Chapter IV: The Hazing

Tom didn’t see much of Jerry the next day until afternoon, for they met neither at classes nor meals, but he feared that the North Carolinian was having his troubles. Yet when they did meet, at four, Jerry looked as unperturbed as ever and, although he confessed to some awkward experiences with the instructors――Mr. Troop, who taught geography and science, had openly ridiculed the boy’s ignorance――he said nothing of any difficulty with his schoolmates. Either, thought Tom, Jerry was singularly dense――which he didn’t appear to be――or he was remarkably forbearing and patient. It didn’t seem possible that he could have gone through the day without encountering a good share of openly expressed ridicule. Some light was thrown on the matter, however, when Tom met Joe in the gymnasium at five.

“Where’s Jerry?” Joe inquired, grinning.

“In the room. He’s got his coat and waistcoat off and his suspenders tied around his waist and he’s ‘wrastlin’’ with Latin. If he doesn’t tear all his hair out first, he will get the decision. Jerry studying is an interesting sight, Joke. He gets hold of that short hair of his――or tries to――puts both elbows on the table, winds his legs around the chair and bores in. And every minute or two he groans like a lost soul!”

“Heard about him this morning, didn’t you?”

“Nothing especial. What do you mean?”

“He didn’t tell you then?” Joe chuckled as he stooped to lace his gym shoes. “Why, half a dozen fellows were standing outside the Hall between classes when Jerry came along. That smart Jordan――you know him; wears glasses and talks like a mouthful of hot mush――――”

“Bet you he’s the fellow Jerry spilled the tea on!”

“All right. I haven’t heard about that. Well, Jordan puts his foot out as Jerry starts up the steps and he falls over it and spills his books. I came along just then and waited to see the fur fly. Jerry, though, picks up the books and smiles and is going on in when Jordan says: ‘Say, Whitey, can you fight?’ ‘Why, I reckon I can,’ says Jerry, ‘but I ain’t hankerin’ to.’ ‘I’ll bet you’re not,’ says another chap. ‘Never saw a towhead yet that had any scrap in him.’ ‘Well, I ain’t what you’d call agin it,’ says Jerry, mighty sweetly. ‘If any of you fellers is spoilin’ for a fight, I’m right obligin’. Tell you what, now, I’ll take the biggest one first and then kind of work down to the little shoat that tripped me up.’ That made a hit with them, all except Jordan, and he didn’t like being called a shoat. ‘Pick your man, Country,’ some one called, and Jerry pointed. ‘I’ll meet him first,’ he says. ‘Take him all around, I guess he’s the biggest of you.’ Who do you suppose he meant?”

Tom, smiling, shook his head.

“Norris! Well, they all got to laughing then, and Norrie, who had just been looking on, didn’t take to the idea at all! And that ended it. Some fellow told Jerry he was all right and they let him alone and he grinned and went on inside. Jordan made believe he wanted to go after him, but I noticed he didn’t start until Jerry was out of sight! Now what about spilling the tea?”

Jerry was still “wrastlin’” with his Latin when Tom got back to the room after basketball practice. He had removed his shoes, too, during Tom’s absence, and looked, on the whole, as though he had spent a strenuous hour and a half. But he declared that he “reckoned he was gettin’ the best of the thing!”

After supper Jerry didn’t show up in the corridor, although a glance at his table proved he had finished and left, and, after waiting a few minutes, Tom went over to Follen House to see Anson Lord, who, besides being the President of the First Class, was captain of the Nine. An hour’s talk of the baseball prospects and plans brought the time to almost eight. Back in Number 7 Baldwin, Tom found only an empty room, with no signs of recent occupancy. There was, however, a note propped up on the table against the base of the lamp, and Tom expected to find a line from Jerry explaining his whereabouts. Instead, however, it was signed “C. Falk.” Charles Falk, although a member of Tom’s class, was not a very close acquaintance, and Tom’s countenance expressed curiosity as he read the message.

“DEAR HARTLEY: Some of the fellows are planning to haze that
new fellow that’s rooming with you to-night. I don’t know any
more. Thought you might like to know. Keep me out of it.”

Tom frowned as he stuffed the note in his pocket. Hazing, although strictly against the written laws of North Bank School, was sometimes indulged in. Usually it was mild in character and more a matter of fun than discipline. And usually it occurred at the beginning of the school year in September. But he didn’t doubt that Falk’s information was correct. There were plenty of fellows in school who would welcome such a subject as Jerry Benson for their attentions. In fact, Tom wondered a little that the contingency had not occurred to him. He was not greatly worried, for, after all, the hazing wouldn’t be severe and Jerry had, he thought, proved fairly able to fight his own battles. But, after a minute of indecision, Tom put his cap on again and went unhurriedly downstairs.

Affairs of the sort were generally held in one of two places: either in the stable or down along the river. As the night was inclined to be chill, Tom decided that the stable was the more likely scene and so, passing around the corner of the house, he bent his steps across the grass toward where, close to the western boundary of the grounds, a dark object showed against the row of poplars along the fence. The fact that no lights showed didn’t fool him, for once or twice in his first year he had taken part in ceremonies there, and he knew that a lantern or two in the back room of the stable showed no glimmer in front. He went quietly as he neared the building and skirted the gravel road carefully.

The farther end of the stable held the carriage room, large enough to accommodate the Doctor’s small automobile and the three-seated vehicle that carried the students to and from the station. At the nearer corner, where Tom halted in the darkness, were the stalls. In the rear was a fairly large room used for harness and the litter that usually accumulates about a stable. There was a stove there, but to-night there was no fire in it, as Tom saw when, peering in under the edge of an ancient carriage curtain that had been hung over the end window in lieu of a shade, he surveyed the scene inside. Two lanterns threw a dim and uncertain light about the room and on the faces of the dozen or more boys there. As Tom had suspected, they were all second class fellows save one, and most of them he knew. Somewhat to his surprise, Wayne Sortwell was not of their number. Purves Jordan, the boy whom Jerry had alluded to as “the little shoat,” appeared to be in charge of the ceremonies. The one occupant of the room not a second class fellow was, of course, Jerry Benson.

When Tom applied his eyes to the aperture between curtain and window frame Jerry held the floor and the others faced him in a half circle. To his relief, Tom observed that, so far at least, the hazing was good-natured on both sides. The subject was singing. Tom couldn’t hear the words, or but an occasional one, and the tune, if it deserved the name, sounded particularly funereal. From the laughter and frequent applause, however, the performance appeared to make a hit. Only Jordan, a tall, supercilious looking boy of seventeen, who wore spectacles over a pair of smallish eyes, seemed displeased. Jordan was frowning. Jerry ended his croon soon after Tom’s arrival and bowed jerkily, and the audience clapped enthusiastically and cried “More!” Jerry made a reply of some sort, ran his fingers through his abbreviated locks and started off again. Jordan scowled and kicked impatiently at the oat bin against which he leaned. When Jerry had again finished Jordan demanded a dance.

“Come on, Whitey! Kick your heels for us! Let’s see some action!”

Jerry shook his head smilingly. Presumably he denied any ability of the sort suggested, for Jordan moved forward threateningly.

“Never you mind whether you can or can’t, you tow-headed North Carolina cracker! You try! Get that whip there, Gus. That’s the ticket!”

Jordan flicked a long-lashed coach whip in uncomfortable proximity to Jerry’s legs. Jerry remained unmoved and several of the fellows protested. Tom heard one boy say: “Oh, let him be, Skinny! He’s all right! Lay off him now!” But Jordan only grinned and swung the lash again, and this time it flicked Jerry’s legs. Tom, watching anxiously now, saw Jerry stiffen and turn toward the tormentor, and for the first time he spoke loud enough to be heard outside the closed window.

“I told you I can’t dance, and I mean it. And I ain’t going to. I’ve done what you fellers asked me and I’m getting kind of tired. Reckon you ain’t aimin’ at havin’ no unpleasantness.”

Jerry spoke firmly, but amiably still, and some good-natured laughter greeted his pronouncement. But Jordan sneered and drew the whip back. “You do as we tell you, Tarheels! You dance or you’ll be made to! Quick!” The lash swung again, this time with more force, and wound itself around Jerry’s frayed trouser legs.

For an understanding of what happened next, happened so suddenly, in fact, as to leave Tom gasping and blinking outside the casement, it should be stated that the door by which they had entered was in the back wall of the building, some ten feet from where Jerry stood, and that between it and him several sizable youths intervened. Also, that of the two lanterns one rested on the floor beside the stove and the other hung from a harness hook just over Jerry’s head.

The instant the whiplash encircled Jerry’s legs he dealt a swift blow to the lantern above him. There were cries and the sound of breaking glass as the lantern, leaving its hook, shot across the room and crashed against a farther wall. The fraction of a second later Jerry’s foot mistook the other lantern for a football and black darkness fell! After that pandemonium reigned supreme. Tom heard cries and thuds and crashes, and the shrill voice of Jordan imploring all and sundry to “Stop him, fellows! Don’t let him get to the door!” But Jerry was already at the door, it seemed, for Tom heard it slam mightily and then narrowly avoided collision with a swiftly-moving figure that hurtled around the corner, laughing joyously as it went, and disappeared toward Baldwin!

Grinning broadly himself, Tom fled after, aware of pursuing footsteps until he was within the light that fell from the windows of the House. Once there, the pursuit halted behind him. He heard laughter and mutters in the darkness beyond the illumination, and, as he thought, the voice of Jordan snarling recriminations on his faithless henchmen. Jerry had vanished, but Tom found him a moment later when he tried the door of Number 7, found it locked, gave his name and was admitted.

Jerry, still smiling, had laid aside coat and vest and was already applying first aid to a lacerated cheek.

“Well,” asked Tom, simulating surprise, “where have you been? And what’s happened to your face?”

“Fellers caught me after supper and took me over to the stable yonder,” explained Jerry easily. “Asked me to sing and I sung. Then they wanted me to dance and I wouldn’t. Feller in glasses swung a rawhide at me and I left.”

“I see,” said Tom, dryly. “And when you left you scraped your face against the door?”

“Scraped it against some feller’s fist, I reckon,” corrected Jerry. “Two, three of ’em aimed to stop me.”

Tom seated himself in a chair and gave way to laughter. Jerry smiled amiably back. He thought it pretty funny himself, although he couldn’t understand why Tom was so amused. After a moment the latter recovered enough to ask with some severity: “Didn’t you know those lanterns might have set fire to the stable, you crazy chump?”

“Huh? Where were you?” demanded Jerry in surprise.

Tom explained, and when he had finished Jerry answered the question. “Those lanterns always go out when you knock ’em over,” he said untroubledly. “Anyway, I reckon there was enough of those fellers to put a fire out!” He began to chuckle then. “Reckon that was a right surprised bunch when the light went out!”

“If they were half as surprised as I was,” commented Tom, “they sure were! How did they happen to nab you, Jerry?”

“Feller came along while I was waitin’ for you in the hall and said you wanted to see me outside. I’d seen you at the table a minute before, but I didn’t think but what maybe you’d got by when I wasn’t looking. So I went out and there was a gang of ’em at the corner and they grabbed me. They were sort of laughing and I reckoned it was just a joke and didn’t put up any scrap. So it was, a joke, till that razorback with the spectacles got sassy with the whip. Before that I sung ’em all the songs I knowed――knew, and they were just enjoying themselves and I didn’t mind for shucks. But, golly, I wasn’t aimin’ to be any man’s mule, Tom! Maybe I was too hasty, but he got me sort of mad before that callin’ me ‘cracker’ and ‘towhead’ and such things. Think I ought to have been more――more patient, Tom?”

“No, I don’t,” laughed Tom. “You did just right, Jerry. Only, you ought to have handed Jordan a jolt on the way out!”

“Oh, I didn’t scrap none,” Jerry assured him earnestly. “I just was aimin’ to get out of there. I didn’t punch nobody at all, I just brushed by ’em.”

“I’ll bet you did! I heard you ‘brushing’!”

“Reckon they’ll be after me again to-morrow?” asked Jerry.

“No, they’ve had enough, I think. Don’t you worry.”

“I wasn’t aimin’ to do no――any worriting,” responded the other calmly. “I was just ponderin’.”

“About what?” inquired Tom, smiling broadly.

“About that feller with the whip. Did you-all say his name was Jordan? Well, I wouldn’t want to have any ruckus with him, because he don’t look right strong and healthy. Reckon he is?” Jerry viewed Tom with calm inquiry. “I wouldn’t want to do him any damage.”

“He won’t give you a chance, Jerry. He doesn’t want to fight. He’s just brave when he’s got a crowd around him. Here, you better let me doctor that cut for you. On the whole, son, you got off pretty cheap!”