LOVEL’S WOODS

“Ough, school again!” exclaimed Jimmie Lawrence, with a grunt, as he jumped off the platform of the little way-train at Monday Port one bright cold afternoon the following January. “I say, Tony,” he continued, linking his arm in that of his companion, and fishing in his pockets with his disengaged hand for his luggage checks, “this term it is school and no mistake! An unspeakable odor of gumshoe pervades the premises; Pussie Gray hurls math. lessons at your head a yard long, and the masters generally shriek exhortations at you as though you were deaf as well as dumb.”

“Nonsense, Jimmo! I am right glad to get back.” And Tony drew in a deep breath of the cold pure air, and his eyes glistened as he looked out across the snow-clad landscape—the white town clinging to its hills, the frozen pond, the troubled blue waters of the bay. “I’ve never seen any snow to speak of, you know; think of the sliding down Deal Hill! Mind, old boy, we’re to pack over to Lovel’s Woods this afternoon and see to a cave.”

“Gemini crickets! Deering, you’ll get enough of the Woods before the winter’s over. Me for the form-room and a heart to heart talk with my loving schoolmates.”

“Be an old woman if you like,” interrupted Kit Wilson, who joined them at this moment. “Tony and I will find the cave, and you’ve got to pony up the first supply of grub.”

“Oh, very well,” said Jimmie, with a grand air, as the three boys climbed into a fly. “If you will direct the coachman of this equipage to stop at the Pie-house, I will give Mrs. Wadmer a carte blanche order for the proper supplies; and we’ll have a feed to-morrow afternoon. At present, I’m perished with cold.”

By this time the driver had applied the whip to his poor horse, and the dilapidated fly was crawling up the cobblestones of Montgomery street. Once the top of the hill was gained, it moved along more rapidly, and soon Monday Port was left behind, the icy shores of Deal Water had been skirted, and the long hill that led up to the school was being climbed. The school “barge,” filled with a shouting, laughing crowd of small boys, was lumbering along ahead of them, and a dozen or so more cabs such as our friends had chartered dotted the white road. They passed a few of these, and noisy greetings were exchanged.

“There’s a trifling pleasure in seeing the kids once more,” said Jimmie, settling back after they had passed the barge, and assuming a blasÉ expression. “It would be rather jolly to be a prefect and boss ‘em all about.... Whoa-up! here’s the Pie-house and there’s Mother Wadmer in the doorway with a smile of welcome as broad as her pocketbook is deep. Hello, Mrs. Wadmer,” he cried, as the cab drew up before a small frame house by the roadside, on the portico of which stood a tall angular CÆsarean dame, with a calico apron drawn over her head.

“How de do, Master Lawrence; howdy, boys. Come right in, and I’ll give you a glass of the best cider you’ve ever tasted. ‘Tis Mister Wadmer’s own brew, and a fine thing to begin the term on.”

The three boys piled out of the fly, and in a moment were merrily greeting the crowd of youngsters who already had established themselves about the long deal table in Mrs. Wadmer’s hospitable kitchen. “Hello, Jim!” “Hello, Kit!” “Hello, Tony,” and a dozen other names, nicknames or parts of names, rang out. The boys shook hands, exchanged rapid notes of vacation experiences, gulped down several glasses of cider, and consumed a score or so of luscious tarts.

“When did you get back, Tack?” Kit enquired of a large, ungainly, rosy-cheeked boy who came from Maine.

“This morning,” answered Turner. “I came down on the boat last night to New York—scrumptious time. Say, Kit, have you heard the latest at school?”

“No, we just got in, crawled across the flats from Coventry. What’s up?”

“What’s up? why, some meddlesome jackanapes in the Sixth got wise to something irregular last winter and has gone to the Doctor with a doleful tale about the wickedness that’s supposed to go on in the Woods; so the fiat has gone forth: no caves for boys below the Fourth.”

“No caves!” shouted a dozen boys. A storm of protests and exclamations arose. “Well,” said Jimmie, as the hubbub ceased, “school will be a jolly old jumping-off place then.”

“No caves for boys below the Fourth,” echoed Kit. “Well, I announce my promotion then. Come on, Tony; come on, Jim; let’s get up to school and get the facts.”

They stalked out amidst howls of derision, and re-entered their chariot. Jimmie had taken care, however, to direct Mrs. Wadmer to stack it well with such provisions as were in customary requisition in Lovel’s Woods. The worthy landlady of the Pie-house was officially deaf to all rules that emanated from the Head unless they were presented to her in writing. She owed, it may be said in parenthesis, her long career under the shadow of Deal School to the admirable loyalty of many generations of Deal boys.

As luck would have it, to Tony’s amusement as he watched Jimmie’s expression, the first person they met in the Old School whither they went at once to report, was Mr. Roylston, who held a roll-call in his hands and wore on his face a look of patient suffering and in his eyes an expression of latent indignation. Our friends, thanks to their digression at the Pie-house, were ten minutes late.

“How do you do, Mr. Roylston?” exclaimed Kit, offering his hand, and receiving three of the master’s lifeless fingers. A pencil occupied the other two. “Ah!” he murmured,—Kit afterwards declared, with satisfaction,—“Lawrence, Wilson, Deering—ten minutes late. I congratulate you on the punctual way in which you begin the new year.”

“Oh, sir, we were beguiled by the way,” protested the irrepressible Kit. “The woman beguiled me, sir, and I did eat.”

“Faugh!” exclaimed Mr. Roylston. “Spare me your coarse irreverence. You are redolent of the unpleasant odors of the Pie-house. I will give you five marks apiece.”

“Oh, sir!”

“Please, sir!”

“I beg of you, sir. Pray divide ‘em, sir.”

“Silence, Wilson; you are impertinent as well as irreverent. If you linger longer with this futile protesting, I shall double your marks. Kindly go at once and unpack your trunks.”

“Please, sir; we always do that in the evening, sir; and I hope you will allow us to go to the form-room, sir.”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me so. Write out for me before to-morrow’s school fifty lines of the Æneid, and go at once.”

“Very good, sir!” And lest they all get a similar dose of “pensum,” as such punishments were called, they hurried off to the Third Form common-room. There they found a crowd of newly-arrived boys, engaged in a vociferous denunciation of the Doctor’s new rule against caves in the Woods. The news had evidently been announced by the prefects.

“What a gloomy old piece of rubber the Gumshoe is!” muttered Kit, as they were entering. “Fancy soaking me a pensum two minutes after I’m back at school. Hey, you fellows!” he cried, “what’s this racket?”

A dozen boys started to explain together, so that from their noisy chatter nothing could be gathered, except “Woods,” “caves” and execrations on the Head and the Sixth, with Kit’s lament on the gloomy Mr. Roylston rising above it all like a dismal howl.

A Fourth Form boy,—Barney Clayton, by name,—thrust a red head through the open doorway. “Oh, fy!” he yelled, “what a precious howl you kids are letting out! What’s the matter? does the prohibition against caves rile your independent spirits?”

“Get out, you red-head!” rose in angry chorus; and one boy shied a dog-eared Latin book at the fiery shock in the doorway. In a second a shower of missiles,—ink-stands, books, chairs, waste-paper basket,—went flying through the doorway and out into the corridor. Barney ducked his head and fled, shouting back derisive taunts. The commotion attracted the attention of Mr. Roylston at his post in the main hall, and he came flying to quell the disturbance. And, alas! he arrived just at a moment to receive full in the face the contents of a waste-paper basket, which Kit had flung. The dÉbris descended upon him in comical fashion. The poor gentleman was speechless with indignation; but the situation was too much for the boys; despite his angry countenance, his blazing black eyes, they greeted his appearance with shouts of laughter.

He waited, inarticulate with rage, until the commotion ceased, finally quelling them to a spell-bound silence by the sheer force of his anger, and a little also, by the righteousness of his cause.

“In the whole course of my career as a schoolmaster,” the master said at last, with a nervous jerk to each phrase, but pronouncing each word with the deadly precision of a judge uttering a capital sentence, “I have never been met with such gratuitous insult. Every member of this form will consider himself on bounds until further notice. As for you, Wilson, you shall be reported immediately to the Head, and if my recommendation can effect it, you will receive the caning you deserve.”

“We were not throwing at you—we didn’t know you were coming—” began Kit.

“Silence! do not add hypocrisy to insolence. You had been told to go to your rooms.... Disperse now at once, and do not show yourselves before supper. You Wilson, Lawrence and Deering, remain behind and clean up this disgusting mess. It is not surprising, I may say, that the Head feels himself unable to trust this form in the Woods this winter.” And with this parting shot, Mr. Roylston turned and walked away, with what dignity he could command.

The boys, somewhat subdued by the dispiriting announcement of bounds, marched off gloomily, and our three friends stayed behind and began to clear up the dÉbris.

“Well,” said Kit at last, turning a half-merry, half-rueful countenance to his companions, as he seated himself upon a broken chair, “what a gloomy ass it is! But, oh my dears, did you observe his beautiful pea-green, Nile blue, ultramarine phiz as the contents of the waste-basket descended upon his lean and hairless chops? Oh, my! what a home-coming! what a sweet heart to heart talk we’ve all had together!”

“And a jolly good caning you’ll get, Kitty, when Gumshoe has had his talk with the Doctor.”

“Jolly good,” replied Kit, rubbing his legs with a wry face. “But in the meantime, mes enfants,” he continued, “since I am to be swished, it shall not be that I suffer unjustly; we are going to make the swishing worth while. We are off to the Woods this minute. We’ll take the stuff over, stow it in the cave, put up a notice, and be back by supper. I’ll be hanged if I’ll pay any attention to Gumshoe’s twaddle about bounds or to the Doctor’s nonsense about caves. Are you with me, Jimmie, old boy?”

“Well, rather,” Jimmie replied. “The experience of the last quarter of an hour has quite discouraged me with regard to the peace and quiet and healthy conversation us nice boys ought to have in form common-room.”

Tony had kept silent. “Well, are you going to cut for a quitter?” asked Kit, turning upon him with an indignant glare.

“Not I,” said Tony quickly.

“Then help stow this truck. We’ve an hour and a half till supper, and the Gumshoe will undoubtedly think we have disperrssed to our rooms.” And he gave an absurd imitation of Mr. Roylston’s manner of speaking.

Ten minutes later they were running down the slope of Deal Hill, under the cover of the stone walls; then tearing across the frozen marshes, and clambering up the steep banks and crags that bounded the west side of Lovel’s Woods. The sun was sinking in the west, and its rich mellow golden light fell athwart the snow-clad woodland, flooding it with glory, save where the great masses of pine and cedar cast broad splotches of shadow. The splendid loveliness of the dying afternoon, the biting cold of the wind, the thrill of doing the forbidden, filled Tony with a delicious sense of happiness and adventure.

Each boy had his arms full of cooking utensils, food, boxes—the varied paraphernalia of a cave. It had been an ancient custom at Deal during the winter for boys to have caves in Lovel’s Woods, where they cooked weird messes during the afternoons when there was no skating. This year the Doctor, owing to certain abuses reported by the prefects the year before, had decided to restrict the use of caves to the three upper forms.

Kit had a particular cave in mind, far away on the remote side of what was known as the Third Ridge, a cave that he and Jimmie and Teddy Lansing had had together the year before as Second Formers. This desirable spot was a natural formation in the rocky side of the farther of the three ridges of which Lovel’s Woods consisted. It was practically inaccessible from below, and the entrance above, well concealed by a clump of low cedars, was a narrow cleft in the rocks, at the extreme edge of which the initiated might descend to the cave by a series of dangerous steps which the boys had fashioned in the side of the precipitous cliff.

Tony and Kit climbed down into the cave, while Jimmie, lying flat on the ledge above, handed down to them the supply of stores. These were safely stowed in a strong box, which had lasted out the previous season, and made secure. When the boys had clambered up again, they discovered that the sun had set and the darkness was gathering swiftly. The clear crescent of the new moon hung in the western sky a band of gold, and the evening star was rising over the ocean.

“Twenty minutes to supper: we can just make it,” exclaimed Kit, looking at his watch. “Heave ahead, my hearties, and let’s run for it.”

And run they did, at breakneck speed along the mazy paths, through the tangled undergrowth, over the slippery crags, across the frozen marsh. Kit, the imprudent, was impudently singing at the top of his shrill voice the verses of one of the School songs.

“Out of the briny east,
Out of the frosty north,

Over the school-topp’d hill,
Whistle the shrill winds forth.

“Over the waves a-quiver,
Over the salt sedge grass,

Over the beaches tawny,
The bright wind spirits pass.”

And the other two boys took up the ringing refrain,

“Grapple them e’er they go,
Grapple them e’er they go.”

Luck was with them. They reached the school as the great bell in the Chapel struck six. Five minutes later, after a hasty wash and brush-up in their rooms, they were in the great library, shaking hands with the Doctor and Mrs. Forester and with masters and boys.

The three, more closely united than ever by their sense of sharing a dangerous secret, kept together during chapel, and directly after were for making off to Jimmie’s room, when Sandy Maclaren, looking wonderfully handsome and “swagger” in his town clothes, laid a heavy hand on Kit’s shoulder. “Not so fast, boy. The Doctor wants to see you instanter at the Rectory.”

Kit heaved a sigh in mock heroics. “Hail, blithe spirits,” he lamented, murdering his quotation, “hail and farewell.”

The boys pressed his hands heartily. “Is it a caning, Sandy?” they asked.

“Well, I rather think so,” answered Maclaren, with a smile. “You weren’t very keen not to distinguish between Barney Clayton and Mr. Roylston.”

“They were both butting in,” protested Kit.

“Well, cut along now. And you two report to Bill, he’s looking for you.”

Kit found the Doctor in his comfortable study at the Rectory, standing before a glowing log fire, with his swallow-tails spread to the blaze.

“Ah, Christopher,” the Head Master exclaimed, shaking hands with the culprit, “I’m glad to see you.”

“Thank you, sir. Maclaren said you wanted to see me particularly?”

“I do, most particularly. Take off your coat.”

Kit backed a little. “But, sir——”

“Yes, my boy, I dare say you have full and ample explanations, but I am quite sure they will not impress me. I know that you were but one of many in this fracas, and that it is your misfortune—shall I say?—rather than your fault that your particular missile took unfortunate effect. But we must all suffer at times for our mistakes, perhaps a little unjustly. The moment has struck when you must suffer too. The sooner we get at this business the sooner it will be over.”

“Very good, sir,” said Kit, and silently removed his coat. And then the Doctor took a familiar implement of stout old hickory from a corner, and swished him soundly. Those were the happy days when debts against school discipline were so quickly and effectively liquidated.

Kit bore no grudge to the Doctor, and comparatively little to Mr. Roylston. “It was worth it,” he confessed to Jimmie and Tony afterwards, “and I rather think this lets me out, conscientiously lets me out, you know, from paying attention to his futile announcement of bounds.”

It goes without saying that the Doctor’s prohibition against Lovel’s Woods was about as unpopular a rule as had ever been promulgated. Combined with the fact that the Third Form were bounded for a month, as a consequence of their trouble with Mr. Roylston, the Lower School began the term in a bad mood. The Third Formers were particularly disgruntled with the prefects, who had assumed the responsibility of keeping Lovel’s Woods in order. It appeared that smoking had been indulged in the year before quite extensively by some of the younger boys, and gambling was suspected on the part of a few of the older ones. The Doctor’s rule had been more in the nature of a preventive than a punishment.

But the effort to keep the rule effective was more of an undertaking than the prefects had realized; for they felt themselves required practically to police the forbidden district, a task, the novelty of which soon wore off. With the older boys caves were not particularly popular. Chapin and Marsh started one together, and moved into it the paraphernalia that they had hitherto kept stored in the cave on the beach by Beaver Creek. All of the prefects, acting on Maclaren’s advice, gave up their caves in order to set an example; with the result that there were hardly more than a dozen in official operation.

For the first few weeks of the term the prefects were so zealous in their police duties that few boys cared to run the risk of “skipping” to the Woods. Even our three friends, despite their firm resolution to evade the rule, for the time being felt it the part of wisdom to lie low. Accordingly they avoided the Woods as if it were plague stricken and industriously played hockey every afternoon on Deal Great Pond, which was fully two miles away. But toward the end of January a thaw set in, the skating was spoiled, a heavy snow came, and their usual sports were interrupted; consequently the temptation to visit the cave sub rosa grew stronger than ever. Gradually also the inclement weather dampened the ardor of the prefects and they began to relax their vigilance over the forbidden territory. And we may say in passing that Tony and Jimmie and Kit spent several delightful afternoons in their hiding-place, and the parts of one or two wildly thrilling nights after lights.

Despite his nefarious proceedings in contravention of the rules, be it said to his credit, Tony was making good his resolution of “poling” at his books, and felt confident of taking a good stand in the school when the ranks were read at the beginning of February. The football game, so far as his part in it was concerned, as Morris had predicted, seemed forgotten. He avoided Chapin as much as he could, and when they inevitably met he treated him with a courteous indifference which the older boy doubtless understood and was thankful to accept.

Carroll, after a vacation spent in New York where he had seen all of the plays and dined at the best restaurants and gone to many more dances than were good for his health, returned to the school more than ever dissatisfied and disgruntled with the life he led in it. The talk with Mr. Morris about Tony, the consciousness that they possessed an important secret in common, served a little to make his relations with his house master easier, but he was still unable to give his friendship in the easy way he longed to give it. Neither, to his deepening chagrin and regret, was he making progress in his friendship with Deering, for Tony was more than ever absorbed in the life of his form, and spent all his free time with Wilson and Lawrence. He seemed unconscious of the affection he had won from Carroll and this, with Carroll’s intense consciousness of how completely his affection was going out, served to make their relations anything but free and spontaneous. So far as Tony thought about his room-mate that term it was as of an older fellow with whom he was not very congenial, and of whose laziness and indifferent attitude toward the school he did not approve. He thought Carroll to be wasting his time both at his books and in the school life, in either of which he could have counted immensely. Had Tony been less absorbed in his younger friends, he would probably have found a good deal in Reggie to like and value, as earlier in the year he had begun to feel he should.

From his cozy den in the midst of Standerland Hall, surrounded by his well-loved books, his few but carefully chosen pictures, Mr. Morris watched the life throbbing about him with sympathetic insight and keen interest. He was not one of those fortunate schoolmasters who do not allow their profession to engage their affections. Morris, with a surrender that was effectually a sacrifice, for he had gifts and opportunities that might have won him a finer place in the world, gave his life completely to the school. He had loved it as a boy, he had looked back upon it during college with fond recollection and yearning, and after three years or so at a professional school, having taken his examinations for the bar, he had gone back to accept Dr. Forester’s offer of a mastership. For half-a-dozen years he had been there now, and each year the place and the boys got a deeper hold upon his heart and his interest. He was scrupulously fair and evenly kind; therefore deservedly popular; but despite this he had his favorite boys, not usually known as such by the school at large, to whom he gave a special affection and a deeper interest. From the first day, when Deering, with his sparkling eyes and bright, clear-cut, eager face, had come to him for a seat in the schoolroom, he had felt for him that keen attraction which, as he grew to know the boy’s high spirits, lively sense of honor, and sunshiny nature, had deepened to a real affection. In Carroll also he had always felt a special interest, and had been glad when Tony was put to room with him. He saw Reggie’s growing devotion to Deering, and was sorry that Tony did not respond to a greater extent. Morris felt that Carroll needed the strengthening influence of a strong unselfish friendship with the right sort of boy to help make a man of him. Occasionally Morris had the two boys with others in his rooms for tea or on Saturday nights for a rarebit and a bit of supper, but otherwise occasions did not present themselves for his getting to know them better. He was sorry for this, but saw no very satisfactory way of making them. By the end of January it seemed to him that Reggie was in quite the worst attitude that he had ever been, thoroughly indifferent to the work and life of the school.