A LOSS TO THE NINE
MEANTIME the school had heard the proclamation of the sin and its
punishment, and looked upon Wilmot’s vacant seat. The exile was missed.
Dunn chuckled ecstatically over the amusing fact that the official
lightning had passed by the bold man of action and struck the crafty
suggester. His merriment was coldly received.
“You’d better shut up, Jason,” said Trask, roughly. “Any fool can stick
a match into a sand box when he’s given the match and told how to do
it.”
“And no one but a fool would have put that one into the bag,” declared
Eaton. “I believe that’s what gave poor Steve away.”
“That’s right,” said Sumner, in confirmation. “And Steve said one, not
three. If only one had gone off, Cary wouldn’t have suspected anything,
and Steve wouldn’t have got stung. You gave the thing dead away.”
Dunn, who had by this time lost all pride in his handiwork, glowered
across the table. “If he was afraid of getting stung, he ought to have
kept clear of the thing altogether,” he growled. “He took his risk, and
I took mine. It isn’t my fault if he left his matches in the drawer!”
“He wouldn’t have left them there if Cary hadn’t forced him to, and Cary
wouldn’t have been standing over him if you hadn’t tried to burn the
whole box at once.” This, from Trask, was but a repetition of Sumner’s
argument.
“You both ought to be spanked,” remarked Talbot. “It isn’t fair that one
should be soaked and the other not.”
“Would you have me go to Westcott and say, ‘I’m guilty, please sting me
too?’ I see myself doing that!” Dunn gave a derisive laugh at the idea.
“No one who knows you would expect that of you,” replied Talbot,
significantly. “It wouldn’t do any good, either. Hardie tried to help
Steve out by confessing that he brought the matches to school and
offering to take part of the punishment, but it wouldn’t go.”
Dunn sniffed his contempt. “And old Westcott soaked him for it.”
“No!” answered Talbot, shortly. “He isn’t that kind of a man.”
After this conversation Dunn avoided all reference to the laboratory
incident, and would have been glad to have the others forget it, but
they continued to regard him as responsible for Wilmot’s misfortune, and
withdrew their favor from him. Those were unpleasant days for Archibald
Dunn; no one at Adams’s would have much to do with him, and the
conviction, in part justified, that he was not receiving from the boys a
fair deal kept him morose and sulky. Moreover, frank letters concerning
his work were going home to his parents, which served to plunge him more
deeply in trouble. Having shirked and trifled so long, he was well-nigh
incapable of doing anything else.
About the time of Wilmot’s return to school, Talbot called out the
candidates for the crew. They came in a flock, ranging in size from
Bumpus the fat to McDowell the small, and in degrees of chance according
to the popular estimate, from Talbot the sure-to-make-it to any one of a
half-dozen equally sure not to make it.
“What’re you doing here, Bump?” asked Mac. “You don’t suppose any crew
could pull you, do you?”
“I’m out for the exercise,” responded Bumpus, unruffled. “What’re _you_
doing here? You don’t suppose you could pull any one, do you?”
“I’m out for the fun,” explained Mac. “There’s nothing doing, and I’m
tired of the gym.”
These two, of course, were among those considered sure not to make it.
Where Hardie stood, no one could tell until he began to row on the
machines, and then the experts opined unanimously that his chances were
slim. The captain arranged the candidates in fours to suit himself.
There was a first four, which Talbot stroked, made up of the fellows
left in school who had rowed in the first or second boat the year
before. Then a second containing those of unofficial rank but known
experience; and after these, squads of four taken without much care in
grouping. All the instruction they received was such as could be given
by the captain or his aids.
Roger got a place at two in the third squad, and did what he could to
carry out the directions given him—pull his stroke through hard all the
way, recover sharply, start his slides back with a gradual, deliberate
movement, and use his legs. It was all new and strange to him, so
totally different from anything he had tried before that experience in
rowing in an ordinary skiff with an ordinary pair of oars seemed of no
help whatever. He perceived his awkwardness quite as clearly as the
bystanders who whispered together as they watched him,—and he felt it
besides, as they could not. The secret ambition which he had cherished
since the day when Deering made the speech in school assumed the form of
an absurd presumption. But he had no thought of giving up.
Bumpus got his exercise, and Mac his fun. The others got fun, too, when
Bumpus rowed, for he proved the jolliest clumsy porpoise that ever
tried to sit in a boat. He was too big for his seat. He couldn’t get
forward to begin stroke, and when he finished, the chances were even
that he couldn’t recover at all. His candidacy was of short duration.
Talbot had to get rid of him to keep his squad under control.
Mac, on the other hand, took to the practice as if he had done it for
years. Every suggestion made to him was translated immediately into his
stroke. From catch to finish, from recovery to catch, his stroke seemed
one blended, graceful movement.
“What a pity he isn’t bigger!” said Talbot to Eaton, who stood beside
him. “He’s a natural oarsman.”
The second day McDowell stroked the third crew, while Hardie blundered
along on the fourth. A fortnight later he was still blundering along,
with nothing to sustain his courage but a resolution to hang on as long
as there was anything to hang to.
And now Dunn received a blow that hurt. The call had gone forth for
candidates for baseball, and Dunn’s name appeared near the head of the
list. Mr. Westcott then summoned Dunn to an official interview, in which
he informed the sanguine ball player that in consequence of his
continued poor performance of school work, he could not be allowed to
play on the nine. “We have kept you here,” said the head-master, “in
spite of your neglect, only because we were not willing to believe that
a boy could be six months among us without catching from teachers and
boys something of the spirit of serious work. So far, we have apparently
failed to make any impression upon you. At the present time there is not
a single subject in which you could be recommended for college
examinations. This being the case, we cannot allow you to assume new
responsibilities which would interfere still further with your study.”
And then the teacher made a serious attempt to bring home to the
misguided boy the wrongfulness and folly of his course, but Dunn heard
nothing but the fact that for him there was to be no baseball. His
answers were given in stolid monosyllables; he went forth suffocating
with rage.
No one knew better than Dunn that his school life had been a failure,
but his point of view was very different from that of his teachers.
Dunn’s scholastic ideal was formed somewhat on the lines of Kipling’s
Stalky. To dodge one’s work, outwit one’s teachers, and triumph at
examination by luck and cleverness represented to Dunn the only truly
desirable way of conquering school drudgery. The real thing was to be
popular, to be in the important set, to play on the teams, and be talked
about. When Stalkyism, as exemplified in Dunn’s recitation career,
proved a flat failure, and the expected popularity turned out to be only
a kind of contemptuous freedom to disregard him, he had consoled himself
with assurances of a different experience on the baseball field, where
he should shine with no uncertain light. Now with a single word Mr.
Westcott had robbed him of his opportunity. He felt like a soldier who
at the critical moment of defence finds that his cartridges have been
stolen and that he is at the mercy of the enemy.
Stover listened to his tale, deeply disgusted. Braggarts are usually
liars or victims of delusion, but occasionally one is found to make good
some of his boasts. Stover had investigated Dunn’s baseball career and
believed in him.
“It’s a low-down trick!” he burst forth. “That’s the way they do here.
If they find a fellow who can play something, they scare up some excuse
to rule him out. Anything to discourage athletics!”
“I suppose it’s no good to kick,” said Dunn, despairingly.
“I’ll tell you what to do. Go to the old man and play the penitent. Tell
him that you’ve done wrong, and that you’re going to study hard from now
on. If you can put it up to him strong enough, he’ll fall on your neck
and forgive you. You’ll have to make a good bluff at work for the next
two or three weeks until you get your reputation up, but it won’t hurt
you any to do that. Some of the fellows out there at Adams’s will give
you a lift. There’s Hardie, now; he’s a good-natured fellow and a pretty
good scholar; he’d help you out if he knew what you’re up against.”
“I guess not,” said Dunn, hopeless. “He’s always been down on me.”
“I don’t believe it. He got you that invitation last fall for the
dancing school. I don’t see why he shouldn’t help you now.”
“It wasn’t Hardie. Ben Tracy got it,” corrected Dunn, quickly.
“Ben Tracy nothing! It was Hardie. I heard Sumner talking about it at
the time. It was Hardie that did it. He isn’t so conceited as some of
that crowd. If you go at him right, he’ll help you. Now do as I say, and
see what comes of it.”
This news concerning the invitation to the dancing class—he had not
forgotten his anxiety at the time—set Dunn’s thoughts in a new
direction. The more he recalled the circumstances, which included Ben’s
clumsy disclaimer, the more he was inclined to believe that Stover was
right. For the first time during the year Dunn clearly perceived that he
had been in some respects a silly fool. For the first time it dawned
upon him that some of these fellows whom he had been so ready to
disparage might be in reality better and more deserving of honor than
he. He was honest enough to recognize that if he had been in Hardie’s
place he would have acted in a far different way.
Following Stover’s counsel, he went to Mr. Westcott with an artificial
penitence on his lips; but there was already a half-formed, half-real
penitence in his heart. By what means Mr. Westcott pierced his shell and
made this half-penitence wholly real, we may not inquire. The
head-master had a skill in such interviews, the product of much
experience and a genuine desire to help rather than to punish; and
Dunn’s career offered few points capable of defence, when considered
with frankness and honesty. That his repentance was indeed real, and his
resolution to face about, was, for the moment at least, genuine, is
proved by two circumstances: first, he acquiesced, though sadly, in Mr.
Westcott’s decision that if he was to regain lost ground, he could not
afford the time and the thought which school baseball required;
secondly, he confessed, unsolicited, many of his misdeeds, including his
part in the episode of the sand bath.
“I suspected it,” said Mr. Westcott, “but we won’t consider that now.
That belongs to the past. We start anew to-day.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------