THE SPECTACLE

Games and girls fortunately are but interludes in schoolboy life. Were it otherwise, it is to be feared that the specific objects for which boys are sent away from home during such valuable years would receive but little of their attention. There were to be no more games, except indoor baseball and fives, until the hockey season which rarely set in before the Christmas holidays.

The little group of boys, whose fortunes we have been following, were not particularly interested in indoor baseball, except Jimmie, whose athletic achievements had been altogether on the diamond in the spring. And it was well they were not, for studies had been suffering during the football season, and at the exams, which came the week following the Boxford game, both Tony and Kit found that they were standing lower in the school than they had ever stood before. Judicious advice from the Head and a sharp letter from old General Deering, who, though he was proud of Tony’s athletic honors, regarded them as no substitute for scholastic achievements, kept him pretty closely at his books.

As for girls, he and Betty exchanged a few rather commonplace letters, but as the keen-eyed mistress at Betty’s school soon detected the nature of her correspondence, their letters were few and far between. At the Christmas holidays Tony went home with Kit to the Wilson country place on Long Island, and spent there a glorious three weeks. But, it might as well be said at once, that though Tony and Betty became the best of friends, the sentiment that had accented their walks together the night of the game at Deal, died a natural death. School and its varied interests absorbed Deering and left him little time or opportunity for love affairs.

During the winter he became interested in the Dealonian, a semi-secret society, that held frequent debates and discussions before the school, and regarded itself as being an institution of great importance. For exercise and sport he went in for hockey, where his fleetness counted as much toward success as it did in football. The Deal boys had capital hockey grounds, one on Deal Water which lay at the foot of the hill between the school and Monday Port; and the other on Beaver Pond, under the lee of Lovel’s Woods which though smaller usually froze earlier.

It was customary for the Dealonian to elect a Fifth Former as its president at the beginning of the winter term. This office was supposed, and usually did, register the boys’ somewhat premature choice for a head prefect for the school for the following year. Deering was elected president of the Dealonian by a unanimous vote, after very little campaigning on the part of his friends. He was generally popular, and his exploit in the Boxford game had brought him more prominently before the school than ever before. In the opinion of his particular friends he was also developing qualities of leadership, which made him the logical candidate of their group for general honors. Tony valued the position of president highly. And in the fine fervor of his good resolutions he determined that through it he would do a lot for the school. The Dealonian held frequent meetings at which the entire school were invited, and at which topics of general interest were discussed by the boys themselves. It was indeed through these meetings that the public opinion of the school was largely formed and guided by the older boys.

The walk with Mr. Morris on the beach the night of the Boxford game had solidified in Tony’s mind a good many resolutions. And, though it is not usually the case that the generous ideals and ambitions of boys find particular expression, since the flash of intuition into Finch’s starved life had been in part the occasion of his forming good resolutions at all, it was not unnatural that he should have settled upon Finch as a concrete opportunity for putting them into effect. The talk with Mr. Morris, though Finch’s name had not actually been mentioned, had also brought the matter before Tony’s mind, for Morris had been the first to suggest to him the possibility of his being of use in that direction. To be sure, the sympathy with Finch had been intuitive and had not stayed with him as vividly as it had impressed him on the night of the bonfire, but then it had flashed so intensely that it was not soon altogether to expire. It glowed in the depths of his consciousness like sparks amongst the embers of a dying fire, capable of blazing forth again if fresh fuel should be added. Tony proposed to add the fuel.

He made a point, for instance, of dropping in at Finch’s room in Standerland two or three times a week and chatting with the boy the odd quarters of an hour that he otherwise would have spent in genial loafing with his cronies. And though he certainly would not have kept on going there for the sake of anything that Finch could contribute to the joy of life for him, when the awkwardness of deliberately performing a kindness had somewhat worn off, he found a certain amount of compensating satisfaction in noting the light of pleasure that came into Jake’s pale blue eyes, and in the relaxation of the corners of his mouth from bitter rigidity into friendly appreciation and welcome. Gradually too Finch’s shyness wore off a little when he was alone with Tony; and though it can hardly be said that even in his most un-selfconscious moments he ever seemed a full-blooded care-free boy, he thawed into a semblance of humanity. He reminded Tony often of a dog that has been treated cruelly in its puppyhood, which never recovers fearlessness but shrinks even under a friendly hand.

And like a dog Jacob Finch began to idolize Anthony Deering. This was the first time in all his barren life that a fellow boy had treated him with kindness, who had not showed in his manner the repulsion the unhappy little chap had the misfortune to stir in his kind. Tony’s image loomed large in his thoughts. The intense worship he paid him secretly did much to atone for the slights of others, to blot out other boys from his consciousness. He cringed and shrank still under jibes and jokes, trembled with unreasoned fear before masters, quivered with fright when he found himself alone in a crowd of boys; but he did his work faithfully and with the success that comes from persistence even when a keen intelligence is lacking. More and more, however, his inner life was absorbed in his devotion to Deering.

From his seat in the chapel he could just see the wavy, copper-colored top of Tony’s head. By straining a little he could frequently see his face,—bright, sensitive, mobile, smiling often that smile of a singular and rare sweetness that made Tony beautiful to others beside Finch. To Jake he was as perfect, as spotless, as wonderful, as a god. The fervor of his adoration was akin to the enthusiasm of a devotÉe for his idol. All this of course he hid, not altogether but mostly, from Deering; never voiced, though he could not help looking his devotion. He would spend hours during a day standing about in various places on the mere chance that he would get a glimpse of Tony; haunted the woods above Beaver Pond in the hockey season, where he would lie, flat and shivering, upon a projecting rock, and follow with weak, straining eyes the skaters on the ice below, his eager gaze seeking always for one bright slim form. And when he had found it, he was as happy as he often had been.

Even Tony’s friends occupied but a small place in Finch’s consciousness. He was grateful to Kit for his protection against Ducky Thornton and his gang of tormentors, but the only real admiration he had for Kit was because he possessed qualities—Finch could not have named them—that had induced Tony to choose him for a friend.

Occasionally Tony and Jimmie would have their protÉgÉ in Number Five study, but on these occasions Finch seemed to suffer so much from shyness that they did not long attempt to repeat them.

Mr. Morris watched the process with inward approval and outward indifference. His own advances toward Finch had been received in a manner that gave him little encouragement. He was sorry for the boy, and he was proud of Tony’s efforts to help him on and bring him out, but even his sanguine optimism and unselfish good will failed to convince itself that the Head had been wise in bringing Finch to Deal. As for Doctor Forester, with the best intentions in the world, he had few opportunities of seeing the boy intimately, and he trusted absolutely to Morris as being the one who could do the most and the best for him.

Number Five study Standerland had become during the winter term the sanctum of a privately published and privately circulated magazine, issued weekly as a rule, in pamphlet form under the title of The Spectacle. The inspiring genius, editor-in-chief, business manager, printing department and reportorial staff was Jimmie Lawrence. Jimmie had always had a literary turn, and usually had received A’s for his weekly themes in English from Jack Stenton, who combined with athletic prowess a genuine appreciation for good literature. In addition to required work for the masters he had written yards of short stories, poems, plays, essays and the like for the waste-paper basket and his secret scrap-book. Jimmie was likewise a great reader and he had taken more kindly than the majority of his classmates to the Sir Roger de Coverly papers from The Spectator that Stenton had inflicted on the Fifth Form that year. He was able to appreciate the genial sympathy and quiet humor of the Eighteenth Century essayists, and more than once he had dipped his pen in ink to attempt a crude imitation of them. Practice improved his style. He had himself a fund of subtle humor that was becoming more and more evident as he matured, for it was a humor that had found little opportunity for expression in the crude horseplay and practical joking of the Lower School.

One afternoon as he was planning an essay in the Addisonian vein and style, it suddenly occurred to him that there was a fund of material for such treatment in the actual world about him. He chose little Beverly, a fledgeling master, cock-sure and sophomoric, as the subject for his first serious essay in the comic, and achieved, in his own opinion, such a success that he read his paper that evening to Tony.

“By Jove, Jim, that’s a joy!” was his room-mate’s gratifying criticism. “That’s a blame sight better than the sawdust that Jack is trying to stuff down our throats in English.”

“Well, I have me doubts as to that,” Jimmie responded, “but I appreciate the compliment even if it makes the critic out to be an ignoramus.”

“Words of one syllable, my dear,” protested Tony, “when you try to get ideas into my cranium. Critic or not, that’s darn good writing. Give us another.”

Jimmie smiled, closed his mathematics books with the air of one who makes a sacrifice in a noble cause, and for half an hour bent again to laborious composition. The result was a clever little skit on Ducky Thornton entitled “The Human Sofa Cushion.” The wit was broader, and it struck Tony as quite irresistibly funny.

“By Jove, kiddo, we’ll start a Spectator of our own, eh? Hit off the masters and some of our loving schoolmates, and let ‘em circulate. It’ll be heaps of fun.”

Lawrence laughed at the vision of the possibilities that came to him. “I think it will,” he said. “We’ll write ‘em out in your clear hand, and pass ‘em on to the crowd.”

And so The Spectacle came into existence. Jimmie did most of the composition, and Tony invariably copied it out, for Jimmie’s handwriting left much to be desired, as is the case we have been told with other authors. Now and then there was an original contribution from Tony, and occasionally one from Charlie Gordon, Teddy Lansing or Tack Turner, all more crude and broad, but few absolutely devoid of real humor. In the course of a few months they had composed quite a gallery of pen-portraits, wherein were caricatured, seldom unkindly, the faults and foibles of most of the faculty and many of the boys. The Spectacle had a popular if restricted circulation.

It fell to Tony at length to do the paper on Mr. Roylston. None of the articles were labeled by correct names, but there was scarcely ever any doubt in the mind of the reader who had served as the model of the portrait. The paper on Mr. Roylston, paraphrasing his nickname, was entitled “Soft-toed Samuel.” Tony had caricatured broadly, but before being written out in his neat fine hand, the style had been softened, smoothed and improved, occasional lapses in orthography had been corrected, and the defects of punctuation supplied,—in fact the crude strokes of the amateur had been retouched by the hand of an artist. The artist was Jimmie.

It was a great success with the habituÉs of Number Five study. Tony was so pleased with it himself, that he took it in late of an evening to Finch’s room with the idea of cheering up his charge who had seemed even unwontedly seedy that day.

“Here, Jake,” he exclaimed, as he burst in at the door, “here’s the latest Spectacle. Have a try at it.”

Finch was lying on his couch, laid low by an intense headache. The pain was so severe that he could scarcely respond to his hero’s greeting. “Thanks,” he said weakly. He tried to get up, but Tony, quick as a flash, pushed him gently back.

“There, keep quiet! I didn’t know you had another headache. I’m awfully sorry, old chap. Rotten things, those headaches of yours.”

Finch smiled, and writhed with pain. “It’ll be all right, I guess.”

Tony sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you go up to the Infirmary?... Can I get you anything?”

“No ... thank you,” Jake answered. “I’ll sleep it off; it’s the only way. Don’t bother. If you don’t mind, I’ll make out better alone.”

“Mind? No. Only I’m blamed sorry.”

“Leave the Spectacle, will you?”

“All right, I’ll stick it here on your desk. Read it in the morning. Don’t forget to call me if you want anything. Does Bill know you’re sick?”

“Yes—he’s been in.”

“Well, good-night, Jake. Tell me what you think of it to-morrow.”

When Tony had gone out, Finch tried to get up and read the paper, but the pain pulled him back on his bed again, and he lay there in misery till sleep came at last and released him.

The next morning, with the hurry of breakfast and chapel, he had no opportunity of reading the squib until First Study, which, as Mr. Roylston held it, usually was study and not the loafing, letter-writing, novel-reading period it occasionally was under laxer masters. Finch, who had hard work to keep the place he was determined to maintain in the school, rarely wasted his study periods, so that he was ignorant of the various devices whereby the lazy gave the pretense of studying when they were doing other things. At the risk of an imperfect Greek lesson—for he could restrain his curiosity no longer, he took out Tony’s manuscript soon after First Study began, and was eagerly and hastily perusing it. Deering’s obvious exaggerations, and even more, though he could not distinguish them, Jimmie’s finer touches, amused him greatly. For the first time he was really smiling broadly in the schoolroom. The master, so long the traditional bÊte noir and subject of caricature, took form in his imagination, and Mr. Roylston, whom Finch feared with an abject fear, for once seemed to him to be amusing.

Suddenly, to his intense horror, Gumshoe Ebenezer stood before him, not in the spirit but in the flesh, and his long slim bony fingers closed about Tony’s manuscript as he removed it quickly from Finch’s nerveless grasp.

“I will relieve you of that extraneous matter,” he observed sharply. “It is expected that boys shall spend this period in study, not in reading amusing letters.”

“It—it isn’t a l—letter,” gasped Finch.

“It does not in the least matter whether it is a letter or not,” replied Mr. Roylston. “It is very evident that it has no bearing whatever upon Xenophon’s Anabasis or the Greek Grammar.”

He glanced at the title as he spoke. “Soft-toed Samuel” conveyed little to him, enough however to inform him that he had been correct in his surmise that it was tabooed matter.

“But—but, it—it isn’t mine,” protested Finch.

“No?” commented Mr. Roylston, with an accent of indifference. “I shall return it to its owner in good time, if you choose to inform me who he is.” He glanced casually over the writing.

“Don’t—don’t you dare to read that!” cried Finch, his face livid, as for the moment anger got the better of fear. “I’ll—I’ll—” he half rose from his seat, his fists clenched in helpless rage.

Mr. Roylston turned upon him with a glare. “You will do what?” he asked in tones that almost robbed Finch of his senses. “Get to work,” he added, after looking at him steadily for a moment; and then turned away, leaving his victim morally and spiritually prostrate.

Poor Finch sank back in his seat, bent his head, and fastened his unseeing eyes on the pages of the Anabasis. The incident, though observed and heard by the whole schoolroom, seemed not to have created a ripple of excitement. Not a sound disturbed the stillness of the room. As the master turned from Finch, he observed a hundred heads bent diligently over their books, and a slight grim smile of satisfaction crossed his face. He felt that he had reason to be proud of his discipline. He seated himself at the desk, and his eyes fell idly upon the first page of the manuscript. “Soft-toed Samuel,” he read, and a curl of contempt trembled along his thin lips. And then:

“There is no place of general resort in the school which is immune from the presence of Soft-toed Sam; sometimes he is seen thrusting his head even into the locker-rooms below stairs and listening with eager and suspicious ear to the slang and careless conversation that is apt to take place there. And woe to the boy whose tongue is not restrained on such occasions! there will be a day of reckoning. Sometimes he munches a bit of cake at the Pie-house, making pretense of joviality; but whilst he seems attentive to nothing but his goody and the Pie-lady, he overhears the remarks of every boy in the place, and makes a note of them in his little book. Sometimes he comes into the general assembly of all the boys on a Sunday evening, as one who comes to hear and to improve, but who leaves to carp. His face is too well-known, too often seen by every boy in the school. The stealthy tread of Soft-toed Samuel is ever on the trail of the lazy, the indifferent and the wicked, and where he does not find matter for condemnation provided him by nature, he creates it out of nothing. The Head has....”

Mr. Roylston turned the pages, and glanced at the conclusion.

“Thus he lives in the school as a critic of and a bane to mankind rather than as one of the species.”

It was enough. The handwriting, of course, he recognized. He folded the paper neatly and placed it in his pocket.

Poor Finch meanwhile was undergoing excruciating agonies. Not a line of the Greek penetrated his consciousness, even the familiar ??te??e? ??e?a??a? was to him as the inscription on a Babylonian tablet. His own careless folly and stupidity had brought about a catastrophe, a frightful situation, in which he could see his hero was apt to suffer more grievously than himself. But in reality that was not possible. Finch was suffering vicariously with an intensity that Tony could never realize, that in such connection he could never share.

And at the end of the period he fearfully approached the master’s desk. As though divining the petition trembling on his lips, Mr. Roylston bade him sternly go out with his form, adding sharply, “I shall return the paper myself when I have had the opportunity of enjoying its promising humor.”

At recess Finch found Deering eating his bit of luncheon in the Fifth Form common room. He drew him aside.

“Well, Jake, headache gone?” began Tony. “What did you think of the Soft-toed Sammy? Why, what’s the matter?”

Finch was white as a sheet. “Oh, Deering,” he gasped, “an awful thing has happened. I—I was reading it—like a fool—in First Study—and—and—Mr. Roylston swiped it.”

Tony paused in the midst of taking a bite from his bun, and looked at Jake in consternation.

“Gumshoe swiped it?”

“Yes, Deering.... I’m sorry.... You don’t know ... I wish I was dead.” He leaned against the lintel of the doorway and hid his face in his hands.

Tony pulled himself together with an effort. “I guess you’ve done me,” he began. Then, as he saw Finch wince under his words, he went over quickly to his side, and put his hand on his shoulder. “There, cheer up; I was a beast to say that. It’s all my own fault. It was a darn fool stunt to write such things.”

After a time he calmed the unhappy lad, and got from him the details of the incident. At last he went off to report the matter to Jimmie.

Lawrence naturally was inclined to say harsh things of Finch, but he too realized that they themselves were to blame for the predicament.

“Hate to deprive you of the honor, old chap,” he said, “but honesty forbids me deny the authorship and responsibility for The Spectacle. The horse is on me.”

“The horse!” exclaimed Tony. “It will be a ton of bricks. But it’s rot, Jimmie, to say you’re responsible. I’ll be hanged if I think sticking an adjective here and there, sprinkling commas about, and tinkering with a few mixed tenses, makes you the author. ‘Tis true it’s but a beastly paraphrase on Addison,—but ‘twas my best and, so to speak, my own.”

They waited somewhat anxiously that day for the dreaded summons to Mr. Roylston’s outraged presence, but it did not come. That night on his way to Standerland from a meeting of the Dealonian, Tony found a sealed packet in his letter-box in the Old School. It was directed to him in Mr. Roylston’s minute slanting chirography. He tore it open, and found that it contained the confiscated copy of The Spectacle and a note from the master therein caricatured.

“I return to you under cover,” it ran, without address, “the manuscript for which, since it is in your handwriting, I presume you are responsible. It was confiscated from Finch in First Study this morning. I have read it enough to suggest that the wisest course will be for you to destroy this piece of scurrility at once, also any copies of it that may exist. I have only to say that the offense is so deep and gratuitous an insult that it is not punishable by any of the ordinary methods at our command. Vain as the supposition sometimes seems, we proceed at Deal School on the assumption that we have to treat with gentlemen and the sons of gentlemen.

“E. Roylston.”

As he read this note, Tony by turns went hot and cold. The last sentence stung him to the quick. He was intensely angry, but as the first impulse of rage passed away, he realized with a bitter sense of humiliation that the master had a perfect right to his resentment; that for once he, Tony Deering, was absolutely, hopelessly in the wrong. Alas! while he had been fondly supposing that he was beginning to live more unselfishly, beginning to do more for others than he had ever done before, he had wantonly wounded and grossly insulted, as a result of indulging in his propensity to make fun, a fellow member of the school. With the shame and repentance warm in his heart, he hurried over to Howard House where Mr. Roylston roomed, and knocked at his door.

The master looked up from his desk, as Tony entered, and his face hardened into a severe expression as he waited for his visitor to speak.

“Sir,” exclaimed Tony, impulsively, “I’ve come to beg your pardon.... I know I have done an inexcusable thing, but I am sorry——.”

Mr. Roylston laid his pen down and looked fixedly at the boy, but the muscles of his face did not relax. “Don’t you think, Deering,” he interrupted coolly, “that your apology comes with a bad grace after the offense is accidentally discovered? Apparently the despicable character of your method of poking fun seems only to occur to you when you are in danger of incurring the just penalty of such conduct.”

Tony bit his lips, but he felt he deserved what the master chose to say. He would not spoil his apology by showing resentment. “I dare say it seems to you that way, sir. But I can only say that at first I simply saw the amusing side of it, and that it was not until I thought how it must have seemed to you that I realized it was an unkind caricature.”

Mr. Roylston perceptibly sniffed at the word caricature. “Gratuitous insult, it were better termed,” he ejaculated.

“Well, sir, I can’t undo it ... I only wish I could. I apologize to you, sir, ... unreservedly.”

Mr. Roylston appeared to choose his words with even more than his usual care. “I accept the apology, of course, technically. But naturally it does not atone for the offense.”

“No,” said Tony, “I know it does not.”

For a moment there was silence. “You are curious to know what I propose to do?” asked Mr. Roylston, with a note of sarcasm.

“No—no, sir,” replied Tony ingenuously. “I don’t think that matters, sir. I only hope you believe what I say, that I am truly sorry for what has occurred.”

He had worded his sentence unfortunately, for the master took it as a quibble. “Yes,” he replied tartly, “I can well believe that you are sorry for what has occurred.”

“I don’t mean——” began Tony.

“That will do,” said Mr. Roylston dryly. “I have gathered enough of your meaning for the once. No—I do not mean to punish you.” A bitter smile flickered over his face. “As I sought to explain in my note, which I had every intention should put a period to the incident, our punishments in this school are not adapted to the case. One has but two alternatives in such affairs,—to expel or to ignore persons capable of such conduct. I have concluded to ignore. I bid you good evening.”

Tony opened his mouth to speak again, but closed it quickly, and with a slight inclination of his head, turned and left the room.

“He means to rub it in by slow degrees, by his peculiar and unspeakable methods of torture,” was Jimmie’s comment when Tony had told him of the interview later. “You were an ass not to let me share the responsibility. The Gumshoe accept an apology! why, he hasn’t the charity of a mosquito. As Kit would say,” he added thoughtfully, “he is ‘a gloomy ass.’ Well, I reckon, Tonio, old sport, we’ll have to chuck The Spectacle.”

“Hang it, of course, we will. It was a poor fool sheet, Jim; rather a sad business for two good little schoolboys like us to be taken up with.”

“And like most wicked things, amusing,” remarked Reggie from the depths of an armchair where he had been an interested hearer of the conversation. “Like most forbidden things, diverting.”

“What a crude philosopher you sometimes are, Reggie,” said Lawrence. “One looks to you for illuminating comment—not for the obvious platitude.”

“True, my poet,” drawled Carroll, “but there are moments when one inadvertently sinks below one’s normal level. But adieu to some diverting moments!”

“Thanks! Adieu, too, to my Addisonian English! I wish we could as easily bid adieu to the consequences.”

“I fancy it will be a long time before you say farewell to those, my young friends.”

“Hm, he evidently doesn’t mean to take it to the Head,” said Tony.

“No, not yet,” said Reggie, with the air of a prophet, “the time is not ripe; but the Gumshoe, like Fate, will take a fall out of you in the hour of your pride. Beware.”

“Bosh!” said Tony, “I’m going to forget it.” And he fell to work.