Ramsey Milholland Part 9

Ramsey started violently. "See here--"

But the senior rea.s.sured 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 Yoc.u.m?"

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 a.s.sented, 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 a.s.sented, 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 pa.s.sed the slightly disfigured Linski on the campus next day without betraying any embarra.s.sment or making a sign of recognition.

Fred Mitch.e.l.l 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 Ma.s.ses' 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 t.i.ttered 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 cla.s.s of Nineteen-Eighteen's already lost a member," said Fred Mitch.e.l.l. "I guess we can bear the break-up!"

"I guess so," Ramsey a.s.sented. "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 sa.s.sprilly."

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 pa.s.sed 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 fas.h.i.+on's sprig, a "fusser" and b.u.t.terfly, 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 s.e.x. 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 Mitch.e.l.l, 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 d.a.m.n Kaiser."

The motion was hotly seconded and instantly carried. Then followed a much fl.u.s.tered 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.