CHAPTER XII
MR. ALSOP’s DIGNITY
“I’m awfully sorry!” began Mulcahy, vehemently, as soon as the door had closed behind the departing form of Mr. Alsop. “I’m awfully sorry, but I couldn’t help it. There wasn’t any other way out.”
“I suppose not,” answered Archer, with sullen sarcasm.
Mulcahy came round the table and put his hand on Archer’s shoulder. Sam threw it off and edged away.
“Just try to think of it from my side,” urged Mulcahy. “Here I was, caught in the act. If Alsop had wanted to make a row about it, I might have lost my scholarship. They’d all have been down on me, anyway, and it would have been terribly hard to get them over to my side again; while as for you—” He hesitated at this point, not sure how to put his idea into unobjectionable form.
“While as for me,” flamed Archer, “all I get is to have Alsop tell all the rest that I’m a liar and going to the bad as fast as I can. That’s nothing at all!”
“You’re crazy!” answered Mulcahy, smiling compassionately at his companion’s vehemence. “Nothing like that will happen. You’ve a right to smoke if you want to. Alsop understands that. I smoothed out all the difficulty about your telling him that you didn’t. You won’t hear from it again. Alsop won’t think any differently of you from what he always has.”
“No different, but more so,” interjected Sam, bitterly.
“While as for me, why, my whole life plans might be spoiled.”
“My life plans don’t make any difference, do they?”
“You haven’t any. You don’t need to have any. A fellow in your position, with all the bills paid for you, and everything provided for years to come, doesn’t know what it is to have to struggle along with your head just above water, always afraid a big wave will roll up and swamp you.”
“Why didn’t you think of that when you lighted the cigarettes?” demanded Sam, roughly. “What business have you to smoke at all? You know the rules.”
“The rules are silly for a man of my age,” returned Mulcahy. “If I’d known Alsop was going to butt in, of course I wouldn’t have done it.”
“It’s done now, anyway,” sighed Archer, looking at his watch. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to do some studying to-night. I can’t let Alsop flunk me to-morrow, after this.”
“I’m going,” said the visitor. He held out his hand with his best, most flattering smile. “Good-by, Sammy. You showed yourself the right sort of a friend to-night. I shan’t forget it.”
“Nor I,” thought Sam, as he gave back a feeble pressure and muttered a return good-night.
When Mulcahy was gone, Sam sat down by the lamp with his books spread out before him. For a long time, however, he let his eyes stray past them to the shaded corner of the room, while with tight-pressed lips and wrinkled brow he considered his experiences since he came to Seaton, and pronounced himself a fool. He had not been a fool in every respect, it was true; he hadn’t been fresh, or boastful about himself, and he had not done things flagrantly wrong, but he saw clearly that many of his judgments had been mistaken. Strangely enough, the irritating incident of the evening did not so greatly depress him. He felt a certain satisfaction in the superiority of his behavior as compared with Mulcahy’s, which served to offset the uneasiness caused by the teacher’s error. But he did wish that he hadn’t committed himself so far to intimacy with Mulcahy, and he regretted that he had invited him home for Sunday.
In the distractions of the evening, Sam overlooked one part of the French lesson for the next day. Mr. Alsop had given notice of a test on vocabulary, a comparatively easy matter to prepare if he had only remembered to study it. He was unpleasantly reminded of this omission at the recitation next morning, when Mr. Alsop announced that all those who failed to write correctly the English equivalents of twenty of the twenty-five French words on the paper, must come to a “make-up” on Saturday at five. Sam had forgotten to study his vocabulary. He struggled over the list, and succeeded in getting but eighteen of the twenty-five. On Saturday morning Mr. Alsop read his name among those doomed to the five-o’clock make-up.
To be present at five o’clock on Saturday meant a late train home and the evening spoiled. Sam had secured out-of-town permission from the office, and had arranged to escort his mother to a meeting of his old school athletic association in the evening. It seemed hard—unjust—to be cut off from this prearranged visit, in order to take an exercise which involved hardly five minutes and could be as well taken at some other time. So the boy, having fretted and reviled for an hour, called at Mr. Alsop’s room, and after explaining that the make-up would prevent his going home, offered to take it in the instructor’s room immediately after his return.
“I don’t see why you should have a privilege which the others have not; and I don’t see why I should sacrifice my time to save a student from the results of his own neglect,” said Mr. Alsop, tartly. Like many a serious but narrow-minded pedagogue, he was taking the wholesale failure of the class as a personal affront. He felt his dignity struck at almost as if the boys had deliberately refused to learn. To Sam Archer, moreover, he owed no favor.
“It’s a slight matter,” pleaded Sam, foolishly, “and it’s going to keep me from going home. I got permission from the office three days ago.”
“It is not a slight matter,” declared Mr. Alsop, sharply. “I beg to differ with you. Neglect of work is never a slight matter. Permissions from the office are always provisional. You will come with the rest. I have no extra time to give you.”
Sam withdrew, crestfallen and indignant. He understood that he was paying the penalty for the misunderstanding of the evening before, and also for the morning’s shock to the teacher’s self-esteem. The unfairness of it rankled deep. The loss of thirty-six hours at home, the breaking of the engagement with his mother, the abandonment of his plan of reunion with his old mates—all counted as nothing in the balance when weighed against Mr. Alsop’s five minutes and ruffled dignity. The worst of it was the fact that there was no appeal. The principal was away on leave of absence for six months. Every teacher was autocrat in his own courses. To resist would be to collide with the whole machinery of government of an institution which prided itself on expelling annually more boys than any other school in the land. Between enduring in silence, and resorting to entreaties and flattery,—the only alternatives,—Sam did not hesitate a moment. The one he could bear, the other he would not stoop to.
On the way down to the telegraph office, where he sent a brief message to his mother, announcing that he could not get away, Sam drew an angry comparison between Mr. Alsop’s methods and those of certain other instructors: Dr. Leighton in Greek had discovered his pupil’s weakness on the verb and offered to give special help at any time the boy chose to call at his room; Mr. Howe in mathematics, finding him well advanced in geometry and algebra, had voluntarily suggested that he slight those subjects and apply the time thus gained where it was more needed; Professor Towle in English roughed him in the class when he got things wrong, but Towle had a heart of gold and was square as a brick. On the way back he dwelt on Mulcahy’s treacherous selfishness of the evening before, which had set Mr. Alsop against him and had made him forget that wretched vocabulary. “There’s one consolation,” he muttered to himself. “I shan’t have to take him home with me now.”
But Mulcahy had no wish to be cheated of his visit to the Archers. “I’ll fix that up,” he promised eagerly, when Sam informed him of the change of plan. “Let me go and see Alsop. I’ll tell him a yarn that’ll bring him round in five minutes.”
“What yarn?”
“Oh, I don’t know; any old thing that’ll go—something about a family party, or your mother’s being sick and sending for you and your being so overcome by losing his respect that you didn’t dare explain. It’ll be dead easy.”
“Easy or not, you won’t do it!” replied Archer, savagely. “I won’t have any one sucking round Alsop for me. You’ve told him lies enough, as it is.”
“Don’t be a fool!” said Mulcahy, sharply. “Don’t you want to go?”
“No, I don’t. I did, but I don’t want to any more.”
Mulcahy, disappointed here, had other forms of amusement. That afternoon Sam dropped in at the Sedgwicks’ to call, and allowed himself to be persuaded to stay to dinner, at which meal he proved to his own satisfaction that the disasters of the day had not affected his appetite. Afterward he lingered in the society of Mrs. Sedgwick and Miss Margaret as long as it seemed decent, and departed for his room reasonably comforted in mind. As he crossed the street, in the rear of the Academy buildings, two familiar figures appeared opposite him under a gaslight and got away quickly into the darkness. They were John Fish and Mulcahy, each with an overcoat on his arm.
The next day John Fish was at church, wedged into the corner of a pew. He slept during most of the service. Mulcahy stayed in his room; his report next day informed the authorities that he had been suffering from an attack of indigestion. Fish took a long nap in the afternoon. He told Mr. Alsop, as they walked to dinner together, that he liked to pass Sunday quietly. Mulcahy was well enough to be present at the Christian Fraternity in the evening.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHALLENGE
The Christmas vacation brought Sam a chance to consider his school experiences away from the school atmosphere. He did this in part deliberately, in part by an unconscious process of comparison of school standards with home standards, the hard facts of student life with the fine and high ideals of his father and mother. Certain phases of schoolboy morality he talked over with Mr. Archer, who, pleased to receive the confidence of his son, met frankness with frankness and cleared Sam’s mind of many a harassing doubt. The quiet trust of his parents braced the boy strongly against the influence of evil.
Sam went back to school resolved that if he could not have the intimacy of the best he would at least not associate with the worst; if he could not be popular with those whom he respected, he would not seek the favor of those whom he could not respect. He was convinced that he was not marked for great distinction in his school career. He might, by keeping eternally at it, in course of time make a fair showing as a hurdler; he could always get good marks in mathematics and history; he could maintain friendly relations with a good many fellows. More than this, however, was not to be hoped for. He could not, if he would, go on a still-hunt for honors after the calculating fashion with which Mulcahy was scheming to gain possession of the Yale Cup. He was not made that way.
The work of the winter was for Sam uneventful and plodding. He toiled with sullen aversion on his French, with devotion on his Greek, with calm satisfaction on his mathematics and history, with resignation on his other subjects. In the gymnasium he practised pole-vaulting; and on the wooden track outside, with Collins’s assistance, he struggled with dashes and starts and hurdles, and met discouragement with a laugh. He managed also to find free intervals for a little reading. On the whole the laborious life proved not unpleasant, and time slipped rapidly away.
Besides himself, Jones and Mulcahy were the chief exponents of the art of pole-vaulting. Jones was the star of the school, brilliant and unapproachable. He could do ten feet whenever he wanted to, and was deemed capable of very much better performances. Mulcahy started with nine feet, and Sam with eight feet six. After a month’s work, Mulcahy had climbed to nine three and Sam to nine feet. They practised at different times, but each listened greedily to reports of the other’s progress, and while openly depreciating his own powers, hoped from day to day to discover the precious knack of combining spring and throw, which would put him well ahead of his rival. Mulcahy was handicapped by his weight, Sam by his length and slowness.
The intimacy between the two was lapsing. The process was slow, because Sam was too good-natured to quarrel openly and Mulcahy too thick-skinned to be sensitive to ordinary chilliness of treatment. Sam put himself to some inconvenience to be absent from his room when he thought Mulcahy might call; he likewise cultivated a friendship with Kendrick, whom Mulcahy disliked. In time Mulcahy awoke to the fact that Archer’s neglect was intentional, and accepted the rebuff as he would have accepted the final refusal of an expected purchaser to take a book. While there was no open break between them, Sam shrewdly suspected that to reject Mulcahy as a friend was to invite him as an enemy.
“Where’s your friend Mulcahy these days?” Peck asked, one evening early in February. “You don’t seem to be so thick with him as you were a while ago.”
“No,” answered Sam, indifferently. “I don’t seem to be.”
“What’s the matter?” pursued Peck. “Been scrapping?”
“No. We just don’t see as much of each other as we used to.”
Duncan fidgeted about a little, and then blurted out, “Of course it’s none of my business,—except as I’ve a little claim in the room and have some interest in knowing whom I’m likely to find here,—but I’d really like to be told whether you’re just taking a vacation from him or have got through with him for good.”
“Well, I guess I’m through with him for good,” confessed Sam.
Duncan’s face broke into a smile. “Glad to hear it! Only you ought to have done it long ago. When you ran up against him in the pole-vault, you probably began to see what sort of a fellow he is.”
“I haven’t run up against him in the pole-vault,” replied Sam. “We don’t practise together. It was something that happened last term that opened my eyes.”
“Oh, it was!” said Peck, in a tone between a question and an exclamation. He waited a little to see whether Archer was going to explain, but as Sam volunteered no information, he continued: “It’s about time for me to begin to work, if I’m going to pass off those exams in June. I couldn’t study here with that fellow hanging round.”
“I’m sorry if I drove you out,” said Sam, rather stiffly.
“Oh, that’s all right. I didn’t have to go unless I wanted to, and you had just as good a right to have your friends round as I did to have mine. I couldn’t really expect you to take up all my prejudices.”
“There was prejudice all round, I’m afraid,” responded Sam. “I had my share. I thought you were down on Mulcahy just because he was a poor fellow who was pushing his way up, and it made me so mad I couldn’t see anything wrong with him. It wasn’t till after he’d played me a dirty trick with Alsop that my eyes began to open. Then I thought it all over during vacation, and made up my mind that he wasn’t a safe person to fool with.”
“I didn’t hear anything about any trouble with Alsop,” said Duncan, with evident curiosity.
Sam saw that he was committed, and told his tale. Peck listened with deep interest and frequent exclamations. “I don’t think I should have taken that as sweetly as you did,” he said at length. “No fellow has a right to put you in that position. Why didn’t you say: ‘Mr. Alsop, I told you the truth. I don’t smoke,’ and let Mulcahy get out of it as well as he could?”
“I didn’t like to do that,” replied Sam. “It didn’t seem honorable.”
“I don’t know but you’re right,” said Duncan, thoughtfully. “You couldn’t play the mucker because he did. It wouldn’t have done any good, either. He’d have lied you right down.”
“Perhaps so. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make it worse.”
Duncan nodded agreement. “I suppose it would. You’ve got a lot more sense than I thought you had.”
Sam smiled grimly at the dubious compliment.
“Look here,” went on Duncan, taking up a brown-covered book from the table. “You’re a shark in geometry, aren’t you?”
“I got B plus for a term mark,” said Sam, complacently.
“Well, I wish you’d explain this formula. I can understand equation 3, but how you get 5 from it, as the book says, is beyond me.”
It wasn’t a difficult thing to explain, nor was Duncan as stupid about geometry as he thought himself. Sam turned the clean white pages of the book.
“New?”
“Yes!” ejaculated Duncan, with indignant emphasis, “the third I’ve had this year. It’s a scandal the way books disappear in this school. You might as well throw ’em away as leave ’em out on the hall racks. The last one I had, I put my initials in at the bottom of the next to the last page. If you ever see a book with ‘D. P.’ in it, confiscate it—it’s mine.”
Duncan stopped that afternoon for a few minutes at the room of Fuzzy Woods in Odlin House.
“How’s Shirley?” he asked in the course of gossip. “Done anything queer lately?”
“I guess not,” drawled Woods. “He’s got two or three duels on.”
Duncan giggled. “What for?—insults?”
“Yes,” returned Woods. “It’s always for insults.”
“Will they fight?”
“Naw, the duels never come off—at least none has so far. They think it’s a great joke till he gets fierce as a pirate and asks ’em which they’ll take, swords or pistols. Then most of ’em try to sneak out of it. He told Lauter he’d shoot him anyway, and scared the life out of him.”
“Has he challenged you?”
“Naw, I let him alone.”
“What’s the matter with the fellow?”
“He was in school a long time in France and Switzerland; he got a lot of crazy ideas there about honor and insults and settling things by duels.”
“Can he really fence?” questioned Duncan.
“How should I know!” answered Fuzzy, indifferently.
Just then some one knocked and was yelled at to come in. It proved to be Shirley himself, a slender, well-groomed boy with an English accent, who had come to borrow a translation. On Woods’s invitation he stayed. Duncan fell to asking him questions about foreign schools and schoolboys. The two got on finely until Duncan wanted to know what kind of athletics they had in these foreign places, and Shirley confessed that there were no regular sports.
“What do they do for exercise?”
“Oh, they walk and fence and play tennis a little.”
“No track athletics, or football, or baseball, or rowing?”
“No. Football wouldn’t be allowed.”
“Why not?”
“It isn’t a gentleman’s game.”
Duncan sniffed. “It isn’t a lady’s game. Don’t they even have cricket?”
“No, they don’t know any more about cricket than they do about baseball.”
“I suppose they all go to walk two and two, like the girls in a convent. They must be a choice lot of little mollycoddles!”
“I shouldn’t advise you to call one of them by that name!” declared Shirley, warming up.
“Why not?”
“You’d have a duel on your hands.”
“Rats!” said Duncan, contemptuously. “No one but a barbarian fights duels these days.”
“That shows how little you know about it,” said Shirley, stiffly.
“Would you fight a duel?” demanded Peck.
“Certainly, if honor demanded it.”
“Then you’d be a barbarian. Don’t you think so, Fuzzy?”
“I don’t think anything about it,” answered Woods, who had been vainly trying to catch Duncan’s eye and warn him that he was entering dangerous ground.
“Half barbarian and half fool,” continued Peck.
Shirley rose and stood erect, gazing straight at the visitor, with indignant eyes and reddening cheeks.
“I am not used to being called a fool!” he said solemnly.
“Who called you a fool?” asked Duncan, coolly. “I didn’t.”
“You said a man who would fight a duel was a fool and a barbarian,” repeated Shirley.
“Half a fool and half a barbarian,” corrected Peck.
“But I said that I would fight a duel.”
“Then you must be it,” asserted Duncan, with nonchalance, stretching himself out in his chair and putting his hands in his pockets.
“Those are insulting words to apply to a gentleman. You will take them back!” cried Shirley, hotly.
“I didn’t apply them—just made a general statement. You took ’em yourself. Perhaps you felt they fitted.”
“That’s quite enough!” said Shirley, slowly, taking a step forward. “It’s evident that you mean to insult me. We will settle the point of honor in a gentleman’s way. Name your weapons and the place of meeting. Shall it be swords or pistols? The choice is yours.”
CHAPTER XIV
AN AFFAIR OF HONOR
“Swords or pistols!” echoed Duncan, sufficiently aroused to sit up in his chair. “What have swords and pistols to do with it?”
“They are the recognized weapons for settling affairs of honor. Perhaps you were ignorant of the fact.” Shirley spoke with scornful dignity.
“This isn’t an affair of honor, it’s a mere difference of opinion,” protested Duncan. “You wouldn’t fight over that, I hope.”
“I’d fight over insults!”
Duncan laughed aloud, reckless of the fact that his laugh added to the affront.
“What good does fighting do? If you should wound me with a sword, it wouldn’t make the truth of what I said any less true, and if I should put a bullet into you, it wouldn’t drive out the insult. I say that the man who fights duels is a barbarian. If I fight, I make myself a barbarian.”
“Swords or pistols!” insisted Shirley, with a dogged indifference to logic.
“Neither,” answered Peck.
“Then you are not a gentleman, and are a coward. You have my contempt.”
“Hold on there!” exclaimed Peck, dropping his smile and his air of pleasantry. “Who’s calling names now?”
“They are names usually applied to a man who insults you and won’t give you satisfaction.”
“If you think I owe you satisfaction for our difference of opinion, you must owe me something for calling me a contemptible coward,” announced Duncan, in serious tones. “I’ll propose—” he hesitated, and approached a step nearer Shirley; “I’ll propose bowie-knives!”
Shirley recoiled. “I am not used to bowie-knives.”
“Nor I to swords and pistols,” said Duncan.
The fairness of this answer appealed to the man of honor. “Then we must find some other way,” he said. “Insults can only be wiped out with blood. We’ll play chess, and the one who’s beaten will commit suicide.”
At this proposition Duncan stared hard. For a moment he harbored the suspicion that Shirley was chaffing him, not he Shirley. But the boy’s solemn face and tragic manner immediately dispelled this illusion.
“I don’t play chess,” Duncan answered with plausible earnestness. “Let’s make it golf, and leave to the one who’s defeated the option of committing suicide or not. We can consider him dead anyway.”
“I don’t play golf.”
At this point Woods, seeing a chance to bring the deadly affair to a bloodless conclusion, interrupted with a shrewd proposal.
“Why not run it off? Both of you can run. Make the course a certain number of times round the wooden track, and let the fellow that’s beaten set up fudges and stuff for the principals and seconds. I call that a very honorable arrangement.”
“It isn’t quite regular,” remarked Shirley, doubtfully. “Properly there ought to be some blood shed.”
“If I’m beaten, I’ll apologize,” said Duncan. “How does that strike you? I suppose on a pinch I might produce a little blood. I don’t want to neglect any formalities.”
“I think I can accept without that,” said Shirley, with magnanimity.
“The one that’s beaten sets up for the crowd; don’t forget that!” Woods interposed. “Whose second am I going to be?”
“You can have him and I’ll get some one else, or I’ll take him and you can have some one else.” Duncan was truly generous.
“I’ll take him,” said Shirley.
“Then, sir, I will send my second to wait upon yours and arrange for the details of the combat. I have the honor, sir, to wish you good afternoon. We shall meet again!” This grand peroration safely and pompously delivered, Duncan stalked solemnly away.
So much time had been consumed in this highly interesting interview with Shirley that Duncan postponed until after recitation the pleasure of retailing the whole story to Bruce, and giving him the chance to act as second. On the way home he remembered that Bruce was to be in Boston the following day, but this did not dampen his spirits. Seconds for such an occasion could be obtained by the squad. He flew upstairs to his room chuckling and stumbling, nodded absently to Archer, who was moping over a Greek lesson, and took up an algebra with the intention of utilizing the fifteen minutes remaining to gain some idea of the methods of the review chapter which was the lesson for the four-o’clock flunkers’ class. Through the carelessness of inattention he ran on a snag in the first explanation, and had to call on his room-mate to help him off. Then he worked out two problems near the beginning and one near the end of the exercise, threw the book on the table, looked at his watch, rose, stretched, and burst into a hearty laugh.
“I never saw anything so funny as that in the algebra,” remarked Sam, observing his merry room-mate over his reading glasses.
“It isn’t in the algebra, it isn’t in any book,” cried Duncan, gleefully. “Nothing like it ever happens in a book. I’m engaged in an affair of honor; I’m going to fight a duel!”
“A duel!” exclaimed Sam, aghast. “With whom?”
“Oh, a fellow you don’t know, in Odlin House.”
“When?”
“To-morrow, on the running track behind the gym. Will you be my second?”
The invitation was due to a momentary impulse of friendliness. Archer was a track expert and a decent fellow; why not let him in?
Duncan stood with hands in trousers pockets, smiling roguishly and watching the expression on Archer’s face. Appalled by the grim picture called up by the word “duel,” and puzzled to reconcile this conception with Peck’s evident gayety, Sam knew not whether to accept or refuse. Then there recurred to his mind the serious incident of the last term, when Kendrick had sprung instantly to his help, and he answered in Kendrick’s own words, “Sure I will!”
“That’s right,” said Peck. “There’ll be no end of sport. You see—oh, hang that bell!—I’ll tell you all about it after class.”
At half-past two the next afternoon, when the outskirts of the gymnasium were clear of idlers, the duel was fought. It was agreed that Archer should be starter and Woods judge at the finish; the course was three times round the track. Shirley took the lead at the start, running in quick, short steps, with Peck pounding away in eager strides behind him. Shirley tripped past the judge on the first lap, ten yards ahead of his pursuer, and went pattering around the curve and up the back stretch as if his legs were driven by a gasoline engine. At the lower end, however, his pace began to tell upon him; the pat-pat of the striking soles became slower, the steps shorter. Duncan perceived that the time for his spurt had come, but he was twelve yards behind when he crossed the line the second time.
The third lap proved fierce beyond all expectation. Shirley, game to the last, clenched his fists and lashed himself on. Duncan, stung by the fear of an ignominious end to his adventure, plying his legs to the limit of his strength, with dry mouth and dizzy head panted after his rival. He gained but slowly. On the back stretch he was still five yards behind. As they came down toward the finish line, two wobbly, tottering figures with set eyes and strained, twisted features, one close to the shoulder of the other, Sam, seized with the fear that both would drop before the finish, reached forward eagerly to catch Duncan as he touched the line. Duncan, keeping his feet to the end, plunged helplessly into Sam’s arms. At the same time Woods received the quivering, gasping Shirley, who lay upon him for a few seconds, an inert dead weight. Presently Shirley opened his eyes and looked up. “Who—won?” he breathed rather than spoke.
“I’m blest if I know!” answered Woods. “I forgot to see. Who got it, Archer?”
“I didn’t notice,” said Sam. “It wasn’t my business to judge the finish. I was getting ready to catch this fellow.”
“They were right together anyway. We’ll have to call it a tie,” decided the judge.
“That means we don’t get anything,” observed Archer.
“We’ll run it—over again—” panted Shirley, over his shoulder, as Woods led him away to the gymnasium.
“No, we won’t!” whispered Duncan in a broken undertone into his second’s ear. “I’d rather take my chances with swords or pistols. Catch me running any more races without training. I’ll bet we made a new record.”
It developed in the course of the afternoon that there had been unseen witnesses of the spectacle, and these witnesses not only spread highly colored versions of what they had seen, but also asked rude, saucy questions of the actors. The fellows in Odlin House cleverly pried certain admissions out of Shirley, guessed at what they did not know, and put in circulation a tale which was received with greedy ears and grinning faces. Duncan bounced into 7 Hale in the middle of the evening and planted himself, an outraged victim of treachery, before Archer’s chair.
“What did you want to go and blab all this thing for?” he began, glowering fiercely at his room-mate’s startled face.
“I didn’t,” replied Sam, quickly. “I haven’t said a word about it.”
“It’s all over school. Some one’s been giving it away. They say it was you.”
Sam tossed his book upon the table with a spiteful jerk. “They lie, then. I haven’t even told who won the race. I’ve referred every single fellow to you.”
Duncan’s wrath gave way to gloom. “Some one’s done it, anyway. They’re all joshing me about it.”
“I can’t help that,” said Sam. “What do you care? Laugh it off.”
“I’ve been laughing it off. I’ve laughed till my face aches, but that doesn’t make me any happier. Do you know, I could have sworn I was ahead of that fellow at the finish. Why didn’t you keep your eyes open?”
“I was thinking of you, not of the race. You looked as if you were all in, ten feet before you got to me. I expected to see you drop.”
Sam waited for Peck to reply, but Peck offered no comment.
“As a matter of fact,” continued Sam, frankly, “the last time I did notice your positions, Shirley was a good yard ahead.”
“I’m dead sure I beat him at the finish,” said Duncan, obstinately. “I wish I’d had Bruce there!”
CHAPTER XV
SAM’S FIRST RACE
One result of the Shirley-Peck duel was to check the developing friendship of the inmates of 7 Hale. Duncan felt that Archer ought to have been on the watch when he passed Shirley at the finish—he took most indignantly the suggestion that Shirley was really ahead after all. Sam, having performed his part to the best of his ability, was disgusted with the childish obstinacy with which Duncan cherished his sense of injury. Coldness again marked the relations of the room-mates.
Another consequence of the bloody fray was the appearance of Shirley among the track men. Bruce got him out—no one could long resist the spell of Bruce’s winning manner—and Collins appointed him his proper task. They tried him at first on the longer stretches, but six hundred yards and even three hundred were soon found to be distances for which Shirley’s quick stride was not adapted. Then Collins set him to sprinting, and rubbed his hands with delight over the result. “Frenchie” took to starting and sprinting as a hound to a rabbit trail. In a week his starts were instantaneous, and his legs twinkled along the forty yards like the feet of a running mouse. Duncan was out too for the three hundred, and doing well, his friends said, though with old Chouder in the event, second place was the best he could hope for.
Mulcahy’s attitude toward Sam was changing. There had been no outward break in their relations, but Mulcahy had become distant in his greeting, and only showed his old cordiality when he had some special object to attain. He was busy now with what Duncan called “a new graft”—getting members for the Harvard Club, of which he was secretary and treasurer. Every boy who was preparing for Harvard was pressed to join in order to prove his loyalty. Every new member paid one dollar for a printed shingle signed by the secretary. The club had no meetings, except to elect officers and to be photographed. It had no expenses except the price of the shingle plate with fifty cheap prints, and the cost of inserting a group photograph in the school Annual.
“Easy money!” said Duncan in disgust, when Sam reported that he had joined. “He’s got my dollar too.”
“You don’t think he keeps the money, do you?” asked Sam, surprised at the implied charge.
“You don’t think he gives it back, do you?” retorted Duncan.
“No, but there must be miscellaneous expenses.”
“You can call it that if you want to. The account stands something like this: twenty-five shingles sold to new members at a dollar each, twenty-five dollars; twenty-five shingles bought at a dime each, two-fifty; picture in the Annual, five; miscellaneous, seventeen-fifty; balance in treasury at the beginning of next year, nothing. Conundrum: who got the seventeen-fifty? Your friend Mulcahy is a slick one!”
“He isn’t my friend!” declared Sam, stoutly.
“He is if he can get anything out of you; if he can’t, he’s your enemy.”
Vexed at the slur at his simplicity implied in Duncan’s words, yet half inclined to acknowledge that the senior was right, Sam took his geometry and departed for the Academy. It lacked still fifteen minutes to the time for recitation, but he hoped to find among the few steadies who often came early either Phipps or Entstein, the sharks of the section, and get an idea from one of them as to the last original in the lesson. He had solved four out of the five.
No sooner was he seated at a desk than Mulcahy came in, glanced round the room, made quick estimate of the possibilities offered, and slipped into a seat beside Archer.
“Hello, Archer!” he exclaimed, his voice ringing with cordiality. “I haven’t seen you for a week. How’s the pole-vault going?”
“Not very well,” responded Sam, coldly.
“If you’re doing no better than I am, you’re rotten!” went on Mulcahy, amiably. “I can’t make nine feet any more—seem to have lost the knack. I hear you did nine four the other day.”
“Nine three,” corrected Sam.
“I can’t touch that. I see where I come out at the bottom in the Shield Meet. How many originals did you get to-day?”
“Four.”
“You’re a shark! What kind of figure did you have for 213?”
Sam opened his papers and showed a neatly drawn diagram with his proof carefully indicated beneath. Mulcahy studied it silently for two full minutes. “That’s the way I did it,” he said. “I wasn’t sure it was right. Did you get 214?”
Sam handed over another sheet, to which his companion gave as close a scrutiny as to the first. “I don’t understand that,” he said, pointing to a statement. “How do you get that?”
“That’s easy,” replied Sam, proud of his achievement. “I’ll show you.” He looked about for a loose sheet of paper.
“Use this,” offered Mulcahy, turning to the blank page at the end of his book. “I can rub it out afterward.”
Sam took the geometry and quickly jotted down on the fly leaf the omitted intermediate steps. “I see that,” said Mulcahy, and devoted himself once more to the study of Sam’s diagrams. Sam turned back the leaves of the geometry. On the margin of the page next to the last he found the two letters D. P.
This discovery effectually occupied Sam’s mind during the few minutes that remained before the recitation bell sounded. His papers went unnoticed through Mulcahy’s hands. While the bell was ringing, Mulcahy asked a last question, and Sam leaned absently toward him to follow the questioner’s finger upon the page. At this moment, while their heads were close together, some one called sharply from the door at their side, “Archer!”
Sam turned and beheld Duncan Peck grinning at him in the doorway.
“What did I tell you!” Peck threw at him in a jeering undertone, and disappeared behind the entering class.
“There’s one thing I could tell you,” thought Sam, grimly, as he faced front again, “but I won’t. You can find your missing books yourself!”
When the instructor asked how many had succeeded in proving the whole five originals, Phipps alone put up his hand. Three, including Archer and Mulcahy, averred that they could do four. Others professed three and two and one, and some none at all. Mulcahy was sent to the board and returned in triumph, sure of a good mark for the recitation. He had made excellent use of Archer’s solution. Sam was not called on.
To the blasé attendant from the town, the Faculty Shield Meet of that year would have seemed little different from a dozen other events of the kind which he had witnessed. Collins and Bruce, testing it by a standard of their own, called it satisfactory. The old boys who came back from the colleges in fine attire to act as judges spoke of it with patronizing interest as a success. For two contestants, at least, it was the most important event that the school year had as yet developed. Shirley, the duellist, won his trial heat in the forty yards, though some derisive remarks were made about him as he crouched on the starting line. These remarks ceased when he took his second heat, an easy yard ahead of his nearest rival. In the third heat he was again the leader. In the final he was matched against Gay, the best hundred-yards man in school.
Sam and Taylor stood together near the finish line.
“I wish Shirley would beat that Gay, even if Gay does belong to my class,” remarked Taylor, maliciously. “Since he won the hundred last year at Hillbury, he wears a hat four sizes bigger. I don’t suppose there’s any chance for Frenchie.”
“Lots of chance,” returned Archer, wisely. “Shirley strikes his stride in the very first yard. He may get put back, of course.”
There was a false start, but it was Gay who went back a foot; another, and Fairmount joined him. All four hung on the next set, and the pistol cracked. While the others were still rising, Shirley was shooting forward with his feet well under him. He was a yard ahead at the end of ten yards; at the forty no one was within five feet of him.
“Bully for Frenchie!” cried Taylor. “That’ll take down the swelling on Gay’s head an inch or two. What’s the time? Four and three-fifths? Why, that’s the record!” And Taylor ran off to have a hand in the boisterous congratulations which the lower middlers were lavishing on their unexpected champion.
Sam was on his way to the starting line for the forty-five-yard hurdles. He had no chance against Fairmount, he knew well, but Fairmount was not in his heat, and he hoped to survive the first trial at any rate. If he could only get his long legs to swinging faster! He crouched for his start, a little white around the lips, but cool, waited while Somers was put back, and got off reasonably well. Somers was ahead of him at the second hurdle, but he caught him on the third, and breasted the tape a foot ahead. In the finals, Fairmount was outside him and Edmands and Foote inside. This time he was slower. All three got off before him, but Foote stumbled at the first hurdle and fell behind. Edmands he overtook as he passed the second. Together they ran for the third, but Archer cleared with less waste of time, and was close behind Fairmount at the finish. It was not victory, but he was fully satisfied with second place.
After that Sam had nothing to do but sit content in his warm bathrobe and watch the other races. Bruce, of course, took the six hundred yards, and Weatherford the thousand, both veterans who surprised no one. Then old Chouder’s race, the three hundred, was called. Duncan was in the pack that chased at Chouder’s heels, gradually scattering behind as the pace told. Duncan was not the last by any means, nor quick-stepping Shirley, who held the pole behind the leader, and after gaining fifteen yards on the first round, kept himself in the van during the second. Both Peck and Richmond spurted to pass him on the final stretch, but neither could quite reach him. Shirley fell across the line two feet behind Chouder, with Peck a yard farther back.
“I wonder what he’ll say now!” thought Sam, gleefully. “He can’t pretend he beat Frenchie this time!”
But alas! Sam’s complacency was soon to receive a shock. In the indoor pole-vault, which Jones won at ten feet four amid great applause, Archer did his expected nine feet three. Mulcahy, however, who had pretended two days before that he could no longer reach nine feet, vaulted nine six with ease! And when Sam taxed him with the inconsistency of his words and his performance, he smiled contemptuously, and “guessed he had got back his form!”
That night Sam waited a sleepy hour beyond his bedtime to catch Peck, who spent the evening out.
“What about Shirley now?” he demanded, as soon as the door was closed behind the truant.
“He can run,” answered Duncan, coolly.
“He licked you to-day, right and good, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did,” conceded Duncan.
“What about the day of the duel,” pursued Sam. “Didn’t he beat you then, too?”
“Perhaps he did and perhaps he didn’t. Who can tell?”
“I wasn’t so far out, anyway,” growled Sam. And Duncan thought so too, but not being wholly ready to acknowledge the error, he deferred his admission to a later time.
CHAPTER XVI
HE TRIES AGAIN
On the Saturday after the Faculty Shield day, Sam ran in the forty-five-yard hurdles again, in the handicap meet which regularly follows the scratch contests. The handicapper thought one yard about the right allowance for the long-legged upper middler; Somers got two and Foote three. Fairmount ran from scratch. It was a hot race, with every contestant hoping to cross the line first, the man in front driving himself that his advantage might not be wrested from him, the pursuers confident of superiority and struggling to secure the positions which belonged to them. Sam felt the presence of Somers and Foote ahead pulling him forward as the magnet attracts steel; his legs followed each other faster than they had ever gone before; the three hurdles were but three exhilarating bounds in his course. Forgetting Fairmount, who was behind, he ran down Somers, pressed on after Foote, and passed him by a convulsive straining effort at the finish. Never before had he felt what it was to fight his way in a race; to mark his adversary and beat him, as one throws his opponent in a wrestling bout, or as the tackier downs his man, surely and hard, on the football field. In his struggle to pass Foote he had kept ahead of Fairmount, who finished two feet behind him.
Collins was pleased, as much with the new spirit of the hurdler as with his success in the event. “He’s slow,” he remarked to Bruce, “but he’ll come in time.”
“This year?” questioned Bruce, closely. It was “this year,” the year of his captaincy, that interested Bruce.
“I can’t say,” answered Collins, thoughtfully. “It may take a long while. He’s a good, steady boy; he’ll come all right sometime.”
Duncan Peck, too, seemed to be influenced by Sam’s modest success in the handicap meeting. He confessed one day in a burst of confidence, after Sam had led him through the maze of a foolish algebra problem about two men who rowed past each other up and down stream—each, apparently, with a stop watch and a log line—that his duel joke with Shirley had proved a boomerang. In return Sam told him of the initials—D. P.—in the back of Mulcahy’s book.
“It’s mine all right,” remarked Duncan, “but I’ve got another now, and it isn’t worth while to make a row about it. I can’t prove anything against him. He’d say he bought it at Moran’s or of one of those fellows who were fired last week. It shows you what he is, though.”
“I know what he is,” said Sam, blushing. “I don’t need any more lessons.”
Another person with whom Sam hoped that he might gain some influence by the prestige of his improvement in the hurdles was his second cousin, Wally Sedgwick. Wally was a lower middler, active-minded and ambitious. Athletics would have given a natural scope to his energy, but he was too small and immature to have any chance in Seaton sports. He had fallen in with a set of idle boys of not the highest standards, who appealed to Wally’s imagination as gay young bloods; they knew things and were up to date. None of these was in the class of John Fish, a reprobate, and callous to the opinion of his associates; nor in that of Mulcahy, whose ambition led him to conceal his wrong-doing, but could not prevent his determined selfishness from pushing to the surface. The wickedness of Wally’s friends lay mainly in talk and swagger, but they had already suggested to him that the code of morals taught in his home was goody-goody, and that the proper way to show his spirit was to do “what everybody did.” Wally was popular with many of the older boys because he was the brother of Margaret Sedgwick. They bestowed attentions on him in the hope of “making themselves solid” with Miss Margaret, caring little whether these attentions were good for the boy or not.
The track team were going to Boston to compete in the schoolboy games of the Boston Athletic Association. For the first time in his school career Sam was to be a member of a Seaton team in contest with other schools. He was to wear the significant red letters on his shirt, was to see his name on the big official programme as a representative of Seaton, was to be trusted to do a part in gaining public honors for the school. He thought of it by day, dreamed of it by night, and longed, as only an inexperienced tyro can long, to do credit to those who trusted him. Mr. Archer, who sympathized with his son in all innocent interests, that he might wield the stronger influence when great questions of conduct came up for settlement, ordered a ticket and promised to be present at the contests. Sam wrote the usual disclaimer of any expectation of getting a place, but his secret hopes ran high. Why shouldn’t Fairmount win first and he second, as they had done at Seaton?
Then came the trip in pleasant but orderly company, the lunch in town, the dressing in confused, cramped quarters, the facing of tier on tier of partisans encircling the huge room, the disorderly jumble about the starting lines, the hurried calling of contestants, the uproar of rival cheers—and at last the all-important summons. Few looked upon that particular heat of the forty-five-yard hurdles with special interest. Occasional friends of runners scattered through the benches, Mr. Archer straining his eyes at the long, lank figure crouching in the outside course, Collins ever calmly observant of his protégés, the little batch of eager Seatonians watching the red letters, a noisy squad cheering the wearer of a big W—these were the real audience.
The pistol cracked. The line shot forward, over hurdles, through hurdles, stampeding for the tape. Sam stumbled, caught his step again and dashed blindly on. He sprang for the last hurdle as another was leaving it. A blue N was first, the W second, Sam an unplaced third. The starters were calling the sixth heat.
It was all over in ten seconds—the set, the start, the struggle, the finish, Sam’s dream of achievement. He slipped into a corner by his schoolmates and tried to forget his disappointment in watching the efforts of his friends. He saw Kilham of Hillbury beat out Fairmount by a foot in the finals of the hurdles. He cheered vigorously when Gay took the forty. He groaned in dismay as Bruce was pocketed on the curve of the track in the six hundred and forced behind. When Weatherford won the thousand yards and Brewster the mile, and Jones soared a handbreadth above the bar after all rivals had failed, he exulted with pure delight. At such times the sight of the success of his school almost comforted him for his own failure. But when unfamiliar letters were in the van, when the Seaton runners were lost in the field of pursuers, then the fruitlessness of his own effort recurred to him afresh, and the folly of his hopes. Abashed, he glanced up at the indistinct face in the distant gallery and wondered whether his father felt himself the victim of false representations. Exactly what his father did think he had no opportunity to discover. When Sam looked for him after the pole-vault, his place was empty; Mr. Archer, having stayed to the limit of his time, was hurrying for his train.
The next day Sam approached the groups of chattering acquaintances with some dread of sarcastic comment. His fears were needless. Kendrick and Taylor and a few others remarked sympathetically on his “hard luck”; Duncan Peck made a creditable effort to be encouraging; but the majority showed no concern whatever in his failure. This contemptuous indifference on the part of the many, this assumption that he didn’t count or that nothing was expected of him anyway, stirred Sam’s fighting blood. He did not need the consolation which Collins gave when he spoke of the event as “just practice,” nor the inspiration of Bruce’s gay derision of himself for being blocked off on the track. The public disdain was stimulus enough to a proud spirit. Sam’s resolution to brook no discouragement until time had fully proved his incompetency dates from that day.
But there were other interests in Sam’s daily life besides hurdling. His lessons were going, some well, some tolerably, some ill. In French he did not get ahead, and consequently he did not gain in favor with Mr. Alsop. In truth, it is to be feared that Sam did not try his very best for the lord of his entry. The experienced had informed him that if one did well enough with two or three teachers to make himself solid with them, they would defend him against those with whom he did ill. As Sam’s schedule was a full one and some neglect was inevitable, he followed his inclination and neglected Mr. Alsop. That gentleman did not relish neglect; it offended his dignity and cut through the smooth coating of his self-satisfaction. Mr. Alsop would never have struck an enemy whose hands were bound, but he did not hesitate to assail in the classroom with personal flings and stinging sarcasms the luckless boy who incurred his displeasure. Unable to strike back, the boy endured in silence and nursed his sense of unjust treatment with sullen, unforgiving wrath. Mr. Alsop meant well, but he lacked the instinct of fairness.
In the dormitory entry there were troubles for which Sam and Birdie Fowle were generally held responsible by Mr. Alsop,—Sam as the accessory who was too clever to be detected, Birdie as the criminal occasionally caught in the act. Some one, supposed to have been Birdie, had thrown water out of a window in the vain attempt to reach a boy who was hurling taunts from below. Mr. Alsop had called up Fowle and charged him with the offence. Birdie had acknowledged his sin. The teacher, instead of welcoming this frankness as an encouraging symptom, and by tact and kindness inspiring in that careless youth the desire to keep the peace, read him a harsh to the indignant satisfaction of the boy that the fellows were right when they said that honesty was not the best policy in dealing with profs. Injustice being the rule, one might as well be actually bad, as good and always suspected of badness.
Soon after this the day’s collection of waste paper in the wire grate in the basement was set on fire, causing small damage, but much excitement throughout the well and great chagrin to the official regulator thereof. Fortunately for Birdie, his presence at recitation at the time enabled him to prove a complete alibi. Right upon the heels of this act of vandalism some miscreant, in the middle of the evening study hour, set off a cannon cracker in the entry. Mr. Alsop, who was at home, tore open his door and rushed savagely up the stairs. Through a dense cloud of smoke he descried John Fish standing in his doorway.
“What is it, Fish?” Mr. Alsop demanded angrily.
“Some one’s set off a cannon cracker, sir,” answered Fish. “I was just coming out to see if I couldn’t catch the fellow.”
Doors were open now about the stairway, heads peered over from above.
“Could you tell where it came from?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you have anything to do with it, Booth?”
“No, sir.”
“You, Rand?”
“No, sir.”
“You, Moorhead?”
“No, sir.”
“You, Taylor?”
“No, sir.”
“You, Fish?”
“No, sir.”
Mr. Alsop went upstairs, called out every occupant of every room, and put to all the same question. Fowle and Archer he asked twice. Peck was out, and so was Lord’s room-mate. Otherwise the entire well was canvassed. After the cross-examination was concluded, the teacher gathered the whole company into his room.
“Some one has told me a falsehood,” he began solemnly. “I do not know who it is, but I can guess. To that person I want to say that I consider a lie as much worse than setting off crackers, as crackers are worse than an ordinary rough-house. The one who is responsible will do well to come to me and confess the truth. The rest of you who are shielding the guilty one should remember that by keeping silent you assume a share in the guilt. If I can’t have order in this well by any other means, I’ll put the whole well on study hours, and if that doesn’t answer, it will have to be cleaned out altogether. The school has no use for rowdies.”
This last threat Mr. Alsop did not really mean, as it would have involved firing the studious Moorhead, the good John Fish, and the cherub Rand,—the sweetest, most friendly, most diligent little boy that Mr. Alsop had on his list. But instances were known of whole dormitory wells ruthlessly swept clear at an indignation meeting of an offended faculty. Fowle and Archer as the scapegoats of the well foresaw trouble for themselves, at any rate, whatever punishments were inflicted. They got together soon after Mr. Alsop’s audience was dismissed, and held wrathful council. At the end they picked up Taylor and moved down on John Fish, who opened his door a crack to see who was knocking, and then opened it wide because a big foot prevented its being closed.
“I’m getting popular,” he said, smiling feebly at his visitors.
“Not with this gang!” said Taylor, as he shut the door behind him.
“You set off that cracker!” blurted Sam, with suppressed fierceness.
“I didn’t.”
“You lie! You did,” retorted Sam. “You know you did. We want to give you warning that this funny business has got to stop. You know that Fowle and I get the credit if anything happens here, whether we’re in it or not. If we get soaked by Alsop for anything that’s done hereafter, we’ll maul you so that you can’t stand!”
Fish looked at the trio in apprehension. Archer’s fight with Runyon had passed into dormitory history; he was regarded as a dangerous man. Fowle and Taylor were solid fellows, the latter a member of his class football team. Fish himself, though easily superior to the smaller occupants of the well, would have shrunk from single combat with any one of the militant trio. His chance against them all would have been very poor indeed.
“What do you want?” he asked sullenly.
“We want you to cut it out, that’s all,” answered Fowle.
“Cut it out entirely,” added Taylor.
“Well, I will,” answered Fish, in a sour tone, “but I can’t be responsible for everything that happens.”