Part 13 (1/2)
CHAPTER IX
The day of Professor Frazer's next lecture, a rain-sodden day at the end of October, with the stubble-fields bleakly shelterless beyond the campus. The rain splashed up from pools on the worn brick walks and dripped from trees and whipped about buildings, soaking the legs and leaving them itchingly wet and the feet slos.h.i.+ly uncomfortable. Carl returned to his room at one; talked to the Turk, his feet thrust against the side of their rusty stove. He wanted to keep three o'clock, the hour of Frazer's lecture, from coming. ”I feel as if I was in for a fight and scared to death about it. Listen to that rain outside. Gee! but the old dame keeps these windows dirty. I hope Frazer will give it to them good and hard. I wish we could applaud him. I do feel funny, like something tragic was going to happen.”
”Oh, tie that dog outside,” yawned the Turk, stanch adherent of Carl, and therefore of Professor Frazer, but not imaginative. ”Come on, young Kerl; I'll play you a slick little piece on the mouth-organ.
Heh?”
”Oh, thunder! I'm too restless to listen to anything except a cannon.”
Carl stumped to the window and pondered on the pool of water flooding the graying gra.s.s stems in the shabby yard.
When it was time to start for Professor Frazer's lecture the Turk blurted: ”Why don't we stay away and forget about it? Get her off your nerves. Let's go down to the bowling-alley and work up a sweat.”
”Not a chance, Turk. He'll want all the supporters he's got. And you'd hate to stay away as much as I would. I feel cheered up now; all ready for the sc.r.a.p. Yip! Come on!”
”All right, governor. I like the sc.r.a.p, all right, but I don't want to see you get all worked up.”
Through the rain, across the campus, an unusual number of students in s.h.i.+ning, cheap, black raincoats were hastening to the three o'clock cla.s.ses, clattering up the stone steps of the Academic Building, talking excitedly, glancing up at the arched door as though they expected to see something startling. Dozens stared at Carl. He felt rather important. It was plain that he was known as a belligerent, a supporter of Professor Frazer. As he came to the door of Lecture-room A he found that many of the crowd were deserting their proper cla.s.ses to attend the Frazer event. He b.u.mped down into his own seat, gazing back superciliously at the outsiders who were edging into unclaimed seats at the back of the room or standing about the door--students from other cla.s.ses, town girls, the young instructor in French, German, and music; a couple of town club-women in gla.s.ses and galoshes and woolen stockings bunchy at the ankles. Every one was rapidly whispering, watching every one else, peeping often at the platform and the small door beside it through which Professor Frazer would enter.
Carl had a smile ready for him. But there was no chance that the smile would be seen. There must have been a hundred and fifty in the room, seated and standing, though there were but seventy in the course, and but two hundred and fifty-six students in the whole college that year.
Carl looked back. He clenched his fist and pounded the soft side of it on his thigh, drawing in his breath, puffing it out with a long exasperated ”h.e.l.lll!” For the Greek professor, the comma-sized, sandy-whiskered martinet, to whom nothing that was new was moral and nothing that was old was to be questioned by any undergraduate, stalked into the room like indignant Napoleon posing before two guards and a penguin at St. Helena. A student in the back row thriftily gave the Greek G.o.d his seat. The G.o.d sat down, with a precise nod.
Instantly a straggly man with a celluloid collar left the group by the door, whisked over to the Greek professor, and fawned upon him. It was the fearless editor and owner (also part-time type-setter) of the _Plato Weekly Times_, who dated back to the days of Was.h.i.+ngton flat-bed hand-presses and pure Jeffersonian politics, and feared neither man nor devil, though he was uneasy in the presence of his landlady. He ostentatiously flapped a wad of copy-paper in his left hand, and shook a spatter of ink-drops from a fountain-pen as he interviewed the Greek professor, who could be seen answering pompously. Carl was hating them both, fearing the Greek as a faculty spy on Frazer, picturing himself kicking the editor, when he was aware of a rustling all over the room, of a general turning of heads toward the platform.
He turned. He was smiling like a shy child in his hero-wors.h.i.+p.
Professor Frazer was inconspicuously walking through the low door beside the platform. Frazer's lips were together. He was obviously self-conscious. His motions were jerky. He elaborately did not look at the audience. He nearly stumbled on the steps up to the platform. His hand shook as he drew papers from a leather portfolio and arranged them on the small reading-table. One of the papers escaped and sailed off the platform, nearly to the front row. Nearly every one in the room snickered. Frazer flushed. A girl student in the front row nervously bounded out of her seat, picked up the paper, and handed it up to Frazer. They both fumbled it, and their heads nearly touched.
Most of the crowd laughed audibly.
Professor Frazer sat down in his low chair, took out his watch with a twitching hand, and compared his time with the clock at the back of the room--and so closely were the amateur executioners observing their victim that every eye went back to the clock as well. Even Carl was guilty of that imitation. Consequently he saw the editor, standing at the back, make notes on his copy-paper and smirk like an ill-bred hound stealing a bone. And the Greek professor stared at Frazer's gauche movements with a grim smugness that indicated, ”Quite the sort of thing I expected.” The Greek's elbows were on the arm of the seat, and he held up before his breast a small red-leather-covered note-book which he superciliously tapped with a thin pencil. He was waiting.
Like a judge of the Inquisition....
”Old Greek 's going to take notes and make a report to the faculty about what Frazer says,” reflected Carl. ”If I could only get hold of his notes and destroy them!”
Carl turned again. It was just three. Professor Frazer had risen.
Usually he sat while lecturing. Fifty whispers commented on that fact; fifty regular members of the course became self-important through knowing it. Frazer was leaning slightly against the table. It moved an inch or two with his weight, but by this time every one was too high-strung to laugh. He was pale. He re-arranged his papers. He had to clear his throat twice before he could speak, in the now silent, vulturishly attentive room, smelling of wet second-rate clothes.
The gusty rain could be heard. They all hitched in their seats.
”Oh, Frazer _can't_ be going to retract,” groaned Carl; ”but he's scared.”
Carl suddenly wished himself away from all this useless conflict; out tramping the wet roads with the Turk, or slas.h.i.+ng through the puddles at thirty-five miles an hour in the banker's car. He noted stupidly that Genie Linderbeck's hair was scarcely combed. He found he was saying, ”Frazer 'll flunk, flunk, flunk; he's going to flunk, flunk, flunk.”
Then Frazer spoke. His voice sounded harsh and un-rhythmical, but soon swung into the natural periods of a public speaker as he got into his lecture:
”My friends,” said he, ”a part of you have come here legitimately, to hear a lecture; a part to satisfy the curiosity aroused by rumors to the effect that I am likely to make indecorous and indecent remarks, which your decorum and decency make you wish to hear, and of which you will carry away evil and twisted reports, to gain the reputation of being fearless defenders of the truth. It is a temptation to gratify your desire and shock you--a far greater temptation than to be repentant and reactionary. Only, it occurs to me that this place and time are supposed to be devoted to a lecture by Henry Frazer on his opinions about contemporary drama. It is in no sense to be given to the puling defense of a martyr, nor to the sensational self-advertis.e.m.e.nt of either myself or any of you. I have no intention of devoting any part of my lecture, aside from these introductory adumbrations, to the astonis.h.i.+ng number of new friends whose bright and morning faces I see before me. I shall neither be so insincerely tactful as to welcome you, nor so frightened as to ignore you. Nor shall I invite you to come to me with any complaints you have about me. I am far too busy with my real work!
”I am not speaking patiently. I am not patient with you! I am not speaking politely. Truly, I do not think that I shall much longer be polite!
”Wait. That sounds now in my ears as rhetorical! Forgive me, and translate my indiscretions into more colloquial language.