CHAPTER VII
DRAFTED
Barry saw Clyde daily. Clyde seemed to expect it and Barry was anxious that their friendship shouldn’t wane. That it was in danger of waning was evident, not through the desire of either but because they belonged to different classes and so their paths lay apart. Clyde’s intimates had been chosen from those of secured position. Some had won standing in athletics, usually football: others merely on the score of family wealth or prominence. They didn’t constitute a large proportion of the student body, but they were always much in evidence and managed to exert a good deal of influence in school affairs.
Clyde’s efforts to include Barry in his circle were doomed to failure from the first. Barry had arrived unheralded, with none to vouch for him save Clyde; and Clyde’s own position among the “right sort” was none too secure as yet. Perhaps had Barry made earnest efforts to please he might, after a proper novitiate, have been accepted. But Barry didn’t, and he realized that Clyde’s friends resented his presence. Clyde sought to make Barry feel at ease, but he soon adopted a patronizing tone that the other didn’t relish, and as a result Barry’s evening calls at Number 42 Dawson became fewer and fewer and he relied on seeing Clyde during the forenoons, between recitations. Now and then a day passed with no more than a dozen words between them, and Barry blamed himself and, recalling his obligation to the other, made greater efforts the next day.
Once—it was the Sunday following the Shefford game—Clyde walked out to the Lyle house shortly after dinner and found Barry and Peaches on the porch, surrounded with Sunday papers. Although Barry took the visitor up to his room, Clyde remained but a few minutes. A week after that, when Barry’s father and mother motored over to see him, Clyde, informed of the coming visit, was on hand and helped Barry do the honors during the four hours of their stay. When Mrs. Locke said gratefully that it was splendid of Clyde to look after Barry so well, Clyde, while verbally disclaiming credit, was plainly of like opinion. Mr. Locke, whose eyebrows had raised slightly at first glimpse of Barry’s room, cast a shrewd look at Clyde and said, “Hm!” in a tone that meant anything you liked.
The next day the home team met and defeated the local high-school eleven by the one-sided score of 22 to 0, and again Barry watched the game with Peaches. Mill made a third, however, and growled constantly at the idea of any sane fellow going in for such a piffling, uninteresting recreation as football. Clyde played the last two periods at right half and rather disappointed Barry. He was twice stopped behind his line and acted generally as though not fully awake. But then the whole team was logy that day, possibly because of the heat. The three stuck it out to the end, hoping for and rather expecting a turn of the tables toward the last. But it didn’t come. Wessex, playing her first game, had less to offer than Broadmoor.
Parting from Mill at the gate, Barry and Peaches entered the house and Peaches proceeded to the little table that held the telephone and the mail.
“Nothing for you and nothing for me,” he announced. “Toby gets it all. But—I say!” Peaches lifted a small package and viewed it with deep suspicion. “Something ought to be done about this.” He carefully returned the package to the table, his countenance expressing extreme distaste.
“What is it?” asked Barry, from the foot of the stairway.
“I don’t know,” said Peaches, mournfully, “but I fear the worst. Toby! Oh, Toby!” A door opened above and Toby answered the hail. “Come down and take it away,” called Peaches.
“Take what away where?” asked Toby.
“Take this away anywhere! It’s a package for you, dear one, and it smells to heaven!”
“Mail?” inquired Toby, eagerly. He came hurrying down. “Let’s have it, Peaches.”
“I’ll not touch it again. Come and get it.” Toby finished the descent indignantly and clutched his prize.
“It’s the snails!” he chortled gleefully.
“Snails!” exclaimed Barry and Peaches in chorus.
Toby nodded, studying with a positively thrilled look the inscription on the wrapper. “A fellow I correspond with in South Carolina sent them. They’re salt-water snails.” He turned toward the stairs again, beaming through his spectacles, but Peaches laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
“Toby,” he said gravely, “I’ve bad news for you.”
“Huh?” said Toby.
“Try to take it like a man, Toby. Bear up, you know, and all that.”
“What’s eating you?” demanded Toby, very inelegantly.
“Prepare yourself, my friend.” Peaches’ voice trembled. “This will be a great shock to you. They—” he pointed tragically to the package—“they’re dead, Toby, quite dead!”
Toby stared blankly an instant. Then his gaze went to the package.
“Who’s dead?” he asked. “The snails, you mean? Of course they’re dead, you chump! They can’t live out of water, can they? Huh!”
Toby gave the other a scathing glance and mounted the stairs. Peaches fell in behind and Barry followed in turn, and as the two tramped solemnly upward they chanted a dirge for the dead snails.
It was the middle of October now, but Indian summer dwelt in the Connecticut hills. The days were warm and languorous, sweet-scented with drying grasses and late blossoms; and while coolness came with twilight, the evenings were frequently so mild that the Lyles’ porch, which caught the last rays of the sun, was comfortable until, perhaps about nine o’clock, a little chill breeze wandered across the clover meadows. Then Mrs. Lyle would say:
“Betty, don’t you think it’s getting— Father, I think perhaps we’d better go in now.” And then, raising her voice a trifle: “Father! It’s time to go in. It’s getting quite—” Whereupon Mr. Lyle, sound asleep in the hammock in the darkest corner, would respond brightly with:
“Eh? Yes, yes, Mother! I was—er—just about to suggest it.”
Now that Barry had virtually ceased his evening visits to Clyde, he was at liberty to join the gathering after supper. Always there were Mr. and Mrs. Lyle, Betty, and Peaches; frequently Toby as well. Mr. Benjy, having finished reading the afternoon paper, acquainted them with the happenings in the outside world, adding personal comments. Mrs. Lyle supplied the simple gossip of the neighborhood and narrated the domestic episodes of the day. Something thrilling was always occurring to Mrs. Lyle; such as the overturning of a quart of milk by Miss Muffet, the white cat, or the failure of a batch of jelly to jell. Betty brought the news of the high school, and the boys drew on their day’s experiences for items of interest. Mr. Benjy, having unburdened himself of information and opinions, stretched out in the hammock and quietly fell asleep. Barry enjoyed those evenings at home.
The Saturday night of the Wessex game was especially warm, and Barry and Peaches went to the village and returned with ice-cream. Mrs. Lyle supplied cake, and Peaches summoned Mill and Zo to the feast. Toby tore himself from his defunct snails at the first hail of “Toby! Oh, Toby! Ice-cream!” Zo had brought his violin along and later he played for them. And when, after several classic selections, he rendered “Sunny Days,” Toby joined the others in singing the words of the school song. Toby sang very earnestly, with a voice like that of one of his pet frogs!
When the violin was laid back in its case, conversation took the place of music. Peaches inquired about the snails, and Betty, not having heard the sad tidings, asked if Toby was going to train them. Peaches replied reprovingly:
“Only ignorance can excuse such a—a callous question, Betty. The snails are—the snails— You tell her, Barry. I haven’t the heart to, myself.”
“Dead,” said Barry, solemnly.
“Dead!” echoed Betty. “You mean they were dead when— Why, then, that was what—” Betty sought for a delicate phrase.
“It was,” affirmed Peaches. “Barry and I noticed it, too—shortly after leaving the campus.”
“Aw, get out!” Toby protested. “Why, they don’t hardly smell at all. Gee, there’s only eight of ’em, Mrs. Lyle!”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know—” began Mrs. Lyle, doubtfully.
“I suspect you will know,” murmured Peaches, pessimistically. “Sooner or later.”
There were footsteps on the farther sidewalk and a figure passed, a dark form in the uncertain radiance of the nearest light. Barry saw Mrs. Lyle lean suddenly forward and stare intently through the gloom, saw Betty’s hand go out and rest on her mother’s, saw Mrs. Lyle settle back in her chair. The sound of a faint sigh came to him in a pause of the talk. It was a small enough incident, yet it left Barry vaguely disturbed and curious. A moment later Mrs. Lyle said:
“Betty, don’t you think it’s getting just a little—”
Then Mr. Benjy was awakened and the party was over.
At the gate Walter Millington turned to call back:
“I’ll have my radio set up by Monday, Betty. I want you to come over and hear it. And Mrs. Lyle, too, and Mr. Benjy, if they care about it.”
Betty consented eagerly, but what her mother said was drowned by Mr. Benjy’s voice.
“Wonderful invention,” he was declaring as he got out of the hammock. “Makes one wonder what—er—what next, eh? I was reading the other day—”
But Mill and Zo didn’t wait to hear what he had read, and in the withdrawal of the rest, which was accompanied by the scraping of chairs, the balance of his remark was a total loss. But Mr. Benjy didn’t mind. It happened so often.
Baseball practice was over for the fall and on Monday Peaches proposed tennis in the afternoon. But they found all the courts in use, and so, leaving their rackets behind, they sauntered over to the running-track and watched the football squads performing on the gridiron beyond. Peaches was rather bearish regarding Broadmoor’s chance of a victory the coming Saturday, when she was to play Peebles School at Clear Lake.
“We haven’t got the material we had last year,” he said, sitting on the turf and chewing a grass. “Lost a lot of good fellows in June. Almost the whole back field and half the line. I don’t say the Major won’t have a team by the time we face Hoskins, but he hasn’t got it yet, nor the sign of it.”
Just then a stray football came bobbing across the running-track and settled a few yards behind them, and Barry got up and went after it. Some forty yards away down the field a player raised a hand in signal.
“Let’s see you kick it, Barry,” called Peaches. Barry smiled dubiously but accepted the challenge. He poised the scuffed ball, stepped forward, swung his right leg, and dropped the pigskin. Fortune stood by him, for instep and leather met fairly and the ball arched away, across the bluish ribbon of track, safely past the end of the goal, and straight to the waiting player. Barry stared in mingled surprise and pleasure and Peaches clapped his hands.
“If that wasn’t an accident,” he laughed as Barry returned to his seat on the grass, “they ought to have you on the team. That was a mighty pretty punt, son, and all of forty yards.”
“Well, but it was an accident!” said Barry. “I haven’t touched a football since last fall.”
Peaches shook his head.
“I don’t know. I’m afraid you’re trying to put something over on us, Barry, my lad. I’m beginning to suspect—” He stopped suddenly and then added in lower tones: “Here comes the Major! Say, I’ll bet you he saw that and—”
The coach waited for a white-clad runner to pass and then crossed the path.
“Hello, Jones,” he called. “I’ve hardly seen you this fall. How are you?” The two boys arose and Peaches shook hands.
“First rate, Major, thank you. And you, sir? Have a nice summer?”
“So-so. Spent August in training-camp; that was fun. Got rid of five or six pounds up there.” His cool gray eyes turned speculatively to Barry, and Peaches announced:
“This is Barry Locke, Major. Major Loring, Barry.”
Barry shook hands, conscious of something questioning both in the firm clasp of the coach’s hard, brown hand and in the level gaze. Major Loring had a lean, deeply tanned face that was distinctly good-looking, but Barry had the sudden conviction that if the firm mouth and the steady gray eyes ceased to smile the Major wouldn’t look nearly so pleasant! And Barry was also as suddenly convinced that should the Major say, “Locke, stand on your head!” he would immediately and unquestioningly stand on his head!
What the Major did say, however, was little like that.
“You’ve played football, I take it, Locke,” he remarked.
“Very little, sir,” answered Barry.
“What do you call very little?”
“Two years, sir, at high school. But I never made anything.”
“How old are you? Sixteen?”
“Not quite. I’ll be sixteen in December.”
“I see. You seem to be able to kick a ball.”
“That was—mostly accident, Major.”
“Possibly. Why haven’t you reported for football, Locke? Anything wrong with you?”
“No, sir, only I—I just didn’t think I cared to try for it. I play baseball.”
“I see.” Major Loring looked inquiringly at Peaches. “How has practice been going?” he asked. “You’re through, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir; finished Saturday. I guess we got on pretty well. We’re weak in some places, but we’ll probably find some new material in March.”
“We’ll hope so. I tried to get over and have a look at you, but this business here kept me busy.” He turned again to Barry and said crisply: “Well, Locke, now that baseball’s over you can give us a chance at you, I guess. I’d like to see you at work with the back-field fellows. Start to-morrow, eh?”
Barry looked to Peaches for aid, but Peaches was grinning heartlessly. Barry gulped and nodded.
“If you think—” he began.
“Good!” said the Major. “Report to the manager at three-thirty. I can’t promise you anything but hard work this fall, Locke, but in this game we have to keep next year always in mind.” He nodded to Barry and to Peaches. “Come to see me, Jones,” he called over his shoulder as he strode away.
Barry turned a perplexed and unhappy countenance to his companion.
“But—but I don’t want to play football!” he protested.
Peaches chuckled.
“Go and tell the Major, Barry,” he advised.
Barry stared at the coach’s retreating form and shook his head despondently.
“You know blamed well I wouldn’t dare to,” he sighed. “He—he’d probably order me shot at sunrise!”