"You'd better," he said. "That cut is mighty close to some of the most important nerves of the eye."
It was evening when I ventured out. Over in the big assembly hall the meeting of the senior class had already begun. I stole across the campus with my coat collar turned up and my hat far down to hide my face. I did not want to be recognized until I was ready. I hung about outside the ruddy windows of the hall, watching the crowded groups that sat within. They were listening intently to someone on the platform that I could not see—but I knew that it was Fred, presiding. Fred—and he was explaining it all to them, perhaps, in that deep-voiced way of his.
Then, as I watched, I saw how the heads of all who sat within the scope of my spying craned suddenly towards the side of the room. I knew what that meant, too. It meant that either Sayer or Braley had risen from his seat to make reply to the president's accusation.
Then, amazed, I heard applause and laughter. The muffled clapping of hands went on for minutes. So they approved these things that the two editors had done, did they? So they could laugh and clap to hear how Sayer and Braley had crushed the spirit out of two young Jews in front of fifty other freshmen?
I grew too angry to wait. I was not going to dawdle idly in the background, waiting for a foolish, theatrical entrance cue—I wasn't going to "stand aside" a moment longer!
I hurried into the building, up stairs and around corners until I was at the very threshold of the hall. The big mass of men there, the lights, the noise of their clapping, ten times louder from within—all of it gave a tightening to my throat. My knees began to tremble violently.
It was Braley who was speaking. He was waving his hand with his usual sense of the grandiloquence of his remarks. I heard, I suppose, only the last of them—but that was enough:
"I regret, of course, that I should have had to give pain to these two poor little kike freshmen. I regret that I have thereby offended no less a person than the president of the class. But there is the broader way of looking at this thing: that of the interest of the whole community. And I believe, as every man in this room believes, that it would be ten times better that all Jews be debarred from our college. If not that, then certainly from all our college activities, in order that real Anglo-Saxon fair play may prevail! If any man, including the Jew who has instigated this protest against Sayer and myself, wishes to refute this, let him step forward now or be forever silent."
He sat down grandly, amid huzzas.
I do not know whether he or Sayer actually meant me to be incarcerated during all that day and night, while the meeting went forward so famously. Probably they had had it in mind when they played the vindictive little prank, and had been ashamed, when in better senses, to come back and release me. Certainly Sayer, who sat close to the door, turned pale when he saw me now.