CHAPTER III
“PAX”
It is not to be supposed that we share the fright of the four hazers.Tony of course was not drowned, nor indeed at any time had he been indanger. He had not lived on a Mississippi bayou for the greater part ofhis life in vain. He was an excellent swimmer, and he had the knack toan unusual degree of swimming under water a long distance.
When Chapin had first advanced upon him, he had intended to fight, buthe realized at once that such a course would be foolish, for he wouldinevitably be conquered, and forced in the long run to go through the“stunts” even in a more unpleasant fashion than if he submitted atonce. He had, however, no intention of submitting so long as he sawany possibility of a way out of the situation. Suddenly it occurredto him that by jumping into the creek and swimming for some distanceunder water, he might get a start in the way of escape that it would bedifficult for his pursuers to make up. In this way the hazing might beavoided for the night at least, and on the morrow he could take counselas to the future with some of his new-found allies.
No sooner did he think of this stratagem than he acted upon it. As wehave seen, it proved even more successful than he had expected orhoped. The creek was quite deep enough for him to swim a considerabledistance beneath the surface. He headed up stream, and kept under waterto the limit of his endurance. Then, instead of coming to the surfacein the splashing, sputtering fashion of the amateur, he came so far upas to thrust only his face above the waters for breath. So careful werehis movements that the anxious watchers did not detect him even at thismoment. A second time he went below, swimming beneath the surface forsome yards, until he emerged again, this time within a short distanceof the bridge. A few strokes brought him to this hiding-place, and hehad scarcely ensconced himself there, clinging to one of the heavywooden supports, when he heard Chapin and Marsh rushing across theplanks above his head. He could tell by their tones of alarm, as theytalked farther down the bank, that they thought he had drowned. Heheard one of them jump into the creek and splash vainly about for somemoments, and at last he heard two of them depart, and saw the shadowyoutlines of the other two, as they returned disconsolate to wait by therocks.
In about five minutes Tony crawled out from his hiding-place beneaththe bridge. He was shivering with the cold, but otherwise not theworse for his long immersion. He ran softly along the dune road, abouta hundred yards or so behind Carroll and Marsh on their way to theschool. He followed them at a safe distance across the meadows and thecampus, and watched them as they rang the bell of the Head Master’shouse. Then he hurried off to his own room in Standerland, slipped offhis wet clothes, and got into bed. A little alarm as to his safety onthe part of his would-be tormentors, he thought, would be a just bit ofrevenge, particularly against the supercilious Carroll.
While Deering lay comfortably in bed, rapidly recovering in bodyand spirit, the two conspirators had a mournful few minutes as theyexplained matters to Doctor Forester, who had thrust his head and hispyjama’d shoulders out of an upper window.
The Head Master listened to their frightened explanations. “Very well,”he said at length, “I will dress at once. In the meantime, one of yougo quickly over to Standerland and see if by any chance he has returnedthere. It is possible that there has been a serious accident, but Ithink it much more likely that he has simply outwitted you. I trustthat is the case. Report to me immediately.” And with that the Doctorclosed his window sash with a bang.
With his heart in his mouth Carroll ran across the quadrangles toStanderland House, resolving with more passion than he customarilyallowed himself that the Head had shown himself a brute. He felt hisway along the dark corridor, still cautious, although convinced thatit was but a matter of moments when the whole school must be alarmed.He always recalled that walk upstairs as one of the most disagreeablequarters of an hour of his life. At last he found his door, enteredhis study, and breathed a sigh of relief as he switched on the light.Then he cautiously opened the door into Tony’s bedroom, and gave afrightful start as he saw the boy sitting up in bed. But Carroll wasnot one to betray more than momentary surprise. He gave Tony a longcurious look, sufficiently assured after the first glance that he wasnot a ghost. “So, my Socrates,” he said, “you are back?”
“It would seem so,” answered Tony dryly, and as the older boy thought,impertinently.
“One wondered, you know,” Carroll remarked quietly, as he turned offthe light and left the room.
In five minutes he was back at the Head Master’s house. “Deering is inbed, sir,” he reported to the non-committal head at the upper window.
“Good; I thought so. Do you go now after your companions on the beach.Return at once; get back into bed as quietly as you got out of it, andthe four of you report to me to-morrow morning after prayers. I fancythat whether or not you become the laughing stock of the school willdepend entirely upon yourselves. Good-night!”
“Good-night, sir.”
Carroll had lost but a trifle of his suavity during this nocturnaladventure. He hurried off now to the beach, and explained the situationto Thorndyke and Chapin, who were so rejoiced to learn that they hadnot been the cause of an involuntary suicide that they forgot to beannoyed with Tony for outwitting them. It was a cold and dejected trioof boys that stowed away the remains of the unenjoyed feast, and thenbetook themselves up the hill, crept silently into their dormitories,and went to bed.
On the morrow they were excused from first study and reported to theHead Master. To their surprise Doctor Forester had very little to sayto them. “I had intended to give you a lecture,” he said, looking upfrom his writing and without laying down his pen, “and probably asevere punishment, but I fancy you have learned a lesson.... You cansee, at least, to what the hazing of a high-spirited boy might lead....I understand your ideas about hazing. I do not share them. I believethat you will not disappoint me when I say that I expect the practiceto stop from this day.”
“Quite so, sir,” said Thorndyke.
“And that is all,” added the Doctor, giving them a nod of dismissal.
“Phew!” exclaimed Chapin, as they entered the corridor, “that’s slidingout easy.”
“Rather,” answered Thorndyke, “unless we have the whole school howlingat us when the kid squeals.”
“Which he’s sure to do,” suggested Marsh.
Carroll withered them with a glance. “I rather fancy not,” he drawled.“He’s a southerner and a gentleman.”
“Well, let’s hope not,” interposed Thorndyke.... “There, don’t gethuffy, Harry, you can’t help coming from Chicago.”
“Who wants to help it, you big cow?” cried Marsh, giving his chumThorndyke a good-natured push against the wall. “But if I thought, asCarroll does, that there were not any gentlemen north of Mason andDixon’s line, I wouldn’t come to a northern school.”
“Rot!” vouchsafed Carroll. “Let’s whoop her up for Gumshoe, and avoidany daffy questions about being quizzled by the Head.”
* * * * *
Tony found it difficult the next day not to take Jimmie Lawrence orKit Wilson into his confidence, and tell them of his adventure of thenight before. But he conquered the temptation, for he was singularlyincapable of enjoying himself at the expense of any one’s elsediscomfiture. Tony was not without his faults, as we shall see, but hegenuinely disliked to make other people uncomfortable. Perhaps thiswas an inheritance from a long line of ancestors who had had rathernice ideas about what constitutes a gentleman. At any rate, he was bornthat way, and did not deserve any special credit for it. He realizedthat if he told his story he might easily make his three captors thebutts of the school, but that was not a form of revenge that appealedto him. Accordingly he held his peace, and if it had depended on himthe story never would have been told. But we may say in passing, thateventually Carroll told the tale himself: it entered into the body ofDeal tradition, and is frequently told by old Deal boys when hazing isa subject of conversation.
Tony
felt almost familiar with the schoolroom as he entered afterprayers the next morning. A score of faces were now known to him,and so many had seemed friendly as he looked into them, that thehomesick feeling and the alarm of the night before rapidly passed away.Occasionally he noticed Mr. Morris’s glance resting upon him, as he satat his books during the day, in a particularly interested and friendlyway. There was something in Morris’s face—an attractiveness, perhapsone would call it, for he was not precisely handsome—a winningnessin the directness of his glance, that more than once had won boys atalmost first sight. Morris had the genius of inspiring enthusiasms, andhe was to inspire one in Tony. The master was soon to hear from Carrollthe inwardness of Tony’s exploits, and marvel with him at the boy’s“whiteness” in not talking. Mr. Morris was the occasional recipientof the intimate confidences of the supercilious Virginian, for evenCarroll had moments of weakness when he felt the need of unburdeninghimself and receiving sympathy—moments, as he would have said, when hewas not himself.
As the day wore on Tony was inclined to forget his unpleasant adventureof the night before. The afternoon found him again on the footballfield, absorbed in learning the game, and winning encomiums in theeyes of Kit, who until Thanksgiving would have few thoughts aside fromfootball. Kit was captain of his form eleven, and his interest in itssuccess was equaled only by the readiness with which he would sacrificehis best players to the school team or even to the scrub if they wereneeded. He was delighted with Deering’s advent, as he had felt he wasweak in ends, and Tony’s fleetness promised much in that direction.
The likelihood of his securing a position on his form team gave Deeringa prestige that stood him in good stead as a new boy; and as he waslively, good-natured and appreciative, it seemed that on the whole hewould have an agreeable time.
There was, however, a rift in the lute—which Tony detected the secondday of his school life. As he would pass Chapin in the Schoolhousecorridors or on the campus, he could see by the expression on his facethat he had taken the result of their adventures of the night beforein bad part. They exchanged no words on the subject, but Chapin’sbehavior was in such contrast to that of Thorndyke and Marsh, or evenof Carroll, all of whom had smiled good-naturedly when they had methim, that he put it down that in Chapin he had made an enemy. At thetime this troubled him very little. He wondered of course if he shouldbe hazed again, but surmised correctly that if he were it would not beby the same crowd.
The spirit with which he went into things, his success on the formteam, and the powerful friends that he had made in Wilson and Lawrence,the leaders of the Third, soon secured him an immunity from hazing inany form. The Sixth frowned on the custom, so that none but adventurousspirits were apt to attempt it.
Tony was tired out that night, and as soon as he was dismissed from theschoolroom at nine o’clock, he ran over to Standerland and got intobed, scarcely noticing Carroll, who had the privilege of working intheir common study. Hardly, however, was he in bed, than the door wasopened, his light switched on, and again Carroll appeared, but thistime there was a friendly grin on his face, and a box of biscuit and ajar of jam tucked under his arm.
“Don’t jump, my philosopher!” he exclaimed, “I am alone and unarmed.”Then he advanced to the bed, and held out his hand. “Shall we make it‘pax’?”
“With all my heart,” laughed Tony, and gave Carroll’s hand a friendlyshake.
“Suppose then we smoke a pipe of peace,” and Carroll extracted from therecesses of his pocket two brierwood pipes.
“Hang it!” said Tony, “I don’t smoke, you know. Aren’t you afraid ofgetting caught?”
“Oh, yes, somewhat,” answered Carroll, as he nonchalantly lighted amatch. “But what will you have? School bores me to extinction. I findmyself within two days craving nefarious excitement. You are fortunateto possess a calmer temperament. Here, help yourself to the jam andbiscuit.”
“You seem calm enough,” commented Tony.
“I assume that, little one, for amusement, I am in reality excitable toa degree. Now take that incident last night—”
“Oh, let’s drop that,” said Tony.
“On the contrary, I should like to discuss it. I was rather a beast togo in for it, you know, when you had been, as it were, put in my tendercare. It was the fun of doing something that one knew would get oneinto trouble if one were caught. You behaved in a singular fashion, Imust confess, and lamentably upset our little calculations. Somehow,after blowing the business to the Head the joy of the affair was gone.I felt like a sick cat when I crawled into bed at one A. M.”
“What happened?” asked Tony.
Carroll took a deep pull at his pipe, and blew the smoke out of thewindow. “Old Hawk laughed at us, and sent us to bed as though we wereFirst Formers. Say, it was rather decent of you, you know, not to peachto the fellows.”
“How do you know I didn’t?”
“Well, we’ve escaped the jolly horsing we’d have got if you had, that’sall.... Do you know, I approve of that,—well, to a degree. Confoundit! there’s curfew. Lie still, I’ll souse the light. I guess we’resafe enough. Bill saw us both in, and he isn’t one to nose about afterlights unless there’s a beastly noise. Bill is such a gentleman thatone hates to take advantage of his considerateness,—like this!” And heblew a puff of smoke into Tony’s face.
“Why do you do it then?”
Carroll got up and turned out the light; then resumed his seat onTony’s bed.
“Why do I? Hang it, Deering, I sometimes wonder why I do a number ofthings. I’ve a great notion to chuck it.”
Tony had the good sense to make no reply to this remark, but to munchinstead with rather unctious enjoyment on his biscuit and jam. Carrollseemed to meditate for the moment in the dark, then knocked his ashesout on the window-sill, and leaned over, feeling for the jar. “Wherethe deuce is the biscuit? That jam is the real article, you know.There is a great gulf between the jam I use and what one gets in therefectory. Would that in that gulf we might souse the housekeeper, eh?”
And so they talked the shop and jargon, the boyish confidences, andexperiences, and plans, that have been the theme of nocturnal talksever since schools were invented. It was quite late before Carrollreturned to his bedroom, and Tony immediately dropped to sleep, feelingthat after all he had misjudged him upon first appearances. His nextconscious thought was as he leaped to his feet in answer to thestrident tones of the rising bell.