THE NIGHT OF THE BONFIRE

If Tony had enjoyed the sensation of expanding under appreciation the night before the game, it reached fatigue point the night after. It falls to few boys, even for so short a time, to be the hero of his school; but it is one of the pleasantest experiences that can befall him. It gives the hero a feeling of kinship with the mighty conquerors of the past; a sense, intense if fleeting, of being one with Alexander, with CÆsar, with Napoleon. And though Deering bore his honors modestly, for this once he enjoyed them to the full; with the full-bloodedness of youth, he luxuriated in a sense of satisfaction with the world in general and with himself in particular. He was not ordinarily self-important, but it would have been an inhuman boy who remained indifferent to the incense of praise he received after that Boxford game. To have turned what seemed certain defeat into unexpected victory was a piece of good luck for which he was grateful, as well as he was grateful for the undoubted fact that he could run faster than most boys of his age.

Immediately after the game a score of boys, rushing across the lines, had laid bodily hold of him, hoisted him on their shoulders; and with similar groups, who had performed like service for other members of the team, they marched off the field, singing the school song at the top of their hoarse voices, in dreadful tune but with an enthusiasm that atoned for all defects. Jack Stenton was in the midst of them, and he literally hugged Tony when the boys put him down at the entrance to the Gymnasium locker-room. “I’m glad it fell to you, young ‘un,” he said; “it was a great run that will be remembered as long as boys play football at Deal.”

After his shower Tony dressed, joined Kit and Jimmie Lawrence, and wandered about the campus with them, enjoying to the fullest the sensation of universal proprietorship. At half-past six, they went again to the Inn to dine with Mrs. Wilson and the girls.

Kit had a black eye and a swollen nose that hurt considerably, but which he would not have foregone for the world; they made him feel as well as look a martyr to the cause. The girls were beaming, quite unaffectedly proud to be the guests of such heroes. Kit’s bruises seemed to affect Miss Worthington rather as ornaments than otherwise, to lend a fascination not afforded by his natural good looks, for she acquiesced this time in the pairing off on the way to the school after the dinner, for the celebration, that afforded him an opportunity for the much desired tÊte-À-tÊte. Mrs. Wilson appropriated Jimmie, so that Tony and Betty were left to walk together.

Alone with him, Betty ceased to beam; in fact, became shy and unwontedly silent. Tony liked the shyness, thought her sweeter so. He felt a pronounced sentimental thrill as he gave her his hand to help her across an insignificant ditch.

“It must be wonderful,” she said at last to break the awkward silence, “it must be wonderful to win a game.”

“It is,” Tony laughed ingenuously. “Do you know, Miss Wilson, I feel half ashamed of myself. I so hoped something like that might happen. I suppose a fellow ought to think of the game and the school, and I reckon most of ‘em do; but two years ago, I was the means of our losing the Boxford game, and I tell you it took me a long time to get over the feeling that gave me.”

“I know,” said Betty. “Kit has told me about that.”

“Well, it was a long time ago; but I never did really get over it.”

“But it wasn’t your fault,” protested Betty.

“Oh, yes, in a sense it was; if I had stuck to the ball tighter, I reckon it wouldn’t have happened. But that sort of made me feel that I wanted a special chance to-day.”

“Well, you got it,” said the girl, with a smile. “Of course, one cannot help wanting to do things one’s self. I suppose we are all a little bit selfish.”

They chatted on then more at ease, until they reached the great field behind the Chapel where the celebration was to take place.

Every light in the school building was blazing, and a line of Chinese lanterns had been strung to fine effect up and down the driveway and along the terraces. In the center of the playing-field back of the school an enormous bonfire had been constructed, of drygoods boxes, barrels, fence rails, and various other combustibles, including an untenanted chicken-house that an amateur farmer of the Second Form had contributed in a genuine spirit of sacrifice. Around the bonfire were gathered three hundred boys of the school, a score or so of the masters and many of the Old Boys and friends who had stayed over. On the outskirts of the crowd there was a complement of sundry enthusiastic country urchins, who for the night had buried the proverbial hatchet usually in play between them and the school, and were rejoicing lustily in the honor that had fallen upon the entire community.

As Mrs. Wilson’s party arrived, Billy Wendell applied a match to a mass of kerosene-soaked excelsior, and the flames started up the pile with an avidity, it seemed, that was impelled by sympathy with the mounting spirits of the boys. A dozen rockets were fired off simultaneously, three hundred Roman candles were exploded, and a score of red fires were lighted in various parts of the field. There was a sudden blaze of splendid light.

Soon the magnificent bonfire dominated the interest. The boys circled about it, hand in hand, shouting, cheering, singing. The school bells rang out joyously on the frosty night; the strains of the school songs echoed and re-echoed, until was caught up in full chorus by those hundreds of happy voices, the triumphal song,—

“Palms of victory, palms of glory.”

Finally they hoisted Billy Wendell, the captain, up on the wooden rostrum that was brought out on such occasions; and after more wild and intense cheering when the cheer leaders had sunk back almost exhausted by their efforts, they gave him a chance to speak. “Fellows,” said Billy, with not more than the usual oratorical grace but with an effect that many a trained orator might have envied, “Fellows, I guess we’re all glad we won. I can’t make a speech; and anyway there’s some one else here to whom our victory to-day really is due. And I move we have Tony Deering up here, and tell him what we think of him.”

Frantic howls as Billy leaped down, and a dozen boys hustled Tony with rough-and-ready good will up to the rostrum, paying absolutely no attention to his protests. Tony’s presence of mind quite deserted him as he faced the encircling crowd of eager, flame-brightened faces,—also the feeling that there was anything heroic in being a hero. As they cheered and cheered him to the echo, he had a moment in which to gather his wits. “Fellows,” he said at last, when the crowd had become quiet, “I’m mighty grateful for the way in which you’ve treated me. But I don’t deserve it. The ball popped into my arms in the scrimmage, and I just ran. Any other fellow would have done the same. What really won,” he added, “was that the team had made a good defense against a whirlwind attack at critical moments. And that’s the reason that when we got a chance to score, it meant a victory. Ned Clavering scored the winning point by kicking the goal.”

With that he jumped down, struggled through the crowd, and slipped unobserved to the outskirts of the circle. Other boys were being elevated to the rostrum, so that attention was diverted from him. For himself, his heart was full, and for the moment he wanted to be alone.

He could not hear the speeches from where he stood, but the scene was before him like the stage at a play. Suddenly he noticed, standing quite near him, apart from the jubilant crowd, the lonely, pathetic little figure of the despised Finch. The boy was gazing at Tony intently, with an expression of pathetic admiration, the self-forgetting admiration sometimes experienced when we behold a noble or a fine action in which we have had no part, of which we are incapable. There was longing in the boy’s pale watery little eyes, and his mouth was twisted out of shape, as though it were not fashioned to express the unwonted emotions that stirred his soul. As Tony glanced at him, with a flash of intuition, it seemed to him that he thoroughly understood the half-starved soul of Jacob Finch, his pathetic and terrible loneliness, his unreasoned terrors of life, his ardent unsatisfied longings for the boyish friendliness and companionship about him in which he had no part.... Involuntarily Tony moved toward him, and obeying an impulse quite devoid of that repulsion that Finch usually stirred in him, he threw his arm carelessly over the boy’s shoulder. “It’s a great sight, kid; ain’t it?” he said.

Finch was trembling as if he had a chill. His eyes glanced for a moment into Tony’s intensely, then shifted, and he answered in a queer hoarse tone, “I ‘spose so. I dunno.” And then he added, fiercely, “But I’m glad—I’m glad you made that run.” The next instant, as if his own speech had frightened him, he shook Tony’s arm from his shoulder, and slipped away into the shadows. Tony saw him no more that night.

“Poor kid!” he thought, and his eyes filled with tears. He had seen unhappiness before, in his own home, and the memory of it was bitter. Here at school he had forgotten it all; the world had seemed a bright and a happy place, and he was happy in it. Poor Finch brought back to him intensely the realization that life was not altogether as free from care, as full of affection and kindness and joy, as this gay scene and jubilant celebration would indicate. There was bitterness in the thought, and yet, in a way, he was not sorry it had come. It seemed to him now that for the last few days he had been absolutely absorbed in himself, in fact that he had been living self-absorbed for a long time; that despite his generous words from the rostrum, what he had really been glad of in the victory was, that it had been so largely due to him.

Suddenly he gave the tree against which he was standing a vigorous kick. What a fool he was! to be silly with delight at winning a football game when just across the hall from him there lived such livid boyish misery!

At length he resought his companions, and when at last the celebration was over, and the great blazing pile of the bonfire had collapsed, he walked back again with Kit’s party to the Inn. Both Betty and he were quieter now than before. She was shy again, and this time he could think of nothing to say. Their commonplaces about the celebration fell flat.

“You are going to-morrow?” he asked abruptly, as they turned into the grounds of the Inn.

“Yes,” she answered, “quite early. Bab and I are at school too, you know?”

“Yes, I know. I wish I could see you sometimes....”

“Well, can’t you?... You’ll be coming home with Kit some holiday.”

“Perhaps I will. I hope so.” He was silent for a moment, then with a strange shyness, he said, “Will you—will you give me those violets?”

Betty was silent. She hesitated for a moment, then unpinned the violets from her dress, and gave them to him. Their hands met in the dark, and fluttered in a little clasp for the moment. Then Tony slipped the violets into his pocket. They were at the Inn steps, and to the surprise of all, he declined to come in, but bade them good-bye there.

Instead of going back to the school, he struck across the meadows to the beach. It had cleared at nightfall, and the stars were shining in a deep blue sky, and a lovely young crescent moon, cloud-clung, hung in the west. Tony walked up the beach alone, thinking, feeling intensely. The silent somber beauty of the night, the great stars, the lazy splash of the little foam-flecked waves upon the sands, the cool frosty dark, appealed to him deeply. He could scarcely have told of what he was thinking: of various things—the day’s events, the celebration, Betty and the violets she had given him, Finch and his hungry eyes, life. The world seemed beautiful to him, but strange and sad.... Years afterward he was to recall that night, and remember that it had marked a definite moment in the process of his coming to himself.

At the end of the beach he met Mr. Morris, who was also walking alone. “Hello,” exclaimed the master, “what are you doing here? The conqueror is tired of plaudits, eh?”

“What brings you, magister?... I wanted to be alone I guess.”

“And I,” said Morris, with a smile. “Sometimes a day of excitement reacts on me like this. I need to round it off with a walk by myself. Let’s go back together though, if you have had enough of yourself as I have.”

“Quite enough,” said Tony, as he turned with the older man back toward the school.

For a while they said nothing, but eventually the master, by tactful questions, led the boy to talk of himself. There followed one of those long quiet conversations that come so rarely, but mean so much to boy and master when they come. When they reached the school all of the lights were out save for a glow at the spot where the bonfire had been. They shook hands and parted at the door of Morris’s study.

The schoolmaster, when he was alone, instead of lighting his lamp, stood for a long while before the glowing embers of the fire on his hearth, absorbed in his thoughts. He had had a bad day, a stupid day after the excitement of the game, for there had come upon him one of those unaccountable and unreasonable moods of depression wherein it seemed to him that he was wasting his life in the obscurity of a petty profession, wasting the talents, abilities, ambitions, that in college days had promised a brilliant career. He knew it was but a mood, but he had not been able to shake it off. Other fellows, classmates of his at school and college, had been back, with their good-natured, ill-chosen greetings that drove the iron deeper into his soul: “Old Morris—holding the fort—still on the old camp-ground, eh?” and the like.

As he stood before his dying fire that night, he recalled the mood of the afternoon and marveled to realize that it was gone. He asked himself the reason for its going, but he knew the answer. He knew in his heart that the best he was, the best he could be, counted here at Deal as much, perhaps, more, than it could count elsewhere; and that it counted despite the obscurity, despite the lack of recognition where he would so keenly have valued it, from those who had expected good things from him in days gone by. And he knew that the real compensation was in the response he got from, the stimulus he gave to, boys like Tony Deering. Once in a while it was given him to see the meaning of his life, as in a vision. He knew to-night, as perhaps he had never definitely put it to himself before, that he would stay on at Deal for good and all, give his best, not only for a time as for years he had somehow supposed it would only be, but his best for as long as he lived....