Chapter 9

They found a corner table in the restaurant. The room wore the quiet look of Monday evening, the calm that follows the storm of Sunday, when the place rocks with post-picnic revelry. A squat negro, perched on the edge of a serving-table by the wall, sang vociferously to a resonant banjo. Now and then a party of swarthy Latins joined in mildly when the selections incurred their favor.

The two college men found it easy chatting. Williamson's dollar had brought a very good dinner, particularly the chicken and the tortillas; the claret was abundant and not half bad when jollied with seltzer. He was trusting to Lincoln for tobacco.

Still the physician could not bring himself to the point toward which the dinner was intended to smooth the road. The "Dago red" had mellowed them both and they talked merrily of the days at Palo Alto, bringing up one good memory after another, drifting gradually to an exchange of Alumni personals of which the newspaper man furnished the larger part. They talked of the men their young University had sent into the distant parts of the world, youngsters running mines in the Antipodes, with fat salaries to keep up their courage; of the little Stanford colony in Western Australia and the Pioneers in China. There were a good many for so new a college. Then there were the commonplaces who were doing well at home. The thought of bringing the serious side of his own case into this chat gave Williamson a chill. It was a foolish bit of pride, but it was getting harder every minute to down it. He deftly turned the subject his way.

"It isn't all prosperity, though. I've noticed that some of them seem to be up against it lately--just hard luck stories, I suppose. There's Rawdon, for example."

Lincoln leaned back comfortably in his chair.

"Let me tell you a case that has come under my notice lately and see what you think of it," he said. "I won't mention names, but it's about a man we both knew at College. He had a place on the paper, the _Chronicle_, and during the political season did very well; after that there came a slump and the city editor let him out; the other papers had no room for him, of course--they were dropping men--and he couldn't get a thing of any sort to do, though he rustled hard. You know Coles and Harrison, the boys call them the Stanford Employment Bureau, they have found quite a number of places for the fellows; but this particular man was evidently up against it, and there wasn't the smallest symptom of a job. He managed to get something in the Sunday supps, but barely enough to keep him alive, and nothing certain. Meanwhile he pawned his things gradually and grew pretty well discouraged. I remember I heard him say once, and his laugh covered more than I guessed at the time, that Jewish holidays ought to be prohibited by state law, since closed doors under the three balls meant some Stanford man's going hungry. He got down to bedrock and finally reached the point where he had gone without three successive meals. Pretty rough, wasn't it?"

"I should say so," answered Williamson. His own distress was trivial beside a trouble like this.

Lincoln fed the alcohol flame burning around the omelet just brought them.

"It seems to me," he went on, "that there is a case in which a man is justified in asking help; he ought to ask it long before he gets to such a pass as that; if he lets his pride prevent him it's his own fault. We certainly have carried away from the University something of the spirit we learned there. I know for my part that such a man has a claim on whatever help I can give him, and as a Stanford man he has a right to seek it. Don't you agree with me?"

Williamson had been waiting through the course of the dinner for a chance to advance an identical theory. He could not have hoped for a better opening.

"Indeed I do," he said. "You have the old Stanford spirit as strong as ever, haven't you, Lew? Now I want to tell _you_ a story."

At a table near them a woman who looked as though she had a history, one that dated far back at that, began to sing--one of those ballads about home and the wandering boy. The two men tipped back in their chairs and listened to the song. Williamson was planning what he should say as soon as it was ended. It would be better to tell the whole thing.

During the applause that followed, Lincoln dropped his cigarette into his coffee cup and started to speak. Williamson, unwilling that another subject should follow the last words they had exchanged, interrupted him.

"I have a story, too, Lew, and it's about myself. I don't doubt this is rather a surprise to you," he went on, noticing the look on the other's face, "although you know the way of the young physician is hard. The fact is, I have got to the point where I must get a little temporary lift or give up the struggle for a while, and I can't bear the thought of that."

Then he went on swiftly, ignoring his friend's attempts at interruption, until he had told the whole story of his uphill work and his defeat.

"You asked me just now, Lew, if I didn't think one Stanford man should help another who really needed help, if he could. I put up my last coin for an opportunity to ask you the same question, but with a different purpose."

Lincoln's eyes were moist as he reached across the table and grasped Williamson's hand.

"I think you know me well enough, old man, to know my answer to that question. But you did not let me finish my story. You see, I--er--I'm the man I was telling you about."

BOGGS' ELECTION FEED.

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: "_WithdrawalI: 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.