Ramsey Milholland Part 7

"The good ole cla.s.s of Nineteen-Fourteen is about gone," he said to Fred Mitch.e.l.l, 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 n.o.body starts a move to have any reunions. There's a good many members of the ole cla.s.s 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 Yoc.u.m 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 Yoc.u.m again."

This was again his theme as he sat by the same friend's side, in the rear row of the cla.s.s 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 Yoc.u.m!"

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, antic.i.p.ating pleasurable excitements in the way of "fraternity" pledgings and initiations, encounters with soph.o.m.ores, cla.s.s 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 cla.s.smates, 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 Yoc.u.m._

...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 cla.s.ses."

"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 cla.s.s. The masculine element predominated, but Dora Yoc.u.m 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 hara.s.sment was less grave than he had antic.i.p.ated.

There were about five hundred students in the freshman cla.s.s; 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 cla.s.sroom. 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 a.s.sist 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 Mitch.e.l.l; they went to their first "Lumen" meeting in a state of fear and came away little rea.s.sured.

"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 'a.s.signment' 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 'a.s.signments.' 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 "a.s.signment," 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:

a.s.sIGNMENT

TWELVE-MINUTE DEBATE, CLa.s.s 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.)

Affirmative Negative R. MILHOLLAND, '18 D. YOc.u.m, '18

Concluding his reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitch.e.l.l 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. Yoc.u.m, '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, pa.s.sionately. "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 impa.s.sive 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 Yoc.u.m, hitherto unperceived by Ramsey, rose and went forward to one of the small desks in the open s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sembled collection of parts which had relapsed each into its own individuality. 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.