A HAZING BEE

As a matter of fact Tony did not get over to Standerland all that day. He had waited for Lawrence after that first curious hour in the schoolroom and the subsequent recitation in CÆsar with Mr. Gray, generally known as “Pussie,” a clever, sarcastic young master, who mercifully however paid him no attention. Instead then of running over to the dormitory to wash up, Jimmie led him down a flight of back stairs in the Schoolhouse, and through a series of subterranean passages, to a remote little room, in which stood a stationary washstand in official disuse, which had probably been designed for the use of the servants. This Jimmie announced with pride to be his private luxury. “It saves a deal of time and trouble to wash here,” he explained. Tony could not see that it really did, but he felt at once a boy’s pleasure in doing the irregular thing.

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

“Deering was his father’s name,” Jimmie answered facetiously, “Anthony was 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, lace my 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 brag here. Swat him, Tony, if he gets fresh.”

Kit burst into a ripple of delicious, infectious laughter. “Oh, that’s the ticket! Well, Tony, my darling, will you condescend to dip your lily 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 extracted Jimmie’s handkerchief, and thrust it at Deering. There was a laugh and scuffle between the two boys, quickly over as a distant bell sounded; they grabbed their coats, and fled unwashed toward the great dining-hall, which occupied the same relation to the Old School on the east 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 football togs 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 Bill hates a laggard, and you’re at his table.”

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

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

At 9 o’clock he was dismissed from evening school, and the attentive Lawrence steered him over to Standerland Hall, where Mr. Morris showed him the rooms he was to share with a Fourth Former. This was a pleasant little apartment, consisting of a study and two bedrooms, which looked eastward, over Lovel’s Woods and the Strathsey River.

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

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

“This is Tony Deering, Carroll. Tony, allow me to present you to your room-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’t you honor us, Mr. Morris?” he asked, waving his hand gracefully in the direction of the deep easy chair.

“No, thank you; not to-night, Reginald. Be good enough to explain to Deering 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 of his tongue; which however he refrained from asking, as he saw Carroll sink back into the Morris chair, extract the novel that he had slipped under it when he had heard the knock, and resume reading.

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

Carroll placed the book on the table at his side, with an air of mild surprise. “Dear child,” he murmured indulgently, “shall we adopt the Socratic 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 supposed we might find something to say if we tried hard enough. However, if you will tell me in which room I am to sleep, and at what hour we are expected to get up, I think I can get on without troubling you any further.”

“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 to have arrived a day earlier than you upon the scene of action, I have chosen the larger one to the right, which is protected from the early morning sun by a trifling angle of the exterior wall. A murderous bell will assassinate your innocent sleep at seven in the morning. The time that you arise will be determined by the length of time it takes you to dress and your estimate of the value of late marks. Breakfast, my Socrates, 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’ would have 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, and surveyed Tony for a moment or so with languid interest. When it appeared that his new acquaintance had nothing further to say, the older boy leaned his head wearily back upon his chair, and took up his book 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 himself somewhat petulantly out of the study and into his bedroom. He turned on the light, undressed quickly, and got into bed. For a long time he lay thinking; first of Carroll, the elegant, languid, supercilious Carroll, and rebelled with passionate inner protest at his fate in being cast to room with him. Why had it not been Jimmie Lawrence—clever, handsome, jolly Jimmie, of the sparkling eyes, and the good-natured banter? or the likable self-important Kit, or any one of a dozen or more good fellows he had run against that day? But the memories of them appeased him. He felt himself lucky to have hit it off so well with such as they; and certainly there was much about the school that he was going to like; and it was fine to have a room to himself, a privilege that he had learned was exceptionable with Third formers and was supposed to be due to a “pull” his people had with the Doctor; and it was good luck to be under such a master as Bill Morris, whom he had already decided was to be his favorite. What a horrible fate it would have 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 had to submit to Mr. Gray’s sarcasm too often! All things considered, he felt he was very lucky; and so he stifled a queer feeling of loneliness and homesickness, and turned over and tried to go to sleep.

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

It was perhaps an hour later that he heard a soft tapping, repeated once or twice; then presently a movement in the study, and the creaking of a door being opened and closed; then the sound of whispering in the room without. Tony sat up in bed, wide awake now, and listened intently. 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 a second the bedroom was flooded with light. Four boys, dressed in crimson and white jersies and old trousers, with red caps pulled down over 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 head through the doorway, “even in the moment of excitement he preserves the Socratic method.”

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

“Get into your clothes, and come along,” said a big fellow, with the air, 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 toward him menacingly.

“Careful, Chapin!” whispered one of the others, “the kid’ll squeal in a moment, 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 until persuasion is exhausted. Dear Socrates, we desire the pleasure of your company for a walk abroad. The hour is unusual, but therefore the greater is the compliment. My friend Chapin is impetuous and slightly rude, 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 patience of 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 remove you by force will cost them no end of a hanging.”

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

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

At last they emerged upon the campus. It was dark and still. A late moon was casting its waning light over the hills beyond Strathsey Neck. The boys, still speaking in whispers, led Tony quickly across the ghostly campus, and into a field below the chapel, which sloped down toward the curving beach and sea. As they evidently meant to take him farther still, Deering pulled back here, and wrenched his arm free of Carroll’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 the note 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 lobsters and the mermaids play, and there have you sing us songs and make us merry with your quips and jests; while we, from the recesses of a certain cave well known to us, extract certain delightful viands, and feast.”

Tony listened patiently to this speech, with an expression of contempt upon 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 this point, and for his pains got a stinging blow on the ear. This youth, whose name was Chapin, was exceedingly angry at this, and Tony’s fate doubtless would have been settled then and there, had not the other three interposed, and restrained Chapin’s efforts to enforce an immediate punishment, protesting if there was a fight now he would spoil the fun. After an exciting altercation, which nearly resulted in the hazing party itself engaging in a civil war, peace was restored and the five proceeded toward the beach.

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

One boy quickly started a fire in the lee of a rock, the flame of which was shielded from the view of the school by the neighboring dunes. The other three, leaving Tony for the moment to his own devices, though they kept a watch on him, made preparations for a feast. From the tin boxes they produced various canned stuffs, biscuits, sweets, and the like, while the others began to fry some sausages in a skillet over the fire. It was probably near midnight, and so thrilling and so interesting were these proceedings, that for the moment Tony forgot that he too was not one of them out for a lark and began to enjoy himself hugely. Suddenly Chapin took a seat on a rock, and calling to him sharply, reminded him on what a different status he was there—a despised new boy to be hazed for freshness. He wondered, not without some 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 you get up on that rock there, and give us a sample of your beautiful southern voice. We’ll have ‘Louisiana Lou,’ if you please.”

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

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

Tony backed off a little. “I supposed you knew,” he said, “that I didn’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 a rumpus up near the School, where you might think I was scared and trying 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 so as to convince you of the fact that you are going to be hazed?” asked Carroll, in tones of sarcasm.

“Oh, biff him!” cried Chapin.

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

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

“Wait till the little devil comes up,” cried Marsh, standing on the brink of the rock and looking at the bubbling water. “He’ll swim across, 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 the creek along a dune road about a hundred yards from the beach. Carroll and Thorndyke watched for the reappearance of Tony on the surface of the creek, but no Tony reappeared. The seconds lengthened into minutes; they heard their two companions stamping across the bridge, but not a ripple 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 you seen 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 words Marsh plunged into the stream. He floundered about for a moment or so, diving here and there, but in four or five minutes crawled to shore exhausted. The others had investigated the bank to the bridge.

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

“He hasn’t come up to the surface, you ass!” said Carroll. “Do you think 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 to stay 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 two companions crouched on the rocks, peering down fearsomely into the stream. 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 at ease.

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