He took the first occasion to stop Le Baron, for he wanted the latter to make no mistake about him.
“Hugh, I was rude as the devil to you the other night,” he said directly. “I was drunk—more than you had any idea. What I want you to know is this. You put the question right up to me. You’ve forced me to take my stand, and I’ve done it. You’re all wrong on the argument, but I don’t blame you. Only after this you’ll never have the chance to fling that at me again. You and I’ll never agree on things here, we’re bound to be enemies, but I want to thank you for opening my eyes, putting it squarely up to me.”
He left without waiting for an answer, having said what he wished to. For several days he kept by himself, taking long walks, disciplining the ship that had sailed so long in mutiny. Then he turned up in Regan’s room, and holding out his hand, said:
“Well, Tom, it’s over. How in blazes did you keep from telling me what you thought about me all this time?”
Regan, unruffled and undemonstrative, said through the cloud of his pipe:
“Well, I’ve seen men go through it before. You never were very bad.”
“What?” said Stover, who felt rather annoyed at this tame estimate.
“It’s not a bad thing when you’ve licked the devil four ways to election,” said Regan. “You know what you can do, and that’s something.”
“Ever been through it?” said Stover, still a little piqued.
“Ye‑es.”
“Really, Tom?” said Dink amazed.
“Ran about six months,” said Regan, crossing his legs and dreaming. “I wasn’t nice and polite like you—used to clean up the place—rather ugly time, but I pulled out.”
“You’ve never told me about yourself,” said Stover tentatively.
Regan rose, reaching for the tobacco. “No, I never have,” he said. “My story is one of those stories that isn’t told. Come on over to Brocky’s; he’s got a debating scheme you’ll be interested in.”
“You damned unemotional cuss,” said Stover, looking at him a little defiantly.
“Are you coming with me this summer to see a little real life—get a little real education?” said Regan irrelevantly.
“If you’ll take me.”
“Good boy.”
He rested his hand on Stover’s shoulder a moment, and gave him a little tap, and the touch brought a genuine thrill of happiness to Dink.
“Lord, what a leader he’d make,” he thought. “Why is it, and what’s the story the old rhinoceros can’t tell, I wonder?”
The old crowd was at Brocky’s, the crowd which had first stirred his imagination. His return produced quite a sensation. Nothing was said, but the grip in the handshakes was different, and the diffident, hesitant little expressions of relieved goodwill that came to him touched him more than he would have believed.
Brockhurst began to expound his scheme, speaking nervously, in compressed sentences, as he always did in the beginning of an argument.
“Here’s what I’m trying to say. We’ve all been sitting round and criticizing—I mean I have—things up here. Now why not really suggest something—worth while?” He frowned, and becoming angry at his own difficulty in expressing himself, gradually became more fluent. “We all feel the need of getting together and having real discussions, and we all agree that debating here has died out, become merely perfunctory. The debates take place in a classroom, and everything is cold, stiff, mechanical. Now that all is unnecessary. What we want is something spontaneous, informal and with the incentive of a contest. This is my scheme. To take a certain number—say twenty—of the men in the class who really have ideas, and believe in expressing them; form a club to meet one night a week in some room over a restaurant where we can sit about tables, smoke, have beer and lemonade, a bit to eat if you want, everything natural, informal. Divide the club up equally into two camps, each camp to have a leader for each debate, who opens the discussion and sums it up—the only formal, perfunctory speeches. Everyone else speaks as he feels like it, right from his table. Have in an outside judge, and keep a record. At the end of the year the side that loses sets the other up to a banquet.”
Stover was interested at once. He saw an instrument at hand for which he had been looking—something to bring the class together.
“Look here, it’s bigger than that, Brocky,” he said earnestly. “I’m not criticizing—I like the idea, the whole thing, you know. But here’s what we can do. Make the club, say, forty, and get into it all the representative elements of the class—make it a real meeting place. Get the fellows who are going to be managers and captains. They’ve all got to speak—the fellows on papers, the real debaters—and you’ll have something that’ll bring the class together.”
“What would you debate?” said Swazey, while the others considered Stover’s suggestion.
“College subjects everyone has an opinion about at first,” said Regan. “And then get into red-hot politics.”
“Of course Stover’s idea is a social one—democratic if you will,” said Brockhurst perplexed. “My idea was for a more intimate crowd, all alike, trying to discuss real things.”
“Brocky, I don’t believe you can do it,” said Stover. “My experience is that the big discussions, the ones worth while, always are informal, just as they’ve been in this crowd, and the crowd mustn’t be too large.” Several nodded assent. “The other thing is something we need in the class. We’ve been torn to pieces, all at loggerheads, and I believe, outside of the debating, this is the first step to getting together. Moreover, I think you’ll find all crowds will jump at the chance. Let me talk it around.”
“I think Dink’s got the practical idea, Brocky,” said Regan. “And, moreover, he’s the man to work it.”
As they
