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.”