Suddenly he realized the whole situation, realized much more than any one else did at that strenuous moment, for he remembered the red-clothed arm that was responsible for the catastrophe of his losing the ball, and he gave a long look full into Chapin’s face, but held his tongue. With a sudden overwhelming bitterness he realized that Chapin had had his revenge.
As soon as the cheer was over he ran across the field toward the Gymnasium, passing Jack Stenton on the way, who gave him a glance of unmitigated disgust. “Couldn’t you have kept from fumbling for one second when the game was in your hands?” he hissed at him, forgetting himself in his bitter disappointment. Tony bent his head and ran on—not back to the lockers, but to his own room in Standerland, where he locked himself in. He refused to open even to Jimmie Lawrence, who came knocking there presently, loyal despite his grief, anxious only to commiserate his friend, whom he knew was suffering more keenly than any of the rest of them.
CHAPTER VI
AFTERMATH
The outcome of the game for several days cast a deep gloom over the school. No one apparently had seen Chapin’s dastardly play, so that the cause of the defeat was very generally ascribed to Tony’s fumbling. The Boxford boys had driven off in great glee, Deal joining good-spiritedly in their cheers; but the bells remained silent; the bon-fires were not lighted, and the school settled down to a doleful Saturday night. Little groups of boys gathered here and there after supper, and discussed the incidents of the day. Sandy Maclaren and Stenton were universally blamed for having risked the experiment of playing a green boy in a big game, but with boys’ native generosity they showed no animosity toward Deering. He had lost the game—the consciousness of that, they realized, was bitter enough punishment for him. Even his own form mates thought it natural that he should prefer to keep to himself that evening, and showed little sympathy for Jimmie Lawrence’s anxiety on his behalf. Jimmie had tried again and again to get into Tony’s room, but could get no response to his repeated knockings.
Had he known all that was going on in Tony’s mind and heart, he would have understood. For shut in his bedroom, flat upon his face on the bed, Deering was struggling with the keenest temptation he had ever faced. He realized acutely the opprobrium, the unjust opprobrium, that he would meet with, perhaps not crediting his schoolmates for as much generosity as they had; and though he would not have feared to face the boys had the fault been his own, he could not trust himself yet to meet them, see their disappointment in him, receive their tolerant sympathy, when he knew that a word from him might free himself from ignominy and cast the blame where it belonged. And as he lay there, great waves of hate for Chapin swept over him. He clenched his fists and drove them into the pillows, longing that his fingers were about Chapin’s throat and that he might choke out of him a confession of his dastardly betrayal. To his overwrought mind his future in the school looked dark and unattractive. The two months that he had spent there had been so bright and happy; he had made such warm friends and won for himself, it seemed, such a promising place in the regard of the school; and now, he felt, all must change, and his fool’s paradise go tumbling down. To have been given his chance, and failed through the willful meanness of another, and failing, to have cost his school the victory! For a moment he felt that he would pack his trunk, go down and tell Stenton the truth, and then take the first train out of Monday Port and leave the school to settle the wrangle how it would.
And then he remembered his grandfather’s parting words, as the old general had stood in the portico of the white-pillar’d house on the far-away bayou, “Never repay a meanness by a meanness, my boy; and you will make a good sort of Christian.” And now, would not telling, truth though it were, be repaying a meanness by a meanness? Yes; but with the acknowledgment, wrung from his conscience, he burst into tears, tears of helpless disappointment and chagrin. Telling on another, especially in his own defense, Tony had always instinctively felt the most exquisite form of meanness.
After a time he slipped from the bed, and fell on his knees by the bedside, obeying an unconscious need, in response to the suggestion of an unbroken habit of putting his boyish trust in an unseen power that knew and understood. “Oh, God,” he cried, “don’t let me be mean.” And after a time, though as a matter of fact he prayed very little more while he knelt there, he rose up, removed his soiled football clothes, washed and dressed, and slipped out quietly upon the campus. He avoided meeting the wandering boys, took himself to the beach, and with wind whistling and waves roaring in his ears, in tune with his mood, he walked the four miles out to the extreme point of Strathsey Neck. It was a grim walk, but not an unhappy one, for he had won his battle and had definitely made up his mind to be silent about the game as he had been silent about the hazing.