DUNCAN’S DISGUST
Despite his fears, Sam never heard from the faculty with reference to
his duel. He had, on the whole, proved to his teachers his right to be
considered a law-abiding citizen, if not a distinguished scholar; and
the accepted student version of the affair showed him anything but an
aggressor. Mr. Alsop, while consenting to the verdict of acquittal,
adhered in silence to his own opinion, which held Sam accountable for
the desecration of the well by a low fight.
This, however, was a month after the event. Mulcahy had come over on
the very evening to offer congratulations.
“You were lucky to get out of it so easily,” he said. “The fact is that
I thought Runyon would be too much for you, so the best thing was to
switch him off. I didn’t like the idea of your being mauled about by
a rough bully like him. That’s why I tried to keep you back.”
“But I simply couldn’t put up any longer with the treatment he was
giving me,” protested Sam. “That was worse than fighting and getting
licked. I hadn’t any self-respect left.”
“I hoped you would be able to patch it up. I see now that I was wrong,
but I was terribly afraid he’d do you some injury.”
Sam uttered a low laugh--quite the good-natured victor. “Well, he
didn’t. My knuckles are the only sore spot on me.”
“It’s a good thing you got Kendrick into it with you. He’ll be more
likely to come over to our side on the Laurel Leaf matter. Have you
talked with him yet?”
Sam shook his head.
“Be as careful with him as you can. Make him see that we want to get
the offices out of the hands of the oligarchy, back into the school.
It’s a shame that a democratic institution like the Academy should be
bossed by the few fellows in the fraternities.”
“Isn’t it chiefly because the frats have got some of the best fellows
in them?” asked Sam, innocently.
“No! They have some good fellows and a lot who wouldn’t be anything if
they didn’t have money behind them. They put a frat man forward, and
the rank and file just sit still and vote him in.”
“The rank and file don’t care much about it anyway.”
“They ought to, and they will when they’re aroused. It’s up to us to
show them how to protect their rights.”
After Mulcahy went, Sam compared the statement which his guest had
just made about the duel, with the reasons which he had given the day
before when he refused to act as second. “He was really afraid to have
anything to do with it,” he mused. “I don’t believe those fellows he’s
so down on would have gone back on a friend in that way. Still, I ought
not to blame him for that; he has his way to make; he can’t afford to
get into trouble with the profs.” The contrasting conduct of Kendrick,
who also had his way to make, occurred to him, and shook his faith
in his own argument. “But Ken is a natural scrapper,” he reassured
himself. “Ken would do ’most anything to see a fight.”
One thing, however, Ken would not do--vote for Mulcahy for office. That
Archer discovered as soon as he broached the subject.
“I wouldn’t vote for him for street sweeper!” he declared. “Mulcahy’s
a pig, and a grafter. He’s all for Mulcahy, and for nobody and nothing
else. If he wants a thing, on general principles I don’t want it. If
he says a course is right, I’m sure it isn’t. He works everything and
everybody he can get hold of. He’s got the faculty hypnotized into
believing he’s an angel. I wouldn’t trust him around the corner.”
“He’s a mighty able fellow,” replied Archer, who charged Kendrick’s
vehemence up against prejudice and envy; “a lot abler than Metcalf, or
Dupont, or--”
“Or me--” put in Kendrick, fervid, but ungrammatical. “He’s all
that--everything but straight.”
“I’ve never seen anything crooked about him,” Sam persisted. “He’s been
a very good friend to me. I should think as you’re both in the same
boat, you’d sympathize with him.”
“How are we both in the same boat?”
“Why, you both have to rely on yourselves for what you get. You are
both scholarship men.”
Kendrick looked relieved. “Is that all you meant! I was afraid you
thought we were in some way alike. If that was so, I was going to
change right off so as to be different. Mulcahy’s a crook!”
“He’s a friend of mine, if you please,” said Sam, with dignity.
“What has he ever done for you, anything?”
“Yes, he’s helped me with lessons and given me advice.”
“Advice is cheap. You can get it by the hour down in Alsop’s room. If
he’s given you free tutoring, that’s something.”
“It hasn’t been very much,” confessed Sam. “I didn’t need it.”
“He wasn’t much use to you in your row with Runyon, was he? If you’d
followed his advice then, you’d have been to the bad altogether.”
“He meant well; he was afraid I’d get hurt,” announced Sam; and then,
to cut short this discussion of Mulcahy’s virtues, he asked, “Then you
won’t vote for him?”
“Vote for him? Never. I’d rather vote for myself! I’m more or less of
a fool, but I have a little principle, and there are some things I’m
too good or too proud to do. There’s nothing Mulcahy wouldn’t do, if
he could make anything by it, and was sure nobody saw him. Don’t be
surprised if you find me electioneering against him.”
Sam went back to his room disgusted. The causes of his disgust were so
complex, that he couldn’t possibly disentangle them. He imagined the
chief one to be his failure to accomplish his object with Kendrick,
and the latter’s colossal prejudice against Mulcahy. In fact, he
was beginning to feel the difficulty of defending his friend from
insinuations against him, and to be annoyed that it was necessary to do
so. He found Peck standing before the grate with hands clasped behind
him, and a black frown on his face.
“I hear you’ve been turning this place into a prize ring,” began
Duncan. “Hereafter when you have these little affairs with your
friends I wish you’d hold ’em somewhere else.”
“I shan’t have any more. I didn’t want this one. I tried as hard as I
could to keep out of it.”
“You didn’t have to hold it here, did you?”
“Perhaps not. I didn’t know where else to go. I thought you wouldn’t be
here.”
“I wish I had been. I’d have stopped it mighty quick. Runyon and Brandy
Brantwein and Mulcahy and you! That combination would ruin any room’s
reputation!”
“Mulcahy wasn’t here!” said Sam, sullenly.
“Who was it, then?”
“Kendrick.”
Duncan stared. “I wonder how he got into it,” he said at length.
“He knew I was forced into the thing and he wanted to help me out,”
answered Sam, quickly. “That’s more than some fellows I know would do,”
he added with scornful emphasis.
Duncan’s stern look melted into a malicious grin. “More than Mulcahy
would do, I’ll bet. He isn’t running any more risks than he can help.”
“There wasn’t any risk!” said Sam, bravely.
“There wasn’t? Why, you’ll every one of you be fired when the faculty
gets on to it.”
“I guess not,” Sam remarked with a confidence which was not altogether
sincere.
“That Mulcahy has the crust of a crocodile,” went on Peck. “I
understand he’s trying to elect himself president of the Leaf.”
“Look here, Peck,” said Sam, holding his head high, “I wish you’d leave
Mulcahy out of the conversation hereafter. He’s a friend of mine, and I
don’t care to hear him abused all the time. If you don’t want to vote
for him, you’re not obliged to. There’ll be other candidates. He has
brains and ability, but perhaps they don’t count as much in your eyes
as clothes and a big allowance and membership in a frat.”
“That isn’t so,” snapped Duncan. “I don’t care anything about money,
but I hate a mucker whether he’s rich or poor.”
“Mulcahy isn’t a mucker. My opinion on that point is worth more than
yours, for I know him better than you do. He’s going home with me over
next Sunday. That shows what I think of him.”
Archer spoke with six feet of dignity and the gravity of a judge
handing down a decision, but Peck was totally unimpressed. “I hope he
won’t steal the silver,” he said with an exasperating twinkle,--“the
old silver!”
Sam blushed, and cursed himself that he had ever been fool enough
to tell Peck anything. And while he blushed and sought vainly for a
crushing reply, Peck went whistling off to his bedroom, disposed to
think rather better of his room-mate after all. If you believe in your
friends, it’s your business to stand up for them--until you find them
out.