SOME VICTORIES AND A DEFEAT
The St. Philip’s game proved a rude awakening for Grafton, for four
twelve-minute periods――St. Philip’s had insisted on forty-eight minutes
of playing time――left the two teams virtually where they had started,
on an even footing. To be sure, each team had managed to secure one
field-goal in that time, but the final score of 3 to 3 was indecisive.
And from the Grafton point of view it was very disappointing. St.
Philip’s was a new opponent and, while rumor credited her with football
strength and Grafton had looked for a hard contest, she was not
expected to prove the Tartar she had shown herself.
Grafton could find no consolation in the fact that, if she had not won,
neither had she lost, for an unbiased analysis of the game showed that
the home team had been out-played from first to last and that had the
fortunes of war dealt fairly with each team St. Philip’s would have
gone off with a 3 to 0, or even possibly a 6 to 0, victory.
As Captain Bert Winslow said afterwards, no light team had ever faced
Grafton with so much punch in attack and dogged resistance in defence
as the late adversary. Outweighed many pounds in the line, St. Philip’s
had overcome that handicap by an almost phenomenal speed. Time after
time her linemen had “got the jump” on Grafton, and time after time
the best efforts of Winslow and Ordway and Manson and, later, their
substitutes, had gone for little or nothing. Around-the-end attempts
had been early shown futile, and Grafton, after many failures to
puncture the line from tackle to tackle, had had recourse to the
kicking game. But even there her opponent had bested her slightly,
while the longest and best placed of Captain Winslow’s or Quarterback
Blake’s punts had missed effectiveness by reason of the brilliant
running back of the St. Philip’s quarter and left half. St. Philip’s
had earned her lone tally honestly when, after four long runs from
wide formation that started in her own territory and took the ball to
Grafton’s twenty-six yards, she had twice failed at an advance and had
sent her drop-kicker back to the thirty-five-yard line. Although the
angle was fairly difficult, and although Pete Gowen and “Hobo” Ordway
had both broken through, the kick was made slowly and carefully and
went directly across the center of the bar. That was in the second
period. Again, in the third, St. Philip’s came near to scoring another
three when a place-kick from the thirty-eight yards struck the upright
and bounded back.
Grafton’s single score had been secured in the last period. With defeat
staring her in the face, she had commenced and executed a creditable
march up the field in which a quarterback run and a forward-pass had
featured and had eventually reached St. Philip’s twelve yards. There
a fumble had cost her a down and lost her four yards. Subsequently,
Ordway had been thrown back for a loss. Then, on third down, a fake
forward-pass had sent the ball to Fullback Manson and that able-toed
young gentleman had put the pigskin across easily enough from the
thirty-yard line.
Monty had failed to get into that contest for even a minute and had
watched it with mingled feelings from the bench. No one asked Monty’s
opinion, but he had one nevertheless. To paraphrase a celebrated
quotation: “Breathes there a boy with soul so dead who never to himself
hath said: Things would have been different had I led!” Perhaps Monty
didn’t say just that, but he did confide to Leon and Dud and Jimmy that
evening that it was his firm conviction that Coach Bonner would do well
to pay less attention to the little things and more to the big. “What’s
the good,” he wanted to know, “of spending a month learning half a
hundred unimportant details and not knowing how to use what you learn?
If our backs had forgotten a lot of slush about standing just so and
having one foot ahead of the other and counting one, two, three after
the signal and all that, and had just taken the ball any old way and
slammed into that line we might have done something. They were so busy
remembering the by-laws that they never got started until the other
fellows were tackling them!”
That led to an argument, with Jimmy Logan on the other end, which
continued until Leon, yawning, requested them to dry up.
“It’s all very unimportant, anyhow,” he said. “Football’s a crazy game
and only wild men play it.” And, of course, Monty had to deny that and
another argument began.
There was a great deal of argument between the four, and they settled,
to their own satisfaction, at least, many problems that autumn. The
subjects left undiscussed were few indeed, and Number 14 Lothrop and
Number 32 Trow were the scenes of many earnest debates. (The quartette
seldom met in Monty’s room, since there was always the chance of Alvin
Standart’s making himself an unwelcome fifth. None of the others could
stomach Alvin. Leon, indeed, held him in the utmost loathing.) The
debates were always good-tempered. Leon was the only one of the four in
danger of losing his temper in the heat of an argument, and the others
saw that he didn’t. It was usually a nonsensical remark by Jimmy that
saved the situation.
But football was not the only interest at Grafton just then. October
had come in with frosty nights and mornings and days that held just
the right amount of snap to put zest into life. The maples fluttered
their red and orange and yellow leaves down and the elms laid russet
carpets on sidewalks and paths. The baseball players were holding fall
practice each afternoon, and Dud, already slated to lead the pitching
next spring, was very busy. Jimmy and Leon played tennis a good deal.
There was work, too, for the track and field candidates, and as for the
fellows who slammed little white balls for miles over the yellowing
turf, why, they were in their element. The river of an afternoon,
especially if the afternoon happened to be Sunday, was quite crowded
with canoes. Monty, impatient of delays, purchased a maroon-colored
canoe from Pete Gordon and, coached by Leon, became a skilled paddler
in a surprisingly short time. The fine weather lasted the month
through and life at Grafton was very pleasant. It would have been much
pleasanter, in Monty’s opinion, had there been no such things as German
and English, for he was not doing very well with them. He tried for
permission to exchange German for Greek, but was denied. Mr. Rumford,
however, told him he could make the substitution with the beginning of
the mid-winter term if he managed promotion to the upper middle at that
time. Monty saw no prospect of it, though.
The second week in October witnessed the final cut in the football
squad and left just twenty-nine players extant. Of these eighteen
constituted the regulars and enjoyed the distinction of eating at
training table, while the remaining eleven substitutes got along as
best they might with the assistance of a diet list, which, I fear, was
seldom regarded. The second team also went to a training table. The
second took itself very seriously and, under the care of Mr. Crowley,
fast developed into a formidable aggregation. Monty survived the final
cut, but still could figure himself no better than a third substitute.
Starling Meyer terminated his connection with football, being too
haughty to go out for his class team after being rejected by Coach
Bonner. Doubtless it peeved him not a little to see that the boy whose
amazing innocence he had laughed at had survived where he had failed!
Monty didn’t go with the team when it traveled away from home to play
the Rotan College freshmen. He wasn’t included in the list of those
to be taken along, and, while he would have liked to have gone with
the half-hundred rooters who accompanied the team, a falling-out with
Mr. Rumford prohibited. Jimmy thought it better for Monty to remain
at school and labor on an English 2 composition. Last year Rotan had
beaten Grafton on Lothrop Field by the score of 20 to 6, and Grafton
wanted revenge. That she obtained it was due principally to Manson’s
good right foot, for he barely managed to convert Grafton’s single
touchdown into seven points, while the freshmen, after smashing out a
touchdown in the first ten minutes of the contest, failed to kick goal.
The score of 7 to 6 was not decisive, but it constituted a victory, and
Grafton, team and rooters, returned home in triumph.
Grafton met her first defeat the following Saturday at the hands――or
possibly it would be more proper to say the feet――of St. James Academy.
The game was on Lothrop Field. St. James was unable to do much with the
home team’s line and, after the two elevens had played each other to a
stand-still for two periods, she opened up her bag of tricks and showed
that both the Grafton ends were far from impregnable. When Foster
Tray gave place to Milford, gains around the Scarlet-and-Gray’s right
became less frequent, but Mann, who succeeded to Derry’s place, was
no improvement. St. James worked forward-passes with fair success and
used a split attack from kick formation in which quarterback took the
ball outside tackle that made many gains until Grafton finally solved
and smothered it. Grafton’s attack seemed very weak that day, but the
truth was that her rival had a strong line that played low and hard.
Once Hobo Ordway got loose for thirty-odd yards, and several times
Brunswick, who went in for Captain Winslow in the third quarter, snaked
through for gains of from three to six. But invariably St. James
tightened inside her thirty-yard line and four times Grafton lost the
ball on downs almost under the shadow of the opponent’s goal. Twice she
might have tried field-goals and didn’t. It was explained later that
Coach Bonner had forbidden them. St. James, with no such prohibition
governing her attack, landed two drop-kicks over the bar and took the
game home with her. As heretofore Grafton had always won, that 6 to 0
victory was a surprise to the Scarlet-and-Gray, and an unpleasant one.
Monty played nearly the whole of the fourth period at right guard and
handled himself well even if he created no sensation. He sustained an
honorable injury in the form of a black eye, of which he was secretly
very proud while it lasted.
By this time Monty’s circle of acquaintances had widened. That
he had increased the number of his friends is doubtful, however.
Acquaintanceship and friendship are different craft. He felt no need
of more friends, though, for Leon and he were inseparable chums, while
Jimmy and Dud were a good deal more than mere acquaintances. In a
casual way he came to know half the fellows in the football squad, some
quite well; Pete Gordon, the substitute center, Tom Hanrihan, the big
tackle, Nick Blake, the innocent-visaged, mischievous quarter, “Hobo”
Ordway, who played right half and who, so rumor had it, was an English
Earl when he was at home! Bert Winslow, the captain, Monty counted as
an acquaintance, too, but Bert was too busy and absorbed in his tasks
to pay much attention to the substitute guard. And there were others:
Foster Tray, who played right end, Gus Weston, the chap who was so
earnestly striving to oust Blake from the quarterback position, Oscar
Milford, a second-string end and Paige Burgess, the team’s manager.
At Morris House, Monty knew his companions even more intimately and
had revised his opinion of several. Joe Mullins, for instance, was not
at all the “Indian” Monty had dubbed him, but a very decent fellow
indeed who occupied the unofficial position of house captain and ruled
them all with a light but firm hand. And there was, of course, Alvin
Standart. And very often Monty wished heartily that there wasn’t.
In short, Monty was finding his place by degrees and enjoying himself
in the meanwhile. He sometimes missed his beloved mountains and
sometimes felt a bit lonesome for no reason that he could discover, but
as time went on he took more kindly to the tranquil, well-kept country
around him and the lonesome spells became less and less frequent. He
often wondered what would have happened had he not pitched into that
bullying newsboy in New York. In that case Jimmy Logan wouldn’t have
spoken to him and he would have gone on to Mount Morris, as he had
first intended. Probably he would have liked the Greenbank school
quite as well as he now liked Grafton, but he wouldn’t have met Leon
Desmarais. He concluded that Fate had treated him well, for he had
grown very fond of Leon and couldn’t imagine an existence that didn’t
include him. Of course they quarreled now and then. Leon had a temper
like a spring-trap. It always went off suddenly and unexpectedly.
When thoroughly angry he was, to use Monty’s metaphor, “a regular
bob-cat.” But Leon’s rages soon burned out and, since it took a lot
to make Monty lose his temper, their quarrels were usually rather
one-sided and speedily over, and left no scars. Leon was inclined to be
a bit snobbish in the matter of birth, something that Monty was quite
indifferent to. Monty had once remarked that it didn’t seem to him to
matter much who one’s great-grandfather was, and Leon had been quite
scandalized.
“Do you mean that birth doesn’t count?” he had exclaimed incredulously.
“What do you mean, birth?” Monty had asked. “My father was a perfectly
respectable American and my mother was a French woman. Neither of ’em
was ever in jail.”
“Don’t be a silly ass! Anybody could tell that you come of good family,
Monty. The west is full of families from the south and east, of course.
But do you mean to tell me that generations of breeding and culture
don’t count? If your grandfather had been a rag-picker――What are you
laughing at?”
“You’re so serious! Suppose he had been a rag-picker? What of it?
The man who picks rags today deals in them tomorrow and gets rich.
His children go to school and his son sells the land the junk-shop
was on and starts a dry-goods store on the next corner. And in a few
years he’s rich, too, and becomes a bank director. And his son grows
up and marries the daughter of the wealthiest man in town. And if you
met _his_ son on the campus tomorrow you’d think ‘There’s a chap with
breeding!’”
“It takes more than three generations,” answered Leon stiffly.
“You mean it used to,” Monty had laughed. “Nowadays things move faster.
Why not? We put up a two-million-dollar building in six months. We
ought to be able to make a gentleman in two generations. I don’t know
much about my family, but I remember my father telling of the time when
he walked four miles to school in his bare feet, and so I guess there
weren’t any lords or dukes on my family tree!”
“Poverty has nothing to do with it. Your father’s father――――”
“It has a lot to do with it nowadays,” chuckled Monty. “Do you suppose
I’d have had the courage to come east here and butt in on these
high-brows with their silver-backed brushes and all if I hadn’t had a
gob of money behind me? Yes, I would――not! Son, it’s having something
in the old sock that gives you the right to shove through the crowd
and take a front seat. If my father had been George Washington and my
mother――er――Mary Antoinette, or whatever her name was, and I didn’t
have any money, I’d just as soon thought of jumping off the Washington
Monument as coming here to school!”
“That’s nonsense! Money has nothing to do with it!”
“Wait a bit! Your folks have money. You haven’t told me so, but your
father’s a sugar dealer――factor, you call it, don’t you?――and you dress
like a circus horse, and so I guess it’s a fair bet that they have. All
right. But just suppose they hadn’t. Suppose you had just enough money
to pay your fare up here and back and your tuition. A lot of good your
old ancestors would do you!”
“I’d be just the same as I am now, wouldn’t I?”
“No, you wouldn’t, son! You’d be slinking around in a suit of old
clothes that you were ashamed of and hating fellows who dressed
decently. And you’d know two or three fellows like yourself and no one
else. That’s how near you’d be to what you are now.”
“You talk like a――a snob!”
“Maybe I talk like one, but I’m not. I don’t care whether a fellow has
money or hasn’t, and I care just as little whether his great-grandfather
or his grandfather or his father came over with the Pilgrims in 1500 or
whenever it was, or came last Friday in the steerage. If a chap is
square, that’s enough for me. He doesn’t have to have silver military
brushes with monograms on ’em, and I don’t give a hang if he says
‘ain’t’ for ‘isn’t’! Birth be blowed!”
“But you make money everything!” Leon had protested.
“I don’t! I make the confidence that having money gives you everything.
Gee, I’m talking like a spell-binder at a country picnic! I don’t say
that it’s a fine thing to have money just as money, but I say it’s a
fine thing to have it for what it gets you. If I was poor, know what
I’d do?” Leon shook his head. “Well, I’d make some money,” chuckled
Monty.
“There are lots of better things to do!”
“Maybe, but you can do them better if you have the money, son. If I
wanted to be――to be a musician, for instance, I’d make me a little pile
first off. Or if I wanted to be a statesman, or――or anything else.”
“And by the time you’d got your money it would be too late to be
anything!”
“Don’t you believe it! Making money isn’t hard.”
“Why doesn’t everyone have it then?”
“I’ll tell you, Leon. It’s a secret, but I’ll tell it to you. It’s
because the way to make money is to work, and a lot of folks never
learned that. They think you have to sit down and wait for it to drop
into your pocket. Savvy?”
“I ‘savvy’ that you’re a perfect ass,” grumbled Leon. “And I don’t
believe you believe――――”
“All I believe? Right you are, son! And I don’t believe you believe
that you are any better because your great-great-grandfather was fried
in oil by Spanish inquisitors away back in 1100 B. C.”
“You’re strong on dates!” laughed Leon.
“Dates,” replied Monty untroubledly, “are as useless as ancestors.
They’re like the frills they put on lamb chops. You can’t eat them and
the chop would taste just as well without ’em. I know that Columbus
or Amerigo Vespucci or Sebastian Cabot or some other guy discovered
America. But I don’t know when, and I don’t care, and it doesn’t
matter. And, say, who did do it, anyway? I’ll bet it was the Vespucci
chap, because they named the country America after him, and Columbus
only got the capital of Ohio named after _him_!”
“Well,” answered Leon, “if that’s your argument, the real discoverer
must have been a fellow named United States!”