The brunt of battle fell next day on Guthrie. His eleven o’clock
lecture was interrupted by a messenger with a note asking him to call
at the President’s office at noon.
When he faced the Ruler in his swivel chair, that representative of
things as they are was friendly of manner but meant business.
“I want to talk to you about you and Clark,” he said. “I have asked
for Clark’s resignation, and I am extremely anxious not to have to ask
for yours.”
“Clark dismissed!” exclaimed Guthrie. He realized that the President
was striking too quickly for them, and groped for defence.
“I warn you fairly that the Regents are behind me,” said the
President. “You have your choice of severing with that preposterous
organization formed in Clark’s rooms last night or with the
University.”
“You may not find it so simple a matter to dismiss teachers merely
because they choose to form an organization,” said Guthrie,
stiffening. “It is an open acknowledgment that freedom of action does
not exist. Moreover, it is not two men you dismiss, if any, but—a
considerable number.”
“I have reason to think not,” replied the President.
Guthrie was weakened by his lack of information, and by the fear that
his colleagues had gone to pieces.
“Make no mistake,” said the President. “I am prepared to dismiss
_seven_—if necessary. There are other reasons for your own dismissal.
You supported Clark in his insubordination with regard to Vida
Martin.”
“Since you did refuse to let her speak in the University what was
there wrong in saying so?”
“Clark’s tone. And yesterday you came out astonishingly for
sex-radicalism. The student president of the Y. W. C. A. came to me
and protested, saying a professor in this institution had no right to
corrupt the youth of the State with any such doctrine as unmarried
motherhood.”
“Because I presented Shaw’s argument!” exclaimed Guthrie indignantly.
“If you are going to adopt this girl’s point of view you will be
compelled to maintain the position that the ideas of the most
conspicuous living English writer shall not be mentioned to students
of English in this University!”
“Well, Guthrie, you must know where the fathers and mothers of this
State would stand in a fight about that. You cannot expect the
University to rise higher than its source, and its source is the
community.”
“The University has no reason for existence unless it rises higher
than the rest of the community,” said Guthrie. “It is nothing if it is
not able to lift itself out of the community’s inertia and maintain
itself against the community’s prejudice. If you had not condemned
without inquiry that organization formed last night, you might find
that it contains the possibility of raising the faculty into precisely
that commanding position.”
“I know the purpose of your organization, Professor Guthrie. Its
success would mean the end of all directing authority. An executive
could not discipline men upon whose votes he was dependent for
continuance in his position.”
“That is absurd,” said Guthrie scornfully. “An English premier,
dependent upon a parliamentary majority, possesses power enough to
govern the British Empire. He is not able to dismiss members of
Parliament. There’s no reason why the head of a university should have
any such power. There is altogether too much disciplining of teachers
for acting on their own honest convictions.”
“I won’t argue that matter of opinion,” said the President. “The fact
is plain that you have placed yourself at the head of an organization
directed squarely against the legally constituted authority of this
University, and unless you drop it you go.”
Guthrie sat silent, facing what he felt must be a vain sacrifice of
himself—and nothing gained for his cause. He heard the rushing click
of typewriters through the closed door of an adjoining office. Their
frequent tiny bells of warning gave him a sense of time moving too
fast, events crowding too close.
The President rose and walked slowly up and down the room. “Can you
afford it, Guthrie?” he said kindly. “How about your life insurance?
Will it lapse if you stop payment? How about your house? Still paying
for it?”
“You are remarkably well informed as to my private affairs,” said
Guthrie coldly.
“You have given me reason to be. Your children are approaching their
most expensive years. How about their education? Do you want Harold
and Lucy Guthrie to sink back into the untrained, ignorant class?”
“That’s the fiendish cruelty of this!” cried Guthrie. He saw the eager
face of Harold offering to sacrifice his little Indian suit. “That’s
where you’ve got me,” he said despondently. “No wonder one of the
Regents offered to double Clark’s salary if he would marry. There’s
something hellish in a system that makes a slave of a man through the
needs of his children!”
“It is doubtful if any other university will want you when it becomes
known why you left here,” mused the President. “Don’t do it, Guthrie.
You’ve been a living influence with our students. Many an old grad. is
grateful to you for kindling in him here a life-long love of letters.
You ought to go on doing that for twenty years.”
“It’s just because I do not want to stop being a living influence——
A man must grow or ossify. Yesterday a new world of thought, a new
secret of living, a new sincerity, came to birth in my mind. You want
me to kill it. That is not being a living influence. That is spiritual
infanticide. It means my extinction as a free teacher. And deserting
that organization I helped to form last night—that means dishonor!”
“No,” said the President emphatically. “You cannot be expected to
sacrifice your career and your family because you happened to be
carried away in a dramatic moment worked up by a professional
agitator. You’ll see that within a month. This means your salvation
from some wild ideas and wilder conduct.”
With an air of relaxing from strain the President dropped back easily
in his chair. “That woman must be clever, Guthrie. Isn’t she?”
“She’s more than clever,” said Guthrie. “She’s a brave and skilful
fighter for a great cause—a thing I cannot be. I cannot even face
what every married button-cutter faces when he goes on strike!”
Partially realizing how low Guthrie was sinking in his own estimation,
the President was not the man to let sympathy keep him from gaining
his end. “Well, Guthrie,” he said, “I take it that chiefly on account
of your children I may count on your withdrawing from the College
Teachers’ Union.” He smiled. “I say nothing more about the
sex-radicalism, for I feel sure you will yourself see the need of
soft-pedalling that in the classroom and in public. I am heartily glad
you are still going to be with us.”
Guthrie went out of the President’s office like a man who has been
drugged. With an instinct to hide from every eye, he sought the
noonday solitude of his seminar room, let the door lock behind him,
and at the head of the long green table sank into that chair they
called the chair of English.
There, in the hour of his degradation, he felt prophetically the ennui
of the next twenty years—the dead thoughts he would there utter and
reiterate—the bored young faces——
What had become of the interestingness of ideas? Where was that
passion for the hard and glorious quest of the true truth within? Why
had he been so fiercely bent on shaping new channels for his energy?
He had no energy. His thwarted force flowed away from his will where
it meant health and conquest into a morbid intensity of emotion—the
road to melancholia.
He stiffened up. There was one pain he must meet now. There was that
desire to hide to overcome—a self-revelation harder than any he had
ever thought to make. There was shame to endure. “I have to tell her,”
he said.
He rose and left his solitude, went down the deserted central walk,
and over to the drab-colored hotel. He looked between the open double
doors into the dining room. There were a dozen people. At the table
by the window in the corner where he had sat with them two days before
were Kenton Clark and Vida. They beckoned eagerly to Guthrie.
He found himself strangely unwilling to cross alone the moderately
large square room. Its floor of alternate light and dark wooden strips
seemed like a great open space in which something evil must happen. He
yielded to the irrational fear which impelled him to slip around close
to the wall.
Without waiting for him to take off his overcoat or sit down, Clark
flashed news of his own dismissal—too much aglow with the war they
were going to wage to perceive anything wrong with Guthrie.
“Searles wanted all six to resign!” said Clark in a low, eager voice.
“Corking spirit, but we decided not. Six is too few. With six more—!
If we’d only had a little more time! Never mind. The idea is sound.
We’ll put it through. We’re going to raise a fund. I’ll give my whole
time to it as organizer. Sit down, man, sit down!”
Guthrie shook his head.
Vida rose with sudden solicitude, came close and laid her hand on his
arm. “What has happened to you, Mr. Guthrie?” she asked, so low that
Clark barely heard.
“You are happy people,” said Guthrie, for a moment permitting her
searching eyes to fathom his. “You will fight beautifully. I have
failed you. The children were too much for me. I have caved in. I keep
my job. I’m done for.”
He turned away, unable to endure their eyes. “Good-bye,” he said, and
started back along the wall.
Clark sprang up, napkin in hand, knocking a knife to the floor. “Oh,
here!” he protested.
Vida, with compassionate eyes on the retreating figure of Guthrie,
stopped Clark with a gesture.
“That’s final,” she said. “He’s crushed. There’s no use torturing him.”