CHAPTER XI.
THE BLUE DEVILS.
"Pop, old boy," said L. Putney Betts, "you've got something on your mind. Your presence exudes a blue haze suggestive of remorse or a dread of impending trouble. Cheer up! Care kills cats, you know."
Hart was sitting in the window with his feet up on the cushion, looking out at Nassau Street. Three or four chilly nights had scattered the leaves from the trees and they littered the walks and roadways. It was now late in October.
The Westerner's appearance had changed not a little in the past two months. He looked somewhat younger than he did when he had climbed up the stone steps from the station, the day of his first encounter with the sophomores. His face had become thinner, but it glowed with health. His coat was open and a big orange P flared on the breast of a new sweater. His only reply to Betts's remark was a half smile and a straightening back of his shoulders.
"If I didn't know they fed you well at the training-table," put in Terence Golatly, slapping the soles of Hart's feet with the handle of a tennis racket, "I should say that you had the same thing that was the matter with the little bird who sang 'Tit Willow, Tit Willow, Tit Willow,'—love, or-er-indigestion."
"He's ashamed of the way he treated that big right guard from Lafayette yesterday," said Simeon Tolker Congreve. "You were awfully rude, Pop, and if I were you I should write a letter of apology."
Again Hart smiled. The day before he had played his first game on the 'Varsity eleven (although he had been riding in "that she-bang" for the past week) and, making use of a college expression, in the game referred to, the big freshman had "everlastingly torn his shirt,"—which means that he had accomplished everything expected of him and a little bit more; but there was something on his mind and this was a fact. It was nothing very tangible as yet, and certainly nothing that he could talk about, being merely this:
He had carried a letter from Mabel unopened in his pocket for half a day, and he really found it growing difficult for him to write. He no longer felt thrilled by the mental picture he drew of her, standing at the head of the rickety old stairs that led from the store to the second story of the frame house in Oakland, and even her photograph (with her hair beautifully frizzed with a hot iron), that he had on the mantelpiece of his room in Edwards, failed to stir him. She was very different from—from some one else, the tones of whose voice would not leave his mind, and yet who was as far above him as the stars above the earth—the way he looked at it.
All this made him very unhappy, and made him think that he was somehow a very mean individual, and resulted in his studying harder and playing football with a grim, cool determination in which, perchance, he found some relief.
Miss Hollingsworth had been present at the game with Lafayette the day before, and upon one occasion, when he had dashed through the crowd and fallen on the ball outside the boundary, he had looked up and caught her eye as she was watching him eagerly from the front seat of an open carriage. Despite himself, his heart had given an almost sickening leap, and he had gone back and thrown the Lafayette guard so heavily, in breaking through the line, that the man from Pennsylvania said afterwards that he "thought he had been hit by freight."
Hart had carefully avoided meeting Miss Hollingsworth, although Bliss, on congratulating him when the struggle was over, had said: "I say, the girls are over there. Why don't you trot across and see them—never mind the dirt."
Hart, however, had hidden himself in the dressing-room and wished to be alone. That night, however, he had dreamt that Miss Hollingsworth had told him she was proud of him, whereat he had blushed in his sleep. So all this may account for his exuding a blue haze, and being in a "Tit Willow" frame of mind.
The bell in old North had commenced ding-donging, and Putney Betts and Golatly asked each other "What the dickens was the next recitation?" Hart knew, of course, and pulled a well thumbed note-book from his pocket. Then the freshmen hurried down the street and crossed the campus to attend Livy Wescott's Latin. If there was one thing that Hart was disturbed about in his mind, there was another upon which he had reached a satisfactory conclusion. It was that he had completely changed his mind about college, and that if he had only nothing to worry over, he could live from day to day as happy a man as ever breathed.
So the time went on. The first of November came. It was growing too chilly for lolling out on the grass without a dread of pneumonia, and the day of the first big game with Harvard was fast approaching. The usual big scores had been rolled up against the smaller colleges in the practice games without much effort, although there had been quite a tussle with Pennsylvania, where it was rumored they were catching on to the tricks of the trade—a renegade "Eli" had them in hand.
Of late Hart had not seen very much of Patrick Corse Heaphy, but the latter joined him on the way across the campus and falteringly asked him if he would not come over to his room. There was something he wished to talk about, Heaphy said, and he could not say it where they might be interrupted. Hart was not prepared for the surprise that followed. He had supposed that Heaphy, who belonged to a small coterie that exchanged note-books, wished to talk to him upon some such matters. But when he had reached the bare little room, the "young man with a purpose" had locked the door carefully. He appeared fidgety and nervous.
"Now don't mind what I am going to say," he began, first picking up one book and then another from the table under the drop-light, "but you're in trouble. There's something worriting you (Heaphy had inherited the word from his father). I've seen your face in recitation. Do you think playing football is interfering with your studies?"
Hart was shuffling uneasily.
"Not a bit," he said; "I wouldn't let either of them interfere with the other."
"Then," said Heaphy, with his face lighting up, "I know what it is. You see, you see,—it costs money to go to college, and sometimes it isn't aisy to get it."
Hart was now regarding him quietly and had stopped twirling the bunch of keys about his forefinger.
"Now, I know a man," said Heaphy, "who's got some money to spare, and if you're hard up, I could get some for you. He don't want any interest," he went on eagerly, "and you can pay him back after you get through college. He's helped me." And Heaphy at this turned as red in the face as his carrotty crop of stiff bristles,—"and I'm not going to worry over it; some day, perhaps, I'll tell you more about the matter, but I don't want to just now, for reasons."
Hart was touched. Heaphy's shorter nickname was "Irish," but Hart had a tendency (that he was nearly overcoming) to call almost everybody "Mr." But as he had found that this prevented close relationship, he was growing out of it. On this occasion his reply was so polite that only its heartiness prevented it from being distant.
"Thank you ever so much, Mr. Heaphy," he said, "but it isn't that. I have enough to carry me through the term, I guess. But—" he paused. "I'm ever so much obliged to you, and if I'm ever in trouble that way I shall tell you, bet on that. Perhaps I've been training too hard. Mr. Robinson says I look a trifle stale."
Heaphy, replying to the thanks and not to the last remark, murmured, "Don't mention it." Then he opened the door and ushered his guest out into the hallway with an awkward bow. When he returned to his room, the latter found Ned Bliss waiting for him.
"I say, come home with me and spend Sunday," said Ned, twirling a button on his friend's jacket. "On the level, it'll do you lots of good."