +"Why oughtn't they?" Fred demanded, sharply. + +"Well, it looks to me as if she was only fightin' for her principles. +She believes in 'em. The more it costs a person to stick to their +principles, why, the more I believe the person must have something +pretty fine about 'em likely." + +Yes!" said the hot-headed Fred. "That may be in ordinary times, but +not when a person's principles are liable to betray their country! +We won't stand that kind of principles, I tell you, and we oughtn't +to. Dora Yocum's finding that out, all right. She had the biggest +position of any girl in this place, or any boy either, up to the last +few weeks, and there wasn't any student or hardly even a member of +the faculty that had the influence or was more admired and looked up +to. She had the whole show! But now, since she's just the same as +called any student a murderer if he enlists to fight for his country +and his flag--well, now she hasn't got anything at all, and if she +keeps on she'll have even less!" + +He paused in his walking to and fro and came to a halt behind his +friend's chair, looking down compassionately upon the back of +Ramsey's motionless head. His tone changed. "I guess it isn't just +the ticket--me to be talking this way to you, is it?" he said, with +a trace of huskiness. + +"Oh--it's all right," Ramsey murmured, not altering his position. + +"I can't help blowing up," Fred went on. "I want to say, though, I +know I'm not very considerate to blow up about her to you this way. +I've been playing horse with you about her ever since freshman year, +but--well, you must have understood, Ram, I never meant anything that +would really bother you much, and I thought--well, I ~really~ thought +it was a good thing, you--your--well, I mean about her, you know. +I'm on, all right. I know it's pretty serious with you." He paused. + +Ramsey did not move, except that his right hand still fidgeted with +the pen upon the table. + +"Oh--well--" he said. + +"It's--it's kind of tough luck!" his friend contrived to say; and +he began to pace the floor again. + +"Oh--well--" + +"See here, ole stick-in-the-mud," Fred broke out abruptly. "After +her saying what she did-- Well, it's none o' my business, but-- +but--" + +"Well, what?" Ramsey murmured. "I don't care what you say, if you +want to say anything." + +"Well, I ~got~ to say it," Fred half groaned and half blurted. +"After she said ~that~--and she meant it--why, if I were in your +place I'd be darned if I'd be seen out walking with her again." + +"I'm not going to be," Ramsey said, quietly. + +"By George!" And now Fred halted in front of him, both being huskily +solemn. "I think I understand a little of what that means to you, +old Ramsey; I think I do. I think I know something of what it costs +you to make that resolution for your country's sake." Impulsively he +extended his hand. "It's a pretty big thing for you to do. Will you +shake hands?" + +But Ramsey shook his head. "I didn't do it. I wouldn't ever have +done anything just on account of her talkin' that way. She shut the +door on me--it was a good while ago." + +"She did! What for?" + +"Well, I'm not much of a talker, you know, Fred," said Ramsey, +staring at the pen he played with. "I'm not much of anything, +for that matter, prob'ly, but I--well--I--" + +"You what?" + +"Well, I had to tell her I didn't feel about things the way she did. +She'd thought I had, all along, I guess. Anyway, it made her hate me +or something, I guess; and she called it all off. I expect there +wasn't much to call off, so far as she was concerned, anyhow." He +laughed feebly. "She told me I better go and enlist." + +"Pleasant of her!" Fred muttered. "Especially as we know what she +thinks enlisting means." He raised his voice cheerfully. "Well, +that's settled; and, thank God, old Mr. Bernstorff's on his way to +his sweet little vine-clad cottage home! They're getting guns on the +ships, and the big show's liable to commence any day. We can hold up +our heads now, and we're going to see some great times, old Ramsey +boy! It's hard on the home folks--Gosh! I don't like to think of +that! And I guess it's going to be hard on a lot of boys that +haven't understood what it's all about, and hard on some that their +family affairs, and business, and so on, have got 'em tied up so it's +hard to go--and of course there's plenty that just can't, and some +that aren't husky enough--but the rest of us are going to have the +big time in our lives. We got an awful lot to learn; it scares me +to think of what I don't know about being any sort of a rear-rank +private. Why, it's a regular ~profession~, like practising law, or +selling for a drug house on the road. Golly! Do you remember how we +talked about that, 'way back in freshman year, what we were going to +do when we got out of college? You were going to be practising law, +for instance, and I--well, f'r instance, remember Colburn; he was +going to be a doctor, and he did go to some medical school for one +year. Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere in ~Persia~. Golly!" + +He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on. +"Well, there's ~one~ good old boy was with our class for a while, +back in freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army! +Old rough-neck Linski that you put the knob on his nose for. Tommie +Hopper says he saw him last summer in Chicago soapboxin', yellin' his +head off cussin' every government under the sun, but mostly ours and +the Allies', you bet, and going to run the earth by revolution and +representatives of unskilled labour immigrants, nobody that can read +or write allowed to vote, except Linski. Tommie Hopper says he knows +all about Linski; he never did a day's work in his life--too busy +trying to get the workingmen stirred up against the people that +exploit 'em! Tommie says he had a big crowd to hear him, though, +and took up quite a little money for a 'cause' or something. Well, +let him holler! I guess we can attend to him when we get back from +over yonder. By George, old Ram, I'm gettin' kind of floppy in the +gills!" He administered a resounding slap to his comrade's shoulder. +"It certainly looks as if our big days were walking toward us!" + + +He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one +brought a new and greater portent. The faces of men lost a driven +look besetting them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of +that heavy apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn +in 1776 and 1861, and the history of the old days grew clearer in +the new. The President went to the Congress, and the true indictment +he made there reached scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy +somewhat chiling even to Potsdam, one guesses--and then through an +April night went almost quietly the steady work: we were at war with +Germany. + +The bugles sounded across the continent; drums and fifes played up +and down the city streets and in town and village squares and through +the countrysides. Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise +like distant, hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora +Yocum heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room. The bugles +and fifes and drums had been heard about the streets of the college +town, that day, and she thought she must die of them, they hurt her +so, and now to be haunted by this imaginary cheering-- + +She started. Was it imaginary? + +She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the +open air. No; the cheering was real and loud. It came from the +direction of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat +with it. + +Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening. "What's +the cheering for?" she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was +one of her acquaintances who had not yet stopped "speaking" to her. +"What's the matter?" + +"It's a good matter," the old man answered. "I guess there must be +a big crowd of 'em down there. One of our students enlisted to-day, +and they're givin' him a send-off. Listen to 'em, how they ~do~ +cheer. He's the first one to go." + +She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed +with an aching head. She rose in the evening, however--a handbill +had been slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a "Mass +Meeting" of the university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; +but when she got to the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest +corner, farthest from the rostrum. + +The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many +hundreds before him, for tumultuous they were until he quieted them. +He talked to them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for +"deliberation and a little patience." There was danger of a stampede, +he said, and he and the rest of the faculty were in a measure +responsible to their fathers and mothers for them. + +"You must keep your heads," he said. "God knows, I do not seek to +judge your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor assume to +tell you what you must or must not do. But by hurrying into service +now, without careful thought or consideration, you may impair the +extent of your possible usefulness to the very cause you are so +anxious to serve. Hundreds of you are taking technical courses +which should be completed--at least to the end of the term in June. +Instructors from the United States Army are already on the way here, +and military training will be begun at once for all who are +physically eligible and of acceptable age. A special course will +be given in preparation for flying, and those who wish to become +aviators may enroll themselves for the course at once. + +"I speak to you in a crisis of the university's life, as well as that +of the nation, and the warning I utter has been made necessary by +what took place yesterday and to-day. Yesterday morning, a student +in the junior class enlisted as a private in the United States +Regular Army. Far be it from me to deplore his course in so doing; +he spoke to me about it, and in such a way that I felt I had no right +to dissuade him. I told him that it would be preferable for college +men to wait until they could go as officers, and, aside from the fact +of a greater prestige, I urged that men of education could perhaps +be more useful in that capacity. He replied that if he were useful +enough as a private a commission might in time come his way, and, as +I say, I did not feel at liberty to attempt dissuasion. He left to +join a regiment to which he had been assigned, and many of you were +at the station to bid him farewell. + +"But enthusiasm may be too contagious; even a great and inspiring +motive may work for harm, and the university must not become a +desert. In the twenty-four hours since that young man went to join +the army last night, one hundred and eleven of our young men students +have left our walls; eighty-four of them went off together at three +o'clock to catch an east-bound train at the junction and enlist for +the Navy at Newport. We are, I say, in danger of a stampede." + +He spoke on, but Dora was not listening; she had become obsessed by +the idea which seemed to be carrying her to the border of tragedy. +When the crowd poured forth from the building she went with it +mechanically, and paused in the dark outside. She spoke to a girl +whom she did not know. + +"I beg your pardon--" + +"Yes?" + +"I wanted to ask: Do you know who was the student Doctor Corvis +spoke of? I mean the one that was the first to enlist, and that they +were cheering last night when he went away to be a private in the +United States Army. Did you happen to hear his name?" + +"Yes, he was a junior." + +"Who was it?" + +"Ramsey Milholland." + + + + + +Chapter XX + +Fred Mitchell, crossing the campus one morning, ten days later, saw +Dora standing near the entrance of her dormitory, where he would pass +her unless he altered his course; and as he drew nearer her and the +details of her face grew into distinctness, he was indignant with +himself for feeling less and less indignation toward her in +proportion to the closeness of his approach. The pity that came over +him was mingled with an unruly admiration, causing him to wonder what +unpatriotic stuff he could be made of. She was marked, but not +whipped; she still held herself straight under all the hammering and +cutting which, to his knowledge, she had been getting. + +She stopped him, "for only a moment," she said, adding with a wan +profoundness: "That is, if you're not one of those who feel that +I shouldn't be 'spoken to'?" + +"No," said Fred, stiffly. "I may share their point of view, perhaps, +but I don't feel called upon to obtrude it on you in that manner." + +"I see," she said, nodding. "I've wanted to speak with you about +Ramsey." + +"All right." + +She bit her lip, then asked, abruptly: "What made him do it?" + +"Enlist as a private with the regulars?" + +"No. What made him enlist at all?" + +"Only because he's that sort," Fred returned briskly. "He may be +inexplicable to people who believe that his going out to fight for +his country is the same thing as going out to commit a mur--" + +She lifted her hand. "Couldn't you--" + +"I beg your pardon," Fred said at once. "I'm sorry, but I don't know +just how to explain him to you." + +"Why?" + +He laughed, apologetically. "Well, you see, as I understand it, you +don't think it's possible for a person to have something within him +that makes him care so much about his country that he--" + +"Wait!" she cried. "Don't you think I'm willing to suffer a little +rather than to see my country in the wrong? Don't you think I'm +doing it?" + +"Well, I don't want to be rude; but, of course, it seems to me that +you're suffering because you think you know more about what's right +and wrong than anybody else does." + +"Oh, no. But I--" + +"We wouldn't get anywhere, probably, by arguing it," Fred said. +"You asked me." + +"I asked you to tell my why he enlisted." + +"The trouble is, I don't think I ~can~ tell that to anybody who needs +an answer. He just went, of course. There isn't any question about +it. I always thought he'd be the first to go." + +"Oh, no!" she said. + +"Yes, I always thought so." + +"I think you were mistaken," she said, decidedly. "It was a special +reason--to make him act so cruelly." + +"Cruelly!" Fred cried. + +"It ~was!~" + +"Cruel to whom?" + +"Oh, to his mother--to his family. To have him go off that way, +without a word--" + +"Oh, no' he'd been home," Fred corrected her. "He went home the +Saturday before he enlisted, and settled it with them. They're all +broken up, of course; but when the saw he'd made up his mind, they +quit opposing him, and I think they're proud of him about it, maybe, +in spite of feeling anxious. You see, his father was an artilleryman +in the war with Spain, and his grandfather was a Colonel at the end +of the War of the Rebellion, though he went into it as a private, +like Ramsey. He died when Ramsey was about twelve; but Ramsey +remembers him; he was talking of him a little the night before he +enlisted." + +Dora made a gesture of despairing protest. "You don't understand!" + +"What is it I don't understand?" + +"Ramsey! ~I~ know why he went--and it's just killing me!" + +Fred looked at her gravely. "I don't think you need worry about it," +he said. "There's nothing about his going that you are responsible +for." + +She repeated her despairing gesture. "You don't understand. But +it's no use. It doesn't help any to try to talk of it, though I +thought maybe it would, somehow." She wnet a little nearer the +dormitory entrance, leaving him where he was, then turned. "I +suppose you won't see him?" + +"I don't know. Most probably not till we meet-if we should--in +France. I don't know hwere he's stationed; and I'm going with the +aviation--if it's ever ready! And he's with the regulars; he'll +probably be among the first to go over." + +"I see." She turned sharply away, calling back over her shoulder +in a choked voice. "Thankd you. Good-bye!" + +But Fred's heart had melted; gazing after her, he saw that her proud +young head had lowered now, and that her shoulders were moving +convulsively; he ran after her and caught her as she bagan slowly +to ascend the dormitory steps. + +"See here," he cried. "Don't--" + +She lifted a wet face. "No, no! He went in bitterness because I +told him to, in my own bitterness! I've killed him! Long ago, when +he wasn't much more than a child, I heard he'd said that some day +he'd 'show' me, and now he's done it!" + +Fred whistled low and long when she had disappeared. "Girls!" he +murmured to himself. "Some girls, anyhow--they will be girls! You +can't tell 'em what's what, and you can't change 'em, either!" + +Then, as more urgent matters again occupied his attention, he went on +at an ardent and lively gait to attend his class in map-making. + + + + + +Chapter XXI + +That thunder in the soil, at first too deep within it to be audible, +had come to the surface now and gradually became heard as the thunder +of a million feet upon the training grounds. The bugles rang +sharper; the drums and fifes of town and village and countryside were +the drums and fifes of a war that came closer and closer to every +hearth between the two oceans. + +All the old symbols became symbols bright and new, as if no one had +ever seen them before. "America" was like a new word, and the song +"America" was like a new song. All the dusty blatancies of orating +candidates, seeking to rouse bored auditors with "the old flag"; all +the mechanical patriotics of school and church and club; all these +time-worn flaccid things leaped suddenly into living colour. The +flag became brilliant and strange to see--strange with a meaning that +seemed new, a meaning long known, yet never known till now. + +And so hearts that thought they knew themselves came upon ambushes +of emotion and hidden indwellings of spirit not guessed before. Dora +Yocum, listening to the "Star Spangled Banner," sung by children of +immigrants to an out-of-tune old piano in a mission clubroom, in +Chicago, found herself crying with a soul-shaking heartiness in a way +different from other ways that she had cried. Among the many things +she thought of then was this: That the banner the children were +singing about was in danger. The great country, almost a continent, +had always seemed so untouchable, so safe and sure; she had never +been able to conceive of a hostile power mighty enough to shake or +even jar it. And since so great and fundamental a thing could not be +injured, a war for its defence had appeared to be, in her eyes, not +only wicked but ridiculous. At last, less and less vaguely, she had +come to comprehend something of the colossal German threat, and the +shadow that touched this bright banner of which the immigrants' +children piped so briskly in the mission club-room. + +She had begun to understand, though she could not have told just why, +or how, or at what moment understanding reached her. She began to +understand that her country, threatened to the life, had flung its +line those thousands of miles across the sea to stand and hold +Hindenburg and Ludendorff and all their Kaisers, Kings, Dukes, and +Crown Princes, their Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their +monstrous other engines of men made into armies. Through the long +haze of misted sea-miles and the smoke of land-miles she perceived +that brown line of ours, and knew it stood there that Freedom, and +the Nation itself, might not perish from the earth. + +And so, a week later, she went home, and came nervously to Ramsey's +mother and found how to direct the letter she wanted to write. He +was in France. + +As the old phrase went, she poured out her heart. It seems to apply +to her letter. + +She wrote: + + Don't misunderstand me. I felt that my bitter speech to you had + driven you to take the step you did. I felt that I had sent you + to be killed, and that I ought to be killed for doing it, but I + knew that you had other motives, too. I knew, of course, that you + thought of the country more than you did of me, or of any mad thing + I would say--but I thought that what I said might have been the + prompting thing, the word that threw you into it so hastily and + before you were ready, perhaps. I dreaded to bear that terrible + responsibility. I hope you understand. + + My great mistake has been--I thought I sas so "logical"--it's been + in my starting everything with a thought I'd never proven; that war + is the worst thing, and all other evils were lesser. I was wrong. + I was wrong, because war isn't the worst evil. Slavery is the + worse evil, and now I want to tell you I have come to see that you + are making war on those that make slavery. Yes, you are fighting + those that make both war and slavery, and you are right, and I + humbly reverence and honour all of you who are in this right war. + I have come home to work in the Red Cross here; I work there all + day, and all day I keep saying to myself--but I really mean to + ~you~--it's what I pray, and oh, how I pray it: "God be with you + and grant you the victory!" For you must win and you will win. + + Forgive me, oh, please--and if you will, could you write to me? + I know you have things to do more important than "girls"--but oh, + couldn't you, please? + +This letter, which she had taken care not to dampen, as she wrote, +went in slow course to the "American Expeditionary Forces in France," +and finally found him whom it patiently sought. He delayed not long +to answer, and in time she held in a shaking hand the pencilled +missive he had sent her. + + You forget all that comic talk about me enlisting because of your + telling me to. I'd written my father I was going at the first + chance a month and a half before that day when you said it. My + mind was made up at the first time there was any talk of war, and + you had about as much responsibility for my going as some little + sparrow or something. Of course I don't mean I didn't pay any + attention to the different things you said, because I always did, + and I used to worry over it because I was afraid some day it would + get you in trouble, and I'm mighty glad you've cut it out. That's + right; you be a regular girl now. You always were one, and I knew + it all right. I'm not as scared to write to you as I was to talk + to you, so I guess you know I was mighty tickled to get your + letter. It sounded blue, but I was glad to get it. You ~bet~ I'll + write to you! I don't suppose you could have any idea how glad I + was to get your letter. I could sit here and write to you all day + if they'd let me, but I'm a corporal now. When you answer this, I + wish you'd say how the old town looks and if the grass in the front + yards is as green as it usually is, and everything. And tell me + some more about everything you think of when you are working down + at the Red Cross like you said. I guess I've read your letter five + million times, and that part ten million. I mean where you + underlined that "~you~" and what you said to yourself at the Red + Cross. Oh, murder, but I was glad to read that! Don't forget + about writing anything else you think of like that. + + Well, I was interrupted then and this is the next day. Of course, + I can't tell you where we are, because that darned censor will read + this letter, but I guess he will let this much by. Who do you + think I ran across in a village yesterday? Two boys from the old + school days, and we certainly did shake hands a few times! It was + the old foolish Dutch Krusemeyer and Albert Paxton, both of them + lieutenants. I heard Fred Mitchell is still training in the States + and about crazy because they won't send him over yet. + + If you had any idea how glad I was to get your letter, you wouldn't + lose any time answering this one. Anyhow, I'm going to write to + you again every few days if I get the chance, because maybe you'll + answer more than one of 'em. + + But see here, cut out that "sent you to be killed" stuff. You've + got the wrong idea altogether. We've got the big job of our lives, + we know that, but we're going to do it. There'll be mistakes and + bad times, but we won't fall down. Now you'll excuse me for saying + it this way, Dora, but I don't know just how to express myself + except saying of course we know everybody isn't going to get back + home--but listen, we didn't come over here to get killed + particularly, we came over here to give these Dutchmen h--l! + + Perhaps you can excuse language if I write it with a blank like + that, but before we get back we're going to do what we came for. + They may not all of them be as bad as some of them--it's a good + thing you don't know what we do, because some of it would make you + sick. As I say, there may be quite a lot of good ones among them; + but we know what they've done to this country, and we know what + they mean to do to ours. So we're going to attend to them. Of + course that's why I'm here. It wasn't you. + + Don't forget to write pretty soon, Dora. You say in your letter--I + certainly was glad to get that letter--well, you say I have things + to do more important than "girls." Dora, I think you probably know + without my saying so that of course while I have got important + things to do, just as every man over here has, and everybody at + home, for that matter, well, the thing that is most important in + the world to me, next to helping win this war, it's reading the + next letter from you. + + Don't forget how glad I'll be to get it, and don't forget you + didn't have anything to do with my being over here. That was--it + was something else. And you bet, whatever happens I'm glad I came! + Don't ever forget ~that~! + +Dora knew it was "something else." Her memory went back to her first +recollection of him in school: from that time on he had been just an +ordinary, everyday boy, floundering somehow through his lessons in +school and through his sweethearting with Milla, as the millions of +other boys floundered along with their own lessons and their own +Millas. She saw him swinging his books and romping homeward from the +schoolhouse, or going whistling by her father's front yard, rattling +a stick on the fence as he went, care-free and masterful, but shy as +a deer if strangers looked at him, and always "not much of a talker." + +She had always felt so superior to him, she shuddered as she thought +of it. His quiet had been so much better than her talk. His +intelligence was proven now, when it came to the great test, to be +of a stronger sort than hers. He was wise and good and gentle--and +a fighting man! "We know what they've done to this country and what +they mean to do to ours. So we're going to attend to them." She +read this over, and she knew that Ramsey, wise and gentle and good, +would fight like an unchained devil, and that he and his comrades +would indeed and indeed do what they "came for." + +"It wasn't you," he said. She nodded gently, agreeing, and knew what +it was that sent him. Yet Ramsey had his own secret there, and did +not tell it. Sometimes there rose, faint in his memory, a whimsical +picture, yet one that had always meant much to him. He would see an +old man sitting with a little boy upon a rustic bench under a walnut +tree to watch the "Decoration Day Parade" go by--and Ramsey would see +a shoot of sunshine that had somehow got through the walnut tree and +made a bedazzlement of glinting fine lines over a spot about the size +of a saucer, upon the old man's thick white hair. And in Ramsey's +memory, the little boy, sitting beside the veteran, would half close +his eyes, drowsily, playing that this sunshine spot was a white +bird's-nest, until he had a momentary dream of a glittering little +bird that dwelt there and wore a blue soldier cap on its head. And +Ramsey would bring out of his memory toughts that the old man had got +into the child's head that day. "We knew that armies fighting for +the Freedom of Man ~had~ to win, in the long run.... We were on the +side of God's Plan.... Long ago we began to see hints of His +Plan.... Man has to win his freedom from himself--men in the light +have to fight against men in the dark.... That light is the +answer.... We had the light that made us never doubt." + + +A long while Dora sat with the letter in her hand before she answered +it and took it upon her heart to wear. That was the place for it, +since it was already within her heart, where he would find it when +he came home again. And she beheld the revelation sent to her. This +ordinary life of Ramsey's was but the outward glinting of a high and +splendid spirit, as high and splendid as earth can show. And yet it +was only the life of an everyday American boy. The streets of the +town were full, now, of boys like Ramsey. + +At first they were just boys in uniform; then one saw that they were +boys no more. + +They were soldiers. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Ramsey Milholland, by Tarkington + diff --git a/old/rmsym10.zip b/old/rmsym10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..494befd --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rmsym10.zip |