_ CHAPTER XVIII. LOVE COMES LIKE THE MEASLES
IT had all happened the Saturday before, when for reasons of her own Miss Clara Bedelle (the reasons taking shape in the heroic figure of Turkey Reiter, captain of the eleven, and the Triumphant Egghead, premier danseur of the school) had asked Skippy to invite those heroes, as she, being already wise in protective knowledge, preferred not to show her affection too directly. Skippy, on receipt of these sisterly directions, had been in a towering rage, for it had never occurred to him that men of the world such as Turkey and the Egghead would for a moment condescend. If it had not been for the added bait of a Princeton game, he would never have found the courage. The result upset all his preconceived theories, and it was not until he found himself on the high road to Princeton, actually squeezed into a buggy between two eager and enthusiastic lords of the school that he attempted to reason it out. The attempt, however, was beyond him. If girls as such were incomprehensible, how the deuce was he, Skippy Bedelle, to conceive that such a thing as a sister, particularly his sister, could arouse any enthusiasm?
"Guess it's the grub and the game all right," he reflected finally. "Anyhow they will let me alone, that's something."
At lunch it did seem that his wish was to be gratified and despite certain sisterly glances of reproach, he was able to secure a third helping of roast beef and a double portion of ice cream and cake, with the connivance of Miss Biggs the chaperone, while Sister and Miss Lafontaine attended to the chatter. So engrossed was he in this attempt to stock up for the long week ahead, that he completely failed to notice the comedy which was being played to the greater edification of Mr. Turkey Reiter and the obvious disconcerting of the Triumphant Egghead, who was being neglected flagrantly and openly for mysterious reasons known only to the ladies.
Skippy, therefore, was totally unprepared, as he was both shocked and terrified, suddenly to find himself at the side of Miss Mimi, with Turkey and his sister behind, while the Triumphant Egghead, not to give his tormentor any further satisfaction, was pretending to laugh uproariously at something that his companion, Miss Biggs, had just said. For five minutes Skippy was in the most complete funk of his life. His body seemed suddenly all hands and pockets and do what he would his feet would interfere as they had that awful day eight months before when he had descended into the family parlor in the first pair of long trousers.
"I think that Princeton is just the sweetest place in the world, don't you?" said Miss Lafontaine with the air of a great discovery.
"I'm preparing for Yale," said Skippy hoarsely.
"Oh, I'm so glad," said the young lady immediately, and sinking her voice to a confidential whisper, she added, "you know I'm Yale too though you mustn't give it away. I think Yale men have such strong characters, don't you? You can't help but admire them, can you?"
Skippy had no ideas upon any subject whatsoever at that moment, besides he hadn't the slightest idea what she meant. So he took out his handkerchief and then put it back suddenly, as he remembered that a nose was never blown in polite society. As Miss Lafontaine's sole object in appropriating Skippy was the reflex action on the Triumphant Egghead, it was absolutely necessary that Skippy should at least give the appearance of appreciating the privilege. Miss Mimi, therefore, decided to jump the fence of strict conventionality if the expression be permitted.
"Jack," she said, coming closer, "own up now, you are a terrible woman-hater, aren't you?"
"Damn all sisters," he muttered to himself. Then he looked up and met at the deadliest of ranges, the smiling, mischievous eyes of the Japanese brunette. Despite himself, he broke into a laugh.
"Girls do give me a pain," he said abruptly, "but for the love of Mike, I mean for heaven's sake, don't tell Sis I said that."
Miss Mimi immediately passed her hand through his arm.
"Won't you try very, very hard, Jack, to make an exception?"
He breathed hard and something warm went up his back like the warm ripple of the hot water when his body slowly immersed. If Snorky Green could see him now! Mimi hanging on his arm, Mimi's soft voice pleading with him, Mimi, just as she had done in the fictitious weeks, throwing herself at him, actually throwing herself at him! He tried to remember one of the dozen eloquent replies he had once evolved, but nothing came.
"I say, you're not a sister, are you?"
Miss Lafontaine was considerably puzzled by this but pretended that she was an only child.
"Well that makes a difference; I thought you couldn't be," said Skippy unbending a little, "you act differently."
"Oh I see," said Mimi, who had half expected a display of sentiment, "aren't you a funny man. So you don't approve of sisters?"
She had called him a man--perhaps after all his sister had not told the age of his trousers. He straightened up and answered, "Oh, I suppose they are all right--later on."
"Jack--you
are a woman-hater!"
"Oh, I don't know," he said, beginning to be flattered, and he fell to wondering how he could call her Mimi, which of course was his right.
"I'll tell you a secret, but perhaps you know it already. Perhaps after all you are only making fun of me."
"Oh, I say, Mimi," he said all in a gulp and then blushed to his ears.
The young lady, noticing this, smiled to herself and continued:
"Well, if you are simply pretending, it's a very good way to get a lot of attention, but of course you know that."
"I? What? Oh, really you don't think!"
"Well, I don't know. Because of course that is what does make a man interesting. It is such a compliment when he does take notice. Now a man like Mr. Sidell who jollies every girl he meets--"
"The Egghead is a terrible fusser," said Skippy with new appreciation of his own value, "you should have seen him at the Prom."
"Did he have Cora Lantier down, the blonde girl with the big ears!"
"She was blonde but I didn't notice the ears. She was down two weeks ago."
"Oh, she was?"
Miss Lafontaine glanced backward and snuggled a little closer. Skippy began to be aware of the strangest of symptoms; at one moment he felt a rush of blood to the forehead just like the beginnings of bronchitis, the next moment his throat was swollen as though it were the mumps, yet immediately there came a weakness in his knees that could only be influenza. The warm contact of the little hand penetrated through his sleeve, the sound of her voice shut out all other sounds in his ears, and when he met her eyes his glance turned hastily away and as avidly returned.
Mimi Lafontaine at the age of nineteen knew very little of the school curriculum, but had a marked aptitude for the liberal intuitive arts.
"Mimi would flirt with a clothes horse, if you flung a pair of trousers over it," a dear friend had said of her, and on the present occasion she was deriving a good deal of pleasure from the situation. The attitude of a young lady of nineteen, about to emerge into society, vis-a-vis with a youngster sprouting out of his first long trousers, particularly when he happens to be the brother of a best friend, is a fairly obvious one. There is no excitement to be derived but a certain amount of exercise. A fisherman is necessarily a man who enjoys catching fish, and if trout are not rising to the fly, sitting on the edge of the wharf and hauling in suckers is still fishing.
At the end of the afternoon Skippy was head over heels in love. If he had had the opportunity he would have trusted her with the secret of his life's ambition--the Bathtub and the Mosquito-Proof Socks. But Miss Mimi was too busy extracting information about the Triumphant Egghead (who had countered by steadfastly devoting himself to Miss Biggs) and certain sentimental chapters in the past of her best friend in which she had had a revisionary interest. These subtleties naturally were beyond the experience of Skippy, in fact he was quite unable to reason on anything. His heart was swollen to twice its natural size, his pulse was racing, and the next moment with the wrench of the farewell, he felt in a numb despair, the light go out of the day, and a vast sinking weight rushing him down into chill regions of loneliness.
"Say Skippy, old sporting life," said Turkey Reiter, speaking over his head to the Egghead, who was in a terrific sulk, "How do you do it?"
"Do what, Turk?"
"Why, my boy, you're the quickest worker I ever saw; I thought the Egghead knew his business, but he's a babe, a suckling to you!"
"Mimi Lafontaine is the damnedest little flirt I ever met," said the Egghead, with a slash of his whip which sent the buggy careening on two wheels.
"Hold on there!" said Turkey, grabbing the reins. "I've got to live another week. Well, Skippy, my hat's off to you, old sporting life. You've got her feeding out of your hand. . . . And Mimi too, right under the Egghead's eye!"
"Oh, come off now, Turkey," said Skippy, to whom this light badinage was torture.
"Shucks!" said the Egghead, "you know her game."
"Well you played a pretty slick game yourself, old horse, but how did you enjoy Miss Biggs?"
"You go chase yourself," said the Egghead, flinging the remnants of a cream puff at the horse, which kept Turkey busy for the next five minutes.
Skippy scarcely heard. All he wanted was to have the drive over and to be alone with his memories. How bold he had been at the end when he had crushed her little hand in his! Had she understood--and just what had she meant when she had said,
"And so it's Jack and Mimi now, isn't it?"
That night at precisely 10.45 in his sixteenth year, hanging out of the second story window of the Kennedy, with a soul above mosquitoes, Skippy Bedelle discovered the moon.
* * * * *
Forty-eight hours later, Skippy suddenly realized that the hot and cold symptoms, the loss of appetite, the inability to concentrate his mind on either "The Count of Monte Cristo" or "Lorna Doone," the hardness of his bed, the length of the day were not due to either German measles or the grippe. He was suffering from something that neither Dr. Johnny's pink pills, nor his white ones nor the big black ones could alleviate. He was in love, genuinely, utterly, hopelessly in love. _