back. He was trying to compromise, but he had no idea how any change was
to come about. He brooded over it in his room that night, and the more
he pondered the more clearly he realized that the debt to his uncle
stood in his way. Plainly, he was up against it. He made the foot of his
iron bedstead jingle with a petulant kick, and, muttering the Phi yell
in a savage tone, went off to sleep.
At luncheon the next day at the Phi house, the Freshman was so friendly
and so gracious that two of the Chapter went out into the kitchen and
shook hands. Had he not inquired solicitously about the fraternity's
position in Amherst, had he not expressed great pleasure at learning of
their high political standing back there? Never a word had they heard of
his uncle, however. The Freshman who is in his own neighborhood does not
donate additional arguments.
The Phi house was shaken to its foundations. This was the greatest
piece of work for years. Walt was immediately invited to stay for dinner
and to spend the night and the next day, but although it was Saturday,
he declined. Even the tempting bait of a Populist campaign rally moved
him not.
The days passed and Walter Olcott Haviland was an unhappy child. His
sudden intimacy with the Phis could not escape the astonished Rhos; he
was sensitive to the change in their manner, slight as it was. He would
have been glad enough to have stayed out of fraternities altogether if
it would have helped matters. There was a very jolly set in the Hall,
men who had refused far better bids than the Phis. Jimmie Mason and
Frank Lyman, "Peg" Langdon and Blake, the fullback; these fellows, as
prominent as any in College, were in the dormitory crowd; they used one
another's rooms and tobacco and clothes with the utmost good nature.
Walt had been fond of the big building from his first day there; he
could have had a happy time with this independent set.
He was not made any happier by Lyman's saying, "Whatever you do, don't
join the Phis. They've no standing here, and you won't help yourself
any." Freshmen usually listened to what Lyman said. But Haviland had
thought and reasoned and struggled with himself, and had come to a
conclusion. To write to his uncle, "I have joined the Phis because you
are one," would be worth any sacrifice. Perhaps he could work to improve
the crowd a little after he was one of them. At least there was no
reason why they need be his only friends.
He went to the lab one afternoon with his decision made. If the Phis
asked him to dinner, he would go and put his head on the block.
As he came along toward the main entrance he saw Andrew Higgins, the
longest, lankiest Phi of them all, bearing down upon him. His heart
sank, but his resolution was firm, and he looked his fate in the face.
When his executioner had almost reached him, somebody touched his
shoulder; it was Smith.
"Before your frat brother gets hold of you," muttered Cap, drawing Walt
aside, "I want to speak to you. The boys must have your final answer
to-day."
The "frat brother" was not to be turned down. He loomed up steadily in
their direction. Walt was miserable. It was the beginning of the end.
"I'll give it to-night," he said hurriedly, as the Phi reached them.
"Will you come to dinner?"
Haviland wanted one sunbeam before the darkness.
"Yes, I'll come, Cap," and turned to shake hands with the Phi, whose
invitation was frozen half-way in his throat. Now the Beta Phis were not
of the people who let to-morrow get anything while to-day lasts, so
Higgins asked Walt to come down after dinner for the night, and the
unhappy boy, half-hearing, promised.
It was a gloomy dinner for the Freshman, baked funeral meats and he the
corpse. Mrs. Perkins gave him a motherly smile and told him in a careful
undertone that she was glad he was going to be one of her boys, after
which he felt childishly close to tears. He sat out-doors with the
others and smoked and joined weakly in the singing. The roses clinging
to the porch had never been so sweet; the Rho dog had never nosed so
affectionately against his shoulder. There was to be no substitute for
this. He wished he had never seen the campus. His mood communicated
itself to the others and things grew slow. One by one the fellows
slipped away with various excuses. Finally Cap said:
"Come up to the room," and Haviland went up stairs with the emotions one
carries to the dentist.
Smith threw himself on the bed and motioned Walt to a chair at his study
table. They tried a little general conversation, but failed mournfully.
The Freshman had a wretched feeling that this room was home to him. He
had slept here so often and he knew every athletic picture and trophy
around it. There had been something said about his living here with Cap
after Christmas. The clock ticked spitefully at him.
Smith's voice, deep and quiet, broke the pause.
"What's the good word, Professor?"
Walt swallowed a lump, nervously opened a book that lay on the table,
then looked at the big red sweater on the bed, and said:
"I can't do it, Cap."
Smith kicked a pillow of which he thought a great deal almost into the
grate, and said with fine scorn:
"When do you join the Phis?"
"I don't know," said Van, drearily.
"Well, I think you're nutty; it's the cheesiest gang in College."
The battle had begun. Walt might as well practice his defense at once,
so he said with a little dignity:
"My uncle is a Phi, and it is his wish."
"So that is it!" Such a reason was no discredit to the Rhos; therefore
it was the harder to accept. "You give me a jolt, Walt. Just because
your uncle is in a rotten fraternity you must crawl into the heap, too.
I'd see him hanged first before I'd queer myself with those yaps."
Cap went on even more impatiently, but the Freshman heard not a word.
He was staring at the book open before him.
"Cap, what book is this?"
"The fraternity catalogue."
"What fraternity?"
"Ours, of course; whose did you think it was, the--"
Walt gave a hysterical whoop and flung himself over the footboard upon
the astonished Smith. He rolled him over the bed and sent him to join
the pillow on the floor; then, sitting up on the bed with tousled hair
and shining eyes, he said:
"Cap, if you still want me, I say yes!"
"What's the matter with you?" asked the amazed Sophomore from the rug.
"Nothing!" shouted Walt. "I see the whole thing; uncle's awful
writing--mother got it Phi instead of Rho--she doesn't know one from the
other--his name's in your book. Hoo!" and he sprang on Smith again and
lifted him bodily.
The Chapter had been waiting. Hearing propitious sounds, they came
stringing in, and Haviland's explanation, with the celebration that
followed it, took such a length of time that the longest, lankiest Phi
fell asleep in the parlor and his lamp burned out about two.
THE INITIATION OF DROMIO.
The Initiation of Dromio.
"I know a prof.,--not much to see,--
Take care!
Mistakes are made here frequently,
Beware!"
The Rho fraternity called Walter Haviland "professor." Haviland was one
of their pledged Freshmen. In rushing, a good nickname, gracefully used,
is a great thing. It puts a Freshman considerably at his ease, and
impresses him with the feeling that he belongs to the set.
The first day that Haviland came over to dinner, Bob Duncan, a Senior,
spoke up from his end of the table: "Are you a relative of Lamb, the
botany professor?"
"I have never heard that I am," answered the Freshman.
"Are you in any of his classes?"
"No; I'm not going to take botany."
"If you were, I don't believe the class could tell you apart. Doesn't he
look like Lamb to beat the band, fellows?"
"He's a little heavier than the prof.," suggested Smith.
"Oh, perhaps he is a little," admitted Duncan, "but their height is the
same to an inch, and the facial resemblance is great."
"He can't look much like a professor," laughed the Freshman.
"He doesn't," said Duncan, "they've got him down in the register as an
associate professor in botany, but that's all he has to his credit. He
gets taken for a Freshman right along. New students ask him if he is
registered and what his major is--sure they do."
"They say there was a big farmer who went in to register in botany and
wouldn't do business with poor Lamb at all," said Perkins. "He said he
wasn't so green as he looked, and he knew all about these students who
make believe they're professors and give fake examinations. The
professor was as red as a beet."
"I don't blame him," said Duncan. "Why, the man is married and has two
children."
"Are you sure they're his," said Pellams, seriously. "I've seen them
with him on the Quad, but I thought perhaps he'd borrowed them for
effect, to keep off the Senior girls."
"The year he came here the Beta Phis tried to rush him, didn't they?"
asked Smith. Duncan scowled across the table at the Sophomore. This was
Haviland's first day at the house; they could josh other frats later, if
he came their way; just now it was a break.
Ted Perkins interrupted tactfully. "Have some of this Spanish goo? The
English department here is crazy on theatricals. They will probably want
you for a grand revival of the Comedy of Errors."
"If I were you," came in Smith, to cover up his slip, "I would go over
and draw his salary some day. They would pay it all right if they didn't
look twice and ask questions."
"Better look out," added Pellams, in his solemn drawl, "those babies of
his will be claiming you in the Quad in front of all Roble some sunny
day, and then you might just as well leave college!"
This table-talk gave the men an idea for a nickname, and so, when they
knew the Freshman a little better, they slipped an arm through his and
called him "Professor." It was really the most civilized nickname in the
house.
One Thursday, at football practice, about two weeks after Haviland had
agreed to join, Pellams spoke to him.
"Professor, on Saturday night you are to be initiated. Bring over your
suit-case with a change of under-clothes and a pair of old shoes."
"I was going up to San Francisco on Saturday," murmured Haviland, his
heart beating a bit faster, "but----"
"You have changed your mind," finished Pellams, quietly. "We will have
dinner as usual, and you will be on time, please. So long, Professor."
Haviland was not wholly at peace as he walked back to the dormitory. A
Freshman never becomes especially hilarious in anticipating his
initiation night; there is an uncertain certainty about it that he
cannot entirely laugh away, however much natural bravery he may have,
however hoary he may be in high school fraternity experience. At the
chapter house, where things have been made so pleasant, careless remarks
are dropped, full of sinister meaning. It is not nearly so comfortable
there now, and Freshman Damocles wishes the suspense were over.
When the fateful Saturday dawned, Walter had a strong impulse to go to
the city as he had originally planned. Pellams had explained to him that
his having held out so long before agreeing to join would probably mean
his "getting it unusually hard." He knew that of all the fraternities,
the Rhos were the most severe in their initiations--one of the Rhos had
told him so.
At the post-office that morning he met Professor Lamb starting for a
day's botanizing in the foothills. He did not know the instructor, but
he envied him as he leaned on his wheel and watched the botany man take
the fence and start off across the brown pastures toward the hills
beyond the lake. There certainly was a strong resemblance.
"Oh," groaned the candidate for fraternity privileges, "I wish it was a
case of his resembling me instead of my looking like him. I only wish I
was the prof, now, I'd change places quickly enough. I'm afraid I'm a
coward."
He wondered if they guessed how scared he was; he hoped not. He pedaled
around to the courts, where Cap. Smith was waiting to play tennis, and
he put on an infant bravado which secretly pleased the Sophomore. After
a few sets Cap. put his racket under his arm.
"No more tennis, Professor," he said, with meaning; "you'd better rest
most of the day. Get out your work for Monday, you won't feel much like
studying to-morrow, you know, and don't forget to be at the house at six
sharp." Then, since the Freshman had visibly wilted, Smith grinned all
the way across the field.
Haviland suspected two other fellows in the Hall of being in a state of
mind similar to his own, but as he had been instructed to keep the
matter absolutely secret, he could not turn to them for relief. He
worried through the long Saturday, making futile attacks on the work
prescribed for Monday, strumming in an aimless way on his banjo, and
finally writing his mother a letter between the lines of which she at
once read malaria.
Dinner at the Rho house was the most miserable meal he had ever choked
his way through. A half-dozen graduates were present, and some men from
the Berkeley chapter. These visitors seemed a solemn lot, and
conversation included the candidates only now and then. During the lulls
in the talk, the Freshmen made audible sounds trying to swallow their
food; this was so embarrassing that they gave up the effort to eat, only
gulping water now and then during talk. It was a relief when some one
touched each Freshman quietly, and the condemned youngsters followed
upstairs, their faces wearing pitiful dumb-victim-at-the-altar
expressions, or trying with ghastly smiles to show how little they
cared.
The young moon, sloping toward the shaggy rim of the Palo Alto hills
soon after eight o'clock, looked down into the pasture lands back of the
campus. There she saw Walter Haviland, blindfolded and with a rope about
his waist. Three other Freshmen were in a similar condition in different
parts of the field. Haviland had been intrusted to the tender mercy of
Cap. Smith, a 'Varsity man, and Pellams Chase, greatest of all joshers.
This was indeed a high honor. Two of the less distinguished members
hovered about them, eager to add their services. Their objective point
was a fence skirted by a gully through which water ran in the winter
time; into this gully they flung the luckless Walt and left him there
while they took their ruthless course to a part of the field where
another group of men had gathered.
The moon touched delicately the redwood trees upon the western ridge,
then slipped down beyond them. With her last look into the field she saw
Haviland lying on his face at the bottom of the gulch. She saw also
Professor Lamb, of the botany department, hurrying home cross-country
from the day's collecting on upper San Francisquito Creek, tired, dusty,
bedraggled, thinking with an unscientific enthusiasm of the hot dinner
awaiting his homecoming. The lingering moon, peering over the mountain
edge, saw the instructor clear the fence and plunge into the shadowy
gulch. Then, before she could see what happened next, the stern law of
the solar system drew her reluctant down.
The four men who had charge of Haviland came back from their
consultation with the others. When they were near the place where they
had left their victim, a man appeared, climbing out. This called for
investigation; they bounded along through the gulch and came up with the
fellow. To their surprise it was Haviland with his bandage off and the
rope nowhere. It was the first time a man had ever tried to give them
the slip. He should pay for it! Cap. Smith threw himself on the Freshman
at the first glimpse of his face. In a jiffy there was a new bandage
over his eyes and another rope coiled around his waist; this time it
included his hands. He struggled resolutely, but in silence, for his
breath had left him when he struck the ground with Smith on top.
They seized him firmly and ran him at breakneck speed over a terrible
course, heading for an old well which waters a back pasture. Here they
stopped, spent with running.
"On your knees, Professor!" gasped Pellams, with as much authority as
his lack of breath would allow.
The panting victim remained standing.
"Down!" accompanied by a resounding blow of a barrel stave.
Still no movement, but a gurgle was heard as though speech was being
labored for.
Biff!
The unfortunate creature sprawled beside the well, but struggled up
again to a half-kneeling posture.
"This--must--stop!" he gasped, painfully. "It--is--an--outrage.
I--am----"
"No levity, sir!" said Smith. "You've got to do what we say, Professor,
or you won't get in at all."
"I don't--want--to--get--in," panted the poor wretch in desperate
protest. "It's--a--mistake--I----"
"See here, Professor; where's your nerve? Be a man! You'll never make a
Rho at this rate. Brace up, for Heaven's sake! Rise, Neophyte."
They gave the rope a cruel wrench, which brought their captive to his
feet.
"Let's kill him," whispered one of the men. Never before had there been
so shameful a display of the white feather.
"We'll duck him."
They brought their Freshman to the brink of the well. They tightened the
rope under his arms, and, before he could divine their intentions, they
were lowering him down the slippery side. When his feet struck the cold
water he struggled violently, shouting something which his splashing and
the echo of the well made unintelligible. Presently they hoisted him,
dripping and speechless with rage.
"Thou hast now been cleansed of thy sin and cowardice, O Neophyte,"
declaimed Pellams. "Forward to the joys that await thee!"
They dragged him home on the run, taking the road this time and making
all haste to the house. The half-dead initiate had to be carried
upstairs. Smith took off the rope and told him to strip for a bath. The
victim sat on the edge of the Sophomore's bed and shook his head
feebly. He was evidently exhausted.
"Come, hurry up, Haviland," said Cap. He felt a brutal impatience to see
what the barrel staves had done to the fellow's back. "Get bathed and
put on your dry clothes and be ready for the feed."
The initiate raised his hands slowly and untied the bandage. He blinked
a moment at Smith, then he said huskily, "I am not Haviland, Mr. Smith,
nor do I want any 'feed.' I want to know what this means." There was no
anger in his voice, only great weariness.
The freezing truth dawned on the horrified student. His first impulse
was to rush out of the house and to keep running. He managed to stammer:
"Where's Haviland?"
"I don't know where Haviland is," muttered the tired instructor. "I
don't know who Haviland is. If I have taken his place I am ready to
change again." He looked down upon his clothes, stuccoed with tarweed
burrs and wet mud.
Then Jack Smith laughed aloud.
"Professor, when we've found Haviland, and you've seen him, you'll
understand the whole horrible mistake, and----"
"There was no mistake," said the other, coldly, "you called me Professor
while you were beating me."
This only set Smith off again.
"That's our name for Haviland. You see he looks like you--oh, I can't
explain it to you, Professor; but when you've seen the man you'll
forgive us, I know you will. And you've simply got to stay to our feed
now, if we have to tie you up again to keep you here."
Professor Lamb, of the botany department, smiled wanly.
"I think I will take a bath, anyway," he sighed.
THE SUBSTITUTED FULLBACK.
The Substituted Fullback.
"Shadows, you say, mirages of the brain!
I know not, faith, not I;
Is it more strange the dead should walk again
Than that the quick should die?"
ALDRICH.
"Frank Lyman, Football Manager, Stanford University:
"Blake died three forty-five. Body going East. I return five
train. DIEMANN."
When he had sent this message to the University, the instructor in
Psychology went gloomily down to the Third and Townsend Street station.
There was nothing more to be done just then. He had telegraphed to the
dead athlete's parents; the undertakers had their instructions about
shipping the body to Ohio, and the hospital bills would be arranged for
later. He slipped into a single seat at the back of the car to avoid the
chance of a travelling acquaintance. Now that the business part of it
was over, he could not talk to anyone.
The whole thing had been so sudden that it was hard to feel the truth.
Barely a week ago he had stood on the practice field at the University,
following Blake's splendid play and listening to the shouting of the
crowded bleachers, who idolized their great fullback with the absolute
idolatry of a college crowd. It was not easy to believe that all this
physical manhood, all this intellectual promise, had been snuffed out
like a candle before their very eyes.
Diemann pressed his face against the car window and stared out at the
terraced produce gardens slipping dimly by in the early November dusk.
Between him and the dead fullback there had been such companionship as
comes now and then to an instructor under thirty and a man nearing the
end of his college course. When Diemann, just home from Germany, came
West to teach Psychology, he found young Blake the college hero. The new
instructor had himself been a noted back; he still hovered somewhere
between enthusiast and fiend. At Stanford he at once identified himself
with the football men, and they welcomed him gladly as assistant coach.
During that first season, two years ago, he had come to know and like
Fred Blake. Later, the fullback took Diemann's course in Psychology, and
to the elder man's gratification, developed a passion for the subject.
The instructor recognized the quality of the athlete's mind, and before
long the two were working together, reading and discussing along the
line of the teacher's special interest.
Coming home from the sober materialism of Leipzig, Diemann had realized
more fully than ever how thoroughly the interest in matters occult had
pervaded the mind of his native country. To this department of
Psychology he turned with an admitted interest in things unseen and a
confidence in the restraint of his University training. He felt that he
stood barely upon the threshold of the subject, held back by material
prejudice and the conservatism of little faith; yet his enthusiasm grew
daily. He weighed the evidence of phenomena with an impartiality that
other people pronounced belief. The attitude of those about him was for
the most part unsympathetic. Some to whom he had made furtive
confidences called him "spooky," a spiritualist; but he was merely an
investigator, trying to be fair. It was an alluring study; perhaps he
ran the risk of over-enthusiasm--he had known people who had
spiritualized the palpably material--but he was guarding against this
danger; it would take an exceptional impulse ever to get him to that
point.
It might be that some such temptation was coming to him now. He had just
seen his friend pass into perfect knowledge. Blake had said something to
him at the last that still ran in his ears, above the rumble of the
train. "I will come back, if there is anything in it all."
Diemann, peering out into the deepening gloom toward the bay shore
faintly white in the luminous mist, thought over this last interview of
theirs; he was finding it hard to realize that their friendship had
ended.
Only eight days before, he remembered, Blake first complained. It was at
the practice, and Diemann had given him a shot about his listless work.
Fred had answered:
"I can't help it, Die; I feel dead, somehow. I'm afraid I'm going stale,
after all."
He recalled the drawn look on Fred's face. But the boy would come out
the next night, for there was only a week before the team would leave
for the Springs, and so much had to be done that the captain simply
couldn't lay off. Toward the end of the practice, he collapsed. With his
arm over Lyman's shoulder he had gone back to the Hall, dragging his
feet heavily, while the crowd sat on the bleachers, quiet and
frightened. Then the pain came, tearing its way into the heroic body,
and the specialist hurriedly summoned from San Francisco had said that
they must get him to the hospital.