VICTIMS
“Hello!” cried Marchmont, as Lindsay opened his door a few evenings
after the Eastham concert. “Thought you were dead.”
“I’ve been busy,” replied Wolcott; “I’m on for a debate at the Laurel
Leaf Saturday, and I’ve been studying up my side.”
“So you belong to that, do you?” commented Marchmont, with good-natured
contempt. “I suppose you joined to please the old man.”
“Partly,” answered Wolcott; “and partly because I thought I might get
some good out of it.”
“I was thinking of putting you up for the Omega-Omicron. Like to join?”
“I don’t know,” said Wolcott, with an indifference more honest than
polite.
“I shan’t urge you,” said Marchmont, significantly. “What’s the matter
with you to-night? You look as solemn as your friend Laughlin.”
“Solemn or not, he was a pretty good friend to us all the other
evening,” remarked Lindsay.
“I don’t see why the fellows made so much of that broken-runner
business. Any common teamster could have done as well.”
Lindsay made no reply.
“I’m getting sore on this monotonous life,” continued Marchmont. “Can’t
we stir something up? I got a check to-day which I should like to
celebrate on before I go on probation. Let’s go to Rivermouth.”
“What for?”
“Oh, see the town and have some fun—anything to break away from this
place.”
Lindsay shook his head: “It doesn’t sound attractive. I’ve no wish to
get fired.”
“You’re afraid!”
At another time Wolcott might have felt the sting of this taunt. The
Eastham ride, however, which had not presented Marchmont exactly in the
light of a hero, had considerably lessened the spell of superior
cleverness and experience which the idealized boy cast over his
follower. Marchmont’s merits were no less commendable in Wolcott’s eyes;
but his faults were no longer wholly overlooked.
“Yes, I am, if that will please you. There are some things it’s well to
be afraid of.”
“What a good boy!” said Marchmont, covering his sneer with a smile. “You
must be the delight of your mother’s heart! I really thought you had
more spirit in you.”
But Lindsay to-night was beyond the reach of Marchmont’s wiles. “Go to
bed and take a long snooze,” he said, laughing; “it will do you lots
more good than trying to think of some way of getting into trouble.”
As he passed Salter’s room on the way down, Salter was just coming out.
“Going over to the Yard?” asked Wolcott.
“Yee-up,” replied Salter. He was a queer person, this Salter, a little
of a calf, a little of a sissy, a great deal of a scholar,—in fact, one
of the best in the class,—yet a favorite with no one. He was under
medium size, fat and clumsy in build, with girlish movements, a manner
shy even to timidity, and modesty that was a fault. His fellows took him
at his own estimate. The only occasions on which his society seemed
really desired were just before recitation, when one boy would jostle
him into a corner and demand, “Here, Sal, what’s the answer to 38?” Or
another would pluck him roughly by the shoulder and insist on being told
immediately how to “do these two lines at the bottom of the page.” These
attentions were due, as Salter was of course aware, not to friendship
but to necessity. The very persons whom he helped, nicknamed him “Sal”
and “Marm,” called him a grind, made him the butt of jokes, and even
used him as an example of “the kind of fellow who has no school spirit,
never does anything for the school.” If the words escaped Salter’s ears,
the general attitude told the story just as plainly. Salter was not
happy in his school life.
“I’ve seen your private way to Marchmont’s room,” remarked Lindsay, as
they walked down the street.
“It’s not mine!” returned Salter, with an emphasis quite unnatural to
him. “If it were, I’d nail it up so tight it never could be opened
again.”
“But you let March use it,” pursued Wolcott.
“I let him use it because I can’t help myself, not because I like it.
It’s bound to get me into trouble sooner or later, but that’s nothing to
him.”
“He probably doesn’t think you really object,” suggested Wolcott.
“I’ve told him twenty times at least that I do object,” responded
Salter, almost tearful. “I don’t see what more I can say. Of course I
can’t report him, and I’m not strong enough to fight him. If I were as
big as you, I’d know what to do fast enough! As it is, some one is
likely to see him going through my window ’most any time, and then I
shall get it.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Wolcott. “You aren’t supposed to see
him.”
“I don’t see him, you can depend on that, and I try not to hear him; but
I know who’s going through the window just the same, and I can’t say I
don’t without lying.”
Wolcott climbed the stairs to his room, feeling very sorry for Salter
and very much grieved with Marchmont. It seemed hardly possible that
March could be so inconsiderate. If the grieving friend could have heard
a conversation which took place in Marchmont’s room that same evening,
other and stronger feelings might have mingled with his grief.
Wolcott had been gone scarcely ten minutes when a timid knock evoked
from Marchmont a surly “Come in!” and Haynes White’s gaunt figure edged
its way into the room.
Marchmont nodded coolly. “Good evening.”
“Good evening,” returned White. “I’ve come to ask about that money.”
“I haven’t got it yet,” replied Marchmont, testily. “I told you I’d pay
you when I got the money; you won’t lose it.”
“But I need it now,” continued White, insistently. “I really need it.”
Marchmont laughed. “So do I, and I’ve never seen the time when I didn’t.
I can’t keep a dollar two days. If I could, I never should have borrowed
that twenty. Don’t worry, you’ll be paid. I’m not trying to cheat you.”
“I don’t suppose you are,” returned White, “but I want the money now.
It’s mine and I propose to have it.”
“Oh, you’re going to report me, are you?” exclaimed Marchmont, in a
different tone. “That’s about what I might have expected. Here I tutored
with you for several weeks at your own price, though you didn’t teach me
a blamed thing; and now you come and threaten to report me because I
don’t pay spot cash. Why, there are people in New York who could buy up
this whole town, who only pay their bills once a year and then merely as
a favor. If you report me, you’ll never get a cent out of me; I’d leave
school first.”
“I’ve got to have something or I’ll starve,” said White, solemnly. “Pay
me that twenty you borrowed, anyway. That was my own money that I had
earned and saved. I must have that.”
Marchmont had risen. “Why, I’m going to pay you all of it as soon as I
can. You won’t starve; people don’t starve nowadays. You can get credit
as well as I can. And don’t fuss about the money; it’ll be all right.”
And White went home to his chilly attic room at old Miss Rolfe’s, which
he paid for by tending the furnace and shovelling the paths, and tried
to prove to his satisfaction in black and white that by cutting meat out
of his dinner four times a week he could save enough to carry him
through to the end of the term, when the scholarship payments would be
made. He had already been boarding himself for a fortnight, the dining
hall having proved too expensive for his shrivelled purse.