Two astounding tears welled from the scholar’s pale eyes, tears of a still man’s uttermost fury.
“I will demonstrate to you,” said he precisely, “what it is to fight.”
He launched himself across the table at the Governor’s throat.
The steel-framed Laurens seized and forced him back; but not before Embree had collapsed into his chair. From his place, up the table, the Lieutenant-Governor, quite beside himself, squealed for a totally imaginary sergeant-at-arms. The corn-belt farmer, in thunderous tones with a wailing inflection besought any and all not to forget that they were gentlemen. Girdner, huge and formidable, had jumped to his feet. The white-haired, alert Milliken caught up a heavy paper-weight. Bausch was solemnly, almost sacrificially taking off his coat. A medley of voices demanded “Order!”
“Throw him out!”
“Arrest him!” There were all the elements of a lively and scandalous mêlée, waiting only the fusing act.
Laurens checked it with one sufficient threat. Brandishing the weighty official gavel of lignum vitæ, he stood, a modern Thor, in the unconscious pose and with the menace of the Berseker, and, in a full-throated bellow proclaimed:
“I’ll brain the first man that strikes a blow.”
Before that intimidation they dropped into their chairs. There was a ripple of the shamed and foolish laughter of self-realization as the strain eased. The warrior-scholar’s neighbors, who had been holding him in his chair, felt his limbs relax, and mistakenly thinking his effort spent, released him. Instantly he rose.
“I apologize to this honorable body,” he said with quiet courtesy, “and to the State of Centralia as represented by its chief executive. And, as a question of privilege preliminary to my resignation, I ask whether the list as read is to stand.”