CHAPTER XXIX.
ON NEUTRAL GROUND.
The sensational climax of Merriwell’s dinner was the talk of the college for many days, and it seemed now that Frank’s enemies must admit that they had met their Waterloo.
Roland Packard was bitter in his resentment toward Defarge for having lured him into a plot that had been so completely turned against him.
Hawkins, deeply humiliated by his defeat and the generous manner in which Frank had treated him, had disappeared promptly from New Haven, leaving the two chief conspirators to bear the burden of their signal failure.
But Frank was not vindictive, and, satisfied with the result as it had worked out, he discouraged any further reference to the matter among his friends. Merriwell was ever generous to a defeated enemy, and it was particularly gratifying to him to think that, of the long list of men who had arrayed themselves against him, because of a spirit of jealousy, so few now remained his foes. It was with this warm feeling in his heart that he looked now with a smile of pleasure at the gathering of his friends in his room.
Frank Merriwell’s room was the neutral ground on which—or in which—all classes and conditions of Yale men met. The air of that room, perhaps one of the finest rooms in splendid Vanderbilt, was thoroughly democratic. There the man with money, or with ancestry, cut no better figure than any other man, unless he had done something. To be a notable in Merriwell’s room, the student must have accomplished something worthy of his efforts. Of course, the “good fellow” was not barred, but he could not hope to be a central figure merely because he was a good fellow.
The Merriwell spirit was “a do-something spirit,” and it was strangely infectious, for all who associated with him regularly soon acquired the habit of doing things. Even big, lazy Browning awoke at times and astonished everybody by the accomplishment of some marvel. Hodge was a perfect engine of energy, although at times he became liable to break loose and run wild, like an untamed mustang. Jack Ready, the eccentric sophomore, was as restless and full of ginger as a young colt, or a half-grown kitten.
Berlin Carson, the Westerner, possessed all the breadth and sweep of the cattle-range and the plains, and he was fast making himself notable since coming “under Merry’s wing.” Hock Mason, the man from South Carolina, had once perverted his energy and been reckoned a bully, but after the days of his reformation he used his energy in the right direction, and accomplished things far more worthy than beating an enemy.
Joe Gamp, right down from New Hampshire, long, lank, awkward, hesitating in speech, had shown that he had sterling qualities and could fill an emergency on the ball-field or in the classroom. Greg Carker, the socialistic young millionaire, whose head continually buzzed with schemes for the elevation of the masses and the leveling of the aristocracy, could forget his schemes at times, could cease to rant about “the coming earthquake,” and could do things worthy of a young twentieth century Yale man.
Jim Hooker, who had been rescued from ostracism by Merriwell, and given a chance to hold his head up before all men, showed that he possessed manly qualities and would not hesitate in the face of necessity. Starbright, the young freshman giant and wonder, had been brought to the fore as Merriwell’s protégé, and no man could say he had not proved himself worthy.