CHAPTER XVITHE MAN INZA MET.
Starbright was moody. Nothing seemed to arouse him from the dispirited, downcast state into which he had fallen. Being a big, strong fellow, in robust health, such an atmosphere was strange to him. Frank could not remember having seen the fellow just like that but once before, and that was when he was recovering from the spell of dissipation into which he had been thrown by the drug given him by his enemies.
Diamond had never seen Dick in a gloomy mood, and he was surprised by it. He tried to rally the freshman, saying he must be in love; but Starbright simply frowned and shook his head.
Dick was thinking of Inza as she had appeared to him once, and as she appeared to him now.
“They’re all alike!” he thought bitterly. “Rosalind was like Inza in many ways, and she threw me over for Dade Morgan. When she found out what a scoundrel Morgan was she tried to make up with me, but I was not quite so big a chump as she imagined. I think Inza is even worse than Rose, for she has deceived Frank right along. He is so honest and square himself that he never suspects others of deception. It’s useless to try to convince him, for he believes in that girl implicitly.
“I’m sorry for him, but it’s plain he is desperately in love with her, even though he may not really know it. Why, I fancy he’d marry her to-morrow if she’d have him! That being the case, he is in danger, for she is liable to decide at any minute that she’ll have him. If she should, she’d find a way to let him know it and to lead him into a proposal. How is that to be prevented? The only way is to convince him beyond the shadow of a doubt that she is a treacherous, heartless flirt. But how can I convince him? I must find a way. I will.”
Starbright still seemed to feel that he had done Merriwell a wrong, and this added to his sense of duty toward the youth who had befriended him when he first came to college. Having become convinced that Merry would be led into a snare in case he ever married Inza, Dick determined to find a way to prove to Frank that the dark-eyed, haughty girl was unworthy of him.
“I must do it, even though it makes him despise me,” mentally decided the big Andover man. “It will be nothing more than an act of pure friendship.”
Jack Diamond’s story of his mistake had made not the slightest impression upon Starbright. Frank had hoped it would open the youth’s eyes to the folly of jumping at conclusions, but it had not, for Dick, like old Captain Starbright, his father, was hard-headed and set, once having formed an opinion.
A man of this character is almost always successful in life if he gets started on the right track, for he will stick and hang like a bulldog until he wins; but give him a wrong start, let him bend his energies in the wrong direction, and he will persist in a bull-headed way in carrying out plans that any one and every one else can see are certain to bring disaster upon him.
The bulldog determination and stick-to-it-iveness is all right if it is properly combined with reasoning ability. But the person who says he is right because he thinks so, and refuses to listen to reason or argument, is certain sooner or later to butt his head against a stone and knock out what few obstinate brains he possesses. There are men so constituted that they persist in declaring they are right, in the face of positive evidence to the contrary. Sometimes they shut their eyes so they may not see the evidence. This sort of bulldog persistency is simply “foolishness.”
Frank knew Dick was brooding over the affair, and he thought a walk in the open air might do the big freshman good. Thus, after they had eaten, during which Jack and Merry seemed in a very agreeable mood, not a little to Dick’s wonderment, Merriwell proposed a walk.
Diamond, however, stated that he had many letters to write and thought he had better be about them at once.
“I’ll have to run down home for a day or two before going across,” he said. “I shall leave you to-morrow, Merriwell. To-night I shall spend in getting things straightened out here.”
So Frank and Dick left the hotel together. They made a handsome “pair” as they strolled along the street—shoulder to shoulder. Starbright was larger, but he was not a whit more finely developed, and there was a certain air of confidence and assurance about Merriwell that was not possessed by the big fellow. At a glance a discerning person could see that Frank was the natural leader and a born commander of men.
They walked up Broadway, attracting considerable attention and causing more than one head to be turned that the owner might follow them with his or her eyes.
“Things have conspired to hold me here in New York long after I had thought of returning to college,” said Merry; “but I’m going back with you to-morrow, Starbright.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Dick listlessly.
“Your voice did not sound as if you were very glad.”
“Nevertheless, I am, Frank. All the fellows will be delighted. Why, things are at loose ends there. Everybody is wondering what keeps you away.”
“Are they?”
“Yes. The baseball men are worried to death, and there is a general air of suspense and dread over the place.”
Frank laughed. “I fear you are making it too strong, Starbright. Yale got along all right before I came, and I am sure she will continue to do so when I’m gone.”
“But you know what happened when you were away—you know how she slumped the year you were out of college.”
“The same thing might have happened had I been there.”
“Nobody believes it. All point to the fact that you straightened things out in a hurry when you came back.”
“That is giving me too much credit.”
“Nobody thinks so. Yale never in her history had such a football-team as she did last season. Not once was she defeated. Harvard had the best team she ever put onto the field, yet Yale beat her. I say Yale, but I mean Merriwell, for it is certain Harvard would have won that game had you not risen from a sickbed and appeared on the field at the critical moment in the last half. You won the game for us, Merriwell, by the most remarkable play ever seen on a football-field, jumping clean over the head of a tackler. What other man could have done that?”
Starbright was beginning to forget Inza, and life and animation were coming back to him.
“It was a very lucky trick,” said Merry, with no show of false modesty.
“Lucky! It was astounding, and the strange thing is that not a single newspaper report described it. All reports say you dodged Fulton, the Harvard tackler, when in truth you dodged him by jumping over him as he flung himself forward to grasp you about the body. I think that was a clean case of robbing you of the credit that was your due.”
Again Frank laughed.
“Who cares as long as Yale won!” he cried.
“Everybody cares at Yale. I tell you, Merriwell, you’ll find you are the thing when you get back there! You had enemies once, but they’re all in the soup now. Not even the Chickering set dares breathe a word against you in public, for they know it would mean tar and feathers. You’ll find the professors ready to take off their hats to you. And everybody is kicking because this is your last term at the old college.”
“My boy, you make me afraid to go back there; but I hope it is not as bad as you say, for I couldn’t stand it. I don’t want anybody bowing down to me. I’m just plain Frank Merriwell, and nothing more.”
“Which means that to-day you are the greatest and best-known young man in this country. Oh, I’m not putting it on too thick! Can you wonder that Yale dreads to lose you? Can you wonder that your absence has produced no end of worry?”
Frank knew Starbright was sincere. He had entertained a feeling of resentment toward the freshman because of his suspicions concerning Inza; but now Merry realized once more that Dick was scarcely anything but a big, impressionable boy, and must be regarded as such.
“I shall be sorry to leave without seeing Inza or hearing anything about her,” admitted Frank.
Instantly the cloud returned to Starbright’s face.
“Inza!” he muttered bitterly.
They had reached Thirty-third Street.
“Let’s walk down Sixth Avenue,” said Merry, and they turned that way, leaving Broadway, glowing with thousands of electric lights, behind.
Over their heads rumbled the elevated trains, beneath the trestles of which ran the surface trolleys. The avenue looked dark and dingy in comparison with “Beautiful Broadway,” for at night the portion of Broadway between Twenty-third and Forty-second Streets is really fascinating and attractive.
On Broadway the greater part of the pedestrians had been well dressed and fashionable in appearance. Barely had they turned into Sixth Avenue when the general appearance of the people changed.
Dick suddenly clutched Frank’s arm with a crushing grip.
“Look!” he excitedly breathed, seeming to quiver from head to feet. “There he is!”
He pointed to a bearded man who had paused to look at the chronometer in the window of a jeweler’s small shop, having in hand his own watch, which he was setting to correspond with the correct time.
“Who is it?” asked Frank quietly.
“The man Inza met at the Grand Central!” hissed Starbright. “The one she called Walter! That is the man!”