from the letter: “‘So you want a new car to enable you to cut a dash
with the college boys and girls, do you? I was sort of hoping, Son,
that your break into Old Sheddon would make you understand that there
are some other things in the world besides having a good time, but it
seems it hasn’t. But it’s all right with me. I’ve put two thousand
dollars to your account in the college town bank, and you may buy a car
with it――if that’s what you want more than anything else. But I should
have been a pretty proud Dad if you’d wanted the money for something
besides a plaything that you’ll wear out in a year.’”
“Well?” said Larry, when McKnight refolded the letter and put it back
in his pocket.
McKnight didn’t answer the implied query. Instead, he put one of his
own.
“How far would two thousand dollars go toward boosting little Purdy
through his four years, Donnie?”
“How far?――Great cats! it would take him all the way through. It’s as
much as, or more than, I expect to spend in the four years!”
“All right,” said McKnight coolly. “I’ll write you a check for it when
I get back to the house.”
“But see here――good goodness, Ollie, you can’t do anything like that!”
Larry broke out. “In the first place, Purdy won’t take it――no fellow
would; and in the next――”
“Let’s knock the pins down in one alley before they’re set up in
another,” cut in the offhand maker of scholarships. “Of course, one of
the conditions would have to be that Purdy doesn’t know where it comes
from. We’ll call it the Red-Wagon Scholarship, and let it go at that.”
“But even then, he’d consider it a loan and want to pay it back.”
“You can’t pay a scholarship back. But that’ll be all right; if he
ever gets fixed so he can, let him pass it along――boost some other
fellow who needs it. You may as well quit chucking hurdles in the way,
Donnie. This is the first time I’ve ever given anything that’s cost
me something, and you can’t choke me off. Besides, I’d like to shock
Dad――just this one time, you know. I’d give a hen worth fifty dollars
if I could be there to see, when he gets the news.”
“Then you won’t buy a car?”
“Not so you could notice it――not this year, anyway. When you come to
think of it, it isn’t good form for a Freshie to be daddlin’ around in
a little red wagon anyhow. Which reminds me that it isn’t good form
for me to stay daddlin’ around here and keeping you out o’ bed. So I’m
gone.”
“Hold on a second and I’ll go with you,” said Larry, reaching for his
cap and overcoat.
“Whichward ho, at this time o’ night?” questioned the son of much
money, as they went out together.
“I’m going to see if I can find out what’s become of Charlie Purdick,”
Larry returned. And at the parting moment: “Sure you won’t change your
mind, Ollie, after you’ve slept on it?”
“Don’t you worry. I’ve got a lot of weaknesses, Donnie, but that isn’t
one of ’em. You go find Purdy.”
“I’m gone,” said Larry; and he turned down the cross street, while
McKnight swung off in the opposite direction.
VI
A NEW ROOM-MATE
Being well used to Colorado mountain winters, Larry had been finding
the Middle-Western variety of the season rather a joke than a hardship
thus far. But on the night when he parted from the founder of the
Red-Wagon Scholarship at Mrs. Grant’s front gate, old Boreas was
outdoing himself.
Down Maple Avenue, cutting across angling behind the athletic field,
the wind came howling straight out of the shivery northwest, bringing
with it a storm that was half snow and half a fine sleet to sting like
needles on a bare face, and to make the sidewalk as uncertain underfoot
as the bottom of a soapy bath-tub.
It was only two squares down to the main street of the college suburb,
and then one more to Hassler’s restaurant, where Larry made his
first inquiry about Purdick. Here he learned nothing except the fact
that Purdick hadn’t shown up for a week and more, and that another
student waiter had been put on in his place. The big, puffy-lipped
German didn’t know where Purdick roomed, but he thought it was over
Heffelfinger’s grocery, two squares farther down.
Thither Larry posted, slipping and sliding over the treacherous
sidewalks, and was lucky enough to find Heffelfinger just closing his
grocery shop. Yes, Purdick had a room “oop-shtairs”――two flights up.
Larry blundered into the box hall beside the grocery entrance and
climbed――in darkness so thick that it was almost sticky. But there was
a window in the second floor hall, and enough light from the street
electrics filtered through its grimy panes to enable him to find the
second stair.
Groping along on the third floor, which seemed to be a sort of junk
room, Larry made his way toward a thin thread of light coming from the
crack under a door. The barn-like third floor was cold with the deadly
chill of a shut-up space that has never been heated, and Larry had all
he could do to keep his teeth from chattering. At the door with the
chink of light under it he rapped, and a hoarse voice that he hardly
recognized said: “Come in.”
Larry wasn’t any more impressionable than he had to be, and wasn’t
at all troubled with the sort of imagination that adds frills and
furbelows to make a thing you remember grow into a sort of cold horror
the more it is dwelt upon. Yet he thought he should never forget the
desolate cheerlessness of the cubbyhole into which the opening door
admitted him.
It was a bare little place, roughly board-partitioned off from the
storehouse attic and lighted――in daytime――by a single window which was
now rattling in its frame and letting a thin sifting of fine snow blow
through the cracks. For furniture there was a pine packing box for a
table, another which had been made into a sort of chair, and a third
for a light stand on which stood a guttering candle. In a corner, with
its head beside the light-stand box, was a cot, and propped up in the
narrow bed, with a coat over his shoulders, the blanket pulled up to
his chin, and his copy of “Hun and MacInnes” held so that the light of
the candle would fall upon the page, was Purdick.
“Hello, Donovan!” he croaked in the same hoarse voice that had said
“Come in.” “Dug me up, did you? Pull up the easy-chair and sit
down”――this last with a grin that was more than half ghastly.
Larry dragged out the box chair and sat by the cot. But he didn’t take
off his overcoat, or even unbutton it.
“Been meaning to dig you up for a week or more,” he said. “Why didn’t
you let some of us know you were sick?”
“Didn’t want to be a nuisance. I’m getting over it all right, now.”
“What was it?”
“Touch of the grippe, I guess. I had it last winter. I don’t mind it so
much, only I’m afraid it’s cost me my job at Hassler’s.”
Larry looked around at the cheerless, unheated cubbyhole.
“Gee!” he shuddered, “this is no place to be sick in. Why didn’t you
report to the hospital?”
Little Purdick’s smile was another of those half-ghastly grins.
“I don’t mind telling you, Donovan. Your three-dollar-per-semester
hospital fee, that you have to pay when you register, entitles you to
two days sick-a-bed in a ward. If you stay over that time it’s a dollar
a day extra. I didn’t have the dollar a day.”
“Well, you’ve got to get out of this,” said Larry; and he said it
gruffly because the pitifulness of Purdick’s case was getting next to
him. “You’re going to room with me for the rest of the year. Dick’s
gone over to the Omeg house and I’m needing a bunkie.”
Purdick wagged his head on the blanket pillow.
“I know you don’t mean to stick a knife into me and twist it round,
Donnie, but you know very well that I can’t afford to go to Mother
Grant’s. Let it slide and help me out a bit on this trig.――if you can
stand the cold. I’ve lost a week on the stuff, and if I can’t make it
up I’ll go bust on it.”
“You chuck that book and listen to me,” growled Larry. “I say you’re
going to room with me in the Man-o’-War, and what’s more, you’re going
to begin it to-night――if I can find a night-owl auto hack anywhere this
side of Chicago.”
“But I tell you I can’t, Donnie. It’s as much out of my reach as――as――”
“That’s all fixed,” Larry put in brusquely. “Your room rent’s paid, and
your board, too; or they will be.”
“But listen, you good old scout; I can’t take charity that way――you
know I can’t. It――it would break me, world without end!”
“It isn’t charity; it’s a――scholarship,” Larry stammered.
“Sheddon hasn’t any first-year scholarships, Donnie. You know that as
well as I do.”
“Maybe it hasn’t had; but it’s got one now――just――er――founded. One of
the fellows――er――knew of it so he nailed it for you.”
“Donnie, you’re lying to me; you know good and well you are,” protested
the sick one. “You’re meaning to put up for me yourself――out of money
that you told me yourself was borrowed money. Isn’t that the truth?”
Larry managed to force a sort of donkey-bray laugh.
“Much obliged for the compliment, Purdy, but I’m not so generous as all
that amounts to. I told you it wasn’t charity, and it isn’t. It’s a
sure-enough scholarship, and it runs for four years. After that, if you
make a go of your profession, you’re to pass it on to some other fellow
that needs it. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”
Purdick turned his face to the wall and for a long minute there was
silence in the freezing little room. When he spoke again there was
something more than the grippy hoarseness in his voice.
“I――I can’t take it in, Donnie,” he stammered brokenly. “I’m a perfect
fool about this engineering course. I’ve wanted it ever since I knew
what engineering was――wanted it so bad that I could taste it. The――the
home doctor said I could never stand it to work my way through, and I
guess maybe he was right. And now――” again he turned his face to the
wall, and because it is a shame for one fellow to see another one cry,
Larry jumped up and went to shiver at the rattling window.
When he thought he had given Purdick time enough to sort of get a grip
on himself, he went on to the business part of his errand.
“Think you’re not too sick to stand the trip over to the house if I get
a flivver and wrap you up good?”
By this time the little fellow was able to grin again.
“If it’s any colder out doors than it is up here, it must be going
some,” he replied.
“It’s a rough night, just like it listens,” said Larry, “but we’ll make
it, all right.” After which he groped his way out and down the two
pairs of stairs and went to look for an auto cab.
That proved to be some hunt. There wasn’t a vehicle of any kind in
sight on the college-suburb side of the river, and he had to go
creeping and slipping over the bridge and into the town proper before
he could find one. He discovered one at last, and had a wrangle with
the driver because the man said he didn’t need tire chains and Larry
insisted that he did; kept on insisting until the hackman grumblingly
consented to put them on――with Larry to help.
When he got back to the cubbyhole under the Heffelfinger flat roof he
found Purdick dressed and sitting on the edge of the cot. The sick one
got up and wabbled around as if he were going to strike right out by
himself, but Larry said: “Nothing doing; mamma’s baby hasn’t learned
to walk yet,” and without more ado, wrapped the invalid in a blanket,
stuck the candle in his hand so that he could light the way, and then
gathered him up and carried him, catching his breath when he found what
a feather-weight Purdick was, either from the sickness or from not
getting enough to eat.
After Larry had bundled his arm-load into the hack, the short trip was
made safely, though the machine skidded some, even with the chains on.
Larry had taken time, while he was over in town looking for the auto,
to telephone Mrs. Grant what he was meaning to do, so when he staggered
up the steps with his burden, the good house-mother was at the door to
meet him and help him get Purdick upstairs and into the bed that had
been Dick’s.
A few minutes later she came trotting up with a pitcher of hot
milk and made the new room-mate drink two glasses of it. After she
went away, Purdick wanted to talk; wanted to know more about the
scholarship, and who the fellow was who had grabbed it off for him, and
if it was really true that he didn’t have to work for wages any more
during the three-and-a-half years he hoped to stay in Old Sheddon. But
Larry resolutely squelched him and told him to go to sleep, threatening
to turn the lights off and run away to Welborn’s room to study if he
wasn’t obeyed. So once more little Purdick turned his face to the wall;
and a half-hour later, when Larry went to bed, the grippe patient was
sleeping peacefully, and Larry, giving him the once over before he put
the lights out, could fancy that a good half of the strained look had
already gone out of the thin, colorless face.
This was the beginning of Larry’s experience with a substitute for
Dickie Maxwell in the big upper room at Mrs. Grant’s. With the best of
care, and plenty of good food, Purdick was soon up and around and at
work in his section. Naturally, it took a good bit of boning to make up
for the lost time, but since he didn’t have anything else to do, didn’t
have to worry about rent and board and such things, he soon worked off
the temporary handicap.
Matters went along quietly for three or four weeks before anything
more was said about the “scholarship.” On the day following Purdick’s
transfer to the Man-o’-War, Ollie McKnight had given Larry a check for
the two thousand dollars, and with it Larry had opened an account in
the college bank in the name of Charles Purdick, got a pass-book and a
check-book and put both of them where Purdick could find them.
So far, so good. After Purdick got up and out, he paid his few debts
and his delayed second semester dues, moved his scanty belongings
over to Mrs. Grant’s, and apparently settled down to the new order of
things without trying to find out anything more about his miraculous
windfall. But Larry knew that the day of reckoning was only postponed,
and it came one evening after the room had been cleared of the latest
stragglers and its two occupants were left alone together.
“Now, then, Donnie,” Purdick began, “I want to know something more
about this ‘scholarship’ thing. And first let me say that I know now
that it _isn’t_ a scholarship.”
“But it is, in a way,” Larry insisted.
“Not officially,” said Purdick. “There’s no record of any such thing in
the books. I’ve asked the Registrar.”
“Good gracious!” Larry exclaimed, seeing trouble ahead; “why can’t you
let well enough alone?”
“Because, as I said that night when you came to hunt me up, I can’t
take anybody’s charity.”
“Poor but proud, eh?” said Larry, knowing well enough that he would
have felt exactly the same way in Purdick’s place.
“You can call it that if you want to; I guess it’s the truth. But I
want to know; I’ve _got_ to know.”
“I’ll tell you all I can――which isn’t so very much,” Larry temporized.
“The money was given to one of the fellows here to――er――do as he
pleased with. He didn’t need it for himself, so he took a notion to
give it to you――lend it to you, if you’d rather have it that way. Only
instead of paying it back to him, he wants you to boost some other
fellow, by and by, when you’re able to do it.”
“That’s all right, as far as it goes. But who is the fellow?”
“I can’t tell you. I’ve promised.”
Little Purdick twisted himself in his chair and seemed to be looking
out of the window, though the panes presented nothing but a blank wall
of darkness. Finally he said:
“I guess I’m up against it pretty hard, Donnie.”
“How so?”
“Can’t you see? You know the way I’ve always talked; what I’ve been
thinking and saying about rich people. Nobody but some one of the rich
fellows could do what’s been done to me. Can I take a bone that’s been
thrown to a dog?”
Larry grinned.
“That depends, doesn’t it? Of course, if you’re calling yourself a
dog――――”
“Say it all,” Purdick prompted.
“I don’t know how to say it so as to make anybody understand it. But
this is the way it looks to me. If you do something for somebody that
needs to have it done for ’em, you get a whole lot of satisfaction out
of it, don’t you? Makes you feel sort of warm and comfortable all over,
doesn’t it?”
“Of course; everybody knows that.”
“Well, if you’re going to be able to jolly yourself over the giving
part of it, somebody else will have to do the taking, won’t he?”
Purdick took time to think about it. Trying to be perfectly honest
with himself, he had to admit that he had never looked at it in just
that way before. But poverty pride――especially when it is backed up by
a lot of prejudice――is a pretty stubborn thing.
“If you won’t tell me anything, how am I going to know that this isn’t
rotten money I’m spending?” he demanded.
“What do you mean by ‘rotten money’?”
“Money that’s been sweated out of a lot of poor people who couldn’t
help themselves.”
Larry shook his head.
“I can’t go back that far, Purdy――and I don’t think you ought to. The
money’s doing a good job now, whatever it did before it came to you.”
“But I think you might at least tell me who gave it. Supposing it
happens to be somebody that I’d rather die than take it from? There’s a
bunch of just such fellows here in Sheddon.”
“Don’t you lose any sleep about that. When the thing was put up to
me, I asked myself just one question, and that was if I’d take it if
that same fellow offered it to me and I needed it. That question sort
of answered itself. I’ve got a lot of that same poverty pride myself,
Purdy, but I’d have done it in a minute, if only for one reason; I
could see that it was going to be the best thing that ever happened to
that fellow to give it.”
“And you won’t tell me his name?”
“I can’t; that was the one thing he made me promise.”
“Am I never going to know it?”
“That’s up to him. And he’s right about that, too. What you don’t know
needn’t worry you, and you don’t have to feel under any obligations.
Now, let’s get to work on this descrip. It’s pretty stiff for
to-morrow.”
It was perhaps a week beyond this talk, one evening when Larry was
putting on his coat to go over to the _Micrometer_ office with his
athletic notes, that Purdick looked up from his book to say:
“Seeing much of Dickie Maxwell these days, Donnie?”
Larry shook his head. As a matter of fact, he had been seeing far too
little of Dick since the Zeta Omegas had taken him in. For the first
week or two Dick had dropped in at the Man-o’-War every evening or so.
But the “drop-ins” had grown farther and farther apart as time went on,
until now they had stopped altogether.
“No, I don’t see him very often, except on the campus,” Larry admitted.
“What makes you ask?”
“It’s none of my business,” Purdick went on rather hesitantly, “but
he’s running with a pretty rapid bunch. Did you ever hear of the
‘Mixers’?”
“No; what is it?”
“It’s a private club, and it meets over in town. That ought to tell you
all you need to know about it.”
“It doesn’t.” Apart from athletics and his job on the _Micrometer_,
Larry knew little of what went on outside of his classroom work.
Little Purdick was staring at the darkened window; a habit he had when
he had to say something that he didn’t want to say. And what he said
didn’t explain much――except by inference.
“We can give the frats credit for one thing, anyway,” he remarked.
“They don’t allow card-playing for money in the houses.”
“Gee!” said Larry, with a gasp; “are you trying to tell me that this
‘Mixer’ thing is a gambling club?”
“That’s what you hear whispered about it.”
“And Dick Maxwell belongs to it?”
“I’m afraid he does. Anyway, he runs with that sort of a crowd.”
“I don’t believe it――I can’t believe it, Purdy!” said Larry; but when
he left the house a few minutes later to breast his way through a
softly falling snow to the newspaper office on the other side of the
river, he knew that his last word to Purdick had been more of a hope
than a conviction.
VII
IN WHICH DICK MIXES IT
March at Old Sheddon, which had come in like a lion, was promising to
go out like a lamb. By the middle of the month the snow was all gone
and the athletic field was beginning to dry out enough to let the teams
get a little outdoor work.
Keeping up his job as athletic reporter for the student daily, Larry
was always on hand when there was anything doing on the field, and as
soon as Coach Brock began to organize the teams and squads, he was
given a chance to train for the next year’s ’Varsity foot-ball.
Ordinarily, you’d say, any fellow would jump at a chance like that,
coming while he was still in his Freshman year, and Larry, who had all
along been hoping he might make the team, was ready enough to jump.
“If you think I’m good enough,” was the way he took the bid; and after
Brock, who never coddled any of his men, had said he would probably
grow to be good enough if he worked hard, Larry left the field feeling
about three inches taller than any self-respecting measuring machine
would have recorded his stature. One of the ambitions he had begun to
cherish, as soon as he had acquired a little of the “college spirit”
that Dick Maxwell had tried so hard to hammer into him at the beginning
of the year, was to make the ’Varsity foot-ball, and all through the
year he had been hoping that Coach Brock wouldn’t forget the November
game with Rockford Poly and the part in it that one Larry Donovan had
taken.
Little Purdick, who had an almost uncanny knack of face-reading, knew
instantly what had happened as soon as Larry entered their joint room
in the Man-o’-War.
“So Brock has picked you, has he?” he said, as Larry flung his cap and
dropped into a chair. “Where’s he playing you?”
“I don’t know,” said Larry; “I guess it will be right half. That’s the
job I know best.”
“Tickled purple, I suppose?” put in Purdick with his queer little grin.
“You’ve said it, Purdy; hits me right where I live. It’s going to take
a lot of time, but I’d rather sit up nights than miss it.”
“I’ll help you all I can in the ‘boning,’” Purdick offered, out of
the depths of a loyalty to his big room-mate which had been steadily
growing ever since the night when Larry had bundled him in blankets
and carried him down two flights of stairs to chuck him into the hired
auto. “You must turn all your copying and problem drawing over to me. I
can do ’em just as well as not.”
“You’re a pretty good little old rat, Purdy, and I’ll lick the fellow
that says you’re not. Has Dick been over?”
“Not since last night, after you’d gone to the ‘_Mike_’ office.”
“Did he say he wanted to see me for anything particular?”
“No, he didn’t say much of anything; just asked for you, and then
mooned around a bit with his hands in his pockets and went away.”
Knowing well Purdick’s peculiar gift for reading faces, Larry pushed
the inquiry farther.
“You’re pretty good at guessing what’s in the back part of a fellow’s
head, Purdy. Was there anything the matter with Dick?”
“If you ask me, I’ll say there was. He looked mighty sober――for him.”
Larry hung upon his heel, so to speak. Though he had had a number of
invitations, he had never yet set foot inside of the Zeta Omega house.
Should he go and look Dick up? At this time in the evening he would
probably be in the frat house. Larry thought he’d better go over. For
old times’ sake, if for nothing else, he might take that much trouble.
It was just coming on to dusk when he left Mrs. Grant’s, and as he was
unlatching the gate a slender figure with its head down and its hands
in its pockets came along the sidewalk.
“Dick!” exclaimed Larry; “I was just going over to the Omegs’ to hunt
you up.” Then, as he got his first good look at Dick’s face: “Great
cats!――what under the sun have you been doing to yourself?”
Dick turned his face away.
“Would you――would you mind taking a little hike with me, Larry?” he
asked.
“Sure I won’t; it’ll seem like old times. Which way?”
Dick set the direction and the pace without saying anything. The course
led out Maple Avenue to the country road leading to the bridge whose
portal arch bore in figures two feet high the numerals of their class.
For the entire mile they tramped along side by side in silence. Dick
did not speak, and Larry, borrowing something from that manhood which
he was just touching on its hither side, respected his companion’s
silence.
It was quite dark when they came to the bridge, though there was a
slender sickle of a new moon hanging a few degrees above the western
horizon. The bridge approach was guarded by a low concrete wall, and
when they reached the wall Dick sat down on it.
“You haven’t had your supper yet, I know, and I won’t keep you very
long,” he said in a sort of strained voice. Then he went on: “I――I’ve
brought you out here to tell you good-bye, Larry. I’m canned――sent
home.”
“What!” Larry almost shouted the word.