The Diary of a Freshman. Flandrau Charles Macomb

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СКАЧАТЬ eyes, gagged a little, and let him have it. "Why, it's the thumb of a glove," Berrisford said, holding up his prize for us to look at, "and he dess tould n't eat it 'tause it had a nassy tin button wivetted on uzzer end, so he tould n't," he added to the animal.

      "That doesn't seem to have stood in the way of his eating the other one," I remarked coldly, for there was enough of the chewed thing in Berrisford's hand to enable me to identify the remains of a pair of very expensive gloves I had bought two days before.

      "Heavens! – do you suppose he really did?" Berrisford asked in great alarm. "Do you think it will hurt him?"

      "Of course he ate it. I don't see it anywhere, and they were both together on that chair. I hope it will hurt him," I said.

      "It is n't like you, Wood, to talk that way about a poor, lonely, foreign thing who 's never been in a house before in all his life," Berrisford muttered resentfully.

      "Well, he certainly do make the most outlandish sounds," Mrs. Chester interposed.

      "It isn't outlandish – it's Icelandic," Berrisford replied. "He came all the way from Reikiavik on a Gloucester fishing-smack. I bought him at Gloucester yesterday for a dollar – didn't I, my booful Saga; ess he did. And he dess chewed all de checks often de trunks in dat nassy old baggage car on de way up – didn't he, darlin'? And dat horrid baggage man was dess crazy 'tause he did n't know where to put off any baggage and had to delay de twain like evvysing." Berrisford became quite incoherent after this, so I returned to my bedroom and slammed the door.

      I don't think it's right for any one man to inflict a whole community with a beast like Saga, and I 've told Berrisford so several times; but he always says: "You seem to forget that I suffer as much, if not more, than any one. Do you ever hear mecomplain when he wallows in the mud and then snuggles up in my bed? Was there any outcry when he ate my gloves and my patent leather shoes and my Russia leather notebook with hundreds of exhaustive, priceless notes on the first part of 'Paradise Lost'? Did I make a violent scene – the way you and Duggie do every day – when I gave the tea for my sister and found him just before the people came – behind the bathtub in a state of coma from having eaten thirty-six perfectly delicious lettuce sandwiches? You might at least admit that you think he 's just as distinguished and quaint-looking as he can be; because, of course, you do think so. You know you love him to follow you through the Square – with everybody turning to look – you know you do. Does n't he, mon tou-tou, mon bébé, mon chien de race?"

      One of the fellows at the table invited us to dine at his house in town last Sunday evening. Berrisford was to meet me at a hotel in the Back Bay at a quarter past seven and we were to go together. I took a long walk that afternoon, and the air was so delicious and the autumn foliage in the country so beautiful that I didn't realize how late it was until I looked at a clock in a jeweller's window on the way back. I hurried to my room to dress, and as I opened the front door my heart suddenly sank – for upstairs I heard Saga chanting his terrible little refrain. We have all come to dread that sound at our house, for it invariably means the loss of a cherished object to somebody. Berrisford calls it the "Icelandic Hunger and Death Motif." I ran upstairs and found Saga eating one of the tails of my dress-coat which I had hung over the back of a chair in my study to get the creases out. He had apparently first torn it off, then divided it into small pieces, and was consuming them one by one as I came in. I was already late for dinner, and as it was Sunday evening there was no one in town from whom I could borrow another coat. For a moment I could n't decide whether to sit down and cry or to commit Sagacide.

      IV

      Of course I went to the dinner – and what is more, I arrived almost on time. I can't give myself any particular credit for this achievement, however, as it was luck, pure and simple, that got me there. There is no doubt about it, I am marvellously lucky; I seem to have a knack of falling on my feet, and although Duggie has taken to worrying about my "shiftlessness" (as he is pleased to call it) in money matters, and the calmness with which I regard the approaching examinations and the academic side of college in general, I have a feeling that everything will come out all right somehow.

      It would sound heartless, I suppose, to speak as if I thought it fortunate that Jerry Brooks had been stricken with appendicitis just in time to get me into the dinner, if it were n't for the fact that he is recovering so splendidly. (I went up to the hospital this afternoon to inquire.) But under the circumstances it is hard not to look upon his sudden seizure rather cheerfully – as I know he will enjoy hearing about it when he is well enough to see people. I was in despair that evening when his roommate came clattering up our tin steps and pounded on Berrisford's door; but the instant I ran into the hall and saw him my heart gave a great throb of hope. He had his dress clothes on; but he didn't look in the least like a person on the way to dine in town – and I felt with indescribable relief that, if this were the case, I could have his coat.

      "Isn't Berrisford here? Has he gone?" he exclaimed excitedly. (I had never seen him before – although I knew his chum, Brooks, slightly.) "We were going to dine at the same house in town, but my roommate, Jerry Brooks, got sick just as I was starting and I can't go, and two doctors have taken him up to the hospital, and the Hemingtons haven't a telephone, and I thought I'd let Berrisford know, for, of course – "

      Well, his coat didn't fit me in a way to make a tailor expire with envy exactly, but I was mighty glad to get it – and anyhow, I think people are inclined to take a dress-suit for granted. Berrisford attached no importance whatever to the fact that his beast had ruined my coat, but merely said reproachfully: "I hope you let him have the pieces to play with; he 'll be so lonely this evening with no one in the house except Mrs. Chester."

      I have mentioned the fact that of late Duggie has given intimations of having me "on his mind." Of course when a man like Duggie finds time to care one way or the other about what he thinks you ought to do, it's a great honor. He is the busiest, hardest worked, and most influential person I ever knew. He belongs to no end of clubs, and besides being captain of the team he's at the head of a lot of other college things. Almost every day there's a reporter or two lying in wait for him out here to ask about the team, and whether he approves of the athletic committee's latest mandate, and what he thinks about all sorts of things in regard to which he hasn't any opinion whatever – and would n't express it even if he had. Besides all this he manages in some way to study awfully hard and to get high marks in everything he takes. Furthermore, he's in training most of the year, and just now he has to go to bed every night except Saturday at half-past nine or ten. He's almost always amiable and kind to people, and I think he's great. I can't help liking the fact that he drops into my room and sits down and talks the way he does. Some of the fellows at our table found him there the other day and were scared to death. But at the same time I have a feeling that he does n't think Berrisford and I are just what we ought to be. As if people could be different from the way they 're made! I know that sometimes he would like to say things that, after all, he never quite does.

      Of Berrisford, I 'm sure, he doesn't approve at all. I don't, of course, believe for a moment that he was anything but amused at the way Berrisford conjugated the French verb for him the other day; but as it is the sort of thing that Berri takes an uncontrollable joy in doing, I think Duggie has an idea that he is n't good for anything else.

      Duggie – I can't imagine why – has never studied French until this year. He enrolled in a class only a week or so ago, and though it's merely an extra course with him and he could get his degree just as easily without it, he goes at it as if it were all-important. Berrisford knows French as well as he knows English, and volunteered to help him with his exercises. The other afternoon Duggie ran into Berri's room and said: "I 've an idea that we're going to have 'je suis bon' in French to-day; I wish you would write out a few tenses for me so I can learn them on the way over – I simply have n't had a minute to myself for two days." Naturally Berrisford seemed delighted to help him, and gravely wrote something on a piece of paper that Duggie carried off just as the bell СКАЧАТЬ