CHAPTER XVII
LEAVE-TAKING
The short Easter vacation, during which Tony had visited Jimmie, had come and gone, and our friends were settled down again into the routine of the spring term. For the time being, much to the discomfort of all concerned, the old crowd was broken up. Tony and Kit did not even speak to each other, so that Jimmie had a hard time keeping on friendly terms with them both.
The winter had long since broken completely. Long lazy days were come again when the sea glistened like glass under shining skies and the mounting sun was rapidly warming the earth into green good humor. The fields were dotted in the afternoons with a dozen developing baseball teams composed of white clad, red-capped boys. Boats, too, heavily manned by members of the rival school clubs, sped out of the little harbor tucked under Strathsey Neck, and, plied by their happy crews, went scudding on half-holidays up the River or boldly out past Deigr Light into the open ocean. It was a happy term at Deal: boys and masters expanded in the genial sunshine, and for the most part the stress of the long winter term problems and discipline was wholly relaxed. Lawrence and Deering threw themselves into baseball, worked fairly faithfully at their books, and thus kept themselves happy and contented. Kit Wilson was coaching one of the younger teams on the north field, so that they did not come in contact with him very frequently. Jimmie would go to his rooms often in the evening, but he came 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 the fear of exposure, for a long time abandoned his vandalism entirely. His conscience was troubled by the fact that he had lied to Tony, but less perhaps than he would have been disturbed if Tony knew the truth. There was on both his and Tony’s part a certain sense of strain in their friendly relations, which Tony, however, tried to ignore. He believed of course that Finch had told him the truth about the episode in Wilson’s room and that Wilson had simply been mistaken; but after Kit’s open break with him, he saw no way to set things right.
This troubled him a great deal and cast a gloom over much of that bright spring term that otherwise might have been so happy. Each boy felt the loss of the other’s friendship keenly, but both were impulsive, both felt themselves right, both had been stung to the quick by the other’s attitude. Time, as often happens, widened the breach.
One day in Fifth English they were reading As You Like It, and it fell 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,