The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
_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.
"Well, young man, are you prepared to apologize to the president and
faculty?"
"Apologize? What for? The president said those that wanted to
protest----"
"Now we won't have any blustering, if you please, Ericson. I haven't
the slightest doubt that you are prepared to give an exhibition of
martyrdom. That is why I asked the privilege of taking care of you,
instead of permitting you to distress President Wood any further. We
will drop all this posing, if you don't mind. I assure you that it
doesn't make----"
"I----"
"----the slightest impression on me, Ericson. Let's get right down to
business. You know perfectly well that you have stirred up all the
trouble you----"
"I----"
"----could in regard to Mr. Frazer. And I think, I really think, that
we shall either have to have your written apology and your promise to
think a little more before you talk, hereafter, or else we shall have
to request your resignation from college. I am sorry that we
apparently can't run this college to suit you, Ericson, but as we
can't, why, I'm afraid we shall have to ask you not to increase our
inefficiency by making all the trouble you can. Wait now; let's not
have any melodrama! You may as well pick up that hat again. It doesn't
seem to impress me much when you throw it down, though doubtless it
was ver-ee dramatically done, oh yes, indeed, ver-ee dramatic. See
here. I know you, and I know your type, my young friend, and I
haven't----"
"Look here. Why do I get picked out as the goat, the one to apologize?
Because I stood up first? When Prexy said to?"
"Oh, not at all. Say it's because you quite shamelessly made motions
at others while you stood there, and did your best to disaffect men
who hadn't the least desire to join in your trouble-making.... Now I'm
very busy, young man, and I think this is all the time I shall waste
on you. I shall expect to find your written----"
"Say, honest, dean," Carl suddenly laughed, "may I say just one thing
before I get thrown out?"
"Certainly. We have every desire to deal justly with you, and to
always give--always to give you every opportunity----"
"Well, I just wanted to say, in case I resign and don't see you again,
that I admire you for your nerve. I wish I could get over feeling like
a sophomore talking to a dean, and then I could tell you I hadn't
supposed there was anybody could talk to me the way you have and get
away with it. I'd always thought I'd punch their head off, and here
you've had me completely buffaloed. It's wonderful! Honestly, it never
struck me till just this second that there isn't any law that compels
me to sit here and take all this. You had me completely hypnotized."
"You know I might retort truthfully and say I am not accustomed to
have students address me in quite this manner. I'm glad, however, to
find that you are sensible enough not to make an amusing show of
yourself by imagining that you are making a noble fight for freedom.
By decision of the president and myself I am compelled to give you
this one chance only. Unless I find your apology in my letter-box here
by five this evening I shall have to suspend you or bring you up
before the faculty for dismissal. But, my boy, I feel that perhaps,
for all your mistaken notions, you do have a certain amount of
courage, and I want to say a word----"
The dean did say a word; in fact he said a large number of admirable
words, regarding the effect of Carl's possible dismissal on his
friends, his family, and, with an almost tearful climax, on his
mother.
"Now go and think it over; pray over it, unselfishly, my boy, and let
me hear from you before five."
Only----
The reason why Carl _did_ visualize his mother, the reason why the
Ericson kitchen became so clear to him that he saw his tired-faced
mother reaching up to wind the alarm-clock that stood beside the ball
of odd string on the shelf above the water-pail, the reason why he
felt caved-in at the stomach, was that he knew he was going to leave
Plato, and did not know where in the world he was going.
* * * * *
A time of quick action; of bursting the bonds even of friendship. He
walked quietly into Genie Linderbeck's neat room, with its rose-hued
comforter on a narrow brass bed, passe-partouted Copley prints, and a
small oak table with immaculate green desk-blotter, and said
good-by.... His hidden apprehension, the cold, empty feeling of his
stomach, the nervous intensity of his motions, told him that he was
already on the long trail that leads to fortune and Bowery
lodging-houses and death and happiness. Even while he was warning
himself that he must not go, that he owed it to his "folks" to
apologize and stay, he was stumbling into the bank and drawing out his
ninety-two dollars. It seemed a great sum. While waiting for it he did
sums on the back of a deposit-slip:
92.00 out of bank
2.27 in pocket
about .10 at room
-----------------------
tot. 94.37
Owe Tailor 1.45
" Turk .25
To Mpls. 3.05
To Chi. probably 15 to 18.00
To N. Y. 20 to 30.00
To Europe (steerage) 40.00
----------------------------
Total (about) 92.75----would take me to Europe!
"Golly! I could go to Europe, to Europe! now, if I wanted to, and have
maybe two plunks over, for grub on the railroad. But I'd have to allow
something for tips, I guess. Maybe it wouldn't be as much as forty
dollars for steerage. Ought to allow----Oh, thunder! I've got enough
to make a mighty good start seeing the world, anyway."
On the street a boy was selling extras of the _Plato Weekly Times_,
with the heading:
PRESIDENT CRUSHES STUDENT
REBELLION
Plato Demonstration for Anarchist Handled
Without Gloves
Carl read that he and two other students, "who are alleged to have
been concerned in several student pranks," had attempted to break up a
chapel meeting, but had been put to shame by the famous administrator,
S. Alcott Wood. He had never seen his name in the press, except some
three times in the local items of the _Joralemon Dynamite_. It looked
so intimidatingly public that he tried to forget it was there. He
chuckled when he thought of Plain Smith and Genie Linderbeck as
"concerned in student pranks." But he was growing angry. He considered
staying and fighting his opponents to the end. Then he told himself
that he must leave Plato, after having announced to Genie that he was
going.... He had made all of his decision except the actual deciding.
He omitted his noonday dinner and tramped into the country, trying to