"Well, young man, so you are going to let us know how to run Plato," teetered the president. "I'm sure everybody will feel much obliged to you."
Carl did not move. He was aware of Genie Linderbeck rising, to his left. No one else was up, but, with Genie's frail adherence, Carl suddenly desired to rouse every one to stand for Frazer and freedom. He glanced over at the one man whom he could always trust to follow him-the Turk. A tiny movement of Carl's lips, a covert up-toss of his head, warned the Turk to rise now.
The Turk moved, started to rise, slowly, as though under force. He looked rather shamefaced. He uncrossed his legs and put his hands on the pew, on either side of his legs.
"Shame!" trembled a girl's voice in the junior section.
"Sit down!" two or three voices of men softly snarled, with a rustle of mob-muttering.
The Turk hastily crossed his legs and slumped down in his seat. Carl frowned at him imploringly, then angrily. He felt spiritually naked to ask support so publicly, but he had to get the Turk up. The Turk shook his head beseechingly. Carl could fancy him grunting, "Aw, thunder! I'd like to stand up, but I don't want to be a goat."
Another man rose. "I'll be darned!" thought Carl. It was the one man who would be expected not to support the heretic Frazer-it was Carl's rustic ex-room-mate, Plain Smith. Genie was leaning against the pew in front of him, but Plain Smith bulked more immovable than Carl.
No one joined the three. All through the chapel was an undertone of amazed comment and a constant low hissing of, "Sssssit down!"
The president, facing them, looked strained. It occurred to Carl that S. Alcott Wood had his side of the question. He argued about the matter, feeling detached from his stolidly defiant body. Then he cursed the president for keeping them there. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to cry out....
President Wood was speaking. "Is there any one else? Stand up, if there is. No one else? Very well, young men, I trust that you are now satisfied with your heroism, which we have all greatly appreciated, I am sure. [Laughter.] Chapel dismissed."
Instantly a swirl of men surrounded Carl, questioning: "What j' do it for? Why didn't you keep still?"
He pushed out through them. He sat blind through the first-hour quiz in physics, with the whole class watching him. The thought of the Turk's failure to rise kept unhappy vigil in his mind. The same sequence of reflections ran around like midnight mice in the walclass="underline"
"Just when I needed him.... After all his talk.... And us so chummy, sitting up all hours last night. And then the Turk throws me down.... When he'd said so many times he just wanted the chance to show how strong he was for Frazer.... Damn coward! I'll go room with Genie. By gosh--Oh, I got to be fair to the Turk. I don't suppose he could have done much real good standing up. Course it does make you feel kind of a poor nut, doing it. Genie looked--Yes, by the Jim Hill! there you are. Poor little scrawny Genie-oh yes, sure, it was up to him to stand up. He wasn't afraid. And the Turk, the big stiff, he was afraid to.... Just when I needed him. After all our talk about Frazer, sitting up all hours--"
Through the black whirlpool in his head pierced an irritated, "Mr. Ericson, I said! Have you gone to sleep? I understood you were excellent at standing up! What is your explanation of the phenomenon?" The professor of physics and mathematics-the same who had pursued Carl on the ledge-was speaking to him.
Carl mumbled, sullenly, "Not prepared." The class sniggered. He devoted a moment to hating them, as pariahs hate, then through his mind went whirling again, "Just wait till I see the Turk!"
CHAPTER XII
A notice from the president's office, commanding Carl's instant presence, was in his post-office box. He slouched into the waiting-room of the offices of the president and dean. He was an incarnate desire to say exactly what he thought to the round, woolly President Wood.
Plain Albert Smith was leaving the waiting-room. He seized Carl's hand with his plowman's paw, and, "Good-by, boy," he growled. There was nothing gallant about his appearance-his blue-flannel shirt dusty with white fuzz, his wrinkled brick-red neck, the oyster-like ear at which he kept fumbling with a seamy finger-nail of his left hand. But Carl's salute was a salute to the new king.
"How d'you mean 'good-by,' Al?"
"I've just resigned from Plato, Carl."
"How'd you happen to do that? Did they summon you here?"
"No. Just resigned," said Plain Smith. "One time when I was school-teaching I had a set-to with a school committee of farmers about teaching the kids a little botany. They said the three R's were enough. I won out, but I swore I'd stand up for any teacher that tried to be honest the way he seen it. I don't agree with Frazer about these socialists and all-fellow that's worked at the plow like I have knows a man wants to get ahead for his woman and himself, first of all, and let the walking-delegates go to work, too. But I think he's honest, all right, and, well, I stood up, and that means losing my scholarship. They won't try to fire me. Guess I'll mosey on to the U. of M. Can't probably live there as cheap as here, but a cousin of mine owns a big shoe-store and maybe I can get a job with him.... Boy, you were plucky to get up.... Glad we've got each other, finally. I feel as though you'd freed me from something. God bless you."
To the dean's assistant, in the waiting-room, Carl grandly stated: "Ericson, 1908. I'm to see the president."
"It's been arranged you're to see the dean instead. Sit down. Dean's engaged just now."
Carl was kept waiting for a half-hour. He did not like the transference to the dean, who was no anxious old lamb like S. Alcott Wood, but a young collegiate climber, with a clipped mustache, a gold eye-glass chain over one ear, a curt voice, many facts, a spurious appreciation of music, and no mellowness. He was a graduate of the University of Chicago, and aggressively proud of it. He had "earned his way through college," which all tradition and all fiction pronounce the perfect manner of acquiring a noble independence and financial ability. Indeed, the blessing of early poverty is in general praised as the perfect training for acquiring enough wealth to save one's own children from the curse of early poverty. It would be safer to malign George Washington and the Boy Scouts, professional baseball and the Y. M. C. A., than to suggest that working one's way through college is not necessarily manlier than playing and dreaming and reading one's way through.
Diffidently, without generalizing, the historian reports this fact about the dean; he had lost the graciousness of his rustic clergyman father and developed an itchingly bustling manner, a tremendous readiness for taking charge of everything in sight, by acquiring during his undergraduate days a mastery of all the petty ways of earning money, such as charging meek and stupid wealthy students too much for private tutoring, and bullying his classmates into patronizing the laundry whose agent he was.... The dean stuck his little finger far out into the air when drinking from a cup, and liked to be taken for a well-dressed man of the world.
The half-hour of waiting gave Carl a feeling of the power of the authorities. And he kept seeing Plain Smith in his cousin's shoe-store, trying to "fit" women's shoes with his large red hands. When he was ordered to "step into the dean's office, now," he stumbled in, pulling at his soft felt hat.
With his back to Carl, the dean was writing at a roll-top desk. The burnished top of his narrow, slightly bald head seemed efficient and formidable. Not glancing up, the dean snapped, "Sit down, young man."
Carl sat down. He crumpled his hat again. He stared at a framed photograph, and moved his feet about, trying to keep them quiet.
More waiting.
The dean inspected Carl, over his shoulder. He still held his pen. The fingers of his left hand tapped his desk-tablet. He turned in his swivel-chair deliberately, as though he was now ready to settle everything permanently.