The Varmint Part 17

He sat in abject mental and physical suffering, his eyes on his plate, tasting nothing of what went into his mouth, chewing mechanically.

Mr. Jenkins, to be affable, asked him how he had enjoyed the day. He mumbled some reply, he never knew what, hearing only the dreadful snicker that ran the table. He refused the dessert and left the table. It had been a nightmare.

He stayed in his room, watching from behind the curtains his fellow-beings romping and shrieking over a game of baby-in-the-hat.

The bottom had, indeed, dropped out of things--the universe was topsy-turvy. More keenly than in the afternoon he felt the utter hopelessness of his disgrace. If he could only get away--escape from it all. If he only had had five dollars in his pocket he could have reached Trenton and worked his way to some seaport town. He looked at the now ridiculous souvenir toilet set and bitterly thought where the precious dollars had gone--that story, too, would be abroad by the morrow. The whole school would probably rise and jeer at him when he entered chapel the next morning. That night he crept into his bed to the stillness of the black room, to suffer a long hour that first overwhelming anguish that can only be suffered once, that no other suffering can compare to, that is complete, because the knowledge of other suffering has not yet come, and he who suffers suffers alone.

Then the imagination came to the rescue. He fell into blissful unconsciousness by a process of consoling half dreams in which he vindicated himself by feats of extraordinary valor, carrying the suffocating Tough McCarty and the Coffee-colored Angel out of burning houses at the risk of his own life, and earning the plaudits of the whole school.

Suddenly a peal of thunder shook the building; he landed all in a heap in the midst of the sunlit floor, rubbing his eyes. Outside, the morning came in with warm embrace; green things stirred against the window-panes; the flash of a robin's wing cut a swift shadow on the floor and was gone. Below, the horrid clanging of the gong rattled the walls and called on the dead to rise.

d.i.n.k gazed at the opposite bed. Butsey, with the covers wound around him, with his knees under his chin, was actually asleep. In great alarm he went over and shook him gently. One eye opened and reproachfully fastened on him.

"I say, the gong--the gong's rung, Mr. White," said d.i.n.k.

"The rising gong?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, when the breakfast gong explodes wake me up."

The eyes shut, but presently reopened and a m.u.f.fled voice added:

"Pour out water--washbasin--stick my shoes over here."

d.i.n.k obeyed, mystified. Then, going to the window, he drank in all the zest and glory of green fields and blue skies with woolly clouds drifting over the tingling air. Joyfully he turned for a plunge in cold water and the unspeakable crockery set met his eye. Then he remembered. A shadow fell across the room; the day went into eclipse.

Mechanically, heavily, he dressed, and the fever of yesterday sprang up anew.

Meanwhile, not a sound in the House except down the hall a snore--a glorious, triumphant note. A second time the gong took up its discordant march. Then from the coc.o.o.n on the bed a flash of legs and arms sprang out and into the waiting garments. There was a splash in the basin that spattered the water far and near, and Butsey, enveloped in a towel, rushed into his upper garments, flung back his hair with a masterful swooping stroke of the comb, and bolted out of the door, buckling his belt and struggling into a sweater. Down the stairs they went in the midst of floating coats, collars to be b.u.t.toned and neckties to be tied; and when the last note of the gong had ended not a place was vacant, though every eye still drooped with drowsiness.

Breakfast over, d.i.n.k followed Butsey to their room and, after the more permanent preparations had been attended to, they left for chapel.

The much-dreaded breakfast had pa.s.sed with but one incident; the Coffee-colored Angel, in pa.s.sing him the sugar, had said in a terrific whisper:

"I'll get you to-day. I'll tame you!"

But, being still in a nodding state, his anger was contented with this slight expression. Tough McCarty had given him just one look, but somehow he remembered nothing else. The instinctive hostility he had felt at the first meeting of their eyes rose anew. The Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary were but incidents; the enemy, _le sacre_ Albion, was Tough McCarty.

He went in the current of boyhood past Foundation House and around the circle toward chapel. For the first time the immensity of the school was before him in the hundreds that, streaming across the campus in thin, dotted lines, swelled into a compact, moving ma.s.s at the chapel steps. It was more than an inst.i.tution; it was a world, the complex, marvelously ordered World of Youth.

Somehow, he did not attract the attention he had expected. His entrance into the pew was attended by no hilarious uprising _en ma.s.se_. He found his place in the gallery, between Pebble Stone and Duke Straus, who sleepily asked his name and went off for a supplementary nap on the shoulder of D. Tanner. Stone evidently had heard nothing of his disgrace, or else was too absorbed in a hurried conning of the Latin lesson to make remarks.

d.i.n.k lifted his head a little and stole a glance--strange, no one seemed to be paying the slightest attention to him. Somewhat astonished and unutterably relieved he gazed down at the body of the school marshaled below, at the enormous fifth-formers who seemed--and never was that illusion to fade--the most terrifically immense and awesome representatives of manhood he had ever seen. The benches were hard, decidedly so; but he lost himself pleasantly in the vaulted roof, and gazed with respect at the distant pulpit.

The Doctor ascended and swept the school with that glance peculiar to head masters which convinces each separate boy it is directed at him.

Stover felt the impact on his own forehead and dropped his eyes uneasily. When the hymn began he looked curiously among his cla.s.smates, located Doc Macnooder and caught the eye of the Tennessee Shad, who winked at him to show him he was still his friend.

Somehow, his awful disgrace seemed to slip from him--the Green House was but a grain in the sand. There were friends, undiscovered friends, in the ma.s.s before him, to be won and held. An easier feeling came to him. When the school shuffled out he sought the Tennessee Shad and, holding out his hand said:

"Say, you are wonders; and I'm the only living sucker!"

"d.i.n.k, you're a real sport," said the Tennessee Shad, pleased; "but we did come it pretty strong. Now, if you want to turn in those shoes----"

"Not on your life!" said d.i.n.k. "I deserved it, but--but look out for next year!"

"All right," said the Tennessee Shad with an approving look. "If you do us we'll take you into the firm. Tack on to me, and I'll pilot you to The Roman's."

Following his lanky guide Stover went in the churning, lagging ma.s.s across to Memorial Hall, rubbing elbows with the heroes, who stalked majestically in their voluminous bulk, with the coveted 'Varsity caps riding on the backs of their cropped heads, or being jostled by the freckled imps who ran zigzag, shrieking chases past him.

At the steps they divided, some surging upward and others crowding into the lower corridor.

"Below for us," said the Tennessee Shad, pus.h.i.+ng his way forward.

d.i.n.k found himself outside of one of the dozen cla.s.srooms in a throng that waited hopefully, as other cla.s.ses waited hopefully every hour of every day in the hopes of an improbable cut.

"The Roman," said the Tennessee Shad wisely, "is the one master you want to stand in with. Study like the devil the first two weeks; and say, get up on the gerund and the gerundive--they're his pets."

"I will," said d.i.n.k.

"You can't bluff him and you can't beat his system," continued the Tennessee Shad. "If you guess don't hesitate; jump at it. The only thing you can do is to wait for his jokes, and then grab the desk and weep for salvation--it's his one weak spot."

"I will," said d.i.n.k.

A cry of dismay went up from the sentinels at the window.

"Oh, rats! Here he comes."

"Oh, peanuts!"

"Oh, melancholy!"

"All in!"

d.i.n.k modestly took a seat in the back, at the end of the row of S's where he must sit. On four sides, like prison walls that no convict might hope to scale, the slippery blackboards rose up and bound them in. On a raised stand was the master's pulpit where presently The Roman would come and sit, like the watcher of the galley slaves in Ben Hur, with his eagle glance sweeping the desks that, in regimental file, ran back from him.

Outside, through two open windows, was the warm, forbidden month of April, and the gateway to syntax-defying dreams. At this moment d.i.n.k's copy of Caesar's Gallic Wars slid on to the floor. He bent down, laboriously collecting the scattered pages and straightened up. Then he glanced at the pulpit. Directly in front of him, his eyes on his eyes, sat the big consular frame of his stage companion of the day before.

d.i.n.k gasped in horror; twice his hand went instinctively toward his lip, stopped half-way and dropped. Then his mouth opened, set, and galvanically he rose to his feet, while the room seemed to tip up.

He grasped the desk to keep from slipping, never taking his eyes from the Ciceronian countenance and the twinkling orbits above the slightly twitching lips.

"Dear me," said a low, mocking voice with a curious rising and falling infection, "who's here? Another delegate to this congress of scintillating intelligences?"

"Yes, sir," said d.i.n.k in a whisper.

"Quite a valuable addition, I hope. Yes? What is the name?"

"John."

"Well--well?"