TONY PLAYS THE PART OF A GUARDIAN ANGEL
Mr. Roylston put his policy with regard to Tony into rigorous effect.
From that day, except when it was obviously necessary to speak with
them about their classroom work, he ignored Deering and his friends.
He treated them with an icy courtesy that was far more effective in
subduing their high spirits than his sarcasm had ever been. Lawrence
and Wilson, particularly the latter, were restive under the process,
and often threatened, though they never attempted, open rebellion.
Tony, on the other hand, was more sensitive to this peculiar method
of revenge, and it was probably due to his recognition of this
sensitiveness that Mr. Roylston had adopted it. Deering knew that he
had been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct and he was not happy so long
as his whole-hearted apology was not accepted in the spirit in which
it was given. But there seemed no way in which he could improve the
situation. He tried to prove his sincerity by doing specially good work
in Mr. Roylston’s class, but no word of commendation ever fell from the
master’s lips.
In truth Mr. Roylston had been wounded more deeply than he had ever
been before in a long career that had been marked, too, by much open
hostility. But unfortunately he was not the type that could perceive
that his difficulties largely lay in his own fundamental lack of
sympathy with boy nature; and, resenting what he felt was the boys’
unjust attitude toward him, he had not it in his soul then to forgive
such an offense as Tony had been guilty of. As he looked back over
their four or five years at Deal, the incident of _The Spectacle_
seemed to him but the culmination of a long series of systematic
attempts on the part of that particular “crowd” to belittle and annoy
him. That the Head had practically required him to give up the gating
penalty, that he had perhaps a lurking feeling that that penalty had
been unjustly imposed, added to the bitterness he felt for our young
friends.
And mixed up in all this affair of Deering and his “crowd,” there was
in Mr. Roylston’s mind a sense, not clear but keen, that Finch was
somehow concerned. He genuinely believed that Doctor Forester had made
a mistake in taking Finch at Deal, and the passage of words with Morris
on the occasion of the boy’s arrival, had irritated him intensely.
He knew, and was sometimes ashamed of the fact, that he had let that
irritation affect his treatment, in little ways, of the boy himself.
He had always disliked Morris, and quite sincerely thought Morris’s
unaffected good nature and genial optimism with regard to boys was
a pose. The incident of Finch’s hazing, wherein he had punished the
rescuers instead of the hazers, increased his uncomfortable feeling
about the whole situation. But the discomfort did not increase his
humility. He knew that in much he was wrong, but he was so accustomed
to the idea of supposing himself to be right, that he argued away the
accusations of his conscience.
On Finch he therefore continued to vent a good deal of his spleen.
And on Finch the old sledge-hammer method of sarcasm was an effective
weapon. The boy bore the master’s reproofs with a little less outward
wincing than of old, but inwardly they racked his very soul. Mr.
Roylston’s attitude affected him very differently from the way
it affected Deering. He could not work in his class. A shaft of
sarcasm, an expression of patient suffering on the master’s face as
the boy blundered through his recitation, altogether confused him.
Day after day he would fail in a lesson which he had spent hours in
preparing. From a sense of duty Mr. Roylston now and then would see
the delinquent outside of the classroom, and make an attempt to clear
up his difficulties. But on these occasions Finch seemingly was more
completely bereft of his senses than during a recitation. Mr. Roylston
mistook this confusion for willful refusal to understand, and in time
treated him accordingly.
“What the deuce is the matter with you, Jake?” Tony asked once, after
a trying period in Latin, wherein Finch had floundered about in absurd
fashion. “You know a heap more Latin than I do, but you go in before
Gumshoe and act as if he were asking you questions in Sanscrit.”
“I know—I know,” Finch answered, miserably. “But I can’t help it. I
just can’t get my wits before him. Every idea flies out of my head when
he asks me a question. I am doing all right in other subjects.”
“Well, why don’t you go to Gumshoe and tell him?”
“Oh, I’ve tried,” said Finch. “That’s worse.”
“It’s a beastly shame,” said Tony. “But there’s nothing I can do; I’m
in with Gumshoe worse than ever.”
“And that’s all my fault!”
“Not a bit,” said Tony. “I had no business to write that thing in the
first place; neither had Jimmie for that matter,—about Gumshoe or
anybody else. I wish I could convince him that I am really sorry.”
“Well, I guess you can’t do that,” said Finch. “But if I had not been
so stupid it wouldn’t have happened. To tell you the truth, Deering, I
often wish I had never come here.”
“That’s idiotic!” said Tony; and then asked tactlessly, “What would you
have done?”
“I dunno,” Finch answered. “I guess it would have been better if I had
never been born.”
Poor Jake resented Mr. Roylston’s attitude toward his hero much more
than he did the master’s treatment of himself. Once or twice, glancing
up from his desk in the schoolroom, Mr. Roylston caught a glance
of such concentrated hatred in Finch’s eyes, as actually made him
tremble. He attributed it, of course, to the boy’s perverse and willful
laziness, and once or twice he returned Finch’s stare in a way, that
though the boy dropped his eyes beneath it, seemed to burn into his
soul.
Jacob failed miserably in Virgil at the mid-year examinations
in February, and did not do well enough in his other work to
counterbalance the bad impression of his abject failure in Latin. The
nervous, overwrought state in which he had been living during the fall
and winter told on his health. At the best he was frail, but now he
suffered frequently from intense headaches that forced him much against
his will, quite frequently to spend two or three days in the Infirmary.
Tony saw all this more clearly than anyone else except Morris. “What he
needs,” he said one evening to Jimmie and Kit, “is to get an interest
in something, to be brought out of himself, to get into something that
will bring him more in touch with the life of the school.”
Kit, in his easy-going way, agreed; and went on strumming his guitar,
on which he had been trying to pick out a new popular air. Jimmie gave
the matter a little thought and asked, “What can he do?”
“Well,” said Tony, after a moment or so, “I’ve been thinking that it
would be a good thing to put him up for the Dealonian.”
“The Dealonian!” exclaimed Kit, tossing the guitar aside. “Why, man,
you’re plumb nutty. He’s got as much chance of getting into the
Dealonian as I have of getting into Congress. A fine figure that little
scarecrow would cut in a public meeting, wouldn’t he?”
“Oh, I think he could do it,” protested Tony, a little sharply, for he
was annoyed by Kit’s tone. “It would give him a lot of confidence if
we took him in. It would make him feel that the best fellows in school
were willing to give him a chance.”
“I dare say it would make him feel that,” Lawrence remarked
judiciously. “But I can’t say that I see that he has any particular
claim to consideration. The Dealonian isn’t exactly an asylum for the
maimed, the halt and the blind.”
“No, of course, it isn’t, but it’s supposed to be run for the benefit
of the school, isn’t it? And ‘the good of the school’ simply means
the good of the fellows in school. Finch has as much right to the
Dealonian, if there’s a chance of it being a help to him, as you or I
have.”
“But he hasn’t any chance, d’ye see?” said Kit.
“No I don’t see,” answered Tony. “I dare say the three of us have a
certain amount of influence, and if we chose to exert it I’ve an idea
that we could get him in.”
“Well, you can hang that harp on a weeping willow-tree,” was Kit’s
conclusive comment, “I don’t intend to try. I am perfectly willing
to lick Ducky Thornton every day in the week for hazing him, if need
be; I’m willing to have Tony bring him in here three or four times a
week and bore us to death, if he wants to; but I’m hanged if I’ll try
to get him into the Dealonian. That’s supposed to be made up of the
representative fellows of the school. You’re carrying your guardian
angelship business too far, kiddo. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
Tony, for once, did not reply in like fashion to Kit’s vigorous and
breezy way of expressing himself. He reflected a moment or so, and then
spoke with an unusually quiet and determined air, as though he were
simply making an announcement and not asking advice. “I have thought it
over pretty carefully, Kit; and I’ve made up my mind to try it. I only
hope you fellows will back me up.”
Jimmie was silent. Kit, convinced at last that Tony was indeed in
earnest, protested vigorously. “You’re dead wrong, Tony. You oughtn’t
to try it. The fellows won’t stand for it. And you’ve no right to ask
me to back you up in a thing which I’m perfectly certain is a darn fool
proposition.”
“Well,” said Tony, “you needn’t back me up, if you don’t want to. But
that’s all rot for you to say it’s a darn fool notion. I’ve a perfect
right to put him up, if I think it the thing to do, and I am going to
do it.”
“Well, go ahead, and waste your time. I s’pose the little pup’ll lick
your boots cleaner than ever in gratitude, whether you’re successful or
not.”
Tony flared up at this. “I’ll thank you, Wilson, not to call my friends
pups. I reckon I can find some decent chaps to vote for him, even if I
can’t count on my own pals.” And with that, very hot in the head, he
flung himself out of the room.
“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Kit. “To think of him flinging me over for
that drowned rat! What’s the matter with him? Has he gone clean crazy?”
“He’s got the kid on his brain. But no sense in your flaring out so,
Kit; that’s no way to get on with Tony. Naturally he’s sensitive.”
“Who flared up?” demanded Kit, indignantly. “I’m as calm as a millpond.
Tony went off the handle because we disagreed with him. I guess I’ve as
good a right to my opinions as he has to his.”
“Oh, for gosh’s sake, shut up; there’s no sense in quarreling over this
matter. Finch won’t get into the Dealonian, but whether he can or not,
I’d just as soon vote for him.”
“Well, I’ll be hanged if I would,” asserted Wilson. “And what’s more
I’ll get up in the meeting and say it’s a darn fool proposition and
ought to be turned down.”
“What’s the sense in doing that? It’ll just mean that you and Tony will
have a serious falling-out, and the crowd will get busted up. What’s
the use? It ain’t worth while.”
“The heck it isn’t! I won’t compromise a principle for a friend ever, I
don’t care who he is. Nor I won’t have a friend ram his ideas down my
throat. I’ve as much right to put a fellow up or blackball him in the
Dealonian as Tony has. Seems to me he’s getting——.”
“Oh, shut up. You are working yourself all up over nothing. It isn’t
worth it. Don’t quarrel with Tony.”
“Seems to me Tony’s picking the quarrel with me. Who flung himself out
of the room just now? I didn’t, I guess. I tell you what, Jim, if Tony
wants to keep on good terms with me, he can; but he’s not going to make
the price of his friendship my voting to suit him about anything. I
guess we made Tony Deering in this school—you and I.”
“Rot!” exclaimed Jimmie. “Tony made himself. He’d have been the head
of the school if we had never exchanged a word with him. We’ve been
darn glad to have him in the crowd, that’s the truth of it; he’s been
the center of it ever since he’s been here. You were keen enough about
making him president of the Dealonian, and I guess you want him for
head prefect next year.”
“’Course I was keen; ‘course I do ... I’m all serene. If there’s a
quarrel, it won’t be my fault. But I’m going to blackball Finch for the
good of the Society, ‘cause I think it would be a mistake to let him
in, and I hope you’ll do the same.”
“Well, I won’t.”
“Do as you please, that’s _your_ right. So long, kiddo, I guess I’ll
seek a more congenial clime for the time bein’.” And with that Kit
swung himself out of the room.
Jimmie, genuinely distressed by this first serious difference in
their congenial little circle, went over to Mr. Morris’s room, and
took him into his confidence on the subject. Morris was not a little
disturbed by the situation. He admired Tony’s purpose, but with
Jimmie, thought it somewhat ill-judged and ill-timed, and deplored the
possible cleavage it might make in the little knot of friends. But,
characteristically, he did not see his way to interfering, even with
advice.
Unfortunately Tony and Kit again encountered each other that night in
Reggie Carroll’s room. Tony was cool, and Reggie, ignorant of what
had happened, made matters worse by asking them facetiously what had
ruffled the sweet waters of their friendship.
“Ask Tony,” answered Kit laconically, as he thumbed a school year book
and tried to think of some way of getting out of the room.
Tony shrugged his shoulders.
“What’s up?” repeated Reggie.
“Nothing particular,” Deering answered, after a pause. “We just don’t
pull together in a certain matter.”
“Well, what do you expect,” exclaimed Kit impulsively, “do you expect
me to measure my opinions by yours?”
“Rather not,” answered Tony, with a faint sneer, “you’d find them in
that case a darn sight too big for you.”
“Softly, softly,” protested Reggie. But Tony again was gone.
When he got back to his own room later in the evening, Jimmie tried to
talk the subject over with him, but Tony, ruffled and irritated, was
not inclined to do so.
“I’ve made up my mind, Jim, so that’s all there is to it. I’m going
to put Finch up next Saturday night, and in the meantime I’m going to
work hard to try to get the fellows to vote for him. I hope you won’t
blackball him.”
“No, I won’t do that, Tony; but I wish you’d see Kit and talk it over
with him in a friendly way.”
“I’ll talk it over with Kit, if he wants to talk it over with me; but
he has got to drop his swagger and bulldozing manner, if he wants to.”
“Look here, old man; Kit’s just impulsive; that’s all. Suppose I, after
I had thought it over, made up my mind that it would be a bad thing
for the Society and blackballed Finch, would you let that make any
difference between us?”
Tony thought a moment. “No, old chap, of course it wouldn’t. I’d be
sorry, of course, because I would feel you were wrong. But it isn’t
being opposed that makes me sore, it’s Kit’s blustering blowing way of
doing it.”
Jimmie went that night and sat on Tony’s bed for a long time after
lights. They said nothing more about Kit or Finch, but talked
intimately of a variety of other things in which they were interested,
in the old close pleasant way. It was a long happy quiet talk and it
did much to strengthen their friendship in the times of stress that
were coming.
The conversations we have recorded took place well along in the winter
term on a Monday night in March. The following Saturday evening was the
date of the important meeting of the Dealonian Society at which new
members were elected.
Tony spent a zealous week campaigning for Finch, and found it a
disheartening business. Most of the boys—there were about forty
members of the Society—protested, but after long persuasion, promised
to cast favorable votes, though they took pains, almost without
exception, to assure Tony that they were doing it simply because he
asked them. Others refused definitely to commit themselves, and Tony
had to be content with that. To Jimmie’s distress, Kit kept away from
Number Five study all that week, and refused to make any advances
toward setting things right with Tony. “I’ll talk it over, if he comes
to me,” he would say to Jimmie over and over. “But I am going to
blackball Finch, and I guess I can persuade at least one other fellow
to do the same, so he won’t get into the Dealonian. Tony can do what he
pleases. After it’s all over, if he wants to make up, well and good;
I’ll have no hard feelings: if he don’t,—well, well and good, also.”
At last, after what seemed an interminable week to our three friends
Saturday night came, and the forty members of the Dealonian Society
met in solemn conclave in the Library. Tony took the chair, looking a
trifle nervous and anxious, and called the meeting to order. Kit was
present, sitting well back, and assumed an air of bland indifference
to the proceedings. There were four new members to be elected from the
Fifth Form.
Routine business was transacted for a quarter of an hour, and at last
the president announced, “If there is no objection, we will proceed to
the election of new members. As I wish to place a name in nomination, I
will ask Mr. Wendell to take the chair.”
Billy Wendell, the head prefect, captain of the football team, and the
last year’s president of the Dealonian, rose from his seat, and took
the chair behind the big desk in a very solemn way, very much as a
president _pro tem_. walks up to the platform of the Senate. He settled
himself, coughed slightly, and recognized Tony. “Mr. Deering has the
floor,” he observed in judicial tones.
“Mr. President and members of the Dealonian Society, I desire to place
in nomination for membership in this society the name of Jacob Finch of
the Fifth Form.” As this was expected, the boys showed little surprise.
Jimmie glanced back at Kit, and saw his lips curl with faint contempt.
Tony too glanced about him; then, after a moment’s hesitation, he
threw back his shoulders, and addressed the Society. He cast aside now
the solemn traditional oratorical form that the boys made an effort
to assume, and his clear sweet voice rang with feeling. “Fellows,” he
said, “I believe, as we all do, that this Society has the right to
consider itself the most important institution in the school, and I
realize that I am nominating one for membership in it, who, according
to all standards we have set for ourselves and which have been so well
maintained through many school generations, seems not to have a shadow
of right to election. We want here fellows whose opinion counts, whose
influence will be strong and positive, who have done and are able to
do things for the school, in athletics, in scholarship, and in various
other ways. I can’t pretend that I think that Jacob Finch will stand
for these things or will do these things. But for once, it seems to me,
that other considerations should weigh with us.”
The boys were startled by the unusual feeling in Deering’s voice and by
the unconventional arguments he was using to urge his candidate upon
their favor, and they settled into attitudes of deep attention.
“At the beginning of the year,” Tony went on, “a new boy came amongst
us who, as we all know, has been treated as no boy ever was who came to
the school before. He has been brutally hazed, and for months his life
has been made miserable by young and old, and unfortunately he has had
no way of defending himself. He has never had a chance, he hasn’t got
a square deal. I have got to know him, I suppose, better than anyone
else, and while I don’t claim or even think that he is an unusual
fellow, I do believe there is something in him that could be made to
count for the school if he had a show; if it could really be proved to
him that you fellows were willing to make him one of yourselves, give
him not merely a fair, but a generous chance. I don’t want you merely
to admit him to this Society because I ask it as a favor to me, though
I hope you will do it for that reason if you won’t do it for any other;
but I ask you to vote for him as an act of generous kindness toward a
chap who hasn’t had the chance that any of us have had, whose life in
this school up to now has been downright hell.”
With that Tony sat down. A ripple of conversation went round the room.
The boys were quite won by this unusual appeal to their generosity and
sympathy. Billy Wendell called them sharply to order. “Are there any
further remarks upon Finch?”
Half a dozen fellows rose one after another, and declared, with a
certain amount of feeling and a certain lack of grace, that they agreed
with Deering, and that they thought Finch ought to be elected. Jimmie
wanted to speak for Tony’s sake, but he could not quite bring himself
to do so. In his heart he agreed with Kit that Tony’s judgment on
this occasion was mistaken, and that were Finch elected it would not
accomplish for him what Tony so generously hoped. There was a pause
after good-natured Clayton had uttered a few stuttering sentimental
remarks. Then Kit Wilson rose up quickly. His face was flushed, he
seemed nervous, but there were lines of dogged determination about his
mouth.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “we have all been moved by the eloquence
of our popular president. I want to say, however, that I feel very
strongly that the considerations that should guide us in this affair
are not those of sentiment or of personal friendship. I think, Mr.
Chairman, that the president of this Society has no right to ask us to
vote for a fellow on his nomination as a personal favor to himself. The
argument that it is up to us to give Finch a better show in the school
than he’s had, by electing him to this Society is no doubt generous,
but it is sentimental. I agree with Mr. Deering that we should do
everything in our power to make Finch’s life a pleasanter and a happier
one than it probably has been. I do not think, however, that to do this
it is necessary to elect him to the Dealonian Society, the membership
of which is supposed to be made up of those who really represent the
various activities of the school. I sincerely trust he will not be
elected.”
With that he sat down, and some one immediately called for a vote. The
Dealonian voted on membership by roll call, the secretary reading the
names and the boys responding _Placet_ or _Non Placet_, as the case
might be. To Tony’s surprise boy after boy voted in the affirmative.
Tack Turner, one of “the crowd,” was the first to blackball, but after
him the voting again was favorable. Wilson’s name was the last called.
“Non Placet,” he said quietly, without looking up.
“The name is rejected,” said Wendell, and resigned the chair.
The meeting went on, several other names were proposed and accepted.
After the adjournment, Tony, bitterly disappointed not in the result,
which he had feared, but by the means it had been obtained, avoided
speaking with his friends, and hurried out. In the corridor he
came face to face with Kit. Their eyes met, and Tony’s lip curled
contemptuously. “Well,” he exclaimed sarcastically, “you were
successful, weren’t you!”
Kit stared back with a dark scowl on his good-looking, usually kindly
face. “I did as I thought right,” he answered.
Tony smiled with a look of insulting incredulity. “Let me congratulate
you on your sense of duty.” Then he hurried on to his own room, and
fell to work with self-deceptive industry at his books.