One Wednesday afternoon, as Dink was lolling gorgeously on his
window-seat, sniffing the alert air and waiting for the moment to go
skipping over to the 'Varsity field for the game with a visiting
school, a voice from below hailed him:
"Oh, you, Rinky Dink!"
Stover languidly extended his head and beheld Tough McCarty.
"Hello there, Dink."
"Hello yourself."
"Come over to the Woodhull and meet my family."
"What!" said Dink in consternation.
"They're over for the game. Hurry up now and help me out!"
Dink tried frantically to call him back, but Tough, as though to shut
off a refusal, disappeared around the house. Dink returned to the room
in a rage.
"What's the matter?" said the Tennessee Shad.
"I've got to go over and meet a lot of women," said Dink in disgust.
"Confound Tough McCarty! That's a rotten trick to play on me. I'll
wring his neck!"
"Go on now, make yourself beautiful!" said the Tennessee Shad,
delighted. "Remember the whole school will be watching you."
"Shut up!" said Dink savagely, making the grand toilet, which
consisted in putting on a high collar, exchanging his belt for a pair
of suspenders and donning a pair of patent-leathers. "The place for
women is at home! It's an outrage!"
He tied his necktie with a vicious lunge, ran the comb once through
the tangled hair, glanced at his hands, decided that they would pass
muster, slapped on his hat and went out, kicking the door open.
At the Woodhull, Tough hailed him from his window. Dink went up, bored
and rebellious. The door opened, he found himself in Tough McCarty's
room in the vortex of a crowd of fellow-sufferers. Over by the
window-seat two fluffy figures, with skirts and hats on, were seated.
He shook hands with both; one was Mrs. McCarty, the other was the
daughter, he wasn't quite sure which. He said something about the
delight which the meeting afforded him, and, gravitating into a
corner, fell upon Butsey White, with whom he gravely shook hands.
"Isn't this awful?" said Butsey in a confidential whisper.
"Frightful!"
"What the deuce's got into Tough?"
"It's a rotten trick!"
"Let's hook it."
"All right. Slide toward the door."
But at this moment, when deliverance seemed near, Tough bore down and,
taking Stover by the arm, drew him aside.
"I say, stick by me on this, old man," he said desperately. "Take 'em
to the game with me, will you?"
"To the game!" cried Dink in horror. "Oh, Tough, come now, I say, I'm
no fusser. I'm tongue-tied and pigeon-toed. Oh, I say, old man, do get
some one else!"
But as Tough McCarty kept a firm grip on the lapel of his coat Dink
suddenly found himself, with the departure of the other guests, a
helpless captive. The first painful scraps of conversation passed in a
blur. Before he knew it he was crossing the campus, actually walking,
in full view of the school, at the side of Miss McCarty.
Her unconsciousness was paralyzing, perfectly paralyzing! Dink,
struggling for a word in the vast desert of his brain, was overwhelmed
with the ease with which his companion ran on. He stole a glance under
the floating azure veil and decided, from the way the brilliant blue
parasol swung from her hand, that she must be a woman of the
world--thirty, at least.
He extracted his hands precipitately from the trousers pockets in
which they had been plunged and buttoned the last button of his coat.
Somehow, his hands seemed to wander all over his anatomy, like jibs
that had broken loose. He tried to clasp them behind his back, like
the Doctor, or to insert one between the first and second button of
his coat, the characteristic pose of the great Corsican, according to
his history. For a moment he found relief by slipping them, English
fashion, into his coat pockets; but at the thought of being detected
thus by the Tennessee Shad he withdrew them as though he had struck a
hornet's nest.
The school, meanwhile, had gamboled past, all snickering, of course,
at his predicament. In this state of utter misery he arrived at last
at the field, where, to his amazement, quite a group of Fifth-Formers
came up and surrounded Miss McCarty, chattering in the most
bewildering manner. Dink seized the opportunity to drop back, draw a
long sigh, reach madly behind for his necktie, which had climbed
perilously near the edge of his collar, and shoot back his cuffs. He
saw the Tennessee Shad and Dennis de Boru grinning at him from the
crowd, and showed them his fist with a threatening gesture.
Then the game began and he was seated by Miss McCarty, unutterably
relieved that the tension of the contest had diverted the entire
attention of the school from his particular sufferings.
The excitement of the play for the first time gave him an opportunity
to study his companion. His first estimate was undoubtedly correct;
she was plainly a woman of the world. No one else could sit at such
perfect ease, the cynosure of so many eyes. Her dress was some
wonderful creation, from Paris, no doubt, that rustled with an
alluring sound and gave forth a pleasant perfume.
The more he looked the more his eye approved. She was quite
unusual--quite. She had style--a very impressive style. He had never
before remembered any one who held herself quite so well, or whose
head carried itself so regally. There was something Spanish, too,
about her black hair and eyes and the flush of red in her cheeks.
Having perceived all this Dink began to recover from his panic and,
with a desire to wipe out his past awkwardness, began busily to search
for some subject with which gracefully to open up the conversation.
At that moment his eye fell upon his boot carelessly displayed and, to
his horror, beheld there a gaping crack. This discovery drove all
desire for conversation at once out of his head. By a covert movement
he drew the offending shoe up under the shadow of the other.
"You hate this, don't you?" said a laughing voice.
He turned, blushing, to find Miss McCarty's dark eyes alive with
amusement.
"Oh, now, I say, really----" he began.
"Of course, you loathe being dragged out this way," she said, cutting
in. "Confess!"
Dink began to laugh guiltily.
"That's better," said Miss McCarty approvingly. "Now we shall get on
better."
"How did you know?" said Dink, immensely mystified.
Miss McCarty wisely withheld this information, and before he knew it
Dink was in the midst of a conversation, all his embarrassment forgot.
The game ended--it had never been really important--and Dink found
himself, actually to his regret, moving toward the Lodge.
There, as he was saying good-by with a Chesterfieldian air, Tough
plucked him by the sleeve.
"I say, Dink, old man," he said doubtfully, "I'd like you to come over
and grub with us. But I don't want to haul you over, you know----"
"My dear boy, I should love to!" said Dink, squeezing his arm eagerly.
"Honest?"
"Straight goods!"
"Bully for you!"
He had three-quarters of an hour to dress before dinner. He went to
his room at a gallop, upsetting Beekstein and Gumbo on his volcanic
way upward. Then for half an hour the Kennedy was thrown into a
turmoil as the half-clothed figure of Dink Stover flitted from room to
room, burrowed into closets, ransacked bureaus and departed, bearing
off the choicest articles of wearing apparel. Meanwhile, the corridors
resounded with such unintelligible cries as these:
"Who's got a collar, fourteen and a half?"
"Darn you, Dink, bring back my pants!"
"Who swiped my blue coat?"
"Who's been pulling my things to pieces?"
"Hi there, bring back my shoes!"
"Dinged if he hasn't gone off with my cuff buttons, too!"
"Oh you robber!"
"Body snatcher!"
"Dink, the fusser!"
"Who'd have believed it!"
Meanwhile, Dink, returning to his room laden with the spoils of the
house, proceeded to adorn himself on the principle of selection,
discarding the Gutter Pup's trousers for the gala breeches of the
Tennessee Shad, donning the braided cutaway of Lovely Mead's in
preference to an affair of Slush Randolph's which was too tight in the
chest.
The Tennessee Shad, the Gutter Pup and Dennis de Brian de Boru watched
the proceedings, brownie fashion, across the transom, volunteering
advice.
"Why, look at Dink wash!"
"It's a regular annual, isn't it?"
"Look out for my pants!"
"I say, Dink, your theory's wrong. You want to begin by parting your
hair--soak it into place, you know."
Stover, struck by this expert advice, approached the mirror and seized
his comb and brush with determination. But the liberties of a
rebellious people, unmolested for sixteen years, were not to be
suddenly abolished. The more he brushed the more the indignant locks
rose up in revolt. He broke the comb and threw it down angrily.
"Wet your hair," said the Tennessee Shad.
"Soak it in water," said the Gutter Pup.
"Soak it in witch-hazel," said Dennis. "It will make it more
fragrant."
Dink hesitated:
"Won't it smell too much?"
"Naw. It evaporates."
Stover seized the bottle and inundated his head, made an exact part in
the middle and drew the sides back in the fashion of pigeon wings.
"Now clap on a dicer," said the Gutter Pup approvingly, "and she'll
come up and feed from your hand."
"Are you really in love?" said Dennis softly.
Stover, ignoring all comments, tied a white satin four-in-hand with
forget-me-not embossings, which had struck his fancy in Fatty Harris'
room, and inserted a stick-pin of Finnegan's.
"You ought to have a colored handkerchief to stick in your breast
pocket," said the Gutter Pup, who began to yield to the excitement.
"Up his sleeve is more English, don't you know," said Dennis.
Stover stood brazenly before the mirror, looking himself over. The
scrubbing he had inflicted on his face had left red, shining spots in
prominent places, while his hair, slicked back and plastered down,
gave him somewhat the look of an Italian barber on a Sunday off. He
felt the general glistening effect without, in his innocence, knowing
the remedy.
"Dink, you are bee-oo-tiful!" said Dennis.
"Be careful how you sit down," said the Tennessee Shad, thinking of
the trousers.
"How are the shoes?" asked the Gutter Pup solicitously.
"Tight as mischief," said Dink, with a wry face.
"Walk on your heels."
Stover, with a last deprecating glance, opened the door and departed,
amid cheers from the contributing committee.
When he arrived at the Lodge the dusky waitress who opened the door
started back, as he dropped his hat, and sniffed the air. He went into
the parlor, spoiling his carefully-planned entrance by tripping over
the rug.
"Heavens!" said Tough, "what a smell of witch-hazel. Why, it's Dink.
What have you been doing?"
Stover felt the temperature rise to boiling.
"We had a bit of a shindy," he said desperately, trying to give it a
tragic accent, "and I bumped my head."
"Well, you look like a skinned rat," said Tough to put him thoroughly
at his ease.
The angel, however, came to his rescue with solicitous inquiries and
with such a heavenly look that Stover only regretted that he could not
appear completely done up in bandages.
They went in to dinner, where Dink was so overwhelmed by the vision
of Miss McCarty in all her transcendent charms that the effort of
swallowing became a painful physical operation.
Afterward, Tough and his mother went over to Foundation House for a
visit with the Doctor, and Dink found himself actually alone,
escorting Miss McCarty about the grounds in the favoring dusk of the
fast-closing twilight.
"Let's go toward the Green House," she said. "Will you take my cloak?"
The cloak settled the perplexing question of the hands. He wondered
uneasily why she chose that particular direction.
"Are you sure you want to go there?" he said.
"Quite," she said. "I want to see the exact spot where the historic
fight took place."
Stover moved uneasily.
"Dear me, what's the matter?"
"I never go there. I hate the place."
"Why?"
"I was miserable there," said Dink abruptly. "Hasn't Tough told you
about it?"
"Tell me yourself," said the angelic voice.
Stover felt on the instant the most overpowering desire to confide his
whole life's history, and being under the influence of a genuine
emotion as well as aided by the obliterating hour, he began straight
forward to relate the story of his months of Coventry in tense,
direct sentences, without pausing to calculate either their vividness
or their effect. Once started, he withheld nothing, neither the agony
of his pride nor the utter hopelessness of that isolation. Once or
twice he hesitated, blurting out:
"I say, does this bore you?"
And each time she answered quickly:
"No, no--go on."
They went back in the fallen night to the campus, and there he pointed
out the spot where he had stood and listened to the singing on the
Esplanade and made up his mind to return. All at once, his story ended
and he perceived, to his utter confusion, that he had been pouring out
his heart to some one whose face he couldn't see, some one who was
probably smiling at his impetuous confidence, some one whom he had met
only a few hours before.
"Oh, I say," he said in horror, "you must think me an awful fool to go
on like this."
"No."
"You made me tell you, you know," he said miserably, wondering what
she could think of him. "I never talked like this before--to any one.
I don't know what made me confide in you."
This was untrue, for he knew perfectly well what had led him to speak.
So did she and, knowing full well what was working in the tense,
awkward boy beside her, she had no feeling of offense, being at an age
when such tributes, when genuine, are valued, not scorned.
"I can just feel how you felt--poor boy," she said, perhaps not
entirely innocent of the effect of her words. "But then, you have won
out, haven't you?"
"I suppose I have," said Stover, almost suffocated by the gentleness
of her voice.
"Charlie's told me all about the rest," she said. "Every one looks up
to you now--it's quite a romance, isn't it?"
He was delighted that she saw it thus, secretly wondering if she
really knew every point that could be urged in his favor.
"I suppose I'll kick myself all over the lot to-morrow," he said,
choosing to be lugubrious.
"Why?" she said, stopping in surprise.
"For talking as I've done."
"You don't regret it?" she said softly, laying her hand on his arm.
Stover drew a long breath--a difficult one.
"No, you bet I don't," he said abruptly. "I'd tell you anything!"
"Come," she said, smiling to herself, "we must go back--but it's so
fascinating here, isn't it?"
He thought he had offended her and was in a panic.
"I say, you did not understand what I meant."
"Oh, yes, I did."
"You're not offended?"
"Not at all."
This answer left Stover in such a state of bewilderment that all
speech expired. What did she mean by that? Did she really understand
or not?
They walked a little way in silence, watching the lights that fell in
long lines across the campus, hearing through the soft night the
tinkling of mandolins and the thrumming of guitars, a vibrant,
feverish life that suddenly seemed unreal to him. They were fast
approaching the Lodge. A sudden fear came to him that she would go
without understanding what the one, the only night had been in his
life.
"I say, Miss McCarty," he began desperately.
"Yes."
"I wish I could tell you----"
"What?"
"I wish I could tell you just what a privilege it's been to meet you."
"Oh, that's very nice."
He felt he had failed. He had not expressed himself well. She did not
understand.
"I shall never forget it," he said, plunging ahead.
She stopped a little guiltily and looked at him.
"You queer boy," she said, too pleasantly moved to be severe. "You
queer, romantic boy! Why, of course you're going to visit us this
summer, and we're going to be good chums, aren't we?"
He did not answer.
"Aren't we?" she repeated, amused at a situation that was not entirely
strange.
"No!" he said abruptly, amazed at his own audacity; and with an
impulse that he had not suspected he closed the conversation and led
the way to the Lodge.
When at last he and Tough were homeward bound he felt he should die if
he did not then and there learn certain things. So he began with
Machiavellian adroitness:
"I say, Tough, what a splendid mother you've got. I didn't get half a
chance to talk to her. I say, how long will she be here?"
"They're going over to Princeton first thing in the morning," said
Tough, who was secretly relieved.
A button on the borrowed vest popped with Stover's emotion.
"How did you get on with Sis?"
"First rate. She's--she's awful sensible," said Dink.
"Oh, yes, I suppose so."
"I say," said Dink, seeing that he made no progress, "she's been all
around--had lots of experience, hasn't she?"
"Oh, she's bounded about a bit."
"Still, she doesn't seem much older than you," said Dink craftily.
"Sis--oh, she's a bit older."
"About twenty-two, I should say," said Dink hopefully.
"Twenty-four, my boy," said Tough unfeelingly. "But I say, don't give
it away; she'd bite and scratch me all over the map for telling."
Stover left him without daring to ask any more questions--he knew what
he wanted to know. He could not go to his room, he could not face the
Tennessee Shad, possessor of the trousers. He wanted to be alone--to
wander over the unseen earth, to gulp in the gentle air in long,
feverish breaths, to think over what she had said, to grow hot and
cold at the thought of his daring, to reconstruct the world of
yesterday and organize the new.
He went to the back of chapel and sat down on the cool steps, under
the impenetrable clouds of the night.
"She's twenty-four, only twenty-four," he said to himself. "I'm
sixteen, almost seventeen--that's only seven years' difference."