TONY PLAYS THE PART OF A GUARDIAN ANGEL

Mr. Roylston put his policy with regard to Tony into rigorous effect. From that day, except when it was obviously necessary to speak with them about their classroom work, he ignored Deering and his friends. He treated them with an icy courtesy that was far more effective in subduing their high spirits than his sarcasm had ever been. Lawrence and Wilson, particularly the latter, were restive under the process, and often threatened, though they never attempted, open rebellion. Tony, on the other hand, was more sensitive to this peculiar method of revenge, and it was probably due to his recognition of this sensitiveness that Mr. Roylston had adopted it. Deering knew that he had been guilty of ungentlemanly conduct and he was not happy so long as his whole-hearted apology was not accepted in the spirit in which it was given. But there seemed no way in which he could improve the situation. He tried to prove his sincerity by doing specially good work in Mr. Roylston’s class, but no word of commendation ever fell from the master’s lips.

In truth Mr. Roylston had been wounded more deeply than he had ever been before in a long career that had been marked, too, by much open hostility. But unfortunately he was not the type that could perceive that his difficulties largely lay in his own fundamental lack of sympathy with boy nature; and, resenting what he felt was the boys’ unjust attitude toward him, he had not it in his soul then to forgive such an offense as Tony had been guilty of. As he looked back over their four or five years at Deal, the incident of The Spectacle seemed to him but the culmination of a long series of systematic attempts on the part of that particular “crowd” to belittle and annoy him. That the Head had practically required him to give up the gating penalty, that he had perhaps a lurking feeling that that penalty had been unjustly imposed, added to the bitterness he felt for our young friends.

And mixed up in all this affair of Deering and his “crowd,” there was in Mr. Roylston’s mind a sense, not clear but keen, that Finch was somehow concerned. He genuinely believed that Doctor Forester had made a mistake in taking Finch at Deal, and the passage of words with Morris on the occasion of the boy’s arrival, had irritated him intensely. He knew, and was sometimes ashamed of the fact, that he had let that irritation affect his treatment, in little ways, of the boy himself. He had always disliked Morris, and quite sincerely thought Morris’s unaffected good nature and genial optimism with regard to boys was a pose. The incident of Finch’s hazing, wherein he had punished the rescuers instead of the hazers, increased his uncomfortable feeling about the whole situation. But the discomfort did not increase his humility. He knew that in much he was wrong, but he was so accustomed to the idea of supposing himself to be right, that he argued away the accusations of his conscience.

On Finch he therefore continued to vent a good deal of his spleen. And on Finch the old sledge-hammer method of sarcasm was an effective weapon. The boy bore the master’s reproofs with a little less outward wincing than of old, but inwardly they racked his very soul. Mr. Roylston’s attitude affected him very differently from the way it affected Deering. He could not work in his class. A shaft of sarcasm, an expression of patient suffering on the master’s face as the boy blundered through his recitation, altogether confused him. Day after day he would fail in a lesson which he had spent hours in preparing. From a sense of duty Mr. Roylston now and then would see the delinquent outside of the classroom, and make an attempt to clear up his difficulties. But on these occasions Finch seemingly was more completely bereft of his senses than during a recitation. Mr. Roylston mistook this confusion for willful refusal to understand, and in time treated him accordingly.

“What the deuce is the matter with you, Jake?” Tony asked once, after a trying period in Latin, wherein Finch had floundered about in absurd fashion. “You know a heap more Latin than I do, but you go in before Gumshoe and act as if he were asking you questions in Sanscrit.”

“I know—I know,” Finch answered, miserably. “But I can’t help it. I just can’t get my wits before him. Every idea flies out of my head when he asks me a question. I am doing all right in other subjects.”

“Well, why don’t you go to Gumshoe and tell him?”

“Oh, I’ve tried,” said Finch. “That’s worse.”

“It’s a beastly shame,” said Tony. “But there’s nothing I can do; I’m in with Gumshoe worse than ever.”

“And that’s all my fault!”

“Not a bit,” said Tony. “I had no business to write that thing in the first place; neither had Jimmie for that matter,—about Gumshoe or anybody else. I wish I could convince him that I am really sorry.”

“Well, I guess you can’t do that,” said Finch. “But if I had not been so stupid it wouldn’t have happened. To tell you the truth, Deering, I often wish I had never come here.”

“That’s idiotic!” said Tony; and then asked tactlessly, “What would you have done?”

“I dunno,” Finch answered. “I guess it would have been better if I had never been born.”

Poor Jake resented Mr. Roylston’s attitude toward his hero much more than he did the master’s treatment of himself. Once or twice, glancing up from his desk in the schoolroom, Mr. Roylston caught a glance of such concentrated hatred in Finch’s eyes, as actually made him tremble. He attributed it, of course, to the boy’s perverse and willful laziness, and once or twice he returned Finch’s stare in a way, that though the boy dropped his eyes beneath it, seemed to burn into his soul.

Jacob failed miserably in Virgil at the mid-year examinations in February, and did not do well enough in his other work to counterbalance the bad impression of his abject failure in Latin. The nervous, overwrought state in which he had been living during the fall and winter told on his health. At the best he was frail, but now he suffered frequently from intense headaches that forced him much against his will, quite frequently to spend two or three days in the Infirmary.

Tony saw all this more clearly than anyone else except Morris. “What he needs,” he said one evening to Jimmie and Kit, “is to get an interest in something, to be brought out of himself, to get into something that will bring him more in touch with the life of the school.”

Kit, in his easy-going way, agreed; and went on strumming his guitar, on which he had been trying to pick out a new popular air. Jimmie gave the matter a little thought and asked, “What can he do?”

“Well,” said Tony, after a moment or so, “I’ve been thinking that it would be a good thing to put him up for the Dealonian.”

“The Dealonian!” exclaimed Kit, tossing the guitar aside. “Why, man, you’re plumb nutty. He’s got as much chance of getting into the Dealonian as I have of getting into Congress. A fine figure that little scarecrow would cut in a public meeting, wouldn’t he?”

“Oh, I think he could do it,” protested Tony, a little sharply, for he was annoyed by Kit’s tone. “It would give him a lot of confidence if we took him in. It would make him feel that the best fellows in school were willing to give him a chance.”

“I dare say it would make him feel that,” Lawrence remarked judiciously. “But I can’t say that I see that he has any particular claim to consideration. The Dealonian isn’t exactly an asylum for the maimed, the halt and the blind.”

“No, of course, it isn’t, but it’s supposed to be run for the benefit of the school, isn’t it? And ‘the good of the school’ simply means the good of the fellows in school. Finch has as much right to the Dealonian, if there’s a chance of it being a help to him, as you or I have.”

“But he hasn’t any chance, d’ye see?” said Kit.

“No I don’t see,” answered Tony. “I dare say the three of us have a certain amount of influence, and if we chose to exert it I’ve an idea that we could get him in.”

“Well, you can hang that harp on a weeping willow-tree,” was Kit’s conclusive comment, “I don’t intend to try. I am perfectly willing to lick Ducky Thornton every day in the week for hazing him, if need be; I’m willing to have Tony bring him in here three or four times a week and bore us to death, if he wants to; but I’m hanged if I’ll try to get him into the Dealonian. That’s supposed to be made up of the representative fellows of the school. You’re carrying your guardian angelship business too far, kiddo. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

Tony, for once, did not reply in like fashion to Kit’s vigorous and breezy way of expressing himself. He reflected a moment or so, and then spoke with an unusually quiet and determined air, as though he were simply making an announcement and not asking advice. “I have thought it over pretty carefully, Kit; and I’ve made up my mind to try it. I only hope you fellows will back me up.”

Jimmie was silent. Kit, convinced at last that Tony was indeed in earnest, protested vigorously. “You’re dead wrong, Tony. You oughtn’t to try it. The fellows won’t stand for it. And you’ve no right to ask me to back you up in a thing which I’m perfectly certain is a darn fool proposition.”

“Well,” said Tony, “you needn’t back me up, if you don’t want to. But that’s all rot for you to say it’s a darn fool notion. I’ve a perfect right to put him up, if I think it the thing to do, and I am going to do it.”

“Well, go ahead, and waste your time. I s’pose the little pup’ll lick your boots cleaner than ever in gratitude, whether you’re successful or not.”

Tony flared up at this. “I’ll thank you, Wilson, not to call my friends pups. I reckon I can find some decent chaps to vote for him, even if I can’t count on my own pals.” And with that, very hot in the head, he flung himself out of the room.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Kit. “To think of him flinging me over for that drowned rat! What’s the matter with him? Has he gone clean crazy?”

“He’s got the kid on his brain. But no sense in your flaring out so, Kit; that’s no way to get on with Tony. Naturally he’s sensitive.”

“Who flared up?” demanded Kit, indignantly. “I’m as calm as a millpond. Tony went off the handle because we disagreed with him. I guess I’ve as good a right to my opinions as he has to his.”

“Oh, for gosh’s sake, shut up; there’s no sense in quarreling over this matter. Finch won’t get into the Dealonian, but whether he can or not, I’d just as soon vote for him.”

“Well, I’ll be hanged if I would,” asserted Wilson. “And what’s more I’ll get up in the meeting and say it’s a darn fool proposition and ought to be turned down.”

“What’s the sense in doing that? It’ll just mean that you and Tony will have a serious falling-out, and the crowd will get busted up. What’s the use? It ain’t worth while.”

“The heck it isn’t! I won’t compromise a principle for a friend ever, I don’t care who he is. Nor I won’t have a friend ram his ideas down my throat. I’ve as much right to put a fellow up or blackball him in the Dealonian as Tony has. Seems to me he’s getting——.”

“Oh, shut up. You are working yourself all up over nothing. It isn’t worth it. Don’t quarrel with Tony.”

“Seems to me Tony’s picking the quarrel with me. Who flung himself out of the room just now? I didn’t, I guess. I tell you what, Jim, if Tony wants to keep on good terms with me, he can; but he’s not going to make the price of his friendship my voting to suit him about anything. I guess we made Tony Deering in this school—you and I.”

“Rot!” exclaimed Jimmie. “Tony made himself. He’d have been the head of the school if we had never exchanged a word with him. We’ve been darn glad to have him in the crowd, that’s the truth of it; he’s been the center of it ever since he’s been here. You were keen enough about making him president of the Dealonian, and I guess you want him for head prefect next year.”

“’Course I was keen; ‘course I do ... I’m all serene. If there’s a quarrel, it won’t be my fault. But I’m going to blackball Finch for the good of the Society, ‘cause I think it would be a mistake to let him in, and I hope you’ll do the same.”

“Well, I won’t.”

“Do as you please, that’s your right. So long, kiddo, I guess I’ll seek a more congenial clime for the time bein’.” And with that Kit swung himself out of the room.

Jimmie, genuinely distressed by this first serious difference in their congenial little circle, went over to Mr. Morris’s room, and took him into his confidence on the subject. Morris was not a little disturbed by the situation. He admired Tony’s purpose, but with Jimmie, thought it somewhat ill-judged and ill-timed, and deplored the possible cleavage it might make in the little knot of friends. But, characteristically, he did not see his way to interfering, even with advice.

Unfortunately Tony and Kit again encountered each other that night in Reggie Carroll’s room. Tony was cool, and Reggie, ignorant of what had happened, made matters worse by asking them facetiously what had ruffled the sweet waters of their friendship.

“Ask Tony,” answered Kit laconically, as he thumbed a school year book and tried to think of some way of getting out of the room.

Tony shrugged his shoulders.

“What’s up?” repeated Reggie.

“Nothing particular,” Deering answered, after a pause. “We just don’t pull together in a certain matter.”

“Well, what do you expect,” exclaimed Kit impulsively, “do you expect me to measure my opinions by yours?”

“Rather not,” answered Tony, with a faint sneer, “you’d find them in that case a darn sight too big for you.”

“Softly, softly,” protested Reggie. But Tony again was gone.

When he got back to his own room later in the evening, Jimmie tried to talk the subject over with him, but Tony, ruffled and irritated, was not inclined to do so.

“I’ve made up my mind, Jim, so that’s all there is to it. I’m going to put Finch up next Saturday night, and in the meantime I’m going to work hard to try to get the fellows to vote for him. I hope you won’t blackball him.”

“No, I won’t do that, Tony; but I wish you’d see Kit and talk it over with him in a friendly way.”

“I’ll talk it over with Kit, if he wants to talk it over with me; but he has got to drop his swagger and bulldozing manner, if he wants to.”

“Look here, old man; Kit’s just impulsive; that’s all. Suppose I, after I had thought it over, made up my mind that it would be a bad thing for the Society and blackballed Finch, would you let that make any difference between us?”

Tony thought a moment. “No, old chap, of course it wouldn’t. I’d be sorry, of course, because I would feel you were wrong. But it isn’t being opposed that makes me sore, it’s Kit’s blustering blowing way of doing it.”

Jimmie went that night and sat on Tony’s bed for a long time after lights. They said nothing more about Kit or Finch, but talked intimately of a variety of other things in which they were interested, in the old close pleasant way. It was a long happy quiet talk and it did much to strengthen their friendship in the times of stress that were coming.

The conversations we have recorded took place well along in the winter term on a Monday night in March. The following Saturday evening was the date of the important meeting of the Dealonian Society at which new members were elected.

Tony spent a zealous week campaigning for Finch, and found it a disheartening business. Most of the boys—there were about forty members of the Society—protested, but after long persuasion, promised to cast favorable votes, though they took pains, almost without exception, to assure Tony that they were doing it simply because he asked them. Others refused definitely to commit themselves, and Tony had to be content with that. To Jimmie’s distress, Kit kept away from Number Five study all that week, and refused to make any advances toward setting things right with Tony. “I’ll talk it over, if he comes to me,” he would say to Jimmie over and over. “But I am going to blackball Finch, and I guess I can persuade at least one other fellow to do the same, so he won’t get into the Dealonian. Tony can do what he pleases. After it’s all over, if he wants to make up, well and good; I’ll have no hard feelings: if he don’t,—well, well and good, also.”

At last, after what seemed an interminable week to our three friends Saturday night came, and the forty members of the Dealonian Society met in solemn conclave in the Library. Tony took the chair, looking a trifle nervous and anxious, and called the meeting to order. Kit was present, sitting well back, and assumed an air of bland indifference to the proceedings. There were four new members to be elected from the Fifth Form.

Routine business was transacted for a quarter of an hour, and at last the president announced, “If there is no objection, we will proceed to the election of new members. As I wish to place a name in nomination, I will ask Mr. Wendell to take the chair.”

Billy Wendell, the head prefect, captain of the football team, and the last year’s president of the Dealonian, rose from his seat, and took the chair behind the big desk in a very solemn way, very much as a president pro tem. walks up to the platform of the Senate. He settled himself, coughed slightly, and recognized Tony. “Mr. Deering has the floor,” he observed in judicial tones.

“Mr. President and members of the Dealonian Society, I desire to place in nomination for membership in this society the name of Jacob Finch of the Fifth Form.” As this was expected, the boys showed little surprise. Jimmie glanced back at Kit, and saw his lips curl with faint contempt. Tony too glanced about him; then, after a moment’s hesitation, he threw back his shoulders, and addressed the Society. He cast aside now the solemn traditional oratorical form that the boys made an effort to assume, and his clear sweet voice rang with feeling. “Fellows,” he said, “I believe, as we all do, that this Society has the right to consider itself the most important institution in the school, and I realize that I am nominating one for membership in it, who, according to all standards we have set for ourselves and which have been so well maintained through many school generations, seems not to have a shadow of right to election. We want here fellows whose opinion counts, whose influence will be strong and positive, who have done and are able to do things for the school, in athletics, in scholarship, and in various other ways. I can’t pretend that I think that Jacob Finch will stand for these things or will do these things. But for once, it seems to me, that other considerations should weigh with us.”

The boys were startled by the unusual feeling in Deering’s voice and by the unconventional arguments he was using to urge his candidate upon their favor, and they settled into attitudes of deep attention.

“At the beginning of the year,” Tony went on, “a new boy came amongst us who, as we all know, has been treated as no boy ever was who came to the school before. He has been brutally hazed, and for months his life has been made miserable by young and old, and unfortunately he has had no way of defending himself. He has never had a chance, he hasn’t got a square deal. I have got to know him, I suppose, better than anyone else, and while I don’t claim or even think that he is an unusual fellow, I do believe there is something in him that could be made to count for the school if he had a show; if it could really be proved to him that you fellows were willing to make him one of yourselves, give him not merely a fair, but a generous chance. I don’t want you merely to admit him to this Society because I ask it as a favor to me, though I hope you will do it for that reason if you won’t do it for any other; but I ask you to vote for him as an act of generous kindness toward a chap who hasn’t had the chance that any of us have had, whose life in this school up to now has been downright hell.”

With that Tony sat down. A ripple of conversation went round the room. The boys were quite won by this unusual appeal to their generosity and sympathy. Billy Wendell called them sharply to order. “Are there any further remarks upon Finch?”

Half a dozen fellows rose one after another, and declared, with a certain amount of feeling and a certain lack of grace, that they agreed with Deering, and that they thought Finch ought to be elected. Jimmie wanted to speak for Tony’s sake, but he could not quite bring himself to do so. In his heart he agreed with Kit that Tony’s judgment on this occasion was mistaken, and that were Finch elected it would not accomplish for him what Tony so generously hoped. There was a pause after good-natured Clayton had uttered a few stuttering sentimental remarks. Then Kit Wilson rose up quickly. His face was flushed, he seemed nervous, but there were lines of dogged determination about his mouth.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “we have all been moved by the eloquence of our popular president. I want to say, however, that I feel very strongly that the considerations that should guide us in this affair are not those of sentiment or of personal friendship. I think, Mr. Chairman, that the president of this Society has no right to ask us to vote for a fellow on his nomination as a personal favor to himself. The argument that it is up to us to give Finch a better show in the school than he’s had, by electing him to this Society is no doubt generous, but it is sentimental. I agree with Mr. Deering that we should do everything in our power to make Finch’s life a pleasanter and a happier one than it probably has been. I do not think, however, that to do this it is necessary to elect him to the Dealonian Society, the membership of which is supposed to be made up of those who really represent the various activities of the school. I sincerely trust he will not be elected.”

With that he sat down, and some one immediately called for a vote. The Dealonian voted on membership by roll call, the secretary reading the names and the boys responding Placet or Non Placet, as the case might be. To Tony’s surprise boy after boy voted in the affirmative. Tack Turner, one of “the crowd,” was the first to blackball, but after him the voting again was favorable. Wilson’s name was the last called. “Non Placet,” he said quietly, without looking up.

“The name is rejected,” said Wendell, and resigned the chair.

The meeting went on, several other names were proposed and accepted. After the adjournment, Tony, bitterly disappointed not in the result, which he had feared, but by the means it had been obtained, avoided speaking with his friends, and hurried out. In the corridor he came face to face with Kit. Their eyes met, and Tony’s lip curled contemptuously. “Well,” he exclaimed sarcastically, “you were successful, weren’t you!”

Kit stared back with a dark scowl on his good-looking, usually kindly face. “I did as I thought right,” he answered.

Tony smiled with a look of insulting incredulity. “Let me congratulate you on your sense of duty.” Then he hurried on to his own room, and fell to work with self-deceptive industry at his books.