THE NIGHT OF THE BONFIRE
If Tony had enjoyed the sensation of expanding under appreciation the
night before the game, it reached fatigue point the night after. It
falls to few boys, even for so short a time, to be the hero of his
school; but it is one of the pleasantest experiences that can befall
him. It gives the hero a feeling of kinship with the mighty conquerors
of the past; a sense, intense if fleeting, of being one with Alexander,
with Cæsar, with Napoleon. And though Deering bore his honors modestly,
for this once he enjoyed them to the full; with the full-bloodedness
of youth, he luxuriated in a sense of satisfaction with the world
in general and with himself in particular. He was not ordinarily
self-important, but it would have been an inhuman boy who remained
indifferent to the incense of praise he received after that Boxford
game. To have turned what seemed certain defeat into unexpected victory
was a piece of good luck for which he was grateful, as well as he was
grateful for the undoubted fact that he could run faster than most boys
of his age.
Immediately after the game a score of boys, rushing across the lines,
had laid bodily hold of him, hoisted him on their shoulders; and with
similar groups, who had performed like service for other members of
the team, they marched off the field, singing the school song at the
top of their hoarse voices, in dreadful tune but with an enthusiasm
that atoned for all defects. Jack Stenton was in the midst of them, and
he literally hugged Tony when the boys put him down at the entrance to
the Gymnasium locker-room. “I’m glad it fell to you, young ‘un,” he
said; “it was a great run that will be remembered as long as boys play
football at Deal.”
After his shower Tony dressed, joined Kit and Jimmie Lawrence, and
wandered about the campus with them, enjoying to the fullest the
sensation of universal proprietorship. At half-past six, they went
again to the Inn to dine with Mrs. Wilson and the girls.
Kit had a black eye and a swollen nose that hurt considerably, but
which he would not have foregone for the world; they made him feel
as well as look a martyr to the cause. The girls were beaming, quite
unaffectedly proud to be the guests of such heroes. Kit’s bruises
seemed to affect Miss Worthington rather as ornaments than otherwise,
to lend a fascination not afforded by his natural good looks, for she
acquiesced this time in the pairing off on the way to the school after
the dinner, for the celebration, that afforded him an opportunity for
the much desired tête-à-tête. Mrs. Wilson appropriated Jimmie, so that
Tony and Betty were left to walk together.
Alone with him, Betty ceased to beam; in fact, became shy and
unwontedly silent. Tony liked the shyness, thought her sweeter so. He
felt a pronounced sentimental thrill as he gave her his hand to help
her across an insignificant ditch.
“It must be wonderful,” she said at last to break the awkward silence,
“it must be wonderful to win a game.”
“It is,” Tony laughed ingenuously. “Do you know, Miss Wilson, I feel
half ashamed of myself. I so hoped something like that might happen.
I suppose a fellow ought to think of the game and the school, and I
reckon most of ‘em do; but two years ago, I was the means of our losing
the Boxford game, and I tell you it took me a long time to get over the
feeling that gave me.”
“I know,” said Betty. “Kit has told me about that.”
“Well, it was a long time ago; but I never did really get over it.”
“But it wasn’t your fault,” protested Betty.
“Oh, yes, in a sense it was; if I had stuck to the ball tighter, I
reckon it wouldn’t have happened. But that sort of made me feel that I
wanted a special chance to-day.”
“Well, you got it,” said the girl, with a smile. “Of course, one cannot
help wanting to do things one’s self. I suppose we are all a little bit
selfish.”
They chatted on then more at ease, until they reached the great field
behind the Chapel where the celebration was to take place.
Every light in the school building was blazing, and a line of Chinese
lanterns had been strung to fine effect up and down the driveway and
along the terraces. In the center of the playing-field back of the
school an enormous bonfire had been constructed, of drygoods boxes,
barrels, fence rails, and various other combustibles, including an
untenanted chicken-house that an amateur farmer of the Second Form had
contributed in a genuine spirit of sacrifice. Around the bonfire were
gathered three hundred boys of the school, a score or so of the masters
and many of the Old Boys and friends who had stayed over. On the
outskirts of the crowd there was a complement of sundry enthusiastic
country urchins, who for the night had buried the proverbial hatchet
usually in play between them and the school, and were rejoicing lustily
in the honor that had fallen upon the entire community.
As Mrs. Wilson’s party arrived, Billy Wendell applied a match to a mass
of kerosene-soaked excelsior, and the flames started up the pile with
an avidity, it seemed, that was impelled by sympathy with the mounting
spirits of the boys. A dozen rockets were fired off simultaneously,
three hundred Roman candles were exploded, and a score of red fires
were lighted in various parts of the field. There was a sudden blaze of
splendid light.
Soon the magnificent bonfire dominated the interest. The boys circled
about it, hand in hand, shouting, cheering, singing. The school bells
rang out joyously on the frosty night; the strains of the school songs
echoed and re-echoed, until was caught up in full chorus by those
hundreds of happy voices, the triumphal song,—
“Palms of victory, palms of glory.”
Finally they hoisted Billy Wendell, the captain, up on the wooden
rostrum that was brought out on such occasions; and after more wild
and intense cheering when the cheer leaders had sunk back almost
exhausted by their efforts, they gave him a chance to speak. “Fellows,”
said Billy, with not more than the usual oratorical grace but with an
effect that many a trained orator might have envied, “Fellows, I guess
we’re all glad we won. I can’t make a speech; and anyway there’s some
one else here to whom our victory to-day really is due. And I move we
have Tony Deering up here, and tell him what we think of him.”
Frantic howls as Billy leaped down, and a dozen boys hustled Tony
with rough-and-ready good will up to the rostrum, paying absolutely
no attention to his protests. Tony’s presence of mind quite deserted
him as he faced the encircling crowd of eager, flame-brightened
faces,—also the feeling that there was anything heroic in being a
hero. As they cheered and cheered him to the echo, he had a moment in
which to gather his wits. “Fellows,” he said at last, when the crowd
had become quiet, “I’m mighty grateful for the way in which you’ve
treated me. But I don’t deserve it. The ball popped into my arms in the
scrimmage, and I just ran. Any other fellow would have done the same.
What really won,” he added, “was that the team had made a good defense
against a whirlwind attack at critical moments. And that’s the reason
that when we got a chance to score, it meant a victory. Ned Clavering
scored the winning point by kicking the goal.”
With that he jumped down, struggled through the crowd, and slipped
unobserved to the outskirts of the circle. Other boys were being
elevated to the rostrum, so that attention was diverted from him. For
himself, his heart was full, and for the moment he wanted to be alone.
He could not hear the speeches from where he stood, but the scene
was before him like the stage at a play. Suddenly he noticed,
standing quite near him, apart from the jubilant crowd, the lonely,
pathetic little figure of the despised Finch. The boy was gazing
at Tony intently, with an expression of pathetic admiration, the
self-forgetting admiration sometimes experienced when we behold a
noble or a fine action in which we have had no part, of which we are
incapable. There was longing in the boy’s pale watery little eyes, and
his mouth was twisted out of shape, as though it were not fashioned to
express the unwonted emotions that stirred his soul. As Tony glanced
at him, with a flash of intuition, it seemed to him that he thoroughly
understood the half-starved soul of Jacob Finch, his pathetic and
terrible loneliness, his unreasoned terrors of life, his ardent
unsatisfied longings for the boyish friendliness and companionship
about him in which he had no part.... Involuntarily Tony moved toward
him, and obeying an impulse quite devoid of that repulsion that Finch
usually stirred in him, he threw his arm carelessly over the boy’s
shoulder. “It’s a great sight, kid; ain’t it?” he said.
Finch was trembling as if he had a chill. His eyes glanced for a moment
into Tony’s intensely, then shifted, and he answered in a queer hoarse
tone, “I ‘spose so. I dunno.” And then he added, fiercely, “But I’m
glad—I’m _glad you_ made that run.” The next instant, as if his own
speech had frightened him, he shook Tony’s arm from his shoulder, and
slipped away into the shadows. Tony saw him no more that night.
“Poor kid!” he thought, and his eyes filled with tears. He had seen
unhappiness before, in his own home, and the memory of it was bitter.
Here at school he had forgotten it all; the world had seemed a bright
and a happy place, and he was happy in it. Poor Finch brought back to
him intensely the realization that life was not altogether as free from
care, as full of affection and kindness and joy, as this gay scene
and jubilant celebration would indicate. There was bitterness in the
thought, and yet, in a way, he was not sorry it had come. It seemed to
him now that for the last few days he had been absolutely absorbed in
himself, in fact that he had been living self-absorbed for a long time;
that despite his generous words from the rostrum, what he had really
been glad of in the victory was, that it had been so largely due to him.
Suddenly he gave the tree against which he was standing a vigorous
kick. What a fool he was! to be silly with delight at winning a
football game when just across the hall from him there lived such livid
boyish misery!
At length he resought his companions, and when at last the celebration
was over, and the great blazing pile of the bonfire had collapsed, he
walked back again with Kit’s party to the Inn. Both Betty and he were
quieter now than before. She was shy again, and this time he could
think of nothing to say. Their commonplaces about the celebration fell
flat.
“You are going to-morrow?” he asked abruptly, as they turned into the
grounds of the Inn.
“Yes,” she answered, “quite early. Bab and I are at school too, you
know?”
“Yes, I know. I wish I could see you sometimes....”
“Well, can’t you?... You’ll be coming home with Kit some holiday.”
“Perhaps I will. I hope so.” He was silent for a moment, then with a
strange shyness, he said, “Will you—will you give me those violets?”
Betty was silent. She hesitated for a moment, then unpinned the violets
from her dress, and gave them to him. Their hands met in the dark,
and fluttered in a little clasp for the moment. Then Tony slipped
the violets into his pocket. They were at the Inn steps, and to the
surprise of all, he declined to come in, but bade them good-bye there.
Instead of going back to the school, he struck across the meadows to
the beach. It had cleared at nightfall, and the stars were shining in a
deep blue sky, and a lovely young crescent moon, cloud-clung, hung in
the west. Tony walked up the beach alone, thinking, feeling intensely.
The silent somber beauty of the night, the great stars, the lazy splash
of the little foam-flecked waves upon the sands, the cool frosty
dark, appealed to him deeply. He could scarcely have told of what he
was thinking: of various things—the day’s events, the celebration,
Betty and the violets she had given him, Finch and his hungry eyes,
life. The world seemed beautiful to him, but strange and sad.... Years
afterward he was to recall that night, and remember that it had marked
a definite moment in the process of his coming to himself.
At the end of the beach he met Mr. Morris, who was also walking alone.
“Hello,” exclaimed the master, “what are you doing here? The conqueror
is tired of plaudits, eh?”
“What brings _you_, magister?... I wanted to be alone I guess.”
“And I,” said Morris, with a smile. “Sometimes a day of excitement
reacts on me like this. I need to round it off with a walk by myself.
Let’s go back together though, if you have had enough of yourself as I
have.”
“Quite enough,” said Tony, as he turned with the older man back toward
the school.
For a while they said nothing, but eventually the master, by tactful
questions, led the boy to talk of himself. There followed one of those
long quiet conversations that come so rarely, but mean so much to boy
and master when they come. When they reached the school all of the
lights were out save for a glow at the spot where the bonfire had been.
They shook hands and parted at the door of Morris’s study.
The schoolmaster, when he was alone, instead of lighting his lamp,
stood for a long while before the glowing embers of the fire on his
hearth, absorbed in his thoughts. He had had a bad day, a stupid day
after the excitement of the game, for there had come upon him one of
those unaccountable and unreasonable moods of depression wherein it
seemed to him that he was wasting his life in the obscurity of a petty
profession, wasting the talents, abilities, ambitions, that in college
days had promised a brilliant career. He knew it was but a mood, but
he had not been able to shake it off. Other fellows, classmates of
his at school and college, had been back, with their good-natured,
ill-chosen greetings that drove the iron deeper into his soul: “Old
Morris—holding the fort—still on the old camp-ground, eh?” and the
like.
As he stood before his dying fire that night, he recalled the mood
of the afternoon and marveled to realize that it was gone. He asked
himself the reason for its going, but he knew the answer. He knew in
his heart that the best he was, the best he could be, counted here at
Deal as much, perhaps, more, than it could count elsewhere; and that it
counted despite the obscurity, despite the lack of recognition where
he would so keenly have valued it, from those who had expected good
things from him in days gone by. And he knew that the real compensation
was in the response he got from, the stimulus he gave to, boys like
Tony Deering. Once in a while it was given him to see the meaning of
his life, as in a vision. He knew to-night, as perhaps he had never
definitely put it to himself before, that he would stay on at Deal
for good and all, give his best, not only for a time as for years he
had somehow supposed it would only be, but his best for as long as he
lived....