Ann Arbor Tales Part 12

It was the one's lack, or expressed lack, of confidence in the other, that evenly balanced the other's really splendid confidence in himself.

When first Nibs had expressed his intention of posting a challenge to Billy Shaw on the Bulletin Board in the Main Hall, Jimmy had sniffed and sneered derisively.

"What's the use making a Jack of yourself?" he asked.

"Who's going to?" Nibs replied, tartly.

"You are. He'll beat you by a rod," was the cool retort.

"Don't you believe it."

"Well, I do."

"You needn't."

"All right; we'll see."

And Jimmy did see, and it was a glorious sight--a splendid picture of a righteous triumph in which the best man won; to revel in the joy of victory a s.p.a.ce, and then to meet, and join in combat, with a foeman vastly worthier of his steel. For, in spite of Jimmy's discouragement--which could not have been that, really, and perhaps was not even meant for that--Nibs posted the challenge.

It was written in huge letters, that all who ran might read, and was made doubly conspicuous, by its poster style, among the score or more announcements of cla.s.s-meetings, conferences, and graduate-events that fluttered with it on the Board.

Nibs hung up the challenge one evening while the janitor's back was turned. He carried it into the corridor folded beneath his coat.

Satisfied that they were not observed, he drew it out and spread it upon the long, marble-topped radiator, and invited the criticism of Jimmy, the which Jimmy was not loth to utter.

"Big as a barn, eh?" he said, sniffing.

"But I want him surely to see it," the author of the broadside replied, tilting his head and viewing his work admiringly in the dim light of the slim chandelier above.

"Well, I'm still thinking you're a fool,--a blamed big fool."

"Don't you think he'll accept?" Nibs asked eagerly, pa.s.sing lightly over Jimmy's expression of what appeared at least superficially to be a definite opinion.

"Of course he will, that's just it; he'll see it and he'll accept it, and he'll beat the life out of you," was the discouraging rejoinder.

"Hurry, hang it up," he added, "I don't want to wait here all night."

And Jimmy slouched away in the direction of the great door.

So the doc.u.ment challenging Billy Shaw to run against Nibs Morey in State Street, on the evening of October nineteenth, at seven o'clock, was forthwith tacked upon the Board to the complete concealment of one bill announcing the publication of the Palladium, and another displayed to notify the scornful that the Dramatic Club would--at an early date--repeat its marvelously successful and delicately artistic performance of "Among the Breakers."

"There! I guess he'll take notice, now!" exclaimed the joyous Nibs, stepping back from the board, and gazing at the poster proudly.

"And so will all the University," replied Jimmy, not, however, without a secret pride in the valor of his friend, after all; for Billy Shaw, the prospective opponent, had brought with him to Ann Arbor a country record for swift running that was not to be considered lightly, even by a sprinter of the attainments of Nibs Morey.

All efforts to match the two had thus far failed. It was Nibs' zeal, purely, though tempered, of course, by his fine conceit, that prompted the posting of the challenge now--a zeal to prove--perhaps to Jimmy, more than to the others--his wisdom, and the justification of his own abundant confidence. And the challenge thus publicly offered achieved the end that Nibs had hoped it might.

There is record in undergraduate history of the excitement that prevailed upon the campus the day after its publication. No one seemed to doubt Billy Shaw's acceptance of it. He would have to run now, or ever after hold his peace,--they said--an alternative not to the relish of a youth of his temperament. And he did accept the challenge, and he did run; and bets were made, and money was won and lost, all to the undying credit of Alma Mater, who looked on, smiling, proud of her sons in their glorious youth, their honor and their prowess.

II

For a week, now, the Gown had been speculating; placing its bets with the Town eagerly, enthusiastically, and many of those bets--sad to relate--were on the wrong side of the book, so far as Nibs Morey was concerned. When Jimmy, learning the way of the wind, informed his friend of the odds against him, with all the coldness of a perfect enmity, Nibs experienced his first twinge of uneasiness. For the Gown, loyal to its foreign upholder, Billy--in the excess of its patriotism and without regard to possible consequences such as unpaid laundry bills, and staved-off tailor accounts--had wagered against poor Nibs, who, though he was _of_ the Gown, cannot be said to have been _with_ it. He suffered the misfortune of having been born and reared within a scant stone's throw of the main building, the which, it may be noted in pa.s.sing, he had, for half a dozen years, held as a grudge against his parents, to the perplexity of his sister Wilma, who found only a keen enjoyment in her college home and in the shifting aspects of the college life around her.

The event that Nibs longed for was only a week away, and his friend seemed to take rare delight in deriding the hardihood that had prompted the posting of the challenge.

"Well," Nibs said, at last, breaking his long legs at the knee, and rising from the table, laboriously, "maybe he will beat me,--but he won't do it hands down--he won't do it in a walk, anyway."

"Oh, I don't know," was the cool retort of Jimmy, and stepping down into the street he added, "you can't always tell."

Nibs had not once chided his friend for his seeming lack of confidence; he bore it simply, and gave no sign that it produced an effect, unless an occasional weak smile, as when the other became too atrociously insulting, might be taken for such a sign. For there were things that even Jimmy had no knowledge of. He did not dream for instance that, on many a night after Nibs had, with a plea of study, begged off from going "down town," he had dressed himself in a thin undershirt, loose, full breeches and spiked shoes, and wrapped in a bath-robe and crouching in the shadow, had sought the solemn, ghostly cemetery, there to run among the white stones, glistening in the pale light, to his full heart's content. Later, on those same nights, tired out, he had sneaked back to his room un.o.bserved in the silent streets. No, Jimmy did not know of this strenuous course of Nibs' training. He knew his legs were wiry, elastic, to be sure; but _how_ wiry, _how_ elastic, he did not dream. And though deride him he did, in his cheerful confidence and self-a.s.surance, when, on the Monday following their meeting in Nat's low-ceiled bar-room, a particularly venturesome soph.o.m.ore laid him a wager of five to three on Billy, Jimmy took the shorter end of the bet with amazing alacrity.

During the week immediately preceding the day for which the race was set, interest in the event increased with the pa.s.sage of the hours.

Posey's billiard-room on Main Street became the betting-green, where Town met Gown, and Gown flung its challenges into the teeth of Town, which Town at first snarled at, but eventually bit into and clung to tenaciously.

Once, during the tempestuous seven days, Nibs encountered Billy face to face. The latter was leaving the president's office; Nibs was approaching the door.

As their eyes met, a spark flashed between them, and their faces became hard and set. There were several loiterers in the corridor who witnessed the meeting, and one of these, "Pinkey" Bush--a lawyer in Chicago now,--never tires of recalling the incident. You have but to mention it to him to hear him say, with a brilliant twinkle in his eye:

"Gad! It was great! Simply great! There they stood, face to face; Nibsey, long, thin as a lath, glaring down at Billy, who was shorter, but just as gaunt. Their eyes gleamed like new shoe b.u.t.tons, and their hands were clenched tight at their sides. A second? It seemed an age!

They didn't speak; just drilled little wells in each other's eyes with their own--and it was over. The door of the president's office closed upon Nibsey; the big west door rattled shut after Billy. It was like a dissolving view--great, while it lasted, but soon ended. I thought every instant--and held my breath--that one of 'em would shoot out his fist and land it on the other's jaw. No reason, of course; but it wouldn't have surprised any of us who saw the meeting, if one or the other had."

Two days before the race, the entire student body became divided in its sympathy; wordy quarrels were hourly occurrences on the campus; nor were bodily a.s.saults infrequent.

The next day the excitement was as tense as the air before a cyclone. A million pounds of young animal spirits, the highest explosive known to science, were encased in delicate human bottles, needing but a jar to touch them off.

At six o'clock, men pa.s.sing in the streets gazed mad-eyed at one another, their jaws set square, their lips drawn tight across their teeth.

III

Friday came, eventually, as Fridays have a way of doing, and it came like a breath from the Northland where ice and snow and cold are. The air set one's teeth on edge and one's flesh a-tingling, but there was no frost. That was destined to come a week later, and, over night, convert the summer into the pageant of autumn, the scarlet king at its head, his crimson, gold and purple banners flaunting gaily.

When Nibs appeared on the campus in the morning, he was besieged by a horde of the faithful, who wanted to know if the weather was "going to make any difference."

"You bet it won't; not to me," he replied, with a sort of vocal swagger, and with a marked enunciatory underlining of the p.r.o.noun.

"You don't mean to say you're going to prance up and down State Street in those d.i.n.ky flapping white pants of yours, bare-legged, in such weather as this, do you?" inquired Jimmy, with a most perceptible sneer in his voice.

"Yes, I am. I shan't think of the cold," was the brave reply.

"Rah! Rah! Rah! Nibsey!" yelled a little pug-nosed freshman on the edge of the crowd, and the cry was taken up l.u.s.tily.

"Oh, shut up, you fellows," said Nibs, blushing; "leave your yelling till after the race, can't you?" But he sensed an expansion of his chest, just the same, an expansion that, for the moment, made his waistcoat feel uncomfortably tight.

Meanwhile, Billy Shaw was being besieged in precisely the same manner at another point on the campus. With considerable less than Nibs'

braggadocio he informed his followers and backers that so far at least as he was concerned, there would be no postponement of the race. And he, too, was cheered forthwith.

Thurston Hubert, a Law, large with importance,--he had been chosen to fire the pistol for the start--was in the little crowd that surged around Billy. He gave it as his opinion that the weather was "great for a running event--simply great." But by six o'clock the mischievous mercury had dropped another five degrees.

They were a m.u.f.fled, overcoated lot of young men, who, an hour later, began to gather in State Street.