THE HALO FADES
If Marchmont underestimated White’s urgent need and conveniently ignored
him, there were others who interested themselves in his welfare. Ware,
who sat near him in the class room, first began to suspect that the boy
was not getting enough to eat. He took counsel with Poole, but Poole was
as helpless as Ware. Either would have been glad to advance money to
White, but neither could see a way of approaching him. If White, without
giving any hint of his condition to school authorities or
fellow-students, was denying himself sufficient food, it was either
because he was too proud to have his distress known or unwilling to
incur obligation. In either case the boys were likely to give offence by
offering aid. They finally decided to put the matter in Laughlin’s
hands, in the hope that White would prove more amenable to arguments
presented by one who, like himself, was earning his way through school.
Laughlin lost no time in carrying out the commission.
“Well, what about it? Were we right or wrong?” demanded Poole, as the
familiar big shoulders and the square, serious face loomed up in his
doorway.
“You’re right about his starving himself, if that’s what you mean,” said
Laughlin, dropping heavily upon the window-seat, which he always
considered the safest resting place in the room.
“Would he take anything?” asked Ware.
Laughlin shook his head soberly. “I didn’t dare ask him. He says he has
plenty to eat, but all he had to-night for supper was mush and milk,
which he pretends to be very fond of.”
“That’s nourishing, isn’t it?” asked Poole.
“Of course it’s nourishing,” replied Laughlin, “but he can’t live on it
entirely. He isn’t a pig or a chicken.”
“What are we going to do about it?” demanded Poole. “Must we leave him
to his mush and milk?”
“To his mush and milk and me,” returned Laughlin, quietly. “There’s
something back of all this that hasn’t come out yet. I don’t understand
why he should be so short. He had some money at the beginning of the
year, as I happen to know. Since then he’s had a scholarship payment,
has done considerable tutoring, and apparently hasn’t spent anything. He
ought to have money left.”
“Tutored Marchmont, didn’t he?” asked Poole.
“I believe so,” Laughlin replied.
“I wonder if he got his money,” remarked Ware.
Laughlin glanced sharply at the speaker as if a new idea had struck him.
“I don’t know about that,” he said; “I’m not through with the case yet.
He’s going to take one of my furnaces, that will give him a dollar a
week more; and perhaps by the end of another week we can find where the
trouble lies.”
“But you want the dollar a week yourself, Dave,” cried Poole,
indignantly. “That’s like you. You start out to discover how Ware and I
can help White: the first day you give him some of your work, the second
you’ll be doing your work and his too. Where do we come in, I’d like to
know?”
“I’ll let you fellows know when there’s a chance for you,” said
Laughlin, smiling. “At present I’m the whole team.”
“He’s scabbed our job,” said Ware, in disgust.
Two or three days after this Laughlin hunted up Poole and informed him
that his time had come. Underfed, overworked, worried, White had at last
given out, and he now lay in bed, feverish and weak, and desperate at
the thought that a long illness might be before him. In his helpless
state his lips had been unsealed and he had spoken freely and fully of
his affairs. It was Marchmont’s long-continued delay in paying the debt
that had forced him to these privations.
“The thief!” cried Poole. “Think of his borrowing money from a poor
fellow when he was in debt to him already, and then coolly letting him
starve! If that isn’t the lowest-down trick for a fellow of his front!”
“Here is where you come in,” said Laughlin. “I wanted him to let me go
to Mr. Graham and get his help to collect it; but White wouldn’t hear of
it—he thinks it wouldn’t be the right thing, you know. The only way to
keep that fellow out of the hospital is to make Marchmont pay the bill,
and you’re the man to do it.”
“No, I’m not,” replied Poole, slowly. “Marchmont wouldn’t do anything
for me if he could help it, and I should be mad before I’d said ten
words.”
“And I’m not, either,” sighed Laughlin. “I’ve never spoken to him a
dozen times in my life, and yet he seems to hate me as if I were his
worst enemy.”
A few minutes later Lindsay looked up in surprise to see Poole and
Laughlin walk solemnly into his room. The former had made very
infrequent visits of late; the latter had never appeared there before.
“We’ve come for help in a charity case,” said Poole. “Will you give it?”
“I guess so,” replied Wolcott, cautiously. “It depends on the case.”
“Laughlin will explain. Fire away, Dave!”
And Laughlin rehearsed White’s tale as he had heard it, briefly, without
adjectives or exclamation points to weaken the effect of the simple
details, ending with an account of the victim’s present condition and
the need of prompt action if he were to be saved serious illness. When
he finished, Wolcott was sitting straight up, with eyes fixed on the
narrator’s lips and a red spot burning on either cheek.
“Do you mean to tell me that Marchmont still owes that money?” he
demanded.
Laughlin nodded: “That’s what I mean. He still owes it and is likely to
owe it indefinitely.”
“Unless some one can get it out of him,” added Poole. “White won’t let
us put it in Grim’s hands, and we have no influence with the fellow.”
“Then it’s up to me,” said Wolcott, jumping to his feet with a look of
determination in his face. “I’ll have a try at him myself.” And before
the others could utter a word, he had seized his hat and dived out the
door.
The visitors looked at each other and laughed.
“Dead easy,” said Phil. “He’s the right kind, isn’t he? How quickly he
caught on!”
“I always liked him,” returned Laughlin. “The trouble is, he doesn’t
like me.”
Marchmont looked up from his cigarette and his novel into Wolcott’s
stern face and understood that something had gone wrong. He did not ask
what, for his visitor left him no opportunity.
“Do you owe Haynes White any money?”
“I believe I do,” answered Marchmont, unpleasantly startled at this
abrupt opening; “but that’s our business.”
“It’s other people’s business now,” retorted Wolcott, hotly. “He’s in
bed sick. He’s sick because he hasn’t had enough to eat. He hasn’t had
enough because you have taken the money he needed for food and won’t
return it to him. Now you can cough up that money, or I’ll put the case
into Grim’s hands to settle as he chooses. I won’t see a fellow like
that fleeced of his money and starved to death without putting up some
kind of a howl. It’s robbery!”
Marchmont gasped. The look of bravado had suddenly left him. “I didn’t
know it was as bad as that, really I didn’t,” he said eagerly. “Here,
I’ll give you all I’ve got left. It will cover the twenty dollars,
anyway, and I’ll send for more to-night. You don’t think I’d keep money
from a starving man, do you now? You must know me better than that.”
“I should hope you wouldn’t!” said Wolcott, whose indignation was
somewhat appeased by the ready offer of the money, while the pleading
tones affected him as the defiant ones had not. “How much more do you
owe him?”
“About twenty,” answered Marchmont.
“How long will it take you to get it?”
“A week.”
“He’ll expect it, then, next Thursday night; and I hope, for your sake
as well as his, that you’ll have it ready for him. Good night!”
Ten minutes after he had left his room, Wolcott opened the door again,
walked to the table, and deposited the money upon it. “There’s the
twenty,” he said coolly; “he’ll have the rest in another week.”
Laughlin stared; Poole shouted aloud. “How did you do it?” he cried;
“shake it out of him?”
“I told him I wanted it, and he gave it to me. He didn’t know White
really needed it.”
“What do you say to that, Dave?” demanded Poole, turning with a comical
grimace to his companion.
“I say he was lying,” replied Laughlin, quietly.
After the callers had departed, Wolcott sat for some minutes striving to
define his opinion of Marchmont and to determine his future attitude
toward him. Clearly there were other characteristics to be considered in
the fellow than the graceful manners and airs of superior gentility
which had so imposed upon the new boy. He was absolutely selfish,
indifferent to the rights and happiness of others, and at heart a
coward. There was as great a contrast between this weak, self-indulgent
character and the rugged, generous, downright honesty of Laughlin as
between the two exteriors: the ratio of values was inverse to that of
appearances.
“I’m afraid Tommy was nearer right than I that day when he was ranting
about a pile of Marchmonts,” he said to himself in no happy frame of
mind, as he started to clear up his desk. “I’ve been well taken in by
that fellow.”
His Aunt Emmeline’s unanswered letter appeared from under a pile of
papers. He opened it again and read it through, then seized his hat and
hurried forth.
Two minutes later a hulking six-footer, with face rosy from rapid
walking, presented himself at the delivery window of the Seaton library.
“Have you bound copies of old _Atlantics?_” he asked, with an eagerness
quite unusual in searchers of by-gone periodicals.
“We have a complete set from the beginning,” replied the librarian,
promptly. This set she had herself completed by researches in the
garrets of the villagers, and she was proud of her achievement.
“I should like to look at several around 1870,” said Wolcott. “May I
begin with ’67?”
The two volumes were brought, and he eagerly scanned the table of
contents. Miss Codman’s name was not to be found among the contributors
of poetry. Then another year was examined, and still another. It was in
the second volume of the fourth year, which he had mentally resolved
should be the last he would ask for, that the title “A Sail! A Sail!” in
roman followed by _Alice Codman_ in italics, at length caught his eye.
Hurriedly he fluttered the leaves to page 873, as the index directed.
Alice Codman’s poem contained four stanzas,—identical with four of the
stanzas published in the last _Lit_ over Marchmont’s name!
Wolcott shut the book with a bang, noted the page and volume on a
library slip, and returned the books to the librarian.
“Can you tell me whether any student has had this volume in the last two
months?” he asked.
“We keep no record after a book has been returned,” replied the
librarian. “These old periodicals are seldom called for, but I remember
that a student took out several old _Atlantics_ and _Littells_ four or
five weeks ago. I have forgotten his name. He was tall and slender, very
well dressed, and with extremely polite manners.”
“Was it Marchmont?”
“That’s the name—Marchmont.”
Wolcott’s expressions of gratitude to the librarian as he left the
delivery window, if not as polite as Marchmont’s, were at least as
sincere. On the way home he stopped at the post-office, where he mailed
a postal card bearing Tompkins’s address on one side, and on the other:
“Consult _Atlantic Monthly_, Vol. 25, page 873.”
Then he strode home, reiterating his resolution with every step. His
intimacy with Marchmont was over.