The Varmint Part 21

It was a strange fight. They stood around in silence, rather frightened at Stover's frenzy. Tough McCarty, overtopping his antagonist by four good inches, stood on the defensive, seeking only to ward off the storm of frantic blows that rained on him. For d.i.n.k cared not a whit what happened to him or how he exposed himself.

Blinded by rage, crying from sheer excess of emotion, shrieking out inarticulate denunciations, he flung himself on McCarty with the recklessness of a mad dervish, crying:

"You thought I was a coward,--darn you! You great, fat slob! You thought I was afraid of a licking, did you? I'll show you. Lick me now if you can, you big brute! Lick me every day! I'm not afraid of you!"

"Confound the lunatic!" said Tough McCarty, receiving a solid thump in the ribs. "I can't stand here, getting pummeled all day. Got to hit him--ouch!"

d.i.n.k, in his frantic rush, throwing himself under his enemy's guard, almost bore him to the ground by the shock of his onslaught. McCarty, angrily brus.h.i.+ng the blood from his already outraged nose with the cuff of his sleeve, shook himself like an angry bear and, catching Stover with a straight-arm blow, sent him rolling on the turf.

Back again and again came Stover, hurling himself wildly onto the scientific fists that sent him reeling back. The green arms of the trees, the gray faces of the onlookers, the blue of the tilting sky rushed into the reeling earth, confounded together. He no longer saw the being he was fighting, a white film slipped over everything and then all went out in blank unconsciousness.

When he opened his eyes again he was on his back, looking up through the willows at a puffy cloud that turned against the blue. At his side the brook went softly, singing in whispers the note that stirred the leaves.

Something wet fell on his face and trickled uncomfortably down his neck. Some one was applying a dripping cloth.

"Coming to?" said Cheyenne Baxter.

Then d.i.n.k remembered.

"Where is he?" he cried, trying to spring up. "Fight him,--fight him to the end!"

A strong hand pressed him down.

"There, there, you fire-eater!" said Cheyenne. "Go easy. You've had enough blood for one afternoon. Lie back. Shut your eyes."

He heard whispering and the sound of voices going, and lost consciousness again.

When he saw the face of the day once more he was alone with Cheyenne, who was kneeling by his side, smiling as he watched him.

"Better now?"

"I'm all right."

"Let me carry you."

"I can stand."

Cheyenne's good right arm caught him as he tottered and held him.

"I'm all right," said d.i.n.k gruffly.

Aided by Cheyenne, he went weakly back to the Green. At the steps Tough McCarty sprang up and advanced with outstretched hand, saying:

"Put her here, d.i.n.k; you're dead game!"

Stover put his hand behind his back.

"I don't want to shake hands," he said, flus.h.i.+ng and gazing at Tough McCarty until the pupils of his eyes seemed to dwindle, "with you or any of you. I hate you all; you're a gang of muckers. I'll fight you now: I'll fight you to-morrow. You're too big for me now; but I'll lick you--I'll lick you next year--you, Tough McCarty--or the year after that; you see if I don't!"

Tough McCarty stood back, rightfully offended. Cheyenne led d.i.n.k up to his room and lectured him.

"Now, young bantam, listen to me. You've shown your colors and we respect you for it. But you can't fight your way into being liked--put that in your pipe and smoke it. You've got to keep a civil tongue in your head and quit thinking this place was built for your special benefit. Savez? You've got to win your way if you want to be one of us. Now, when you get your head clear, go down and apologize to Tough McCarty and the Angel, like a man."

The advice, which a day later would have been gratefully received, came inopportunely for d.i.n.k's overwrought nerves. He gave an angry answer--he did not want to be friends--he hated them all--he would never apologize--never.

When Butsey White came with friendly offers he cut him short.

"Don't _you_ come rubbering around now," he said scornfully. "You went back on me. You thought I was afraid. I'll do without your friends.h.i.+p now."

When a calmer view had come to him he regretted what he had done. He eliminated Tough McCarty--that was a feud of the instincts--but it certainly had been white of the Coffee-colored Angel to offer to be his second; Cheyenne was every inch a leader, and Butsey really had been justified. Unfortunately, his repentance came too late; the damage had been done. Only one thing could right him--an apology to the a.s.sembled House; but as the courage to apologize is the last virtue to be acquired--if it ever is acquired--d.i.n.k in his pride would rather have chopped off his hand than admit his error. They had misjudged him; they would have to come to him. The breach, once made, widened rapidly--due, princ.i.p.ally, to d.i.n.k's own morbid pride. Some of the things he did were simply ridiculous and some were flagrantly impudent.

He was one against eight--but one who had learned his strength, who feared no longer the experiences he knew. He stood ready to back his acts of belligerency with his fists against any one--except, of course, Butsey White; for roommates do not fight unless they love one another.

He had always in him the spirit of the rebel. To be forbid a thing, with him, was to do it instantly. He refused all the service a Freshman should do. At table he took a malignant delight in demanding loudly second and third helps of the abhorrent prunes--long after he had come to feel the universal antagonism. He would not wake Butsey in the morning, fill his basin or arrange his shoes. He would run no errands. He refused to say sir or doff his hat to his superiors in the morning; and, being better supplied with money, he took particular pleasure in entering the House with boxes of jiggers or tins of potted meats and a bottle of rootbeer, with which he openly gorged himself at night, while Butsey squirmed over the unappetizing pages of the Gallic Wars.

Finally, the blow came. Cheyenne Baxter, as president of the House, appeared one evening and hurled on him the ban of excommunication--from that hour he was to be put in Coventry.

From that moment no one spoke to him or by the slightest look noticed his existence. d.i.n.k at first attempted to laugh at this exile.

At every opportunity he joined the group on the steps. No one addressed him. If he spoke no one answered. At table the Coffee-colored Angel no longer asked him to pa.s.s his plate, but pa.s.sed it around the other way. He went out in the evenings and placed his cap in line with the other boys', but the ball never went into his hat. If he stood, hoping to be hit, no one seemed to notice that he was standing there. For several days he sought to brazen it out with a miserable, sinking feeling, and then he gave it up. He had thought he cared nothing for the company of his House mates--he soon discovered his error and recognized his offending. But apology was now out of the question. He was a pariah, a leper, and so must continue--a thing to be shunned.

The awful loneliness of his punishment threw him on his own resources.

At night he lay in his bed and heard Butsey steal out to a midnight spread behind closed doors, or to join a band that, risking the sudden creak of a treacherous step, went down the stairs and out to wend their way with other sweltering bands across the moonlit ways, through negro settlements, where frantic dogs bayed at the sticks they rattled over the picket fences, to the banks of the ca.n.a.l for a cooling frolic in the none too fragrant waters.

In the morning he could not join the group that congregated to listen to Beekstein--Secretary of Education--straighten out the involved syntax or track an elusive x to its secret lair. In the afternoon he could not practice on the diamond with them, learning the trick of holding elusive flies or teaching himself to face thunderous outshoots at the plate.

This enforced seclusion had one good result: left to his own devices his recitations improved tremendously, though this was scant consolation.

He kept his own company proudly, reading long hours into the land of Dumas and Victor Hugo; straying up to the 'Varsity diamond, where he cast himself forlornly on the gra.s.s, apart from the groups, to watch Charlie DeSoto dash around the bases, and wonderful Jo Brown on third base sc.r.a.pe up the grounders and shoot them to first.

He was too proud to seek other friends, for that meant confession.

Besides, his own cla.s.smates were all busy on their own diamonds, working for the success of their own House nines.

Only when there was a 'Varsity game and he was swallowed up in the indiscriminate ma.s.s that whooped and cheered back of first, thrilling at a sudden crisis, did he forget himself a little and feel a part of the great system. Once when, in a game with the Princeton Freshmen, Jo Brown cleared the bases with a sizzling three-bagger, a fourth-former he didn't know thumped him ecstatically on the back and he thrilled with grat.i.tude.

But the rest was loneliness, ever recurrent loneliness, day in and day out. His only friends were Charlie DeSoto and Butcher Stevens at first, whom he could watch and understand--feeling, also, the fierce spirit of battle cooped up and forbidden within him.

One night in the second week of June, when Butsey White had gone to a festal spread in Cheyenne Baxter's rooms, d.i.n.k sat cheerlessly over the Latin page, seeing neither gerund nor gerundive.

The windows were open to the multiplied chorus of distant frogs and the drone of near-by insects. The lamp was hot, his clothes steamed on his back. He thought of the rootbeer and sarsaparilla being consumed down the hall and, going to the closet, consulted his own store of comforting things.

But to feast alone was no longer a feast at all. He went to the window and sniffed the warm air, trying to penetrate the outer darkness.

Then, balancing carefully, he let himself out and, dropping on the yielding earth, went hungrily up to the campus.

He had never been on the Circle before at night, with all the lights about him. It gave him a strange, breathless feeling. He sat down, hugging his knees, in the center of the Circle, where he could command the blazing windows of the Houses and the long, lighted ranks of the Upper, where the fourth-formers were singing on the Esplanade. The chapel at his back was only a shadow; Memorial Hall, a cloud hung lower than the rest.

From his position of vantage he could hear sc.r.a.ps of conversation through the open windows, and see dark figures flitting before the mellow lamps. The fellows.h.i.+p in the Houses, the good times, the feeling of home that hung about each room came to him with acute poignancy as he sat there, vastly alone. In the whole school he had made not a friend. He had done nothing; no one knew him. No one cared.

He had blundered from the first. He saw his errors now--only too plainly--but they were beyond retrieving.