CHAPTER VIITHE SHARK LECTURES
The Shark was out of humor. He sat in a corner of the club-room, glowering through his spectacles at his fellow members, and quite ignoring the chess-board on the table beside him.
Now, though the Shark had a brusque manner and was often curt in speech, he really was a fellow of even disposition, and seldom became involved in disputes. One reason for this, perhaps, was the circumstance, observed by the philosophical Poke and by him communicated to the rest of the club, that “it was surprising how many things didn’t make any difference to the Shark.” Athletic rivalries did not excite him; school competitions, except in his specialty of mathematics, ordinarily had no interest for him; unless forced to do so, he gave no heed to school politics. The other members of the club might be in a fine stateof mind over any of a dozen questions without stirring the Shark perceptibly. So it was all the more curious that this day, when his friends appeared to be getting along in harmony, the Shark was having a fit of the sulks or the blues. He had been working over a chess problem—working and growling, it must be confessed—and having failed to reach its solution, had pushed back the board and was regarding the others darkly and with hostility.
The club was in full session. Everybody was there, with Sam Parker fully restored to his old position of influence. A fortnight had passed since the rescue of the injured woodsman and Varley’s little lunch, two incidents which had restored Sam’s relations with Step and Poke and made easy his return to the fellowship of the club. There it was understood that Parker didn’t like to be joked about runaway horses or mince pies, and these topics being placed under taboo, things were going much as they had gone in the days before Mrs. Grant’s horse chose to bolt and before Varley came upon the scene.
Sam enjoyed the renewed companionship.It had needed a brief denial of it to realize what it meant to him. So he had been as little disposed to take offense as the others had been to give it; and there had been hardly a ripple of bickering anywhere until the Shark, of a sudden, developed a case of nerves and a yearning for squabbles.
“You’re the most useless crowd!” he grumbled. “Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you get a move on? You’re loafing on the job, every one of you!”
There was a long silence after this outburst, which took the others completely by surprise. Finally Sam spoke.
“Well, what do you want to have us do?”
“Oh, anything!”
“But what is there to do?” Step inquired.
“What is there to do?” the Shark echoed scornfully. He sprang from his chair and came forward. “Look here, all of you! You make me tired! Why, right in this room a while ago I heard Step going on about this being the meanest, slowest, stupidest part of the year.”
“So it is,” Step insisted.
“That’s what you said. There’s no skating,and the snow-shoeing and sleighing and coasting are not worth having—wasn’t that your argument?”
“I’m sticking to it still.”
“Bosh!”
Then Poke took a hand. “Tell you what it is, Shark,” said he. “Winter’s all right, in its way; but you can get too much of a good thing. It gets monotonous—leave it to you if it doesn’t.”
The Shark declined to commit himself. “This gang is getting lazy. All it seems to care for is to sit around and tell stories. You’re as good for nothing as a lot of woodchucks stowed away in a hole till spring comes.”
“Well, the woodchuck knows his business,” quoth Step.
“It’s mighty poor business, all the same, for a pack of human beings.”
Trojan Walker laughed softly. “Ha, ha! If you’d like my opinion, Shark, getting mad with the world because you can’t work out a chess problem is worse business still.”
The Shark whipped about to face him. “Can’t work it out, can’t I? Huh! Muchyou know about it! I’ll show you now—no I won’t, either; you wouldn’t understand.”
“And you would? And that’s what makes you so pleasant to all of us?”
“Who wants to be pleasant to a crowd that just sits around and talks about a city fellow who happens to have more money than he knows what to do with?”
“What! You mean Varley?”
“Course I do!”
There was another pause before anybody made answer to the charge. Two or three of the boys glanced inquiringly at Sam, as if they felt that here was a matter concerning which it behooved him to speak. So Sam it was who broke the silence.
“Shark, what ails you, anyway? Varley’s all right.”
“Huh! So’s his money and the big dinners it buys!”
“What’s that?”
“You heard well enough. You and Step and Poke haven’t been talking about anything for a week but that feed he gave you.”
Step’s long arm shot out. He shook a finger under the Shark’s nose.
“You mean we’re toadying to him because he treated us to lunch? Say that, straight out, and I’ll smash you!”
The Shark was a head shorter than the tall Step, but he was in no mood to shrink from controversy, vocal or physical. He bristled belligerently.
“You don’t dare do it! And you can’t put words in my mouth!”
“Take it back then!”
“I’ll take nothing back—that I’ve said.”
A little voice seemed to whisper in Sam’s ear that the Safety First Club was hardly living up to its name. He caught Step’s wrist, and drew the tall youth back. Then he addressed the still bristling Shark.
“I don’t like what you’ve said any better than Step likes it. But I don’t intend to let anybody get into a fight over it. It was a bully good dinner we had, and I’m not ashamed to say it was. You wouldn’t have me lie about it, would you?”
“N-no,” the Shark admitted.
“And you wouldn’t expect me to pretend I was ashamed of accepting Varley’s invitation?”
“Why—why, no.”
“And I haven’t hinted you were sore because you weren’t lucky enough to be there.”
The Shark reddened to the roots of his hair. “Anybody who says that——” he began hotly.
“I haven’t said it,” Sam interposed promptly. “Why haven’t I? Because I know, and every other fellow here knows, it isn’t true.”
“Oh!” said the Shark, with a queer little gasp, and a perceptible lessening of ferocity.
Sam pressed his advantage. “Be sensible, can’t you? I like Varley; so do most of the others. For some reason you don’t. That’s no excuse, though, for a general row. Varley isn’t thrusting himself in here or——”
“Huh! That’s just what he did do in the beginning.”
“Well, that was because he didn’t understand the custom about outsiders. But he was clever enough to guess visitors weren’t the usual thing. You’ll notice he hasn’t come here again.”
“Huh! Good reason!”
“What do you mean?”
“I told him not to,” said the Shark grimly.
Sam stared at the spectacled youth. “You—you said that—to his face?”
“Sure!” said the Shark doggedly. “When? Oh, three-four days ago. Where? On the street, where we’d met, and where he’d stopped me, and begun to hint about what a smooth joint we had here, and how he’d like to look in occasionally. Then I told him it was a closed club. Why shouldn’t I tell him? Fact, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Only with a fellow from out of town, a stranger——”
The Shark interrupted Sam. “Look here! I don’t pretend to fancy Varley overmuch, but there I was treating him just as I’d treat the best friend I have. I let him have the truth. It’ll save him a lot of embarrassment. Besides, he isn’t what you’d call a stranger any more. He’s staying in town right along, and he’s going to school—no use trying to put him off in a class by himself.”
Sam frowned, but Poke spoke sharply.
“Hang it, Shark, but you have messed things! And after that cracking good dinner he treated us to—geeminy, but I wish I knew how we could even up things for that!”
“All right—go ahead and even them all you please,” growled the Shark; then his tone changed. “See here, you fellows! You’ve got me started, and I’m going to free my mind. I don’t like the way you’re behaving. You’re quitting on the job, the bunch of you!”
“Bully boy, Shark! Go it!” jeered the Trojan.
“I will! Listen! There isn’t one of you that’s stirred a finger to win that history essay prize. You mope around, and wail about the weather and the snow and nothing to do, and don’t even dream of trying to land that hundred dollars. Can you deny that, Trojan? Or you, Sam? Or you, Poke? Or Herman, or Step or Tom Orkney?” He was shaking an accusing hand at each of them in turn. “All of you heard what the principal said. Now hear what I say: It’s a shame and disgrace to the club that you’re letting this chance go by default.”
“How about yourself?” Step demanded.
“I’m out of it. My line’s different. I can do things with figures, but not with words. Two or three of you fellows write decently.Why don’t you pull together—it’s allowable, under the rules—and gather in that hundred?”
Nobody took upon himself the responsibility of making reply.
The Shark glanced from one to another. His manner was still grim.
“That’s right—think it over!” said he. “Let it sink in. And don’t forget the rest of the class is watching the club. I’ve had a couple of nasty raps handed me about a gang that put on a lot of side, yet didn’t have sand enough to make good at anything requiring real work.”
“Who said that?” asked Sam.
“Never mind! It was said—said to me.”
“I’ve heard something of the sort,” said Tom Orkney quietly.
Two or three of the others stirred uneasily; it was to be inferred that they, too, had been reminded of the club’s inactivity.
The Shark picked up his cap.
“Well, I feel better,” quoth he. “I’ve got the thing off my chest. I’ve got to cut along now, but you fellows can mull over what I’ve told you. The lecture’s over; but it’s up toyou to show whether or not it’s going to do any good.”
With that he walked out of the room, leaving a group whose members seemed to be of diverse opinions about his views. Step declared that it was hopeless to attempt to win the competition; Herman and the Trojan were uncertain; Orkney inclined to the idea that the attempt would be worth making.
Poke, his face puckered and his air a bit mysterious, drew Sam aside.
“Look here! The Shark has sure chucked the fat in the fire!” he whispered. “Say, we’ve got to do something!”
“Umph! I don’t believe the bunch of us can do much,” Sam objected.
“I’m not talking about the prize. It’s Varley I’m worrying about. Don’t you see, after the crack the Shark made to him, we’ve just got to wipe out the obligation for that dinner?”
“I wish we could! Only I don’t see how——”
Poke broke in, his manner more mysterious than ever. “Hold your horses, Sam! You watch me! No; I can’t lisp a word, butmaybe—well, there’s a chance your little old uncle will be able to square accounts and put us all on Easy Street, Shark or no Shark. How? Can’t breathe a syllable about it—now. Just watch and wait—that’s all you’ll have to do, Sam!”