IN THE PAIR-OAR
DUNN’S change of heart was not as sudden as it seemed. A boy often
builds for himself a certain structure of false principle which it
gratifies his vanity to consider his permanent philosophy of life. When
faults in this structure develop, he shuts his eyes to them or patches
them with flattering sophistries; and even when the foundations are
actually crumbling away, he affects a firm confidence because he is too
weak to face the task of rebuilding. In the end some bitter experience
may undermine the last support and bring down the edifice with a crash.
So it was with Dunn. He had been aware for some time that he was on the
wrong track, but he could not bring himself to acknowledge the fact. The
information that even when he felt most bitter against Hardie, Hardie
had secretly done him a good turn, stirred his sense of shame and
disproved his assumption that all the boys had been down on him from the
beginning. He recognized clearly enough now that he had been making a
fool of himself, and that the only sensible course was to retrace his
steps and start anew in a different path. He went that evening to
Hardie’s room, announced that he was going to turn over a new leaf, and
asked if he might drop in occasionally for a lift over a hard place. He
said nothing of the dancing-school invitation; that lay now too far away
in the past.
Hardie met him so cordially that Dunn was moved to open his heart still
further. “What is the matter with me, anyway?” he demanded bluntly. “I
wish you’d give me the bottom facts, right out straight.”
Hardie smiled. “You don’t do any work.”
“Oh, I know all about that. I’m a loafer and a goat besides. I don’t
mean about studies. Why don’t the fellows like me?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Hardie, warily. “Don’t they like you?”
“No, they don’t. You know they don’t. Now, what is it?”
Roger looked shyly across the table at the questioner; he didn’t know
what to answer.
“Spit it out!” insisted Dunn. “Just give me the truth. I can stand it.”
“Well,” said Roger, slowly, “for one thing, you talk too much.”
Dunn stared. “I don’t think that’s such a crime. I’m nothing compared
with Wilmot. His tongue’s going all the time.”
“Oh, he’s different,” exclaimed Roger, hastily. “He talks a lot of
trash, but he’s amusing, and the fellows like it. He never talks about
himself.”
“And my talk isn’t amusing and is always about myself.”
“Not that exactly, but you’re always thinking about yourself. You don’t
take much interest in anybody else.”
“It isn’t easy to do it if they won’t let you,” said Dunn, with a gloomy
smile. “What else?”
“Your ideas are different from theirs. You think things are funny that
they don’t. They don’t like your way of looking at things.”
“In other words I’m all wrong,” growled Dunn, in disgust, as he rose to
go. “I couldn’t please ’em, anyway, and I shan’t try it, but I’m going
to stop talking and cut out smoking and get right down to work.”
“For how long?” asked Roger, with a grin of incredulity.
“Right through the year,” returned Dunn, hotly. “You don’t believe me,
but you wait and see!”
With this bold assertion on his lips, Dunn made for his room. The door
was just closing behind him when Roger called out, “Oh, Jason!”
Dunn returned, closed the door and backed against it.
“Aren’t you going to play ball at all?”
“No; what’s the use? If I can’t play on the team, I might as well cut
the whole thing out and study.”
“You can’t study all the time. You might come out just the same and play
on the second and pitch for batting practice. It would show the right
spirit, and the fellows would appreciate it. You know how they all felt
about Sumner.”
“I won’t do it,” answered Dunn, stubbornly. “I’ve been cut off from the
team, and now it’ll have to get along without me. Sumner always had a
chance to get on the team again; I’m out of it for good.”
The time had come for the crews to take to the river. The Boston schools
row under the patronage of the Boston Athletic Association, which
provides boats and coaches, arranges for the races, and furnishes
prizes. Each school enters two fours, a first and second, which compete
in separate races. As Westcott’s possessed a pair-oar of her own, there
were places in the boats for ten men exclusive of the coxswains. Talbot
narrowed down his squad to eleven, allowing an extra man for accidents
and illness, and getting rid of the rest by the easy method of not
inviting them to report on the river. Hardie, to his delight, received
orders to bring his rowing clothes to the boat-house. He did so fully
conscious that his destination was neither the first nor the second.
Talbot had said nothing to this effect,—indeed, Talbot, now that the
rowing season was actually to begin, abated something of his
intimacy,—but there was a general agreement as to the provisional
formation of the crews which was almost authoritative. Of the new men
who had come out, three had shown promise of skill as oarsmen. One of
them was Bursley, a quiet fellow who came in every day from a suburb a
dozen miles out, tall, muscular, and teachable. Louis Tracy was another,
and finally McDowell, who, though he had grown during the year, was
still undersized. On the first crew were to be tried—so the report
ran—Talbot, Bursley, Eaton, and Pitkin; on the second, Weld, Sumner, L.
Tracy, and McDowell; Wilmot, Hardie, and Redfield would thus be left
over for the pair-oar.
This forecast proved correct except in one particular. To his surprise,
Roger got a trial the first day out, at two on the second. We may well
call it a trial, for such it surely was to all concerned. More
accurately described, it was a demonstration of incapacity. Roger’s
struggles with his oar stirred his rowing companions to fierce growls,
the coxswain to abuse, the loiterers on the float to gestures and grins
of malicious enjoyment. Poor Number Two couldn’t get his oar in right;
it twisted in his hand and pulled under, it wouldn’t come out when it
ought and as it ought. Delayed by the insidious clutch of the water, he
started his slide before he had freed his blade, and his knees rose and
blocked the backward movement of his handle. Though he put forth
extraordinary efforts to master the oar, the oar insisted on mastering
him. By good luck and violent slide rushing, he managed to avoid taking
Number Three in the back, but half the time he was holding or backing
water, and all the time he was preventing bow from keeping stroke.
Strive as he might with mind and body, his strength wrought nothing but
confusion. A half-hour of this fruitless wrenching and blundering was
all the crew could stand; the boat was headed in, and Roger was
unceremoniously dumped upon the float.
Louis Tracy took his place—and kept it. After that, the disenchanted
but still determined Roger rowed bow on the pair-oar to Wilmot’s stroke,
and toiled over the unmanageable oar. It had a way of plunging under,
every few strokes, and pulling the side of the boat down; then it stuck
deep in the water, and Coolidge, the cox, would reprove, and the
offending bow would grip his handle still tighter and vow that this
particular fault shouldn’t occur again. But it did occur again, and
others as heinous. He couldn’t get his oar away after he had raised it
from the water; he rushed his slide instead of drawing it gradually back
so as not to check the motion of the boat; he could not put into
practice the apparently simple direction that the legs were to bear the
burden of the work. As a result his back suffered,—and the temper of
his mates, who poured out on his head reproach and sarcasm until the
ineffectualness of words was made apparent, when they relapsed into a
humorous pessimism that was more unflattering than abuse.
The crew of the pair-oar was under another disadvantage: very little
coaching trickled through to them. Caffrey, the Westcott coach, gave his
attention chiefly to the first and incidentally to the second: the
pair-oar shifted for itself, or received one set of amateur directions
one day and another the next. As Roger thought of it, he and Wilmot were
in the position of a slow steamer trying to overtake one which was
several knots faster. Only a breakdown in the leader could prevent the
distance between them from growing hourly greater.
“What’s the matter with Hardie?” asked Talbot, one day, as he walked
down with Wilmot to the boat-house. “He doesn’t seem to be gaining at
all.”
“He’s just rotten,” answered Wilmot, despairingly. “A low-caste baboon
would do better!”
“He may get it yet,” said Talbot.
“He may!” echoed Wilmot, derisively; “oh, yes, he may! But I’ll bet you
a dollar to a cent that he won’t!”
A fortnight passed: Bursley was making good in the first, and Mac had
been promoted to stroke on the second, but Roger’s improvement was
scarcely noticeable. He was beginning to fear that rowing was something
for which he was physically unfitted, as a fat man for pole vaulting. In
spite of his hardened muscles he became easily tired; his poor form wore
on his back and wrists and arms. Good rowing is easy rowing: Roger’s was
both bad and hard. Yet in spite of all discouragement he enjoyed the
practice. It was interesting to struggle for the hoped-for improvement,
even though the hope proved vain, to observe the other crews on the
water, to rest on the oar, a little out of the channel, and watch the
Varsity eight sweep magnificently by, with the nose of the coaching
launch close at the shell’s rudder, the oarsmen’s bodies bending in
beautiful unison, the water boiling back from the driving blades. Roger
never saw Deering’s crew without a thrill of that awe which the
subaltern feels when he stands in the presence of a famous general. It
represented power, skill, and determination concentrated; in it was
embodied a kind of majesty before which the schoolboy oars bowed with
instinctive reverence. Every crew on the river gazed at the Varsity in
rapt admiration, but the Varsity recognized the presence of no one but
itself.
One afternoon in early May, Coolidge turned the bow of the pair-oar
upstream. For a mile Hardie’s oar played its old tricks, twisting in his
hand and pulling under, tipping the boat, spoiling the stroke, filling
with disgust and despair the hearts of the little crew. Near the Cottage
Farm bridge they stopped to watch a college eight pass. When they
started again, it occurred to Roger to see whether the rowlock would not
carry his oar, and permit him to concentrate his attention on his slide
and the recovery. To his surprise the oarlock did carry the oar. His
wrists were relieved of an exhausting strain; his blade plunged under no
longer. He found that a little easy toss of the oar at the end of the
slide would bring the blade squarely into the water.
“What’s the matter with you, Bow?” called Coolidge, amazed. “You’re
rowing right!”
[Illustration: AND WATCH THE VARSITY EIGHT SWEEP MAGNIFICENTLY BY.]
“It’s about time,” growled Wilmot.
Hardie, delighted, gave his whole mind to his movement, ceasing to steal
side-glances at his blade, and watching Wilmot’s back more closely. The
oar was beginning to catch spontaneously and hard, his slide to return
naturally with the motion of the boat. The pair-oar continued upstream
to the edge of Soldiers’ Field, then turned and retraced its course,—a
three-mile row,—but Roger felt no weariness. The relief from the
awkward strain which he had been putting upon himself made the work seem
like a rest. Just above the Harvard bridge they met the first boat,
which stopped to enable the captain to watch them, and Pete sang out
something which could not be heard. Later when they were all dressing in
the boat-house, Coolidge asked what this message was.
“Oh, nothing of importance,” answered Talbot. “I only said that bow was
doing well.”
“It seems to me of importance,” said Roger, whose face glowed with joy.
“That’s more than you’ve said so far this year.”
“I’ve been thinking lately that I might never be able to say it at all,”
said Talbot.
Meantime on the ball field things were going badly for Westcott’s. Dunn
reconsidered his resolution and went out to give the batters practice
and play general helper, but he couldn’t make Ben Tracy a good pitcher
or Stover a forceful captain. The school appreciated Dunn’s efforts and
thought better of him for them. Jason was studying, too, though with no
very startling classroom results. He had a tutor for an hour every
afternoon, and he often worked the whole evening in Hardie’s room.
“I’m almost glad that I couldn’t play on that nine,” he said one evening
as he brought in his books; “they’re a terribly poor lot, and Stover
doesn’t get anything out of ’em. Think of Newbury beating them twelve to
two the other day!”
“They may brace up near the second game,” suggested Roger.
Dunn shook his head; “No, they won’t. It isn’t in ’em. Did you see
Smithy leading the cheering at the game? He was wild to beat!’
“If they can win the baseball and the crew now, they can get along
without the football.”
“Oh, they won’t win the crew,” declared Dunn, “we’ll have ’em there.”
“Lanning says they’re going to,” said Roger. “He coaches Newbury.”
Dunn considered a moment. “I don’t see how Pitkin can be strong enough
to row a hard race. He’s bow on the first, isn’t he?”
“Yes, and he rows well, too.”
“You ought to be there. You could stand the pace.”
Roger laughed. “I can’t even make the second. A little while ago Wilmot
wanted to kick me off the pair-oar.”
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