Charles King - From School to Battle-field - A Story of the War Days

It was a question of veracity, then, between Briggs and Shorty, the class believing the latter, but being unable to prove the case. Snipe himself could say nothing. Being in the lead, he had seen none of the runners of the Metamora except the heels of a few as they bounded over him when he rolled into the street. There was an intense feeling smouldering in the class. They were indeed "laying" for Hoover as they had been for Briggs when they tumbled out for recess. The latter, with his characteristic vim and effrontery, denied all knowledge of the affair, as has been said, and challenged the class to prove a thing against him. The former, as has been told, lurked within-doors. What had he to fear? He was not at the scene of the fire and the assault. He never had energy enough to run. There was some reason why he shrank from meeting or being questioned by the boys. There was some reason why Snipe Lawton should have left them and returned to the school, and was discovered standing there at the doorway, looking fixedly at the head-master's angered face as it glowered on Hoover and the tearful John. Whatever the reason, it could not well be divulged in the presence of Mr. Halsey. Hoover stood off another proposed demonstration in his honor after school at three o'clock by remaining behind, and only coming forth when he could do so under the majestic wing of the Doctor himself. Pop looked curiously at the knots of lingering First Latins, and raised his high-top hat in response to their salutations. Hoover huddled close to his side until several blocks were traversed and pursuit was abandoned. Then he shot into a street-car, leaving the Doctor to ponder on the unusual attention. And so it happened that while the class was balked for the time of its purpose, and the victim of Saturday's assault was debarred from making the queries he had planned, Mr. Halsey was enabled to pursue his bent. Just as the little group of five, gazing in disappointment up the avenue after the vanishing forms of the Doctor and Hoover, was breaking up with the consolatory promise that they'd confront Hoover with their charges first thing in the morning, the open-mouthed janitor came running.

"Oh, Lawton!" he panted, "Mr. Halsey says he wishes to speak with you, and to please come right back."

"I'll wait for you, Snipe," said Shorty. "Day-day, you other fellows." And wait he did, ten, twenty minutes, and no Snipe came, and, wondering much, the smaller lad went whistling down the avenue, forgetful, in the fact that he still wore the jacket, of the dignity demanded of a lad of the First Latin and full sixteen. He wondered more when eight o'clock came that evening and without Snipe's ring at the door-bell. He wondered most when he saw Snipe's pallid, sad-eyed face on the morrow.

There was something in the friendship between those two members of the First Latin not entirely easy for the school to understand. In many ways they were antitheses, – Snipe, over-long; Shorty, under-sized; Snipe, brown-eyed and taciturn, as a rule; Shorty, blue-eyed and talkative (Loquax was Pop's pet name for him); Snipe was studious; Shorty quick to learn, but intolerant of drudgery. Both loved play, active exercise, and adventure. Both took naturally to everything connected with the fire department, but in addition the smaller boy had a decided love for the military, and was a member of the drum corps of a famous organization of the old State militia, and vastly proud of it. Snipe loved the fishing-rod, and Shorty had no use for one. Shorty loved drill, Snipe couldn't bear it. Take it all in all, they were an oddly assorted pair, but when forty-eight hours passed without their being in close communion something had gone sadly amiss; and that was the case now.

Everybody knew that Snipe Lawton had little or no money of any kind, but few knew why. His own father had been dead many years. His mother had remarried when he was twelve years old, and between the boy and his step-father there was no love whatever. Nor was this the boy's fault. Open-hearted, affectionate, and of gentle nature, he had really tried to like and to win the regard of the man who had won his mother's heart and had given her an attractive, even a beautiful, home. But there are men who have no sympathy whatever with boys. Mr. Park was one of these, and, after two years of experiment, gave up trying to understand his step-son, and declared that the boy must be sent away to school. It is needless to describe what those two years were to the mother or to the son. Both welcomed the decision, though it cost the former many tears. A younger sister was married and living in New York City. Mr. Park was a Columbiad and a fervent admirer of the great Doctor. It was arranged that the boy should have his home under the roof of his aunt, Mrs. Lawrence, and his lessons under Pop. He grew rapidly, and his clothes were generally short for him. He was shy, sensitive, and hated to ask for money from home, because it had to come from his step-father. Time and again he could not go to the little social gatherings of his schoolmates, with whom he became popular almost from the start, solely because of his outgrown coat and trousers. His aunt had a houseful of company much of the time; her husband's kindred were numerous and prevalent, and, to tell the truth, she was a little ashamed of the tall, shy, sometimes awkward, if not gawky, boy, whose wrists were always in evidence and whose trousers were so short and shabby. And so it resulted that poor Snipe had his little bedroom in her garret, which the servants soon learned they could neglect with impunity, and a place at her table when they were not entertaining company; but home, he really had none. Breakfast was served at the Lawrences' at nine o'clock, but before that time Snipe was expected to come down to forage for himself and be off to school and out of the way. Luncheon he could take with him, if he chose to put it up and carry it, but as none of the other boys did this Snipe soon ceased, and one of Duncan's doughnuts was the mid-day sustenance, washed down by a glass of what the Doctor referred to as "copious cold Croton" (the Doctor loved that word copious), and on this rather meagre diet Snipe worried through the day till dinner-time, which with Uncle and Aunt Lawrence was half-after six, and a very hungry boy was he who silently, even humbly, took his seat among the lively, chattering party (there were always six or eight in the family circle), and, as soon as his appetite was appeased, was permitted to withdraw, presumably, to his studies, though the fact that he was at Shorty's home was always comforting to Aunt Lawrence, for she had great regard for certain feminine relatives of the smaller boy, and believed that wherever they presided her nephew could not possibly get into mischief. It is not that Aunt Lawrence was either knowingly neglectful or actively unkind. She was a busy woman, a fashionable woman, a woman full of pleasant impulse. She had told George to be sure and come to her whenever anything went wrong, when he needed advice or aid, or – rather vaguely – anything else. She had told the butler to be sure to see that Master George had coffee ready every morning at quarter-past eight, and the seamstress was ordered to keep his wardrobe in repair, and for a month or so both did as they were bid, and then let Master George look out for himself. Mr. Park had requested Mr. Lawrence to see that George was given fifty cents each Saturday for his spending money, out of which he was to provide his own shoes and gloves. This was Park's own allowance in the old days when he was a boy at the grammar school and Columbia was away down-town, about on line with the City Hall, and the boys lunched sumptuously at Shaddle's for thrippence; but Park had not to buy his shoes in those days, though he said he bought his gloves out of his little sum. He simply argued that it would be good discipline for his step-son to learn to economize. Gloves and shoes cost much less in the ante-bellum days than now, and less in Park's school-days than in those of his step-son. George took what was given him silently and without appeal, and during his three years at Pop's that was every cent of money he received from home. But gloves, he said, he had no use for, and boots were far beyond him. Furthermore, low shoes, summer and winter both, were best to run in, and not another boy at the Doctor's dreamed of the true state of the case, unless it was little Shorty, for to that boy the hungry heart of the lonely fellow seemed to go out from the start. He, too, was an alien; he, too, had left the mother wing to find a nest in the great, thronging city; he, too, was probably not a little in the way, but for him at least there was warmth and interest and sympathy and kindliness, and many a time and oft did Snipe roost all night long in that snug white bed of Shorty's, with no one "at home" the wiser. And many and many a time had he been made welcome at the bountiful board where Shorty sat among an affectionate kindred, and the tall boy's soft brown eyes seemed mutely to thank each member of the big family circle for every pleasant word. They had grown to like him, despite his silence, or perhaps because of it and its contrast with Shorty's chatter. They took no note of his short-sleeved, skimpy sack-coat or the low shoes at which Briggs had sneered and other fellows at school had levelled their witticisms until they saw it hurt, and then, wonder of wonders, the latter quit it. With all their impulse for fun and frolic and mischief, Pop's boys had the leaven of gentlemen. Even Hoover had never twitted Lawton on the evidences of his poverty, and there were others of that immortal twenty-seven little better off than he. In all the First Latin, Briggs had been the only one to continue the torment after the discovery that it brought pain and distress, and even Briggs no longer dare attempt it when certain of the class were near, for Julian, overhearing him one day, had called him aside at recess and told him that only a mean-spirited whelp would be guilty of such a thing, slapped his face, and invited him into a neighboring stable to fight it out, which invitation Briggs declined. Even little Shorty, overhearing Briggs one day, had flown at him like a young bull-terrier and drawn blood from Briggs's nose before they could be separated. The class stood up for Snipe most loyally in these days of his early tribulations, and by the time Second Latin year was over no one seemed to think of his worn and undeniably shabby garb. Snipe himself was "all right," said they. But there was lingering venom in the soul of Briggs, and as for Hoover, his soul was that of Ishmael and his hand against everybody, and when these two crabbed natures drifted together in alliance, offensive and defensive, it meant trouble for somebody, and there was no fun in the First Latin when Tuesday came, for to one and all it was plain that Snipe Lawton's heart was heavy, and his big brown eyes were full of nameless misery.