LEAVE-TAKING
The short Easter vacation, during which Tony had visited Jimmie, had
come and gone, and our friends were settled down again into the routine
of the spring term. For the time being, much to the discomfort of all
concerned, the old crowd was broken up. Tony and Kit did not even speak
to each other, so that Jimmie had a hard time keeping on friendly terms
with them both.
The winter had long since broken completely. Long lazy days were come
again when the sea glistened like glass under shining skies and the
mounting sun was rapidly warming the earth into green good humor. The
fields were dotted in the afternoons with a dozen developing baseball
teams composed of white clad, red-capped boys. Boats, too, heavily
manned by members of the rival school clubs, sped out of the little
harbor tucked under Strathsey Neck, and, plied by their happy crews,
went scudding on half-holidays up the River or boldly out past Deigr
Light into the open ocean. It was a happy term at Deal: boys and
masters expanded in the genial sunshine, and for the most part the
stress of the long winter term problems and discipline was wholly
relaxed. Lawrence and Deering threw themselves into baseball, worked
fairly faithfully at their books, and thus kept themselves happy
and contented. Kit Wilson was coaching one of the younger teams on
the north field, so that they did not come in contact with him very
frequently. Jimmie would go to his rooms often in the evening, but he
came no more to Number Five study.
Kit had said nothing about his affair with Finch; but, as he expected,
his rooms were disturbed no more. Finch, terrified by discovery and the
fear of exposure, for a long time abandoned his vandalism entirely. His
conscience was troubled by the fact that he had lied to Tony, but less
perhaps than he would have been disturbed if Tony knew the truth. There
was on both his and Tony’s part a certain sense of strain in their
friendly relations, which Tony, however, tried to ignore. He believed
of course that Finch had told him the truth about the episode in
Wilson’s room and that Wilson had simply been mistaken; but after Kit’s
open break with him, he saw no way to set things right.
This troubled him a great deal and cast a gloom over much of that
bright spring term that otherwise might have been so happy. Each
boy felt the loss of the other’s friendship keenly, but both were
impulsive, both felt themselves right, both had been stung to the quick
by the other’s attitude. Time, as often happens, widened the breach.
One day in Fifth English they were reading _As You Like It_, and it
fell to Kit to read the lines of Amiens’ song in the second act:
“Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most love merely folly.
“Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.”
As he got toward the end of the lines, his voice almost broke. Stenton,
realizing with quick sympathy that the song had taken on for him some
keen personal meaning, passed on the reading immediately to another
boy. Tony sat in his seat flushed and uncomfortable; for him also the
verse had intense meaning. He longed to look up and catch Kit’s eye,
and then join him after class and say boldly how foolish he felt their
coolness was. But he did not do so. He felt he never could do so. Kit
had been too unfair, too bitter—the advance must come from him.
Suddenly one day, in the midst of all this intense life and activity
of school so absorbing to our boys, there came a word to Tony that was
rudely and without warning to take him out of it. The message came in
the form of a letter from his grandfather bidding him come home at once.
“It will be bad news to you, my dear boy,” he wrote, “but your
unfortunate father’s business venture has been an absolute failure; he
has been very ill and is only just now on the road to recovery, and your
poor mother has fallen a victim at last to the worry and strain. She
wants you, and the doctor and I think it best for you to come. So you
must do so at once, as I am writing to the Head Master. I don’t know,
Anthony, whether we shall be able or not to send you back next year.
We poor people of the south, when Fortune turns against us, are pretty
well down and out. You have made a good record at school, and I do not
doubt but that Doctor Forester will promote you to the Sixth Form next
year, should we be able to send you back, even if you do lose these two
months. But you must come now, and at once. Telegraph me the day and
hour and I will have Sambo meet you at the Junction.
“Your affectionate grandfather,
“Basil Deering.”
Poor Tony read this letter over and over before he could clearly take
it in. He knew something of old of his reckless father’s terrible
propensity to indulge in wild-cat speculation, of the disaster and
trouble it had brought upon the family at Low Deering before. And now
too his mother was ill! Of course, of course, he must go home. He
fumbled in his drawer and found a time-table. Yes, he could leave that
night. And yet—he paused, with the letter in his hand—it was like a
sentence of banishment: to leave school now in the middle of the best
term of the year, and with so many things in which he was interested
at loose ends! He could not believe it really meant that; it could not
be true. And perhaps never to return! He looked again at his letter,
and the old general’s words made him sick at heart. Never again to
race up and down that hillside, to look out upon that splendid sea;
never again to swagger about the campus with his chums in the old glad,
happy, self-important way! No, no, he could not bear that it should
mean that! The hot tears welled in his eyes,—but he brushed them away.
Of course, his mother needed him. He had gone through before those
agonizing family crises, had seen his tender patient mother struggle
bravely against his father’s bad moods and dark despair. He knew that
indeed she must have collapsed when his grandfather sent for him and
she permitted it.
He ran over to the Rectory and found the Doctor in his study. He too
had just been reading a letter from General Deering.
He clasped Tony’s hand in his strong affectionate grip. “I am sorry
for you, my boy.... Yes, I have just been reading a letter from your
grandfather. There is no choice but for you to go at once.”
“I can leave on the ten o’clock from Monday Port, to-night, sir,” said
Tony, “and catch the midnight express at Coventry, which will get me
home the next evening.”
“Doubtless that is the best plan,” the Doctor agreed. “I don’t think,
from what the General tells me, that you need worry about your mother’s
immediate condition. But undoubtedly you are needed. I am very sorry
that you should lose these two months, but you can keep up your work
at home and there is no reason why you should not make the Sixth
comfortably in September.”
“I think I could do that, sir,” replied Tony, “but my grandfather says
there is some doubt about—about their being able to send me back next
year.”
“Yes, yes, he writes that to me; but you are to come, nevertheless. We
will arrange that. I hope the financial difficulties will straighten
out satisfactorily, but if worst comes to worst and they should not,
why there are any number of ways that we can provide for you. There
is always a scholarship fund rusting in the bank,—ripening, I had
better say, for just some such occasion. I fancy, even, that the school
would be willing to trust you for your tuition. But one thing is quite
settled: you _are_ to return. And I will make that clear to Basil—to
your grandfather.”
“Thank you, sir; you’ve been mighty good to me.”
“You have been mighty good to us—mighty good _for_ us, I may say,—my
boy.... Good-bye now, for the present.... And God bless you.”
In a moment or so Tony was gone. He found Jimmie, Charlie Gordon,
Teddy Lansing, and told them the news. And then, after a few hasty
farewells, went to his rooms with Jimmie to pack. It was then late in
the afternoon. The packing was a sad business, for he felt he must
take everything. He would be away five months; perhaps, despite the
Doctor’s kind prophecy, for good. As this possibility occurred to him,
he would stand now and then in the middle of the room, with a coat or
hat or what not in his hands, and feel it was simply impossible to go
on. Tears would start in his eyes and trickle down his cheeks. He had
always liked the school, even in his bad moods he had been loyal; but
he had not known, he had not realized, as few boys do at the time,
how the school had become a part of his very life, how intensely his
affections were centered there. And then—Mr. Morris; the fellows,
Jimmie, Teddy, Charlie, Kit—it would be hard to leave without saying
good-bye to Kit—, Reggie!
He turned to Jimmie who had come in at the moment with his arms full
of Tony’s belongings that he had collected from various parts of the
school, locker rooms and the like. “Excuse me for a little while,
Jimmie old boy; I’ve got to run over and see Reggie. I haven’t told him
yet.” Tony had a pang of regret that he had seen so little of Reggie of
late, “I’ll be back before long.”
“All right,” said Jimmie dolefully. “I’ll go on with the packing, if
you don’t mind. Don’t be long.”
“I won’t,” said Tony.
He found Carroll fortunately in his own room in the Old School. For
once Reginald was studying, and Tony could scarcely remember when he
had seen him so engaged. But the Sixth Former closed his Horace with
relief as he recognized his visitor and kicked out a chair for him to
sit down. “Well, I am certainly glad you have come. Heaven knows how
long I would have kept at that futile exercise, if it had not been
pleasantly interrupted. But what’s up, my boy, you look as if you had
seen a ghost?”
Tony sat down on the chair that Carroll had pushed out. “I have,
Reggie,” he said, “I have just got a letter from home; worse luck. My
mother’s ill, and I have to start south to-night.”
“Jove, that is hard luck! When shall you get back, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think my mother is dangerously ill, but she
wants me. There’s been a mess about money too. The old governor has
written, and says I may not get back at all—not this term any way.”
“Not this term!” Reggie jumped up quickly, all the habitual languor of
his attitude and movements gone, and strode over to the window.
“No, I’m afraid not, Reggie.”
“Why—why—I’ll be gone next term, boy.”
“I know, old man.”
For a moment Carroll turned his back to Tony and looked out of the
window into the deepening twilight, and was silent. There was a lump in
his throat that kept him from speaking.
“I’ve only a few minutes, Reggie, old boy,” said Tony, at last. “I am
leaving in an hour and I am only half packed. I’ve got to say good-bye.”
Carroll turned at this: a pathetic smile was on his lips. “It has come
so suddenly, boy ... it’s kind of taken the wind out of my sails.” He
came over then and took Tony’s hand in his. “Tonio, ... I can’t say
good-bye.... You’ll write to me ... you will come back surely.... I’ll
be at Kingsbridge and often back at school.”
“I hope so, Reggie.”
“You don’t know, boy,” Reggie went on, still holding Tony’s hand, “I
can’t tell you what your being here has meant for me—you and Bill. We
haven’t seen each other much this year, and I reckon I’ve often seemed
to you a poor sort of friend ... but, to put it poetically, old chap,
... the light o’ my heart goes out with you.”
Tony gripped the hand in his tightly at this. There was a lump in his
throat too.
“Good-bye, Reggie.... I will write, and you be sure to write to me.
Tell me all that’s going on.... Have an eye on Finch, will you? Poor
duffer!”
“Poor duffer, indeed!” said Carroll, and then added, “Poor me!” Their
hands clasped tightly, and then Tony was gone.
Reggie stood for a long time just as Tony had left him. “One by one the
lamps go out,” he murmured, quoting a line from one of his own verses.
He sighed. “So runs, so runs the world away....” There was a queer
sharp pain at his heart. He sat down at last and opened his Horace
again, and began to read, but the words conveyed no sense to his mind.
He threw his arms out once, and whispered softly, pathetically, “Oh,
Tony, Tony.... God bless you, boy; God bless you!”
Back in Number Five Jimmie and Tony were absorbed in the last stages
of the packing. Morris, to whom Tony had explained the occasion of his
going, had come in and was helping them. And his presence went a great
way to cheer them up, for Morris refused for an instant, even in his
own mind, to consider the possibility of Deering not coming back. He
eased off their good-byes, and sent Lawrence over to cheer up Carroll,
whom he knew would feel it more than the rest, for it was good-bye to
Tony for him as he was in the Sixth and would be at Kingsbridge next
year when Tony returned.
Deering said good-bye to Finch, quickly, quietly, he had time for
little explanation. Finch said nothing, but died of despair within.
On the way down the corridor Tony passed Kit, a generous word was on
his lips, their eyes met for a second, but Kit looked quickly away, and
Tony passed on. The opportunity for a reconciliation was gone. Morris
drove in to Monday Port with the boy and saw him off on the way-train
for Coventry. With persistent tact, he continued to treat the parting
as only a temporary one, and refused himself the melancholy pleasure
of saying much to his young friend that was in his heart and that Tony
might have been glad to hear. It was better so, thought Morris. The
kind things could be written, if the need came.
There was a quick, short, strong grip of their hands at last, and Tony
climbed into the train. He stowed his things in the empty car, and then
went and stood on the rear platform and waved his hand to Morris as the
train pulled out of the little station, and strained his eyes to see
the last of the master’s patient, kindly friendly figure until darkness
blotted out the vision. The train was rushing through the outskirts of
the little town. Beyond the limits it ascended a steep grade and ran
along a high level plateau for a way, and thence Tony caught a glimpse
of the lights of the school shining brightly from the far-away hill,
wafting him, it seemed, a friendly good-bye across the dark. Suddenly
the train plunged into a narrow cut in a hill and Deering could see the
lights of Deal no more.
At Coventry he had a dreary wait for half-an-hour until the midnight
express for the south lumbered in and stopped on signal. As soon as he
had boarded the through train, he got into his berth, for he was worn
out with the wearisome journey from Monday Port and with the excitement
of the last seven hours. But he could not sleep for a long time. When
at last he did fall into a fitful slumber, constantly disturbed by the
jolts and jars of the rushing train, it was to dream bad dreams. Once
it seemed to him, in the dazed state between sleeping and waking, that
he was lying in his little bed at Low Deering, that he was still a
little boy of fourteen, and that the last four years at Deal had been
only a dream....
At Low Deering Tony found things almost as bad as he had feared. His
father, a genial, charming, irresponsible creature—the unaccountable
wild olive that grows now and then on the stock of the good olive
tree—had rather more deeply than usual—for the same sort of thing had
happened before—plunged his family into distress. He had ventured all
his available capital and more that he had borrowed, on the security
of his extravagant hopes and good intentions, from his wife; staked it
in a case where he stood to win twenty-fold or quite overwhelmingly
lose; and, as not unfrequently happens, had lost. Then had followed,
as Tony could remember the horror of it all at an earlier period of
his boyhood, a trying disappearance and a return in a mood of black
melancholy and idle remorse.
But the worst was over by the time he reached home. Victor Deering,
thanks to his father’s stern but tender patience and his wife’s
unfailing much-tried devotion, was slowly recovering his normal
health, his irrepressible spirits, his habitual weaving of futile
plans and nursing of quixotic hopes. But the process this time had
cost his family a good deal more than its meager income could pay for
and had sacrificed Mrs. Deering’s health to worry and distress. For
weeks she had been lying in a state of nervous exhaustion, from which
the physician at last thought she might be rallied if her wish were
granted and Tony, her only child, might be with her. And so he had been
sent for.
During those two hot months of the southern spring Tony devoted
himself to his mother, a devotion that was only relaxed when later,
the old general having scraped together enough for the purpose, the
family removed for the summer to the cooler climate of a resort in
the North Carolina mountains. The mother grieved not a little for her
boy’s interrupted school days—she guessed at the sacrifice Tony’s
cheerfulness hid,—but Tony and the General knew that his return had
saved her health if not her life.
Tony had been separated a great deal from his family since he had gone
north to school, so that, after the first homesickness for Deal was
over, he began to be deeply interested again in the old scenes and
familiar friends of his early boyhood: the easy-going, ill-managed old
plantation with its extensive sugar industry bringing in such income
as they had; the little hill on which stood the house of Low Deering,
low, white and great galleried; the sleepy bayou that stretched away
below to the wild and beautiful jungle, a marshy live-oak forest,
picturesquely hung with the heavy lace of the gray Spanish moss and the
delicate purple of the wild wistaria; the inky black darkies, relics of
ante-bellum days; the few families of similar decaying plantations in
the neighborhood.
Later in the summer at Bald Rock in North Carolina, at the hotel to
which their diminutive cottage was attached, there were young people
again—boys to play baseball and climb the near by mountains with,
girls with whom to dance at the Saturday night hops on the great
gallery of the hotel. Then too there was his father. Despite an
inner disapproval that Tony could not help feeling for his father’s
irresponsible doings, for the trouble he now and then brought so
deeply, perhaps unwittingly, upon them all, Tony enjoyed his father
immensely. If he himself had inherited his strong sense of honor and
his manly grip on life from his grandfather, and the inner patient
tenderness we have sometimes noted in him from his mother, it was from
his father that his charm, his quick and ready sympathy, his genial
grace had come.
After the terrible six months he had given them, Victor Deering could
not have done more to atone than he was whole-heartedly trying to do.
It was characteristic of him, for he deeply appreciated what Deal
School had done for Tony, that his repentance should have caused him to
suggest to the old general that his own patrimony, hoarded by the head
of the house against a rainy day, should be made over to Tony at once,
and the income, the capital if necessary, be applied to completing his
education at Deal and later on at Kingsbridge. General Deering took
his son at his word. Victor was only too eager to promise from then
on steadfast attention to the plantation, which, better managed, was
capable still of recouping their fortunes and furnishing them with a
living. So it began to look bright, as Tony wrote to Jimmie Lawrence,
for his return to school, and without any question of taking advantage
of scholarships or such aid as the Head had so kindly offered. That
offer rankled, unjustly as he knew, in the old aristocrat’s mind. He
was determined Tony should have no such humiliation to face.
Of the school in these days of Tony’s enforced exile, a glimpse shall
be had through the medium of Jimmie Lawrence’s letters, for, of course,
the two boys had written each other with some regularity.
“DEAL SCHOOL: _May 10th_.
“DEAR TONY:
“Well, old boy, how does it seem to be getting Long Vacation two months
ahead of time? I am glad to know that your mother is better; but I
shan’t be contented again till you tell me definitely that you will be
back next term....
“I suppose you want to know what has been going on here. You won’t be
surprised if I say pretty much the same old thing. It is lively enough
to be in the thick of it, but there doesn’t seem much to write about.
I have naturally seen rather more of Kit since you have been away, and
though he does not say much if I try to talk about you, I can’t but
think that things must be all right between you next fall. I have been
seeing too a lot of Reggie Carroll. Reggie, I suppose, will be the same
lanky languid critter to the end of the chapter, but Bill dropped the
word to me the other day that he has tremendously bucked up in his work,
and that he’s going in for the Latin Prize. I happen to know also that
he is hammering away on some verses for Jack Stenton’s prize in Poetry.
From the sample he read me the other night, I have no doubt he’ll get
it,—it is the real thing, not the style of the poems that desecrate
the pages of the _Deal Lit_. Reggie is going to turn out O. K., Bill
says; and I begin to think so myself. Though I must confess, up to now,
despite what you have always thought of him, I have considered him
rather poor pickings and considerably proud of nothing. I haven’t seen
much of Finch; he keeps pretty much to himself; in fact hasn’t been in
here since you left. Bill tells me however that he’s to be back again
next year.
“The team is developing in a satisfactory sort of way, and Teddy makes
a pretty good captain. I’m playing first as usual. We have won all our
games so far, and I guess we’ll give Boxford a good rub on June 10th.
It’s a shame you won’t be here.
“There’s not much faculty news. Gumshoe’s Gumshoe! His rooms have been
rough-housed several times lately, and from the way he glares at Kit, I
fancy, he thinks he is responsible. Kit, characteristically, retaliates
by veiled impudence that sets the Gumshoe’s teeth on edge. But he champs
and says nothing.
“The fellows ask about you a lot, and send their best. Let me hear
from you soon, and don’t forget you are to spend the last month of the
vacation with me at Easthampfield. Write soon.
“Ever affectionately,
“JIMMIE.”
In June there came another letter that interested Tony very much.
“Reggie has pulled both the Latin and the Poetry Prizes. Even the
Gumshoe thawed a trifle and shook hands with him as he came down from
the platform on Prize Day, with a set of Browning in his arms and the
Jackson medal in his inside pocket. He’s so blamed clever that he has
got a _cum laude_. Bill beams with pride over him. The President of
Kingsbridge, a funny old chap who talks through his nose and has a wit
as keen as a razor, made us a bully talk, and the Doctor announced
the prefects for next year—curiously enough he said the Head Prefect
will not be appointed until the opening of school in September. We all
suppose, of course, that that means you, and that it is only postponed
until it is certain that you are coming back. The other prefects will be
Teddy, Gordon Powel, Doc Thorn, Ned Clavering and myself. I had hoped
Kit would be one, but he’s been too independent I guess. It’s a pretty
good lot of fellows, I think, though I say it as shouldn’t, and with
you at the head, we ought to run things very much as we want to next
year....”
Tony had scarcely thought of the Head Prefectship since he had left
school. He believed that there were others better fitted for it than
himself and who more deserved it. The fact that he was President of
the Dealonian made him an obvious candidate, of course; and certainly
if the authorities thought him up to the position he would be glad to
have it. The possibility from this time on added to the keenness with
which he looked forward to his return in September.