With the complete arrival of the spring came also a lessening of
Dink's requested appearances at Faculty meetings, his little evening
chats in The Roman's study on matters of disciplinary interpretation
and the occasional summons through the gates of Avernus to quail
before the all-seeing eye.
It was not that the spirit of Spartacus was faint, or that his enmity
had weakened toward The Roman--who, of course, without the slightest
doubt, was always the persecutor responsible for his summons before
the courts of injustice. The truth was, Stover had suddenly begun to
age and to desire to put from himself youthful things. This
extraordinary phenomenon that somehow does happen was in some measure
a reflex action.
Ever since the stormy afternoon on which he had decided against his
own eleven, he had slowly come to realize that he had won a peculiar
place in the estimation of the school--somewhat of the dignity of the
incorruptible judges that existed in former days. He became in a small
way a sort of court of arbitration before which questions of more or
less gravity were submitted. This deference at first embarrassed, then
amused, then finally pleased him with an acute, mannish pleasure.
The consequence was that Stover, who until this time had only looked
forward and up at the majestic shadows of the fourth and fifth
formers, now looked backward and down, and became pleasurably aware
that leagues below him was the large body of the first and second
forms. Having perceived this new adjustment he woke with a start and,
rubbing his eyes, took stock of his amazing knowledge of life and
again said to himself that now, finally, he certainly must have
arrived at man's estate.
On top of which, having been asked to referee several disputes in his
character of Honest John Stover, Dink, while holding himself in
reserve to direct operations on a dignified and colossal scale against
the Natural Enemy, decided that it was unbecoming of a man of his
position, age and reputation, who had the entree of the Upper House,
to go skipping about the midnight ways, in undignified costume, with
such rank shavers as Pebble Stone and Dennis de B. de B. Finnegan.
So when Dennis arrived after lights, like a will-o'-the-wisp, with a
whispered:
"I say, Dink, all ready."
Stover replied:
"All ready in bed."
"What," said Dennis aghast, "you're not with us?"
"No."
"Aren't you feeling well?"
"First rate."
"But I say, Dink, there's half a dozen of us. We've got all the
laundry bags in the house heaped up just outside of Beekstein's door
and, I say, we're going to pile 'em all up on top of him and then jump
on and pie him, and scoot for our rooms before old Bundy can jump the
stairs and nab us. It'll be regular touch and go--a regular lark! Come
on!"
A snore answered him.
"You won't come?"
"No."
"Are you mad at me?"
"No, I'm sleepy!"
"Sleepy!" said Dennis in such amazement that he no longer had any
strength to argue, and left the room convinced that Stover was
heroically concealing an agony of pain.
Stover immediately settled his tired body, sunk his nose to the level
of the covers and floated blissfully off into the land of dreams. The
next night and the next it was the same. For a whole month Dink slept,
wasting not a one of the precious moments of the night, sleeping
through the slow-moving recitations, sleeping on the green turf of
afternoons, pillowed on Tough McCarty or the Tennessee Shad, and
watching others scampering around the diamond in incomprehensible
activity; but the month was the month of April and his years sixteen.
In the first week of May Stover awakened, the drowsiness dropped from
him and the spirit of perpetual motion again returned. Still, the
distance between himself and his past remained. He had changed, become
graver, more laconic, moving with sedateness, like Garry Cockrell,
whose tricks of speech and gestures he imitated, holding himself
rather aloof from the populace, curiously conscious that the change
had come, and sometimes looking back with profound melancholy on the
youth that had now passed irrevocably away.
During this period of somewhat fragile self-importance, the
acquaintance with Tough McCarty had strengthened into an eternal
friendship in a manner that had a certain touch of humor.
McCarty, after the close of the football season, had repeatedly sought
out his late antagonist, but, though Dink at the bottom of his soul
was thrilled with the thought that here at last was the friend of
friends, the Damon to his Pythias, the chum who was to stand shoulder
to his shoulder, and so on, still there was too much self-conscious
pride in him to yield immediately to this feeling.
McCarty perceived the reserve without quite analyzing it, and was
puzzled at the barriers that still intervened.
During the winter, when Dink was resolutely set in the pursuit of that
beau-ideal, which had a marked resemblance with a certain creation of
Bret Harte's, Mr. Jack Hamlin, "gentleman sport," as Dennis would have
called him, McCarty found little opportunity for friendly intercourse.
He disapproved of many of Dink's friendships, not so much from a
moralistic point of view as from Stover's not exercising the principle
of selection. As this phase was intensified and Stover became the
object of criticism of his classmates for hanging at the heels of
fifth-formers and neglecting his own territory, McCarty resolved that
the plain duty of a friend required him to administer a moral lecture.
This heroic resolve threw him into confusion for a week, for, in the
first place, he had been accustomed to receive rather than to give
words of warning and, in the second place, he was fully aware of the
difficulties of opening up the subject at all.
After much anxious and gloomy cogitation he hit upon a novel plan
and, approaching Stover at the end of the last recitation, gave him a
mysterious wink.
"What's up?" said Dink instantly.
McCarty pulled him aside:
"I've got a couple of A. No. 1 millionaire cigars," he said in a
whisper. "If you've got nothing better, why, come along."
"I'm yours on the jump," said Dink, trying to give to his words a joy
which he was far from feeling in his stomach.
"You smoke cigars?"
"Do I!"
"Come on, then!"
It was the last day of March, which had gone out like a lamb, leaving
the ground still chill and moist with the memory of departed snows.
They went down by the pond in the shelter of the grove and McCarty
proudly produced two cigars coated with gilt foil.
"They look the real thing to me," said Dink, eying the long
projectiles with a rakish, professional look.
Now, Dink had never smoked a cigar in his life and was alarmed at the
thought of the task before him; but he was resolved to die a lingering
death rather than allow that humiliating secret to be discovered.
"You bet they're the real thing," said Tough McCarty, slipping off
the foil. "Real, black beauties! Get the flavor?"
Dink approached the ominous black cigar to his nose, sniffed it
rapturously and cocked a knowing eye.
"Aha!"
"Real Havanas!"
"They certainly smell good!"
"Swiped 'em off my brother-in-law, forty-five centers."
"I believe it. Say, what do you call 'em?"
"Invincibles."
The name threw a momentary chill over Stover, but he instantly
recovered.
"I say, we ought to have a couple of hatpins," he said, turning the
cigar in his fingers.
"What for?"
"Smoke 'em to the last puff!"
"We'll use our penknives."
"All right--after you."
Stover cautiously drew in his first puff. To his surprise nothing
immediate happened.
"How is it?" said McCarty.
"Terrific!"
"Do you inhale?"
"Sometimes," said Stover, with an inconsequential wave of his hand.
This gave McCarty his opening; besides, he was deceived by Stover's
complete manner.
"Dink, I'm afraid you're smoking too much," he said
earnestly, puffing on his cigar.
"Oh, no," said Dink, immensely flattered by this undeserved accusation
from McCarty, who smoked forty-five-cent cigars.
"Yes, you are. I know it. Trouble with you is, old boy, you never do
anything by halves. I know you."
"Oh, well," said Stover loftily.
"You're smoking too much, and that's not all, Dink. I--I've wanted to
have a chance at you for a long while, and now I'm going for you."
"Hello----"
"Now, look here, boy," said Tough McCarty, filling the air with the
blue smoke, "I'm not a mammy boy nor a goody-goody, and I don't like
preaching; but you've got too much ahead of you, old rooster, to go
and throw it away."
"What do you mean?" said Dink, champing furiously on his cigar, as he
had seen several stage villains do.
"I mean, old socks," said Tough, frowning with his effort--"I mean
there are some fellows here who are worth while and some who are not,
who won't do you any good, who don't amount to a row of pins, and
aren't up to you in any way you look at it."
"Are you criticising my friends?" said Stover, who had just passed an
even more unflattering judgment, due to the Welsh-rabbit episode.
"I am," said McCarty, passing his hand over his forehead with
difficulty.
Stover was just about to make an angry reply when he looked at
McCarty, who suddenly leaned back against the tree. At the same moment
a feeling of insecurity overtook him. He started again to make an
angry answer and then all pugnacious thoughts left him. He sat down
suddenly, his head swam on his shoulders and about him the woods
danced in drunken reelings, sweeping grotesque boughs over him. Only
the earth felt good, the damp, muddy earth, which he all at once
convulsively embraced.
"Dink!"
The sound was far off, weak and fraught with mortal distress.
"Has it hit you, too?"
Dink's answer was a groan. He opened one eye; McCarty, prone at his
side, lay on his stomach, burying his head in his arms.
At this moment a light patter sounded about them.
"It's beginning to rain."
"I don't care!"
"Neither do I."
Stover lay clutching the earth, that somehow wouldn't kept still,
that moved under him, that swayed and rose and fell. Then things began
to rush through his brain: armies of football-clad warriors, The Roman
whirling by on one leg of his chair, Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan
prancing impishly, sticking out his tongue at him, whole flocks of
Sunday preachers gesticulating in his direction, crowds of faces,
legs, arms, an old, yellow dog with a sausage in his mouth----
Suddenly near him McCarty began to move.
"Where are you going?" he managed to say. "For Heaven's sake, don't
leave me."
"To the pond--drink."
McCarty, on his hands and knees, began to crawl. Stover raised himself
up and staggered after. The rain came down unheeded--nothing could add
to his misery. They reached the pond and drank long copious drinks,
plunging their dripping heads in the water.
Gradually the vertigo passed. Faint and weak they sat propped up
opposite each other, solemnly, sadly, glance to glance, while
unnoticed the rain spouted from the ends of their noses.
"Oh, Dink!" said Tough at last.
"Don't!"
"I thought I was going to die."
"I'm not sure of it yet."
"I had a lot I wanted to say to you," said Tough painfully, feeling
the opportunity was slipping away.
"You said I was smoking too much," said Dink maliciously.
"Ugh! Don't--no, that wasn't it."
"Shut up, old cockalorum," said Dink pleasantly. "I know all you want
to say--found it out myself--it's all in one word--swelled head!"
"Oh!" said Tough deprecatingly, now that Dink had turned accuser.
"I've been a little, fluffy ass!" said Dink, marvelously stimulated to
repentance by the episode which had gone before. "But that's over. My
head's subsiding."
"What?"
The two burst into sympathetic laughter.
"You--you didn't mind my sailing into you, old horse?" said Tough.
"Not now."
McCarty looked mystified.
"Tough," said Dink with a queer look, "if you had smoked that black
devil and I hadn't--all would have been over between us. As it is----"
"Well?" said Tough.
"As it is--Tough, here's my hand--let's swear an eternal friendship!"
"Put it there!"
"I say, Tough----"
"What?"
"Now, on your honor--did you ever smoke a cigar before?"
"Never," said McCarty. "And I'll never smoke another. So help me."
"Nor I. I say, what was that name?"
"Invincibles."
"That's where we should have stopped!"
"Dink, I begin to feel a little chilly."
"Tough, that's a good sign; let's up."
Arm in arm, laughing uproariously, they went, still a little shaky,
back toward the school.
"I say, Tough," said Dink, throwing his arm affectionately about the
other's shoulders. "I've been pretty much of a jackass, haven't I?"
"Oh, come, now!"
"I'm afraid I'm not built for a sport," said Dink, with a lingering
regret. "But I say, Tough----"
"What?"
"I may be the prodigal son, but you're the devil of a moral lecturer,
you are!"