RED RETRIBUTION
It must be confessed that the generosity of Tompkins in forgiving the
twins for their second victory over him was very poorly appreciated. A
dog that merely barks frightens only those who are afraid of barking.
The twins, while holding bites in wholesome dread, were brave regarding
barks; and collectively they looked upon Tompkins as a barker.
Individually, their opinions differed. Donald had his doubts as to the
advisability of pressing Tompkins farther. Duncan, however, in whom the
love of mischief was far stronger than discretion, argued that Tommy was
a bluffer, that he was only waiting for his chance to get back at them,
and that the team that takes the offensive usually wins the game. So
Donald yielded to plausible arguments, and the Peck solidarity remained
unbroken. As a concession to the demand for some distinguishing token,
however, they began to wear different-colored neckties, Donald blue,
Duncan red.
Now it happened on a certain Saturday night that Tompkins had a part in
the debate at the Laurel Leaf on that favorite subject for debating
societies,—the advisability of choosing United States senators by
popular vote. The meeting was an open one, and Donald, impelled as much
by natural taste as by curiosity to witness his neighbor’s performance,
was among the spectators. Duncan, to whom debate smacked too much of the
recitation room to be attractive, even with Tommy as a performer,
preferred to stay at home.
Tompkins had the opening. His task was to show that the present system
was a failure. He was just about to begin, when he noticed that the
volume of Bryce’s “American Commonwealth,” from which he intended to
quote a clincher to his argument, was not among his books of reference.
He walked down to Donald and whispered a few words in his ear, whereat
the blue-necktied twin nodded, took up his hat, and disappeared.
“Tommy’s had to send me back for one of his books,” said Donald, a
minute or two later, putting his head in at the Peck door. “He’s just
going to start off.”
“Does he look rattled?” asked Duncan. “If I knew he was going to slump,
I’d go over.”
“I guess there’s no danger of that,” replied Donald, bringing the book
nearer the light. “I hope I’ve got the right volume.”
“How many volumes are there?” demanded Duncan, suddenly.
“Two.”
“Bring the other, then, while I change my tie!” commanded Duncan,
jumping up and pulling vigorously at his necktie.
Donald stared.
“It’s the best thing yet,” chuckled Duncan. “Get a hustle on, there’s no
time to lose.”
Donald, with the puzzled expression still on his face, obediently
returned to Tompkins’s room and brought the other volume. “I told him
I’d get him Number Two,” he said doubtfully. “I can’t take the wrong
one.”
“No, but I can,” declared Duncan, giving the last touch to his blue
cravat, which was an exact duplicate of his brother’s. “How long has he
to spout?”
“Seven minutes.”
“You just stay here three, and then come along with the right book, as
you agreed to. I’m going over with the wrong one. Where d’you sit?”
“Two rows from the front in the aisle seat,” answered Donald, still
bewildered.
Tompkins was greatly relieved to see the door open and the twin with a
blue tie walk to the seat in the second row, bearing the familiar volume
of Bryce under his arm. The speaker’s argument had been planned to lead
up gradually to an effective climax in a final quotation from a great
authority. For this quotation Tompkins had been nervously waiting.
“And now in proof of my contention that the prevailing system of
choosing United States senators is a failure,” he went on confidently,
“that it advances to the highest legislative position not the best and
the ablest, but the richest and the trickiest, the millionaires and the
political bosses, I will add that our wisest foreign critics lay
especial emphasis on this perilous weakness. Let me quote in conclusion
from that fair and sympathetic student of our institutions, Mr. James
Bryce. On page 492 of the second volume of his ‘American Commonwealth’
he says:—”
Here the orator, abandoning his notes and leaving his sentence suspended
in the air, took the book from the twin’s hand and thumbed the leaves to
page 492. It bore the unfamiliar heading, “State Finance.” He consulted
his notes once more, then looked at pages 490, 494, and 497. There was
nothing on these pages which he had ever seen before. He turned to 392
and 592, and to the end of the book to find the index. There was no
index! He whipped the book over and discovered that he was using Volume
I.
By this time the debater’s face was crimson, the listeners were grinning
broadly, and even the presiding officer, whose sense of dignity was
enormous, found difficulty in controlling his countenance.
“You’ve brought the wrong book,” said Tompkins, angrily, to the smiling
twin. “I told you Volume II!”
“You didn’t tell me anything,” replied Duncan, composedly.
Tompkins glared; the audience craned their necks to get sight of Duncan
and snickered aloud.
“I’ve just come in,” continued the twin.
At this the whole company, Tompkins excepted, burst into a roar which
increased rather than diminished as the tardy Donald opened the door,
walked to the front of the room, gravely placed a book on the table
before the outraged debater, and took a seat near his brother.
“I am sorry to say, Mr. Tompkins,” said the chairman, after he had at
last brought the meeting to order, “that your time is up. Perhaps in
view of the peculiar interruption, the negative may be willing to give
you another minute,” he added, with a glance at Richardson, who was to
open for the negative.
Richardson smiled and nodded; and Tompkins read his quotation from the
right book, and finished his speech with the rhetorical flourish which
he had prepared. But Mr. Bryce’s opinion and Tompkins’s rhetoric both
fell on unheeding ears.
At the first opportunity the twins slipped away to their room, and
locking the door securely, waited in awful anticipation for Tompkins’s
knock. It did not come. The next day they ventured cautiously forth, and
sought the protection of numbers when there was danger that the injured
senior might suddenly appear from around a corner and wreak vengeance.
But Tompkins, when he passed them, nodded pleasantly as if nothing had
happened. On the third day he even dropped in after his old manner for a
brief and friendly call. On the fourth he appeared with a comic paper in
which he wished to show an amusing caricature, and spread it out on the
desk. It was then that Nemesis came—swift, unexpected, terrible. As
Duncan leaned guilelessly over the table, feasting his eyes on the
cartoon, he felt the hair on the back of his head suddenly brushed up as
by the hand of the barber testing its thickness. At the same time he
heard a noise as of the sop of a sponge, and felt the chill of a cold
liquid wetting his head and streaming down his neck.
“There!” said Tompkins, backing away and holding out a crimson sponge
like a shield before him. “There’s a red that can’t be changed like a
necktie. It’s good dye, this is, warranted to stand washing and not to
wear off. I think I shall know you, my friend, the next time I see you.”
With these words the senior escaped, leaving the unhappy Duncan to make
his toilet as best he could. There was much bathing that day in the
twins’ abode, and shampooing that in point of thoroughness would have
put to shame the efforts of an expert. The results were not encouraging.
The crimson became but a shade lighter; while the scalp, scraped and
worn by the process, showed vivid pink beneath. When it became apparent
that home treatment would not avail to remove the glaring stain, they
adjourned to the drug store, where they pleaded for advice and received
only ridicule. A friendly barber finally came to their relief with the
promise that by clipping off Duncan’s red locks and dying the stubble to
match the rest, he could make him over as good as new. When the boy got
down from the chair, however, he was horrified to find that though the
gory hue had disappeared, the clipped portion was several shades darker
than the color nature had intended it should bear, and of a different
tone; and through the dark patch the skin still glistened a rosy pink.
“It’ll grow out in three or four weeks and I can cut it to the right
color,” said the barber, with doubtful comfort. “People won’t notice it
now till they git pretty clost.”
And herewith came an unforeseen break in the Peck solidarity. Donald
declined absolutely to have his own hair cut and dyed to match; the
weather was too cold and the bull’s-eye effect too conspicuous. Duncan
must either grow hair or get a wig. All of which Duncan considered very
unbrotherly and unfeeling. And Tompkins, having proved himself a dog
that could bite as well as bark, was baited no longer.
Meantime Wolcott, having given up the society of Marchmont, was seeing
more of others whom in his intimacy with the polished New Yorker he had
neglected. There was no one of these whom he liked better to visit than
Poole, partly because of the attractive personality of Poole himself,
partly because of the pleasant company who habitually gathered in his
study. Planter and Ware he often met there, while Durand, Morgan,
Tompkins, Richardson of the _Seatonian_ board, and Saybrook who drew the
funny caricatures, also belonged to the set. Laughlin was made welcome
as often as his many occupations would permit. With his different
experience of life and greater seriousness, he was not an adept at the
gay banter current among care-free fellows to whom the pleasant things
of life came without effort. His presence, however, was never a damper
on the merriment, while in the discussion of graver matters his opinion
always carried weight. With Wolcott he talked chiefly about football,
with the result that the interest and ambition of the new boy were
constantly growing.
It was on the last evening before the school recess that Wolcott was
publicly committed to the captain’s projects. A group of kindred spirits
had gathered in Poole’s room, talking athletics as vigorously as if the
subject had not been fundamentally discussed a hundred times before.
“The outlook is certainly bad,” Planter was saying. “The football is
gone, and while we don’t want to think that we are going to lose the
baseball too, the chances are certainly against us, and we haven’t any
great show for track. If Dickinson and Todd and all those fellows could
only tie Hillbury last year, I don’t see what we can expect with a green
team. This looks like a mighty bad year for us, doesn’t it?”
“You oughtn’t to talk to a member of the nine about the nine’s losing,”
Laughlin remarked with a jerk of his head toward Poole. “That’s not the
spirit to begin the season with.”
“I suppose, then, if any one asks about your next football season,
you’ll say you’re going to win,” retorted Planter.
“I certainly shall,” replied Laughlin. “There’s going to be no
expectation of defeat on my team. We mean to win if it’s possible.”
“So do we,” said Poole.
“What about that man Strong? Isn’t he going to do something in the
sports?” asked Wolcott.
“He has run the hundred in ten and a fifth, according to Roberts. That’s
fast enough to win ’most anything,” said Durand.
“Some one said he was on probation for not keeping up with his work,”
added Poole.
“Then I don’t believe he’s much of a runner,” commented Laughlin. “These
fellows who haven’t sand enough to do passable work, haven’t sand enough
to run a hard race.”
“That doesn’t always hold true,” Planter protested. “Curtis was no
scholar at all, and yet on the gridiron he’d hustle to beat the band.”
“I wish he were here now,” sighed Laughlin. “It’s hard to get hold of
such fellows. Lindsay here is the only good recruit that I’ve caught for
the line next year.”
Wolcott reddened as the eyes of the company were turned curiously upon
him.
“I’m going to try, that’s all,” he said humbly. “I don’t know that I
shall be able to play.”
“And I’m going to try, though I know I shan’t be able to play,” lamented
Durand. “If I could gain about forty pounds this summer, there would be
some hope for me.”
Laughlin and Lindsay came downstairs together a few minutes later.
“I’ve committed you now before witnesses,” said Laughlin. “You see you
have your work cut out for you.”
“So you guarantee me a place in the line, do you?” asked Wolcott,
smiling.
“Not much!” the captain retorted. “Guarantee you nothing but the chance
to work for one.”
The next day school closed for the spring recess. The grip that Wolcott
gave to Laughlin’s big fist was an earnest of growing regard as well as
a measure of self-defence. He went out of his way to say good-by to
Salter, whose loneliness was the more apparent amid the boisterous
leave-takings of friends. For Marchmont he had but a brief word, and yet
a month before he had written for permission to bring Marchmont home
with him at this very time. Fortunately the invitation had never been
given.