The Varmint Part 19

"Shall I stop, sir?" said Stover.

"Heaven forbid!"

Stover completed the page with a graphic, rus.h.i.+ng account of the athletic exercises of the ancient Germans, and sat down without a smile.

The Roman, back at his post, wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and spoke:

"Very well run, indeed, Stover; excellently well run. Take your breath. Very fluent, very vivid, very persuasive--a trifle free, a trifle--but, on the whole, a very creditable performance. Very! I was sure, whatever you did, Stover, you wouldn't bore us. Now, let us see how the same pa.s.sage will appeal to a more prosaic, less richly-endowed mind."

Then Red Dog rose and, unfeelingly, brought the scene back to Rome and the deliberations of the Senate.

But this was a detail that did not interest d.i.n.k in the least. He had clashed with The Roman and not retreated. He had his first moment of triumph, attested by the admiring glances of the cla.s.s and the m.u.f.fled whisper of Straus, saying:

"Gee, you're a peach!"

The session ended with a solemn warning from The Roman.

"One word," he said in his deepest tones, "just one word to the wise.

We have journeyed together for two whole terms; there is only one more between you and rea.s.signment. Candor compels me to say that you have acquired not even a flunking knowledge." He turned and raked the awed ranks with the sweep of a pivot gun, and then took up again in cutting, chilling, s.p.a.ced syllables: "I have, in the course of my experience as a teacher, had to deal with imbeciles, had to deal with mere idiots; but for sheer, determined, _monumental_ asininity I have never met the equal of this aggregation. I trust this morning's painful, disgraceful, disheartening experience may never, never be repeated. You may go."

And Stover, who had brazenly planned to remain and converse, went swiftly out with the rest, little imagining that he whom he had ranked as a deadly, unforgiving foe sat a long while chuckling over the marvelous route d.i.n.k had gone, murmuring gratefully to himself:

"Wherever the wind blew him, Caesar initiated the orators."

VIII

In the hallway the Coffee-colored Angel jabbed him with his elbow, muttering:

"You laughed at me, you miserable Rinky d.i.n.k. I'll fix you for that."

He disappeared swiftly. Before d.i.n.k could frame a reply he was surrounded by an admiring chorus. The Tennessee Shad and Macnooder shook hands with ceremony.

"You'll do," said the Tennessee Shad.

"You certainly will!" said Doc Macnooder.

"You've made a hit with Lucius Ca.s.sius," said the Tennessee Shad.

d.i.n.k shook his head; he knew better.

"You must always recite--always," said Doc Macnooder, from his great knowledge of the nature of masters. "Whether you're prepared or not--recite."

"I will," said d.i.n.k.

"And say, d.i.n.k," said Macnooder, "keep that outfit we sold you.

There'll be more hayseeds in the fall."

d.i.n.k had thought of that; he had thought of something else, too, which he craftily hid in his own memory.

"Next fall I'll show them a thing or two," he said gleefully. "I'll make souvenir crockery sets the rage."

The Coffee-colored Angel and the petty annoyances of the Green House forgot, he went with a hitch and a kick, loping along, while his delicately-balanced imagination, now soaring above the gloomy descents of the morning, swam joyfully in the realms of future triumphs.

In this abstracted mood he pa.s.sed Foundation's gloomy portals and Laloo standing in his door gazing down the road, and took the leafy path that led to the Green.

All at once he heard a battle cry and, turning, beheld the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary spring from their concealment and bear down upon him with unmistakable intent. Now, whether in a former existence d.i.n.k had been parent to the fox, or whether the purely human instinct was quicker than the reason, before he knew what he had done he had bounded forward and burst for home in full flight, with his heart pumping at his ribs. Easily distancing his pursuers, he arrived at the Green House before it dawned upon him that he had been challenged and run away.

He stopped abruptly with clenched fists, breathing deep.

"Now let them come," he said, turning.

But the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary, having abandoned the hopeless chase, had gone another way.

Angry and ashamed, d.i.n.k went to his room, vowing terrific vengeance.

He planted himself before the mirror and, doubling up either arm, felt the well-hardened muscles.

"There were two of them, and I didn't have time to think," he said.

"I'll fight 'em--any of 'em."

Rea.s.sured by the scowling ferocity of his reflected countenance, he turned away. But, pa.s.sing near the window, he saw the Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary come militantly up the stone walk.

A moment later their steps sounded on the stairs. He went hastily to the door and shot the key. An instant later the door was tried, and then the contemptuous face of the Coffee-colored Angel loomed through the transom.

"I knew you were yellow the moment I looked at you," he said scornfully. "Pah!"

d.i.n.k did not answer. He was all in a whirl. His action in locking the door, so contrary to his heroic resolutions, left him in confusion.

"I wonder if I really am afraid," he said, sitting down-all in a heap.

The look in the Coffee-colored Angel's eye had brought him an unpleasant creeping sensation in the region of the back.

And yet the Coffee-colored Angel, bone for bone and inch for inch, was just what he was--only he had fled from him, inadvertently, instinctively, it is true, yet feeling the running menace at his back.

"I'm a coward!" he said, staring at the opposite wall. "I must be a coward! If I weren't I would have opened that door."

Now, d.i.n.k had never fought a real fight. He had had a few rough-and-tumble skirmishes, but a fight where you stood up and looked a man in the whites of the eyes, a deliberate, planned-out fight, was outside his knowledge, in the mists of the unknown. And so his imagination--which later should be his strength--recoiled before that unknown as it had recoiled the moment he stepped from the stage to face his new judges; as it had recoiled in the hushed parlor before the closed door of the head master's den, and again at the thought of stepping into the batter's box and risking his head against the deadly shoots of Nick Carter, of the Cleve. He had never fought, therefore he was aghast at the fear of being afraid.

"Well, I won't run again," he said desperately. "I'll have it over with--he can only lick me."

But he did run again, and often, despite all his resolves, impelled always by the psychological precedent that he had run before.

The Coffee-colored Angel and the White Mountain Canary made a regular ceremony of it, raising a hue and cry at the sight of him and bursting into derisive laughter after short chases.

d.i.n.k was miserable and now thoroughly frightened. He slunk into the solitude of his own company, avoiding the disdainful looks of his House mates. He knew now he was a coward and should never be anything else. He did not blame Butsey, who scarcely spoke to him. All he thought of was, by roundabout ways, to put off the dreadful hour when either the Coffee-colored Angel or the White Mountain Canary should catch him and beat him to a quivering, senseless pulp.

Then the unexpected happened. One day, cutting across fields to avoid his persecutors, he was suddenly shut off by the White Mountain Canary, who rose from ambush, jeering horribly. Cut off from the Green, d.i.n.k returned post-haste up the village, when all at once the Coffee-colored Angel closed in on him. Only one way of escape was open to him, down an alley between two houses. With the Coffee-colored Angel at his heels he dashed ahead, turned the corner of the house and found himself caught in a blind area.