green Freshman going to fill his shoes at the last minute. I feel like
weeping, honest I do. Who the deuce is this Seeley? Any kin of yours? I
suppose not or you would have bellowed it at me before this.”
“He is my only boy, Dick,” and the father held up his head with a
shadow of his old manner. “I didn’t know he had the ghost of a show to
make the team until I saw this dispatch.”
“Then, of course, you are coming up with me,” roared Mr. Giddings. “I
hope he’s a chip of the old block. If he has your sand they can’t stop
him. Jumping Jupiter, they couldn’t have stopped you with an axe when
you were playing guard in our time, Harry. I feel better already to
know that it is your kid going in at full-back to-day.”
“No, I’m not going up, Dick,” said Seeley slowly. “For one thing, it is
too short notice for me to break away from the office, and I—I haven’t
the nerve to watch the boy go into the game. I’m not feeling very fit.”
“Stuff and nonsense, you need a brain cure,” vociferated Richard
Giddings. “You, an old Yale guard, with a pup on the team, and he a
Freshman at that! Throw out your chest, man; tell the office to go to
the devil—where all newspapers belong—and meet me at the station at
ten o’clock sharp. You talk and look like the oldest living grad with
one foot in the grave.”
Seeley flushed and bit his lip. His dulled realization of what Yale
had been to him was quickened by this tormenting comrade of the brave
days of old, but he could not be shaken from his attitude of morbid
self-effacement.
“No, Dick, it’s no use,” he returned with a tremulous smile. “You can’t
budge me. But give my love to the crowd and tell them to cheer for that
youngster of mine until they’re blue in the face.”
Mr. Richard Giddings eyed him quizzically, and surmised that something
or other was gravely wrong with his grizzled classmate. But Seeley
offered no more explanations and the vivacious intruder fell to his
task of demolishing sauerkraut with great gusto, after which he nimbly
vanished into a cruising hansom with a sense of having been rebuffed.
Seeley watched him depart at great speed and then plodded toward his
up-town lodgings. His sleep was distressed with unhappy dreams, and
during a wakeful interval he heard a knock at his sitting-room door.
An office boy from the _Chronicle_ editorial rooms gave him a note and
waited for an answer.
Seeley recognized the handwriting of the managing editor and was
worried, for he was always expecting the worst to happen. He sighed
with relieved surprise as he read:
“MY DEAR MR. SEELEY:
“Please go to New Haven as soon as possible and do a couple of columns
of descriptive introduction of the Yale-Princeton game. The sporting
department will cover the technical story, but a big steamboat
collision has just happened in North River, two or three hundred
drowned and so on, and I need every man in the shop. As an old Yale
player I am sure I can depend on you for a good story, and I know you
used to do this kind of stuff in fine style.”
Seeley fished his watch from under a pillow. It was after ten o’clock
and the game would begin at two. While he hurried into his clothes he
was conscious of a distinct thrill of excited interest akin to his
old-time joy in the day’s work. Could he “do this kind of stuff in fine
style”? Why, before his brain had begun to be always tired, when he was
the star reporter of the _Chronicle_, his football introductions had
been classics in Park Row. If there was a spark of the old fire left
in him he would try to strike it out, and for the moment he forgot the
burden of inertia which had so long crushed him.
“But I don’t want to run into Dick Giddings and his crowd,” he muttered
as he sought his hat and overcoat. “And I’ll be up in the press-box
away from the mob of old grads. Perhaps my luck has turned.”
When Henry Seeley reached the Yale field the eleven had gone to the
dressing-rooms in the training house, and he hovered on the edge of
the flooding crowds, fairly yearning for a glimpse of the Freshman
full-back and a farewell grasp of his hand. The habitual dread lest
the son find cause to be ashamed of his father had been shoved into
the background by a stronger, more natural emotion. But he well knew
that he ought not to invade the training quarters in these last crucial
moments. Ernest must not be distraught by a feather’s weight of any
other interest than the task in hand. The coaches would be delivering
their final words of instruction and the old Yale guard could picture
to himself the tense absorption of the scene. Like one coming out of a
dream, the past was returning to him in vivid, heart-stirring glimpses.
Reluctantly he sought his place in the press-box high above the vast
amphitheatre.
The preliminary spectacle was movingly familiar: the rippling banks of
color which rose on all sides to frame the long carpet of chalked turf;
the clamorous outbursts of cheering when an eddy of Yale or Princeton
undergraduates swirled and tossed at command of the dancing dervish of
a leader at the edge of the field below; the bright, buoyant aspect of
the multitude as viewed en masse. Seeley leaned against the railing of
his lofty perch and gazed at this pageant until a sporting editor, long
in harness, nudged his elbow and said:
“Hello! I haven’t seen you at a game in a dozen years. Doing the story
or just working the press-badge graft? That namesake of yours will be
meat for the Tigers, I’m afraid. Glad he doesn’t belong to you, aren’t
you?”
Seeley stared at him like a man in a trance and replied evasively:
“He may be good enough. It all depends on his sand and nerve. Yes, I am
doing the story for a change. Have you the final line-up?”
“Princeton is playing all her regular men,” said the sporting editor,
giving Seeley his note-book. “The only Yale change is at full-back—and
that’s a catastrophe.”
Seeley copied the lists for reference and his pencil was not steady
when he came to “Full-back, Ernest T. Seeley.” But he pulled his
thoughts away from the eleven and began to jot down notes of the
passing incidents which might serve to weave into the fabric of his
description. The unwonted stimulus aroused his talent as if it were
not dead but dormant. The scene appealed to him with almost as much
freshness and color as if he were observing it for the first time.
A roar of cheering rose from a far corner of the field and ran swiftly
along the Yale side of the amphitheatre, which blossomed in tossing
blue. The Yale eleven scampered into view like colts at pasture, the
substitutes veering toward the benches behind the side-line. Without
more ado the team scattered in formation for signal practice, paying
no heed to the tumult which raged around and above them. Agile,
clean-limbed, splendid in their disciplined young manhood, the dark
blue of their stockings and the white “Y” gleaming on their sweaters
fairly trumpeted their significance to Henry Seeley. And poised behind
the rush-line, wearing his hard-won university blue, was the lithe
figure of the Freshman full-back, Ernest Seeley.
The youngster, whose fate it was to be called a “forlorn hope,” looked
fragile beside his comrades of the eleven. Although tall and wiry, he
was like a greyhound in a company of mastiffs. His father, looking
down at him from so great a height that he could not read his face,
muttered to himself while he dug his nails into his palms:
“He is too light for this day’s work. But he carries himself like a
thoroughbred.”
The boy and his fellows seemed singularly remote from the shouting
thousands massed so near them. They had become the sole arbiters of
their fate, and their impressive isolation struck Henry Seeley anew as
the most dramatic feature of this magnificent picture. He must sit idly
by and watch his only son battle through the most momentous hour of his
young life, as if he were gazing down from another planet.
The staccato cheers of Princeton rocketed along the other side of the
field, and the eleven from Old Nassau ran briskly over the turf and
wheeled into line for a last rehearsal of their machine-like tactics.
Henry Seeley was finding it hard to breathe, just as it had happened
in other days when he was waiting for the “kick-off” and facing a
straining Princeton line. The minutes were like hours while the
officials consulted with the captains in the centre of the field. Then
the two elevens ranged themselves across the brown turf, there was
breathless silence, and a Princeton toe lifted the ball far down toward
the Yale goal. It was the young full-back who waited to receive the
opening kick, while his comrades thundered toward him to form a flying
screen of interference. But the twisting ball bounded from his too
eager arms, and another Yale back fell on it in time to save it from
the clutches of a meteoric Princeton end.
“Nervous. Hasn’t steadied down yet,” exclaimed a reporter behind Henry
Seeley. “But he can’t afford to give Princeton any more chances like
that. Her ends are faster than chain lightning.”
The father groaned and wiped the sweat from his eyes. If the team were
afraid of this untried full-back, such a beginning would not give
them confidence. Then the two lines locked and heaved in the first
scrimmage, and a stocky Yale half-back was pulled down in his tracks.
Again the headlong Princeton defence held firm and the Yale captain
gasped, “Second down and three yards to gain.” The Yale interferers
sped to circle one end of the line, but they were spilled this way and
that and the runner went down a yard short of the needed distance.
The Yale full-back dropped back to punt. Far and true the ball soared
into the Princeton field, and the lithe Freshman had somewhat redeemed
himself. But now, for their own part, the sons of Old Nassau found
themselves unable to make decisive gains against the Yale defence.
Greek met Greek in these early clashes, and both teams were forced to
punt again and again. Trick-plays were spoiled by alert end-rushers for
the blue or the orange and black, fiercely launched assaults at centre
were torn asunder, and the longer the contest raged up and down the
field the more clearly it was perceived that these ancient rivals were
rarely well matched in point of strength and strategy.
The Yale coaches were dismayed at this turn of events. They had hoped
to see the ball carried toward the Princeton goal by means of shrewdly
devised teamwork, instead of which the burden of the game was shifted
to one man, the weakest link in the chain, the Freshman at full-back.
He was punting with splendid distance, getting the ball away when it
seemed as if he must be overwhelmed by the hurtling Tigers. Once or
twice, however, a hesitant nervousness almost wrought quick disaster,
and the Yale partisans watched him with tormenting apprehension.
The first half of the game was fought into the last few minutes of
play and neither eleven had been able to score. Then luck and skill
combined to force the struggle far down into Yale territory. Only ten
yards more of trampled turf to gain and Princeton would cross the last
white line. The indomitable spirit which had placed upon the escutcheon
of Yale football the figure of a bulldog rampant, rallied to meet this
crisis, and the hard-pressed line held staunch and won possession of
the ball on downs. Back to the very shadow of his own goal-posts the
Yale full-back ran to punt the ball out of the danger zone. It shot
fairly into his grasp from a faultless pass, but his fingers juggled
the slippery leather as if it were bewitched. For a frantic, awful
instant he fumbled with the ball and wildly dived after it as it
caromed off to one side, bounded crazily, and rolled beyond his reach.
The Princeton quarter-back had darted through the line like a bullet.
Without slackening speed or veering from his course, he scooped up
the ball as he fled toward the Yale goal-line. It was done and over
within a twinkling, and while the Yale team stampeded helplessly in his
wake the devastating hero was circling behind the goal-posts where he
flopped to earth, the precious ball apparently embedded in his stomach.
It was a Princeton touchdown fairly won, but made possible by the
tragic blunder of one Yale man. While ten thousand Princeton throats
were barking their jubilation, as many more loyal friends of Yale sat
sad-eyed and sullen and glowered their unspeakable displeasure at the
slim figure of the full-back as he limped into line to face the try for
goal.
The goal was not scored, however, and the fateful tally stood five
to nothing when the first half ended, with the blue banners drooping
disconsolate.
Henry Seeley pulled his slouch hat over his eyes and sat with hunched
shoulders staring at the Yale team as it left the field for the
intermission. He had forgotten about his story of the game. The old
spectre of failure obsessed him. It was already haunting the pathway
of his boy. Was he also to be beaten by one colossal blunder? Henry
Seeley felt that Ernest’s whole career hung upon his behavior in the
second half. How would the lad “take his medicine”? Would it break his
heart or rouse him to fight more valiantly? As if the father had been
thinking aloud, the sporting editor at his side observed:
“He may win the game yet. I like the looks of that boy. But he did
make a hideous mess of it, didn’t he? I hope he hasn’t got a streak of
yellow in him.”
Henry Seeley turned on his neighbor with a savage scowl and could not
hold, back the quivering retort:
“He belongs to me, I want you to understand, and we’ll say nothing
about yellow streaks until he has a chance to make good next half.”
“Whew-w-w, why did you hold it out on me, old man?” gasped the sporting
editor. “No wonder you kicked me black and blue without knowing it. I
hope he is a chip of the old block. I saw you play here in your last
game.”
Seeley grunted something and resumed staring at the field. He was
thinking of the present moment in the training quarters, of the muddy,
weary players sprawled around the head coach, of his wise, bitter,
stinging rebukes and admonitions. Perhaps he would take Ernest out of
the game. But Seeley was confident that the coaches would give the
boy a chance to redeem himself if they believed his heart was in the
right place. Presently the two teams trotted on the field, not as
nimbly as at their first appearance, but with dogged resolution in
their demeanor. Henry Seeley saw his son glance up at the “cheering
sections,” as if wondering whether their welcome was meant to include
him. One cheer, at least, was intended to greet him, for Henry Seeley
stood on his chair, waved his hat, and thundered:
“‘Rah, ’rah, ’rah, for Yale, my boy. Eat ’em alive as your daddy used
to do.”
The men from Princeton had no intention of being devoured in this
summary fashion. They resumed their tireless, whirlwind attack like
giants refreshed, and so harried their Yale foemen that they were
forced to their utmost to ward off another touchdown. This incessant
battering dulled the edges of their offensive tactics, and they seemed
unable to set in motion a consistent series of advances. But the joy of
Princeton was tempered by the knowledge that this, her dearest enemy,
was not beaten until the last play had been signalled.
And somehow the Yale machine of muscle, brains, and power began to find
itself when the afternoon shadows were slanting athwart the arena.
With the ball on Princeton’s forty-yard line the chosen sons of Eli
began a heroic advance down the field. It was as if some missing cog
had been supplied. “Straight old-fashioned football” it was, eleven
minds and bodies working as one and animated by a desperate resolve,
which carried the Yale team along for down after down into the heart of
Princeton’s ground.
Perhaps because he was fresher than the other backs, perhaps because
the captain knew his man, the ball was given to the Yale full-back for
one swift and battering assault after another. His slim figure pelted
at the rush-line, was overwhelmed in an avalanche of striped arms and
legs, but somehow twisted, wriggled, dragged itself ahead as if there
was no stopping him. The multitude comprehended that this despised and
disgraced Freshman was working out his own salvation along with that
of his comrades. Once, when the scrimmage was untangled, he was dragged
from beneath a heap of players, unable to regain his feet. He lay on
the grass a huddled heap, blood smearing his forehead. A surgeon and
the trainer doused and bandaged him, and presently he staggered to his
feet and hobbled to his station, rubbing his hands across his eyes as
if dazed.
When, at length, the stubbornly retreating Princeton line had been
driven deep down into their end of the field, they, too, showed that
they could hold fast in the last extremity. The Yale attack crumpled
against them as if it had struck a stone wall. Young Seeley seemed to
be so crippled and exhausted that he had been given a respite from the
interlocked, hammering onslaught, but at the third down the panting
quarter-back croaked out his signal. His comrades managed to rip a
semblance of an opening for him, he plunged through, popped clear of
the line, fell to his knees, recovered his footing by a miracle of
agility, and lunged onward, to be brought down within five yards of the
coveted goal-posts.
He had won the right to make the last momentous charge. Swaying in his
tracks, the full-back awaited the summons. Then he dived in behind the
interference for a circuit of the right end. Two Princeton men broke
through as if they had been shot out of mortars, but the Yale full-back
had turned and was ploughing straight ahead. Pulled down, dragging the
tackler who clung to his waist, he floundered to earth with most of the
Princeton team piled above him. But the ball lay beyond the fateful
chalk-line, the Yale touchdown was won, and the game was tied.
The captain clapped Seeley on the shoulder, nodded at the ball, and the
full-back limped on to the field to kick the goal or lose a victory.
There were no more signs of nervousness in his bearing. With grave
deliberation he stood waiting for the ball to be placed in front of
the goal-posts. The sun had dropped behind the lofty grand-stands. The
field lay in a kind of wintry twilight. Thirty thousand men and women
gazed in tensest silence at the mud-stained, battered youth who had
become the crowning issue of this poignant moment. Up in the press-box
a thick-set, grayish man dug his fists in his eyes and could not bear
to look at the lonely, reliant figure down yonder on the quiet field.
The father found courage to take his hands from his face only when a
mighty roar of joy boomed along the Yale side of the amphitheatre, and
he saw the ball drop in a long arc behind the goal-posts. The kick had
won the game for Yale.
Once clear of the crowds, Henry Seeley hurried toward the training
quarters. His head was up, his shoulders squared, and he walked with
the free stride of an athlete. Mr. Richard Giddings danced madly across
to him:
“Afraid to see him play were you, you silly old fool? He is a chip of
the old block. He didn’t know when he was licked. Wow, wow, wow, blood
will tell! Come along with us, Harry.”
“I must shake hands with the youngster, Dick. Glad I changed my mind
and came to see him do it.”
“All right, see you at Mory’s to-night. Tell the boy we’re all proud of
him.”
Seeley resumed his course, saying over and over again, as if he loved
the sound of the words, “chip of the old block,” “blood will tell.”
This verdict was like the ringing call of bugles. It made him feel
young, hopeful, resolute, that life were worth having for the sake of
its strife. One thing at least was certain. His son could “take his
punishment” and wrest victory from disaster, and he deserved something
better than a coward and a quitter for a father.
The full-back was sitting on a bench when the elder Seeley entered the
crowded, steaming room of the training house. The surgeon had removed
the muddy, blood-stained bandage from around his tousled head and was
cleansing an ugly, ragged gash. The boy scowled and winced but made no
complaint, although his bruised face was very pale.
“Must have made you feel pretty foggy,” said the surgeon. “I shall have
to put in a few stitches. It was a deuce of a thump.”
“I couldn’t see very well and my legs went queer for a few minutes, but
I’m all right now, thanks,” replied the full-back, and then, glancing
up, he espied his father standing near the door. The young hero of the
game beckoned him with a grimy fist. Henry Seeley went over to him,
took the fist in his two hands, and then patted the boy’s cheek with
awkward and unaccustomed tenderness.
“Sit still, Ernest. I won’t interfere with the doctor’s job. I just
wanted to let you know that I saw your bully work. It made me think
of—it made me think of——”
Henry Seeley’s voice broke curiously and his lip quivered. He had not
meant to show any emotion.
His son replied with a smile of affectionate admiration:
“It made you think of your own teams, didn’t it? And I was thinking
of you in that last half. It helped my nerve a whole lot to remember
that my dad never knew when he was licked. Why, even the coaches told
me that between the halves. It put more ginger into me than anything
else. We’ve got to keep up the family record between us.”
The father looked beyond the boy as if he were thinking of a bigger,
sterner game than football. There was the light of a resurrected
determination in his eyes, and a vibrant earnestness in his voice as he
said:
“I’m not worrying about your keeping the family record bright, Ernest.
And, however things may go with me, you will be able to hang fast to
the doctrine which helped you to-day, that your father, too, doesn’t
know when he is whipped.”
GALLEGHER
A NEWSPAPER STORY
BY
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
This is an illustration of a popular type of the short-story. The
movement from beginning to end is swift and urgent; something important
is happening all the time. Description is reduced to the minimum, and
where it is used does not impede the action. The local color of a
great newspaper office in a large city contributes to the impression
of orderly activity and haste. Gallegher, moreover, is the kind of
character that enlists sympathy by his youth, his daring, and his
resourcefulness.
GALLEGHER[13]
We had had so many office-boys before Gallegher came among us that they
had begun to lose the characteristics of individuals, and became merged
in a composite photograph of small boys, to whom we applied the generic
title of “Here, you”; or “You, boy.”
We had had sleepy boys, and lazy boys, and bright, “smart” boys, who
became so familiar on so short an acquaintance that we were forced to
part with them to save our own self-respect.
They generally graduated into district-messenger boys, and occasionally
returned to us in blue coats with nickel-plated buttons, and patronized
us.
But Gallegher was something different from anything we had experienced
before. Gallegher was short and broad in build, with a solid, muscular
broadness, and not a fat and dumpy shortness. He wore perpetually on
his face a happy and knowing smile, as if you and the world in general
were not impressing him as seriously as you thought you were, and his
eyes, which were very black and very bright, snapped intelligently at
you like those of a little black-and-tan terrier.
All Gallegher knew had been learnt on the streets; not a very good
school in itself, but one that turns out very knowing scholars. And
Gallagher had attended both morning and evening sessions. He could not
tell you who the Pilgrim Fathers were, nor could he name the thirteen
original States, but he knew all the officers of the twenty-second
police district by name, and he could distinguish the clang of a
fire-engine’s gong from that of a patrol-wagon or an ambulance fully
two blocks distant. It was Gallegher who rang the alarm when the
Woolwich Mills caught fire, while the officer on the beat was asleep,
and it was Gallegher who led the “Black Diamonds” against the “Wharf
Rats,” when they used to stone each other to their hearts’ content on
the coal-wharves of Richmond.