I
"Stop!"
The command from the rostrum brought the class up in their seats. Every
eye was bent upon Catherwood standing at the end of a bench in the
second row.
Some one snickered.
Catherwood stared at the floor, a blush of shame mounting his cheek and
melting into his thin, bristly red hair at his freckled temples.
The assistant professor of history glared through his spectacles.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he exclaimed, "this is most unseemly! Mr.
Catherwood, you may be seated! I should advise you, ladies and
gentlemen, to devote a little more time to this course; and a little
less, perhaps, to the Junior Hop. I am sure you do not wish me to make
general the mailing of conditions next week. As you know the examination
is set for nine o'clock on the morning of February 10th. I trust you
will act upon the suggestion I have given you...."
The gong in the corridor clanged just then and the class shuffled out
of the room.
Shunning his acquaintances in the hall Catherwood disappeared. The blush
did not recede from his face until he banged the wide door shut behind
him and the cold of the crisp February morning smote him full.
He walked swiftly down Williams Street to his room, not once lifting his
eyes from the pavement, which was dirty white from the much trampled
snow.
Another flunk! The third in as many weeks! Catherwood with a muttered
imprecation reviewed the succession of class-room disasters.
"Confound history!" he growled as he strode into his room. He flung his
books upon the bed and himself into the deep Morris chair by the window.
A sparrow was hopping on the porch roof without. He rattled the window
violently and the sparrow flew away in fright.
"Go it, you imp," he snarled; and again he condemned all history and its
study to the deepest depths.
It _was_ bad. The assistant professor had been lenient, but fate seemed
to have composed that particular section of every history hater in the
junior class.
Catherwood realized this--or thought he did--as he sat staring out of
the windows into the skeleton branches of the trees, and from the
thought he obtained a modicum of consolation.
He had worked. He had worked hard--but for some unknown reason he
couldn't bite into the course, couldn't dig his teeth into the subject.
He did not fear; on the contrary he was certain--as certain as a man can
be--that his semester's work in class-room was of sufficiently high a
grade to assure him his full credit in the course. And yet, he
considered, there was the examination, five days away. In two hours he
would be required to write out in a thin "blue book" all he was supposed
to have learned in twenty weeks.
He ruminated.
How much of what he had learned had stopped in his head? He asked
himself this, seriously, then smiled. He confessed to himself that he
had worked merely from recitation to recitation with no effort to hold
the subjects in that mathematical brain of his that caused his forehead
to bulge.
And the examination only five days away!
As he reviewed the situation Catherwood's brow darkened and he scowled.
For a space he twiddled his large thumbs and glared at a horse hitched
to a grocery wagon across the street.
"I wish you'd freeze," he muttered viciously to the horse; but of
course the horse did not hear for the window was down.
Catherwood counted his flunks on his fingers. Five; five clean, perfect
flunks, altogether, he recalled. Not so bad, he considered; that is, not
so _very_ bad.
But there before him like a great monster with dripping jaws and green,
slimy body, was the examination; and it was creeping, creeping upon him
with the passage of the minutes.
He stood up and shook himself nervously.
From the window he saw the assistant professor approaching his home next
door. He carried several bulky volumes in his arms, hugged to his breast
lovingly.
Catherwood watched him sourly.
There was the man, he mused, in whose hands--now covered with
gray-striped woolen mittens--lay his fate! Pretty serious
business--one's fate lying in hands covered with gray-striped woolen
mittens.
The courses in mathematics Catherwood did not fear; nor those in shop
work; not the one in elocution, to be sure, for that was a snap; nor yet
the two in political economy; indeed, those were rather fun. But
history! Ugh!
The assistant professor turned in at the gate of his house next door,
and as he vanished the scowl fled from Catherwood's brow and his face
lighted.
He would drop in on the assistant professor within the week and call.
Admirable! He wondered if the date might be anywhere reasonably near the
birthday of one of his children. A box of sweets might work wonders; a
china headed doll greater wonders. He marveled that the idea had never
before occurred to him. And, too, he considered, there was the
president.
The president!
Ah, _that_ would be different. There were no little tads in the
president's family. Then he quickly recalled having read in the
'_Varsity News_ of the day before that the president was in the east and
would not return until the thirteenth.
Three days after!
Futile--absolutely futile!
And Catherwood scowled again and stared out the window, idly twisting
his trunk-check watch fob.
He saw the assistant professor's wife on the walk below with the little
Mary.
It was the psychological moment and Catherwood recognized it. Snatching
his hat from the book rack he plunged down the stairs. He pulled
himself together at the door and stepped, unconcernedly, out upon the
porch.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Lowe," he called quite gaily. "Ah, and there's
little Mary--sweet child. Come here, Mary, won't you?"
He squatted in the snow at the gate and held out his hands to her. She
ran to him with a little cry of delight. The mother's face was radiant.
"Oh, good-morning, Mr. Catherwood," she called.
He smiled and nodded. On the instant he made a vague calculation of the
value of Mrs. Lowe's good-will.
He flung his arms around the child and lifted her clear of the walk to
her great delight as attested by the cries of glee that escaped her.
Mrs. Lowe stopped at the gate.
"Such a dear child," Catherwood gurgled, holding the tot close to him.
"Do you think so?" the mother murmured.
"So strong and so well," Catherwood added, weighing little Mary in his
strong hands.
"Yes, she _is_ heavy," Mrs. Lowe said.
Then the child cried in her pretty _patois_:
"Pleese frow Mary up an' catch her."
"Oh, ho," Catherwood exclaimed gaily, "so _that_ is what Mary wants, is
it? Well then, here goes."
"Careful, Mary daughter," the mother cautioned, smiling.
Catherwood never before had felt his strength as keenly as he did that
moment. It had for him, then, a definite, precise meaning; even a value;
yes, an incalculable value.
"Frow up Mary 'n' catch her like farver do," the child urged.
He tossed her into the air.
"There!" he said as she left his arms.
His hands--broad fine hands--were outspread to catch her.
Afterward, when recollection of that vivid, scarlet instant returned to
him, he was never quite able to explain to himself how it had happened.
Perhaps he did not reckon with his various courses in physics--certain
laws of falling bodies, accelerated motion, and such uninteresting
things. In any event it was as though his hands had not been there; for
before he could clutch at the little furry ball of falling femininity it
had shot between those groping hands of his and in an infinitesimal
space of time had struck the low snow-drift beside the walk, no longer a
furry ball but a sprawl of screaming child.
"Oh! Mr. Catherwood!" cried Mrs. Lowe.
There was an instant's silence and then the atmosphere was punctured by
the piercing yelps of the little Mary.
Mrs. Lowe snatched her daughter from the drift and, clutching her close,
cooed to her, consolingly.
"Did the great horrid man drop mother's darling?" she murmured.
Catherwood, stricken momentarily dumb by the accident, finally found his
voice though it was unsteady and very much in his throat.
"Mrs. Lowe," he exclaimed, despairingly, "I'm very sorry; believe me; I
guess, I must----"
She shot him one glance of injured motherhood, and without replying
turned and strode out of the yard still hugging close to her maternal
bosom the wailing Mary.
The shrieks had penetrated to the study of the assistant professor and
as she turned in at her own gate he appeared upon the porch.
"What's the matter?" he asked sharply.
"The young man next door dropped Mary on the tar walk."
Catherwood clearly distinguished below the child's still frantic yells
the grunt of the man who waited on the steps.
He was prompted to shout: "You lie; it was a drift," but a quick second
thought restrained him.
As it was he took the stairs in the darkened hallway in three bounds
and, rushing into his room, raved impotently. He kicked the legs of the
Morris chair; he kicked the legs of the table; he kicked the backs of
the books on the lowest shelf of the rack. He seized a pillow from the
divan and proceeded to punch it violently, viciously. Then he flung
himself face down upon the divan, and from the heart of the cushions
came the muffled words:
"I wish the confounded kid had never been born!"
After some minutes he rolled over and for a space stared blankly at the
ceiling. Then he rose, took a book from the rack and flinging himself
into the Morris chair by the window opened it upon his knee.
It was a volume of the marvelous and enthralling adventures of the
redoubtable Sherlock Holmes.