John Marvel, Assistant Part 3

"You swear it?"

But I hurried out of the door and slammed it behind me.

I turned down the walk that led across the campus to the point whither Miss Poole was directing her steps, and I took a gait that I judged should meet her at the intersection of the walks. I was doing some hard thinking, for I knew the window behind me was crowded with derisive faces.

As I approached her, I cut my eye at her, and a glance nearly overthrew my resolution. She was, indeed, a charming picture as she advanced, though I caught little more than a general impression of a slim, straight, statuesque figure, a pink face, surmounted by a profusion of light hair, under a big hat with white feathers, and a pair of bluish eyes. I glanced away, but not before she had caught my eye. Just then a whistle sounded behind me, and my nerve returned. I suddenly quickened my pace, and held out my hand.

"Why, how do you do?" I exclaimed with well-feigned surprise and pleasure, plumping myself directly in front of her. She paused; looked at me, hesitated, and then drew back slightly.

"I think--, I--. You have made a mistake, I think."

"Why, do you not remember Henry Glave? Is this not Miss Belle Henderson?" I asked in a mystified way.

"No, I am not Miss Henderson."

"Oh! I beg your pardon--I thought--" I began. Then, as I moved back a little, I added, "Then you must be Miss Lilian Poole; for there cannot be more than two like you on earth. I beg your pardon."

I backed away.

"I am," she said. Her mounting color showed that she was at least not angry, and she gave proof of it.

"Can you tell me? Is not that the way to Dr. Davis's house?"

"Yes--I will show you which it is." My manner had become most respectful.

"Oh! Don't trouble yourself, I beg you."

"It is not the least trouble," I said sincerely, and it was the only truth I had told. I walked back a few steps, hat in hand, pointing eagerly to the house. And as I left, I said, "I hope you will pardon my stupid mistake."

"Oh! I do not think it stupid. She is a beauty."

"_I_ think so." I bowed low. I saw the color rise again as I turned away, much pleased with myself, and yet a good deal ashamed, too.

When I returned to "the lair," as we termed Sam Pleasants's room, the boys seized me. They were like howling dervishes. But I had grown serious. I was very much ashamed of myself. And I did the only decent thing I could--I lied, or as good as lied.

"I will give the supper if you will stop this yelling. Do you suppose I would make a bet about a girl I did not know?"

This took the spirit out of the thing, and only one of them knew the truth. Marvel, who was present, looked at me seriously, and that night said to me half sadly,

"You ought not to have done that."

"What? I know it. It was an ungentlemanly thing."

"I do not mean that. You ought not to have told a story afterward."

How he knew it I never knew.

But I had gotten caught in my own mesh. I had walked into the little parlor without any invitation, and I was soon hopelessly entangled in the web at which I had hitherto scoffed. I fell violently in love.

I soon overcame the little difficulty that stood in my way. And, indeed, I think Miss Lilian Poole rather helped me out about this. I did not allow gra.s.s to grow under my feet, or any impression I had made to become effaced. I quickly became acquainted with my Diana-like young lady; that is, to speak more exactly, I got myself presented to her, for my complete acquaintance with her was of later date, when I had spent all the little patrimony I had. I saw immediately that she knew the story of the wager, though she did not at that time refer to it, and so far as I could tell, she did not resent it. She, at least, gave no sign of it. I asked her to allow me to escort her to a German, but she had an engagement.

"Who is it?" I inquired rather enviously.

She had a curious expression in her eyes--which, by the way, were a cool blue or gray, I never could be sure which, and at times looked rather like steel.

She hesitated a moment and her little mouth drew in somewhat closely.

"Mr. Peck." Her voice was a singular instrument. It had so great a compa.s.s and possessed some notes that affected me strangely; but it also could be without the least expression. So it was now when she said, "Mr. Peck," but she colored slightly, as I burst out laughing.

"Peck! Pecksniff? Did you ever see him dance? I should as soon have thought of your dancing with a clothes-horse."

She appeared somewhat troubled.

"Does he dance so badly as that? He told me he danced."

"So he does--like this." I gave an imitation of Peck's gyrations, in which I was so earnest that I knocked over a table and broke a fine lamp, to my great consternation.

"Well, you are realistic," observed Miss Poole, calmly, who struck me as not so much concerned at my misfortune as I might have expected. When, however, she saw how really troubled I was, she was more sympathetic.

"Perhaps, if we go out, they will not know who did it," she observed.

"Well, no, I could not do that," I said, thinking of Peck, and then as her expression did not change, I fired a shot that I meant to tell.

"Peck would do that sort of thing. _I_ shall tell them."

To this she made no reply. She only looked inscrutably pretty. But it often came back to me afterward how calmly and quite as a matter of course she suggested my concealing the accident, and I wondered if she thought I was a liar.

She had a countenance that I once thought one of the most beautiful in the world; but which changed rarely. Its only variations were from an infantile beauty to a statuesque firmness.

Yet that girl, with her rather set expression and infantile face, her wide open, round eyes and pink prettiness, was as deep as a well, and an artesian well at that.

I soon distanced all rivals. Peck was quickly disposed of; though, with his nagging persistence, he still held on. This bored me exceedingly and her too, if I could judge by her ridicule of him and her sarcasm which he somehow appeared too stupid to see. He succ.u.mbed, however, to my mimicry of his dancing; for I was a good mimic, and Peck, in a very high collar and with very short trousers on his dumpy legs, was really a fair mark. Miss Poole was by no means indifferent to public opinion, and a shaft of satire could penetrate her mail of complacency. So when she returned later to the cla.s.sic shades of the university, as she did a number of times for Germans and other social functions, I made a good deal of hay. A phrase of Peck's, apropos of this, stuck in my memory.

Some one--it was, I think, Leo Wolffert--said that I appeared to be making hay, and Peck said, "Yes, I would be eating it some day." I often wondered afterward how he stumbled on the witticism.

Those visits of my tall young dulcinea cost me dear in the sequel. While the other fellows were boning I was lounging in the drawing-room chattering nonsense or in the shade of the big trees in some secluded nook, writing her very warm poems of the character which Horace says is hated both of G.o.ds and men. Several of these poems were published in the college magazine. The constant allusions to her physical charms caused Peck to say that I evidently considered Miss Poole to be "composed wholly of eyes and hair." His observation that a man was a fool to write silly verses to a girl he loved, because it gave her a wrong idea of her charms, I, at the time, set down to sheer envy, for Peck could not turn a rhyme; but since I have discovered that for a practical person like Peck, it has a foundation, of truth.

V

THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE

Meantime, my studies--if any part of my desultory occupation could be so termed--suffered undeniably. My appearance at the cla.s.sroom door with a cigarette, which I flung away just in time not to carry it into the room, together with my chronic excuse of being "unprepared," moved the driest of my professors to the witticism that I "divided my time between a smoke and a flame." It was only as the finals drew near that I began to appreciate that I would have the least trouble in "making my tickets," as the phrase went. Sam Pleasants, Leo Wolffert and my other friends had begun to be anxious for me for some time before--and both Wolffert and John Marvel had come to me and suggested my working, at least, a little: Wolffert with delicacy and warmth; John Marvel with that awkward bluntness with which he always went at anything. I felt perfectly easy in my mind then and met their entreaties scornfully.

"Why, I did well enough at the Intermediates," I said.

"Yes, but," said John Marvel, "Delilah was not here then----"