THE SPECTACLE
Games and girls fortunately are but interludes in schoolboy life. Were
it otherwise, it is to be feared that the specific objects for which
boys are sent away from home during such valuable years would receive
but little of their attention. There were to be no more games, except
indoor baseball and fives, until the hockey season which rarely set in
before the Christmas holidays.
The little group of boys, whose fortunes we have been following, were
not particularly interested in indoor baseball, except Jimmie, whose
athletic achievements had been altogether on the diamond in the spring.
And it was well they were not, for studies had been suffering during
the football season, and at the exams, which came the week following
the Boxford game, both Tony and Kit found that they were standing lower
in the school than they had ever stood before. Judicious advice from
the Head and a sharp letter from old General Deering, who, though he
was proud of Tony’s athletic honors, regarded them as no substitute for
scholastic achievements, kept him pretty closely at his books.
As for girls, he and Betty exchanged a few rather commonplace letters,
but as the keen-eyed mistress at Betty’s school soon detected the
nature of her correspondence, their letters were few and far between.
At the Christmas holidays Tony went home with Kit to the Wilson country
place on Long Island, and spent there a glorious three weeks. But,
it might as well be said at once, that though Tony and Betty became
the best of friends, the sentiment that had accented their walks
together the night of the game at Deal, died a natural death. School
and its varied interests absorbed Deering and left him little time or
opportunity for love affairs.
During the winter he became interested in the Dealonian, a semi-secret
society, that held frequent debates and discussions before the school,
and regarded itself as being an institution of great importance. For
exercise and sport he went in for hockey, where his fleetness counted
as much toward success as it did in football. The Deal boys had capital
hockey grounds, one on Deal Water which lay at the foot of the hill
between the school and Monday Port; and the other on Beaver Pond, under
the lee of Lovel’s Woods which though smaller usually froze earlier.
It was customary for the Dealonian to elect a Fifth Former as its
president at the beginning of the winter term. This office was
supposed, and usually did, register the boys’ somewhat premature choice
for a head prefect for the school for the following year. Deering
was elected president of the Dealonian by a unanimous vote, after
very little campaigning on the part of his friends. He was generally
popular, and his exploit in the Boxford game had brought him more
prominently before the school than ever before. In the opinion of his
particular friends he was also developing qualities of leadership,
which made him the logical candidate of their group for general honors.
Tony valued the position of president highly. And in the fine fervor
of his good resolutions he determined that through it he would do a
lot for the school. The Dealonian held frequent meetings at which the
entire school were invited, and at which topics of general interest
were discussed by the boys themselves. It was indeed through these
meetings that the public opinion of the school was largely formed and
guided by the older boys.
The walk with Mr. Morris on the beach the night of the Boxford game
had solidified in Tony’s mind a good many resolutions. And, though
it is not usually the case that the generous ideals and ambitions of
boys find particular expression, since the flash of intuition into
Finch’s starved life had been in part the occasion of his forming good
resolutions at all, it was not unnatural that he should have settled
upon Finch as a concrete opportunity for putting them into effect.
The talk with Mr. Morris, though Finch’s name had not actually been
mentioned, had also brought the matter before Tony’s mind, for Morris
had been the first to suggest to him the possibility of his being of
use in that direction. To be sure, the sympathy with Finch had been
intuitive and had not stayed with him as vividly as it had impressed
him on the night of the bonfire, but then it had flashed so intensely
that it was not soon altogether to expire. It glowed in the depths
of his consciousness like sparks amongst the embers of a dying fire,
capable of blazing forth again if fresh fuel should be added. Tony
proposed to add the fuel.
He made a point, for instance, of dropping in at Finch’s room in
Standerland two or three times a week and chatting with the boy the
odd quarters of an hour that he otherwise would have spent in genial
loafing with his cronies. And though he certainly would not have kept
on going there for the sake of anything that Finch could contribute
to the joy of life for him, when the awkwardness of deliberately
performing a kindness had somewhat worn off, he found a certain amount
of compensating satisfaction in noting the light of pleasure that came
into Jake’s pale blue eyes, and in the relaxation of the corners of
his mouth from bitter rigidity into friendly appreciation and welcome.
Gradually too Finch’s shyness wore off a little when he was alone
with Tony; and though it can hardly be said that even in his most
un-selfconscious moments he ever seemed a full-blooded care-free boy,
he thawed into a semblance of humanity. He reminded Tony often of a dog
that has been treated cruelly in its puppyhood, which never recovers
fearlessness but shrinks even under a friendly hand.
And like a dog Jacob Finch began to idolize Anthony Deering. This was
the first time in all his barren life that a fellow boy had treated
him with kindness, who had not showed in his manner the repulsion the
unhappy little chap had the misfortune to stir in his kind. Tony’s
image loomed large in his thoughts. The intense worship he paid him
secretly did much to atone for the slights of others, to blot out
other boys from his consciousness. He cringed and shrank still under
jibes and jokes, trembled with unreasoned fear before masters, quivered
with fright when he found himself alone in a crowd of boys; but he did
his work faithfully and with the success that comes from persistence
even when a keen intelligence is lacking. More and more, however, his
inner life was absorbed in his devotion to Deering.
From his seat in the chapel he could just see the wavy, copper-colored
top of Tony’s head. By straining a little he could frequently see
his face,—bright, sensitive, mobile, smiling often that smile of a
singular and rare sweetness that made Tony beautiful to others beside
Finch. To Jake he was as perfect, as spotless, as wonderful, as a god.
The fervor of his adoration was akin to the enthusiasm of a _devotée_
for his idol. All this of course he hid, not altogether but mostly,
from Deering; never voiced, though he could not help looking his
devotion. He would spend hours during a day standing about in various
places on the mere chance that he would get a glimpse of Tony; haunted
the woods above Beaver Pond in the hockey season, where he would lie,
flat and shivering, upon a projecting rock, and follow with weak,
straining eyes the skaters on the ice below, his eager gaze seeking
always for one bright slim form. And when he had found it, he was as
happy as he often had been.
Even Tony’s friends occupied but a small place in Finch’s
consciousness. He was grateful to Kit for his protection against Ducky
Thornton and his gang of tormentors, but the only real admiration he
had for Kit was because he possessed qualities—Finch could not have
named them—that had induced Tony to choose him for a friend.
Occasionally Tony and Jimmie would have their _protégé_ in Number Five
study, but on these occasions Finch seemed to suffer so much from
shyness that they did not long attempt to repeat them.
Mr. Morris watched the process with inward approval and outward
indifference. His own advances toward Finch had been received in
a manner that gave him little encouragement. He was sorry for the
boy, and he was proud of Tony’s efforts to help him on and bring him
out, but even his sanguine optimism and unselfish good will failed
to convince itself that the Head had been wise in bringing Finch to
Deal. As for Doctor Forester, with the best intentions in the world,
he had few opportunities of seeing the boy intimately, and he trusted
absolutely to Morris as being the one who could do the most and the
best for him.
Number Five study Standerland had become during the winter term the
sanctum of a privately published and privately circulated magazine,
issued weekly as a rule, in pamphlet form under the title of _The
Spectacle_. The inspiring genius, editor-in-chief, business manager,
printing department and reportorial staff was Jimmie Lawrence. Jimmie
had always had a literary turn, and usually had received A’s for his
weekly themes in English from Jack Stenton, who combined with athletic
prowess a genuine appreciation for good literature. In addition to
required work for the masters he had written yards of short stories,
poems, plays, essays and the like for the waste-paper basket and his
secret scrap-book. Jimmie was likewise a great reader and he had taken
more kindly than the majority of his classmates to the Sir Roger de
Coverly papers from _The Spectator_ that Stenton had inflicted on the
Fifth Form that year. He was able to appreciate the genial sympathy and
quiet humor of the Eighteenth Century essayists, and more than once
he had dipped his pen in ink to attempt a crude imitation of them.
Practice improved his style. He had himself a fund of subtle humor that
was becoming more and more evident as he matured, for it was a humor
that had found little opportunity for expression in the crude horseplay
and practical joking of the Lower School.
One afternoon as he was planning an essay in the Addisonian vein and
style, it suddenly occurred to him that there was a fund of material
for such treatment in the actual world about him. He chose little
Beverly, a fledgeling master, cock-sure and sophomoric, as the subject
for his first serious essay in the comic, and achieved, in his own
opinion, such a success that he read his paper that evening to Tony.
“By Jove, Jim, that’s a joy!” was his room-mate’s gratifying criticism.
“That’s a blame sight better than the sawdust that Jack is trying to
stuff down our throats in English.”
“Well, I have me doubts as to that,” Jimmie responded, “but I
appreciate the compliment even if it makes the critic out to be an
ignoramus.”
“Words of one syllable, my dear,” protested Tony, “when you try to get
ideas into my cranium. Critic or not, that’s darn good writing. Give
us another.”
Jimmie smiled, closed his mathematics books with the air of one who
makes a sacrifice in a noble cause, and for half an hour bent again to
laborious composition. The result was a clever little skit on Ducky
Thornton entitled “The Human Sofa Cushion.” The wit was broader, and it
struck Tony as quite irresistibly funny.
“By Jove, kiddo, we’ll start a _Spectator_ of our own, eh? Hit off the
masters and some of our loving schoolmates, and let ‘em circulate.
It’ll be heaps of fun.”
Lawrence laughed at the vision of the possibilities that came to him.
“I think it will,” he said. “We’ll write ‘em out in your clear hand,
and pass ‘em on to the crowd.”
And so _The Spectacle_ came into existence. Jimmie did most of
the composition, and Tony invariably copied it out, for Jimmie’s
handwriting left much to be desired, as is the case we have been told
with other authors. Now and then there was an original contribution
from Tony, and occasionally one from Charlie Gordon, Teddy Lansing or
Tack Turner, all more crude and broad, but few absolutely devoid of
real humor. In the course of a few months they had composed quite a
gallery of pen-portraits, wherein were caricatured, seldom unkindly,
the faults and foibles of most of the faculty and many of the boys.
_The Spectacle_ had a popular if restricted circulation.
It fell to Tony at length to do the paper on Mr. Roylston. None of the
articles were labeled by correct names, but there was scarcely ever any
doubt in the mind of the reader who had served as the model of the
portrait. The paper on Mr. Roylston, paraphrasing his nickname, was
entitled “Soft-toed Samuel.” Tony had caricatured broadly, but before
being written out in his neat fine hand, the style had been softened,
smoothed and improved, occasional lapses in orthography had been
corrected, and the defects of punctuation supplied,—in fact the crude
strokes of the amateur had been retouched by the hand of an artist. The
artist was Jimmie.
It was a great success with the _habitués_ of Number Five study. Tony
was so pleased with it himself, that he took it in late of an evening
to Finch’s room with the idea of cheering up his charge who had seemed
even unwontedly seedy that day.
“Here, Jake,” he exclaimed, as he burst in at the door, “here’s the
latest _Spectacle_. Have a try at it.”
Finch was lying on his couch, laid low by an intense headache. The pain
was so severe that he could scarcely respond to his hero’s greeting.
“Thanks,” he said weakly. He tried to get up, but Tony, quick as a
flash, pushed him gently back.
“There, keep quiet! I didn’t know you had another headache. I’m awfully
sorry, old chap. Rotten things, those headaches of yours.”
Finch smiled, and writhed with pain. “It’ll be all right, I guess.”
Tony sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you go up to the
Infirmary?... Can I get you anything?”
“No ... thank you,” Jake answered. “I’ll sleep it off; it’s the only
way. Don’t bother. If you don’t mind, I’ll make out better alone.”
“Mind? No. Only I’m blamed sorry.”
“Leave the _Spectacle_, will you?”
“All right, I’ll stick it here on your desk. Read it in the morning.
Don’t forget to call me if you want anything. Does Bill know you’re
sick?”
“Yes—he’s been in.”
“Well, good-night, Jake. Tell me what you think of it to-morrow.”
When Tony had gone out, Finch tried to get up and read the paper, but
the pain pulled him back on his bed again, and he lay there in misery
till sleep came at last and released him.
The next morning, with the hurry of breakfast and chapel, he had
no opportunity of reading the squib until First Study, which, as
Mr. Roylston held it, usually was _study_ and not the loafing,
letter-writing, novel-reading period it occasionally was under laxer
masters. Finch, who had hard work to keep the place he was determined
to maintain in the school, rarely wasted his study periods, so that
he was ignorant of the various devices whereby the lazy gave the
pretense of studying when they were doing other things. At the risk
of an imperfect Greek lesson—for he could restrain his curiosity no
longer, he took out Tony’s manuscript soon after First Study began, and
was eagerly and hastily perusing it. Deering’s obvious exaggerations,
and even more, though he could not distinguish them, Jimmie’s finer
touches, amused him greatly. For the first time he was really smiling
broadly in the schoolroom. The master, so long the traditional _bête
noir_ and subject of caricature, took form in his imagination, and Mr.
Roylston, whom Finch feared with an abject fear, for once seemed to him
to be amusing.
Suddenly, to his intense horror, Gumshoe Ebenezer stood before him, not
in the spirit but in the flesh, and his long slim bony fingers closed
about Tony’s manuscript as he removed it quickly from Finch’s nerveless
grasp.
“I will relieve you of that extraneous matter,” he observed sharply.
“It is expected that boys shall spend this period in study, not in
reading amusing letters.”
“It—it isn’t a l—letter,” gasped Finch.
“It does not in the least matter whether it is a letter or not,”
replied Mr. Roylston. “It is very evident that it has no bearing
whatever upon Xenophon’s _Anabasis_ or the Greek Grammar.”
He glanced at the title as he spoke. “Soft-toed Samuel” conveyed little
to him, enough however to inform him that he had been correct in his
surmise that it was tabooed matter.
“But—but, it—it isn’t mine,” protested Finch.
“No?” commented Mr. Roylston, with an accent of indifference. “I shall
return it to its owner in good time, if you choose to inform me who he
is.” He glanced casually over the writing.
“Don’t—don’t you dare to read that!” cried Finch, his face livid, as
for the moment anger got the better of fear. “I’ll—I’ll—” he half
rose from his seat, his fists clenched in helpless rage.
Mr. Roylston turned upon him with a glare. “You will do what?” he
asked in tones that almost robbed Finch of his senses. “Get to work,”
he added, after looking at him steadily for a moment; and then turned
away, leaving his victim morally and spiritually prostrate.
Poor Finch sank back in his seat, bent his head, and fastened his
unseeing eyes on the pages of the _Anabasis_. The incident, though
observed and heard by the whole schoolroom, seemed not to have created
a ripple of excitement. Not a sound disturbed the stillness of the
room. As the master turned from Finch, he observed a hundred heads bent
diligently over their books, and a slight grim smile of satisfaction
crossed his face. He felt that he had reason to be proud of his
discipline. He seated himself at the desk, and his eyes fell idly upon
the first page of the manuscript. “Soft-toed Samuel,” he read, and a
curl of contempt trembled along his thin lips. And then:
“There is no place of general resort in the school which is immune from
the presence of Soft-toed Sam; sometimes he is seen thrusting his head
even into the locker-rooms below stairs and listening with eager and
suspicious ear to the slang and careless conversation that is apt to
take place there. And woe to the boy whose tongue is not restrained on
such occasions! there will be a day of reckoning. Sometimes he munches
a bit of cake at the Pie-house, making pretense of joviality; but
whilst he seems attentive to nothing but his goody and the Pie-lady, he
overhears the remarks of every boy in the place, and makes a note of
them in his little book. Sometimes he comes into the general assembly
of all the boys on a Sunday evening, as one who comes to hear and to
improve, but who leaves to carp. His face is too well-known, too often
seen by every boy in the school. The stealthy tread of Soft-toed Samuel
is ever on the trail of the lazy, the indifferent and the wicked, and
where he does not find matter for condemnation provided him by nature,
he creates it out of nothing. The Head has....”
Mr. Roylston turned the pages, and glanced at the conclusion.
“Thus he lives in the school as a critic of and a bane to mankind rather
than as one of the species.”
It was enough. The handwriting, of course, he recognized. He folded the
paper neatly and placed it in his pocket.
Poor Finch meanwhile was undergoing excruciating agonies. Not a line
of the Greek penetrated his consciousness, even the familiar _ἐντεῦθεν
ἐξελαῦναι_ was to him as the inscription on a Babylonian tablet. His
own careless folly and stupidity had brought about a catastrophe, a
frightful situation, in which he could see his hero was apt to suffer
more grievously than himself. But in reality that was not possible.
Finch was suffering vicariously with an intensity that Tony could never
realize, that in such connection he could never share.
And at the end of the period he fearfully approached the master’s desk.
As though divining the petition trembling on his lips, Mr. Roylston
bade him sternly go out with his form, adding sharply, “I shall return
the paper myself when I have had the opportunity of enjoying its
promising humor.”
At recess Finch found Deering eating his bit of luncheon in the Fifth
Form common room. He drew him aside.
“Well, Jake, headache gone?” began Tony. “What did you think of the
Soft-toed Sammy? Why, what’s the matter?”
Finch was white as a sheet. “Oh, Deering,” he gasped, “an awful
thing has happened. I—I was reading it—like a fool—in First
Study—and—and—Mr. Roylston swiped it.”
Tony paused in the midst of taking a bite from his bun, and looked at
Jake in consternation.
“Gumshoe swiped it?”
“Yes, Deering.... I’m sorry.... You don’t know ... I wish I was dead.”
He leaned against the lintel of the doorway and hid his face in his
hands.
Tony pulled himself together with an effort. “I guess you’ve done me,”
he began. Then, as he saw Finch wince under his words, he went over
quickly to his side, and put his hand on his shoulder. “There, cheer
up; I was a beast to say that. It’s all my own fault. It was a darn
fool stunt to write such things.”
After a time he calmed the unhappy lad, and got from him the details of
the incident. At last he went off to report the matter to Jimmie.
Lawrence naturally was inclined to say harsh things of Finch, but he
too realized that they themselves were to blame for the predicament.
“Hate to deprive you of the honor, old chap,” he said, “but honesty
forbids me deny the authorship and responsibility for _The Spectacle_.
The horse is on me.”
“The horse!” exclaimed Tony. “It will be a ton of bricks. But it’s rot,
Jimmie, to say you’re responsible. I’ll be hanged if I think sticking
an adjective here and there, sprinkling commas about, and tinkering
with a few mixed tenses, makes you the author. ‘Tis true it’s but a
beastly paraphrase on Addison,—but ‘twas my best and, so to speak, my
own.”
They waited somewhat anxiously that day for the dreaded summons to Mr.
Roylston’s outraged presence, but it did not come. That night on his
way to Standerland from a meeting of the Dealonian, Tony found a sealed
packet in his letter-box in the Old School. It was directed to him in
Mr. Roylston’s minute slanting chirography. He tore it open, and found
that it contained the confiscated copy of _The Spectacle_ and a note
from the master therein caricatured.
“I return to you under cover,” it ran, without address, “the manuscript
for which, since it is in your handwriting, I presume you are
responsible. It was confiscated from Finch in First Study this morning.
I have read it enough to suggest that the wisest course will be for you
to destroy this piece of scurrility at once, also any copies of it that
may exist. I have only to say that the offense is so deep and gratuitous
an insult that it is not punishable by any of the ordinary methods at
our command. Vain as the supposition sometimes seems, we proceed at Deal
School on the assumption that we have to treat with gentlemen and the
sons of gentlemen.
“E. ROYLSTON.”
As he read this note, Tony by turns went hot and cold. The last
sentence stung him to the quick. He was intensely angry, but as the
first impulse of rage passed away, he realized with a bitter sense of
humiliation that the master had a perfect right to his resentment; that
for once he, Tony Deering, was absolutely, hopelessly in the wrong.
Alas! while he had been fondly supposing that he was beginning to live
more unselfishly, beginning to do more for others than he had ever done
before, he had wantonly wounded and grossly insulted, as a result of
indulging in his propensity to make fun, a fellow member of the school.
With the shame and repentance warm in his heart, he hurried over to
Howard House where Mr. Roylston roomed, and knocked at his door.
The master looked up from his desk, as Tony entered, and his face
hardened into a severe expression as he waited for his visitor to speak.
“Sir,” exclaimed Tony, impulsively, “I’ve come to beg your pardon.... I
know I have done an inexcusable thing, but I am sorry——.”
Mr. Roylston laid his pen down and looked fixedly at the boy, but the
muscles of his face did not relax. “Don’t you think, Deering,” he
interrupted coolly, “that your apology comes with a bad grace after the
offense is accidentally discovered? Apparently the despicable character
of your method of poking fun seems only to occur to you when you are in
danger of incurring the just penalty of such conduct.”
Tony bit his lips, but he felt he deserved what the master chose to
say. He would not spoil his apology by showing resentment. “I dare
say it seems to you that way, sir. But I can only say that at first
I simply saw the amusing side of it, and that it was not until I
thought how it must have seemed to you that I realized it was an unkind
caricature.”
Mr. Roylston perceptibly sniffed at the word _caricature_. “Gratuitous
insult, it were better termed,” he ejaculated.
“Well, sir, I can’t undo it ... I only wish I could. I apologize to
you, sir, ... unreservedly.”
Mr. Roylston appeared to choose his words with even more than his usual
care. “I accept the apology, of course, technically. But naturally it
does not atone for the offense.”
“No,” said Tony, “I know it does not.”
For a moment there was silence. “You are curious to know what I propose
to do?” asked Mr. Roylston, with a note of sarcasm.
“No—no, sir,” replied Tony ingenuously. “I don’t think that matters,
sir. I only hope you believe what I say, that I am truly sorry for what
has occurred.”
He had worded his sentence unfortunately, for the master took it as a
quibble. “Yes,” he replied tartly, “I can well believe that you are
sorry for what has _occurred_.”
“I don’t mean——” began Tony.
“That will do,” said Mr. Roylston dryly. “I have gathered enough of
your meaning for the once. No—I do not mean to punish you.” A bitter
smile flickered over his face. “As I sought to explain in my note,
which I had every intention should put a period to the incident, our
punishments in this school are not adapted to the case. One has but two
alternatives in such affairs,—to expel or to ignore persons capable of
such conduct. I have concluded to ignore. I bid you good evening.”
Tony opened his mouth to speak again, but closed it quickly, and with a
slight inclination of his head, turned and left the room.
“He means to rub it in by slow degrees, by his peculiar and unspeakable
methods of torture,” was Jimmie’s comment when Tony had told him
of the interview later. “You were an ass not to let me share the
responsibility. The Gumshoe accept an apology! why, he hasn’t the
charity of a mosquito. As Kit would say,” he added thoughtfully, “he is
‘a gloomy ass.’ Well, I reckon, Tonio, old sport, we’ll have to chuck
_The Spectacle_.”
“Hang it, of course, we will. It was a poor fool sheet, Jim; rather
a sad business for two good little schoolboys like us to be taken up
with.”
“And like most wicked things, amusing,” remarked Reggie from the
depths of an armchair where he had been an interested hearer of the
conversation. “Like most forbidden things, diverting.”
“What a crude philosopher you sometimes are, Reggie,” said Lawrence.
“One looks to you for illuminating comment—not for the obvious
platitude.”
“True, my poet,” drawled Carroll, “but there are moments when one
inadvertently sinks below one’s normal level. But adieu to some
diverting moments!”
“Thanks! Adieu, too, to my Addisonian English! I wish we could as
easily bid adieu to the consequences.”
“I fancy it will be a long time before you say farewell to those, my
young friends.”
“Hm, he evidently doesn’t mean to take it to the Head,” said Tony.
“No, not yet,” said Reggie, with the air of a prophet, “the time is
not ripe; but the Gumshoe, like Fate, will take a fall out of you in
the hour of your pride. Beware.”
“Bosh!” said Tony, “I’m going to forget it.” And he fell to work.