deprived of its ringleaders, the mob fell into such disarray that it was ready to be cowed by the manager of the theater. he had waited for the police to remove the chief pirates, and now he addressed the audience with the one speech that could have had success:
“ladies and gentlemen, i’ve lowered the curtain and i’m going to keep it lowered till the hoodlums settle down or get thrown out. the majority of people here to-night have paid good money to see this show. it is a good show and played by a company of ladies and gentlemen from one of the best theaters in new york, and i propose to have them treated as such while they are in our city. we are going to begin the play all over again, but if there is any further disturbance i’ll ring down the asbestos and put out the house lights. and no money will be returned at the box-office.”
this last argument converted the mob into a sheriff’s posse. the house-manager received a round of applause and the first freshman who rose in his place was subdued by his own fellow-classmen.
bret winfield spent the night in a cell. he slept little, because the freshmen hardly ceased to sing the night long; they were solacing themselves with doleful glees. winfield could not help smiling at his imprisonment. don quixote was tasting the reward of misapplied chivalry.
the next morning he made no defense before the glowering judge who had played just such pranks in his college days and felt, therefore, a double duty to repress it in the later generation. he excoriated bret winfield especially, and winfield kept silence, knowing that the truth would gain him no credence and only added contempt. the judge fined the young miscreants five dollars each and left their further punishment to the faculty.
on his way back to his rooms after his release, winfield met eugene vickery, and said, with a wry smile, “hello, ’gene! i’ve just escaped from the penitentiary.”
to his astonishment, vickery snapped back, “i’m sorry to hear it.”
winfield, seeing that he was in earnest, fumbled for words: “what the—why the—well, say!”
the slight and spindling youth confronted the bureau-chested giant and shook his finger in his face: “if you weren’t so much bigger than i am i’d give you worse than that actor gave you. to think that a great big hulk like you should try to attack a little girl like that! don’t you ever dare speak to me or my sister again.”
winfield gave an excellent imitation of incipient apoplexy. he seized vickery by the lapels to demand: “good lord, ’gene, you don’t think i—say, what do you think i am, anyway? why—well, can you beat it? i ask you? ah, you can all go plumb to—ah, what’s the good!”
winfield never was an explainer. he lacked language; he lacked the ambition to be understood. it made him an excellent sportsman. when he lost he wasted no time in explaining why he had not won. to him the martyrdom of being misunderstood was less bitter than the martyrdom of justifying himself. he was so dazed now by the outcome of his knight-errantry that he resolved to leave the college to its own verdict of him. eugene vickery’s ruling passion, however, was a frenzy to understand and to be understood. he caught the meaning in winfield’s incoherence and seized him by the lapel:
“you mean that you didn’t go out on the stage to scare the girl, but to—well, that’s more like you! i’m a lunkhead not to have known it from the first. why, a copper collared me, too, and accused me of being one of the freshmen! i talked him out of it and proved i was a post-graduate, or i’d have spent the night in a dungeon, too. well, well! and to think i got you so wrong! you write a statement to the papers right away.”
“ah, what’s the good?”
“then i will.”
“just as much obliged, but no, you won’t.”
“you ought to square yourself with the people who—”
“there’s just two people i want to square myself with—that little actress who didn’t realize what i was there for, and that damned actor who knocked me through the bass-drum. who were they, anyway? i didn’t get a program.”
“i didn’t see the man’s name; but the girl—i used to know her.”
“you did! say!”
“she was only a kid then, and so was i. she could act then, too,—for a kid, but now—you missed the rest of the show, though, didn’t you?”
“yes. i was called away.”
“after you left, the audience was as good as a congregation. sheila kemble—that’s the girl—was wonderful. she didn’t have much to do, but, golly! how she did it! she had that thing they call ‘authority,’ you know. i wrote a play for her as a kid.”
“you did! say! did she like it?”
“she never saw it. but i’m going to write her another. i planned to be a professor of greek—but not now—ump-umm! i’m going to be a playwright. and i’m going to make a star out of sheila kemble, and hitch my wagon to her.”
“well, say, give me a ride in that wagon, will you? do you suppose i could meet her? i’ve got to square myself with her.”
eugene looked a trifle pained at bret’s interest in another girl than dorothy, but he said: “i’m on my way to the theater now to find out where she’s stopping and leave this note for her. i don’t suppose she’ll remember me; but she might.”
“do you mind if i tag after you? i might get a swipe at that actor, too.”
“oh, well, come along.”
they marched to the theater, stepping high and hoping higher. the stage door-keeper brought them to ground with the information that the company had left on a midnight train after the performance. he had no idea where they had gone.
the two youths, ignorant of the simple means of following theatrical routes, went back to their dismal university with a bland trust that fate would somehow arrange a rencounter for them.
winfield was soon called before the faculty. he had rehearsed a speech written for him by eugene vickery. he forgot most of it and ruined its eloquence by his mumbling delivery.
the faculty had dealt harshly with the freshmen, several of whom it had sent home to the mercy of their fathers. but winfield’s explanation was accepted. in the first place, he was a senior and not likely to have stooped to the atrocity of abetting a freshman enterprise. in the second place, he would be needed in the next rowing-contest at new london. in the third place, his millionaire father was trembling on the verge of donating to the university a second liberal endowment.
winfield and vickery returned to their daily chores and put in camphor their various ambitions. winfield endured the multitudinous jests of the university on his record-breaking backward dive across the footlights, but he made it his business to find out the name of the actor who brought him his ignominy. in time he learned it and enshrined “floyd eldon” and “sheila kemble” in prominent niches for future attention. somehow his loneliness for dorothy seemed less poignant than before.
eugene vickery could have been seen at almost any hour, lying on his stomach and changing an improbable novel into an impossible play.
