THE SOCIALIST
For a few days after Duncan’s acquittal, Mr. Alsop seemed really to
have profited by his lesson. It is no slight humiliation to make a
theatrical charge of falsehood against two boys, and then be compelled
to eat one’s words in sackcloth and ashes. The tale circulated among
the students in a variety of versions, none of which was inferior
to the truth in picturesqueness. Members of the faculty smiled
significantly as they passed on the word that the committee on Peck
would not report, even while they deplored their colleague’s misfortune
and expatiated on his devotion to duty. The discomfited instructor
had to draw on his whole fund of self-esteem to save himself from
confessing that some of his methods needed mending. As he treated Sam
with unwonted consideration in recitation for the next few days, and
Sam, as a result, made more conscientious preparation of lessons, it
began to look as if Sam, at least, was to be the gainer.
Birdie Fowle was left alone to bear the weight of Mr. Alsop’s
particular suspicion, and Birdie dropped as naturally into trouble,
as a fly into the milk-pail. Taylor and Sam, with Birdie, had one
evening been enjoying a most exhilarating game of ball in Birdie’s
room. They used a baseball and a bat. Sofa cushions piled in the corner
constituted the field. To hit the Harvard cushion was a base hit, the
Yale cushion counted for two bases, the pillow with the girl’s head on
it three, and the S cushion a home run. To miss the cushions altogether
was an out. The sport was great; the cries of the trio floated out
through the open windows, and the floor trembled with the lunges of
the players. Mr. Alsop, who had latterly resolved not to interfere
with the boys in their rooms unless the disturbance was serious,
growing impatient under the strain, tramped his study, nervously asking
himself, with each crescendo from above, whether the time had not now
come when he really must interfere. Then the noises ceased, and he
went back to his work relieved.
The game was at its height when a knock at the door sent the guests
scurrying to the closets. Poor Birdie, bound to obey the summons,
tossed the cushions back upon the sofa, ran his fingers through his
disordered hair, threw on his coat, and hurried to open the door.
Without stood Brantwein with his basket of “hot dogs.”
“You old fraud!” exclaimed Birdie. “I thought sure it was Alsop.”
“You ought to be so glad it isn’t that you’d want to buy me out,”
observed Brantwein, as he pushed in. “I’ll sell you the whole stock for
an even dollar.”
“Come out!” yelled Fowle. “It’s only Brandy!” The hidden players
emerged. “Who wants a dog?”
“I’ll give you a dime for three,” offered Taylor. “That’s all they’re
worth.”
“They’re the best I ever sold, specially fine breed of dog,” returned
Brantwein, seriously. “They’re really worth ten apiece, but I’ll let
you have ’em for a nickel.”
“Hot?” asked Sam, thrusting his hand into the basket.
“Two hundred twelve degrees,” answered the vendor, as he pulled his
basket well out of Sam’s reach. “Don’t handle the pups.”
Fowle treated the crowd, and the three were soon munching the
sandwiches and crying down their quality.
“How’s socialism, Brandy?” asked Fowle, winking at his nearest
neighbor. “I hear it’s a back number nowadays.”
“The socialists are the party of the future,” said Brandy, solemnly.
“The time is coming when the government will own and operate all
railroads and public utilities, together with all mines and great
industrial plants, and the product and advantages derived from the
resources of the country will be enjoyed by the people, to whom they
belong, not by the few greedy monopolists who sit with their feet in
the trough at home--and send their fat-witted sons to Seaton Academy.”
“Good!” cried Taylor. “That’s me! But look here, Brandy, will the
government run the hot-dog business too? If it does, where’ll you be?”
Brandy threw at the interrupter a glance which was meant to express
pity for Taylor’s ignorance.
“Those that are qualified will hold the important positions, not those
who have a pull. I shall be chief government inspector of hot dogs.”
Brantwein turned again to his main audience. “The United States is
to-day fifty years behind Europe in the matter of socialism, but we’re
learning fast now. We must make a beginning with the coal mines and the
great trunk lines--”
“That’ll be bad for you,” cut in Birdie. “You can’t beat your way from
Chicago to Boston, then.”
“I shan’t need to,” retorted Brandy. “The state will pay for every
man’s education. Fellows like you, of course, the state won’t waste
much time on. You’ll be used for road-menders and crossing-sweepers.”
“Hear! hear!” cried Taylor, lacking for the moment a more effective
reply.
“It will be another golden age, won’t it, Brandy?” interposed Sam,
“like that one Virgil tells about, when the pastures were speckled all
over with sheep of different colors, each one producing wool of just
the right tint, so that there was no need of dyeing it. All the lazy
will become hustlers and all the crooks honest, and everybody will have
what he wants to eat and go to the theatre every night.”
“Once a term was more than enough for Duncan Peck,” said the socialist,
most irrelevantly. “That was a hot old bluff he put up on Alsop, wasn’t
it?”
“It was no bluff at all,” answered Sam, warmly. Just then the door was
pushed open and Fish lunged in, gave a general nod that was meant to
include all present, and made a dive for Brandy’s basket. The socialist
proved quite able to defend his property. He met Fish’s onset with a
hard shove that sent the intruder into the desk, then picked up his
stock in trade and made for the door. “I can’t waste any more time on
you fellows,” he said. “Fish has come to make a rough-house and there
are about twenty starved Alumni Hall boarders to be warmed and fed out
of this basket. So long!”
Fish took a newspaper from the desk, punched a hole through it, and
proposed that Fowle wear it as a collar.
“Get out, won’t you!” pleaded Fowle. “I don’t want any rough-house
here.”
“We’ll put him out, if you say so,” offered Sam.
“No, don’t!” expostulated Birdie. “That’ll make a row and Alsop will be
down on us. He’ll go.”
Sam and Taylor drifted home to save the balance of the evening. Fish
seized the long-handled hearth brush which Birdie’s mother, in the
trustfulness of her heart, had sent to her son with admonition that
he keep his fireplace tidy. “Let me brush your hair,” urged Fish,
advancing on his unwilling host.
“Keep away with that!” Birdie commanded, but Fish persisted. Each
clutched the handle of the brush and struggled against the other, Fish
to accomplish his purpose, Birdie to ward off the attack. In the fracas
the stick parted; Fish retained the handle end, Birdie the brush.
“Now see what you’ve done, you hoodlum!” cried Fowle, indignantly. “Get
out of here!”
As Fish showed no inclination to yield to this order, Birdie threw wide
his door, got inside his enemy, and with a hard buck, given suddenly
and low, tried to rush him out the door. Fish caught by the casing,
pulled himself back, and ultimately escaped, with a jeer of defiance,
to the farther side of the room. Here Fowle attacked him again, and by
superior strength dragged him to the door, where Fish by the skilful
use of hands and feet once more blocked his opponent’s game. By this
time Birdie had undeniably lost both temper and caution. He grasped the
interloper’s wrist with one hand, his neck with the other, and twisting
the wrist and pressing the neck hard between thumb and fingers, urged
him to the door.
“Stop! stop!” cried Fish, quickly. “I’ll go.”
“I won’t trust you,” shouted Fowle. “I won’t let up an ounce till
you’re outside that door!”
Fish stood not on the order of his going. Outside Birdie gave him a
final push and paused, panting and dishevelled, in the doorway. Fish
had hardly stretched his cramped neck and shaken out his aching
wrist, when he suddenly lifted his head in an attitude of attention,
and darted up the next flight of stairs. While his ascending head was
still visible over the banisters above, the angry visage of Mr. Alsop
appeared from below.
“At it again, Fowle! Disturbing the whole well for your own amusement,
regardless of the rights of others and my repeatedly expressed wishes!
There’s a limit, I wish you to understand, even to my patience.”
“Yes, sir,” stammered the boy, “but this time it wasn’t my fault.”
“It never is, according to your statements,” declared the instructor.
“What would you do if a fellow came into your room, tried to brush your
hair with a hearth brush, broke your things, and refused to leave? You
wouldn’t stand round and let him rip the room to pieces, would you?”
“Who was it?”
“I can’t tell you, sir.”
“If you prefer to shield him, you can’t blame me for holding you
responsible. Whoever the others may be, you are certainly one. If boys
trespass on your room, you should keep your door locked.”
“I do, usually,” answered Birdie. “Sometimes I forget.”
“For the rest of the term you are on probation,” continued the
instructor, severely. “At the next faculty meeting I shall report your
case and ask that a notice be sent to your parents that unless you can
come back to live an orderly, quiet life in the dormitory, we do not
wish you back at all.”
Overcome by a deep sense of injury, Birdie next morning confided his
troubles to Sam. In consequence, feeling that the fuel for Mr. Alsop’s
ire must have been provided by the ball game in which they had had a
share, and grasping at a vague hope of bettering the condition of the
luckless boy, Sam and Taylor visited the teacher and tried to deflect
to themselves some share of Birdie’s punishment.
“Which of you was the one that forced himself into Fowle’s room and
broke his fire brush?”
“Neither of us,” said Sam.
“But you both played with bat and ball in his room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you may both write out for me before Saturday night ten pages
of French. I ought to put you on probation, but I will reduce the
punishment in consideration of your confession.”
Sam and Taylor withdrew in gloom. “That’s what you get for being
honest!” groaned Taylor. “Write out ten pages! That means five hours’
work!”
“And we didn’t help Fowle any, either,” commented Sam, sadly.
Sam was so depressed by the erratic course of school justice that he
went over to Dr. Leighton’s that evening and told him the whole story,
in which Fish figured only as “a fellow in the well.” Dr. Leighton
listened with sympathy and gave what comfort he could. A certain amount
of injustice, he said, is inevitable in our lives; when we can’t
prevent it, it is better to bear it bravely than to whine over it. Sam
went home resolved to take his punishment without grumbling, and to
hope for better things.
After the boy left, Dr. Leighton drew out his catalogue of students and
ran rapidly down the list to discover who belonged in the east well of
Hale. At the name of Fish his pencil rested. “That’s the black sheep,”
he said, as he put away the pamphlet. “I’m afraid he’s not what Alsop
thinks him.”