Left End Edwards Part 25

"There is one other thing, Edwards," he said hesitantly. "About last night, you know; the--er--the misappropriation of Upton's blue-book.

Have you--er--thought that over?"

"I suppose so, sir."

"Hm! I should like to ask you one question and receive an absolutely truthful reply, Edwards."

"Yes, sir."

"When you took that book to your room did you intend to--er--make a wrong use of it?"

"No, sir. I saw the book on your table, Mr. Daley, and--and it did occur to me that it would be easy to copy it out in my own writing and--and turn it in as my work, sir. I read a little of it and put it back on the table. But I don't at all remember seeing it again after that, sir, and that's the truth. I haven't the slightest recollection of having it in my hand when I left this room or of putting it on the table upstairs.

And--and I'd like you to believe me, sir."

"I want to, Edwards, I want to," replied Mr. Daley eagerly.

"And--er--to-day your story sounds much more plausible. I can imagine that, with the thought of your own composition in mind and doubtless worrying you, you might easily have--er--absentmindedly picked that book from the table here when you went out and taken it to your room without being conscious of the act. I believe that to be quite possible, Edwards, and I am going to think it happened just that way. I have never observed any signs of--er--dishonesty in you, my boy, and I don't think you are a liar. We will consider that matter closed and we will both forget all about it."

"Thank you, sir," replied Steve gratefully.

"But, Edwards, this seems to me a good time to tell you that--er--that your att.i.tude toward--er--your work and toward those in authority has not been satisfactory. You have--er--impressed me as a boy with, to use a vulgar expression, a grouch. Now, get that out of your system, Edwards. No one is trying to impose on you. Your work is no harder than the next fellow's. What you lack is, I presume, application. I--er--I don't deny that possibly you are pressed for time when it comes to studying, but that is your fault. Your football work is exacting, for one thing, although there are plenty of fellows--I could name twenty or thirty with whom I come in contact--who manage to play football and maintain an excellent cla.s.s standing at the same time. So, Edwards, the fault lies somewhere with you, _in_ you, doubtless. Now, what do you think it is?"

"I don't know, Mr. Daley." Steve shook his head hopelessly. "I want to do what's right, sir, but--but somehow I can't seem to."

"When you study do you put your mind on it, or do you find yourself thinking of other things, football, for instance?"

"I guess I think of other things a good deal," replied Steve.

"Football?"

"I guess so; football and--and swimming and--lots of things, sir."

"There's a time for football and a time for study, Edwards. You will have to first of all--er--leave football behind you when you come off the field. Swimming, the same way. It won't work. I've seen it tried too often, Edwards. You--er--you wouldn't want to have to give up football, I suppose?"

"No, sir!" Steve looked up in alarm.

"But it might come to that, my boy. You're here to learn, you know, and we would not be treating your parents fairly--or you either--if we allowed you to waste your time. Football is an excellent sport; one of the best, I think; but it's only a sport, not a--er--profession, you know. All the knowledge of football in the world isn't going to help you when you leave here and try to enter college. By the way, I presume you intend to go to college, Edwards?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then keep that in mind. Remember that you're getting yourself ready for it. Perhaps that will make your work seem better worth doing. How are you getting on with your Latin?"

"Very well, sir, just now."

"Better see that 'just now' becomes 'all the time,' Edwards. Why, look here! You can do the work set you and play football or baseball or anything else if you'll make up your mind to it. You're a bright, normal fellow, with the average amount of brains. Systematise, Edwards! Arrange your day right. Mark down so many hours for recitations, so many hours for study, so many hours for play, and stick to your schedule. You'll find after awhile that it comes easy. You'll find that you--er--you'll miss studying when anything keeps you from it. When you go out of here I want you to do that very thing, my boy. I want you to go right up to your room, take a sheet of paper and make out a daily schedule. And when you've got it done put it somewhere where you'll see it. And stick to it! Will you?"

"Yes, sir; that is, I--I'll do my best."

"Good!" Mr. Daley held out a hand, smiling. "Shake hands on it, Edwards.

You may not believe it, but half of--er--doing a thing consists of making up your mind to it! Well, that's all, I think. Er--you'd better look me up this evening and we'll settle about that French. Good-bye.

Hope I haven't made you late for dinner."

Steve drew a deep breath outside the door, puckered his lips and whistled softly, but it was a thoughtful whistle; as thoughtful as it was tuneless, and it lasted him all the way upstairs and into his room.

Tom had gone, evidently having wearied of waiting for his friend to accompany him to dinner. Steve's own appet.i.te was calling pretty loudly, but, having slipped the blue-book out of sight under a pile on the table, he dropped into his chair, drew a sheet of paper to him and began on the schedule. It took him almost a half-hour to complete it, and he spoiled several sheets in the process, but it was finally done, and, heading it "Daley Schedule," with a brief smile at the pun, he placed it on his chiffonier and hurried across to Wendell.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SECOND PUTS IT OVER

"What do you know about that?" demanded Tom the next day. "'Horace' gave me a B on my comp! Of course, I'm not kicking, but I'll bet he made a mistake. Maybe he got nervous and his pencil slipped!"

"Seems to me," returned Steve coldly, "he knows better than you do what the thing is worth. He's not exactly an idiot, you know."

Tom stared in some surprise. "I didn't say he was an idiot, did I?

Considering the things you've said about 'Horace' I don't think you need take that high-and-mighty tone!"

"Well, don't be a chump, then," replied Steve. "If Mr. Daley gave you a B you deserved a B."

"Thanking you kindly," murmured Tom as he disappeared behind the pages of the blue-book to digest the corrections and criticisms on the margins. Steve's manner since the night he had remained up until morning to write that composition had been puzzling. He had very little to say to Tom, and when he did speak, spoke in a constrained manner quite unlike him. And more than once Tom had caught Steve observing him with an expression that he couldn't fathom. There was something up, that was certain, but what it was Tom couldn't imagine. It wasn't that Steve was cross or disagreeable. For that matter, his disposition seemed a good deal improved. But he was decidedly stand-offish and extraordinarily quiet. Tom wanted to ask outright what the trouble was, but, for some reason, he held back. As the days pa.s.sed, Steve's manner became more natural and he ceased looking at Tom as though, to quote the latter's unspoken simile, he was a new sort of an animal in a zoo! But some constraint still remained, and, after awhile, Tom accepted the situation and grew accustomed to it. By that time he had grown too proud to ask for an explanation. The two chums spent less time together as a result, Steve becoming more dependent on Roy for companionship and Tom on Harry.

When they were all four together, which was very frequently, it was not so bad, but when Steve and Tom were alone conversation was apt to languish.

Tom at first was inclined to blame Steve's "Daley Schedule" for the change, for that schedule had quite altered Steve's existence. He lived by a strict routine which he followed with a dogged determination quite foreign to his ways as Tom knew them. He got up on time in the morning, reached the dining-hall almost as soon as the doors were opened, spent a scant twenty minutes there and then went directly back to his room to browse over his recitations for the day. Once Tom found him there hunched up in a corner of the window-seat while the chambermaid, viewing his presence distastefully, draped the furniture with bedding and did her best with broom and duster to discourage him from a repet.i.tion of the outrage. Between ten and eleven on three days a week Steve put in an hour of study in the room. On other days he managed to s.n.a.t.c.h two half-hour periods in the library between recitations. At six he was almost invariably awaiting the opening of the doors for dinner, and well before seven he was at his table again. Usually he studied until nine, although now and then he closed his books at half-past eight and followed Tom to Number 17 Torrence. Roy called him the Prize Grind and interestedly inquired what scholarship he was trying for. Steve accepted the joking with a grim smile.

It wasn't easy. For the first few days he had to drive himself to his work with bit and spur. His feet lagged and he groaned in spirit--perhaps audibly, too--as he approached his books. But he did it, and little by little it became easier, until, as Mr. Daley had predicted, it had become a habit with him to do certain things at certain hours and he was uncomfortable if his routine was disarranged. I don't think Steve ever got where he loved to study, but he did eventually reach a pride of attainment that answered quite as well. He found as time went on that it was becoming easier to learn his lessons and easier to remember them when learned, and by that time he had taught himself to command over his thoughts, and when he was struggling through a proposition in geometry he wasn't wondering whether he would beat out Sherrard for the position of regular right end on the second before the season was over. In other words, he had learned concentration.

But all this was not yet. That first week, in especial, was hard sledding, and that French composition almost drove him to distraction and gave him brain fever before it was done. But done it was and on time, and, while the best that Mr. Daley would allow it was a C plus, Steve was distinctly proud of it. And in that week he demonstrated to the instructor's satisfaction that he was up with the cla.s.s in French. I think Mr. Daley was very willing to be convinced and that he met Steve quite half-way. Latin was still a bugaboo to Steve, but it, too, was getting easier. On the whole, that schedule, backed by a grim determination, was making good.

Meanwhile football pursued its relentless course. Every day the first and second fought it out for gradually increasing periods and every day the season grew nearer its close and the Claflin game, the final goal, loomed more distinct. Phillips School came and went and Brimfield marked up her fifth victory. Phillips gave the Maroon-and-Grey a hard tussle, and the score, 12 to 0, didn't indicate the closeness of the playing.

For Brimfield made her first touchdown by the veriest fluke and only gained her second in the last few minutes of play, when Phillips, outlasted, weakened on her six-yard line and let Norton through. On the other hand, Phillips had the ball thrice inside Brimfield's twenty yards, missed a field-goal by the narrowest of margins and, with the slightest twist of the luck, might have proved the victor.

"Boots" had hammered the second into what Mr. Robey unhesitatingly declared to be one of the best scrub teams he had ever seen, and there was more than one contest between it and the 'varsity that yielded nothing to an outside game for hard fighting and excitement. Steve and his rival, Sherrard, were running about even for the right end position.

Steve's tackling had improved vastly under Marvin's tutoring, and it was his ability in that department that possibly gave him a shade the better of the argument with Sherrard. So far there had been no decided slump in the playing of either team, and, since a slump is always looked for at some time during the season, both Mr. Robey and Danny Moore were getting anxious. Danny almost begged the fellows to go stale a little. "It ain't natural," he declared. "It's got to come, so let it and have it over with." Neither had there been any injuries of moment. On this score Danny had no regrets, however. He was a good trainer and prided himself on his ability to condition his charges so that they would escape injuries.

Of course there had been plenty of bruises--one mild case of charley-horse, several dislocated or sprained fingers, a wrenched ankle or two and any number of cuts and sc.r.a.pes, but none of the injuries had interfered with work for more than three or four days and not once had any first-string member of the 'varsity missed an outside game by reason of them. Steve's share of the injuries was a bruised shoulder sustained in a flying tackle that was more enthusiastic than scientific, and the thing bothered him for several days but did not keep him off the field.

Tom, who played opposite Jay Fowler in scrimmage, was forever getting his countenance disfigured. Not that Fowler meant to leave his mark, but he was a big, powerful, hard-fighting chap and there were plenty of times when both parties to the practice games quite forgot that they were friends. Tom was seldom seen without a strip of court-plaster pasted to some portion of his face.

It was four days after the Phillips game, to be exact, on the following Wednesday, that the first and second got together for what turned out to be the warmest struggle of the season in civil combat. It was a cold, leaden day, with a stinging breeze out of the northeast, and every fellow who wore a head-guard felt as full of ginger as a young colt. The second trotted over from their gridiron at four and found the first on its toes to get at them. Things started off with a whoop. The second received the kick-off and Marvin ran the ball back forty yards through a broken field before he was nailed. Encouraged by that excellent beginning, the scrub team went at it hammer and tongs. There was a fine old hole that day between Sawyer and Williams, and the second's backs ploughed through for gain after gain before the opposing line was cemented together again there. By that time the ball was down near the 'varsity's ten yards and Captain Miller was frothing at the mouth, while the opposing coaches were hurling encouragement at their charges and the pandemonium even extended to the side-lines, where the school at large, in a frenzy of excitement, shouted and goaded on the teams.

Twice the first held, once forcing Harris back for a loss, and then Marvin called for kick formation and himself held the ball for Brownell.

What happened then was one of those unforeseen incidents that make football the hair-raising game it is. There was a weak spot in the second's line and, with the pa.s.sing of the ball to Marvin, the 'varsity forwards came rampaging through. Brownell swung his leg desperately, trusting to fortune to get the pigskin over the upstretched hands of the charging enemy, but it swung against empty air. Marvin, seeing what was bound to happen, fearing the result of a blocked kick, s.n.a.t.c.hed the ball aside just as Captain Brownell swung at it, rolled over a couple of times out of the path of the oncoming opponents, scrambled to his feet and, somehow, scuttled past a half-dozen defenders of the goal and fell over the line for a touchdown.

The 'varsity afterwards called it "bull-luck" and "fluke" and several other belittling names, but "Boots" said it was "quick thinking and football, by jiminy!" At all events the second scored and then leaped and shouted like a band of Comanche Indians--or any other kind of Indian if there's a noisier sort!--and generally "rubbed it in."

After that you may believe that the 'varsity played football! But nevertheless the first ten-minute period ended with the second still six points to the good and her goal-line intact. The teams were to play three periods that day and "Boots" ran four subst.i.tutes on the field when the next one began. One of them was Steve.

It is no light task to play opposite the 'varsity captain and not come off second best, but the consensus of opinion that evening was to the effect that Steve had done that very thing. The wintery nip had got into Steve's blood, I think, for he played like a tiger-cat on the defence, ran like a streak of wind and tackled so hard that Coach Robey had to caution him. Twice in that period the first came storming down to the second's twenty yards and twice they were held there. Once Milton was nailed on a round-the-end run and once Still fumbled a pa.s.s and Freer fell on it.