A CELEBRATION
They swarmed forth that evening, in jerseys and old trousers and shoes
that feared neither mud nor dust, from every dormitory entrance and
every student lodging house; and, like Parisian revolutionists flocking
to the barricades, gathered to the sound of the drum on the street
before the academy yard. After the football game in the fall, while the
victors were romping and rah-rah-ing through the streets of Hillbury,
the Seaton lads had gathered in forlorn little groups, and sadly argued
the possibly different result if A had done this and B had not done
that. Now the tables were turned. While the good people of Hillbury were
looking forward to the usual quiet evening, the Seaton citizen resigned
himself to the glare of red fires and the din of bells and yells.
With much clamor and vociferation of orders the procession started.
Ahead were torch-bearers, red-light artists, and cannon-cracker
performers; then the town band, or as much of it as could be got
together—it mattered little what, as long as there was a cornet to lead
the songs and a drum to stir the blood; then the barge, loaded with
victorious athletes and drawn by scores of eager hands tugging at the
long ropes; then ranks of boys locked arm in arm, romping in zigzagging
lines back and forth across the road, singing and cheering and shouting
in the hilarious delight which no staid grown-up can understand. Wolcott
and Laughlin guided the flopping pole, Tompkins and Planter led the
cheering from the driver’s seat above, Salter and Poole were at the
ropes forward, while the twins trained with the artillery in the van.
So, illumined by crimson light and the flash of explosives which
drowned, in continuous and hideous din, their own cheering and songs and
the music of the band they had hired, the celebrants took their way by
the houses of certain favored teachers to the hill where the bonfire was
to be. At the houses the leaders throttled the disorderly racket, the
crowd cheered, the teachers appeared, made their facetious speeches, and
retired, the mob yelled applause, the hubbub broke forth again, the
procession moved on. Many a wretched pun and poor, undignified joke was
bitterly repented that night when Dr. X and Professor Z at last laid
their weary heads to rest, longing to amend their remarks as the
regretful congressman amends his faulty speech in the Record by striking
out everything he has said and substituting something wholly different.
But the pith and marrow of the celebration was about the big bonfire on
Jady hill, where proceedings might vary between the war dance of an
Indian tribe and an open-air meeting of the Peace Society. The proper
mean lay between these extremes of the extravagant and the tame, and Mr.
Graham, by throwing responsibility on the older boys, by insisting that
the festivity be public, and by taking a share in it himself, kept the
merriment in bounds. To-night, after the individual members of the team
had been cheered, the Principal set the pitch for the evening’s song of
triumph in a brief, sensible speech; and Freund, captain of the team,
followed with a disclaimer of personal desert and an eulogy on “the work
of all the fellows,” delivered with proper modesty and the usual
schoolboy lack of finish and superabundance of vigor. After Freund,
Collins the trainer had his turn; but after expressing surprise and
delight that the boys should have done so well, and declaring that he
had known all along that they could do it, he struck hard on the
irreconcilability of these statements, and went down in a burst of
cordial applause. Then a friendly townsman of a humorous vein took a
hand, and after the humorist, Mr. Lovering was demanded. The teacher had
the advantage that jokes were not expected of him, so when he declared
that “this is indeed a day on which the battle has been to the strong
and the race to the swift,” the audience laughed in pleased surprise,
and gave sympathetic hearing. The speaker then expressed the pleasure he
had felt in seeing Strong win his two hard races, and passing from this
naturally to the ban of probation and the fine way in which the runner
had removed it, preached a neat little sermon of half-a-dozen sentences
on the value of persistence and grit.
“Strong! Strong!” yelled the crowd. “Speech! speech!”
And then a queer thing happened that was down on nobody’s programme.
Instead of hanging back in confusion or disappearing altogether, as his
friends expected, Strong came promptly forward. There was a look of
seriousness on his face, and he confronted the crowd boldly, as if he
really had something to say.
“For all that has been said about my two races, and all the help I’ve
had from Collins and a lot of others, I’m much obliged. I did the best I
could, and certainly ran in great luck. But there’s one fellow here who
isn’t getting his share of the glory. We should have lost the meet
to-day if any one had missed on his points. Howes and Joslin would have
won my events if I hadn’t got off probation; and I never should have got
off probation in this world if Sally Salter hadn’t spent days and weeks
in driving things into my head. So with all respect to Mr. Lovering, you
see I can’t honestly stand for that probation.”
At this point Strong, suddenly becoming conscious that he was making a
speech, broke abruptly off. Some one in the inner circle sprang forward
and swung his hat. And Salter, Sally Salter, Marm Salter, to his own
intense surprise, was actually cheered.
The celebration was over. Turning reluctantly from the fast-dwindling
fire, the participants in motley company trooped back to rooms and beds.
The band straggled home by twos in silence; the multitude, which with
unfailing enthusiasm had tugged the heavily loaded barge up the long
hill, was now scattered; and only a conscientious few aided by certain
faithful members of the team had a thought for the borrowed state
carriage and the credit of the school. Wolcott was among the forgetters.
In the confusion of the break-up he missed his companions and floated
away with the crowd.
On a side street a dozen yards from the lamp post a knot of students
were watching the figures pass beneath the light.
“There’s Lindsay,” said Whitely. “He’s big enough to hold a man on his
shoulders as steady as a church. Let’s not try to find Bert. O Lindsay!”
he called.
“He’s no use, you chump!” exclaimed Marchmont, sharply; but Wolcott was
already turning back. “What is it?” he asked, straining his eyes to
distinguish the faces.
“Don’t go home yet; there’ll be more doing before long.”
“What do you mean?” repeated Wolcott, eagerly.
He questioned, not from prudence, but from eager curiosity. The noise,
the blaze of lights, the fervor of enthusiasm, the dazzle of
hero-worship, the hilarity, the freedom and comradeship of the
merrymaking, had piled their impressions on his excited brain till his
personal patriotism flamed and roared; his chief desire for the time
being was to lose nothing of this night of exultation. If he recognized
Marchmont among the group, no suspicion of evil occurred to him. He felt
only that it was a great day for Seaton, that all Seatonians were
brothers, and that at this time of universal joy all differences should
be forgotten.
“We’re going to show John Drown how to celebrate,” replied Whitely.
“Come on and see the fun.”
The troop started, and Wolcott, who was out to see, started with the
troop down Hale Street and toward the stables whence the barge had gone
forth early in the evening. As they passed the stable entrance they met
a big, square-shouldered fellow whom Wolcott recognized in the
semi-darkness as Laughlin, and who by the same token recognized Wolcott
overtopping by half a head his nearest neighbors.
“Lindsay!” called Laughlin, sharply, halting and turning round.
“Well, Dave,” called back Wolcott, jovially, “fall in if you want some
fun.”
“Come here a minute, won’t you, please?” continued Laughlin.
The exclamations which this interruption called forth in Whitely’s
company, Wolcott did not notice.
“What are you up to with those fellows?” demanded Laughlin, earnestly.
“We’re going over to get a rise out of John Drown,” replied Wolcott,
innocently.
“Who are they?”
“Oh, Whitely and Reeves, and Marchmont, I think, is with them. Want to
come along?”
Laughlin laid his hand on Wolcott’s arm. “Wolcott, don’t do it. You’ll
get into trouble or do something you’ll be everlastingly ashamed of when
you wake up to-morrow. They aren’t out to-night on any good errand.
Don’t go with them!”
“Nonsense!” cried Wolcott. “I shan’t do anything out of the way. It’s
just a little fun.”
“I know better about that than you do. It’s something wrong, or they
wouldn’t be in it. Let it alone and come back with me.”
“Come on, if you’re coming,” called Whitely. “We can’t stay here all
night.”
“It’s all right,” insisted Wolcott, dropping his arm to free himself
from Laughlin’s grasp. The strong fist merely clutched the tighter.
“It isn’t all right. You’re going back on your word. You promised to try
your hardest to make the eleven, and now you’re doing something that may
prevent your making it at all, whether you play well or not.”
“I don’t see that,” said Lindsay.
“If you get into trouble and get fired you can’t make it, can you?
You’re taking a risk that no football man ought to take, and taking it
in spite of warning.”
The conspirators were moving. “Good-by, darling,” shouted Reeves.
“Always do what Nursey says!” Wolcott muttered an angry something that
he would have preferred no one should hear. Laughlin clung to his
purpose.
“It’s for your own sake and my sake and the eleven that I ask it,
Wolcott,” he pleaded. “Let them go without you.”
The sound of footsteps and voices died away down the street.
“Well, they’re gone!” said Wolcott, in sullen tones, after an interval
of silence. “Now you’ve had your way, I hope you’re satisfied.”
“I am,” replied Laughlin, coolly, “and you’ll be to-morrow. Good night.”
Next morning rumor flew that Drown, the night watchman, had waked to
find the front of his house unexpectedly decorated. Wolcott came home
from church by a roundabout way to see what the conspirators of the
night before had accomplished. Above the first-floor windows, across the
whole front of the house, had been daubed in red paint the score of the
games, and underneath an adjective of personal application to Drown
himself.
Wolcott stared and grew suddenly pale. So this was the “fun” that he had
been invited to share! But for Laughlin’s interference, he might have
been involved in this contemptible act of vandalism. With eyes blazing
and cheeks burning he strode away, indignant but humble, toward
Laughlin’s room. His first lesson in football discipline was learned.
Two days later Marchmont and Reeves severed their connection with the
school. Why these two were punished when Whitely and others escaped was
not clearly explained. The strokes of school discipline are not always
infallible, though it is safe to say of them as of the judgments of the
criminal courts, that few innocent are punished, though many a guilty
man goes free. It is possible that Mr. Drown identified one or two of
the vandals; or that Mrs. Winter, when in the course of Monday morning’s
cleaning, she at last discovered the patched closet ceiling and the
trapdoor hidden under the oilcloth, also found fresh spots of paint on
Marchmont’s clothes.
It was the only celebration of the year. The nine went to Hillbury,
supported by a numerous though half-hearted company praying for a
miracle. But the wicked Hillburyites fell on the hopeful Seaton pitcher
as the Philistines on Samson shorn of his seven locks. When he put the
ball over the plate they hit it; when he kept it out of their reach,
they made runs on balls. The defeat was crushing.
Wolcott sat all the way home in fierce and gloomy silence, broken only
to answer some unavoidable question. Laughlin watched him for a long
time without a word.
“How would you like to be on a defeated eleven?” he asked at last with a
wise smile.
Wolcott answered and set his lips tight together. “All I ask is the
chance to get at them.”
Whereat Laughlin laughed with pleasure, and said no more.
But time and new interests dull disappointment. The end of the school
year arrived with its fêtes and ceremonies; the college examinations
enforced their exacting demands. Then came a day when Laughlin and
Lindsay stood together at the station and exchanged a fervent good-by
and words of advice.
“Don’t spend all your time sailing and playing golf; rowing and swimming
are what you need,” said Laughlin.
“And don’t wear yourself out at that hotel, throwing trunks,” cried
Wolcott. “Light labor is what _you_ need. If you get a chance, come over
to the Harbor and see us.”