Chapter 9 VAN'S GREAT DEED

Dr Maitland, who was a man of unswerving justice, was influenced in his judgments neither by pity nor explanations, and thus it came about that when Van had answered his questions, putting before him the facts about his runaway, the principal sent the boy to his own room to there await sentence Van was in the lowest of spirits. What would the penalty of his insurrection be? He knew Dr. Maitland far too well to expect mercy, nor did he wish it. He was too proud for that. He had disobeyed the rules of the school, and he must now bear the punishment, be it what it would.

The thought of holding back the facts had never entered his mind. Indolent he sometimes was even to laziness but never within his memory had he been dishonest. So he had fearlessly told the truth, and despite the calamity it threatened he found himself the happier for telling it. Whether it would mean expulsion from Colversham he did not know; probably it would.

To think of leaving Colversham, the place he loved so much! And in disgrace, too. What would the other boys say? And his father?

Van shrank at the thought of telling his father.

Mr. Blake was a severe man who, like Dr. Maitland, would not gloss over the affair either by tolerance or sympathy. He would be angry, and he would have the right to be. Van admitted that. As he looked back on his school days he realized for the first time how indulgent his father had been; he had denied his son no reasonable wish, simply asking in return that the boy express his gratitude by studiousness and obedience. Van flushed as with vividness it came to his consciousness that he had repaid his father's goodness with neither of these things. He had studied just as little as was possible, and in place of appreciation he had rendered nothing but disgrace.

His self-esteem was at a very low ebb when Bob, dismissed from the infirmary, returned to his old quarters. Van was seldom depressed-so seldom, in fact, that the sight aroused in his chum nothing but an anxiety lest he be ill. Surely nothing but sickness could cause Van Blake to lie on a couch, his face buried in pillows!

"What's the matter, old fellow?" called Bob the instant he was inside the door. "Are you used up?"

No answer.

"I say, what's the trouble?" Bob repeated, hurrying to his side.

It took much questioning before the story could be drawn from the boy's reluctant lips.

"When Bob had at last heard it he was silent.

"Can't you say something?" queried Van peevishly.

"I hardly know what to say," Bob answered with slow gentleness. "I'm so sorry-so sorry and upset. I can't for the life of me understand how you came to do such a thing. Did you expect to get away with it? You must have known you would be missed at recitations and tracked down."

"That's right-rub it in!"

"I'm not rubbing it in; I'm only trying to understand it."

"There's nothing to understand. I just was crazy to go to that ball game and I started. I should have gone, too, if it hadn't been for the kid getting hurt."

"It was bully of you to bring him back, anyway," Bob said. "Of course you knew it was all up with you when you did it."

"I didn't think about it at all. I wasn't thinking of anything but that poor little chap who was mowed down by the brute in that car. If I hadn't happened to hear the motor it might have been me instead. I wish it had been," he declared gloomily.

"No you don't. Great Scott, cheer up, Van! The country hasn't gone to the dogs yet. I must admit you are in a mess; but it doesn't begin to be the mess it would have been if you had gone to the game, had a bang-up time, and come home a sneak who had stolen his fun. At least you have done the square thing and 'fessed up, and now you'll be man enough to take what's coming to you. What do you suppose Maitland will do?"

"I can guess pretty well-pack me off home. He is stiff as a ramrod on obedience to the school rules," sighed Van, "and he's right, too. It is perfectly fair. I knew it when I went."

"I can't see, just for one afternoon of sport, how you-" Bob broke off. "If I'd only been here you never would have gone."

"Maybe not," admitted Van. Then he added in the same breath: "No, I shouldn't have gone if you had been here, Bobbie. Somehow you're my good angel. I wrote Father so the other day."

"Stuff!"

"It's true. You are such a brick! I thought you'd blow my head off when you'd heard what I'd done."

"Well, I am mad enough to do it," was the tart reply. "For you to go and do a thing like that just for a ball game! It wasn't worth it. Think of your being pitched out of Colversham for a measly game of baseball. And you didn't get there, either!"

Van kicked the pillows impatiently.

"Don't light into me, Bobbie," he moaned. "Don't I feel bad enough as it is?"

"I don't know whether you do or not; you ought to."

"I do, Bob. I'm dead sorry."

"If you'd stay sorry it might do some good," returned Bob. A sudden thought seemed to strike him. He did not speak for a few moments; then he said half aloud: "Who knows-it might help."

"What might help?"

"Nothing."

Bob got up and sauntered to the door.

"Will you stay right here like a decent chap and not get into any more mischief until I get back?"

"Where are you going?"

"Nowhere much-just across the campus for a little while. I'll be back soon. Will you wait here exactly where you are?"

"Yes, but-"

"Honor bright?"

"Sure!"

"All right. Don't quit this room until I come. So long!"

Bob was gone.

Van lay very still after the door had closed, and to keep him company in his solitude back swarmed all those dreary thoughts that Bob's cheery presence had for the time being banished; with a rush they came to jeer, taunt, and terrify.

The little while lengthened into an hour and on into a second one.

The room became intolerable.

Then upon the stone floor of the corridor outside sounded Bob's foot.

"Still here, Van?" he cried, coming in with elastic step and banging the door after him.

His face was wreathed in smiles.

"What's happened to you that you look like that?" questioned Van, sitting up among the pillows.

"Like what?"

"Why, as if somebody had sent you a Christmas-tree or made you president of a railroad?"

Bob laughed.

"I've been to see the Head," he said.

"Humph! I never knew of his causing any one such overwhelming delight," observed Van a little spitefully.

"Hush up, old man; don't run down the Doctor," Bob said. "You may have more cause to be grateful to him than you know."

"You don't mean-" Van's voice trembled. "Did you go to see him about me?"

Bob nodded.

"Bob! How did you dare?"

"I dare do anything that becomes a man; who dares do more is none," quoted Bob merrily. "I don't believe, though, I'd have dared go for myself," he answered. "It is different when you are doing it for some one else. Now sit up and listen and I'll tell you all about it. The Doctor was mighty white about you; but in spite of all he stuck to the fact that you'd disobeyed the rules; he kept going back to that every time I tried to switch him off. We squabbled over you a solid hour, and the upshot of it was this: you are to stay at Colversham-"

"Hurrah!"

Van hurled a pillow into the air.

"Shut up and hear the rest of it. You are to stay here because I promised upon my word of honor that you would keep straight and study."

"I'll do it."

"That isn't all."

Bob hesitated.

It was a wrench for him to deliver the remainder of the message.

"Yes, you are to stay," he repeated as if to gain time. "But of course you can't expect to slip through with no punishment at all."

"No, indeed!"

Still Van spoke with jaunty hopefulness.

"The Doctor thinks it is only fair that you should be pretty severely reminded of what you've done."

"That's all right. I'm not afraid. Fire ahead! What's he going to do with me?"

"He thinks-he says-he feels it is best-"

"Oh, come on, come on-out with it!"

"He has forbidden you to take any part in the school athletics this spring," was the reluctant whisper.

Van did not speak.

"I'm mighty sorry, old fellow," declared Bob, "but it was the best I could do."

Still Van made no reply.

With troubled gaze Bob regarded his chum.

"I'd far rather Maitland had knocked me out," he ventured at last.

Stooping, he put his hand on Van's shoulder.

Van roused himself and looked up into his friend's face with one of his quick smiles.

"It's all right, Bob," he said. "Don't you fuss about me any more. You were a trump to get me off as well as you did. I'll take my medicine without whimpering. I ought to bless my stars that my banishment from athletics is only temporary. Suppose I had been smashed up so I could never play another game like that little kid, Tim McGrew," he shuddered. "It was just sheer luck that saved me. Why, do you suppose, he should have been the one to be crippled and I go scot free?" he observed meditatively.

"I don't know. Maybe because there is something in the world that only you can do. My father believes that."

"Do you?"

"I don't know."

"It would be strange, wouldn't it, to feel you were let off just to do something?" mused Van. "You'd be wondering all the time what it was. Of course it would be something big."

"You could never tell what it was," Bob replied, falling in with his friend's mood. "I suppose the only way to make sure would be to do whatever came to you the best way you could do it. You never could be sure that what you were doing was not the great thing."

"Not studying and stuff like that."

"It might be; or at least studying might lead to it."

"I don't believe it."

"It wouldn't hurt you to try it."

"No, I suppose not." Then with characteristic caprice Van shifted the subject. "But seriously, Bobbie, there is something I am going to do. You'll howl, I guess, and maybe you'll be disappointed, too. It's about that sick kid, Tim McGrew. The surgeon says the little beggar will never walk again. I feel pretty sore about it; I suppose because I was there," explained Van uneasily. "I've about decided to chip in the money Father was going to send me for a canoe and get a wheel chair for him. His folks are poor, and can't get one, and the doctor says-"

"You're a-"

"Oh, shut up, can't you, Bobbie? It's only because I'm so cut up about the accident. Remember, it might have been me instead of him. You won't mind much if we don't have the canoe, will you?"

"No," was the low answer.

Neither of the boys spoke for some time.

Then Bob whispered:

"Have you thought, Van, that maybe the thing you are to do is something for that little lame boy, Tim McGrew?"