ROSALIND’S REWARD.
“I should like to know what you mean by that, Mr. Morgan?”
Rosalind Thornton stood before Dade Morgan, her pretty lips trembling.
He had made an evening call on her at the residence of her aunt, and was
now on the point of taking an early leave. They were standing together
at the foot of the stairs, under the red globe of the swinging hall-lamp
near the outer door.
“You don’t know how pretty you are in that mood, Rose! But perhaps you
do know? It tempts me to steal a kiss.”
Rosalind Thornton was, indeed, a pretty girl, and never more so than at
that moment. A flash of hurt pride made her winsomely attractive—so
attractive that Morgan almost relented from the purpose he had formed in
his heart.
She drew back and put out a little hand.
“You have no right to say such things to me!”
There was a glow of fire behind the unshed tears. Morgan laughed in his
usual reckless, nonchalant way, and hurt Rose by saying roughly:
“Well, I didn’t call to take you out riding this afternoon, as I
promised to do—because I didn’t care to!”
How handsome he was as he stood there looking at her with eyes as dark
as her own. She was as fully alive to his good looks as he was to hers.
There was a mysterious something in his strong, athletic form; in the
resolute face, smiling mouth, and white, even teeth. Dade Morgan was
undeniably a handsome youth, aside from a trick he had of dropping his
lids down over his eyes, to shut out the strange glitter that
occasionally took the beauty out of them.
It was the magnetism of his beauty and strength that had made pretty
Rosalind Thornton willing to hurt the honest heart of big Dick
Starbright—had made her willing to turn from him and accept the pleasant
company of this man, who was his confessed and deadly enemy.
Rosalind’s affections were warm and womanly, but they were not of an
enduring type. She was, besides, of a petulant, jealous disposition. She
had at first accepted Dade’s attentions in the thought that this would
bring Dick Starbright to her feet as a willing and devoted subject. Then
she had suddenly found herself captivated by Dade’s good looks and
winning smile, and wavered in her affection for Starbright, telling
herself that, if Dick did not care to come back, Morgan would be as
acceptable, perhaps more so.
“I suppose I’m a fool, Rose!”
He again moved toward her. Once more she put out a detaining hand.
“Yes, I think you are; but do not call me Rose, please!”
“Rosalind!”
“Nor that!”
He laid his hand on his heart in mock gallantry.
“Miss Thornton, any fellow is a fool who doesn’t fall in love with you!”
“Thanks!”
The laughing smile which he so admired and which he hoped to coax back
to her eyes did not make its reappearance.
“You are quite angry?”
“You didn’t care to keep your word this afternoon!”
Her lips again trembled as she thought of it—thought of the pride and
pleasure with which she had gowned herself—the triumphant pride, which
had made her desire to sweep in Dade’s carriage in grand style past her
former lover, Dick Starbright, whom she was still anxious to draw after
her, as a conquering captor draws a captive.
Dade laughed and dropped the lids over his eyes.
“Well, to tell the truth, I came up here to-night principally to say
that I don’t care to go out driving that way any more.”
The girl’s cheeks paled.
“You’re an awfully pretty girl, Miss Thornton——”
She put out her hand again, but he went on.
“I don’t need to tell you that, for you know it. But there’s no use of
keeping this thing up, you see. You might begin to think that I—I care
for you. To be frank, I don’t. I suppose you’ll say that’s brutal.”
She dropped into a seat on the stairs. Dade looked at her a moment,
still handsome and smiling.
“I hope you aren’t crying,” he said, crossing to her side. “When you
seem so distressed, you know, it makes me—makes me almost lo—care for
you!”
He tried to take her hand. She dashed it away, and turned toward him.
She was undeniably crying now. A strange thrill came to his heart. He
began to think he had been blunt and harsh. His pride was flattered. It
was something to make a pretty girl cry—it evidenced the fact that he
was attractive to women. And he began to ask himself why he had not been
content to go on and make her believe that he cared for her? His vanity
was lashing him, not his conscience.
“I don’t think you care to talk to me any longer,” she declared, in a
low, icy voice. “At least, I don’t care to continue the conversation. I
thought you something which you are not—a gentleman! You were going, I
believe?”
“But perhaps I don’t care to go. Perhaps I—perhaps I prefer to stay. If
we can go on with the understanding that what we’re doing is just for
fun, just for a jolly time and to make Dick Starbright——”
“You were going, I believe!” she icily repeated.
Her eyes were very bright now, and, with the exception of a red spot
glowing in each cheek, her face was white. The tears had dried.
A step was heard on the outer step, making Dade start. He stood in a
listening attitude and heard footsteps departing. Some one had been on
the piazza, and was now going away. Morgan stood a moment in silence,
then opened the door and looked out. The electric light was more than
half a block distant, and the light in front of the house was not good.
Yet he saw a tall form moving down the street.
“If I didn’t know that he couldn’t be guilty of such a thing, I should
say that our good friend Starbright had followed me here this evening
and had been eaves-dropping,” he said, as he withdrew his head and
shoulders from the doorway and closed the door.
“I don’t want to leave until we have settled this matter!” he continued,
still feeling that perhaps he had acted too hastily, and that Rosalind
was altogether too pretty and winsome a girl to be thrown over in that
manner, even if he did not care for her.
“It is settled, I think!” she declared; then turned from him and began
to mount the stairs.
He looked after her, flushed and angry. He had come to the house with
the deliberate intention of telling her that he did not care to take her
driving any more, or to continue their further intimate acquaintance,
and had half-broken down in it because of her beauty and evident
distress. Dade Morgan loved himself better than anything else in the
world, and his self-pride had been hurt. Some way he did not feel as
care-free about the matter as he had fancied he would. He had never
cared for Rosalind Thornton, and had used her merely as a weapon with
which to strike Starbright, but this was somewhat like the weapon
striking back at him when he sought to discard it.
Yet he did not try to speak to her again, though a strange and fiery
light came into his eyes, which, through force of habit, he besought to
conceal. Then he put on his hat, opened the door without saying “Good
night!” and was soon trailing down the street after the person he had
fancied was Dick Starbright.
“Well, she’s off my hands!” he reflected, as he hurried on. “I guess
it’s better that way, though she is deucedly handsome, and I might come
to like her in time, if I could ever like anybody! But that finishes it,
unless I really want to go back. I think I can do that, if I care to try
the trick. Likely I sha’n’t care to try it. I wonder if that was
Starbright? It would be a joke if she’s been playing double, and
Starbright has been calling here all the time. But, no, he wouldn’t do
that. Starbright isn’t a chump, whatever else he is!”
He failed to see Starbright or any one resembling him.
“Taken an electric for down-town, I suppose!”
Then his thoughts went back to Rosalind.
“Umph! Women cry easily; but crying sometimes makes them pretty!”
Hurt, angered, humiliated, Rosalind had rushed into her room, thrown
herself on her bed, and was crying as if her foolish little heart were
about to break.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XHAZERS IN MERRY MOOD.
The youth who had stood for a moment on the steps of the residence of
Mrs. Virgil Throckmorton had indeed been Dick Starbright. He had chanced
to pass along the street, and a sudden impulse had taken him to the
door. His friend, Bert Dashleigh, had told him that Rosalind was soon to
leave New Haven. A desire to see her and have a few words with her
before she went away sent him up the steps, where he became an unwilling
listener to some of the words spoken by her and Morgan, for Morgan had
spoken louder than he knew.
“I guess I’ve made a mistake!” he had grumbled to himself, his heart
flaming against the conduct of the youth whose words he had overheard;
and he had beaten a quick retreat to the street, mentally raging against
Morgan, and assuring himself that he had been an idiot for yielding to
the temptation to speak again to Rosalind.
His thought, as he went down the street toward the car-line, was to wait
for Morgan and demand an explanation; but he did not do this, and,
flinging himself into the first electric that came along, he rode back
to the campus. The recent snow had passed away in a rain-storm, which
had been followed by a return of sharp, frosty weather.
He found the famous quadrangle filled with college men, who seemed to be
having a high old time about something. Dashleigh caught him by the arm.
“What’s up?” Dick demanded.
“I don’t know. They’re roping in the freshmen. Perhaps we’d better make
ourselves scarce.”
But Starbright had already been sighted.
“Oh, Starbright! Come bow to the golden image!” was shouted from the
crowd.
Dashleigh started to run, but he found himself opposed by Bingham and
Jack Ready, who cleverly tripped him as he put his nimble legs in
motion.
“Refuse me!” said Ready, thrusting out his right hand in a wiggling way
as he planted himself before Starbright. “Will you go of your own ’cord,
or shall we cord you?”
He had an arm linked through one of Dashleigh’s, while Bingham was
holding Dashleigh up on the other side.
“What’s up?” Dick calmly asked.
“We are! It isn’t late, you see!”
He saw other sophomores gathering round him, but made no attempt to run.
Down near the fence was a howling mob of students, mostly sophomores and
freshmen, who seemed to be dancing a war-dance about a captive.
“There was a fellow in the Scripture——” Ready began.
“Oh, there was!” Dick interrupted.
“No impertinence, freshman!” cried Ready, blowing out his red cheeks.
“There was a fellow in Scripture who was commanded to bow before the
image of Somebody-or-other, and he refused, and awful things happened to
him!”
“Yes; I remember that he came out all right in the end!”
“Oh, did he? I’ll have to quit quoting Scripture, or go to studying it.
But you’ll not come out all right in the end.”
Dashleigh tripped Bingham and tried to break away.
“Oh, gentle friend, why dost thou try to flee?” Ready purred, holding
onto Bert with iron grip. “Dost thou not see that the enemy surrounds
thee?”
“What’s up?” Starbright again asked.
“Morgan! Morgan!” came as if in answer; and it seemed strange to
Starbright, too, for he was thinking more of Morgan at the moment than
he was of what Ready was saying, or of the antics of the rollicking
sophomores near the fence.
For the sophomores, he cared little enough, having long ago made up his
mind that the only way to deal with them was to let them have their way,
if it was not too rough, and so get rid of them in the shortest order.
Morgan, following Starbright toward the campus, had been suddenly
surrounded by a lot of sophomores who seemed to be lying in wait near
the entrance to capture straggling freshmen. Morgan was in an ugly mood,
because of the events of the evening; and, instead of gracefully
submitting, he began to fight, using his fists freely. In consequence of
this he was roughly thrown down, tied snug and tight with a stout cord,
and then carried bodily toward the rioting mob near the fence, who
seemed to be waiting for just such obstreperous victims.
“I guess I’ll go along and see the fun!” said Starbright good-humoredly,
though his heart was panting against Dade Morgan. Then to himself, as he
moved on with Dashleigh and another freshman who had been caught in the
sophomore net, he said:
“I’ll see Morgan after this thing is over, whatever it may be. I’ll see
him, ask him some questions, and get the answers, too!”
The howling mob gave way, and Starbright saw a large picture of the
rotund proprietor of “Billie’s,” the freshman inn. It was a mere daub on
wood, displaying the round stomach and the shining, bald head of the
genial proprietor. It had been painted by some humorous student and
placed in front of “Billie’s” one night in lieu of a sign-board which
some other student or students had stolen. The proprietor, knowing the
ways of college youths, had smiled his benediction on it and set it up
over the show-case between his two front parlor windows.
And now this gem of art had been surreptitiously extracted from the
tavern, and all the freshmen caught in the sophomore drag-net that
jubilant, crisp evening were being made to go down on their knees before
it and affectionately kiss the bald head.
Morgan was hurt and indignant. He somehow fancied that, because he was
conspicuous as a leader of the freshmen and had done many things to draw
about him a circle of adherents, he should not be forced to do so
humiliating a thing as to kneel on the frosty sand and plant an unctuous
kiss on the pictured bald head.
“Oh, you didn’t half-salute Billie!” Bingham declared, giving Morgan a
push that almost drove his nose through the wood on which the portrait
was drawn. “If you should plant a kiss like that on the ruby lips of
your best girl she would have odious opinions of you.”
“Oh, let up!” Morgan growled. “This is too silly for anything!”
“Except freshmen!” said Bingham. “Salute the bald spot of the human
billiard-cue in a respectful manner, or——”
Two or three sophomores caught Morgan by the neck and shoulders and
forced his lips to the picture, and held him there, in spite of his
protestations, while he kissed Billie’s bald head over and over again.
When released he was mad clean through.
Starbright was pushed up to the daub, murmuring, though he was known
never to drink:
“Oh, thou human punch-bowl, thou concocter of that nectar of the gods!
How I love thee!”
He appeared to want to take the picture to his bosom in a rapturous
embrace, but was dragged back.
“Thou varlet!” cried Ready, pleased with Starbright’s apparent
nonchalance, which was in such marked contrast to Morgan’s fuming rage.
“Avaunt, there! A dog is not privileged to embrace a king!”
“The dog was merely trying to bite him!” chattered Bingham.
“Your pardon!” said Starbright. “The dog mistook his baldness for a link
of sausage!”
“And thought he recognized a kinship!” laughed Greg Carker.
At which sally from the solemn and philosophical Carker the boisterous
sophomores cackled with glee.
The twang of a mandolin was heard, as Bert Dashleigh was made to waddle
forward on all fours and kiss the shiny pate of the pictured host. It
was Dashleigh’s own mandolin, produced by a student who had hastily
invaded Dashleigh’s room for the purpose.
“How did you get in?” Bert coolly asked, stopping in the midst of his
osculatory adorations.
“Fell through the transom,” said the student. “Why the dickens do you
always keep your door locked? That transom is so contracted that I
sprained my wish-bone.”
“Good thing if you had sprained your neck!” Bert flung back; and was
then dragged away, lest in his fervent kissing he should lick all the
paint off the wood.
Two stools were produced from some invisible source, and, while other
freshmen were compelled to bow before and kiss the picture, Dashleigh
and Starbright were made to sit on the stools and sing:
“Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?
Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe?
Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, when I am far away?
“Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?
Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl?
Oh, who will go to see my girl, when I am far away?
“Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?
Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips?
Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, when I am far away?
“Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?
Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand?
Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, when I am far away?”
It was one of those popular college songs which can run on forever, like
Tennyson’s brook, and never get weary; and while Dashleigh thumped away
on the mandolin and he and Dick bawled out every variation and every
verse they had ever heard of or could think of, the captured freshmen
were, one by one, forced to crawl reluctantly forward and honor the
proprietor of “Billie’s.”
It was all very funny—to the sophomores, and to students who, like Dick
and Bert, could take the thing coolly and good-humoredly. To others it
was gall and wormwood. Morgan was brought back three times and made to
moisten the top of “Billie’s” head with his “roseate spoon-bill,” as
Jack Ready facetiously termed Dade’s lips, and Dade grew madder and
madder, until he was in a fighting-mood.
When released at last he stumbled blindly away, vowing vengeance on the
whole tribe of Yale sophomores. As he pitched on in the semigloom,
almost too blind to see which way he was going, he heard his name
called, and, turning about, beheld what he took to be one of the
tormenting sophomores.
“If you follow me any farther, I’ll spread your nose all over your
face!” he threatened.
Whereupon the supposed sophomore drew nearer, laughing in a silent,
mirthless way.
“My dear Dade, you are losing your customary calm!” came the warning in
a familiar voice.
The supposed sophomore was Hector King.
------------------------------------------------------------------------