MR. WORLDLY WISEMAN
The blow fell; Hillbury routed the Seaton eleven with ease. Sam had
his mother and twelve-year-old sister down for the occasion. They
came gay-trimmed and expectant, surveyed the room with critical but
forgiving eyes, took luncheon at the Sedgwicks’, saw the game, and
departed by an evening train, witnessing with unsympathetic curiosity
the noisy antics of the victors as they trooped to their special.
Duncan happened in at 7 Hale while the visitors were there. He had the
courtesy to hide any indifference which he may have felt to the Archer
family. As a result, Mrs. Archer found him most agreeable, and she
gave cordial expression to her opinion that Sam had been fortunate in
his room-mate. Peck listened politely and made an acceptable response,
but Sam, with a haste which surprised his dear mother, switched the
conversation to another track.
After his guests had departed Sam returned to his room and fell to
brooding on the disappointments of life. Being new to the school and
loyal, he was sensitive to the humiliation of the defeat by Hillbury;
he likewise felt his loneliness in the big school in which he knew so
many slightly and cared especially for no one who cared for him. His
relations with Duncan kept him at a distance from Duncan’s friends. In
spite of his championship of Mulcahy he did not find that young man
wholly satisfying as a companion. The temptation to find relief in
wrong ways came up before him in a vaguely attractive form, not strong
enough to upset his moral balance, but effectively adding to his sense
of isolation. John Fish in the room below had planned to celebrate the
victory. The victory failing, John had resigned himself to celebrating
defeat. He did this by stealing out of town to a neighboring city,
whence he would steal back in the early morning with gross boasts of
his achievements ready for trustworthy ears. John Fish was one of
those who never refuse themselves what they crave if gratification
is possible. He was too coarse and too vulgar to exert a winning
influence on Archer, but the thought of him to-night gave a pessimistic
trend to our young man’s philosophy. He looked abroad through blue
spectacles upon a world of injustice in which the wicked triumphed.
There was Birdie Fowle, who never did anything worse than make a noise
or throw water out of a window, and yet was deep in Mr. Alsop’s bad
books; the wise ones declared that Birdie wouldn’t last long in school.
John Fish, meanwhile, went his quiet way unsuspected. Mr. Alsop always
had a good word for him as an orderly and serious-minded youth; yet his
sins compared to Fowle’s were as boiler plate to blotting-paper.
Sam took up his French books to get ready for Monday’s examination.
Mr. Alsop was young and strenuous, a good teacher, but saturated with
the conviction of his own importance, and ambitious for distinction as
a driver. He boasted that he tolerated no sluggards in his courses;
he prided himself on his keenness in detecting the goats before their
whiskers had begun to appear. The result was that many slow-minded
sheep got the credit of being goats, and many a wily old goat palmed
himself off as an innocent lamb. Mr. Alsop meant well, but went wrong;
and being wholly satisfied with the rectitude of his intentions, he
was the last to discover the crookedness of his course. More than one
unscrupulous idler, by pretending that he was struggling hard against
natural inability, secured better marks than he deserved. Others--among
them Sam--who said less and actually struggled more were predestined
from the beginning to D’s and E’s. Sam felt that nothing short of a
series of phenomenal examination books could propitiate fate. Convinced
that the scales were weighted against him, he worked half-heartedly. It
was with a sense of relief, after a quarter of an hour of unprofitable
study on his French, that he hailed the interruption of Mulcahy.
“Plugging to-night?” asked the caller, in a tone of surprise, as he
dropped indolently into a comfortable chair and hoisted his feet to the
top of a table.
“It’s got to be done,” replied Sam; “why not to-night?”
“Because on the night of a Hillbury game nobody expects to do
anything. If we had won, you’d have been out all the evening
celebrating.”
“It was terrible, wasn’t it!” mourned Sam, reminded anew of the
school’s affliction.
“They got it right in the neck,” returned Mulcahy, cheerfully.
“Defence, attack, kicking, running, forward passes, Hillbury put it
all over ’em. They won’t hold up their heads for a week. It’s a very
different thing being on an eleven that’s had the stuffing beaten out
of it, from playing a winner.”
“You talk as if you were glad we got beaten,” said Sam, gloomily.
“Oh, no, I’m just making the best of the case. There’s no use in crying
about it. You and I didn’t lose the game, anyway. Those that lost will
have to take the kicks now.”
“I don’t think they deserve kicks. They played as well as they knew
how. Kendrick was a regular star. The way he stopped the rushes of that
big red-headed Hillbury half-back was wonderful!”
“Yes, he did pretty well considering the short time he’s been out,”
Mulcahy conceded. “But what good was it? They got licked to their
knees, that’s the essential fact.”
“Who wrote that editorial in the ‘Seatonian’ special about the game?”
“I did,” replied Mulcahy, complacently. “Wasn’t it smooth?”
“Well, your statements don’t hang together then. In that you said that
while the result of the game was disappointing to Seaton, the main
thing, after all, was that it was well played and fairly won; it was no
disgrace to a team to be beaten in such a contest.”
Mulcahy laughed heartily. “The ‘Seatonian’ was speaking then. The paper
says what will sound well and suit the profs. The editors think what
they please.”
“Do you write all the good advice the ‘Seatonian’ gives us, about
studying, and maintaining the reputation of the school, and acting up
to the Seaton spirit?”
“We all take a turn at it. It’s part of the business.”
“Don’t you believe in it?”
“Oh, sometimes; sometimes not. We don’t have to.” Mulcahy was growing
tired of the subject. “What’re you working on, French?”
“Yes, I’ve got an exam with Alsop Monday.”
“It’s an easy subject.”
“Not for me, and not with Alsop.”
“Oh, he isn’t bad if you don’t get him down on you. You want to go to
see him and ask his opinion about things. Pretend to think a great deal
of him, and let him give you information--he likes to do that--and
confide in him some trouble or other--not a real one, you know, but
something you’ve thought up. Get him going on the comparative merits of
ancient and modern languages, if you can, and be convinced. He’s ’most
as easy that way as Rounder. You’ll have to do some plugging too, of
course.”
“I’m willing to plug,” said Archer, dubiously, “but I hate to talk with
him.”
“Too bad you don’t have Rounder; he’s the easiest thing there is,” went
on Mulcahy. “Last year Stevens and McCarthy were way down in his class;
they hadn’t either of ’em been doing a thing above E. Both of ’em went
to Doc Rounder two weeks before the end of the term. Stevens said:
‘Don’t you think I’ve been improving lately, Doctor? I’ve been working
terribly. It seems to me I ought to have a D anyway.’ Doc Rounder looks
at his book and says: ‘Well, I don’t know--have you been studying
_very_ hard?’ ‘Two hours every lesson,’ says Stevens. ‘Perhaps I can.
We’ll see,’ says Doc. McCarthy was nervier. He said: ‘Dr. Rounder, I
think I ought to have a B this time. I’ve made a great improvement over
last term.’ Rounder looked in his book again and kind of hesitated;
‘I’m afraid I can’t do it, McCarthy, your marks are too low.’ ‘I ought
to have B with the work I’ve put in it,--C at least,’ McCarthy said,
trying to look indignant. Rounder said he’d think it over. Stevens got
D for a term mark, and McCarthy C--and neither of ’em deserved a thing
above E.”
“Had they been doing all that work?” asked Sam, innocently.
“Naw, they hadn’t studied ten minutes a week.”
“Then they lied.”
Mulcahy laughed aloud. “Of course they lied. Who wouldn’t to Rounder?
Why, lying is the one thing you learn in his course.”
Archer pondered this statement in silence. Presently Mulcahy offered to
help him with his French, and they employed themselves for a half-hour
in looking up points on which Mr. Alsop was considered likely to test
his class in the examination. After a time Mulcahy’s zeal slackened. He
tilted back in his chair, smoked a couple of cigarettes, and talked of
the coming election in the Laurel Leaf.
“Scholarship men do smoke, then?” asked Sam, as the conversation
lagged. He knew well that it was a strict rule that holders of
scholarships should not smoke.
“We’re not supposed to,” answered Mulcahy, easily, “but you can’t
always do what you’re supposed to.”
“I should think they would smell it on your clothes.”
“I’m pretty careful. Besides, you can always lay it off on to some one
you’ve been with. My reputation would save me from suspicion anyway. I
could bluff my way out of it.”
“It doesn’t seem quite square--”
“Oh, rot! What’s a few cigarettes? It’s just a question of getting
ahead of the profs. The faculty is on one side and we’re on the other.
They try to make us do what they want, and we try to do what we please.
They’ll soak us if they can, and we beat ’em when we can. This isn’t
a Sunday-school; it’s a little piece cut out of the world. If you’re
going to get on here, you’ve got to shake your kindergarten ideas, and
play the game.”
Mulcahy soon took himself away, and Sam went early to bed to sleep
off his low spirits. On the next day he made an afternoon call at
the Sedgwicks’ and yielded readily to an invitation to supper. Miss
Margaret was a mighty sorceress in dispelling the grumps. In the
evening he attended the Christian Fraternity meeting, addressed by
a distinguished professor of Yale. Mulcahy sat in a front row, and
listened devoutly.