Deering of Deal; Or, The Spirit of the School

by Latta Griswold

  CHAPTER II

  A HAZING BEE

  As a matter of fact Tony did not get over to Standerland all thatday. He had waited for Lawrence after that first curious hour in theschoolroom and the subsequent recitation in Cæsar with Mr. Gray,generally known as “Pussie,” a clever, sarcastic young master, whomercifully however paid him no attention. Instead then of runningover to the dormitory to wash up, Jimmie led him down a flight ofback stairs in the Schoolhouse, and through a series of subterraneanpassages, to a remote little room, in which stood a stationarywashstand in official disuse, which had probably been designed forthe use of the servants. This Jimmie announced with pride to be hisprivate luxury. “It saves a deal of time and trouble to wash here,” heexplained. Tony could not see that it really did, but he felt at once aboy’s pleasure in doing the irregular thing.

  In this makeshift of a washroom they found another boy, already washinghis hands. He was a bright-eyed, fair-headed, stockily-built youth,whose face sparkled with good nature. “Hello, Jim,” he cried, as theycame up, “who is your new friend?”

  “Deering was his father’s name,” Jimmie answered facetiously, “Anthonywas bestowed upon him by his sponsors in baptism.”

  “So! Well, fellow Christian, where do you hail from?”

  “I?—I come from Louisiana.”

  “Louisiana! that’s a heck of a way to come. Well, Deering Anthony, lacemy boots while I dry my hands.”

  “Go to the deuce, Kit!” Lawrence broke in. “Deering’s in the Third.Take your sloppy boots to the First Form locker-rooms, and don’t braghere. Swat him, Tony, if he gets fresh.”

  Kit burst into a ripple of delicious, infectious laughter. “Oh, that’sthe ticket! Well, Tony, my darling, will you condescend to dip yourlily fingers in this humble basin? The attar of roses unfortunately is‘all,’ as the excellent Ebenezer Roylston has been known to put it.Permit me to offer you a towel.” With the words he deftly extractedJimmie’s handkerchief, and thrust it at Deering. There was a laughand scuffle between the two boys, quickly over as a distant bellsounded; they grabbed their coats, and fled unwashed toward the greatdining-hall, which occupied the same relation to the Old School on theeast as the Chapel did on the west.

  “Can you play football?” asked Kit, as they ran along the terrace.

  “I don’t know—” began Tony.

  “Well, come out this afternoon, and find out. Report to me in footballtogs at three, and I’ll give you a chance on the Third Form squad.”

  “Thanks awfully.”

  “Cut that out! Scoot now after Jimmie, or you’ll be late. Good-boy Billhates a laggard, and you’re at his table.”

  Then had come the first bewildering dinner, with the myriads ofstrange faces about him. Already he thought of Jimmie Lawrence, nextwhom he sat, as an old friend. In the afternoon he was carried offto the Store and fitted out with football clothes, and then led offto the playing-field back of the quadrangle to be tried out. Thegame was strange to him, and he felt an awkward muff at it. But as amatter of fact he was quick and fleet and intelligent, and at the endof the afternoon, Kit deigned to pat him on the shoulder and to bidhim reappear on the morrow. “You are not half bad, you know; for aland-lubber, so to speak. Mind you’re regular, and don’t eat toffy, andkeep clear of the pie-house!”

  At 5 o’clock Tony found himself excused from afternoon school by theDoctor’s command, and went in to tea at the Rectory and was introducedto Mrs. Forester—a sweet, motherly, middle-aged woman; and to two orthree masters, the sarcastic Mr. Gray amongst them; and to four orfive members of the noble Sixth, who were discussing the new footballmaterial. Tony spent a pleasant half-hour there, and after a talk with,or rather from, the Doctor about Kingsbridge and Deal in the oldentime, he was sent back to the schoolroom and to afternoon recitations.

  At 9 o’clock he was dismissed from evening school, and the attentiveLawrence steered him over to Standerland Hall, where Mr. Morris showedhim the rooms he was to share with a Fourth Former. This was a pleasantlittle apartment, consisting of a study and two bedrooms, which lookedeastward, over Lovel’s Woods and the Strathsey River.

  “You can unpack to-morrow,” said Mr. Morris, “but you may takehalf-an-hour now to get acquainted with your room-mate.”

  As they entered the room a tall, lanky youth had arisen from a Morrischair. He had rather fair, well-moulded features, a cool gray eye, aquiet but somewhat patronizing manner, a drawl to his speech, and ageneral air of distinction, not unmingled with conceit.

  “This is Tony Deering, Carroll. Tony, allow me to present you to yourroom-mate, Mr. Reginald Carter Westover Carroll, of Virginia.”

  “Awh, thanks, Mr. Morris, for getting it all in,” drawled Carroll.“How-de-do, Deering; pray don’t hesitate to make yourself at home.”He languidly extended his hand, and allowed Tony to shake it. “Won’tyou honor us, Mr. Morris?” he asked, waving his hand gracefully in thedirection of the deep easy chair.

  “No, thank you; not to-night, Reginald. Be good enough to explain toDeering the simple rules that theoretically will govern his behaviour.Lights are to be out at nine-thirty. Good-night.”

  He shook hands with the boys cordially, and left them alone together.Deering looked curiously about him, a hundred questions on the tip ofhis tongue; which however he refrained from asking, as he saw Carrollsink back into the Morris chair, extract the novel that he had slippedunder it when he had heard the knock, and resume reading.

  Tony stood for a moment, a trifle disconcerted. He was a little at lossto know what might be the etiquette of such an occasion. “I say,” heblurted out at last, “I think you might put that book down and tell afellow a thing or two.”

  Carroll placed the book on the table at his side, with an air of mildsurprise. “Dear child,” he murmured indulgently, “shall we adopt theSocratic method?”

  Tony flushed. “What is the Socratic method?”

  “You ask questions; I answer—a few of them.”

  “I don’t know that I have any particular questions to ask. I supposedwe might find something to say if we tried hard enough. However, ifyou will tell me in which room I am to sleep, and at what hour we areexpected to get up, I think I can get on without troubling you anyfurther.”

  “As to the first of your enquiries,” the long languid youth replied,“as I happen to have the advantage of being in the Fourth, and tohave arrived a day earlier than you upon the scene of action, I havechosen the larger one to the right, which is protected from the earlymorning sun by a trifling angle of the exterior wall. A murderous bellwill assassinate your innocent sleep at seven in the morning. The timethat you arise will be determined by the length of time it takes youto dress and your estimate of the value of late marks. Breakfast, mySocrates, is at half-past seven. Are the problems too much for you?”

  Tony smiled. “I reckon I can figure them out.”

  “You are both tautological and verbose. The single word ‘reckon’ wouldhave expressed your meaning quite as accurately and not less elegantly.”

  “Oh, I don’t go in for elegance.”

  Carroll lifted his eyebrows with an air of feigned surprise, andsurveyed Tony for a moment or so with languid interest. When itappeared that his new acquaintance had nothing further to say, theolder boy leaned his head wearily back upon his chair, and took up hisbook again, holding it open with an air of heroic patience.

  “I think I’ll turn in,” said Tony at last.

  “Ah!” murmured Carroll, “in that case, I may bid you good-night.”

  Poor Tony was a little chilled by his reception, and he flung himselfsomewhat petulantly out of the study and into his bedroom. He turned onthe light, undressed quickly, and got into bed. For a long time he laythinking; first of Carroll, the elegant, languid, supercilious Carroll,and rebelled with passionate inner protest at his fate in beingcast to room with him. Why had it not been Jimmie Lawrence—clever,handsome, jolly Jimmie, of the sparkling eyes, and the good-naturedbanter? or the likable self-important Kit, or
any one of a dozen ormore good fellows he had run against that day? But the memories ofthem appeased him. He felt himself lucky to have hit it off so wellwith such as they; and certainly there was much about the school thathe was going to like; and it was fine to have a room to himself, aprivilege that he had learned was exceptionable with Third formers andwas supposed to be due to a “pull” his people had with the Doctor; andit was good luck to be under such a master as Bill Morris, whom he hadalready decided was to be his favorite. What a horrible fate it wouldhave been to have sat next at table or roomed in the house of Mr.Roylston—“Gumshoe Ebenezer,” as the boys called him! or to have hadto submit to Mr. Gray’s sarcasm too often! All things considered, hefelt he was very lucky; and so he stifled a queer feeling of lonelinessand homesickness, and turned over and tried to go to sleep.

  He had heard Carroll moving about for awhile, and then, as he thoughtat half-past nine, he had heard the click of the electric light asit was turned off, the closing of a study door, and he supposed thatCarroll had also gone to bed.

  It was perhaps an hour later that he heard a soft tapping, repeatedonce or twice; then presently a movement in the study, and the creakingof a door being opened and closed; then the sound of whispering inthe room without. Tony sat up in bed, wide awake now, and listenedintently. In a moment his bedroom door opened. “Who’s that?” he called.

  “Shish! be still! don’t make a sound, or I’ll break your head.”Somebody fumbled with the switch, turned the current on, and in asecond the bedroom was flooded with light. Four boys, dressed incrimson and white jersies and old trousers, with red caps pulled downover their eyes, crowded into the room.

  “What’s the matter?” cried Tony in a whisper, springing out of bed.

  “Excellent pupil!” drawled Carroll, at this moment thrusting his headthrough the doorway, “even in the moment of excitement he preserves theSocratic method.”

  “What do you want?” Tony repeated, backing up against his wall, apathetic but sturdy figure in his white pajamas.

  “Get into your clothes, and come along,” said a big fellow, with theair, real or assumed, of a bully.

  “Where?”

  “Where you’re bid.”

  “I’ll be hanged if I will.”

  “You’ll be hanged if you won’t,” the other rejoined, advancing towardhim menacingly.

  “Careful, Chapin!” whispered one of the others, “the kid’ll squeal in amoment, and we’ll have Bill in on us.”

  “To heck with Bill! I’ll have that kid, or I’ll know the reason why!”

  “Gently, Arthur dear,” murmured Carroll. “Never resort to force untilpersuasion is exhausted. Dear Socrates, we desire the pleasure of yourcompany for a walk abroad. The hour is unusual, but therefore thegreater is the compliment. My friend Chapin is impetuous and slightlyrude, but I counsel you to accept his invitation.”

  “What do you want with me?” asked Tony, stubbornly.

  “Don’t ask me to repeat, I beg of you. Time presses, and the patienceof my friends is on the ebb.”

  “Hang your friends’ patience!” exclaimed Tony. “I won’t—”

  “It will hang them, my child, if you do not come. The effort to removeyou by force will cost them no end of a hanging.”

  Tony saw that whatever resistance he might make, the kind that wouldsave him was tabooed. He had only to make a noise, of course, and themaster of the house would come to his rescue. Intuition told him thatthis was impossible, as impossible as also he felt it would be tosubmit placidly to hazing. Being southern, Tony had his prejudices.An objection to interference with his liberty even in the easy-goingfashion of school-life was one of them. He decided at once that hisprotest, however, must be made out of doors, when all chance ofattracting the attention of the masters was over. All this went throughhis mind a great deal more quickly than it can be told. As he made hisdecision, he pulled on his trousers and a jersey over the shirt of hispajamas, slipped his feet into “sneakers,” and professed to be ready.

  “Mumm’s the word, through the corridor,” whispered Chapin, as theyslipped out into the dark passage-way, and cautiously felt their waytowards the stairs. Carroll had condescended to take Tony’s hand,partly that he might guide him in the dark, partly to make sure thatthe boy did not give him the slip.

  At last they emerged upon the campus. It was dark and still. A latemoon was casting its waning light over the hills beyond Strathsey Neck.The boys, still speaking in whispers, led Tony quickly across theghostly campus, and into a field below the chapel, which sloped downtoward the curving beach and sea. As they evidently meant to take himfarther still, Deering pulled back here, and wrenched his arm free ofCarroll’s grasp.

  “I have gone far enough,” he said. “Tell me what you want of me, here.”

  “Biff him, Kid,” exclaimed one of his captors, in a voice in which thenote of brutality sounded painfully real.

  “Nay, nay, gently,” interposed Carroll. “Let me deal with Socrates....We would lead you to the beach, my friend, where the little lobstersand the mermaids play, and there have you sing us songs and make usmerry with your quips and jests; while we, from the recesses of acertain cave well known to us, extract certain delightful viands, andfeast.”

  Tony listened patiently to this speech, with an expression of contemptupon his face that it was fortunate his captors could not see.

  “Oh, all right, Carroll,” he said in reply, “go ahead, if you want to.I tell you frankly, the four of you may be able to beat me into a pulp,but you are not going to haze me.”

  “No?” with an air of incredulity.

  “No.”

  The irritable member of the party poked Tony in the ribs at thispoint, and for his pains got a stinging blow on the ear. This youth,whose name was Chapin, was exceedingly angry at this, and Tony’sfate doubtless would have been settled then and there, had not theother three interposed, and restrained Chapin’s efforts to enforce animmediate punishment, protesting if there was a fight now he wouldspoil the fun. After an exciting altercation, which nearly resulted inthe hazing party itself engaging in a civil war, peace was restored andthe five proceeded toward the beach.

  They walked some distance along the sands, which the ebbing tide hadleft damp and firm, to a point a little on the nether side of a deepstream, perhaps twenty yards wide, which divided the beach from arocky bit of coast on the farther side. There was a rocky formationalong the shores of this stream in the shelter of which Chapin soonindicated the mouth of a natural cave by thrusting his arms deep intothe crevice, and then bringing forth one after another several largetin boxes and armfuls of fuel.

  One boy quickly started a fire in the lee of a rock, the flame of whichwas shielded from the view of the school by the neighboring dunes. Theother three, leaving Tony for the moment to his own devices, thoughthey kept a watch on him, made preparations for a feast. From thetin boxes they produced various canned stuffs, biscuits, sweets, andthe like, while the others began to fry some sausages in a skilletover the fire. It was probably near midnight, and so thrilling and sointeresting were these proceedings, that for the moment Tony forgotthat he too was not one of them out for a lark and began to enjoyhimself hugely. Suddenly Chapin took a seat on a rock, and calling tohim sharply, reminded him on what a different status he was there—adespised new boy to be hazed for freshness. He wondered, not withoutsome alarm, what they proposed to do to him.

  At length, just as Carroll handed up to Chapin a nicely done sausage,Tony’s principal tormentor turned to him. “Well, Deering, suppose youget up on that rock there, and give us a sample of your beautifulsouthern voice. We’ll have ‘Louisiana Lou,’ if you please.”

  Tony felt a cold shiver run down his back, but nevertheless he bracedhimself against the rock, instead of mounting it, and faced Chapin.Thorndyke and Marsh drew near, and Carroll looked up from where he waskneeling at the fire.

  “Come along.... Nah!” he snarled, in answer to some remark ofCarroll’s, “I am going to haze this kid to th
e limit. Come, step livelythere, Deering; what’s the matter with you? Crawl up on that rock, orI’ll biff you over the head.”

  Tony backed off a little. “I supposed you knew,” he said, “that Ididn’t intend to be hazed when you brought me down here.”

  “Didn’t intend to be hazed!” cried Thorndyke, a strapping big chap.“Well, I’ll be——What did you think we asked you to—a party?

  “No,” Tony answered. “But I came because I didn’t want to raise arumpus up near the School, where you might think I was scared andtrying to squeal out of it.”

  “So you ain’t trying to squeal now, eh?” asked Thorndyke.

  “Not a bit, but I don’t intend to be hazed all the same.”

  “Why, Socrates, my love, do you expect us to fight you in rotation soas to convince you of the fact that you _are_ going to be hazed?” askedCarroll, in tones of sarcasm.

  “Oh, biff him!” cried Chapin.

  Tony backed a little. “I don’t expect you to fight me, no,” heanswered; then like a flash he kicked off his sneakers, slipped off hiscoat, and cast it full into Chapin’s face, with his hands behind it,sending him sprawling over Carroll, and upsetting their fire. With acry, he leaped upon the rocks above. “You’ve got to catch me first.”

  There was a chorus of startled exclamations, and then all four startedafter him, leaping upon the rocks. Tony ran lightly to the fartherside, and then just as Thorndyke’s face appeared over the ledge behind,he sprang into the air, off the rocks, and disappeared beneath thewaters of Beaver Creek.

  “Wait till the little devil comes up,” cried Marsh, standing on thebrink of the rock and looking at the bubbling water. “He’ll swimacross, but he can’t get back to the school without coming this way.Two of you go round by the bridge. Reggie and I’ll wait here.”

  Chapin and Marsh started on a run for the bridge, which spanned thecreek along a dune road about a hundred yards from the beach. Carrolland Thorndyke watched for the reappearance of Tony on the surface ofthe creek, but no Tony reappeared. The seconds lengthened into minutes;they heard their two companions stamping across the bridge, but not aripple disturbed the dark waters of the creek.

  “Good heavens! what’s become of him?” whispered Thorndyke.

  “Nothing!” Carroll responded irritably. “Watch the opposite bank.”

  In a moment more Chapin and Marsh were on the other side. “Have youseen him?” they called.

  “He hasn’t come up yet,” Chapin answered, in an agitated voice.

  “Hasn’t come up yet! Then I’m going in after him!” and with the wordsMarsh plunged into the stream. He floundered about for a moment or so,diving here and there, but in four or five minutes crawled to shoreexhausted. The others had investigated the bank to the bridge.

  LIKE A FLASH HE SLIPPED OFF HIS COAT AND CAST IT FULL INCHAPIN’S FACE]

  “He must have swum up stream,” suggested Marsh.

  “He hasn’t come up to the surface, you ass!” said Carroll. “Do youthink he can swim a hundred yards under water?”

  “What then do you think we are going to do?” he asked, in ghastly tones.

  “Why two of us are going up to Doctor Forester, and two are going tostay here and keep watch.”

  “You don’t think....”

  “What, in heaven’s name, can we think?”

  Carroll and Marsh started on a run up the beach, leaving their twocompanions crouched on the rocks, peering down fearsomely into thestream. The night seemed to them to grow colder, darker, more dismal.The moon in fact had set.

  “By Jove, this is rum!” Thorndyke choked, in a grisly effort to seem atease.

  “It’s ghastly, Harry,” whispered Chapin, as he put his hand on theother boy’s arm.