With Miss Gregory to make a decision was to act. It was but living up to this characteristic the following morning when, after having gotten her classes well started she set off for the college administration building for the purpose of laying the facts before the president and enlisting his aid. Coming to the large, imposing, ivy covered structure which, with its atmosphere of quiet, gave the impression of studiousness and culture, she stepped into the reception room, sent her card to the President and was shortly ushered in.
The President, a short, quickly nervous acting man, whose rotundity of body gave one the impression of a city alderman, accustomed to and enjoying the good things of life, smiled and bounced to his feet as Miss Gregory came into the room, his massive head with its heavy thatch of just-turning grey hair nodded vigorously at the same time that he smiled broadly. All he needed was the apron and a butcher knife to have seemed the inn-keeper in some old world village.
These two had had many meetings before for the purpose of adjudicating differences and matters relating to the students of one school or the other. It was in anticipation of some such trouble that Dr. Dennig greeted Miss Gregory on this morning. Despite the fact that they had met on many other occasions there never was an occasion for such a meeting but that the genial President had tried to grasp the hand of the head of the Girls' school in a way to give the impression of affection for her. It was always a flabby sort of grip that Miss Gregory, when she spoke of the incident at all with her intimates, had described as "clammy."
As he stood, this morning, he reached for the hand again, with:
"Why, good morning, Miss Gregory! How do you do?"
Miss Gregory failed to notice the extended hand or to recognize the greeting except with a bow.
"To what am I indebted for this so early a visit on such a spring morning? I hope it is an errand of love—a—a—a personal errand, I mean." Here he tried again to reach the hand of the woman. Miss Gregory tightened her lips and sat in the chair at the side of the desk. When she still remained silent though smiling to conceal her dislike of the man and his mannerisms, Dr. Dennig continued:
"I suppose some of my boys have been flirting again. Or rather that your girls have been tempting my boys and you come to blame them for being led on. You know, I can't blame my boys, when I'm so hard hit myself by the—," here he bowed again as best he could over the front elevation of himself, "director of the school. I—"
Before he could continue, Miss Gregory interrupted with:
"Dr. Dennig, don't be a fool all your life. Remember you're head of this institution and conduct yourself accordingly. I have come to complain of one of your boys and I want your help. I want the help of the entire faculty."
"Ah, is it as serious as that? That you deem it a faculty matter?"
"You'll see how serious it is," she snapped.
"I'm all attention then, proceed," he directed.
"I have a southern young woman in my school, who comes from a proud, very proud and distinguished family. She and one of your students have fallen desperately in love."
"I don't see that that is such a serious matter. Young men and young women have fallen in love before, even as you and I,—I beg pardon, even as I with you. That's a characteristic of youth, you know. So long as they observe the laws of society, what matters to us? They've done so in other years here and I presume this will not be an off year in the matter of announced engagements when graduations take place. Why worry?"
"But, you don't understand. This engagement is folly—perfect folly, besides it will wreck a young girl's life and will wreck my school."
"My dear Miss Gregory, have you not learned yet that youth will brook no interference when it comes to its love affairs. At least not in these modern days. In our day—"
"I beg pardon," she interrupted.
"In my day," Dr. Dennig corrected hastily, "parents and guardians had much to say concerning the companions of youth and choices for mates but times have changed. We are in a new day. Young people have more freedom. They take more freedom—demand more and when we old fogies attempt to interfere its like trying to harness an unbroken Texas pony. Now my advice is to let this matter severely alone."
"But, you don't understand. You don't understand."
"But I do understand. I understand you fear that this match if consummated will wreck your school. He on that. You fear needlessly. No love affair ever broke up a school."
"This one will—," Miss Gregory persisted "and if you don't act, it will break yours up also."
"Never." Dr. Dennig shook his head pompously.
"Well, hear me out anyway then decide. This girl, I say, is a southerner, with spirit of the south in her being. She has fallen in love with a man of colored blood—fallen in love with Bennet—Truman Bennet."
Dr. Dennig sat back in his chair without a word as if stunned and gazed from the window across the campus arched over by stately elms of generations growth. Thus he sat for fully five minutes. Miss Gregory waited silently, the fingers of his hands touching as in the attitude of prayer. At the end of his meditations he turned to Miss Gregory, with:
"What would you have me do?" he finally asked. "Bennet is an estimable fellow, well liked, and would never be taken for one with colored blood in him. He is manly, too. I've watched him through his four years. Besides he finishes next month—graduates. We can't command him to cease loving the girl, if she cares for him. We can't expel him for that. It seems as if you must work on the girl if you desire to break the match. That's your play, Miss Gregory."
Miss Gregory stamped her foot as she said:
"Call a faculty meeting and have him before it. Demand that he cease his attentions or suffer the penalty of not receiving his degree."
"But he's earned his degree," Dr. Dennig insisted.
"The faculty awards degrees. The faculty can withhold them for whatever purpose they see fit. It is within your right. Put it to a vote and you will see the faculty will bear me out," Miss Gregory still argued.
There was another long pause while Dr. Dennig studied the distant view across the campus. Finally he said, with a deep intake of breath through his teeth:
"I'll call the faculty meeting, if you'll come before them, state your case, make your own plea and then let them vote."
"I'll come—surely—yes," was the positive answer.
"But, I'll make this stipulation," Dr. Dennig persisted. "Bennet shall have his chance also."
"Is that necessary?" returned Miss Gregory with a feeling of misgiving.
"It is. He has committed no crime—and I don't believe the faculty will sustain you.—However, we'll see. I'm neutral," added Dr. Dennig raising his hands to emphasize the words.
"I'll vouch for the faculty.—Thank you, Dr. Dennig," Miss Gregory said with a positiveness she did not feel.
"I'll notify you of the meeting," said Dr. Dennig as the two parted at the door.
Miss Gregory was determined to see that she had her way and set about to canvass the members of the faculty with whom she was friendly, in effort to enlist them on her side. Those she won over, she pledged to her support without telling them what she wanted. "Just vote with me and for me at the meeting when the subject comes up," was what she asked them.
All unmindful of the storm brewing about their heads, conscious only of the fact that their love was mutual and growing stronger, Bennet and Lida contrived to meet for a few moments each day and filled up the remaining time of their existence writing to and thinking of each other. They lived only in the moment and their love, as is the way of youth. They had decided, each to return to their respective homes after school ended, inform their parents, then if objections arose to meet at some to be appointed place there to marry and start their wedded life. Bennet had already secured a commission to travel for a large business firm and it was planned to combine business with their honeymoon abroad.
The day of the faculty meeting, due to the activity and energy of Miss Gregory, found the session permeated with subdued curiosity and an air of mysterious tensity. Neighboring members viewed each other with wonderment, none knowing just what to expect. Dr. Dennig was as mystifying as possible, for instead of the usual smiling suavity of greeting, and the joking banter with which he was accustomed to greet them as they joined him he was serious, sedate and preoccupied.
The professors gathered in the meeting room above the President's office, as was their usage, each taking his accustomed place, with Dean Sandager, aged and patriarchal, at the side of the President and the secretary of the faculty on the other. On either side down the long glass topped table extending the length of the room, remaining members of the faculty took their seats. The Dean of the Divinity School, Dr. Morris, another patriarch of the faculty sat at the end opposite the President.
As the President was about to call the meeting to order he gave the office messenger a note with instructions to deliver it immediately. With this he entered the faculty room and sat at his place. The air was full of expectancy. Every member of the faculty who had been bidden was present. All eyes focussed on Dr. Dennig. After a few moments the latter arose and said:
"Gentlemen, this is no meeting of the faculty in the regular sense of the word. I have called you here at the suggestion of another on a matter that may or may not concern the faculty, according to your viewpoint. This college seeks and has sought to produce men, real men, who, when they left our influence, would have had their ideas and morals so shaped as to stand with real men and lead in life. I have been asked to let you decide a question that I personally believe does not concern us. It has been argued that it is a question for the public good and on the question of that point alone I shall submit it to you."
Here Dr. Dennig stated the proposition that had been put to him by Miss Gregory, detailing the story. When he concluded he said:
"In order that you may judge and decide for yourselves I have asked both Miss Gregory and the other principal concerned to appear before you. I shall first call Miss Gregory."
With that he touched a bell at his elbow and Miss Gregory entered.
"Miss Gregory," Dr. Dennig continued, "I have laid the matter before the faculty and will allow you to present your case."
Miss Gregory then stepped to the table and after facing the gathering for a second, said:
"Gentlemen, I'll be brief and to the point. I am sorry to do this but feel it is my duty and that you will feel it your duty in the interest of all concerned to concur in what I shall ask you.
"Miss Gregory's school and this college have been neighbors, and I might say friendly neighbors for years. The pupils at my school and yours have formed many happy friendships, most of which have been fortunate. I have rejoiced in the close associations of my school and yours; of my students and yours. The reputation of my school has been built on its exclusiveness, the care exercised over the pupils, the training given them and the culture they absorb. Your college has been built on the success of your teaching and the principles you teach and the type of men you turn out. All that is admitted.
"There has arisen a rather unfortunate circumstance which we all owe it to ourselves to amend at no matter what sacrifice. I promise you that I shall exercise more care in the future. One of my pupils whose family and traditions bear me out in my action of opposition has unfortunately taken a fancy to one of your students whom she cannot marry and should not be allowed to marry. I don't want drastic action unless all other efforts fail. I have tried to dissuade the girl and have seemingly failed. I have tried to dissuade the young man in question and have failed. I appeal to you now, for aid. I would ask you gentlemen to summon the young man, impress upon him the enormity of the differences in his circumstances and hers, and assure him that should he persist he will not be allowed to graduate."
"Who is this young man?" Dean Sandager asked. The same question was on the tongue of several others.
"Truman Bennet."
"Bennet—Bennet, Bennet—Why he's all right," came from several sections of the room at the same time as professors recalled their contact with Bennet and his bearing in college. Miss Gregory's face flushed for a minute at the seeming hopelessness of her task.
"Do you mean to say?" she asked, leaning slightly over the table in her intensity, "that you don't know who and what he is, after four years spent with him? Don't you know that he is colored; that he has Negro blood in his veins? He can't be allowed to form an alliance with a southern girl of breeding and refinement such as Lida Lauriston. You cannot allow it! You must not allow it! What will become of my school if such a thing happens?" Her voice was now raised almost to a shrill in her excitement. "This thing must not be."
"Perish the thought!" "Never, never!" "The fool! That's what comes of too much education!" "We'd lynch him in the south for such a thought even!" This last from one of the newer and younger members of the faculty who had come from one of the southern schools. About the table could be heard the other exclamations while some of the older heads and those who knew Bennet best either remained silent or voiced half-hearted approval.
The young man who spoke of lynching, Donald Armstrong, became so excited he arose in his seat and shaking his fist at the air, his face almost purple, exclaimed:
"The brute! I knew it! I knew it! I always knew it would never do to educate 'niggers.' We must preserve the white race pure. I knew if we allowed them to be educated the next thing they would be wanting to marry our daughters. I wouldn't let him graduate. I'd flunk him. I'd expel him for such uppishness. We know, in the south how to handle such. We know how to keep them in their places."
For a few moments there was a general hubbub, with everyone voicing opinions and trying to speak at once. When noises lessened, Dean Sandager, his white hair thrown back from his fine high serried forehead, stood, stroked his patriarchal beard which covered his white shirt front, and pointing a deliberate finger at Armstrong, said:
"Hold on, Son, don't waste your breath yet. You're not in the south. I have been closely associated with this young man, Bennet, in the past four years, having been his adviser. I know his heart is clean, his soul white and his family good. If I had a daughter to trust to the care and keeping of a young man I know none to whom I would rather entrust her keeping than to Bennet. I'd be proud to have him as a son.
"I'm a man far along in years. I have watched this country grow; watched sentiments change and shift; watched events drift; I have learned, and I say with all the force within me, that prejudice based on color or race or religion is damnable and is the curse of the country.
"I am prejudiced against some men and women, but my prejudice is based on lack of character and morality, and culture. Prejudice on any other basis is damnable, narrow, and unjust. Besides, unless told I would not know that Bennet was of any race other than white. It is time we forgot races and saw men. It is time we quit pandering to the insincere or ignorant desires for caste distinctions.
"I have many excellent friends in the south. Most of them do not believe as you, Armstrong. And as for your kind it is best not to boast too violently of race purity. Your kind ought to be the last to talk that stuff when out of twelve million people you have spoiled the purity of more than four million by illicit and unwelcomed amalgamations. You should be the last to shout that shibboleth, Son. The last to shout it.
"I suggest that before we do anything for which we should entertain later regrets we have the young man himself before us. Hear his side of matter. I'm sure he'll give a good account of himself."
Armstrong subsided and there were shouts and hand-clappings of approval when Dean Sandager had finished. As the latter seated himself, Dr. Dennig turned to him with:
"I have already summoned the young man and he ought to be here." Another tap of the bell, a hurried message and the door opened as Truman Bennet stepped before the faculty.
Dean Sandager, his heart yearning like a father's to the young man, stood as Bennet entered. Dr. Dennig, the president also rose. The others remained seated. Dean Sandager stepped to Bennet's side and escorted him to the table, the place where Miss Gregory had stood, she having retired to one of the chairs against the wall. Before Dean Sandager seated himself again he rested his hand on Bennet's shoulders as if to impart courage for the ordeal.
Dr. Dennig lost no time in coming to the point. "Bennet," he said, "You are faced with a very serious predicament. You are summoned here to say whether or not you shall be allowed to graduate with your class or be expelled from college. Upon your answer depends it whether the faculty votes for the one or the other. You can save yourself from trouble if you will here and before us all give us your word that you'll not see Miss Lauriston any more; that you will not communicate with her or in any way seek to associate with her.
"I may also say that your further association with her is distasteful to Miss Gregory, to some members of the faculty and would be decidedly so to the young lady's family. In fact a persistence in your attitude will mean not only a faculty vote but trouble, endless trouble for you both. What have you to say?"
Bennet listened to the words then with one hand ministerially thrust into his bosom where the coat was unbuttoned, with a voice so passion-spent that his words came with almost percussive explosiveness spoke. There was the agony of a tortured soul in every syllable, having sensed immediately the import of his summons. As he faced them with the confidence of youth, yet the gravity of age, he said:
"Gentlemen of the Faculty:—As I read your faces, hear your charges and study the gravity of your countenances I am led to ask myself whether I'm among Christians or heathens, leaders or slaves, friends or foes. I had thought that during my four years here I was among friends.
"This that you propose to do, in fact already have done, might easily be catalogued among the crimes of the ages. You have set yourselves to the task of preventing the most moral, the most human, most natural act of life, the perfectly cosmic mating of two souls.
"You threaten me with expulsion from your school. Not only that. You seek to deprive me of something I've earned and paid for in cash and honest effort. You may deny me certification of my accomplishment. You cannot withdraw that which I have absorbed under these old and stately elms and in these class rooms and under the guardianship of those of you whose lives are worthy of emulation.
"Therefore your proposal if carried out would fail of accomplishment except as it branded you as hide-bound, narrow and bigoted. Your action would but brand you as inhuman, unChristian—unmoral. That I differ from you in blood you may claim. Yet how false that claim. The blood of all men is human. Complexion is external. There is as royal blood in my veins as in yours—as in the best of you. The blood of kings pulses from my heart; the blood of the King of life and death; of God our King courses through my veins. Wherein are you more royal than I? How long is America to dwell in the gloom of prejudice? How long are men of thought and leadership to allow blind caste bigotry to shape our common destinies?
"I want my diploma as a right fully earned; as a matter of justice; as a matter of law. I've earned it by study, by expenditures, by loyalty. As for the halting of my course; the turning aside from my purpose; repudiating of my pledged word, first halt you the tides; reshape the course of day through night; still the wheels of the Universe, yet only death shall rob me of my will to,—right to love the one I love.—Unless it be the lady herself.
"This breast of mine knows what a gem she is." He waved his hand defiantly. "Keep your diploma, deny me, if you will, the honor of standing with my classmates and receiving certification in public at your hands. You cannot deny me my right to love."