CHAPTER XVI.BART AND DAISY.
The change from Hodge’s jubilation of a short time before to his present attitude and appearance of dejection was rather startling. Merry paused an instant, then stepped forward quickly, exclaiming:
“Bart!”
Hodge did not stir.
Frank’s hand fell gently on his shoulder.
“What’s the matter, old man?” asked Merry, softly.
“Nothing,” mumbled Hodge.
“Oh, but there is,” declared Frank. “You were feeling well enough a short time ago. What’s the meaning of this change?”
Hodge was silent.
“Look here, Bart,” said Merry, gently, “I’m your friend—I’m the one for you to talk to about this matter, old man.”
Bart looked up, now, but there was something like defiance in his face.
“There isn’t anything to talk about,” he asserted. “Can’t a fellow have the blues once in a while, if he wants ’em!”
“Nobody wants the blues, Hodge. A man in good health, with a liver that is not torpid, should not have the blues. Is there anything the matter with your liver?”
“Dunno.”
“There was a cause for the sudden change in you,” said Merry, seriously. “A little while ago you seemed in better spirits than you have shown before for a month. And now you are in the funks.”
“Oh, don’t use that word!”
“What word?”
“Funk.”
“What’s the matter with that word?”
“It’s Yale slang.”
“What of that?”
Hodge sprang up and walked the floor.
“I don’t want to hear it!” he cried, fiercely. “I don’t want to hear anything that will remind me of Yale! Isn’t it bad enough for me to know you are going back there!”
“I’m afraid I do not quite understand you,” said Merry, slowly. “Why should you feel that way about it?”
“I am an outcast! You are going back to finish your course.”
“Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you jealous, Hodge?”
“No; I’m glad you’re going—I’m glad for you!”
“Then what is the matter? You seem to be completely off your trolley, old man. You’re getting freakish.”
“Oh, I suppose so! Rub it in! I had a letter from my mother yesterday. She said she was sorry to give me up, but I had been a terrible disappointment to her. She did hope I would get through college. She was sending me money to get through on, you know. I was a fool! I gambled her money away, and she sent it without letting my father know, for he would have stopped her had he known. Oh, isn’t there a reason why I should feel blue?”
“I think you are inclined to make things out worse than they are, Hodge.”
“Worse! worse! Ha! ha! How could they be anyworse? Here my mother, who has clung to me all through everything, is giving up in despair! She thinks I have gone to the dogs.”
“And I suppose you do not write and tell her all the truth?”
“What’s the use?” said Bart, bitterly. “She knows I ran away from college. Do you fancy it would make her feel any better to know I did so because I could not meet the gambling debts I had contracted? In this case, it is better not to tell the truth.”
“I think I will write to your mother, Bart.”
“What for?”
“I have something to tell her.”
“What?”
“That you are going back to college in the fall.”
Hodge stopped and stared at Frank. After a few moments, he spoke:
“Why would you tell her such a thing as that?”
“It would make her feel better.”
“But you were speaking of telling the truth a moment ago.”
“And I should be telling the truth then.”
“What?”
“Nothing but the truth.”
“Look here, Merriwell, I want to know just what you are driving at! Come out and give it to me straight.”
“All right,” smiled Frank. “I mean that you are going back to college when I go. Is that plain enough?”
“It’s plain enough, but it’s you who are off your trolley.”
“Oh, I think not.”
“You are, just the same. I am done with Yale. Howcould I go back there, after skipping out as I did and leaving all those debts? It’s impossible.”
“You know your debts were paid. When Browning returned to college, he squared them all.”
“Without my knowledge, Merriwell. I refused to let you send the money, but you did it without letting me know a thing about it. I was the one to pay the debts I had contracted. You did that.”
“Something I’ll guarantee is known to no person but Browning.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I know it.”
“How?”
“He was bound by a pledge not to say I had anything to do with it, but to give the impression that the money came from you.”
Something misty came into the eyes of the dark-haired lad.
“Merriwell,” he said, huskily, “I’d be an ungrateful churl not to appreciate such kindness!”
“It’s all right, old man; it’s what I’d wish another to do for me were I in your place.”
“It’s exactly what you would not accept from another. I know that. You put me in this position without my consent. Now I owe you all that money.”
“Forget it!”
“That’s easy to say, but it’s not easy to do. Now you are going back to college, and what’s to become of me? I am left!”
“I tell you that you are going with me.”
“No; I have no love for any of your Yale friends. Of course I was sorry that I failed to finish my course and graduate. It’s too late now. I tell you my mother hasgiven me up. That makes it impossible for me to return to college. She was paying my way. Now there is no one to furnish me with money, and I am as bad off as you were when you lost your fortune.”
“Bart, I’ve been thinking of something lately. You know all about our discovery of the lost fortune in the Utah Desert.”
“I know all about your discovery of it, and I know no other person had a hand in it.”
“But Browning, Diamond, Rattleton and Toots were with me. It has been divided equally among us. Shortly after the discovery of that treasure you joined our party. I have thought it all over, and it seems no more than fair that you should have a share of that fortune.”
“You’re going daffy!”
“Not a bit of it. I say it is right. The others have received their shares, but you shall have your share of mine. I will divide with you, and that will give you four thousand dollars. With that sum you can return to college and finish your course.”
Hodge laughed sarcastically.
“I’d like to know what you take me for!” he cried. “Are you trying to insult me, Frank?”
“You know better!”
“Do you imagine I’m a fool?”
“No.”
“Well, then, don’t ever make me such an offer again. You know what I think of those chaps who accepted the checks you sent them. You know I believe that treasure belonged entirely to you, and no other had a right to a dollar of it. Do you take me for a fellow who would accept from you a gift of four thousand dollars? Well, that’s what you propose to make me—nothing more, nothingless. It won’t go with me, Merriwell. I do not thank you for the offer, for you should have known better than to make it. Go back to Yale. I wish you good fortune—I wish you everything you desire. I will go my way in the world; you’ll go yours. It must come to that in time, anyhow. What odds if it comes sooner than we had anticipated! You have taken an interest in me, Frank, and your friendship is the pleasantest memory of my life; but even that must become a mere memory sometime.”
“There is no reason why it should become a mere memory while life shall last,” said Frank, soberly. “Though fate may divide us, still our friendship should remain firm and unshaken. As for your return to Yale, I’m not going to say anything more about it now, but I shall not give it up.”
While a rehearsal was taking place for the benefit of the supers that afternoon the local stage manager came to Frank and said:
“Mr. Merriwell, there is a young lady down at the door who wishes to see you.”
“A young lady?” exclaimed Merry, not without a feeling of consternation, for his recent experiences in St. Joseph were vivid in his memory.
“Yes, sir.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know her name.”
“But she belongs in this town?”
“Yes.”
“Methinks thou hast another mash, most noble grand high muck-a-muck,” spouted Douglas Dunton, in the eccentric manner he sometimes assumed.
“I’m afraid so,” admitted Merry.
“Perchance thou wouldst send me down to see the fair damsel—but I doubt it,” murmured Dunton.
“No,” said Frank, “I think I had better go down myself.”
He went down to the door and found the girl who was waiting there. He was surprised to see her standing with her head bowed, in an attitude of apparent dejection and shame.
“Did you wish to see me, miss?” he asked.
She nodded her head, but did not look up, not a little to his perplexity and wonderment.
“I am here.”
“Mr. Merriwell,” she murmured, “I have come to thank you.”
“To thank me?” exclaimed Merry. “For what?”
“For your kindness to me in St. Joseph.”
Frank’s heart dropped.
“Good gracious!” he thought. “Has she followed us from St. Jo.?”
Then the girl looked up, and he recognized her.
“Daisy Blaney!” he exclaimed. “Why, I didn’t know you!”
No wonder he had not recognized the bold, saucy, reckless girl in this meek, abashed, low-spoken maiden.
“Yes, Daisy Blaney,” she said. “I thought perhaps you did not want to know me, and I did not wonder much.”
“Didn’t want to know you? Why not, Miss Blaney?”
“Oh, because—because—you know,” she faltered, in confusion. “I reckon I ain’t just the sort of girl you would be proud to introduce to your friends. You didn’t meet me under very favorable circumstances, and you must think I’m pretty far down the scale.”
“I hope not,” said Merry, quickly.
“Still, I know just what you think, and I don’t knowthat I blame you much. You are different from any show feller I ever met before. I never fancied any of them cared a snap what became of a girl if they could have a good time. None of them ever gave me any good advice before. I never saw one before you who was not ready to catch on and have a racket. Instead of catching on, you gave me a calling down. I knew I deserved it, and it made me feel all the more reckless. I thought I was too far on the road to turn back, and I tried to forget what you said to me; but I couldn’t forget it, and it kept sounding in my ears all the time. I couldn’t run away from the sound; I couldn’t drown it with music and laughter. I saw you looking at me in that sympathizing, pitying way, and, though I tried to laugh at you for a fool, your eyes haunted me. Oh, I tell you I was right miserable after that talk with you. You set me to thinking of mother and home.”
“Mother and home!” said Frank, softly. “The two strongest influences for good. How many a wayward wanderer has been reclaimed by thoughts of mother and home!”
“If mother had had her way at home I’d never left,” the girl went on. “It was the old man—father, I mean. He drove me away. He didn’t seem to understand me at all. If I made a little mistake, he was so harsh and cruel with me. Why,” she exclaimed, suddenly relapsing into slang under the pressure of excitement, “the old duffer uster be a pretty gay boy himself, and there wasn’t any reason why his daughter shouldn’t take after him. All the same, he never thought of that, but he was dead hard on me.”
Frank knew this was the fault of many fathers. They forgot their own younger days and were harsh and hard with their sons or daughters who showed they had inherited certain lively qualities from their parents.
“But your mother—for her sake, you must overlook anything from your father.”
“Yes, I suppose I ought, but it’s pretty hard sometimes. He’s tried to be so strict with me it’s driven me to do some of the things I have done.”
“That is where you are making your mistake. I do not wish to lecture you now, Miss Blaney, and I am going to say no more about it. I am glad I was able to find you that night in St. Jo.”
Her eyes began to shine and something like a flush came to her cheeks, which, with satisfaction, Merry observed were now unmarred by paint.
“You were brave, Frank Merriwell!” she cried; “just as you seemed to be in the play—just as I knew you were! Those men did not frighten you in the least. You fought the whole crowd like a tiger. But I thought you would be killed till that woman interfered. Who was she?”
“A stranger—a woman I had never seen but once before in my life. Then she was in a plot to blackmail me. The plot failed, and she was ready to turn against her accomplices. What do you know of her?”
“Nothing, save that she is known in the sporting circles of St. Jo. as Queen Mab, and she is something of a mystery. There’s not a gay girl in the city who would not give anything to be like Queen Mab.”
“I am sure the woman is not all bad. It was rare good fortune that brought your mother along there just as we escaped from the place.”
“One reason why I came here was to thank you,” said the girl; “but there is another reason.”
“Yes?”
“Yes; I want to warn you.”
“To warn me?”
“You have had some trouble with Sam Hooker.”
“I have.”
“Everybody in town has heard of it. Sam is in disgrace, but he has sworn a great oath that he’ll disgrace you worse than you did him.”
“Oh, he has?”
“Yes, I heard it from his brother Joe. You know Joe kind of—kind of—— Well, he calls at our house.”
The girl’s confusion explained her meaning. The red blood mounted to her face now, and Frank saw she was ashamed of Joe Hooker when she compared him with some of the flashy city youths she had met.
“He told you?” questioned Merriwell.
“Yes; I pumped it all out of him. He doesn’t know I ever met you in all my life. I slipped in here on the sly, so they would not catch on that I had warned you.”
“It was kind of you.”
“No; it won’t half pay back what you did for me—the risk you ran. I was thinking of that.”
To Frank it seemed a case of “bread on the waters.” But he had not learned what plot had been formed against him, and his curiosity was aroused.
“Joe says Sam is just furious,” the girl went on. “He is fierce enough to kill you. He would kill you, if he dared. He loaded up his guns and swore a mighty oath to make you regret the day you were born.”
“There is considerable wind about Sam Hooker,” said Frank; “but still he might be driven to something desperate.”
“You know he’s been a cowboy?”
“Well, he says so.”
“He really has, and he can throw a lasso.”
“What of that?”
“He’s coming to the show to-night.”
“What then?”
“He says he’s going to bring his lasso.”
“Why?”
“And he swears he will rope you from the stage.”
“Is that it?” cried Merry. “So that is what he means to do?”
“Yes. He says he’ll drag you over the footlights and clean out of the theater.”
“Well, this is rather interesting!” exclaimed Frank; “and I am greatly obliged to you for telling me about it.”
“What will you do?”
“I shall be prepared for Mr. Hooker, be sure of that. But you must take care not to let him know you have told me.”
“Little danger of that. I wouldn’t dare. Joe invited me to come to the theater with him to see Sam square the score. I shall be here, and I do hope you will look out.”
“Don’t worry at all about that, Miss Blaney. Now that I know what is coming, there is not the least danger in the world that I shall not be ready.”
“I am glad I was able to warn you, Mr. Merriwell.”
“It may prove a most fortunate thing for me. I thank you, Miss Blaney. I shall not forget your kindness.”
He held out his hand, and she grasped it eagerly, looking up into his face.
“Oh, Mr. Merriwell!” she exclaimed; “I hope you’ll not think of me as so very bad! I hope you won’t remember me that way!”
“No,” he said, looking straight into her eyes; “I shall not think of you that way, Miss Blaney. I shall think of you as the joy of your mother in her old age. I shall think of you as loving and soothing her in her declining years. I hope I shall not be mistaken in my thoughts.”
“You shall not!” she said, earnestly; “I promise you that, Frank Merriwell! I will be a better girl in the future. It will help me to be better knowing you remember me that way. Good-by.”
She turned hurriedly and was gone.