JUNE TO DECEMBER
It was well for our young men that they could share Owen’s victory,
for Patterson, their school captain, gave them none of their own to
enjoy. A pitcher cannot win a game alone; and Patterson’s cleverness
availed only to keep the Hillbury score down; his followers balked his
efforts with errors, and only O’Toole hit the Hillbury pitcher with any
readiness.
After the Hillbury game, Sam focused his interest on the college
examinations. Mr. Alsop had at the last moment, with much misgiving,
granted him a provisional recommendation in French; and Sam, eager no
less to vindicate himself than to get rid of the troublesome subject,
hammered away at it during the last few weeks with a determination
worthy of a great cause. He was sure of his history and mathematics,
and reasonably confident in Greek and Latin; but English, the
crank-ridden, and French, the elusively easy, mocked him with promise
of failure.
Duncan likewise yielded himself to the spirit of industry which was
turning 7 Hale into the workshop of scholastic cyclops. The latch was
kept down perpetually during these days of preparation. Only Duncan’s
tutor, the useful Moorhead, and occasionally the irresistible Bruce
found entrance. Duncan was at last serious; actually confronted by the
alternative of passing certain examinations and going to Harvard, or
failing and going to work, he understood that the time for trifling was
past. It is safe to say that Sam Archer’s example and encouragement,
and Moorhead’s patient readiness to explain and help, were of more use
to Duncan in his weary battle than class instruction or tutor’s drill.
Duncan did pass his examinations,--he fell sprawling, but across the
line,--and Archer got every point he had worked for. He missed an honor
which he had hoped to get, but he triumphed in Mr. Alsop’s subject with
a C, which, boy-like, he regarded as a decision awarded him against the
teacher’s doubts, not as a proof of good instruction. There followed
for Sam an untroubled summer of loafing and tennis, rowing and sailing;
of reckless squandering of time on pure play; of reading books that
were not required and dreaming dreams of triumphs that would never come
to pass. He took back with him to school greater physical vigor and
clearer comprehension of his own personal problem.
Sam settled with Moorhead very comfortably in his old room, and entered
upon the tasks of his senior year with the quiet purpose of making it
count. To accomplish this, he understood vaguely but sufficiently that
he must keep himself, physically and morally, under good control, must
work steadily rather than frantically, and pursue a sane ambition. This
sane ambition, so far as athletics were concerned, lay along the hurdle
path. Unless some phenomenon unexpectedly appeared, he could reasonably
count on becoming the school champion in the high hurdles. To be school
champion, however, was but a half-success. The Seatonian grudges honor
to a man who leads merely because there happens to be no one better.
The Seaton champion must prevail over the champions of other schools,
if he is to have the credit of achievement.
Sam knew this quite as well as any one else; he appreciated its
personal bearing as no one else could. In the background of every
picture called up by a hopeful imagination, hovered the figure of
Kilham of Hillbury. Wherever Sam foresaw a chance of distinction, there
was Kilham to contest it with him. At the winter competition in Boston,
at the interscholastic games, in the Hillbury-Seaton dual meet, he must
struggle against this quick-starting, strong-running rival, who was at
least half a second better on the high-hurdle course. Should he ever
be able to beat that fellow? Sam considered his own vain endeavors to
put speed into his long legs, and confessed frankly that the odds were
heavy against him. But none the less, being of the smilingly persistent
kind, he went on with his practice undaunted, as if he had battles to
win instead of to lose. He also gave close attention to his school
work. Birdie Fowle informed him one day that he was no good any more;
Moorhead had made a grind out of him. Sam’s laughing comment was that
he wanted to get into college decently if possible, with a point or
two to the good. This was true, but it was not the fundamental reason
for his devotion to his studies.
During the summer Archer had run across a Hillburyite named Denton,
at the seashore. When he inquired of this Hillburyite what kind of
a fellow Kilham was, Denton declared him the very finest sort of a
fellow. Later Sam chanced to ask how Kilham did in his studies, and
Denton returned a report distinctly favorable; he was not the very
best, of course, but much better than the average. Sam considered these
facts a full week. At the end of that time he had made up his mind
that if he had to run second to Kilham in the hurdles, he wouldn’t
fall behind in the classroom, too. This secretly nourished ambition
to maintain a rank that he need not be ashamed to have compared with
that of his Hillbury rival, increased rather than diminished as the
year slipped away. Certain teachers who grew from month to month more
complacent over their stimulating influence on Archer, would have been
much surprised to learn that the steady up trend of his rank line was
due to an unacknowledged, unreal competition with a student in another
school.
Sam’s fall hurdle practice was interrupted by the summons to class
football. Before the season was far advanced, the captain of the
senior team was promoted to the first eleven squad, and Sam was chosen
captain in his place. With the care of his eleven and the class games
and the duty of punting to practise the school backs, Sam found small
opportunity to play with his pair of hurdles.
The season was a fortunate one for the school eleven, and still more
fortunate for Mulcahy, who stepped in mid-season into the shoes of
a big tackle who had ignominiously succumbed to the measles; and he
kept his place through half the Hillbury game. He was thus a member
of a victorious school eleven, in a position to reap the glory of the
successful efforts of others. As a matter of fact, the game was won by
Kendrick, or by Kendrick and Illerton, the new end, together, after the
line had been ignobly crowded to and fro, up and down the field, for
three quarters of the playing time. But a victory is a victory, and
Mulcahy retained his good share of the prestige which the members of a
winning team enjoy.
He made immediate use of this prestige to attain a long-cherished
ambition. In the fall of the previous year, and again in the spring,
he had been balked in his efforts to become president of the Laurel
Leaf, largely through the influence of Duncan Peck and his following.
Duncan Peck was now gone and many new fellows had come. This time
Mulcahy adopted less open methods of soliciting. Swan was his manager,
a natural politician who loved the excitement of a campaign. Swan cared
nothing about Mulcahy, but was down on Archer, who had scorned an
invitation to join the Mu Nu, Swan’s fraternity, which ranked as the
“yaller dog” of school societies. Sam and Moorhead tried to persuade
Kendrick to run for the Leaf, and failed. Then they fell back on
Blankenberg, a substitute on the eleven, who possessed solid qualities
and would have filled the office with dignity. Then it was that Swan
whisked into the field to the support of the candidate whom Archer
opposed.
The contest was uneven. On the one side Mulcahy, football player,
editor of the “Seatonian,” ready-tongued, of imposing personality,
offering a fine show, both of talent and of school spirit; on the other
Blankenberg, plain, honest, conscientious, modest. Mulcahy triumphed
with votes to throw away. He came over to Blankenberg after the affair
was over with a very pretty display of personal sympathy.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get it, really I am,” he said. “I shouldn’t take
it if so many hadn’t voted for me.”
“I’m glad you won, if the majority want you,” returned Blankenberg,
honestly.
“I think your manager lost you votes,” Mulcahy went on, pretending to
joke, but avoiding Sam’s eye. “I wouldn’t trust him again.”
Blankenberg and Sam walked out together. “Isn’t he the limit,” exploded
Sam, when they were alone, “for pulling the wool over people’s eyes!
He’s got everybody on the string from the faculty to Dunbar Hall, and
he hasn’t a principle to his name. The school’s training that fellow
for a political boss.”
“He didn’t need to be unprincipled to win to-night,” remarked
Blankenberg. “It was too easy. I rather think he’ll find some way of
getting ’most anything he wants.”
Sam struggled with an impulse to quote Mulcahy’s statement that his
supreme ambition was to win the Yale Cup; but the feeling that Mulcahy
had spoken in confidence prevented his mention of it. It seemed quite
reasonable now that this ambition should be attained.
“There’s one thing he can’t get,” he said with pardonable bitterness,
“class day offices. The class knows him too well.”
But therein Sam was mistaken. The Omega Omicron clashed with the Alpha
Beta Gamma over the election of President of the Day, neither being
willing to give in to the other. As a result, the unfraternified,
moulded into a temporarily coherent force through the influence of the
vengeful Swan and the despised Mu Nu, united on Mulcahy and swept him
into office.
“There seems to be nothing that that fellow can’t rake in if he tries,”
Sam grumbled to himself, as he swung moodily homeward from the class
election. “Of course you’d expect the faculty to be fooled, but here’s
half the class voting for him when nine out of every ten know he’s a
rotten fakir. Think of our bringing all our relatives to class day, and
that fellow sitting up on the platform as the representative man of the
graduating class of Seaton Academy! The Yale Cup?--Mulcahy, of course!
Anything he wants. He’s our color-bearer, sure enough! Rah, rah, rah,
Mulcahy!”