DOCTOR LANE INTERVENES
Chas Cummins proved a good prophet. On the following day Myron slipped
into a niche in the first team, one of many hopeful, hard-working youths
known as "first team subs." For a few days, indeed, until after the
Phillipsburg game, he was dazed by the sudden leap from obscurity to
conspicuity, from what he termed neglect to what was extremely like
solicitude. Not that his arrival at the field for practice was the
occasion for shouts of acclaim and a fanfare of trumpets, for those at
the helm did not show their interest in promising candidates in any
such manner, but at last he was quite certain that coach and captain,
managers and trainer, were aware of his existence. There were times when
he heartily wished that they knew less of it. Some one was forever at
his elbow, criticising, explaining, exhorting. Coach Driscoll and Ned
Garrison oversaw his punting practice, Snow lugged him to remote corners
of the playfield to make him catch passes, Katie drilled him in signals,
every one, it seemed to Myron, was having a finger in his pie. And when
he was not being privately coached, as it were, he was legging it around
the gridiron with the substitutes or tumbling about the dummy pit with
a bundle of stuffed and dirty canvas clasped to his bosom. Those were
busy, confusing days. And yet no one outside the football "inner ring"
appeared to be aware of the fact that a new light had arisen in the
Parkinson firmament. Not unnaturally, perhaps, Myron looked for signs
of interest, even of awe, from his acquaintances, but he found none. At
table in dining hall Eldredge still glowered at him, Rogers cringed and
the pestiferous Tinkham poked sly fun. Only Joe and Andrew and Chas,
among his friends, showed him honour; and Joe as a strewer of blossoms
in his path was not an overwhelming success. Joe seemed to think that
his chum's leap to incipient fame was pleasing but not remarkable, while
Myron was absolutely certain that it was stupendous and unparalleled
in the annals of preparatory school football. When you are watched and
guided as Myron was by those in command you are likely to think that.
He wondered whether Joe was not just a little bit envious. Of course,
Joe's position was quite as assured as his own, but Joe had not engaged
the time and attention and solicitude of the entire coaching force. He
hoped Joe wasn't going to be disagreeable about it.
Phillipsburg came and went, defeated easily enough, 12 points to 3, and
Warne High School followed a week later. High School always put up a
good fight against Parkinson, and she made no exception this year. Coach
Driscoll used many substitutes that afternoon and so High School found
her work easier. Myron had his baptism by fire in the second period and
lasted until the end of the third. He was taken out then because High
School had tied the score and it was necessary to add another touchdown
or field-goal to the home team's side of the ledger. So Kearns, who was
still the most dependable full-back in sight, took Myron's place. Kearns
gained and lost in his usual way, and had no great part in the securing
of the third Parkinson score. Katie was mainly responsible for that,
for he sneaked away from the opponent's thirty-two yards and landed the
ball on her eight, from whence it was carried over on the fourth down by
Brounker. That made the figures 20 to 14, and there they remained for
the rest of the contest.
Myron was huffy about being removed and every one who spoke to him
discovered the fact. Of course, he was huffy in a perfectly gentlemanly
way. He didn't scold and he didn't sneer, but he indulged in irony and
intimated that if football affairs continued to be managed as they had
been that afternoon he would refuse to be held responsible if the season
ended in defeat. Oddly enough, no one appeared panic-stricken at the
veiled threat. Joe grinned, until Myron looked haughty and insulted, and
then became grave and spoke his mind. He had an annoying way of doing
that, to Myron's way of thinking.
"Kiddo," said Joe, on this occasion, "if I was you I'd let Driscoll and
Mellen run things their own way. Maybe their way don't always look good
to you, but you aren't in possession of all the--the facts, so to speak.
When they put in Kearns today they had a reason, believe me, Brother.
You attend to your knitting and let theirs alone. If they drop a stitch,
it's their funeral, not yours. You've got just about all you can do to
beat Kearns and Williams for full-back's position----"
"I'm ahead of Williams right now," said Myron with asperity.
"All right, kiddo; you stay there. Don't get highfaluting and
swell-headed. Just as soon as you do you'll quit playing your best and
Williams'll slip past you. Take an old man's advice, Brother."
"I wish you'd stop that 'Brother,'" said Myron pettishly. "I'm not
your brother. And I'm not swell-headed, either. And I don't try to
tell Driscoll how to run the team. Only, when I know my own--my own
capabilities I naturally think something's sort of funny when things
happen like what happened today!"
"Lots of funny things happen that we can't account for in this world,"
remarked Joe philosophically as he bent over his book again. "Best thing
to do is let 'em happen."
"Oh, rats!" muttered the other.
It was about this time that Myron began to have fallings-out with
Old Addie. Old Addie--he wasn't phenomenally old, by any means, but
he seemed old in a faculty composed of young or youngish men--was
well-liked, and kindly and just to a fault. But he had views on the
importance of Greek and Latin not held by all members of his classes. He
believed that Herodotus was the greatest man who ever lived and Horace
the greatest poet, and held that an acquaintance with the writings of
these and other departed masters was an essential part of every person's
education. Many disagreed with him. Those who disagreed and kept the
fact to themselves got on very nicely. Those who were so misguided as to
disagree and say so earned his pitying contempt; although contempt is
perhaps too strong a word. Myron in a rash moment confessed that Latin
didn't interest him. He had to think up on the spur of the moment some
plausible excuse for being illy prepared, and that excuse seemed handy.
The result was unfortunate. There was a meeting in Mr. Addicks' study
in the evening, a meeting that lasted for an hour and a quarter and
that included readings from the Latin poets, essayists and historians,
sometimes in translation, more often in the original. Myron, bored to
tears, at last capitulated. He owned that Latin was indeed a beautiful
language, that Livy was a wonder, Cicero a peach and Horace a corker.
He didn't use just those terms, but that's a detail. Mr. Addicks,
suspicious of the sudden conversion, pledged him to a reformation in the
matter of study and freed him.
But the conversion was not real and Old Addie soon developed a
most embarrassing habit of calling on Myron in class. Myron called
it "picking on me." Whatever it was called, it usually resulted
disastrously to Myron's pretences of having studied in the manner agreed
on. Old Addie waxed sarcastic, Myron assumed a haughty, contemptuous
air. They became antagonistic and trouble brewed. Myron didn't have
enough time to do justice to all his courses, he declared to Joe, and
since Latin was the least liked and the most troublesome it was Latin
that suffered. There is no doubt that two and a half hours--often
more--of football leaves a chap more inclined for bed than study. Not
infrequently Myron went to sleep with his head on a book and had to be
forcibly wrested from slumber by Joe at ten o'clock or thereabouts.
So matters stood at the end of Myron's first fortnight of what might
be called intensive football training. So, in fact, they continued to
stand, with slight changes, to the morning of the day on which Parkinson
played Day and Robins School.
The team was to travel away from home for that contest and Myron was to
go with it, not as a spectator, but as a useful member of the force. He
did not go, however. At chapel his name was among a list of seven others
recited by the Principal, and at eleven he was admitted to the inner
sanctum, behind the room in which he had, a month and a half ago, held
converse with Mr. Morgan. This time it was "Jud" himself who received
him. The Principal's real name was Judson, but at some earlier time in
his incumbency of the office he had been dubbed Jud, and in spite of
the possible likelihood of getting him confused with the captain of the
football team, he was still so called. Doctor Lane taught English, but
his courses were advanced and Myron had not reached them. In consequence
he knew very little of Jud; much less than Jud knew of him; and he felt
a certain amount of awe as he took the indicated chair at the left of
the big mahogany desk. The Doctor didn't beat about the bush any to
speak of. He advanced at once to the matter in hand, which appeared to
be: Why wasn't Myron keeping up in Latin?
Myron said he thought it must be because he didn't have time enough to
study it. He said it was his firm belief that he was taking too many
courses. He thought that it would be better if he was allowed to drop
one course, preferably Latin, until the next term. Doctor Lane smiled
wanly and wanted to know if Myron was quite sure that he was making
the most of what time he had. Myron said he thought he was. He didn't
say it very convincedly, however. Doctor Lane inquired how much time
each day was devoted to Latin. Myron didn't seem to have a very clear
impression; perhaps, though, an hour. Jud delved into the boy's daily
life and elicited the fact that something like two and a half hours were
devoted to learning to play full-back and something less than three to
learning his lessons. Presented as Jud presented it, the fact didn't
look attractive even to Myron. He felt dimly that something was wrong.
He attempted to better his statement by explaining that very often he
studied between hours--a little. Doctor Lane was not impressed. He
twiddled a card that appeared to hold a record of Myron's scholastic
career for a moment and then pronounced a verdict.
"Foster, as I diagnose your case, you are too much interested in
football and not sufficiently in your studies. Also, football is
claiming too much of your time. Football is a splendid game and a
beneficent form of exercise, but it is not the--what I may call the
chief industry here, Foster. We try to do other things besides play
football. Perhaps you have lost sight of that fact."
Jud let that sink in for a moment and returned the card to its place in
an indexed cabinet, closing the drawer with a decisive _bang_ that made
Myron jump.
"So," continued the Principal drily, "I think it will be best if you
detach yourself from football interests for--for awhile, Foster."
Silence ensued. Myron gulped. Then he asked in a small voice: "How long,
sir?"
"Oh, we won't decide that now." Jud's voice and manner struck Myron as
being far too bright and flippant. "We'll see how it works out. I've
known it to work very nicely in many cases. I shall expect to hear
better--much better--accounts of you from Mr. Addicks, Foster. Good
morning."
And that is why Myron didn't go bowling off to the station with the
rest of the team, and why Kearns and Houghton played the full-back
position that afternoon, and why, after a miserable six hours spent
in mooning about a deserted campus and a lonely room, Myron packed a
suit-case with a few of his yellow-hued shirts and similar necessities
and unobtrusively made his way to Maple Street in the early gloom of the
October evening.