Boggs' Election Feed.
"Oh think what anxious moments pass between
The birth of plots and their last fatal periods!"
Addison.
It would never have happened if Boggs hadn't dropped in on Jimmy Mason and Pellams when they were cramming for an examination, for, although Pellams had long "kept an axe" for Boggs, he needed the inspiration of the moment to swing it like this. It was always so with Pellams' best things.
The inspiration in this case came one evening when he and Jimmy were doing genuine work. People who have seen it declare that the spectacle of Mason cramming for an examination was one of the show sights of the University. He generally let things go until the last day of grace; then with sundry fellow-victims and a motley collection of notes, syllabi, books, reports—anything on the subject—gathered on the green cloth of his table, he would start in. Raps might come from time to time on the locked door; Jimmy would hold up a warning finger for silence, while the outsider shot through the keyhole such remarks as "Jimmy Mason, loosen up. You've mixed my clothes again;" or, "Hi, Jimmy! give me the markings;" or, possibly, hurled a mass of unrepeatable terms at the unresponsive door. Perhaps his roommate, Marion, would come in when the lights went out; then Jimmy would call a breathing-spell, during which, while "Nosey" went to bed behind the portieres, he drew his lamp from its hiding-place and made strong coffee in the coffee-pot or chafing-dish, whichever had been washed the more recently. Somewhere in the small hours the seminary would adjourn with "international complications," "tendencies of the age," "sub-head B," heating their brains. Out of bed at seven for a final swift review of the subject, Mason would sail over to class with a great unbreakfasted hollow beneath his sweater, to pass freely and gloriously, and to forget the whole mess by the time he had finished his afternoon nap.
And to see Jimmy in the seminary itself! How masterfully he kept track of headings, sub-headings and modifying circumstances! How he could scent at a day's distance the things which the professor was going to ask, as well as those he was going to skip! When he said, "Now, old Morton is heavy on this," the seminary digested the subject in all its bearings and ramifications; and when he said, "No use looking that up," they skipped the heading, though pages of syllabi were slighted thereby. When the wandering mind of Pellams slid off the work, it was beautiful to see Jimmy lead it back with a word and a look; when he sent some sleepy Senior to bed with the remark, "You're no more good. Sleep it off and be fresh to-morrow," Jimmy touched the sublime.
The glory of it all was that upper-classmen as well as Freshmen put themselves absolutely under the Sophomore's rule when it was a question of an examination. Thus does the elective system level all ranks and give genius opportunity.
On the night that Boggs dropped in on them, Jimmy and Pellams were cramming alone. Two seniors who were usually in the group had gone somewhere to mix up in a complication over Student-Body treasurer. A Junior seldom out of line was a candidate for the Executive Committee; he had put his head in at the door to say, "Dead sorry, fellows, but can't get in it," and then gone down to Palo Alto to make himself agreeable to a dig girl who had "influence." The popularity of some people waxes strangely the latter part of April. A Freshman who was taking the course when he shouldn't and who stood on the dizzy brink of flunking it, had gone off with a Junior who wanted to stand well with certain Freshmen of importance, and who had overjoyed the youngster with an invitation to Mayfield, an event which made flunking clear out of the University a thing of small moment to the Freshman's mind.
Pellams alone showed up. He was not in politics; further, he knew the value to himself of these evenings with Jimmy; not that the syllabi made much impression on him, but he carried enough to class next day to shadow forth an apparent knowledge of the subject. This he supplemented with two or three original reflections that interested the instructor and slipped him through. It was these flashes of intelligence that made him worth the labor to Mason. Sometimes he could set the whole seminary right on an obscure phrase; this made up for an hour of imperfect attention.
To-night the two men were hard at it. They sat at opposite sides of the table, the electric drop-light illuminating the papers between them.
"Say," said Pellams, "Bob Duncan's the luckiest baby in the bunch. He doesn't know as much about this course as I do, and he's got appendicitis, the doctor says—no fake."
"Now, Pellams," said Mason seriously, "you have to remember Cromwell. He did all this in sub-headings four to eleven. You've placed him, haven't you?"
"The guy that made them keep the powder dry?"
"The minister Cromwell; you remember him—the one who was bald."
Jimmy had learned that Pellams needed a concrete peg on which to hang his memories.
"Oh, sure, I've got him; that throw-away-ambition boy. Hadn't a hair between him and heaven."
A knock came at the door.
"That's it. Sh—sh!"
"Let me in, Jimmy." The room was still.
"I know you and Pellams are digging. I won't say a word to either of you, only give me a smoke."
"Haven't any," said Jimmy, rapidly transferring a sack of Durham and a package of papers from the table.
"Well, let me in, anyway. I want to read by your lamp. Oh, say, open up!"
"It's Boggs. If we don't let him in he'll stand and plead in outer darkness all night."
The door rattled. Jimmy howled "Ye-e-es!" in a tone of provoked affirmative, and Boggs was opened unto.
It would be hard to tell in what way Boggs did not block the seminary. He found the tobacco by invading Jimmy's sacred drawer during an absorbing discussion on land tenure; then he rolled and consumed exactly fourteen cigarettes. Pellams kept count out of the corner of his eye. Boggs was making smoke in the sunshine of free tobacco. He put his feet on Mason's laundry packages, freshly stacked in the corner. He broke his word by talking politics steadily, and finally, when he drew out of the room just ahead of ten-thirty lights, a double sigh of relief went up from the crammers.
"That article needs fixing," said Pellams, meditatively, as Jimmy got out the chafing-dish and prepared the black coffee that makes additional pages of syllabi possible before sleep comes.
"I wonder," said Jimmy, "if he ever bought an ounce of tobacco since he came here. He's smoked mine every time he could find it since I've been in college. I remember," here Jimmy stopped to laugh, "that when I was a Freshmen—you'll bear witness I was a fresh one, too—I used to be pleased clear to the red at getting all that attention from an upper-classman. The satisfaction cost me a good many pounds of tobacco, though."
"His opinion of himself politically is what kills me. Lyman is his ideal. He loafs in Frank's room until Frank has had to give up smoking. It's fun to see him. I was in there the other night. 'How are you going to stand on the election, Frank?' says Boggsie, as though it were a conference of the powers. 'Oh, I think Higgins is pretty good,' says Frank; 'what do you think?' Not that he gave a whoop; he was trying to be polite. 'Well, I may use my influence for Castleton,' says Boggsie, with his pet air of mystery. His influence consists of his roommate. 'The deuce you will!' says Frank, with sarcasm. All wasted though, for Boggsie fairly chapped at the compliment of having surprised him. 'Yes,' said Boggs, 'that's what I like to see, the office seeking the man; you know, a fellow ought to wait and go about his business until people recognize him. I don't like to see a man going around with his hand out, raking the Freshmen in.' Then he looks around for applause and slopes out, smoking the last of Lyman's Durham."
"He rake in the Freshmen! It would cost too much! Boggs wants the office to seek him, so as to save expense. When he was small I think he must have been the sort of kid that won't play his marbles for fear that he'll wear them out. He'd do anything mean to get office, but he won't spend money for it; he has enough, too; he doesn't have to pinch as he does, but he hates to spend a nickel when he can worm it out of other people. I'd love to get a feed out of him in some way; oh, it would taste good!"
Pellams' ruddy face glowed fire-red with the dawn of an idea. His inspiration had come.
"James Russell Lowell Mason, I'll bet you the price of—anything you name—that I can get a feed, a genuine, Mayfield-with-all-accompaniments, a Mayfield beer-beefsteak-Swiss-cheese-wine-and-song feed out of Boggsie!"
The aroma of the coffee filled the room. Jimmy polished his stein and a tumbler and poured for the two of them.
"But for my principle never to bet on a sure thing, I'd take you," he answered calmly. "You exclusive frat-men over on the Row" (Pellams was always loafing around the Hall) "haven't lived long enough with Boggsie to know him. He's a lobster, Pellams."
But the fat Junior sat there with mirth shining from every line of his face, and drank his coffee; then he rolled on the floor in joyous delirium and beat Jimmy's rugs with an Indian club until the man overhead jumped out of bed and shouted uncultured things down the elevator.
"Jimmy, darling!" cried he, waving a leg in the air for pure rapture, "Boggsie will treat, sure. We'll get him on his one big weakness; we'll play politics against pinching; you watch the office seek the man."
"I don't—"
"I do. Look here; to-morrow we nominate him. You have a mob on the back seats applauding like fiends, and I'll be the power behind the throne to such a campaign of blood, beer and boodle as you never saw, old Laundry-bags. We'll make Boggsie think he's ahead all the time; we can get him some votes, you know; and then he's to go away election day for the sake of the proprieties. I telegraph to him, 'Elected by one vote. Feed!' We have the feed business all properly worked up by that time, of course; just sizzling in his brain, and when he gets off the train we'll meet him with a mob and a brass band, run him to Mayfield or Menlo, and there'll be a sound of revelry by night at his expense."
The ruin of this particular cramming seminary was accomplished. The "coffee hours" were spent in a conference broken by smothered laughter, and by "Nosey" Marion's sleepy protests from behind the curtains.
Next day, after Higgins and Castleton had been duly placed in nomination, Pellams rose from his seat in Chapel and nominated "Lorenzo Boggs, gentleman and student; a man who has let college politics alone, never having sought office from his fellow-students until now, when the office seeks him—Lorenzo Boggs for Student-Body president," amidst a storm of applause half ironical, half worked up by Jimmy Mason.
Pellams flunked in the examination; his co-conspirator passed meagerly; but Pellams' heart lost little of its wonted buoyancy. This was about the last class of any kind he attended in the week between nomination and election. From the Row to the Hall and from the Hall to Palo Alto he moved with an energy rare to his rotund body. It was a new sensation, politics with a josh behind. He revelled in it.
"We have to put up some show of constituents, you know," he said to Mason; "and, as Higgins and Castleton have no strings on me, I might as well help Boggsie out. Too bad my personal magnetism isn't being diffused for a more likely candidate."
"Looks curious," said Jimmy, "the fight Boggs is putting up. Yesterday I struck the Women's Debating League; they won't vote for Higgins because they have been credibly informed—by the Castleton people, of course—that he's bad, and—"
"You and I should have been nominated, St. James," interrupted Pellams, crossing his hands on his breast and looking at the gas fixture.
"And they won't vote for Castleton because they have found out that when he fixed up the open meeting between his society and theirs he was only playing for votes."
"Do you know that Boggs has a girl cousin in Palo Alto? He has worked her to whoop it up for him down there."
"His literary society will go for him all right. They are tired of the way Castleton and Higgins have been waiting for the job to drop down like a ripe plum. Those two marks have worked the thing too long."
"Jimmy, you don't mean that Boggs has any chance?"
"Not a ghost. But we don't have to work up the whole thing; there'll be enough to make a decent showing and lend an air of truth to that telegram of ours. What have you done?"
"Got the Rhos, anyway. We won't vote for anyone as a frat; the fellows hate Castleton on account of that Annual-board election last Christmas, and Higgins has thrown mud at us that we know of. I've about signed them all, except Duncan. Bob knew Higgins' wife's cousin in some dark corner of the country. Say, it's funny how tired people in general are getting of Higgins and Castleton and their gang politics. At Palo Alto yesterday I heard a crowd talking about it. 'Down with organized politics,' they said, and one of them who works in the laboratory with Boggsie said he was going to vote for modest merit."
"Keep it going, Pellams, it won't hurt. Soothe his feelings beautifully after the banquet. I have it all fixed up to get him off the campus."
Higgins' stock went down wonderfully in the next few days. Higgins, said the Castleton men, had pulled wires and worked combinations ever since he had been in the University. It hurts a College politician to have it known that he has been in politics. They pointed to his rather doubtful record as a member of the Daily Palo Alto board. The sins of his Freshman days rose up against him when they touched on the fact that he had been elected class-president on a barb ticket, and had immediately gone over to the enemy in a fraternity house. Finally, to fill his cup a Freshman, who had withstood fraternity blandishments for a year, glided through the hands of the Gamma Chi Taus, who fully believed they had him, and appeared on the very Sunday preceding election in all the glory of Higgins' frat pin. It was a bad slip; right there it cost fifteen Gamma Chi votes with a large girl following.
"It isn't the swell girls that count for numbers, anyway," reflected the Higgins' supporters, wisely, and they turned to the cultivation of the dig girl who trails up the cinder paths mornings at eight, and who lives in the library during football practice. But the girl cousin of Boggs had been there to good purpose when they turned in that direction, and Roble only showed Castleton still ahead. Then a not over-scrupulous Junior in Higgins' trail started a story on Castleton, a tale calculated to put him in the same category, so far as being "bad" was concerned. Wednesday evening the anecdote reached Roble; a girl who had a brother heard it spreading at dinner, and by noon next day half the girls in Roble had their opinion of a crowd that would start such a malicious libel on Mr. Castleton "just to get votes." The Encina politicians did not know Roble girls for nothing.
So it happened on Thursday that Pellams clumped breathlessly into Jimmy's room with a still wet copy of the Daily and tragically pointed to the notice: "Withdrawal: I hereby withdraw from my candidacy for Student-Body presidency in favor of Lorenzo Boggs. Andrew Higgins."
"Ye gods," gasped the Sophomore, "he can't win, Pellams, he can't! Castleton gets it sure. For heaven's sake, don't put the gang on to this until after to-morrow, though. I wouldn't have the double-cross worked on us for a cool ten credits."
Fair dawned the day that was to float or to wreck so many little hopes. There are two periods of the year when the professor who has been young forgets the roll-call, and the one who never has been, remembers it. The first period comes in late November; the other is the morning of the Student-Body election.
With consummate tact, Jimmy had come to an understanding with Boggs as to the propriety of his leaving the campus during the election.
"You see, you stand a splendid show of getting it," he explained, "and the appropriate thing for you is to keep out of sight. When Pellams nominated you he made a point out of the fact that the office was seeking you; that has been a leading feature of the campaign, and it has won you lots of votes. You must not spoil the impression you have made for yourself and which we have emphasized all along. See?"
Boggs saw, or thought he did, and went to town, ostensibly to carry out a commission for Pellams, but not before he had rallied some of his constituents and given them final instructions. It was wonderful to see what a variety of tastes and interests were represented. An older politician would have scented danger from the fact that so many of them had never come out into the arena before; but Jimmy only looked with smiling curiosity on the Ethics major or the Education "shark," dug up somewhere from their abstruse speculations.
It was on their way to the station that Jimmy touched on the remaining issue of the campaign which he was managing.
"You remember my speaking about a feed the other day? I ought to have spoken more fully, but I've been busy with other details."
"Oh,"—began Boggs.
"You know the custom," cut in the conspirator; "it will be expected of you if you get the office; it ought to come off to-night to be done properly."
"That will all be attended to," said Boggs calmly.
"You've seen about it?"
"It's all fixed."
"There'll be a lot of them; they will meet you at the train and you'll have to do it in shape. I can lend you a little."
"Thanks, old man," said the victim, squeezing Mason's arm, "but just you leave that to me. It's all arranged to do the square thing by the people who have stood in with me. So long. Look out for me, won't you? I'll be down on the Flyer."
When Jimmy got back to the Quadrangle there was a shifting mass about the polls. Encina politicians were there, Palo Alto politicians, serious-looking fellows from the Camp, and spruce ones from the Row. Castleton's followers stood in groups, looking smug and confident, while sour-faced Higgins people were revengefully putting in all their work for Boggs.
Every election has its Mark Hanna; this time it was Jennie Brown, whom Pellams knew as "Boggsie's dig girl cousin." She was the silent spirit of the whole Boggs campaign. Mason, in telling the story of it afterward, said:
"Pellams and I were there when the polls opened. That girl was on hand, too, with a gang of Palo Alto girls all ready to start things for Boggsie. Well, you ought to have seen her. Heaven help us and our masculine schemes if they get women suffrage and the Brown lives. At ten-thirty in the first rush she steered a whole Education class, worked them beautifully past Castleton's hungry heelers, right up to the ballot-box. She wasn't working combinations; it cut no ice with her how they voted for managers, and treasurers and editors, so long as they were solid for Lorenzo Boggs.
... THEN A LULL DURING CLASS.
"I numbered them off as they voted, and I could see that things were going darkly and suspiciously for our friend the Lobster. 'What do you think of it?' says Pellams. He was getting excited. 'We didn't know our power, did we? Look at the votes he's rolling up. Say, we're corkers and never knew it!' A few classes from the respectable part of the Quad, where they do Political Science, came drifting along then with votes for Castleton, and it went Castleton for awhile; then a lull during class, followed by a scattering vote for Boggs. It was about an even thing during eleven-thirty break, with Castleton still ahead. The frat votes fell in bunches in the biggest rush at noon; I could catch old Boggsie's name marked on most of them, but Castleton was full fifty to the good then. I bolted lunch with Pellams at his house and came back to the Quad. Things were beginning to happen. People I never heard of, the kind of bird that floats in and out on the train and probably doesn't know there is a Student-Body with troubles of its own; digs, crawling out into the light, blinking away at the line; Laboratory fiends in squads, actually losing twenty minutes of precious credit,—the darndest crowd of resurrected stiffs the Quad ever saw, strung out from the registrar's office to the polls, every last one of them squeezing a ballot properly marked ahead, all looking as if it were a conferring of degrees, serious as hell, you know, and the eye of the Brown girl or of one of her crowd fastened on each of them. Poor Castleton, he was a goner! His heelers got up against this line of sphinxes and fell back, done up. It was two o'clock and after; still the vote rolled up. At two-thirty they closed shop, and Pellams and I fell on each other's chests behind a pillar, and busted at the josh on ourselves.
"Then we went over to get the figures of our triumph. 'Boggs, 402; Castleton, 375,' and the biggest vote in the history of the office. Well, you bet we went down to the train! Couldn't freeze us out! We were going to pry open the Lobster's claws and use them for a corkscrew. So we piled into a 'bus. But, honest, we were paralyzed.
"Down at the station was the conquering Brown with her people, all watching for the train. Say, when Boggsie saw the whole gang of us, he was a balloon. He got up on a truck and made us a speech of thanks. Pellams and I yelled 'Hear, Hear,' right along. Oh, it was awful! He gave us the whole history of the Student-Body from the days of 'Ninety-one up. Finally Pellams couldn't stand it any longer and called out, 'Good boy, Boggsie. How about that feed?' and Boggsie waved his hand like a Tuesday evening spieler and said, 'I have provided for that, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Brown, my cousin, invites you all down to her home in Palo Alto for a little refreshment. Everyone is welcome.'
"I had to pick my fat friend up. Boggsie's getting out of the whole thing without spending a bean knocked him cold. But he got his wind later. You ought to have heard his speech down there at the house, with a plate of melted strawberry muck in one hand and a glass of sour in the other, replying to Boggsie's vote of thanks to us two, and skinning his face at the Brown girl. Oh, it was a peach!"
IN THE DARK DAYS.
In the Dark Days.
"Mrs. Leland Stanford has decided to sell her jewels to keep open the doors of the University."
Associated Press Reports, 1896.
Bonita, mother of racers, stood just beyond the shadow of an oak tree, leisurely cropping the new pasture grass. Occasionally, she lifted her head toward the red roofs of the University buildings as though she expected somebody. The chimney sent up a stripe of black against patches of cloud and sky, and the even hum of the shops came across the pasture with a distinctness born of the motionless Spring air. Bonita, putting her pointed ears forward, could catch the upper notes of the chorus, rehearsing in the Chapel.
Such a day as this should bring Craig into the pastures. He could lean on the fence and pull at his pipe to his heart's content. The brood-mare did not fancy the smoke, but she liked to have him talk to her. There were a number of interests they had in common; the smell of the new grass, the tempting silver-green of willows budding along the lake beyond the fence, delighted him, too, while Bonita herself was deeply interested in his University.
She could remember perfectly the days when the ranch spread undisturbed from her paddock in the stockfarm yard to the deep shadows of the Arboretum. Then she was only a colt, to be sure; but the world beyond the paddock fence interested her. The grooms in the yard were not more sorry than she herself that the last colt from a famous sire should be a filly with an imperfect ankle-joint. When they took the other colts out of the paddock to put them through their morning lessons around the little ring in the kindergarten, she wished mightily to follow. She turned about the corral at a good speed to show them that she had the proper spirit of her blood, but they always shut the red gate too soon and the others went on up the road impudently flicking their fuzzy tails at her.
A gray-bearded man with kindly eyes, whom they called the "Governor," used to drive up under the blossoming eucalyptus trees every now and then; he stopped one day by her paddock and came to look at her. Bonita liked him at once, and she paid him the most delicate attention she knew by trying to eat his clothes. The Governor laughed as he put her off, and said that it was too bad about her ankle. Then he drove over to watch the kindergarten learn the alphabet of race-winning.
Later, she watched her fellows go lightly down the road to the stock car and rumble away over the track to the main line and on to the great world where men put trust in them and sent them back to the Farm with newspaper clippings and horseshoe wreaths made of immortelles with the figure 2-and-a-fraction in the middle.
When she was grown and they had put her out in a side pasture, there were some new stables there, with a lot of men thronging round them who did not look like grooms. The knowledge that something of importance to the world was about to happen the other side of the fence made her feel more contented. If she could not travel in a box car to see such things, it was good to have some of the excitement of it brought in to the ranch.
At first she did not notice much, being deeply interested just then in the early education of Fenelon, 2.10-1/4, who was a fretful infant and took up most of her time. When he had passed out of her immediate care and was cropping sweet alfalfa with the rest, she watched curiously the foundations sinking into the grass, the crowd of people who came one May morning to hear things said round a block of yellow sandstone, the fitting of the red tiling above the stone walls. By this time she knew the reason of it all; the dead heir, the monument, the boys and girls who were coming to be taught in this great kindergarten. Finally, when these had poured into the place, some of them straggled out into the pasture and made friends with her. From them she learned more definitely the great things that had been done and were about to happen; they told her of the wonderful endowment, of the strangers from corners of the world never reached even by the lucky horses who had rolled away in the box cars, of the numberless buildings that were to surround and dwarf the structures she had seen grow up in the sun.
"The Governor" had driven less often through the yard since the yellow buildings were up, and the boys and girls playing among them. After awhile he ceased to come altogether. Then Bonita, the brood-mare, understood that something had happened. It was more quiet everywhere after this. Most of the horses and mares, her colts among them, went off in the cars, not to come back, they told her. She stood under the dark oaks for hours at a time, fearing lest they would send her, too. Her longing for the world was past now; she wished to be left in the quiet pastures with the students to talk to.
It was during these days that Craig, who taught something to the younger people, used to lean on the fence and smoke during the afternoons. He was not much older than many of the students she knew, and she liked him particularly. He had lumps of something white and sweet, and he rubbed her head in exactly the right spot. When she had won his confidence, he told her many things about himself and the College. Once he had been at another place, a college older than this by a long time but not so famous. The Overseer of this one had written him to come and teach there, at a better salary. He explained to her what this meant—money for the support of his mother, and in a few years the study in Europe of which he dreamed, and for which he worked and saved, and beside this the growing up with a new university, from an instructorship in the present to a full professorship in the wonderful future. He told her what was promised him, and showed her a picture once of the plan of the completed university, with its arch and chapel tower and the great mechanical shops spreading back across her shady pasture to the borders of the lake.
Then she learned what the death of "the Governor" had brought upon them; why the horses had been sold and why there were no more hammers nor chisels ringing against the stone. The farm was losing a thousand dollars a day, and the Government had seized upon the money they were building the monument with and was trying to wrest it entirely from the woman who had stopped once to pet the brood-mare when "the Governor" was driving in the yard. These things were hard to understand. There had never been any question of money here that Bonita could remember.
One day she had nosed vainly for the sugar he used to bring; Craig told her that for two months he had had no money to give his mother; that if it wasn't for a grocer in Mayfield who was kind to people in trouble, they would have had nothing to eat. Bonita, remembering the students she had seen gathering mushrooms, suggested grass; but he told her, laughing, that only one man to his knowledge had ever lived that way and he was a king, long ago, in the holy times. He, Craig, would have to have money. In an old vest he had worn in the East, his mother found a few pennies and had walked to Palo Alto and spent them for stamps for the sake of paying for something. After this explanation, Bonita did not hunt for sugar.
Although things grew easier after a time, Craig was gloomy enough during the afternoons when they talked across the fence. Once "the Governor's Wife" had been given five hundred dollars to pay her servants, and she had given it to the Overseer for his teachers. But the Overseer had begun at the houses where there were the most children, and he had not got around to Craig, who had only a mother. When temptation came to him, he told Bonita about it and asked her advice. A letter had come to him with an offer from his old college; it meant a full salary and the hope of Europe. It was everything to him, he said, but he couldn't bear to go away. The brood-mare had put her nose affectionately against his arm. She understood little about the salary, but she knew how dreadful it would be to leave the pasture. The man must have understood, for after being quiet a long time and smoking harder than ever, he said that he was going to stay. But many times after that, when other offers came, he told her how hard it was to decide and how black everything looked for the University. The Government was pulling at the fund, and the lady who was building the monument was going to sell her precious things to get money.
The last time Craig leaned on the fence and whistled to her, he had been very unhappy. Since then Bonita had not seen him. She was afraid that he, too, had gone, after all, as the horses and grooms had gone, without even a good-bye. She felt that if he had finally decided to give it up, the smoke must fade away above the top of the chimney and the voices cease altogether.
But to-day, when the clouds were breaking and the clear blue of summer-time looked down between them, the chimney-smoke was blacker than ever and across by the lake fence some young people were pulling mushrooms and laughing. Bonita looked over toward the buildings. Then she cropped grass again, for only a gurgling meadow-lark broke the line of the fence-rail.
Suddenly she heard Craig's low whistle. He had come out from the Wood-shop and put his elbows on the fence, his pipe sending up clear, white smoke. Stopping now and then for a blade of grass, to show that she was not too eager, the brood-mare walked slowly up to him. He was not happy, as she had expected to find him. His brow was puckered and his lips shut tightly on the stem of his pipe. Bonita put her nose over the fence. The instructor took his pipe from his mouth and rubbed her cheek slowly with the back of his knuckles.
"Well, old girl," he said, "I'm afraid you and I won't have many more talks over this fence."
The brood-mare looked at him with questioning eyes.
"I plead guilty," he went on, "I oughtn't to have kept the secret from you, I know. The minute I got the letter I should have come out to tell you about it, but it was raining; honestly, it was."
He gave her a lump of sugar by way of conciliation.
"You see, I couldn't resist this one," he continued, while the sugar crunched under her teeth; "it's a big honor and three thousand a year, and I've got to do something; now, haven't I?"
His tone was doubtful, as though he were hardly sure of her opinion. The meadow-lark which he had disturbed was releasing the joy of its full throat under a shaft of sunlight further down the fence. The air hung over them, sweet with the fragrance of the freshened pasture, charged with the mysterious power of a Santa Clara Spring. No man, or horse, who has caught that smell, ever forgets the valley of the Saint. Bonita was looking across the green to the mushroom gatherers.
Craig spoke, a little petulantly.
"You never agree with me about my going, anyway. You seem to think that the beauty of this campus and the freedom of everything here is argument enough. But it's all too uncertain. I've told you that my salary is cut away down and I'm not any too sure of ever having it made up to me; as it is, we assistants are here only because the heads decided to cut their own pay and keep us for the sake of the departments. If the suit is lost, it's good-bye, anyway. I can't believe you have much idea that we're going to win it to-morrow. It went for us in the lower courts, here in California, but do you think that the Supreme Court of these selfish and United States is going to decide for us just because they were gallant enough to Mrs. Stanford to hurry the case up in the calendar and cut short her suspense? You don't understand things, if you think so. Out here where you live, the rains may be late and the grass seem never coming, but you know it'll rain sooner or later, and you're getting hay right along and it doesn't take much water to bring up what you want. But with me it's different. We're going to get a weather prediction from Washington to-morrow that'll tell us definitely whether it's to be winter for keeps around here or summer and a good crop."
The instructor leaned on the fence and puffed on at his pipe. Bonita endured the smoke that clung around them in the still air, for she felt that they were at a crisis. She drew up closer to the rails and put her head against the instructor's shoulder. Suddenly, the man let his pipe fall into the grass and he laid his face against her soft, gray nose.
"You're a good old girl," he said, "and you know more about it than anyone. But you haven't any money question to worry you. You don't love the place a bit more than I do; you don't love it as much, because you only know the nature side of it, and I know the bigness of the rest of it, too. But the hope's almost dead, old lady; I can't tie my ambitions to a corpse, you wouldn't ask me to, and you know I'm not the only one to be looked after. But, oh, it'll be hard to go, won't it! There's something that grips you where you live—you understand it."
The brood-mare did not pull away, although he was holding her head tightly in his hot hands.
"If it all goes smash to-morrow and I can ever raise the money, I'm going to send back for you, my beauty. You're getting too old to bring much now, and you'll have to go sure if the Government wins."
Bonita lifted her head suddenly. A drop of cold rain had fallen against her face. The clouds had drawn together sulkily above them. Across the intervening turf hastened the mushroom gatherers, their baskets full of the brown and white trophies. Craig picked up his pipe.
"Good-bye," he said, with a caress. "I'll come over to-morrow and tell you the final news."
Bonita had never shown him how much she really cared, true to her feminine reserve; but to-day, leaning her slender neck far over the fence, she whinnied after him until he stopped at the corner of the Power-house and waved back to her. Then she cropped grass slowly while it began to sprinkle.
Next morning, when the second hour was about half through, a feeling of excitement filled the Quad and penetrated the classrooms. Craig's students were not paying very creditable attention to his lecture. He himself was keeping his mind on the syllabus with considerable difficulty. When someone passed the window and the eyes of the entire class, including even the enthusiastic dig on the front seat, were turned that way, Craig let his own wander and hesitated the least bit in his talk.
All at once, like a thunderclap, a half-dozen voices somewhere in the Quad gave the yell. Craig stopped speaking and looked at the class, who gazed back at him. A man with his back to the windows stood up and looked out. The seats creaked ominously. Then, like grass after a breeze, the whole class rose and craned necks at the window.
The instructor, coming to himself, began feebly:
"If you please—"
Again the yell, not the desperate cry that is wrung out to cheer a losing team, but the voice of victory, of joy and of great relief.
Professor Craig went out of his classroom like a shot, the class after him.
There was a triumphal parade to the station, with flags and the entire population of Roble beating time with dust-pans and brooms, to meet the President who had sent the happy telegram. There were songs and speeches and demonstrations in front of Xasmin House, with fellows hugging each other or swinging round in side-line fashion, girls crying, and the President's parrot incidentally learning the yell. Then, at night, the alumni poured in on the trains from north and south, stirring the tumult anew. Gay lanterns jewelled the porches of the Row, the Gym blazed with light for more speeches and football songs, with no thought of football in the singing of them, and round and round the shadowy Quad, where the yell flashed in electric letters, went a wild carnival procession of men and women, with torches and noise-machines, and Instructor Craig at their head.
The gleam of the unusual lights, the happy shouts, and the clamor of firecrackers, came in mingled confusion across to the dark pasture where Bonita stood by the fence with her head raised and her pointed ears forward. Craig had not come that afternoon to tell her the final truth; but, listening and watching from the shadow, she did not feel that he had gone away.
When she did see him again, he wore a new suit and, what was more important, its pockets bulged with sugar. She was very glad to see him, of course, but her greeting was an indifferent one after all; for she was preoccupied, just then, with the infant needs of Pronto 2:17 ¾, and could not stop to interest herself in the fact that the youngest of the universities had been saved for all time.
CROSSROADS.
Crossroads.
"Oh see ye not yon narrow road
So thick beset wi' thorns and briers?
That is the Path of Righteousness,
Though after it but few inquires.
"And see ye not yon braid, braid road,
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call that the road to Heaven."
Thomas the Rhymer.