THE TORN PAGE
When Lester awoke and looked at his watch, he was horrified to find
that it was nine o’clock. He leaped out of bed and dressed frantically.
Why hadn’t Richard wakened him! Richard had gone――feeling, no doubt,
that he could best display his consideration for his overworked
roommate by letting him sleep as long as he could.
“Two hours――less than two hours――to write that theme!” muttered Lester,
as he slipped into his clothes. “I’ll have to go without breakfast, at
that.”
He seated himself at his desk, but his mind was too panicky to respond
to his need. He filled a page and a half with commonplace narrative,
read it over, and realized in despair that, even though he went on in
that manner for the prescribed number of words, it would do him no
good. He must turn in a piece of work that had some merit if he was to
escape failure.
Taking a fresh sheet of paper, he began an essay on athletics. But it
seemed impossible for him to write anything on that subject without
substantially duplicating David’s work; moreover, it became all too
apparent that, even though his thoughts should flow smoothly, he would
not have time to complete the task. The clock struck ten; he cast his
papers aside, caught up his notebook, and hurried away to a lecture on
fine arts.
Although he took a few notes during the lecture, he gave little
attention to what the professor was saying. His mind was busy trying
to find justification for an act that he contemplated with aversion.
“It isn’t as if it were going to hurt anybody,” he kept saying to
himself. “It won’t affect David’s standing in the least.” The thought
of it became more tolerable when he decided that at some time in the
future he would tell David the whole story. “He’ll understand, when I
make a clean breast of it all,” Lester assured himself. Somehow the
determination to confess the truth eventually to David, who would be
the only sufferer――except that he wouldn’t really suffer!――seemed to
Lester to minimize very much the seriousness of the offense, to make it
almost pardonable. He rehearsed, of course, the various other excuses
that had insinuated themselves into his mind――the exhaustion, mental
and physical, following his sustained and successful efforts in his
other courses, the fact that he and David had so often talked over the
ideas embodied in the theme and that he could not therefore be really
charged with taking something that was not altogether his own. They
were flimsy excuses, yet he was not ashamed to get some comfort and
encouragement from them.
After the lecture on fine arts Lester returned to his room, took the
typewritten theme out of his desk, and copied off in longhand the
last half-page of it, which bore David’s name on the back. Then he
substituted his copy for the typewritten page and wrote his name on
it. He tore up the page that he had removed and threw it into his
waste-basket. David had not given the theme a title; Lester wrote
in the heading, “The Place of Athletics in College Life.” And above
this title he wrote, “Please do not read in class.” The instructor,
Professor Worthington, frequently read some of the best themes to the
class, but had announced that he would respect the wishes of any one
who did not care to have his theme so read.
Having thus safeguarded himself against detection, Lester decided to
dispose of David’s first draft. He took the pages, crumpled them up,
and put them into the fireplace and then touched a lighted match to
them. In a few minutes they were ashes.
Lester was reading a magazine when his roommate entered. “Hello,
Lester,” said Richard. “You seem to be taking things easily for a
change. Have you got that theme done that’s been worrying you?”
“Yes,” said Lester, “it’s all done.”
“That’s fine. It would have been a shame to be stumped by that after
all that you’ve put through in the last two weeks.”
There was a knock on the door, and David entered. Lester instinctively
put his hand to the inside pocket of his coat to make sure that the
theme was hidden.
“How are you coming along, Lester?” David asked. “Get your theme done
all right?”
“It’s done,” said Lester.
“Good work. The queerest thing has happened about mine. It’s disappeared
absolutely. I’ve turned my room upside down, hunting for it.”
“You must have left it somewhere――in the library, perhaps,” suggested
Richard.
“No, I haven’t taken it outside my room. Besides, the rough draft as
well as the typewritten copy has vanished. I could have sworn that I
left them on my desk last night when I went out. I spent the evening at
home, reading to Mr. Dean. It was late when I got back to my room, and
I really didn’t notice whether the theme was on my desk then or not.
This morning when I looked for it I couldn’t find it. Somebody must
have taken it to play a trick on me, but he’d better get it back to me
soon.”
“Who would do a thing like that?” asked Richard.
“Oh, it may be some one’s idea of a joke,” replied David.
“Even if it’s lost it won’t make any special difference to you, will
it?” asked Lester. “You’re all right in the course?”
“Oh, yes, I’m all right in the course, though I suppose it would
probably lower my mark. But the thing is so mysterious――the
disappearance of both the rough draft and the typewritten copy!”
“What do you make of it, my dear Wallace?” said Richard, turning to
Lester.
“Nothing. It’s queer enough certainly. What was the theme about, Dave?”
Even as he spoke he wondered if his voice could sound natural when he
was feeling so utterly contemptible.
“Oh, about athletics in college and just how seriously a fellow should
take them, and all that kind of thing. Some of the old arguments you
and I have had, Lester, worked up into an essay. It was rather good,
too, if I do say it. That’s why it makes me so tired to lose it.”
“I guess it’s not lost,” said Richard. “Somebody must have taken it as
a joke and will return it to you before the hour.”
Lester made no comment. He was wishing that he had courage enough to
pull the theme out of his pocket, and return it on the spot. He felt
that he might have done so if he had not torn up the page bearing
David’s name and substituted that incriminating page bearing his own.
There was no possibility now of his passing his action off as a joke,
and he could not bear the ignominy of confessing to Richard as well as
to David.
The twelve-o’clock bell rang. Lester rose. “Going over to class?” he
said to David.
“Yes,” David answered, “I’ll stop in my room on the way downstairs on
the chance that the merry joker has returned my theme.”
Lester waited on the landing while David made a hurried search.
“Nothing doing,” David said as he emerged and closed the door. “I hate
to lose that theme. It was about the best I’ve written in the course.”
They reached the classroom just as the exercises for the hour were
about to begin. Lester and David both went to the professor’s desk,
which was piled with the themes that the members of the class had
deposited there. Lester drew the theme from his pocket and quickly
thrust it into the pile. He lingered to hear what David would say.
“Mr. Worthington,” said David, “I had my theme all written and copied
yesterday. To-day I’ve looked everywhere for it, and it’s simply
disappeared. I don’t understand it――whether it got thrown away by
mistake or what happened to it.”
“You say that you had it all written and ready to hand in?” said
Professor Worthington.
“Yes, sir.”
“Perhaps it will turn up in a day or two. Anyway, I’ll give you an
extension of a week. I don’t feel that I can excuse you from handing in
the theme, but you may have a week in which to make it up.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Lester, having overheard the conversation, went to his seat with a new
anxiety to worry him. It troubled him all through the hour.
After the class he joined David. “It’s a shame,” he said, “that
Worthington wouldn’t excuse that theme when you told him how it was.
What are you going to do about it?”
“Oh, I’ll make it up. He’s given me a week to do it in.”
“I don’t suppose you can rewrite the theme, can you?”
“I ought to be able to. I have it pretty well in mind.”
“But it would be such a stupid job, doing it all over again. You
probably wouldn’t do it nearly so well as you did it the first time.
I should think you’d better write on something else; you’d have more
interest then.”
“I won’t go at it at once, anyway. I’ll wait a couple of days and then
see how I feel about it.”
“I think you’d make a great mistake not to take a fresh subject,”
said Lester earnestly. “Working over the old one――you’d make it sort
of perfunctory and lifeless. You’d better take my advice and tackle
something new.”
“Well, I’ll see if any new idea comes to me. But it probably won’t, and
I guess the old theme wouldn’t lose much from rewriting. I remember it
pretty well.”
“I know, but when you come to writing it all out again, you’ll find it
so tedious that you won’t do yourself justice.”
“I’ve got a week, anyway, and I shan’t go at it at once.”
Lester saw no valid ground on which he might pursue the argument. When
he entered his room, Richard Bradley turned from the desk at which he
was sitting. “Here’s a queer thing, Lester,” he said. “A little while
ago I wanted to look up a notice in to-day’s _Crimson_, and I couldn’t
find the sheet anywhere. So I pulled out your waste-basket to see if
you’d thrown it in there, and this piece of that theme of Dave’s caught
my eye.” He held up the torn piece with David’s name and the name of
the course and the date written on the back.
“Isn’t that the limit!” said Lester. He felt that his face was set and
that his voice was querulous rather than expressive of astonishment,
but he could not dissemble more successfully; the shock of this new
discovery was too unkind. “How do you suppose it got there?” He made no
effort to take the paper and examine it.
“I can’t imagine.”
“Have you told Dave about it?”
“No; I went down to his room when I discovered it, but he was out.”
“Well, he was probably in here with his theme some time in the last two
or three days when neither of us was in and decided he didn’t like the
last page of it. So he probably just chucked it into my waste-basket
and went home and wrote another last page.”
“I suppose that might have been it,” said Richard doubtfully.
“There’s no other way of accounting for it that I can see,” said
Lester. “And I tell you, Dick, if I were you I wouldn’t go to Dave
about this thing. Professor Worthington’s given him a week’s extension
to make up the theme, and the less he thinks about the old one the
better job he’ll do on the new. He’s bothered himself almost distracted
over what happened to that theme, and we want to get his mind off it
completely. Let’s see the thing, anyway.”
Richard gave Lester the paper, and Lester scrutinized it thoughtfully.
“Of course,” he said, “that’s just what happened. It’s the last page;
he wanted for some reason to rewrite it and so he just chucked it away
wherever he happened to be. Let’s chuck it back into the waste-basket
and not bother him about it. Since when have you taken to scavenging
in waste-baskets, Dick?”
“Well,” said Richard slowly, “I didn’t find what I wanted. So I guess I
won’t do it again.”