"Well, the Faculty were with us in about everything," he went on, rolling a cigarette; "many of them lived in the Hall then."
"Yes, a number did," put in Rice. "Do you remember, Ralph, the night that Professor Torts had his little beer-and-skittles party in his lair, and Burns, who roomed across the pa.s.sage and who was the worst b.u.mmer in Encina, went down to Fessler, and complained that he couldn"t study because of the noise in that number? And Fessler forgot who roomed there and came up and gave them Tartarus through the keyhole and nearly dropped when Torts opened the door?"
"We all enjoyed that," answered Shirlock. "Why, the profs used to come to our feeds and jolly up with the crowd. Often they were the best fun there. It"s different now."
"Oh, I don"t know," said Duncan, "they come over off and on, now. Doc Jordan was here last Sunday to dinner, and Diemann drops in sometimes; last year he came a lot."
"Oh, they come over all right," sighed Pellams from the piano. "I had a report to make one day. I didn"t have it done, and I bribed Ted to go down and tell Engbee I was sick in bed. I was playing cards in here when Sniffles rushed in and told me the old boy was coming up the street. I smelt danger and tumbled into bed like a six-day bicyclist, and fixed my face up with some grease paint and magnesia. Sure enough, he came in, darkly suspicious, thought he had me all right, but he found a wreck that melted him. His wife sent me a bunch of violets next morning. For my part I don"t like the Faculty for intimate friends," and Pellams played "Comrades" with the soft pedal down.
"It"s not the same thing, though, really," persisted Shirlock. "They may come over here to dinner or perhaps to a smoker, but it"s always Professor So-and-So; his chair is a little higher than any of yours, and he never forgets the family waiting for him in the Row; in those first days the family was in most cases beyond the Rockies, or as yet a dream, and it wasn"t always easy to pick out the professor from the jumble of story-tellers on the bed.
"Of course, it was all too good to last," the alumnus went on thoughtfully, "and it wasn"t natural it should. We weren"t so many then.
When the number increased, I suppose the relations had to change and the different cliques must separate. I"ll admit that there is more in the life now, it"s more complex, there are more inst.i.tutions and more ways of having joy; but those were good old days, those first days in Encina when the crowd was one.
"I can see them now, can"t you, Harry? out on the veranda and the steps of the Hall after dinner, with the fellows playing ball on the lawn, and other men sitting up on their window-ledges. The night I started to tell you about, when we went to serenade Mr. and Mrs. Stanford, we got the mandolin fellows, the beginning of your present club, and fell in behind them and started off down the road, past the mausoleum and through the vineyard--never broke ranks there, either, we were on our good behavior, besides, it was Spring--and so on over to the house, where we drew up, and the mandolins played their piece, then we gave the yell--it was only a few months old, that yell, but it had been loud enough to knock out a twenty-five-year-old one we met up in town not long before, and we were proud of it.
"During the pause that followed, the front door opened and the Senator stepped out on the porch; a lamp shone on his gray head and on us fellows in a big black crowd on the gravel below, looking up at him and cheering. When we stopped he said, very much as though a friend had driven up, "Gentlemen, will you come in?" and the whole two hundred of us piled over the piazza, getting a grasp of his hand as we came into the hall, and a word from Mrs. Stanford, who stood beside him. They took us into the library; we formed a hollow square, two rows deep on the sides, and the Founders came into the square and talked to us. I remember that Mrs. Stanford said, "We were very glad, young gentlemen, to hear of your success in baseball," and what a chill it gave us, just convalescing from the football fever; but we forgave the mistake when she asked, a minute later, "Which is Mr. Clemans?" That blushing hero with the other ten we forced into the center to be congratulated, and we sang the new song, "Rush the Ball Along," until the bric-a-brac trembled.
"When we were quiet again, the Senator talked to us informally, as though we were in reality his children as he had said we were to be. It was an earnest talk, about his ideals of what the University was yet to be, and his hope for their fulfillment; of economy and judicious living; and of endeavor to be of use to the world. It was a privilege to stand there listening. He appealed to each one of us individually. We could not know then how few more such opportunities we were to have. When he had finished, the dining-room doors slid back--it was a put-up job, that serenade--and it was Mrs. Stanford"s turn. After the supper, we gathered for a little personal talk with both of them, then we had some more mandolin music, and Baker sang "Suwanee River" to Cap.r.o.n"s accompaniment.
"That evening brought the Founders pretty close to the crowd. It was a good thing to have happen, it began things right. Then, you know, he died suddenly, in vacation. I was in Yosemite. When term opened, it was hard to get used to seeing her driving around the campus alone. I don"t think any of the people who came after those early days can ever be so loyal to the Founders, to the person of one and the memory of the other, as we are. I"m sure none of us who went over serenading that night will ever forget it. It"s one of the Pioneer memories."
Both graduates were looking into the fire. Freshman Haviland snored softly in the window seat. The eyes of the rest of the chapter were fastened on the chafing-dish. Shirlock"s story had seemed pretty long and the rarebit sent out a tantalizing odor.
Duncan called out, "Supper"s ready, children," and the heated plates came clattering up from the hearth, bringing the visitors back from the far echoes of their own beginnings to the noisy unconcern of a Freshman year that knew a kind, white-bearded face from pictures only, and never could understand.
FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT.
For the Sake of Argument.
"For we are frank and twenty And the spring is in the air!"
HOVEY.
"Well!" said Miss Meiggs, spreading across her lap one of the Beta Rhos"
new monogrammed napkins, "I must say _your_ being here is a surprise."
Pellams answered in vague interrogation, not a little surprised, himself, to be caught at a "girl-supper." Now that he was cornered, it would be uselessly impolite to tell her how the Chapter had reasoned and pleaded with him until at the last minute "Cap" Smith ruined his clever escape by catching him midway down a porch pillar. Smith, sitting on the other side of Katharine Graham and wearing the smile of satisfied revenge, would doubtless enjoy telling it. There was so much of genial malevolence in that smile that Pellams, the woman-hater, who knew only enough of the co-eds to avoid them, wondered what sort of a girl he had been placed next to at supper. He had an intuitive idea that she had been given him by general consent. An experienced society man would have scented this at once in the company of Mrs. Perkins, for when there is a choice of tables, chapter-mothers are apt to sit where there is the least sentiment; but this was the Junior"s debut, practically, and he was conscious of little more than that the fellows had it "in" for him, and that this girl had begun the conversation by a personal remark.
"I judged," the girl was saying, not having waited for any explanation, "that in the milder forms of social entertainment you were somewhat out of your element."
Pellams had missed his guess. On sitting down to their small table, he had decided that the conversation would naturally split into two divisions of three rather than into three couples, for Mrs. Perkins, Professor Grind and this Meiggs girl would enjoy themselves together, leaving him to share Smith"s talk with Miss Graham, whose eyes had somehow an engaging twinkle. The idea was rudely dispelled by Miss Meiggs"s immediate and decidedly personal attack. At least, he would have preferred to talk about other people, but he faced the music.
"Oh, I disapprove of them only for myself," he replied, "not for others."
"And why for yourself, particularly?"
The face of the Glee Club"s comedian had a.s.sumed just the right seriousness.
"Because I"m more than susceptible and I don"t want to run risks."
"Your time has come at last, then," put in his captor, Smith, with a gallant look at Miss Meiggs.
"Not at all," retorted Pellams, whose combative sense was less rusty than his skill in compliment. "If I"d been afraid of one exposure like this, do you think I"d have suggested being on deck to-night?"
Smith, with a fresh memory of their struggle, laughed at this blocking move. Katharine Graham, although she did not laugh, enjoyed Pellams"s unconscious "like this." She was a Theta Gamma with Miss Meiggs, and of late there had been a little rift in their sisterly love.
The older girl was not disconcerted. She had her estimate of Pellams Chase, and he was not disproving it. There were certain things she had long wanted the chance to say to him.
"I admire your self-restraint under temptation," she said; "it is characteristic of you in other circ.u.mstances, I believe"--this with discreet emphasis--"but, really, why should you dread letting _this_ susceptibility get the better of you?"
Pellams caught the faint sneer in the words. He hoped that Mrs. Perkins had been talking just then to her Faculty partner. Increasing his affected earnestness, he replied:
"Because, when you get gone, it is bound to knock scholarship."
Here Smith giggled audibly, for Katharine and he were really feigning talk, being more entertained by the couple across the cloth. Katharine knew that by this last statement Pellams had sounded a dominant note in the soul of her opinionated sister. She was not surprised, then, when Miss Meiggs turned more fully toward the woman-hater.
"Tell me, are you one of these people who think co-education an evil?"
"I"m afraid I am." The speech gave Pellams a certain pleasure. There was nothing about this partner they had given him that tended toward converting him to the Chapter"s point of view as to the advantage of girls at college.
"Of course," continued she, "I do not take your remark about scholarship as worthy of consideration in your case, because I am in one or two of your cla.s.ses, when you attend them," and Pellams, listening, gave thanks that he and Professor Grind opposite had no such relation; "but monopolized time is really the cry of a good many who would wish to work, and it is all wrong. There is no reason why we should not come here and work with you, combining friendship and study. Our presence here is, in a way, preventive of many worse things."
Pellams turned his empty salad plate between his fingers.
"Well," he drawled, "I"m not sure I know what you mean by the worse things, and I"ve never been to another college, except Berkeley but I can"t believe as much time is spent on them as some people here give to girls," this with a dreamy look over Smith"s head; "the cigarette heart can"t be much worse than what takes men out of college here, and if you refer to beer----"
"I _do_ refer to beer," said Miss Meiggs, in an iced voice.
"Oh, no!" expostulated the Junior, spreading his hands, "they couldn"t do it!" He looked at her frankly. "You get a head after too much beer,"
he went on, reckless as to p.r.o.nouns and listening professors, "and you stay sober and work, for awhile, any way. In co-education you don"t get any such call-down until the Committee meets."
"Don"t let him tease you, Miss Meiggs," put in Mrs. Perkins, frowning mildly at Pellams because of Professor Grind"s sphinx-like smile; "he"s making it all up out of his inner consciousness, like the German philosopher and the--elephant, wasn"t it, Professor Grind?"
"Yes?" answered Miss Meiggs, with a world of irony packed into the syllable; "your inner consciousness, then, Mr. Chase, proves rather forcibly that in one case the influence is against refinement, while in the case of co-education it is all for it. You will grant that, I think?"
Quite by accident, Pellams caught Miss Graham"s eye. The twinkle there was a sort of glorified "sic "im!"
"On the contrary," said he, perfectly composed, "I think it"s the girl that"s refined."
Miss Meiggs"s "_What!_" was almost a shriek. Foo, the table-boy, brought her just then a plate of creamy rarebit. He had a jacket of luminous green silk, with the fraternity monogram in white, and he wore his cue hanging. But the fragrance of the rarebit and the splendor of Foo"s toilet were alike lost upon the aroused Miss Meiggs. Such a statement, from this man of all others!
"You are judging us with yourself as a basis of contrast, I fancy!"