CHAPTER XIVSENT TO COVENTRY
It was a disagreeable morning, dully lowering and overcast, with now and then a flurry of snowflakes bearing promise of a heavier fall to come, but a crowd of boys and girls lingered in the school yard.
There seemed to be a curious constraint upon everybody. There was no shouting, no practical joking, no horse-play; but there was much low-toned talk in the groups, in which the classes appeared to have gathered unconsciously. Now and then, when late comers hove in sight, there was a stir of expectancy, and necks were craned as eager glances were directed toward the gate. Sam Parker, arriving with Poke Green, was greeted by a murmur of applause; and, flushed with embarrassment, made his way to a party of his chums, who chanced to be standing near the steps leading to the big door.
“Come on—let’s go in!” he said. “What’s everybody waiting for?”
Step Jones laughed harshly. “Ho, ho! This is a reception committee, Sam—reception committee and committee of the whole. It’s for T. Orkney’s benefit.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Sam protested.
“Humph! I may be, but if I am, I’m not lonesome.”
“That makes the thing all the worse.”
“Can’t be much worse than it is.”
Sam shook his head. “Oh, be fair!” he urged. “Remember, Orkney held on to Little Perrine like a good fellow.”
“Yes—after he’d driven him into the water!” growled Step.
“But——”
“But it was like locking the door after the horse was stolen,” Poke put in.
“Right you are!” contributed the Trojan.
“Well, what’s the latest news?” asked Sam. “How is Perrine this morning?”
“Mighty badly off, I hear,” Step told him.
“Delirious all night,” added the Trojan.
Sam looked perturbed, and with reason. “Little” Perrine, as the boy was known to his mates, was a delicate chap, clever at his books—he was a high school freshman at ten—butweak physically and of an extremely nervous temperament; just the sort of lad, in short, to suffer most from such an experience as he had undergone in the icy water. Moreover, he was the pet of the school, and any harm done him would be bitterly resented by the pupils. Indeed, the case promised to go hard with the unpopular Orkney, even if more encouraging tidings were received from those caring for one regarded generally as the victim of his malicious pursuit.
The Shark came hurrying up the walk, carrying a great bundle of books. He nodded at his clubmates, but did not halt. Poke chuckled softly as he passed them.
“There’s cold-blooded science for you!” said he. “Much the Shark cares for a trifling matter of life or death when he’s got a real juicy lot of equations on hand! Why, he put in all yesterday afternoon figuring away with the principal, and now he’s going to have another crack at him before the bell rings. I met him last night, and asked him what he was up to, and what do you suppose he said?”
“Give it up,” said the Trojan.
“So do I,” quoth Step.
“Trajectories!” cried Poke with all the scorn he could command.
Step rubbed his chin. “Well, it takes all sorts of people to fill up the world. But there are mighty few like the Shark, I’ll bet you!... Hulloo, though! There’s Jennie Bruce. She lives next door to the Perrines, and she can tell us the latest.”
Others had the same thought, and crowded about the girl who had just entered the yard. There was a moment’s waiting, and then an angry murmur ran through the throng.
“Whew! That means he’s worse!” Step inferred.
Jennie Bruce broke through the press. She came straight to Sam.
“You should have heard first of all,” she declared. “You pulled both of them out, you know.”
“I hope it isn’t bad news,” said Sam.
“It’s bad enough. No; Little Perrine isn’t dead. He’s better this morning, but the doctor says he may not be able to be out for a week. But that isn’t it, at all!”
“Isn’t what?”
“What I’ve got to tell you, Sam Parker. It’s about last night—and almost all through the night. Poor Little Perrine was out of his head, raving. He seemed to be going over and over it, and then beginning again and going all through it.”
“That is, through the accident?”
Jennie’s eyes flashed. “Accident! You know well enough it was something else. Oh, well, perhaps it was partly accident, but it was something else, too. Don’t stop me! I don’t call it all accident when the poor little fellow was just driven out upon the thin ice! And while he was delirious he kept crying out, ‘Don’t let him get me! Stop him! Don’t let Tom Orkney get me!’ Why, we could hear him over at our house. It was awful!”
“Gee, but it must have been tough!” cried Step.
“Tough!” For a moment Jennie regarded Master Jones half pityingly. “Mercy! but you boys have weak ways of putting things! If you’d heard him shrieking——”
“Hold on!” the Trojan broke in excitedly. “Here comes Orkney!”
There may have been method in the circumstance that Orkney was reaching the school grounds but a few minutes before the opening hour. Perhaps he had hoped that most of his mates would be within the building when he arrived, but he did not falter when his glance fell upon the crowd. Of its temper he could have had little doubt, though probably he had not foreseen the hostility of the reception which awaited him.
Three or four senior girls near the gate deliberately turned their backs to him. As many senior boys looked him full in the face with no sign of recognition.
Orkney squared his shoulders, and raised his head. Looking straight before him, he walked up the path. No one addressed him, and he spoke to nobody till he came to Sam.
“Parker!” Tom’s voice was low and not quite steady.
“Well?” said Sam coldly.
There was a little pause. Orkney was meeting Sam’s searching gaze without flinching, but his sallow face had taken on a grayish pallor.
“Parker, I’ve got something to say to you.And I want to say it now. Yesterday you yanked me out of a bad fix. It was a great job you did. I’d like to have you know I appreciate it, even if I don’t seem to be able to say much more than ‘Thank you!’”
“Oh, that’s all right!” said Sam, hastily and, it may be, gruffly. “Don’t bother your head about it. Forget it!”
“Can’t!” growled Orkney, gruff in his turn. “That brings me to something else I’ve got to say and you’ve got to hear. That other matter—you know?”
Sam nodded. The “other matter,” of course, was the engagement to fight.
“This—this is harder to—to get right.” Orkney plainly found explanation difficult. “You put something up to me, and I said yes. I meant yes; suited me. But you’ve complicated the situation. When you pulled me out of the pond you tied my hands—don’t you see that?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You did, all the same. I won’t go into details, with all these long-ears rubbering; but you don’t need details, anyway.”
The youths referred to as “long-ears” hadthe grace to retire a pace or two, but their liking for their critic was not heightened.
“I get your drift—guess I do,” said Sam. “But here! You’re free to forget yesterday’s business. Wish you would!”
“Don’t think I wouldn’t—if I could!” There was an ugly gleam in Orkney’s eyes. “That’s out of the question, though. So my hands are tied, as I tell you.”
“They needn’t be.”
Orkney shook his head. “It’s all very well for you to take that attitude, but I can’t. I’m in your debt—deep in it. So there are things I can’t do that I’d mighty well like to do.” And again the ugly gleam was in evidence.
A wave of the old anger seemed to sweep over Sam.
“Go ahead and try ’em, then!” he cried savagely.
Two spots of red, of a sudden, burned in Orkney’s cheeks, but he kept his self-control.
“There’s no use talking—I can see that,” he said grimly; turned, and marched alone up the steps to the great door.
The decisions of youth are decisions of adrumhead court-martial, to be carried out on the spot.
The school had but one verdict to give in the case of Thomas Orkney. As he disappeared in the corridor, there was a chorus of hisses and groans.