"If I ~could~ do it," he vociferated, "if I ~could~ stand up there and debate one o' their darn ole debates in the first place--if I had the gall to even try it, why, my gosh! you don't suppose I'm goin' to get up there and argue with ~that girl~, do you? That's a hot way to get an education: stand up there and argue with a girl before a couple o' hundred people! My ~gosh!~"
"You got to!" his prostrate companion cackled, weakly. "You can't get out of it. You're a goner, ole Buddy!"
"I'll be sick. I'll be sick as a dog! I'll be sick as the sickest dog that ever--"
"No use, ole man. The frat seniors'll be on the job. They'll know whether you're sick or not, and they'll have you there, right on the spot to the minute!"
The prediction was accurate. The too fatherly "frat seniors" did all that Fred said they would, and more. For the honour of the "frat," they coached the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate, told him many more things to say than could be said in six minutes, and produced him, despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in the large hall of the Lumen Society at eight o'clock on Friday evening.
Four other "twelve-minute debates" preceded his and the sound of these, in Ramsey's ears, was the sound of Gabriel practising on his horn in the early morning of Judgment Day. The members of the society sat, three rows deep, along the walls of the room, leaving a clear oblong of green carpet in the centre, where were two small desks, twenty feet apart, the rostrums of the debaters. Upon a platform at the head of the room sat dreadful seniors, the officers of the society, and, upon benches near the platform, the debaters of the evening were aligned. One of the fraternal seniors sat with sweltering Ramsey; and the latter, as his time relentlessly came nearer, made a last miserable squirm.
"Look here, Brother Colburn, I got to get out o' here."
"No, you don't, young fellow."
"Yes, I do!" Ramsey whispered, passionately. "Honest, I do. Honest, Brother Colburn, I got to get a drink of water. I ~got~ to!"
"No. You can't."
"Honest, Colburn, I ~got~--"
"Hush!"
Ramsey grunted feebly, and cast his dilating eyes along the rows of faces. Most of them were but as blurs, swimming, yet he was aware (he thought) of a formidable and horrible impassive scrutiny of himself, a glare seeming to pierce through him to the back of the belt round his waist, so that he began to have fearful doubts about that belt, about every fastening and adjustment of his garments, about the expression of his countenance, and about many other things jumbling together in his consciousness. Over and over he whispered gaspingly to himself the opening words of the sentence with which Colburn had advised him to begin his argument. And as the moment of supreme agony drew close, this whispering became continuous:
"In ****** my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in ****** my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in ****** my first appearance before this honor'ble mem--"
It had come. The chairman announced the subject of the fourth freshman twelve-minute debate; and Dora Yocum, hitherto unperceived by Ramsey, rose and went forward to one of the small desks in the open space, where she stood composedly, a slim, pretty figure in white. Members in Ramsey's neighbourhood were aware of a brief and hushed commotion, and of Colburn's fierce whisper, "You can't! You get up there!" And the blanched Ramsey came forth and placed himself at the other desk.
He stood before the silent populace of that morgue, and it seemed to him that his features had forgotten that he was supposed to be their owner and in control of them; he felt that they were slipping all over his face, regardless of his wishes. His head, as a whole, was subject to an agitation not before known by him; it desired to move rustily in eccentric ways of its own devising; his legs alternately limbered and straightened under no direction but their own; and his hands clutched each other fiercely behind his back; he was not one cohesive person, evidently, but an assembled collection of parts which had relapsed each into its own indivuality. In spite of them, he somehow contrived the semblance of a bow toward the chairman and the semblance of another toward Dora, of whom he was but hazily conscious. Then he opened his mouth, and, not knowing how he had started his voice going, heard it as if from a distance.
"In ****** my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel restrained to say--" He stopped short, and thenceforward shook visibly. After a long pause, he managed to repeat his opening, stopped again, swallowed many times, produced a handkerchief and wiped his face, an act of necessity--then had an inspiration.
"The subject assigned to me," he said, "is resolved that Germany is mor'ly and legally justified in Belgians--Belgiums! This subject was assigned to me to be the subject of this debate." He interrupted himself to gasp piteously; found breathing difficult, but faltered again: "This subject is the subject. It is the subject that was assigned to me on a postal card." Then, for a moment or so, he had a miraculous spurt of confidence, and continued rather rapidly: "I feel constrained to say that the country of Belgian--Belgium, I mean --this country has been constrained by the--invaded I mean--invaded by the imperial German Impire and my subject in this debate is whether it ought to or not, my being the infernative--affirmative, I mean--that I got to prove that Germany is mor'ly and legally justified. I wish to state that--"
