The Varmint Part 64

As he left second recitation Tough McCarty joined him.

"I say, d.i.n.k, they both wanted to be remembered to you, and here's a note from Sis."

"A note?"

"Here it is."

Stover stood staring at a violet envelope, inscribed in large, flowing letters: "Mr. John H. Stover."

Then he put it in his pocket hastily and went to his room. Luckily the Tennessee Shad was poaching in the village. He locked the door, secured the transom and drew out the note. It was sealed with a crest and perfumed with a heavenly scent. He held it in his hand a long while, convulsively, and then broke the seal with an awkward finger and read:

_Dear Mr. Stover_: Just a word to thank you for being my faithful cavalier. Don't forget that you are to pay us a good, long visit this summer, and that we are to become the best of chums.

Your very good _friend_, JOSEPHINE MCCARTY.

P. S. Don't dare to "kick yourself about the place,"

whatever that may mean.

When d.i.n.k had read this through once he immediately began it again.

The second reading left him more bewildered than ever. It was the first time he had come in contact with a manifestation of the workings of the feminine mind. What did she intend him to understand?

"I'll read it again," he said, perching on the back of a chair. "Dear Mr. Stover!" He stopped and considered. "My dear Mr. Stover--Dear Mr.

Stover--well, that's all right. But what the deuce does she mean by 'faithful cavalier'--I wonder now, I wonder. She wants me to visit her--she can't be offended then. 'Your very good friend,' underlined twice, that sounds as though she wanted to warn me. Undoubtedly I made a fool of myself and this is her angelic way of letting me down.

'Friend'--underlined twice--of course that's it. What a blooming, sentimental, moon-struck jay I was. Gee, I could kick myself to Jericho and back!" But here his eye fell on the postscript and his jaw dropped. "Now how did she guess that? That sounds different from the rest, as though--as though she understood."

He went to the window frowning, and then to the mirror, with a new interest in this new Mr. John H. Stover who received perplexing notes on scented paper.

"I must get some decent collars," he said pensively. "How the deuce does Lovely Mead keep his tie tight--mine's always slipping down, showing the stud." He changed his collar, having detected a smirch, and tried the effect of parting his hair on the side, like Garry c.o.c.krell.

"She's a wonderful woman--wonderful," he said softly, taking up the letter again. "What eyes! Reminds me of Lorna Doone. Josephine--so that's her name, Josephine--it's a beautiful name. I wish the deuce I knew just what she did mean by this!"

By nightfall he had written a dozen answers which had been torn up in a panic as soon as written. Finally, he determined that the craftiest way would be to send her his remembrances by Tough--that would express everything as well as show her that he could be both discreet and dignified.

In the afternoon he added a dozen extra high collars to his wardrobe and examined hesitatingly the counter of Gent's Bon-Ton socks, spring styles, displayed at Bill Appleby's.

The collars, the latest cut, he tried on surrept.i.tiously. They were uncomfortable and projected into his chin, but there was no question of the superior effect. Suddenly a new element in the school came to his notice--fellows like Lovely Mead, Jock Hasbrouk and Dudy Rankin, who wore tailor-made clothes, rainbow cravats, who always looked immaculate and whose trousers never bagged at the knees.

No sooner was this borne in upon him than he was appalled at the state of his wardrobe. He had outgrown everything. Everything he had bagged at the elbows as well as the knees. His neckties were frazzled and his socks were all earthy-browns and oat-meal grays.

His first step was to buy a blacking brush and his next to press his trousers under his mattress, with the result that, being detected and diverted by Dennis, they appeared next morning with a cross-gartered effect.

At nights, especially moonlight nights, under pretense of insomnia, he drew his bed to the open window and gazed sentimentally into the suddenly discovered starry system.

"What the deuce are you mooning about?" said the Tennessee Shad on the first occasion.

"I'm studying astronomy," said d.i.n.k with dignity.

The Tennessee Shad gave a snort and soon went loudly off to sleep.

d.i.n.k, unmolested, soared away into his own domain. It is true that, having read Peter Ibbetson, he tried for a week to emulate that favored dreamer, throwing his arms up, clasping his hands behind his head and being most particular in the crossing of the feet. He dreamed, but only discouraging, tantalizing dreams, and the figure his magic summoned up was not the angelic one, but invariably the elfish eyes and star-pointing nose of Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan.

But the dreams that lay like shadows between the faltering eyelids and the shut were real and magic. Then all the difficulties were swept away, no cold chill ran up his back to stay the words that rushed to his lips. Conversations to defy the novelist were spun out and, having periodically saved her from a hundred malignant deaths, he continued each night anew the heroic work of rescue with unsatiated delight. At times, in the throbs of the sacred pa.s.sion, he thought with a start of his blackened past and the tendencies to crime within him.

"Lord!" he said with a gasp, thinking of the orgy in beer, "what would have become of me--it's like an act of Providence. I wish I could let her know what a--what a good influence she's been. I don't know what I'd 'a' done--if I hadn't met her! I was in a dreadful way!"

By this time, having had the advantage of countless midnight walks, not to mention the familiarizing effect of several scores of desperate adventures, the character of Miss Lorna Doone McCarty had been completely unfolded to the reverential d.i.n.k. He saw her, he conversed with her, he knew her. She was a sort of heavenly being, misunderstood by her family--especially her brother, who had not the slightest comprehension. She was like Dante's Beatrice, as the pictures, not the dreadful text, represent that lady--and only seven years older than Mr. John H. Stover. There was Napoleon, who had married a woman older than he was--Napoleon and hosts of others.

With the sudden fear of being dropped a year he began to study with such a.s.siduity that, as is the way with newly-sprouted virtue in a cynical world, his motives were suspected by the masters, who, of course, could know nothing of the divine transformation, and by his cla.s.smates, who secretly credited him with some new method of cribbing.

Meanwhile, as the year neared its close, the inventive minds of Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan and the Tennessee Shad conceived the idea of a monster ma.s.s meeting and ill.u.s.trative parade, which should down the hereditary foe--the steam laundry.

Up to this time the columns of _The Lawrence_ had been flooded with communications couched in the style of the oration against Catiline, demanding to know how long the supine Lawrenceville boy would bear in silence the return of his s.h.i.+rt with added entrances and exits, and collars that enclosed the neck with a cheval-de-frise.

This verbal, annual outbreak was succeeded, as usual, by House to House mutinies on the occasion of the arrival of the weekly boxes, without the protest taking further head or front. But at the opening of the last week of the school year, whether a machine had suddenly jumped its fences or whether the ladies of the washtubs desired to open the way for the new summer styles; however it may have been, the laundry returned like the battle flags of the republic to the outraged school. Windows were flung open and indignant boys appeared, with white shreds in hand, and vociferously appealed to the heavens above and the green lands below for justice and indemnification.

A meeting of determined spirits was speedily held under the leaders.h.i.+p of the Tennessee Shad and Doc Macnooder, and it was decided that a demonstration should take place instanter, the Houses to form and march with complete exhibits to the Upper House, where the fifth-formers should likewise display their grievances and join them in a mammoth protest.

d.i.n.k, at the first sounds of martial organization, p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and summoned the Tennessee Shad and Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan to explain why he had been left out of such an important enterprise.

"Why have we left you out?" said the Tennessee Shad indignantly.

"What's happened to you these last three weeks? You've had a fighting grouch--no one dared to speak to you for fear of being bitten!"

"In fact," said Dennis, with his sharp, little glance, "you are under the gravest suspicion."

Seeing his secret in peril, Stover a.s.sumed a melancholy, injured air.

"You don't know what I've had to worry me," he said, looking out the window, "family matters--financial reverses."

"Oh, I say, d.i.n.k, old boy," said the Tennessee Shad, in instant contrition.

"You don't mean it's anything that might keep you from coming back next year?" said Dennis, aghast. "Oh, d.i.n.k!"

"I had rather not talk about it," said Stover solemnly.

Dennis and the Shad were overwhelmed with remorse--they offered him at once the Grand Marshals.h.i.+p, which he refused with still offended dignity, but promised his fertile brain to the common cause.

Now d.i.n.k's sentimental education, which had progressed with a rush, had just begun to languish on insufficiency of food and a little feeling of staleness on having exhausted the one thousand and one possible methods of saving a heroine's life and wringing the consent of her parents.

He felt a species of guilt in the accusation of his roommate and a sudden longing to be back among mannish pursuits. In an hour, with delighted energy, he had organized the banner and effigy committees of the demonstration and had helped concoct the fiery speech of protest that Doc Macnooder, as spokesman, was solemnly pledged to deliver for the embattled school.

Four hours later the Kennedy House, led by Toots Cortell and his famous Confederate bugle, defiled and formed the head of the procession. Each member carried a pole attached to which was some article that had been wholly or partly shot to pieces. The d.i.c.kinson contingent, led by Doc Macnooder, marched in a square, supporting four posts around which ran a clothesline decked out with the dreadful debris of the house laundry.

The Woodhull proudly bore as its battle flag a few strings of linen floating from a rake, with this inscription underneath:

THE GRAND OLD s.h.i.+RT OF THE WOODHULL!

WASHED 16 TIMES AND STILL IN THE GAME!

Several poles, adorned with single hosing in the fas.h.i.+on of liberty caps, were labeled: