University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.
THE NEXT MORNING.

The sun came up, next day, as he usually comes up
at St. Bart's, at that time of the year. First comes a
scattering of golden largess far forward on the sky;
then a crowing of all the cocks, as if they had not
begun and kept it up for three or four hours already,
to be sure to hit the time when it did come; a general
standing-round of all trees, damp and frosty from the
night; next the comfortable salutation of farmers,
smock-frocked and respectable, across the way; then
the blowing of the horrid steam-whistles; next the
cheery ringing of St. Bart's bell; then the slow, sober
sun himself.

The first use that Fatty Dover made of his morning
strength and intelligence, that next day, was to rush
out of the storm-house door, and by the hogshead, and
over the triumphant part of Towne's track of the night
before, searching all sides with his eyes, as he ran.
He went the length of the school-room, and along the
western end; and then from where he stood he surveyed
anxiously the neighborhood, and then, disappointed,
turned back.

The wash-rooms were noisy that morning, with
anecdote and laughter, all drawn from the fruitful
experience of the night before. The jokes were poor,

as most men's, and almost all boys' jokes are; but boys'
jokes, if not those of men, also, answer as good a purpose
in the world as a great many devout and unselfish
writers profess to expect or to hope from their books,
which, as their authors say, will have answered their
purpose if one pious soul shall have received comfort
or edification from them. The amount of gratification
given to at least one person by each witticism here
would have pleased those friends of mankind.

Gaston, who ventured more into the province of classic
history and invention than his neighbors, had given
Towne the nickname of “ Α̛ναδυόμενο< ” (anadyomenos),
which, as it was not generally understood, he explained
at large. “As Venus,” he said, “had risen from the
sea, so Towne had risen” —

“From the sea-a-s-k,” said Thompson Walters, trying
a pun of his own.

This proceeding necessarily took from the freshness
of Gaston's joke; but the boys, in the end, got as much
satisfaction out of it, for they called the hero of the
last evening “Venus;” and young Meadows, who, like
Gaston, in lesser degree, had pushed into mythology,
started a demand of him for apples.

The hero himself tried to show that “that water was
one of the best things for him that could be; for, if
anybody had tried to find him in it, ten to one he'd
have put his hand on the water, instead of him.”

Remsen was spoken of as having been the woman in
the white dress, or the ghost, and commended; but
Dover was quizzed by pretty nearly everybody who
knew how to quiz after any fashion. It seemed a
tender point with him, this morning, that he had not
been able to find the black dress, which Towne in his

adventures had dropped and left behind; and he was
asked “how he would feel if he should see Mr. Wilson
in that gown, making a fool of him before the whole
school.”

Russell, a Fifth Form boy, had caught, and brought
away, a “poetical” outpouring of Antony Brade. This
Russell read, with great enthusiasm, and it was received
with much appreciation by the public in the wash-room:
—

“Pooh!” said Hutchins, almost as soon as the reading
began, “you say Royalty wrote that? I'm sure he
never wrote that! I know I've heard something like
that, — something about a `town' and a `cask,' — a
Senior in college couldn't do that.”

“Blake's the fellow to tell what college fellows can
do,” said Gaston.

“Where's Blake?” asked several voices; and when
Blake appeared, with his face and hair all dripping
from a wash-basin, and blowing water from his nostrils,
Hutchins appealed to him, —

“Look here, old Ultimatum! wouldn't it take a
`Senior' to write that?”

“He hasn't heard it,” said the chorus.

Blake, however, was above any such necessity: —

“That don't make any difference,” he said. “At my
college, out there, the fellows get through with all their
literary work before they get to be Seniors. Seniors, at
Ulterior, do as they like. It's all practical work, then,

— `scientific' they call it, — they keep tally at base-ball,
and keep `time' for fellows rowin'.”

“Let's have the rest o' the poem,” said Thompson
Walters; and Russell went on reading: —

So well received was this second stanza that when
Hutchins began to object that he “knew a poem by
some great poet, — De Kalb, or De Forest, or something,”
— he was called upon by many voices, in language
more vigorous than elegant, to “shut up.”

“That isn't all of it?” said Thompson Walters.

“Oh, `lame and impotent conclusion'!” said Gaston,
quoting, no doubt, from some of his great books.

Russell was not inclined to forsake the rhyme, or
hear it disparaged: —

“You'd better try it yourself, Gaston,” he said.

“And do it in Latin,” said Walters.

“I can,” said Gaston, “if I try,” and began to
think: —

He had gone pretty glibly over two lines, — as far
as most rhymesters go well, — and the flow of verse
was obstructed.

“And there you grow rather misty,” said Walters.

“Now give it me, please, Russell,” said the author of
the English verse, who stood at the wash-room door,
blushing; and, receiving it, blushing he disappeared.

In the younger wash-room a crowd of lesser fellows

surrounded him and teased him for a sight, for the
fame of it had already reached them; but he tore it
into a hundred pieces, and flinging them into Leavitt's
face escaped again.

At this point the veritable Towne himself appeared,
and a sudden whim seized several boys, all at once, to
shoulder him, and give him a triumph. There was
little time, but that only made them go about it the
more quickly; and for the first thing had him up with
his head pretty hardly thrust against the ceiling. Gaston
called out from a distance, —

“`Sublimo vertice sidera feriam.' Fellows! Fellows!
you've made him see stars!” which could hardly give
Towne any comfort.

The rest, full of their work, said that “Towne had
taken cold, in saving himself from drowning;” and
were just going to toss him in a blanket to cure him,
when suddenly the two-minute bell (which they might
have expected) struck. Down tumbled Towne, as
many a hero before has tumbled from a triumph, and
was left sprawling, to gather himself up, and go back,
as he was, to every-day life. The others scampered
up stairs or down, according as they were, or were not,
nearly enough dressed.

Many were the delinquencies, besides Towne's, at
roll-call that morning, and many the losses of breakfast;
but among those who were in their places at that
meal were Dover and Wilkins, both of whom had been
summoned to Mr. Bruce's room after breakfast. Dover
had begun to eat and drink with his usual appetite,
which was one of the best; but a certain piece of intelligence
which gave, as it passed about, a pleasurable
excitement to his neighbors, disturbed Dover to such an

extent that he accomplished far less than he was in the
habit of doing; and when the tables were dismissed, he
rushed hatless and breathless out of doors, and then —
with a question at random, “Where is it?” — forward,
toward a most conspicuous object which had already
attracted the attention of passers-by on the road.

This object was a black dress, hung up and spread
out, to full length and width, on one of the pear-trees,
and surmounted by a woman's black hat. At first a
sort of astonishment seemed to open his eyes and to
slow his steps. He may have wondered, perhaps, how
it got there; he may have been questioning how it
could be got down; but, with his eyes wide open and
his lips apart, he made steadily for it, as if nothing else
existed.

Already boys began to pelt this tempting object with
whatever they could find; and then (alas for Dover!)
a large boy (Phil Lamson) set himself, as large boys
sometimes will, directly in the way, and faced him off
from whatever way of escape he tried. The shower
of missiles, for some reason, slackened and then suddenly
ceased; and then Dover tried as hard as he could,
and entreated his stopper to let him go. It was all in
vain.

Dover saw Brade under that tree; and with him Remsen,
longer-armed than he.

He begged and besought to be let alone (“There's
Brade and Remsen now!” said he), but could not get
away.

The cause of the stoppage in the flight of stones and
sticks was soon evident. “Dover!” said a voice behind
him, as exactly measured as the fling of a lasso,
“I thought I told you to come to me after breakfast;”

and Mr. Bruce appeared, with Mr. Cornell, walking
leisurely.

“So you did, sir; and I'm coming, sir; but” — answered
the boy, looking round toward the tree.

“If you don't want to make a butt of yourself,
Fatty,” said Phil Lamson, aside, “clear out and thank
me.”

On the South Road, close by the school-grounds, a
carriage had stopped in the way, within near sight of
the tree with the black dress.

“Eldridge!” said a lady's voice, of that courageous
sort that is not afraid to go across any open space, and
encounter any ears (as in this case, Mr. Bruce's and
Mr. Cornell's), “how much time have we got? I don't
want to miss that train. There! that's an effigy! It's
something those boys have been getting up. It's Science
or Learning, or something. (I wonder Mr. Bruce don't
see us.)”

The proper name she pronounced with great distinctness.

“Ma!” said Miss Minette Wadham, who was with
her, “don't you see what that is?”

“To be sure I do!” said the mother. “I understand
it. Boys” —

Eldridge ventured an assertion that “it looked to
him amazin' like one o' Miss Wadham's dresses.”

“What? No!” exclaimed the lady, in excess of
amazement. “What? That ain't the dress I lent” —

While the occupants of the carriage gazed at this
extraordinary exhibition, Antony and his taller companion
were very busy at the tree, but without climbing
into it.

“Brade!” said Mr. Bruce, calling from a little distance.

Just as he spoke, — almost at the very word, — a
sudden flame began to creep, and then to climb, and
then to leap up and over the dress, which was of some
flimsy cotton fabric; and in a few moments the tree
showed nothing on its leafless limbs but rags of glowing
red, and then of black tinder. There was no wind,
and the boys had had to run away from the falling
shreds of flame which for an instant came down
thickly. The two Tutors continued their leisurely
walk to the scene.

While this was going on, Mrs. Wadham worked
about in her seat, and seemed on the point of speaking,
and of course looked very red. It could not be
but that she should feel her dignity involved, at this
public destruction of a garment formally borrowed of
her; and her daughter, we may suppose, could not
help sympathizing, as daughters do. Miss Minette,
however, had a smile on her face; and, turning herself
away from the scene of the catastrophe, looked steadfastly
in the opposite direction.

“It was loaned,” said Mrs. Wadham, beginning the
process of recovering her self-assurance, “for the purposes
of investigation, — of an investigation. Well,”
she continued, a little flurried, but showing her native
strength, “all are to perish in the using. It ain't
showing much ceremony; but we'll sacrifice ceremony
on the altar of investigation! — Yes, on the altar
of investigation! — Drive on, Eldridge! Do your
pootiest!”

“There's the Caput!” was cried; and there, sure
enough, — not on the ground, but at his study window,
looking out, — he stood.

Most of the boys were already hurrying away, to

make the utmost of their short time between breakfast
and prayers. Foot-ball was already in active play, and
foot-ball was the only thing in the world, now, to every
boy but Dover, Brade, and Remsen, and such others as
might have to do with the authorities, for the activities
of last night.

“I set it on fire, sir,” said Brade to Mr. Bruce.

“And I gave him the match, — I did, indeed, sir,” said
Remsen, seeing the Tutor smile.

The scene at the tree over, the Tutors sought the
Rector.

They felt clear that the thing had been a masquerade,
to look like Mrs. Ryan (“the lady that came to
church with her daughter,” as Mr. Bruce explained),
“because the boys thought she was a watch over
Brade.”

“And Brade has set it on fire, I suppose,” said the
Rector, “and no wonder.”

Mr. Bruce added another piece of information, —
that “he believed the dress was one of Mrs. Wadham's.”

“Well, certainly, if she lent it, that's her look-out,”
said the Rector. “We must punish playing with fire;
but I'll take off a good deal for the provocation. I'm
sorry to have Brade's score lose by another boy's
fault. Towne may learn wisdom some of these days.”

Though the few minutes before Prayers, and the
Recess in the forenoon together, were not enough for
the examination of the young fellows engaged in the
fun of last night, it was all done with before dinner,
in time to go on the school-room slate that afternoon.
The result was that Towne came out, poor fellow, with
a special infliction of lines and bounds, as the chief

offender; and the rest of the boys in that dormitory
were treated pretty evenly with lines proportioned to
their technical age or standing in the School, in order
of Forms.

The fire was not forgotten, but handled lightly this
time, with the reason given.

With this all were pretty well satisfied, except poor
Towne, who muttered that “when a fellow got wet
through and shivering, the way he'd been, they ought
to have compassion on him, and not punish him hard,
like that.”