CHAPTER III.A SHOCK FOR BART.
Bart Hodge sat alone in his room. The curtains were drawn at the windows and a lighted student’s lamp was on the table, over which books and papers were scattered. In Bart’s hand he held the photograph of a pretty, sweet-faced girl, at which he was gazing with earnest intentness, the light in his dark eyes being one of unspeakable admiration.
It was the picture of Elsie Bellwood. Bart had been trying to study, but his mind would revert to Elsie, try as he might to fix it on other matters, till at last he gave up, brought out her picture and sat there musing over it.
His love for her had seemed to take possession of him full blown in a moment, but cooler afterthought had revealed to him that he had always admired her intensely since that wild night when he had aided Frank to save her from the wreck on Tiger Tooth Ledge, near Fardale.
He had first seen her that night as she was lashed to the mast of the doomed vessel which had struck upon the terrible ledge. Led by Merriwell, the cadets had succeeded in manning a boat and pulling off to the vessel. On reaching the dripping deck Bart had seen Elsie held fast to the mast by ropes, but in the gloomhe was unable to discern if she were young or old. Her voice, however, as she appealed to the lads for aid when her father was assaulted by one of the sailors had sounded musical and sweet.
The music of that voice had stirred silent chords within Bart’s heart many times since that wild night. But he was loyal to Merry, his best friend, and it had seemed that Elsie and Frank cared for each other, so, with Spartanlike heroism, he had resolutely compelled himself to think not at all of her.
Thus he had lived with the germ of love in his heart, refusing to permit it to sprout and grow. For a long time he had fancied himself a “woman-hater,” but it was all because other girls made him think of Elsie—made him think of her as a thousand times more winsome, pretty, and attractive. That he wished to forget, so he avoided girls in general.
But it is not natural for a strong, manly youth to shun womanly and attractive girls, and Hodge began to succumb at last. He could not hold himself aloof from them, try as he might. He was naturally attracted by them and enjoyed their society far more than he would confess to himself.
And the time came when, like other young men, he fancied he cared for one of them. The first was Stella Stanley, an actress several years older than Hodge; but Stella had told him it was not true love and that he would get over it.
At first he had taken this rather hard, but he cameat last to recognize her wisdom and thank her for her plain speech.
Then there was another, Grace Vernon, who fascinated him for a time.
With Elsie it was different. Having once discovered how much he cared for her, he was unable to brush aside the knowledge, which remained with him constantly, no matter what he did or where he was.
The knowledge that his love for her might be hopeless simply made it all the more intense, for it was not Bart’s nature to relinquish anything on which he had once fairly set his heart.
But Merriwell stood as a barrier between them, and, worse than everything else, Merriwell was his friend.
No wonder Hodge spent sleepless nights! No wonder he spent wretched days! No wonder he lost flesh and became more and more irritable till it became dangerous to cross him in anything!
Still, in his loyal heart he was true to Frank Merriwell, whom he well knew had been his best friend and benefactor in a thousand ways when almost any other fellow would have been a mortal foe.
As of old, Hodge would have yielded up his life for Frank, but his love for Elsie was something stronger and more intense than his love for life, and he could not put that aside. As of old, he had been ready to defend Frank against enemies and traducers; but the sight of Frank’s happy face filled him with gloomy forebodings and intense misery.
Why had Merry looked so happy? Why had he remained away from Yale so long?
Bart could not help being suspicious of that happiness. He could not help wondering if it came through an understanding between Frank and Elsie. And that had been brought about while Merry was away from college!
If this was true, Bart felt that Elsie was lost to him, and the ambition had gone out of his life forever. Therefore he sat alone in his room and gazed longingly, earnestly, and almost hopelessly, at her pictured face. Her open eyes seemed to smile back at him reassuringly, but they did not lift the gloom from his heart. Her lips—--
Impulsively, he lifted the picture and kissed it.
The door opened quietly and some one stepped into the room.
“Hello, Bart, old man!” cried a hearty, familiar voice. “What are you doing there?”
Hodge sprang up, his face flaming, and tried to hide the picture behind him.
Frank closed the door and advanced into the room.
Hodge stood beside the table, trembling from head to feet. His eyes were fastened on Merry and he was speechless.
“I thought you’d come round to see me, Bart,” said Frank. “You did not, so I came to see you, though I’m missing time that I ought to spend in grinding. Oh, I’ll be a greasy grind for a while now till I get onEasy Street again. It will take lots of stiff work for me to catch up, but I believe I can do it.”
Still Bart stood there without speaking, looking straight at Frank.
“What’s the matter?” Merry asked, in perplexity. “Why do you stare at me that way? Why, hang it! you don’t seem at all pleased to see me.”
He was surprised and hurt by Bart’s singular manner.
Hodge opened his lips to say something, but the words did not seem to come freely, and he stuck.
Merry came close and placed his hands on Bart’s shoulders, looking deep into the dark eyes of his comrade.
“Tell me why you meet me like this, old man!” he urged. “Have I done anything to cause it?”
“No.”
“Then why——”
“It’s nothing, Merriwell—nothing!” huskily muttered Bart. “Take a chair. I’ve been thinking, and I expect I’m in a deuced unsociable mood, but I’ll try to be decent.”
Frank did not sit down immediately on the invitation. Instead, he looked at Bart as if trying to read his very thoughts.
“You’re thin,” he said. “You have lost flesh and there are dark circles round your eyes. Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Something is the matter with you, and I fancy I know what it is.”
“Perhaps so.”
“I’ve come to talk it over——”
The dark-eyed lad cut him short with a gesture.
“Don’t!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “Talk of anything else—baseball, spring sports, the Southern trip, anything!”
“What is that you have in your hand?”
Almost rudely Bart pushed Frank aside and walked to a desk, into the drawer of which he thrust the photograph. But when he turned round he felt certain Merriwell knew it was a picture of Elsie and that he had been seen pressing that picture to his lips.
“Sit down,” he invited again, with a motion toward a chair.
Frank did so.
“There are a number of things I wish to speak about, Bart,” said he. “One important thing is the nine. Are you working to get into form to catch? That’s one thing.”
“Perhaps I’m not working as hard as usual,” confessed Hodge. “Somehow, I haven’t seemed to have any heart in it. You know you were not here, and that has made lots of difference.”
“I’m here now, and we must get to work, for I hear that the outlook for a strong team is very unsatisfactory.”
“It might be better.”
“Well, if we get into our usual form, the battery should not be so very weak, though, of course, I can’t pitch all the games.”
“Do you know who’s working like a fiend to get into the box?”
“I haven’t heard.”
“That cad, Morgan! Why, he’s training every day, and they say there’s a prospect that he’ll make it. What do you think of that?”
“A good thing.”
“Good? Do you fancy I’ll ever catch with him pitching? Not for my life!”
“Not even for Yale?”
“Why should I?”
“Because you should be ready to do anything for Yale, my boy.”
“I can’t swallow that scoundrel, and I refuse to have him thrust down my throat! That’s all there is to it! If you can stand for him, that’s all right, but I decline.”
“Well, we won’t get into an argument over that now, though I want you to remember the splendid work Morgan did on the gridiron last fall.”
“And I don’t want you to forget that up to the last minute he pulled every string possible to down you, Merriwell. He was as full of tricks as an egg is full of meat.”
“Let it pass now. I hear that Starbright has not been given much of a show with the squad. How is that?”
“Rot! You know any man will be given all the show he deserves.”
“And Browning?”
“He refuses to get out.”
“And Ready?”
“He’s too flip. He’s got himself disliked by his freshness, and I fancy he’ll have a hard pull to make the nine.”
“Nor is he better than other men who are working for his place. I have been promised absolute authority this spring, and I shall have something to say about the make-up of the team I am to captain.”
By this time Bart had begun to cool down somewhat, and now, of a sudden, Merry reverted to the thing about which he had attempted to speak a while before.
“Hodge, you want to stop worrying about the thing that has troubled you so much lately. I am your truest friend, and you must let me speak out frankly. You’ll feel better when I have finished. I know whose picture you held in your hand when I entered—the picture you put in that drawer.”
Bart’s face was very pale now and he had begun to quiver again.
“We had a plain face-to-face talk about her on Cumberland Island not so very long ago, but the finish of that talk left us just where we began. Since then many things have happened, and, as far as I am concerned, that matter has been entirely settled.”
Bart felt a tightening about his heart. So it was true that Frank had remained away from college to see Elsie again and to win her back to him! Somehow, it did not seem just exactly like Merriwell, andyet how could Bart complain, for had not Frank held the prior claim to her?
“Elsie is a beautiful, noble-hearted girl, whom I cannot find words to properly extol,” Merriwell calmly continued, his coolness and confidence causing Bart’s heart to sink still more. “I do not wonder that I came to admire her very much. It would have been far more remarkable if I had not. But I have learned that I wholly misinterpreted my feelings and emotions toward her. Read others however well I may, I did not properly read and analyze myself in regard to her.”
What was Frank saying? Hodge felt a rush of blood to his heart, which began to thump violently in his breast.
“Events which I cannot fully describe have opened my eyes and revealed to me the truth. I loved Elsie and still love her as a very dear friend, and one of the sweetest girls alive, but I do not love her and never did love her as one should love the girl he means to make his wife.”
Bart’s lips parted, but no sound escaped them. He stared at Frank as if turned to stone.
“But I have learned,” Merry continued, “that I love another with all my heart, and that knowledge has brought me great happiness, for my love is returned, and we are engaged to be married some time, though the day is not set yet. Of course, you know without being told that the other of whom I speak is Inza Burrage.”
Bart sprang up.
“Merriwell,” he gasped, “you—you really mean that you are engaged—to Inza?”
“Yes, that is just what I mean. So you see, my dear boy, that you have been worrying over a trouble that does not exist, and the field is open and clear for you to win Elsie.”
There was a ringing as of many bells in Bart’s ears, and the room seemed to whirl round him.
Then he sat down quickly, all the strength having gone out of his legs. But the happiness of the shock made him long to shout, though his lips uttered no sound.