For a week, now, the Gown had been speculating; placing its bets with
the Town eagerly, enthusiastically, and many of those bets--sad to
relate--were on the wrong side of the book, so far as Nibs Morey was
concerned. When Jimmy, learning the way of the wind, informed his friend
of the odds against him, with all the coldness of a perfect enmity, Nibs
experienced his first twinge of uneasiness. For the Gown, loyal to its
foreign upholder, Billy--in the excess of its patriotism and without
regard to possible consequences such as unpaid laundry bills, and
staved-off tailor accounts--had wagered against poor Nibs, who, though
he was _of_ the Gown, cannot be said to have been _with_ it. He
suffered the misfortune of having been born and reared within a scant
stone's throw of the main building, the which, it may be noted in
passing, he had, for half a dozen years, held as a grudge against his
parents, to the perplexity of his sister Wilma, who found only a keen
enjoyment in her college home and in the shifting aspects of the college
life around her.
The event that Nibs longed for was only a week away, and his friend
seemed to take rare delight in deriding the hardihood that had prompted
the posting of the challenge.
"Well," Nibs said, at last, breaking his long legs at the knee, and
rising from the table, laboriously, "maybe he will beat me,--but he
won't do it hands down--he won't do it in a walk, anyway."
"Oh, I don't know," was the cool retort of Jimmy, and stepping down into
the street he added, "you can't always tell."
Nibs had not once chided his friend for his seeming lack of confidence;
he bore it simply, and gave no sign that it produced an effect, unless
an occasional weak smile, as when the other became too atrociously
insulting, might be taken for such a sign. For there were things that
even Jimmy had no knowledge of. He did not dream for instance that, on
many a night after Nibs had, with a plea of study, begged off from
going "down town," he had dressed himself in a thin undershirt, loose,
full breeches and spiked shoes, and wrapped in a bath-robe and crouching
in the shadow, had sought the solemn, ghostly cemetery, there to run
among the white stones, glistening in the pale light, to his full
heart's content. Later, on those same nights, tired out, he had sneaked
back to his room unobserved in the silent streets. No, Jimmy did not
know of this strenuous course of Nibs' training. He knew his legs were
wiry, elastic, to be sure; but _how_ wiry, _how_ elastic, he did not
dream. And though deride him he did, in his cheerful confidence and
self-assurance, when, on the Monday following their meeting in Nat's
low-ceiled bar-room, a particularly venturesome sophomore laid him a
wager of five to three on Billy, Jimmy took the shorter end of the bet
with amazing alacrity.
During the week immediately preceding the day for which the race was
set, interest in the event increased with the passage of the hours.
Posey's billiard-room on Main Street became the betting-green, where
Town met Gown, and Gown flung its challenges into the teeth of Town,
which Town at first snarled at, but eventually bit into and clung to
tenaciously.
Once, during the tempestuous seven days, Nibs encountered Billy face to
face. The latter was leaving the president's office; Nibs was
approaching the door.
As their eyes met, a spark flashed between them, and their faces became
hard and set. There were several loiterers in the corridor who witnessed
the meeting, and one of these, "Pinkey" Bush--a lawyer in Chicago
now,--never tires of recalling the incident. You have but to mention it
to him to hear him say, with a brilliant twinkle in his eye:
"Gad! It was great! Simply great! There they stood, face to face;
Nibsey, long, thin as a lath, glaring down at Billy, who was shorter,
but just as gaunt. Their eyes gleamed like new shoe buttons, and their
hands were clenched tight at their sides. A second? It seemed an age!
They didn't speak; just drilled little wells in each other's eyes with
their own--and it was over. The door of the president's office closed
upon Nibsey; the big west door rattled shut after Billy. It was like a
dissolving view--great, while it lasted, but soon ended. I thought every
instant--and held my breath--that one of 'em would shoot out his fist
and land it on the other's jaw. No reason, of course; but it wouldn't
have surprised any of us who saw the meeting, if one or the other had."
Two days before the race, the entire student body became divided in its
sympathy; wordy quarrels were hourly occurrences on the campus; nor were
bodily assaults infrequent.
The next day the excitement was as tense as the air before a cyclone. A
million pounds of young animal spirits, the highest explosive known to
science, were encased in delicate human bottles, needing but a jar to
touch them off.
At six o'clock, men passing in the streets gazed mad-eyed at one
another, their jaws set square, their lips drawn tight across their
teeth.