A LOOPHOLE
There was not the slightest chance that Mr. Lindsay’s reply could reach
Seaton that night. None the less, three heavy-hearted fellows escorted
Wolcott to the carrier’s window at the post-office, after the evening
mail had arrived, and gazed eagerly over his shoulder while the clerk
drew a bundle of letters from a certain pigeonhole, and, after rapidly
slipping one over another, bestowed on the waiting students the
regretful nod and smirk of sympathy familiar to disappointed applicants
at post-office windows. From the office they crossed the street to the
telephone station, and asked if Wolcott Lindsay had been called up by
Boston. Receiving here also a negative answer, Wolcott demanded to talk
with his father. When the connection was made, Ware squeezed into the
booth behind him, while Laughlin, hopelessly crowded out of the narrow
quarters, projected his head through the partly closed door.
“Is this you, father?” asked Wolcott. “Did you get my letter?”
Laughlin heard dimly the sound of a voice in reply; Ware caught a few of
the words.
“You’ll decide it to-night, won’t you?” went on Wolcott. “It’s awfully
important—you can’t possibly understand without being here how
important. I’m really as sound as a nut. And they do need me. It seems
as if I couldn’t possibly crawl out now.”
The answer this time came more distinctly; Ware at the words and
Laughlin at the tone felt their hearts drop within them. On Wolcott’s
face settled an expression of black despair as he listened with hurried
breath to his father’s sympathetic yet unyielding response.
“But you’ll surely write to-night,” said the boy, when his chance to
speak came; “and think of it as favorably as you can, won’t you? And
remember that there are lots of competent judges who don’t agree with
you. It can’t be as bad as you think if it has done me so much good.”
Wolcott hung up the receiver and rose.
“What does he say?”
“It’s no go, I’m afraid. He will decide to-night, and write so that the
letter will get to me to-morrow morning. The only good thing he sees
about football is that the players are capable of getting up so good a
brief for a bad cause.”
“Does that mean that he’s laughing at us?” demanded Poole.
“No, he was in earnest. He’ll give the arguments a fair hearing, and
then decide against me.”
“It won’t be a fair hearing,” said Ware, “if his mind is already made
up.”
Wolcott turned sharply. “He’ll do what he thinks is right, anyway—that
I’m sure of.”
Laughlin gave his manager’s arm a tug that pulled him half across the
room. “Come home, Dan, and let Wolcott alone. You can’t gain anything
now by arguing. We’ve just got to take what Mr. Lindsay says and make
the best of it.”
They parted for the night with few words. Wolcott, who would not listen
to criticism of his father’s judgment from his friends, yet felt a very
human resentment that he should be treated as a child whose opinion was
valueless, in a matter with which he was familiar and his father
obviously not, and that his father’s prejudices should be the only guide
to the momentous decision. Great as was his mortification and his sense
of ill treatment, he betrayed it openly to no one; and never had he the
slightest notion of defying his father’s command.
The letter-carrier was waylaid next morning as he turned into the
schoolyard and forced to deliver instantly. With the fatal scroll in
their possession, the four boys hurried upstairs to Poole’s room, which
lay nearest on their way, and sat in solemn silence while Wolcott read.
The letter was as follows:—
“MY DEAR BOY: I regret extremely to write that after carefully
considering your letter and the letters of your friends, Ware and
Laughlin, I cannot see a sufficient reason for changing my opinion
with regard to your playing football. Your appeal touches my heart,
but the arguments offered impress me as clever efforts to make the
best of a bad cause, rather than as _bona fide_ reasons for a reversal
of my decision. The evening paper, which I was reading when you called
me to the telephone, reports among the day’s football news that
Harvard has several good men ‘among the cripples’; that ‘Yale’s
hospital list is large’; that Jones of Dartmouth will be out of the
game for a fortnight at least with his shoulder; while Smith of
Princeton is laid off with water on the knee, which will prevent his
playing again the present season. These _may_ be ‘insignificant and
temporary injuries,’ as your friends maintain, but they seem to be
real enough to affect the prospects of the teams concerned. Cripples
and the hospital are not terms which I like to hear habitually
mentioned in connection with a sport in which my only son is engaged.
“Now don’t misunderstand my position. I am no champion of effeminacy.
I do not ask that you be shielded and coddled—in your own words
‘wrapped in lamb’s wool and shut up in a bureau drawer.’ I want you
able to take your share in the rough things of life. There are hard
knocks to be endured in almost all athletic exercises; in many, such
as riding, sailing, swimming, there is actual risk. But the risk in
these sports is slight and occasional—not much greater than that
incurred in the ordinary course of life. In football the danger seems
to be serious and constant. It is by no means necessary that you
should play on the Seaton eleven; there are other sports in which you
can develop strength and skill; there are other boys ready to take
your place on the team. Desirous though I am to gratify your wishes in
every reasonable way, it seems to me that I have no right to allow you
to risk life or limb in a dangerous pastime.
“It may be that, as you say, many other competent—I might perhaps add
more competent—observers do not hold my views. I am inclined to think,
however, that the older men, who are unaffected by the glamour of the
arena or who have opportunities to trace the results of these ‘slight
injuries,’ will be found on my side. At the same time I do not wish to
seem arbitrary or tyrannical. If you can find among the best
half-dozen surgeons in the city—men like Hinds or Rawson or Seaver or
Brayton—a single man who can assure me that you are risking nothing or
little by playing the game, I will waive my objection. I want to be
reasonable and sympathetic. I would not hold you, in the present-day
conditions, to all the limitations of school and college life which I
look back upon as proper and beneficial in my own boyhood; but I would
not have you pay the price of a single broken bone or twisted sinew
for all the football trophies of the season.
“Kindly thank your friends for the interesting and clever letters they
have written me, and express to them my appreciation of their loyal
friendship to you. I trust they will forgive me for not yielding to
their arguments, and that you may not find the sacrifice I am
requiring of you as hard as you fear.
“Affectionately,
”W. LINDSAY.”
“That settles it,” said Ware, heaving a sigh as Wolcott ceased reading.
“When your father makes up his mind that his facts are the only ones,
you may as well knuckle under.”
Laughlin and Wolcott said nothing. The former was cudgelling his brains
to discover some new point of attack; the latter, convinced that the
final decision had been made, sat dumb and hopeless, crushed by the
weight of disappointment. At that moment nothing in the world seemed so
wholly desirable as the privilege of playing in the Hillbury game, and
no fellows so wholly enviable as those whose parents were undisturbed by
anxieties as to broken joints and twisted sinews. He was roused from his
fit of sullen brooding by Poole’s voice.
“Read it again, Wolcott,” commanded Phil, who was standing erect before
his chair, his face bright with a new idea. “Read it again, or at least
that part where he speaks of other competent judges.”
Wolcott found the place and reread the latter portion of the letter.
“Will he stand by what he says there, that if one of them will say you
risk little or nothing, he’ll withdraw his objection?” demanded Poole.
“Of course he will!” returned Wolcott, hotly. “What kind of a man do you
take him for?”
“Do you know any of these doctors?” continued Poole, paying no attention
either to the indignant question or to the offended tone.
Wolcott shook his head sadly. “Only old Dr. Rawson who lives near us. He
set my collar-bone five years ago, when I broke it falling down the
front steps.”
“I’m surprised your father let you go down such a dangerous place,”
remarked Ware. “I suppose he made you avoid danger after that by coming
in the back way.”
“Shut up, Dan, I’m doing the talking now,” ordered Poole, wheeling
quickly upon the interrupter. Then, turning to Wolcott again, he added,
“Dr. Rawson would be likely to help you out, wouldn’t he?”
Wolcott made no reply unless the melancholy smile that appeared on his
face at the suggestion of help from Dr. Rawson could be considered an
answer.
“I believe there’s one man who will help us,” persisted Phil. “That Dr.
Brayton is a Seaton alumnus, and knows football down to the
ground—everything about it good and bad. If any one of the four doctors
your father mentions will back you up, it’s Brayton. The thing for you
to do is to get Grim to let you off for a day, and go up to Boston and
see Brayton. If you tell him the story, and let him look you over, it’s
an even chance that he’ll give you a clean bill of health. If he does,
your father will have to back down.”
Wolcott leaned suddenly forward in his chair and fixed his eyes eagerly
on Poole’s, while an expression of intense joy lighted his face. In a
moment, however, the flash of hope had passed, and he sank back into his
old position more despondent than ever.
“Is he the Brayton who was on the Seaton-Hillbury athletic committee
last year?” asked Ware.
“Yes, and he helped save Dickinson for the team when they were trying to
run him off, on a perfectly false charge of professionalism,” said
Poole. “Dr. Brayton is as square a man as ever lived, and what’s more,
believes in athletics.”
“I don’t suppose father knew that,” observed Wolcott.
“I don’t care whether he did or not,” retorted Poole, sharply. “All I
say is, that if your father has agreed to take Brayton’s opinion, and
there’s a chance of its being favorable, you’re a great fool if you
don’t try to get it—unless you really don’t care to play.”
“He wants to play fast enough,” said Laughlin, taking the words out of
Wolcott’s mouth, “and I’ll see that he tackles Dr. Brayton. If anybody
thinks I’m going to play a poor man in that game when I can get a good
one, he’s mistaken. The best we can scare up may not be good enough to
beat Hillbury.”
Wolcott smiled feebly. “Of course I’ll try it, but I don’t expect
anything to come of it.”
That night he arranged by telephone for an interview with Dr. Brayton,
and on Saturday took the early train for Boston. It was a forlorn hope,
but a hope none the less; and that was enough for the sanguine friends
who gave him godspeed on his way. As for Wolcott’s own feelings, he had
already suffered so much from suspense and disappointment that he went
indifferent, expecting nothing good, fearing nothing bad.