A PROUD-SPIRITED YOUTH.
In all Yale no man felt as bad as Hock Mason. He was proud, and he
knew he was almost universally blamed for the loss of the game.
Thinking the matter over, he could see that he was responsible. If
he had caught both flies but one man could have scored off each of
them, at most, and that would have left the score eight to six in
Yale’s favor.
“I was a fool to try to play baseball!” he bitterly thought. “I’d
never have tried it if it hadn’t been for Merriwell. He wanted me
to do it.”
Then it occurred to him that such a thought was selfish in the
extreme, and he was ashamed of himself.
“You’re a mighty mean chap, Mason,” he grimly declared, to himself,
“to think such a thing about a man who has done as much for you as
Merriwell! Don’t try to lay the blame on him!”
No shouting crowd met the returning players at the station and
escorted them in triumph up Meadow, Church, and Chapel Streets.
No band turned out to thrill them with its music. No shouting,
cheering students surrounded them and strove for the glory of
a hand-shake. On the campus no bonfire blazed and flared and
reddened the foliage of the elms, its light being reflected back
from the windows of the quad.
“There seems to have been a funeral somewhere,” said Jack Ready.
“How sad it is! La! la! Makes me feel like weeping large, fat,
briny tears. Oh, me! oh, my! How different this time is from some
other times!”
“Keep your face closed!” grunted Browning. “Every time you open it,
there’s such a rush of wind that I have to hold my cap on.”
“Some things are awfully sad to contemplate,” persisted Ready, who
could not be easily suppressed. “It is said that in ’steen billion
years the sun will burn out, and we’ll all freeze to death for want
of heat. Isn’t that awful? And what would you say if I were to tell
you that all our rivers would soon dry up?”
“I’d sus--say,” stuttered Gamp solemnly, “gug--go thou and dud--do
likewise.”
Whereupon Browning shook with suppressed laughter, for all of the
feeling of disgust that had possessed him ever since the ending of
the game in Princeton.
Mason went straight to his room, where he spent a most bitter
night, scarcely closing his eyes in sleep. All night long he
dreamed that he was pursuing flies that got away from him, or
that ten thousand eyes were turned on him in withering scorn and
contempt, seeming to glare at him as one great eye of fire.
His Southern pride had been touched to the quick. He felt that
he could not endure the sidelong contemptuous glances of those
who must look on him with scorn for what had happened. If it had
not seemed cowardly, he would have contemplated getting away from
college somehow for a while.
“But I can’t play ball any more!” he told himself. “I can’t! I
can’t do it! Gamp would have caught that fly--both of them! He
always catches anything he can get his hands on. He’s a Yankee, and
everything sticks to a Yankee’s fingers! They can hold onto money
harder than any class of people I ever saw.”
Mason was homesick. He did not confess it to himself, but he longed
for a sight of his South Carolina home, with the red road winding
past and running away into the pine woods. He longed for a sight
of the negro cabins, with the old mammies smoking by the doors
and the pickaninnies romping and playing and rolling their white
eyes up to the passing stranger. He longed for the peaceful quiet
that pervaded the air and the genial warmth of the bright Southern
sunshine. He felt that the North was cold and heartless, and he
wished himself away.
And so he tossed and turned till the gray light of morning sifted
in at his window and reached his bed. In the morning light he slept
dreamlessly for the first time, and there was a smile on his face,
for at last he was at home and his misery was forgotten. Through
his dreaming he seemed to hear the joyous singing of colored
laborers in the fields, and the sound was sweet as the chime of
heavenly bells.
It was six minutes of eight when Mason awoke. He came out of bed
with one great leap. It was his habit to take a sponge bath in
the morning, but there was no time for anything of the sort this
morning. He flung on his underclothing, tore open his wardrobe
door, yanked out a mackintosh and a pair of rubber boots, jumped
into the boots, pulled on the mackintosh, seized an old hat, and
tore out of his room.
In this rig, Mason appeared at chapel in due time, and he was
not the only student present who was dressed in a wild and weird
fashion.
To Hock it seemed as if the eyes of all present were on him. He did
not dare look up, but felt his face burning. His sensitive nature
suffered extreme torture until he could escape, when the service
was over, and hurry to his room.
Merriwell had observed Mason, and Frank fancied he understood how
the proud fellow felt.
It was somewhat remarkable that Hock Mason, a man who had once been
a bully, should have such a sensitive nature; but of late Frank had
been studying the chap, and he found the Southerner a very queer
character.
When he came to Yale, Mason had regarded himself as far superior
to the majority of the students there, just as he fancied a man
born in South Carolina must naturally be superior, everything
considered, to a man born anywhere else. It had irritated him
when he found that in the democratic atmosphere of Old Eli there
was none to bow down and acknowledge him a superior. Then he
had started out knocking into the heads of his associates the
conviction that he was “the real thing,” but this policy had not
worked very well. He became more and more disliked until he ran
against Merriwell, who gave him a sound thrashing and took some of
the growing conceit out of him.
But it was Merriwell’s interest in Mason while the latter lay ill
in a hospital that completely won Hock. Not another soul came to
inquire how Mason was getting along. Those who pretended to be his
friends remained away, but daily Frank Merriwell called, and Frank
it was who came first to the side of Hock’s cot when a visitor was
permitted to see him.
When Mason left the hospital he was completely cured of his
bullying inclinations. More than that, he had become a stanch
friend of Merriwell.
Mason never anticipated that he would be accepted as a member of
Merriwell’s “flock.” That was too much for him to dare to hope.
All the same, he was stanch and true. He did not obtrude himself
on Merry or Merry’s friends, and he conducted himself modestly and
quietly.
By some it was thought that the spirit of the Southerner had been
broken, which, however, was not the case. He had simply learned his
lesson, and learned it well. When the time came he showed that he
had quite as much spirit as of old. And he could fight better when
forced to do so, for he knew he was fighting in a just cause.
But for all that Mason had once seemed to be a bully, there was not
much of the bulldog about him. He was not a quitter, but he felt
always that it was best to get out of a thing before he was kicked
out.
Not till he was pulled into Merriwell’s set did he become one of
the circle. Even then he was rather quiet, although his quietness
was that of pride, instead of modesty. Sometimes this sort of
retiring pride is mistaken for modesty.
After chapel Hock had plenty of time to think. He kept away from
his eating-club, finding breakfast at a lunch-cart. He knew it
would do him little good to study that day, but he tried to apply
himself. As he was leaving his room some time after breakfast, he
paused at the head of the flight of stairs. At the foot of the
flight, three men were talking.
“It was just a case of bad judgment on Merriwell’s part,” said one.
“Mason can’t play ball.”
“Everybody is kicking about it,” declared another. “Mason must be
dropped from the team.”
“He’d never made the nine in the first place, if he had not been
one of Merriwell’s friends,” declared the third.
Then they moved away together, still talking baseball.
Hock Mason stood quite still, his face rather pale.
“So that is what they’re saying!” he muttered. “They are blaming
Merriwell for taking me onto the nine. Well, I’ll get off it at
once.”
And he started to find Frank.