WHISPERING TONGUES

BY

HOMER GREENE

New York Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Publishers.

Copyright, 1902, By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

[3]

TO

Prof. William Wells, LL.D.

KNOWN AND LOVED BY MANY GENERATIONS OF UNION COLLEGE STUDENTS AS “BILLY WELLS,” THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

[5]

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

[7]

CONTENTS.

[9]

WHISPERING TONGUES.

CHAPTER I. THE MOONLIGHT RUSH.

One moonlight evening in the early spring, under a cloudless sky, a party of twelve Concord College Sophomores sang these lines as they marched up the street toward the college grounds. They were young, all in a happy mood; they kept step to the strokes of their canes on the pavement, and swung along with vigor and elasticity, making the air throb with their rollicking songs.

Parmenter was with them. His was the tenor voice that rang out with such strength and clearness above the others. He was the leader of his class; in favor with the faculty, popular with his fellows, a welcome guest at any gathering.

The party passed on up the hill, through the college gate and along the terrace, still singing.[10] They halted in front of Professor Samuel Lee’s residence, faced toward it and began a new song:

The last words were hardly out of the mouths of the singers before the door of the house was opened, and from the square of light thus made, the old professor himself stepped out upon the porch.

“Thank you, young gentlemen,” he said, pleasantly. “This is a glorious night for a song. I’ve heard students sing along this terrace for twenty years and more, and I never liked their songs better than I do to-night. The music of them grows upon me always. Thank you again, gentlemen, and good-night!”

“You’re welcome, Sammy!” shouted one irrepressible from the group, while all the rest responded with a hearty “Good-night!”

No one intended to be disrespectful to Professor Lee. The use of his nickname was meant as a mark of affection, and he understood it so. But in the classroom his dignity was never trespassed upon. There were one or two[11] good stories handed down from class to class, narrating the just fate that befell audacious students of the past who had ventured to be rude to “Sammy.” These possibly apocryphal incidents made him more popular, and in private he was the trusted friend of every student at Concord College.

Besides that, he had a boy of his own—an only child, with whom he kept in close sympathy, and in whom the best and brightest of all his hopes were centered. This boy, Charley, was a member of the Sophomore Class. He was a bright, lovable, popular fellow, impetuous, perhaps somewhat lacking in stability, but likely to become a worthy if not a brilliant man.

He came out now upon the porch, just as his father turned to go in, and stood for a moment peering into the group on the walk as if trying to make out the identity of the persons who composed it. He was no sooner seen by his classmates than another song broke from their lips:

Young Lee recognized the tenor voice in a moment. He and Parmenter were bosom[12] friends. Their companions had long ago dubbed them Damon and Pythias.

“Hello, Fred!” cried Lee, “are you there? Hello, fellows! Is there room for me?”

“Always room for one more,” was the reply. “Move up, please! Move up now and let the gentleman aboard! Why don’t you help him on, Freddie? Help him on; he’s yours.”

There was more good-natured bantering. Then the party faced toward the campus and started on, singing a good-night song to Professor Lee:

The steps sounded in unison, the heavy canes beat time, and back from the campus, mellowed by the growing distance, came still the music of the song:

Through a half-open window the words came floating softly into the ears of Professor Lee, and he smiled as he thought of the real affection and seeming irreverence of the boys. Though his hair was white with years, his heart was very youthful.

[13]

He liked young men, and sympathized with them. He entered heartily into both their work and play. He enjoyed their fun, approved of their games, and was the champion of athletics at Concord. But the doubtful sport of hazing he detested with his whole soul, and did not hesitate to say so.

Every one was aware of his feeling on this subject, but there were few who knew why it was so deep. In a distant city, confined in an asylum for the insane, Professor Lee’s only brother had lived for years, an imbecile. His condition was the direct result of injuries received at the hands of college hazers in his youth.

With this sorrow shadowing his life, it is not strange that hazing was an object of horror and hatred in Professor Lee’s thoughts.

The party of students, now headed by Parmenter and Lee, passed on across the campus, still singing. From the shadows of North College the tall figure of a young man emerged and came toward them. In the bright moonlight he was recognized at once as Van Loan, a man who had recently entered the Freshman class, coming from another college.

He had brought with him a reputation for mental ability and physical strength that gave him at once a prominent position among his fellows. But he was inordinately vain. He did not hesitate to boast of his wealth, of his aristocratic lineage, and of his superior attainments.

There is no community so thoroughly democratic[14] as a community of students; and while Van Loan’s real ability met with the respect it deserved, his vanity and arrogance made him obnoxious.

To-night he was dressed in the height of fashion. His costly clothes were a perfect fit. But the articles of ornament and apparel which particularly attracted the attention of the Sophomores who approached him were his high silk hat and his heavy cane.

It was an unwritten law among the students at Concord College that Freshmen should not wear silk hats or carry canes before reaching their third term. Any violation of this law was sure to bring on a class rush, in which the winning side secured and preserved the offensive articles of costume as trophies and emblems of their victory.

Yet here was a Freshman, in the midst of the second term, approaching a group of Sophomores with a cane in his hand and a silk hat on his head! Apparently he saw danger ahead of him, for he stopped a moment.

“What is it?” asked some one in the group, as they came up to Van Loan.

“It must be Wilson’s dummy come to life,” replied another. Wilson was the college tailor.

Van Loan heard these uncomplimentary remarks, and his face flushed with anger. He started boldly on, turning to the right as if to pass by the group. But half a dozen Sophomores intercepted him.

[15]

“What do you fellows mean by this impertinence?” he asked, curtly.

“We mean,” replied Parmenter, “that Freshmen are not yet allowed to carry sticks or wear ‘plugs.’ As you came here recently, from a one-horse college, perhaps you were not aware of this rule. If not, we shall be pleased to escort you to your room, where you can lay these highly objectionable articles of apparel away, and let them grow with your growth until it is time for you to wear them. But if you have knowingly and deliberately violated our rule, we—”

“What business is it of yours what I carry or wear?” interrupted Van Loan, hotly. “Stand aside and let me pass, or some one will get hurt!”

“Having declined our offer to escort you to your room,” continued Parmenter, coolly, “we shall be obliged to ask you to deliver up to us at once the articles I have named.”

“You shall not have them!” replied Van Loan, savagely. “I dare any one of you to come and get them. I dare all of you to take them away! You are cowards and bullies, every one of you!”

Nevertheless, as the Sophomores approached him he backed out into the road, retreating steadily until he came to the edge of a muddy pool of water left by the melting snows.

“You are robbers!” he shouted, fiercely. “What right have you to stop a gentleman in the public road and demand his property?”

[16]

“The right that might makes,” came the quick reply from some one in the group.

The Sophomores were gradually encircling their victim. Van Loan glanced about him nervously, and clutched his cane as if to make ready for action.

“Give them up peaceably, and we won’t even disturb the part in your hair,” said some one.

“And be quick about it, too,” said another, “for tempus is fast fugiting.”

Another body of students, scenting sport and trouble from afar, was rapidly approaching from the direction of South College. The circle about Van Loan was completed and contracting. He saw that his only hope lay in holding his enemies at bay until help should arrive from his own classmen. Yet he could not face all ways at once.

“Come, here’s the last word,” said Robinson, who recognized the men now bearing down on them as members of the Freshman class; “will you surrender the obnoxious articles peaceably, or won’t you?”

Van Loan, too, saw that assistance was at hand, and his courage increased accordingly.

“Never!” he shouted. “These things are mine, and I’ll keep them, and the first man that lays his hands on them or me, I’ll break his—”

What it was that Van Loan would have broken, no one ever knew; for Parmenter, advancing quickly to his side, tripped him so suddenly and dexterously that he measured his[17] full length in the shallow, muddy pool into which he had been too dainty to step.

In the same instant Lee snatched the cane from his grasp, and Robinson caught the silk hat as it fell.

But the victory was short-lived. Van Loan’s assailants turned with their trophies only to find themselves face to face with and outnumbered by a party of Van Loan’s classmates, who plunged at once to the rescue.

Then the rush was on. Up from the midst of the struggling mass came the class call of the Sophomores. It was followed at once by the class cry of the Freshmen. Soon the campus was alive with students hurrying singly and in groups toward the scene of the conflict.

Freshmen and Sophomores darted at once into the thick of the fight, while the Juniors and Seniors, moving about on the outskirts of the battleground, cheered and encouraged alternately the contending factions.

Van Loan had struggled to his feet as the center of battle moved away from him, and looked down ruefully and in speechless anger at his soiled and dripping garments.

“Don’t look very pretty, do they?” said a smiling Junior who stood by.

The victim of the drenching did not deign a reply. He jerked off his coat, and began wringing the water from it. Suddenly he asked: “Who was it, anyway? What coward threw me down?”

[18]

“A young fellow by the name of Parmenter,” was the answer; “a first-class all-around athlete. I shall be happy to introduce you to him at some more opportune moment.”

Van Loan did not relish the bantering tone of his informant; and muttering something more about cowards and bullies, he turned savagely on his heel, and started across the campus toward his room.

But a second thought appeared to come to him; for in the next moment he swung himself quickly about and ran, as fast as his heavy garments would permit him to, toward the crowd that was still struggling over his hat and cane.

He forced his way desperately into the center of the group and through it, looking for Parmenter, his wet clothing like ice upon his body, but a fire of hate raging in his heart.

It was not long before Van Loan’s hat was in shreds; but the cane, heavy and tough, resisted all the violence brought to bear upon it, and remained unbroken. Wherever it was, there was the center of the fight. The struggling group about it moved here and there, now swiftly, now slowly, swaying and parting, meeting and clinging, the dark mass looking from a distance, in the moonlight, like some huge monster twisting and writhing in pain.

Hats were lost and trampled upon. Coats were torn from the backs of their owners, clothes were rent and ruined—everywhere the campus was strewn with the débris of personal belongings.

[19]

Shifting back and forth by degrees, the surging mob finally reached a point in the driveway near the corner of South College.

Suddenly, the mass being rent by some swift convulsion, Parmenter darted from the midst and ran rapidly along the drive toward the main entrance to the building. He held Van Loan’s cane in his hand. In an instant Van Loan was at his heels, with Lee a good third.

From the crowd that pressed forward toward them came hoarse shouts of encouragement and wild yells of anticipated victory. The non-combatants who stood by joined in the cheers, and hurried on after the racers.

Those who watched closely saw that Parmenter, notwithstanding the swiftness of his gait, limped as if he had been hurt. They saw, too, that Van Loan was gaining on him; and more than one person, marking the look of desperate desire in Van Loan’s face, feared that it meant serious mischief.

When Parmenter reached the stone pavement in front of the buildings Van Loan was near enough to grasp him, but he did not do so. He kept on until pursuer and pursued were side by side; then turning sharply and suddenly, he thrust out his foot and struck Parmenter’s feet from under him. The young man was hurled headlong to the pavement.

He fell on his side and shoulder. The blow of his fall was heard above the storm of shouts and cheers that followed him. In an instant[20] Van Loan had seized the cane, and flourished it for a second in heroic attitude above the prostrate body of his victim. Then finding Lee almost within touch, he turned and ran with it into an open doorway of South College.

But Lee did not follow him; he stopped where Parmenter lay in the moonlight, white-faced, limp, and unconscious, with flowing blood staining the pavement under his head.

“He’s hurt!” cried Lee, frightened at his friend’s appearance, and bending over him in deep anxiety. “He’s hurt! Maybe the brute has killed him! Here, give us a lift; let’s carry him in! Rob, run for Doctor Park—run!”

The crowd, suddenly quieted, pressed forward toward the point where Parmenter lay. Half a dozen of his classmen had already lifted him in their arms, and a moment later they were carrying him, hurt, helpless, still unconscious, across the moonlit campus to his room.

But the fight was won. Van Loan’s stroke, cruel and revengeful though it was, had placed victory in the hands of the Freshmen. Henceforth every man in the class was entitled, by virtue of the time-honored student law, to wear a high hat and carry a cane whenever and wherever he might choose to do so.

[21]

CHAPTER II. THE GAMMA QUESTERS.

Parmenter recovered consciousness soon after he was carried to his room, after being thrown so viciously by Van Loan; but when the college physician came he declared that there was a fracture of the right clavicle.

There was also a deep scalp wound where Parmenter’s head had struck on a sharp edge of the stone pavement, and this required stitching and dressing.

When the bathing and bandaging and plastering had been done, the injured man was thoroughly exhausted, and weak from loss of blood. His bosom friend, Charley Lee, remained to care for him through the night.

Next morning Parmenter awoke, refreshed and comfortable. By and by the doctor came. Parmenter gave him hardly time to take off his overcoat before he inquired,

“How long will it be, doctor, before I shall have the free use of my arm?”

“Oh, three or four weeks,” was the reply. “These simple fractures of the clavicle are of no great consequence. They heal up very quickly.”

[22]

Parmenter’s face fell. Three or four weeks! His injury might indeed have been of no great consequence from the surgeon’s point of view, but to him it was a serious matter. It was likely to block his way to the prize stage.

At Concord College one evening of Commencement week was devoted to the delivery of orations by Juniors and Sophomores in competition for prizes. Six competitors were selected from each class at a trial contest held about three months before Commencement. To be appointed to the prize stage was a marked honor, and one which Parmenter greatly coveted. He had worked for it for months.

The trial speaking was to take place in the college chapel on the following Friday; and here he was, and would be for weeks, with a broken collar-bone, and his right arm in a sling!

When Lee came back from breakfast, Parmenter exclaimed with a groan,

“It’s all up, Charley!”

“What’s all up?” asked Lee, advancing in alarm to the bed.

“Why, the prize stage! The doctor says I can’t use my arm for a month, and here’s the trial speaking coming on next Friday!”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” replied Lee, sinking into a chair. “It is a bad business, that’s so.” After a minute he added, “But your voice will be all right, Fred; you can have that as clear as a bell.”

“My voice! What good is that to me? Can[23] I make gestures with my voice? How can a man do anything with his arm in a sling and his shoulders bound up as if he were a mummy?”

Parmenter was excited. He felt that hitherto his success on the platform had been largely due to the training he had had in what is called “presence” and his skill in gestures. That effect would now be totally destroyed.

“You might learn to use your left arm,” suggested Lee, as a forlorn hope.

“Bah! You know better than that, Charley. I’m out, that’s all. There’s only one redeeming feature about the whole business; and that is, that you’ll carry off first prize now for all the trouble I shall give you.”

For a minute Lee was at a loss for an answer. He also was a candidate for the prize stage. They had agreed that each was to strive to obtain the honor to the best of his ability; but the rivalry was so friendly that neither would have accepted an appointment at the expense of the other. At the same time, it would have been a great pleasure to either to have the other carry off the prize.

After a while Lee said, casting his eyes down on his friend’s bandaged shoulder and plastered head:

“That was a cowardly thing for Van Loan to do, wasn’t it? Dangerous, too. Why, just think of it! It might have cracked your skull!”

“Pity it hadn’t!” growled Parmenter.[24] “Then there’d have been no question about my being an idiot. As it is—well, I’ve two years in which to get even with him. I think I can manage to make it up to him in that time.”

After a minute he added, “Did the Freshies carry sticks this morning, Charley?”

“Every one of ’em,” said Lee. “They all went down town last night after the row, and what canes they couldn’t raise money enough to buy, they begged or borrowed. They’re tremendously proud and joyous this morning—especially Van Loan. He thinks he’s the biggest toad in the puddle now, sure.”

Parmenter turned savagely toward the wall, and winced with the pain the movement caused him; but he said nothing. After a little Lee reverted to the prize-speaking contest. He had been thinking about it all the time.

“Don’t be discouraged about that prize-speaking, Fred,” he said. “Go ahead with it. Put it through. Never mind the gestures. They’re only a useless ornament, anyway. Why, you know—what’s his name?—that great orator, you remember; he never used gestures; disdained ’em; laid himself out on voice and expression, you know, and swayed the hearts of multitudes by his eloquent and thrilling—”

“Oh, tell that to the marines! Here, I want to get up. Give me a lift, will you, Charley? and help me on with my clothes.”

[25]

Parmenter had no great faith in the possibility of successful oratory without gestures, but Lee’s idea struck him as worth considering, after all; and the more he thought about it, the more he was inclined toward it.