Deering of Deal; Or, The Spirit of the School

by Latta Griswold

  CHAPTER XVII

  LEAVE-TAKING

  The short Easter vacation, during which Tony had visited Jimmie, hadcome and gone, and our friends were settled down again into the routineof the spring term. For the time being, much to the discomfort of allconcerned, the old crowd was broken up. Tony and Kit did not even speakto each other, so that Jimmie had a hard time keeping on friendly termswith them both.

  The winter had long since broken completely. Long lazy days were comeagain when the sea glistened like glass under shining skies and themounting sun was rapidly warming the earth into green good humor. Thefields were dotted in the afternoons with a dozen developing baseballteams composed of white clad, red-capped boys. Boats, too, heavilymanned by members of the rival school clubs, sped out of the littleharbor tucked under Strathsey Neck, and, plied by their happy crews,went scudding on half-holidays up the River or boldly out past DeigrLight into the open ocean. It was a happy term at Deal: boys andmasters expanded in the genial sunshine, and for the most part thestress of the long winter term problems and discipline was whollyrelaxed. Lawrence and Deering threw themselves into baseball, workedfairly faithfully at their books, and thus kept themselves happyand contented. Kit Wilson was coaching one of the younger teams onthe north field, so that they did not come in contact with him veryfrequently. Jimmie would go to his rooms often in the evening, but hecame no more to Number Five study.

  Kit had said nothing about his affair with Finch; but, as he expected,his rooms were disturbed no more. Finch, terrified by discovery and thefear of exposure, for a long time abandoned his vandalism entirely. Hisconscience was troubled by the fact that he had lied to Tony, but lessperhaps than he would have been disturbed if Tony knew the truth. Therewas on both his and Tony’s part a certain sense of strain in theirfriendly relations, which Tony, however, tried to ignore. He believedof course that Finch had told him the truth about the episode inWilson’s room and that Wilson had simply been mistaken; but after Kit’sopen break with him, he saw no way to set things right.

  This troubled him a great deal and cast a gloom over much of thatbright spring term that otherwise might have been so happy. Eachboy felt the loss of the other’s friendship keenly, but both wereimpulsive, both felt themselves right, both had been stung to the quickby the other’s attitude. Time, as often happens, widened the breach.

  One day in Fifth English they were reading _As You Like It_, and itfell to Kit to read the lines of Amiens’ song in the second act:

  “Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most love merely folly.

  “Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot: Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not.”

  As he got toward the end of the lines, his voice almost broke. Stenton,realizing with quick sympathy that the song had taken on for him somekeen personal meaning, passed on the reading immediately to anotherboy. Tony sat in his seat flushed and uncomfortable; for him also theverse had intense meaning. He longed to look up and catch Kit’s eye,and then join him after class and say boldly how foolish he felt theircoolness was. But he did not do so. He felt he never could do so. Kithad been too unfair, too bitter—the advance must come from him.

  Suddenly one day, in the midst of all this intense life and activityof school so absorbing to our boys, there came a word to Tony that wasrudely and without warning to take him out of it. The message came inthe form of a letter from his grandfather bidding him come home at once.

  “It will be bad news to you, my dear boy,” he wrote, “but your unfortunate father’s business venture has been an absolute failure; he has been very ill and is only just now on the road to recovery, and your poor mother has fallen a victim at last to the worry and strain. She wants you, and the doctor and I think it best for you to come. So you must do so at once, as I am writing to the Head Master. I don’t know, Anthony, whether we shall be able or not to send you back next year. We poor people of the south, when Fortune turns against us, are pretty well down and out. You have made a good record at school, and I do not doubt but that Doctor Forester will promote you to the Sixth Form next year, should we be able to send you back, even if you do lose these two months. But you must come now, and at once. Telegraph me the day and hour and I will have Sambo meet you at the Junction.

  “Your affectionate grandfather,

  “Basil Deering.”

  Poor Tony read this letter over and over before he could clearly takeit in. He knew something of old of his reckless father’s terriblepropensity to indulge in wild-cat speculation, of the disaster andtrouble it had brought upon the family at Low Deering before. And nowtoo his mother was ill! Of course, of course, he must go home. Hefumbled in his drawer and found a time-table. Yes, he could leave thatnight. And yet—he paused, with the letter in his hand—it was like asentence of banishment: to leave school now in the middle of the bestterm of the year, and with so many things in which he was interestedat loose ends! He could not believe it really meant that; it could notbe true. And perhaps never to return! He looked again at his letter,and the old general’s words made him sick at heart. Never again torace up and down that hillside, to look out upon that splendid sea;never again to swagger about the campus with his chums in the old glad,happy, self-important way! No, no, he could not bear that it shouldmean that! The hot tears welled in his eyes,—but he brushed them away.Of course, his mother needed him. He had gone through before thoseagonizing family crises, had seen his tender patient mother strugglebravely against his father’s bad moods and dark despair. He knew thatindeed she must have collapsed when his grandfather sent for him andshe permitted it.

  He ran over to the Rectory and found the Doctor in his study. He toohad just been reading a letter from General Deering.

  He clasped Tony’s hand in his strong affectionate grip. “I am sorryfor you, my boy.... Yes, I have just been reading a letter from yourgrandfather. There is no choice but for you to go at once.”

  “I can leave on the ten o’clock from Monday Port, to-night, sir,” saidTony, “and catch the midnight express at Coventry, which will get mehome the next evening.”

  “Doubtless that is the best plan,” the Doctor agreed. “I don’t think,from what the General tells me, that you need worry about your mother’simmediate condition. But undoubtedly you are needed. I am very sorrythat you should lose these two months, but you can keep up your workat home and there is no reason why you should not make the Sixthcomfortably in September.”

  “I think I could do that, sir,” replied Tony, “but my grandfather saysthere is some doubt about—about their being able to send me back nextyear.”

  “Yes, yes, he writes that to me; but you are to come, nevertheless. Wewill arrange that. I hope the financial difficulties will straightenout satisfactorily, but if worst comes to worst and they should not,why there are any number of ways that we can provide for you. Thereis always a scholarship fund rusting in the bank,—ripening, I hadbetter say, for just some such occasion. I fancy, even, that the schoolwould be willing to trust you for your tuition. But one thing is quitesettled: you _are_ to return. And I will make that clear to Basil—toyour grandfather.”

  “Thank you, sir; you’ve been mighty good to me.”

  “You have been mighty good to us—mighty good _for_ us, I may say,—myboy.... Good-bye now, for the present.... And God bless you.”

  In a moment or so Tony was gone. He found Jimmie, Charlie Gordon,Teddy Lansing, and told them the news. And then, after a few hastyfarewells, went to his rooms with Jimmie to pack. It was then late inthe afternoon. The packing was a sad business, for he felt he musttake everything. He would be away five months; perhaps, despite theDoctor’s kind prophecy, for good. As this possibility occurred to him,he would stand now and then in the middle of the room, with a coat orhat or what not in his hands, and feel it was simply impossible to goon. Tears would start in his eyes a
nd trickle down his cheeks. He hadalways liked the school, even in his bad moods he had been loyal; buthe had not known, he had not realized, as few boys do at the time,how the school had become a part of his very life, how intensely hisaffections were centered there. And then—Mr. Morris; the fellows,Jimmie, Teddy, Charlie, Kit—it would be hard to leave without sayinggood-bye to Kit—, Reggie!

  He turned to Jimmie who had come in at the moment with his arms fullof Tony’s belongings that he had collected from various parts of theschool, locker rooms and the like. “Excuse me for a little while,Jimmie old boy; I’ve got to run over and see Reggie. I haven’t told himyet.” Tony had a pang of regret that he had seen so little of Reggie oflate, “I’ll be back before long.”

  “All right,” said Jimmie dolefully. “I’ll go on with the packing, ifyou don’t mind. Don’t be long.”

  “I won’t,” said Tony.

  He found Carroll fortunately in his own room in the Old School. Foronce Reginald was studying, and Tony could scarcely remember when hehad seen him so engaged. But the Sixth Former closed his Horace withrelief as he recognized his visitor and kicked out a chair for him tosit down. “Well, I am certainly glad you have come. Heaven knows howlong I would have kept at that futile exercise, if it had not beenpleasantly interrupted. But what’s up, my boy, you look as if you hadseen a ghost?”

  Tony sat down on the chair that Carroll had pushed out. “I have,Reggie,” he said, “I have just got a letter from home; worse luck. Mymother’s ill, and I have to start south to-night.”

  “Jove, that is hard luck! When shall you get back, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think my mother is dangerously ill, but shewants me. There’s been a mess about money too. The old governor haswritten, and says I may not get back at all—not this term any way.”

  “Not this term!” Reggie jumped up quickly, all the habitual languor ofhis attitude and movements gone, and strode over to the window.

  “No, I’m afraid not, Reggie.”

  “Why—why—I’ll be gone next term, boy.”

  “I know, old man.”

  For a moment Carroll turned his back to Tony and looked out of thewindow into the deepening twilight, and was silent. There was a lump inhis throat that kept him from speaking.

  “I’ve only a few minutes, Reggie, old boy,” said Tony, at last. “I amleaving in an hour and I am only half packed. I’ve got to say good-bye.”

  Carroll turned at this: a pathetic smile was on his lips. “It has comeso suddenly, boy ... it’s kind of taken the wind out of my sails.” Hecame over then and took Tony’s hand in his. “Tonio, ... I can’t saygood-bye.... You’ll write to me ... you will come back surely.... I’llbe at Kingsbridge and often back at school.”

  “I hope so, Reggie.”

  “You don’t know, boy,” Reggie went on, still holding Tony’s hand, “Ican’t tell you what your being here has meant for me—you and Bill. Wehaven’t seen each other much this year, and I reckon I’ve often seemedto you a poor sort of friend ... but, to put it poetically, old chap,... the light o’ my heart goes out with you.”

  Tony gripped the hand in his tightly at this. There was a lump in histhroat too.

  “Good-bye, Reggie.... I will write, and you be sure to write to me.Tell me all that’s going on.... Have an eye on Finch, will you? Poorduffer!”

  “Poor duffer, indeed!” said Carroll, and then added, “Poor me!” Theirhands clasped tightly, and then Tony was gone.

  Reggie stood for a long time just as Tony had left him. “One by one thelamps go out,” he murmured, quoting a line from one of his own verses.He sighed. “So runs, so runs the world away....” There was a queersharp pain at his heart. He sat down at last and opened his Horaceagain, and began to read, but the words conveyed no sense to his mind.He threw his arms out once, and whispered softly, pathetically, “Oh,Tony, Tony.... God bless you, boy; God bless you!”

  Back in Number Five Jimmie and Tony were absorbed in the last stagesof the packing. Morris, to whom Tony had explained the occasion of hisgoing, had come in and was helping them. And his presence went a greatway to cheer them up, for Morris refused for an instant, even in hisown mind, to consider the possibility of Deering not coming back. Heeased off their good-byes, and sent Lawrence over to cheer up Carroll,whom he knew would feel it more than the rest, for it was good-bye toTony for him as he was in the Sixth and would be at Kingsbridge nextyear when Tony returned.

  Deering said good-bye to Finch, quickly, quietly, he had time forlittle explanation. Finch said nothing, but died of despair within.

  On the way down the corridor Tony passed Kit, a generous word was onhis lips, their eyes met for a second, but Kit looked quickly away, andTony passed on. The opportunity for a reconciliation was gone. Morrisdrove in to Monday Port with the boy and saw him off on the way-trainfor Coventry. With persistent tact, he continued to treat the partingas only a temporary one, and refused himself the melancholy pleasureof saying much to his young friend that was in his heart and that Tonymight have been glad to hear. It was better so, thought Morris. Thekind things could be written, if the need came.

  There was a quick, short, strong grip of their hands at last, and Tonyclimbed into the train. He stowed his things in the empty car, and thenwent and stood on the rear platform and waved his hand to Morris as thetrain pulled out of the little station, and strained his eyes to seethe last of the master’s patient, kindly friendly figure until darknessblotted out the vision. The train was rushing through the outskirts ofthe little town. Beyond the limits it ascended a steep grade and ranalong a high level plateau for a way, and thence Tony caught a glimpseof the lights of the school shining brightly from the far-away hill,wafting him, it seemed, a friendly good-bye across the dark. Suddenlythe train plunged into a narrow cut in a hill and Deering could see thelights of Deal no more.

  At Coventry he had a dreary wait for half-an-hour until the midnightexpress for the south lumbered in and stopped on signal. As soon as hehad boarded the through train, he got into his berth, for he was wornout with the wearisome journey from Monday Port and with the excitementof the last seven hours. But he could not sleep for a long time. Whenat last he did fall into a fitful slumber, constantly disturbed by thejolts and jars of the rushing train, it was to dream bad dreams. Onceit seemed to him, in the dazed state between sleeping and waking, thathe was lying in his little bed at Low Deering, that he was still alittle boy of fourteen, and that the last four years at Deal had beenonly a dream....

  At Low Deering Tony found things almost as bad as he had feared. Hisfather, a genial, charming, irresponsible creature—the unaccountablewild olive that grows now and then on the stock of the good olivetree—had rather more deeply than usual—for the same sort of thing hadhappened before—plunged his family into distress. He had ventured allhis available capital and more that he had borrowed, on the securityof his extravagant hopes and good intentions, from his wife; staked itin a case where he stood to win twenty-fold or quite overwhelminglylose; and, as not unfrequently happens, had lost. Then had followed,as Tony could remember the horror of it all at an earlier period ofhis boyhood, a trying disappearance and a return in a mood of blackmelancholy and idle remorse.

  But the worst was over by the time he reached home. Victor Deering,thanks to his father’s stern but tender patience and his wife’sunfailing much-tried devotion, was slowly recovering his normalhealth, his irrepressible spirits, his habitual weaving of futileplans and nursing of quixotic hopes. But the process this time hadcost his family a good deal more than its meager income could pay forand had sacrificed Mrs. Deering’s health to worry and distress. Forweeks she had been lying in a state of nervous exhaustion, from whichthe physician at last thought she might be rallied if her wish weregranted and Tony, her only child, might be with her. And so he had beensent for.

  During those two hot months of the southern spring Tony devotedhimself to his mother, a devotion that was only relaxed when later,the old general having scraped togeth
er enough for the purpose, thefamily removed for the summer to the cooler climate of a resort inthe North Carolina mountains. The mother grieved not a little for herboy’s interrupted school days—she guessed at the sacrifice Tony’scheerfulness hid,—but Tony and the General knew that his return hadsaved her health if not her life.

  Tony had been separated a great deal from his family since he had gonenorth to school, so that, after the first homesickness for Deal wasover, he began to be deeply interested again in the old scenes andfamiliar friends of his early boyhood: the easy-going, ill-managed oldplantation with its extensive sugar industry bringing in such incomeas they had; the little hill on which stood the house of Low Deering,low, white and great galleried; the sleepy bayou that stretched awaybelow to the wild and beautiful jungle, a marshy live-oak forest,picturesquely hung with the heavy lace of the gray Spanish moss and thedelicate purple of the wild wistaria; the inky black darkies, relics ofante-bellum days; the few families of similar decaying plantations inthe neighborhood.

  Later in the summer at Bald Rock in North Carolina, at the hotel towhich their diminutive cottage was attached, there were young peopleagain—boys to play baseball and climb the near by mountains with,girls with whom to dance at the Saturday night hops on the greatgallery of the hotel. Then too there was his father. Despite aninner disapproval that Tony could not help feeling for his father’sirresponsible doings, for the trouble he now and then brought sodeeply, perhaps unwittingly, upon them all, Tony enjoyed his fatherimmensely. If he himself had inherited his strong sense of honor andhis manly grip on life from his grandfather, and the inner patienttenderness we have sometimes noted in him from his mother, it was fromhis father that his charm, his quick and ready sympathy, his genialgrace had come.

  After the terrible six months he had given them, Victor Deering couldnot have done more to atone than he was whole-heartedly trying to do.It was characteristic of him, for he deeply appreciated what DealSchool had done for Tony, that his repentance should have caused him tosuggest to the old general that his own patrimony, hoarded by the headof the house against a rainy day, should be made over to Tony at once,and the income, the capital if necessary, be applied to completing hiseducation at Deal and later on at Kingsbridge. General Deering tookhis son at his word. Victor was only too eager to promise from thenon steadfast attention to the plantation, which, better managed, wascapable still of recouping their fortunes and furnishing them with aliving. So it began to look bright, as Tony wrote to Jimmie Lawrence,for his return to school, and without any question of taking advantageof scholarships or such aid as the Head had so kindly offered. Thatoffer rankled, unjustly as he knew, in the old aristocrat’s mind. Hewas determined Tony should have no such humiliation to face.

  Of the school in these days of Tony’s enforced exile, a glimpse shallbe had through the medium of Jimmie Lawrence’s letters, for, of course,the two boys had written each other with some regularity.

  “DEAL SCHOOL: _May 10th_.

  “DEAR TONY:

  “Well, old boy, how does it seem to be getting Long Vacation two months ahead of time? I am glad to know that your mother is better; but I shan’t be contented again till you tell me definitely that you will be back next term....

  “I suppose you want to know what has been going on here. You won’t be surprised if I say pretty much the same old thing. It is lively enough to be in the thick of it, but there doesn’t seem much to write about. I have naturally seen rather more of Kit since you have been away, and though he does not say much if I try to talk about you, I can’t but think that things must be all right between you next fall. I have been seeing too a lot of Reggie Carroll. Reggie, I suppose, will be the same lanky languid critter to the end of the chapter, but Bill dropped the word to me the other day that he has tremendously bucked up in his work, and that he’s going in for the Latin Prize. I happen to know also that he is hammering away on some verses for Jack Stenton’s prize in Poetry. From the sample he read me the other night, I have no doubt he’ll get it,—it is the real thing, not the style of the poems that desecrate the pages of the _Deal Lit_. Reggie is going to turn out O. K., Bill says; and I begin to think so myself. Though I must confess, up to now, despite what you have always thought of him, I have considered him rather poor pickings and considerably proud of nothing. I haven’t seen much of Finch; he keeps pretty much to himself; in fact hasn’t been in here since you left. Bill tells me however that he’s to be back again next year.

  “The team is developing in a satisfactory sort of way, and Teddy makes a pretty good captain. I’m playing first as usual. We have won all our games so far, and I guess we’ll give Boxford a good rub on June 10th. It’s a shame you won’t be here.

  “There’s not much faculty news. Gumshoe’s Gumshoe! His rooms have been rough-housed several times lately, and from the way he glares at Kit, I fancy, he thinks he is responsible. Kit, characteristically, retaliates by veiled impudence that sets the Gumshoe’s teeth on edge. But he champs and says nothing.

  “The fellows ask about you a lot, and send their best. Let me hear from you soon, and don’t forget you are to spend the last month of the vacation with me at Easthampfield. Write soon.

  “Ever affectionately,

  “JIMMIE.”

  In June there came another letter that interested Tony very much.

  “Reggie has pulled both the Latin and the Poetry Prizes. Even the Gumshoe thawed a trifle and shook hands with him as he came down from the platform on Prize Day, with a set of Browning in his arms and the Jackson medal in his inside pocket. He’s so blamed clever that he has got a _cum laude_. Bill beams with pride over him. The President of Kingsbridge, a funny old chap who talks through his nose and has a wit as keen as a razor, made us a bully talk, and the Doctor announced the prefects for next year—curiously enough he said the Head Prefect will not be appointed until the opening of school in September. We all suppose, of course, that that means you, and that it is only postponed until it is certain that you are coming back. The other prefects will be Teddy, Gordon Powel, Doc Thorn, Ned Clavering and myself. I had hoped Kit would be one, but he’s been too independent I guess. It’s a pretty good lot of fellows, I think, though I say it as shouldn’t, and with you at the head, we ought to run things very much as we want to next year....”

  Tony had scarcely thought of the Head Prefectship since he had leftschool. He believed that there were others better fitted for it thanhimself and who more deserved it. The fact that he was President ofthe Dealonian made him an obvious candidate, of course; and certainlyif the authorities thought him up to the position he would be glad tohave it. The possibility from this time on added to the keenness withwhich he looked forward to his return in September.