“PAX”

It is not to be supposed that we share the fright of the four hazers. Tony of course was not drowned, nor indeed at any time had he been in danger. He had not lived on a Mississippi bayou for the greater part of his life in vain. He was an excellent swimmer, and he had the knack to an unusual degree of swimming under water a long distance.

When Chapin had first advanced upon him, he had intended to fight, but he realized at once that such a course would be foolish, for he would inevitably be conquered, and forced in the long run to go through the “stunts” even in a more unpleasant fashion than if he submitted at once. He had, however, no intention of submitting so long as he saw any possibility of a way out of the situation. Suddenly it occurred to him that by jumping into the creek and swimming for some distance under water, he might get a start in the way of escape that it would be difficult for his pursuers to make up. In this way the hazing might be avoided for the night at least, and on the morrow he could take counsel as to the future with some of his new-found allies.

No sooner did he think of this stratagem than he acted upon it. As we have seen, it proved even more successful than he had expected or hoped. The creek was quite deep enough for him to swim a considerable distance beneath the surface. He headed up stream, and kept under water to the limit of his endurance. Then, instead of coming to the surface in the splashing, sputtering fashion of the amateur, he came so far up as to thrust only his face above the waters for breath. So careful were his movements that the anxious watchers did not detect him even at this moment. A second time he went below, swimming beneath the surface for some yards, until he emerged again, this time within a short distance of the bridge. A few strokes brought him to this hiding-place, and he had scarcely ensconced himself there, clinging to one of the heavy wooden supports, when he heard Chapin and Marsh rushing across the planks above his head. He could tell by their tones of alarm, as they talked farther down the bank, that they thought he had drowned. He heard one of them jump into the creek and splash vainly about for some moments, and at last he heard two of them depart, and saw the shadowy outlines of the other two, as they returned disconsolate to wait by the rocks.

In about five minutes Tony crawled out from his hiding-place beneath the bridge. He was shivering with the cold, but otherwise not the worse for his long immersion. He ran softly along the dune road, about a hundred yards or so behind Carroll and Marsh on their way to the school. He followed them at a safe distance across the meadows and the campus, and watched them as they rang the bell of the Head Master’s house. Then he hurried off to his own room in Standerland, slipped off his wet clothes, and got into bed. A little alarm as to his safety on the part of his would-be tormentors, he thought, would be a just bit of revenge, particularly against the supercilious Carroll.

While Deering lay comfortably in bed, rapidly recovering in body and spirit, the two conspirators had a mournful few minutes as they explained matters to Doctor Forester, who had thrust his head and his pyjama’d shoulders out of an upper window.

The Head Master listened to their frightened explanations. “Very well,” he said at length, “I will dress at once. In the meantime, one of you go quickly over to Standerland and see if by any chance he has returned there. It is possible that there has been a serious accident, but I think it much more likely that he has simply outwitted you. I trust that is the case. Report to me immediately.” And with that the Doctor closed his window sash with a bang.

With his heart in his mouth Carroll ran across the quadrangles to Standerland House, resolving with more passion than he customarily allowed himself that the Head had shown himself a brute. He felt his way along the dark corridor, still cautious, although convinced that it was but a matter of moments when the whole school must be alarmed. He always recalled that walk upstairs as one of the most disagreeable quarters of an hour of his life. At last he found his door, entered his study, and breathed a sigh of relief as he switched on the light. Then he cautiously opened the door into Tony’s bedroom, and gave a frightful start as he saw the boy sitting up in bed. But Carroll was not one to betray more than momentary surprise. He gave Tony a long curious look, sufficiently assured after the first glance that he was not a ghost. “So, my Socrates,” he said, “you are back?”

“It would seem so,” answered Tony dryly, and as the older boy thought, impertinently.

“One wondered, you know,” Carroll remarked quietly, as he turned off the light and left the room.

In five minutes he was back at the Head Master’s house. “Deering is in bed, sir,” he reported to the non-committal head at the upper window.

“Good; I thought so. Do you go now after your companions on the beach. Return at once; get back into bed as quietly as you got out of it, and the four of you report to me to-morrow morning after prayers. I fancy that whether or not you become the laughing stock of the school will depend entirely upon yourselves. Good-night!”

“Good-night, sir.”

Carroll had lost but a trifle of his suavity during this nocturnal adventure. He hurried off now to the beach, and explained the situation to Thorndyke and Chapin, who were so rejoiced to learn that they had not been the cause of an involuntary suicide that they forgot to be annoyed with Tony for outwitting them. It was a cold and dejected trio of boys that stowed away the remains of the unenjoyed feast, and then betook themselves up the hill, crept silently into their dormitories, and went to bed.

On the morrow they were excused from first study and reported to the Head Master. To their surprise Doctor Forester had very little to say to them. “I had intended to give you a lecture,” he said, looking up from his writing and without laying down his pen, “and probably a severe punishment, but I fancy you have learned a lesson.... You can see, at least, to what the hazing of a high-spirited boy might lead.... I understand your ideas about hazing. I do not share them. I believe that you will not disappoint me when I say that I expect the practice to stop from this day.”

“Quite so, sir,” said Thorndyke.

“And that is all,” added the Doctor, giving them a nod of dismissal.

“Phew!” exclaimed Chapin, as they entered the corridor, “that’s sliding out easy.”

“Rather,” answered Thorndyke, “unless we have the whole school howling at us when the kid squeals.”

“Which he’s sure to do,” suggested Marsh.

Carroll withered them with a glance. “I rather fancy not,” he drawled. “He’s a southerner and a gentleman.”

“Well, let’s hope not,” interposed Thorndyke.... “There, don’t get huffy, Harry, you can’t help coming from Chicago.”

“Who wants to help it, you big cow?” cried Marsh, giving his chum Thorndyke a good-natured push against the wall. “But if I thought, as Carroll does, that there were not any gentlemen north of Mason and Dixon’s line, I wouldn’t come to a northern school.”

“Rot!” vouchsafed Carroll. “Let’s whoop her up for Gumshoe, and avoid any daffy questions about being quizzled by the Head.”

********

Tony found it difficult the next day not to take Jimmie Lawrence or Kit Wilson into his confidence, and tell them of his adventure of the night before. But he conquered the temptation, for he was singularly incapable of enjoying himself at the expense of any one’s else discomfiture. Tony was not without his faults, as we shall see, but he genuinely disliked to make other people uncomfortable. Perhaps this was an inheritance from a long line of ancestors who had had rather nice ideas about what constitutes a gentleman. At any rate, he was born that way, and did not deserve any special credit for it. He realized that if he told his story he might easily make his three captors the butts of the school, but that was not a form of revenge that appealed to him. Accordingly he held his peace, and if it had depended on him the story never would have been told. But we may say in passing, that eventually Carroll told the tale himself: it entered into the body of Deal tradition, and is frequently told by old Deal boys when hazing is a subject of conversation.

Tony felt almost familiar with the schoolroom as he entered after prayers the next morning. A score of faces were now known to him, and so many had seemed friendly as he looked into them, that the homesick feeling and the alarm of the night before rapidly passed away. Occasionally he noticed Mr. Morris’s glance resting upon him, as he sat at his books during the day, in a particularly interested and friendly way. There was something in Morris’s face—an attractiveness, perhaps one would call it, for he was not precisely handsome—a winningness in the directness of his glance, that more than once had won boys at almost first sight. Morris had the genius of inspiring enthusiasms, and he was to inspire one in Tony. The master was soon to hear from Carroll the inwardness of Tony’s exploits, and marvel with him at the boy’s “whiteness” in not talking. Mr. Morris was the occasional recipient of the intimate confidences of the supercilious Virginian, for even Carroll had moments of weakness when he felt the need of unburdening himself and receiving sympathy—moments, as he would have said, when he was not himself.

As the day wore on Tony was inclined to forget his unpleasant adventure of the night before. The afternoon found him again on the football field, absorbed in learning the game, and winning encomiums in the eyes of Kit, who until Thanksgiving would have few thoughts aside from football. Kit was captain of his form eleven, and his interest in its success was equaled only by the readiness with which he would sacrifice his best players to the school team or even to the scrub if they were needed. He was delighted with Deering’s advent, as he had felt he was weak in ends, and Tony’s fleetness promised much in that direction.

The likelihood of his securing a position on his form team gave Deering a prestige that stood him in good stead as a new boy; and as he was lively, good-natured and appreciative, it seemed that on the whole he would have an agreeable time.

There was, however, a rift in the lute—which Tony detected the second day of his school life. As he would pass Chapin in the Schoolhouse corridors or on the campus, he could see by the expression on his face that he had taken the result of their adventures of the night before in bad part. They exchanged no words on the subject, but Chapin’s behavior was in such contrast to that of Thorndyke and Marsh, or even of Carroll, all of whom had smiled good-naturedly when they had met him, that he put it down that in Chapin he had made an enemy. At the time this troubled him very little. He wondered of course if he should be hazed again, but surmised correctly that if he were it would not be by the same crowd.

The spirit with which he went into things, his success on the form team, and the powerful friends that he had made in Wilson and Lawrence, the leaders of the Third, soon secured him an immunity from hazing in any form. The Sixth frowned on the custom, so that none but adventurous spirits were apt to attempt it.

Tony was tired out that night, and as soon as he was dismissed from the schoolroom at nine o’clock, he ran over to Standerland and got into bed, scarcely noticing Carroll, who had the privilege of working in their common study. Hardly, however, was he in bed, than the door was opened, his light switched on, and again Carroll appeared, but this time there was a friendly grin on his face, and a box of biscuit and a jar of jam tucked under his arm.

“Don’t jump, my philosopher!” he exclaimed, “I am alone and unarmed.” Then he advanced to the bed, and held out his hand. “Shall we make it ‘pax’?”

“With all my heart,” laughed Tony, and gave Carroll’s hand a friendly shake.

“Suppose then we smoke a pipe of peace,” and Carroll extracted from the recesses of his pocket two brierwood pipes.

“Hang it!” said Tony, “I don’t smoke, you know. Aren’t you afraid of getting caught?”

“Oh, yes, somewhat,” answered Carroll, as he nonchalantly lighted a match. “But what will you have? School bores me to extinction. I find myself within two days craving nefarious excitement. You are fortunate to possess a calmer temperament. Here, help yourself to the jam and biscuit.”

“You seem calm enough,” commented Tony.

“I assume that, little one, for amusement, I am in reality excitable to a degree. Now take that incident last night—”

“Oh, let’s drop that,” said Tony.

“On the contrary, I should like to discuss it. I was rather a beast to go in for it, you know, when you had been, as it were, put in my tender care. It was the fun of doing something that one knew would get one into trouble if one were caught. You behaved in a singular fashion, I must confess, and lamentably upset our little calculations. Somehow, after blowing the business to the Head the joy of the affair was gone. I felt like a sick cat when I crawled into bed at one A. M.”

“What happened?” asked Tony.

Carroll took a deep pull at his pipe, and blew the smoke out of the window. “Old Hawk laughed at us, and sent us to bed as though we were First Formers. Say, it was rather decent of you, you know, not to peach to the fellows.”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“Well, we’ve escaped the jolly horsing we’d have got if you had, that’s all.... Do you know, I approve of that,—well, to a degree. Confound it! there’s curfew. Lie still, I’ll souse the light. I guess we’re safe enough. Bill saw us both in, and he isn’t one to nose about after lights unless there’s a beastly noise. Bill is such a gentleman that one hates to take advantage of his considerateness,—like this!” And he blew a puff of smoke into Tony’s face.

“Why do you do it then?”

Carroll got up and turned out the light; then resumed his seat on Tony’s bed.

“Why do I? Hang it, Deering, I sometimes wonder why I do a number of things. I’ve a great notion to chuck it.”

Tony had the good sense to make no reply to this remark, but to munch instead with rather unctious enjoyment on his biscuit and jam. Carroll seemed to meditate for the moment in the dark, then knocked his ashes out on the window-sill, and leaned over, feeling for the jar. “Where the deuce is the biscuit? That jam is the real article, you know. There is a great gulf between the jam I use and what one gets in the refectory. Would that in that gulf we might souse the housekeeper, eh?”

And so they talked the shop and jargon, the boyish confidences, and experiences, and plans, that have been the theme of nocturnal talks ever since schools were invented. It was quite late before Carroll returned to his bedroom, and Tony immediately dropped to sleep, feeling that after all he had misjudged him upon first appearances. His next conscious thought was as he leaped to his feet in answer to the strident tones of the rising bell.