Ramsey Milholland Part 11

"Why, no," said Ramsey. "It was those Dutch did that to us; and, besides, there's more to it than you--"

"No, there isn't," she interrupted. "It's just the old brutal spirit that nations inherit from the time they were only tribes; it's the tribe spirit, and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It's those things and the love of fighting--men have always loved to fight. Civilization hasn't taken it out of them; men still have the brute in them that loves to fight!"

"I don't think so," said Ramsey. "Americans don't love to fight; I don't know about other countries, but we don't. Of course, here and there, there's some fellow that likes to hunt around for sc.r.a.pes, but I never saw more than three or four in my life that acted that way. Of course a football team often has a sc.r.a.pper or two on it, but that's different."

"No," she said. "I think you all really love to fight."

Ramsey was roused to become argumentative. "I don't see where you get the idea. Colburn isn't that way, and back at school there wasn't a single boy that was anything like that."

"What!" She stopped, and turned suddenly to face him.

"What's the matter?" he said, stopping, too. Something he said had startled her, evidently.

"How can you say such a thing?" she cried. "_You_ love to fight!"

"Me?"

"You do! You love fighting. You always have loved fighting."

He was dumbfounded. "Why, I never had a fight in my life!"

She cried out in protest of such prevarication.

"Well, I never did," he insisted, mildly.

"Why, you had a fight about _me_!"

"No, I didn't."

"With Wesley Bender!"

Ramsey chuckled. "_That_ wasn't a fight!"

"It wasn't?"

"Nothing like one. We were just guyin' him about--about gettin' slicked up, kind of, because he sat in front of you; and he hit me with his book strap and I chased him off. Gracious, no; _that_ wasn't a fight!"

"But you fought Linski only last fall."

Ramsey chuckled again. "That wasn't even as much like a fight as the one with Wesley. I just told this Linski I was goin' to give him a punch in the sn-- I just told him to look out because I was goin' to hit him, and then I did it, and waited to see if he wanted to do anything about it, and he didn't. That's all there was to it, and it wasn't any more like fighting than--than feeding chickens is."

She laughed dolefully. "It seems to me rather more like it than that!"

"Well, it wasn't."

They had begun to walk on again, and Ramsey was aware that they had pa.s.sed the "frat house," where his dinner was probably growing cold. He was aware of this, but not sharply or insistently. Curiously enough, he did not think about it. He had begun to find something pleasant in the odd interview, and in walking beside a girl, even though the girl was Dora Yoc.u.m. He made no attempt to account to himself for anything so peculiar.

For a while they went slowly together, not speaking, and without destination, though Ramsey vaguely took it for granted that Dora was going somewhere. But she wasn't. They emerged from the part of the small town closely built about the university and came out upon a bit of parked land overlooking the river; and here Dora's steps slowed to an indeterminate halt near a bench beneath a maple tree.

"I think I'll stay here a while," she said; and as he made no response, she asked, "Hadn't you better be going back to your 'frat house' for your dinner? I didn't mean for you to come out of your way with me; I only wanted to get an answer to my question. You'd better be running back."

"Well--"

He stood irresolute, not sure that he wanted his dinner just then. It would have amazed him to face the fact deliberately that perhaps he preferred being with Dora Yoc.u.m to eating. However, he faced no such fact, nor any fact, but lingered.

"Well--" he said again.

"You'd better go."

"I guess I can get my dinner pretty near any time. I don't--" He had a thought. "Did you--"

"Did I what?"

"Did you have your dinner before I met you?"

"No."

"Well, aren't you--"

She shook her head. "I don't want any."

"Why not?"

"I don't think people have very much appet.i.te to-day and yesterday," she said, with the hint of a sad laugh, "all over America."

"No; I guess that's so."

"It's too terrible!" she said. "I can't sit and eat when I think of the _Lusitania_--of all those poor, poor people strangling in the water--"

"No; I guess n.o.body can eat much, if they think about that."

"And of what it's going to bring, if we let it," she went on. "As if this killing weren't enough, we want to add _our_ killing! Oh, that's the most terrible thing of all--the thing it makes within us! Don't you understand?"

She turned to him appealingly, and he felt queerer than ever. Dusk had fallen. Where they stood, under the young-leaved maple tree, there was but a faint lingering of afterglow, and in this mystery her face glimmered wan and sweet; so that Ramsey, just then, was like one who discovers an old pan, used in the kitchen, to be made of chased silver.

"Well, I don't feel much like dinner right now," he said. "We--we could sit here awhile on this bench, prob'ly."

Chapter XV

Ramsey kept very few things from Fred Mitch.e.l.l, and usually his confidences were immediate upon the occasion of them; but allowed several weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the outlines of this adventure.

"One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred," he said, "I didn't know what to call her."

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, stretched upon the window seat in their "study," and looking out over the town street below and the campus beyond the street, had already thought it tactful to ambush his profound amus.e.m.e.nt by turning upon his side, so that his face was toward the window and away from his companion. "What did you want to call her?" he inquired in a serious voice. "Names?"