Left Tackle Thayer Part 4

CHAPTER III

AMY AIRS HIS VIEWS

Clint settled down into his appointed niche at Brimfield, one of one hundred and seventy-two individuals of various ages between twelve and twenty. At Brimfield there were six forms, and Clint had, after a brief examination, been a.s.signed to the fourth. He found that he was well up with the cla.s.s in everything save Greek and Latin, and these, Greek especially, soon proved hard sledding. The instructor, Mr. Simkins--or "Uncle Sim," as he was called--was no easy taskmaster. He entertained a profound reverence for Aristotle and Vergil and Cicero and Homer and all the others, and failed to understand why his cla.s.ses thought them tiresome and, sometimes, dry. His very enthusiasm, however, made him easy to impose on, and many a fellow received good marks merely because he simulated a fervid interest. But Clint was either too honest or possessed too little histrionic talent to attempt that plan, and by the time the Fall term was a week old, he, together with many another, was just barely keeping his head above water. He confessed discouragement to his room-mate one evening. Amy was sympathetic but scarcely helpful.

"It's tommyrot, that's what it is," Amy said with conviction. "What good does it do you to know Greek, anyway? I'll bet you anything that Uncle Sim himself couldn't go to Athens tomorrow and order a cup of coffee and a hard-boiled egg! Or, if he did order them, he'd get a morning newspaper and toothpick. Last Spring I was in the boot-blacking emporium in the village one afternoon and Horace came in to get his shoes shined. There--"

"Who is Horace!" asked Clint dejectedly.

"Mr. Daley; modern languages; you have him in French. Well, there was a notice stuck on the wall across the place. It was in Greek and I couldn't make anything out of it at all and I asked Horace what it said.

Of course he just read it right off, with a mere pa.s.sing glance; did he not? Yes, he did not! He hemmed and hawed and muttered and finally said he couldn't make out the second word. I told him that was my trouble, too. Then we asked the Greek that runs the place and he told us it said that shines on Sundays and holidays were ten cents. Of course, Horace isn't a specialist in Greek, but still he's been through college, and what I say is--"

"I don't believe the men who wrote the stuff really understood it," said Clint.

"Oh, they understood a little of it, all right. They could sign their names, probably. The only consolation I find is this, Clint. A couple of hundred years from now, when everyone is talking Esperanto or some other universal language, the kids will have to study English. Can't you see them grinding over the Orations of William Jennings Bryan and wondering why the d.i.c.kens anyone ever wanted to talk such a silly language? That's when we get our revenge, Clint. We won't be around to see it, but it'll be there."

Clint had to smile at the picture Amy drew, but he didn't find as much consolation as Amy pretended to, and Xenophon didn't come any easier. He was heartily glad when the study-hour came to an end and he could conscientiously close his books.

The termination of that hour was almost invariably announced by the dismal squawking of Penny Durkin's fiddle. Sometimes it was to be heard in the afternoon, but not always, for Penny was a very busy youth. He was something of a "shark" at lessons, was a leading light in the Debating Circle and conducted a second-hand business in all sorts of things from a broken tooth-mug to a bra.s.s bed. Penny bought and sold and traded and, so rumour declared, made enough to nearly pay his tuition each year. If you wanted a rug or a table or a chair or a picture or a broken-down bicycle or a pair of football pants you went to Penny, and it was a dollar to a dime that Penny either had in his possession, or could take you to someone else who had, the very thing you were looking for. If you paid cash you got it reasonably cheap--or you did if you knew enough to bargain craftily--and if you wanted credit Penny charged you a whole lot more and waited on you promptly for the instalment at the first of each month. And besides these activities Penny was a devoted student of music.

He was an odd-looking fellow, tall and thin, with a lean face from which a pair of pale and near-sighted eyes peered forth from behind rubber-rimmed spectacles. His hair was almost black and was always in need of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, and his garments--he seldom wore trousers, coat and vest that matched--always seemed about to fall off him. Clint's first glimpse of Penny came one afternoon. The door of Number 13 was open as Clint returned to his room after football practice and lugubrious sounds issued forth. It was very near the supper hour and Penny's room was lighted only by the rays of the sinking sun. Against the window Clint saw him in silhouette, his hair wildly ruffled, his violin under his chin, his bow sc.r.a.ping slowly back and forth as he leaned near-sightedly over the sheet of music spread on the rack before him.

The strains that issued from the instrument were awful, but there was something fine in the player's absorption and obvious content, and what had started out as a laugh of amus.e.m.e.nt changed to a sympathetic smile as Clint tiptoed on to his own door.

The sorrow of Penny's young life was that, although he had made innumerable attempts, he could not succeed in the formation of a school orchestra. There was a Glee Club and a Musical Society, the latter composed of performers on the mandolin, banjo and guitar, but no one would take any interest in Penny's project. Or no one save a fellow named Pillsbury. Pillsbury played the ba.s.s viol, and once a week or so he and Penny got together and spent an entranced hour. Time was when such meetings took place in Penny's room or in Pillsbury's room, but popular indignation put an end to that. Nowadays they took their instruments to the gymnasium and held their chamber concerts in the trophy room. Amy one day drew Clint's attention to a fortunate circ.u.mstance. This was that, while there was a connecting door between Number 14 and Number 15, there was none between Number 14 and Number 13.

That fact, Amy declared, rendered their room fairly habitable when Penny was pouring out his soul. "It's lucky in another way," he added, staring darkly at the buff-coloured wall that separated them from Number 13. "If that door was on this side I'd have broken it open long ago and done murder!"

Clint laughed and inquired: "Who rooms on the other side?"

"Schuman and Dreer." The contemptuous tone of his reply caused Clint to ask:

"Anything wrong with them?"

"Oh, Schuman's all right, I guess, but Dreer's a pill." There was a wealth of contempt in the word "pill" as Amy p.r.o.nounced it, and Clint asked innocently what a "pill" was.

"A pill," replied Amy, "is--is--well, there are all sorts of pills. A fellow who toadies to the instructors is a pill. A fellow who is too lazy to play football or baseball or tennis or anything else and pretends the doctor won't let him is a pill. A fellow who has been to one school and got fired and then goes to another and is always shooting off his mouth about how much better the first school is is the worst kind of pill. And that's the kind Harmon Dreer is. He went to Claflin for a year and a half and then got into some sort of mess and was expelled. Then the next Fall he came here. This is his second year here and he's still gabbing about how much higher cla.s.s Claflin is and how much better they do everything there and--oh, all that sort of rot.

I told him once that if the fellows at Claflin were so much cla.s.sier than we are I could understand why they didn't let him stay there. He didn't like it. He doesn't narrate his sweet, sad story to me any more.

If he ever does I'm likely to forget that I'm a perfect gentleman."

But Clint's neighbours were not of overpowering interest to him those days. There were more absorbing matters, pleasant and unpleasant, to fill his mind. For one thing, he was trying very hard to make a place on one of the football teams. He hadn't any hope of working into the first team. Perhaps when he started he may, in spite of his expressed doubts, have secretly entertained some such hope, but by the end of the second day of practice he had abandoned it. The brand of football taught by Coach Robey and played by the 'varsity team was ahead of any Clint had seen outside a college gridiron and was a revelation to him. Even by the end of the first week the first team was in what seemed to Clint end-of-season form, although in that Clint was vastly mistaken, and his own efforts appeared to him pretty weak and amateurish. But he held on hard, did his best and hoped to at least retain a place on the third squad until the final cut came. And it might just be, he told himself in optimistic moments, that he'd make the second! Meanwhile he was enjoying it. It's remarkable what a lot of extremely hard work a boy will go through if he likes football, and what a deal of pleasure he will get out of it! Amy pretended to be totally unable to get that point of view.

One afternoon when Clint returned to prepare for supper with a lower lip twice the normal size of that feature Amy indulged in sarcasm.

"Oh, the proud day!" he declaimed, striking an att.i.tude. "Wounded on the field of battle! Glory! Triumph! Paeans! My word, old top, but I certainly am proud to be the chum of such a hero! I'm so sot-up I could scream for joy. Football's a wonderful pastime, isn't it?"

"Silly chump!" mumbled Clint painfully.

"Yes, indeed, a wonderful pastime," ruminated Amy, seating himself on the window-seat and hugging one knee. "All a fellow has to do is to go out and work like a dray-horse and a pile-driver and street-roller for a couple of hours every afternoon, get kicked in the shins and biffed in the eye and rolled in the dirt and ragged by one coach, one captain and one quarter-back. That's all he has to do except learn a lot of signals so he can recognise them in the fraction of a second, be able to recite the rules frontward and backward and both ways from the middle and live on indigestible things like beef and rice and prunes. For that he gets called a 'mutt' and a 'dub' and a 'disgrace to the School' and, unless he's lucky enough to break a leg and get out of it before the big game, he has twenty-fours hours of heart-disease and sixty minutes of glory.

And his picture in the paper. He knows it's his picture because there's a statement underneath that Bill Jones is the third criminal from the left in the back row. And it isn't the photographer's fault if the good-looking half-back in the second row moved his head just as the camera went _snap_ and all that shows of Bill Jones is a torn and lacerated left ear!"

"For the love of Mike, Amy, shut up!" pleaded Clint. "You talk so much you don't say anything! Besides, you told me once you used to play yourself when you first came here."

"So I did," agreed Amy calmly. "But I saw the error of my ways and quit.

In me you see a brand s.n.a.t.c.hed from the burning. Why, gosh, if I'd kept on I'd be a popular hero now! First Formers would copy my socks and neckties and say 'Good morning, _Mister_ Byrd,' and the _Review_ would refer to me as 'that sterling player, Full-back Byrd.' And Harvard and Yale and Princeton scouts would be camping on my trail and offering me valuable presents and taking me to lunch at clubs. Oh, I had a narrow escape, I can tell you! When I think how narrow I shudder." He proved it by having a sort of convulsion on the window-seat. "Clint, when it's all said and done, a fellow's a perfect, A-plus fool to play football when he can enlist in the German army and die in a trench!"

"I got away for twenty yards this afternoon and made a touchdown,"

proclaimed Clint from between swollen lips, trying to keep the pride from his voice.

Amy threw up his hands in despair.

"I'll say no more," he declared. "You're past help, Clint. You've tasted blood. Go on, you poor mistaken hero, and maim yourself for life. I wash my hands of you."

"You'd better wash them of some of that dirt I see and come to supper,"

Clint mumbled. "Gee, if I'd talked half as much as you have in the last ten minutes I'd be starved!"

CHAPTER IV

CLINT CUTS PRACTICE

Brimfield played the first game on her schedule a few days later, winning without difficulty from Miter Hill School in ten-minute periods by a score of 17 to 0. There was much ragged football on each side; but Brimfield showed herself far more advanced than her opponent and had, besides, the advantage of a heavier team. Clint looked on from the bench, with some forty others, and grew more hopeless than ever of making good this year. His present status was that of subst.i.tute tackle on the third squad, and it didn't look as though he'd get beyond that point. If he had expected his introduction to Jack Innes to help his advancement he must have been disappointed, for the Captain, while he invariably spoke when he saw him, and once inquired in the locker-room how Clint was getting along, paid little attention to him. So far as Clint could see, n.o.body cared whether he reported for practice or not.

Toward the end of an afternoon, when the third was fortunate enough to get into a few minutes of scrimmage with the second, Clint usually finished up at right or left tackle. But he couldn't help thinking that were he not there his absence would go unremarked. Even on the to him memorable occasion when he broke through the second's line on a fumble and, seizing the ball, romped almost unchallenged over the last four white lines for a touchdown the incident went apparently unnoticed. One or two of his team-mates patted him approvingly on the back, but that was all. Clint was beginning to have moments of discouragement.

But two days after the Miter Hill game an incident occurred which proved him wrong in thinking that no one knew or cared whether he reported for practice. That morning's Greek had gone unusually badly for Clint and Mr. Simkins had kept him after cla.s.s and talked some plain talk to him.

When Clint's final recitation of the day was over at three he was out-of-sorts and depressed. He felt very little like playing football and still less like studying, but Mr. Simkins had as much as told him that unless a decided improvement was at once apparent some direful fate would be his, and the instructor had a convincing way of talking and Clint quite believed him. Consequently, of two evils Clint chose the more necessary and dedicated that afternoon to the Iliad. The dormitory was very quiet, for it was a fine, mild day and most of the fellows were out-of-doors, and concentration should have been easy. But it wasn't.

Clint couldn't keep his mind on his book, try as he might. Through the open window came sounds from the grid-irons and ball-field; shouts, the honking of Manager Black's horn, the cries of the coaches and players, the crack of bat and ball where the Nine was holding Fall practice; even, now and then, the voices of the tennis players far down the field.

He tried closing the window, but that made the room hot and stuffy, and he opened it again. Four o'clock sounded and he was still dawdling. Then footsteps sounded on the stairs, the door of Number 13 opened and shut, and a minute or two later the wailing of Penny Durkin's violin broke onto the silence of the deserted dormitory. That ought to have ended Clint's chances of study, it seemed, but, oddly enough, after he had listened for five minutes or so, his eyes sought the page in front of him and then--well, then it was more than an hour later, the violin was silent and someone was knocking on his door!

Clint gazed with surprise on the pencilled notes adorning the margins of the pages, from them to the open lexicon, from that to the pencil in his hand. He had absolutely done five pages! And then the knock at the door was repeated and Clint stammered "Come in!" and Tracey Black entered.

The football manager was a slimly-built, nervous-mannered chap of eighteen and wore gla.s.ses through which he now regarded Clint accusingly.

"What's wrong with you, Thayer?" he demanded bruskly. "Sick?"

"Sick" repeated Clint vaguely. "No, thanks, I'm all right."

"Then why do you cut practice?" asked Black severely. "Don't you know--"

It was then that Black recalled Clint's face and remembered having met him in Innes's room a week before. "h.e.l.lo," he said in a milder tone. "I didn't recognise you. Er--you see, Thayer, when you fellows don't show up I have to find out what the reason is. Maybe you didn't know it, but it's the customary thing to get permission to cut practice."

"Oh! No, I didn't know it, Black," replied Clint. "I'm sorry. I got in a mess with my Greek and thought I'd better stay away and take a fall out of it. Besides, I didn't think anyone would care if I didn't report."

"Didn't think anyone would care!" exclaimed Black, seating himself on an arm of the Morris chair and viewing Clint with astonishment. "How the d.i.c.kens do you suppose we can turn out a team if we don't care whether fellows report or not? Suppose the others thought that, Thayer, and stayed away!"

"I meant that--that I'm not much use out there and it didn't seem to me that it mattered very much if I stayed away once. I'm sorry, though, if I've done wrong."

"Well, that's all right," returned Black, mollified. "If you didn't know, that's different. Only another time you'd better see Mr. Robey and get permission to cut. You see, Thayer, at this time of year we need all the fellows we can get. Maybe you think you're not very important out there, but that isn't the way of it at all. Everyone counts. You are all--ah--you are all parts of the--ah--machine, if you see my drift, Thayer, and if one part is missing, why--ah--Well, you see what I mean?"

"Yes, of course. I'll remember the next time."