CHAPTER XI
In which John Rieler of Campion College, greatly daring, goes swimming alone, finds a companion, and acts in such a manner as to bring to Campion College the strangest, oddest boy visitor that ever entered its portals.
It was thirteen minutes to ten on the following morning when Master John Rieler of Campion College, second-year high, discovered that he earnestly desired to be excused from the classroom. It was a very warm day for September, the sun was shining with midsummer fervor, and John Rieler, who had spent the vacation on the banks of the Miami—whenever, that is, he did not happen to be between the banks—felt surging within him the call of the water. John, a smiling, good-natured native of Cincinnati, was in summer months apparently more at home in the water than on the land. One of the anxieties of his parents in vacation time was to see that he did not swim too much, to the certain danger of his still unformed constitution.
For various reasons, connected more or less with the discipline of Campion College, John had had no swim since his arrival seven days before. He was filled with a mad desire to kick and splash. And so, at thirteen minutes to ten, he held up the hand of entreaty, endeavoring at the same time to look ill and gloomy.
John had figured out everything. As recess was at ten o’clock, the teacher would not call him to account for failing to return. The recess lasted fifteen minutes, giving the boy twenty-eight minutes to go to the river, take a morning splash and return. Of course, there were risks; but in John’s mind the risks were well worth taking.
The boy, on receiving permission, was quick to make his way down the stairs of the classroom building, and, turning to the back of the small boys’ department and hugging the wall closely, he reached the shaded avenue leading from Church Street up to Campion College. Along this avenue was a cement sidewalk bordered on one side by a line of young poplars and on the other, below a terrace of some three or four feet, by another of ancient and umbrageous box-elders. The cement walk was too conspicuous; the graded road beside it equally so. Master John Rieler, therefore, wisely chose the abandoned path below; and doubling himself up, so as to escape the attention of the Brother in the garden, ran swiftly on. Church Street, leading to the city of Prairie du Chien, was passed in safety. The worst was over. An open road, really an abandoned street, left to itself by the march of the city northward, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul track, and then, within a few yards, the bank of the inviting Mississippi.
A boat-landing, projecting quite a distance into the river, the property of the Jesuit Fathers at Campion, was awaiting the daring youth from which to dive.
He was at the further end of it in a trice, kicked off his shoes and stockings, and with the amazing rapidity of small boys when so inclined, was disrobed in almost the time it takes to tell it. With the slight delay of making a hurried but fervent sign of the cross, John took a header, rose, struck out vigorously, and having reached a distance midway between the landing and Campion Island, threw himself contentedly on his back and floated in an ecstasy of satisfaction.
“Ah!” he sighed, “how I wish I could stay right here till dinner time.”
Presently he turned over quietly, and as his ears rose above the water, he thought he heard a splash a little above him. Beating with hands and feet, he raised himself as high as he could out of the water and looked in the direction whence the sound came.
Was that a hand—two hands—was it the head of a swimmer? John was puzzled. Even as he looked, the supposed head seemed to disappear. John swam towards the spot. As he drew near—there could be no mistake that time—a human head rose to the surface and almost at once disappeared again! Frantically John swam forward. As he came close to the place where the head disappeared, a slight bubbling on the water’s surface caught his eye. Throwing himself forward with one almost super-human stroke, John reached down with his foremost hand—the right—and caught an arm. Up there came to the surface the face of a boy, lips ghastly blue, face deathly pale, corn-flower blue eyes that opened for a moment and, even as the tongue gasped out, “Help me, for God’s sake,” closed again.
Putting his hand under the body of the unresisting boy, John Rieler made for the shore. It was an easy rescue. The boy on his arm was unconscious and John Rieler was as much at home in the water as it is possible for any creature short of the amphibious to be.
On getting the boy to land, he lifted him upon the wooden platform of the pier, turned him on his back, raised him up by the feet, and satisfied that the strangers lungs were not filled with water, rolled him over face upward and caught him vigorously on both sides between the ribs.
“Stop your tickling, Jock,” came a weak voice. Eyes of blue, much bluer than the swimming suit of their owner, opened and shut again.
“Say, you’re not dead, are you?”
“Of course, I’m dead,” replied the blue-eyed one sitting up. “If I weren’t, do you think I’d be talking to you?”
“I—I—thought you were drowned.”
“Well, I’m not. How did I get here?”
“I fished you out. You were bobbing up and down there, and I just managed to get you as you went under for the last time, I suppose. How do you feel now?”
“Hungry,” said the other, arising.
“Who are you anyhow?”
“I’m Clarence Esmond. Say, I’m starving!” And Clarence took a few steps with some difficulty.
John Rieler thought quickly, dressing rapidly as he did so.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said earnestly. “You come with me till we get to Campion College. I’d like to bring you in myself; but I don’t see how I can do it without getting into trouble. Come on now; you’re cold, aren’t you?”
“Numb to the bone.”
“Here take my coat till we get to the College. There—that’ll warm you up some. Can you run?”
“I can try.”
“That’ll warm you some more.” With this John Rieler put his arm about Clarence and swept him up the shore.
Clarence was exhausted; but the strong arm of the boy held him securely and so the twain made their way at a brisk trot.
“Now, look here,” said Rieler as they reached the end of the street, and stood within a few feet of the Campion faculty residence, “you give me that coat; I’m going in by the back way. You walk straight on to where you see those steps. You go up those steps and ring the bell. The Brother will come, and you just tell him you’re hungry and you want to see the Rector. Good-bye. Don’t tell anyone you saw me. My name’s John Rieler. Now be sure and do just what I tell you and keep mum.”
“Thank you. I—I can’t talk. Good-bye.”
When the Brother-porter came to the door in response to the bell a moment later, he jumped back at sight of the apparition in the blue swimming suit.
“Ach Himmel!” he exclaimed, clasping his hands. The Brother was not an Irishman.
“Please, sir, I’m hungry and I want to see the Rector.”
“Come—this way.”
Following his startled and disturbed guide, Clarence was escorted into the parlor.
“Sit down while I go for the Rector,” and saying something that sounded like “Grosser Gott,” the Brother left Clarence shivering in a chair and surveying his new surroundings.
“Oh, Father Rector,” cried the porter as he opened the President’s door, “there’s a boy in the parlor who’s hungry and wants to see you.”
The Reverend Rector, busy with the morning’s mail, raised his head and said:
“A new pupil, I suppose.”
“I—I—think not,” answered the Brother, fidgeting upon his feet.
“Why, what are you so excited about?”
“He—he’s dressed only in a swimming suit. It’s blue.”
“Oh, he is. Well, at any rate,” said the Rector, inscrutable of face, “he’s brought his trunks along.”
“No, Father, he’s brought nothing but his swimming suit.”
“Exactly; he’s brought his trunks along. Think about it, Brother, and you’ll see I’m right.”
The good Brother has thought about it many a time since that day. He does not see it yet.
When, a few moments later, the President of Campion College stepped into the parlor, he, too, prepared though he had been, was startled beyond measure. He did not, however, manifest any sign of his feelings. Long experience in boarding schools had given him the power of preserving stoical immobility under circumstances no matter how extraordinary.
It was not, as he had expected, a boy in a bathing suit that confronted his gaze, but a creature wrapped from head to foot, Indian-like, in a table covering, predominantly red, appropriated, as was evident, from the center-table of the parlor.