A SHOCK FOR BART.
Bart Hodge sat alone in his room. The curtains were drawn at the windows
and a lighted student’s lamp was on the table, over which books and
papers were scattered. In Bart’s hand he held the photograph of a
pretty, sweet-faced girl, at which he was gazing with earnest
intentness, the light in his dark eyes being one of unspeakable
admiration.
It was the picture of Elsie Bellwood. Bart had been trying to study, but
his mind would revert to Elsie, try as he might to fix it on other
matters, till at last he gave up, brought out her picture and sat there
musing over it.
His love for her had seemed to take possession of him full blown in a
moment, but cooler afterthought had revealed to him that he had always
admired her intensely since that wild night when he had aided Frank to
save her from the wreck on Tiger Tooth Ledge, near Fardale.
He had first seen her that night as she was lashed to the mast of the
doomed vessel which had struck upon the terrible ledge. Led by
Merriwell, the cadets had succeeded in manning a boat and pulling off to
the vessel. On reaching the dripping deck Bart had seen Elsie held fast
to the mast by ropes, but in the gloom he was unable to discern if she
were young or old. Her voice, however, as she appealed to the lads for
aid when her father was assaulted by one of the sailors had sounded
musical and sweet.
The music of that voice had stirred silent chords within Bart’s heart
many times since that wild night. But he was loyal to Merry, his best
friend, and it had seemed that Elsie and Frank cared for each other, so,
with Spartanlike heroism, he had resolutely compelled himself to think
not at all of her.
Thus he had lived with the germ of love in his heart, refusing to permit
it to sprout and grow. For a long time he had fancied himself a
“woman-hater,” but it was all because other girls made him think of
Elsie—made him think of her as a thousand times more winsome, pretty,
and attractive. That he wished to forget, so he avoided girls in
general.
But it is not natural for a strong, manly youth to shun womanly and
attractive girls, and Hodge began to succumb at last. He could not hold
himself aloof from them, try as he might. He was naturally attracted by
them and enjoyed their society far more than he would confess to
himself.
And the time came when, like other young men, he fancied he cared for
one of them. The first was Stella Stanley, an actress several years
older than Hodge; but Stella had told him it was not true love and that
he would get over it.
At first he had taken this rather hard, but he came at last to recognize
her wisdom and thank her for her plain speech.
Then there was another, Grace Vernon, who fascinated him for a time.
With Elsie it was different. Having once discovered how much he cared
for her, he was unable to brush aside the knowledge, which remained with
him constantly, no matter what he did or where he was.
The knowledge that his love for her might be hopeless simply made it all
the more intense, for it was not Bart’s nature to relinquish anything on
which he had once fairly set his heart.
But Merriwell stood as a barrier between them, and, worse than
everything else, Merriwell was his friend.
No wonder Hodge spent sleepless nights! No wonder he spent wretched
days! No wonder he lost flesh and became more and more irritable till it
became dangerous to cross him in anything!
Still, in his loyal heart he was true to Frank Merriwell, whom he well
knew had been his best friend and benefactor in a thousand ways when
almost any other fellow would have been a mortal foe.
As of old, Hodge would have yielded up his life for Frank, but his love
for Elsie was something stronger and more intense than his love for
life, and he could not put that aside. As of old, he had been ready to
defend Frank against enemies and traducers; but the sight of Frank’s
happy face filled him with gloomy forebodings and intense misery.
Why had Merry looked so happy? Why had he remained away from Yale so
long?
Bart could not help being suspicious of that happiness. He could not
help wondering if it came through an understanding between Frank and
Elsie. And that had been brought about while Merry was away from
college!
If this was true, Bart felt that Elsie was lost to him, and the ambition
had gone out of his life forever. Therefore he sat alone in his room and
gazed longingly, earnestly, and almost hopelessly, at her pictured face.
Her open eyes seemed to smile back at him reassuringly, but they did not
lift the gloom from his heart. Her lips—--
Impulsively, he lifted the picture and kissed it.
The door opened quietly and some one stepped into the room.
“Hello, Bart, old man!” cried a hearty, familiar voice. “What are you
doing there?”
Hodge sprang up, his face flaming, and tried to hide the picture behind
him.
Frank closed the door and advanced into the room.
Hodge stood beside the table, trembling from head to feet. His eyes were
fastened on Merry and he was speechless.
“I thought you’d come round to see me, Bart,” said Frank. “You did not,
so I came to see you, though I’m missing time that I ought to spend in
grinding. Oh, I’ll be a greasy grind for a while now till I get on Easy
Street again. It will take lots of stiff work for me to catch up, but I
believe I can do it.”
Still Bart stood there without speaking, looking straight at Frank.
“What’s the matter?” Merry asked, in perplexity. “Why do you stare at me
that way? Why, hang it! you don’t seem at all pleased to see me.”
He was surprised and hurt by Bart’s singular manner.
Hodge opened his lips to say something, but the words did not seem to
come freely, and he stuck.
Merry came close and placed his hands on Bart’s shoulders, looking deep
into the dark eyes of his comrade.
“Tell me why you meet me like this, old man!” he urged. “Have I done
anything to cause it?”
“No.”
“Then why——”
“It’s nothing, Merriwell—nothing!” huskily muttered Bart. “Take a chair.
I’ve been thinking, and I expect I’m in a deuced unsociable mood, but
I’ll try to be decent.”
Frank did not sit down immediately on the invitation. Instead, he looked
at Bart as if trying to read his very thoughts.
“You’re thin,” he said. “You have lost flesh and there are dark circles
round your eyes. Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Something is the matter with you, and I fancy I know what it is.”
“Perhaps so.”
“I’ve come to talk it over——”
The dark-eyed lad cut him short with a gesture.
“Don’t!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “Talk of anything else—baseball, spring
sports, the Southern trip, anything!”
“What is that you have in your hand?”
Almost rudely Bart pushed Frank aside and walked to a desk, into the
drawer of which he thrust the photograph. But when he turned round he
felt certain Merriwell knew it was a picture of Elsie and that he had
been seen pressing that picture to his lips.
“Sit down,” he invited again, with a motion toward a chair.
Frank did so.
“There are a number of things I wish to speak about, Bart,” said he.
“One important thing is the nine. Are you working to get into form to
catch? That’s one thing.”
“Perhaps I’m not working as hard as usual,” confessed Hodge. “Somehow, I
haven’t seemed to have any heart in it. You know you were not here, and
that has made lots of difference.”
“I’m here now, and we must get to work, for I hear that the outlook for
a strong team is very unsatisfactory.”
“It might be better.”
“Well, if we get into our usual form, the battery should not be so very
weak, though, of course, I can’t pitch all the games.”
“Do you know who’s working like a fiend to get into the box?”
“I haven’t heard.”
“That cad, Morgan! Why, he’s training every day, and they say there’s a
prospect that he’ll make it. What do you think of that?”
“A good thing.”
“Good? Do you fancy I’ll ever catch with him pitching? Not for my life!”
“Not even for Yale?”
“Why should I?”
“Because you should be ready to do anything for Yale, my boy.”
“I can’t swallow that scoundrel, and I refuse to have him thrust down my
throat! That’s all there is to it! If you can stand for him, that’s all
right, but I decline.”
“Well, we won’t get into an argument over that now, though I want you to
remember the splendid work Morgan did on the gridiron last fall.”
“And I don’t want you to forget that up to the last minute he pulled
every string possible to down you, Merriwell. He was as full of tricks
as an egg is full of meat.”
“Let it pass now. I hear that Starbright has not been given much of a
show with the squad. How is that?”
“Rot! You know any man will be given all the show he deserves.”
“And Browning?”
“He refuses to get out.”
“And Ready?”
“He’s too flip. He’s got himself disliked by his freshness, and I fancy
he’ll have a hard pull to make the nine.”
“Nor is he better than other men who are working for his place. I have
been promised absolute authority this spring, and I shall have something
to say about the make-up of the team I am to captain.”
By this time Bart had begun to cool down somewhat, and now, of a sudden,
Merry reverted to the thing about which he had attempted to speak a
while before.
“Hodge, you want to stop worrying about the thing that has troubled you
so much lately. I am your truest friend, and you must let me speak out
frankly. You’ll feel better when I have finished. I know whose picture
you held in your hand when I entered—the picture you put in that
drawer.”
Bart’s face was very pale now and he had begun to quiver again.
“We had a plain face-to-face talk about her on Cumberland Island not so
very long ago, but the finish of that talk left us just where we began.
Since then many things have happened, and, as far as I am concerned,
that matter has been entirely settled.”
Bart felt a tightening about his heart. So it was true that Frank had
remained away from college to see Elsie again and to win her back to
him! Somehow, it did not seem just exactly like Merriwell, and yet how
could Bart complain, for had not Frank held the prior claim to her?
“Elsie is a beautiful, noble-hearted girl, whom I cannot find words to
properly extol,” Merriwell calmly continued, his coolness and confidence
causing Bart’s heart to sink still more. “I do not wonder that I came to
admire her very much. It would have been far more remarkable if I had
not. But I have learned that I wholly misinterpreted my feelings and
emotions toward her. Read others however well I may, I did not properly
read and analyze myself in regard to her.”
What was Frank saying? Hodge felt a rush of blood to his heart, which
began to thump violently in his breast.
“Events which I cannot fully describe have opened my eyes and revealed
to me the truth. I loved Elsie and still love her as a very dear friend,
and one of the sweetest girls alive, but I do not love her and never did
love her as one should love the girl he means to make his wife.”
Bart’s lips parted, but no sound escaped them. He stared at Frank as if
turned to stone.
“But I have learned,” Merry continued, “that I love another with all my
heart, and that knowledge has brought me great happiness, for my love is
returned, and we are engaged to be married some time, though the day is
not set yet. Of course, you know without being told that the other of
whom I speak is Inza Burrage.”
Bart sprang up.
“Merriwell,” he gasped, “you—you really mean that you are engaged—to
Inza?”
“Yes, that is just what I mean. So you see, my dear boy, that you have
been worrying over a trouble that does not exist, and the field is open
and clear for you to win Elsie.”
There was a ringing as of many bells in Bart’s ears, and the room seemed
to whirl round him.
Then he sat down quickly, all the strength having gone out of his legs.
But the happiness of the shock made him long to shout, though his lips
uttered no sound.