Ramsey Milholland Part 18

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 "Ma.s.s 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. "G.o.d knows, I do not seek to judge your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor a.s.sume 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.signed, 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 Mitch.e.l.l, crossing the campus one morning, ten days later, saw Dora standing near the entrance of her dormitory, where he would pa.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day before he enlisted, and settled it with them. They're all broken up, of course; but when they 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 went 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 where 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. "Thank you. Good-bye!"