HICKS MAKES A DECISION
"In the famous words of Mr. Somebody-Or-Other," quoth T. Haviland Hicks,
Jr., "something has _got_ to be did, and immediately to once!"
Big Butch Brewster nodded assent. So did Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan,
Beef McNaughton, Team Manager Socks Fitzpatrick, Monty Merriweather, Dad
Pendleton, President of the Athletic Association, and Deacon Radford,
quarter-back, also Shad Fishpaw, who, being Freshman Class-Chairman,
maintained a discreet silence. Instead of the usual sky-larking, care-free
crowd that infested the cozy quarters of the happy-go-lucky Hicks, every
collegian present, except the ever-cheerful youth, seemed to have lost his
best friend and his last dollar at one fell swoop!
"Oh, yes, something has got to be did!" fleered Beef McNaughton, the
davenport creaking under the combined tonnage of himself and Butch
Brewster, "But who will do it? Where's all that Oh-just-leave-it-to-Hicks
stuff you have pulled for the past three years, you pestiferous insect?
_Bah_! You did a lot; you dragged a Prodigious Prodigy to old Bannister,
enshrouded him in darkest mystery, and now, when he pushed the 'Varsity off
the field and promised to corral the Championship, single-handed, he puts
his foot down, and says, '_No_--I will not play football!' Get busy, Little
Mr. Fix-It."
"Oh, just leave it to Hicks!" accommodated that blithesome Senior, with a
cheeriness he was far from feeling. "You all do know why Thor won't
play football; it is not like last season, when Deke Radford, a star
quarter-back, refused either to play, or to explain his refusal. Let me
get an inspiration, and then Thor will once again gently but firmly thrust
entire football elevens down the field before him!"
As evidence of how intensely serious was the situation, let it be
chronicled that, for the first time in his scatter-brained campus career,
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., did not dare strum his banjo and roar out ballads
to torture his long-suffering colleagues. Popular and beloved as he was,
the gladsome youth hesitated to shatter the quietude of the campus with
his saengerfest, knowing as he did what a terrible blow Thor's utterly
astounding announcement had been to the college.
It was nine o'clock, one night two weeks after the day when John Thorwald,
better known as Thor, the Prodigious Prodigy, so mysteriously produced by
Hicks, had stolidly paralyzed old Bannister by unemotionally stating his
decision to play no more football. Since then, to quote the Phillyloo Bird,
"Bannister has staggered around the ring like a prizefighter with the
Referee counting off ten seconds and trying to fight again before he takes
the count." In truth, the students had made a fatal mistake in building
all their hopes of victory on that blond giant, Thor; seeing his wonderful
prowess, and beholding how, in the first week of the season, the Norwegian
Colossus had ripped to shreds the Varsity line which even the heavy Ballard
eleven of the year before could not batter, it was but natural that the
enthusiastic youths should think of the Championship chances in terms of
_Thor_. For one week, enthusiasm and excitement soared higher and higher,
and then, to use a phrase of fiction, everything fell with a dull,
sickening thud!
In vain did Coach Corridan, the staff of Assistant Coaches, Captain Butch
Brewster, and others strive to resuscitate football spirit; nightly
mass-meetings were held, and enough perfervid oratory hurled to move a
Russian fortress, but to no avail. It was useless to argue that, without
Thor, Bannister had an eleven better than that of last year, which so
nearly missed the Championship. The campus had seen the massive Thor's
prodigies; they knew he could not be stopped, and to attempt to arouse the
college to concert pitch over the eleven, with that mountain of muscle
blotting out vast sections of scenery, but not in football togs, was not
possible.
"One thing is sure," spoke Dad Pendleton seriously, gazing gloomily from
the window, "unless we get Thor in the line-up for the Big Games, our last
hope of the Championship is dead and interred! And I feel sorry for the big
fellow, for already the boys like him just about as much as a German
loves an Englishman; yet, arguments, threats, pleadings, and logic have
absolutely no effect on him. He has said 'No,' and that ends it!"
"He doesn't understand things, fellows," defended T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.,
with surprising earnestness. "Remember how bewildered he seemed at our
appeal to his college spirit, and his love for his Alma Mater. We might as
well have talked Choctaw to him!"
Butch Brewster, Socks Fitzpatrick, Dad Pendleton, Beef McNaughton, Deacon
Radford, Monty Merriweather, and Shad Fishpaw well remembered that night
after Thor's tragic decision, when they--part of a Committee formed of the
best athletes from all teams, and the most representative collegians of old
Bannister, had invaded Thor's room in Creighton Hall, to wrestle with the
recalcitrant Hercules. Even as Hicks spoke, they visioned it again.
A cold, cheerless room, bare of carpet or pictures, with just the
study-table, bed, and two chairs. At the study-table, his huge bulk
sprawling on, and overflowing, a frail chair, they had found the massive
John Thorwald laboriously reading aloud the Latin he had translated,
literally by the sweat of his brow. The blond Colossus, impatient at the
interruption, had shaken his powerful frame angrily, and with no regard for
campus tradition, had addressed the upperclassmen in a growl: "Well, what
do you want? Hurry up, I've got to study."
And then, to state it briefly, they had worked with (and on) the stolid
Thorwald for two hours. They explained how his decision to play no more
football would practically kill old Bannister's hopes of the Championship,
would assassinate football spirit on the campus, and cause the youths to
condemn Thor, and to ostracise him. Waxing eloquent, Butch Brewster had
delivered a wonderful speech, pleading with John Thorwald to play the
game. He tried to show that obviously uninterested mammoth that, like the
Hercules he so resembled, he stood at the parting of the ways.
"You are on the threshold of your college career, old man!" he thundered
impressively, though he might as well have tried to shoot holes in a
battleship with a pop-gun, "What you do now will make or break you. Do you
want the fellows as friends or as enemies; do you want comradeship, or
loneliness and ostracism? You have it in your power to do two _big_ things,
to win the Championship for your Alma Mater, and to win to yourself the
entire student-body, as friends; will you do that, and build a firm
foundation for your college years, or betray your Alma Mater, and gain the
enmity of old Bannister!"
Followed more fervid periods, with such phrases as, "For your Alma Mater,"
"Because of your college spirit," "For dear old Bannister," and "For
the Gold and Green!" predominating; all of which terms, to the stolid,
unimaginative Thorwald being fully as intelligible as Hindustani. They
appealed to him not to betray his Alma Mater; they implored him, for his
love of old Bannister; they besought him, because of his college spirit;
and all the time, for all that the Prodigious Prodigy understood, they
might as well have remained silent.
"I will tell you something," spoke Thor, at last, with an air of impatient
resignation, "and don't bother me again, please! I have come to Bannister
College to get an education, and I have the right to do so, without being
pestered. I pay my bills, and I am entitled to all the knowledge I can
purchase. I look from my window, and I see boys, whose fathers are toiling,
sacrificing, to send them here. Instead of studying, to show their
gratitude, they loaf around the campus, or in their rooms, twanging banjos
and guitars, singing silly songs, and sky-larking. I don't know what all
this rot is you are talking of; 'college spirit,' 'my Alma Mater,' and so
on. I do not want to play football; I do not like the game; I need the time
for my study, so I will not play. Both my father and myself have labored
and sacrificed to send me to college. The past five years, with one great
ambition to go to college and learn, I have toiled like a galley-slave.
"And now, when opportunity is mine, do you ask me to _play_? You want me to
loaf around, wasting precious time better spent in my studies. What do I
care whether the boys like me, or hate me? Bah! I can take any two of you,
and knock your heads together! Their friendship or enmity won't move me. I
shall study, learn. I will not waste time in senseless foolishness, and I
_won't_ play football again."
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. was silent as he stood by the window of his room,
gazing down at the campus where the collegians were gathering before
marching to the Auditorium for the nightly mass-meeting that would vainly
strive to arouse a fighting spirit in the football "rooters." That
blithesome, heedless, happy-go-lucky youth was capable of far more serious
thought than old Bannister knew; and more, he possessed the rare ability
to read character; in the case of Thor, he saw vastly deeper than his
indignant comrades, who beheld only the surface of the affair. They knew
only that John Thorwald, a veritable Colossus, had exhibited football
prowess that practically promised the State Championship to old Bannister,
and then--he had quit the game. They understood only that Thor refused to
play simply because he did not want to, and as to why their appeals to his
college spirit and his love for his Alma Mater were unheeded they were
puzzled.
But the gladsome Hicks, always serious beneath his cheerful exterior, when
old Bannister's interests were at stake, or when a collegian's career
might be blighted, when the tragedy could be averted, fully understood. Of
course, as originator of the Billion-Dollar Mystery, and producer of the
Prodigious Prodigy, he knew more about the strange John Thorwald than did
his mystified comrades. He knew that Thor, as he named him, was just a vast
hulk of humanity, stolid, unimaginative of mind, slow-thinking, a dull,
unresponsive mass, as yet unstirred by that strange, subtle, mighty thing
called college spirit. He realized that Thor had never had a chance to
understand the real meaning of campus life, to grasp the glad fellowship of
the students, to thrill with a great love for his Alma Mater. All that must
come in time. The blond giant had toiled all his life, had labored among
men where everything was practical and grim. Small wonder, then, that he
failed utterly to see why the youths "loafed on the campus, or in their
rooms, twanging banjos and guitars, singing silly songs, and skylarking."
"I must save him," murmured Hicks softly, for the others in his room were
talking of Thor. "Oh, imagine that powerful body, imbued with a vast love
for old Bannister, think of Thor, thrilling with college spirit. Why,
Yale's and Harvard's elevens combined could not stop his rushes, then. I
must save him from himself, from the condemnation of the fellows, who just
don't understand. I must, some way, awaken him to a complete understanding
of college life in its entirety, but how? He is so different from Roddy
Perkins, or Deke Radford."
It seemed that the lovable Hicks was destined to save, every year of his
campus career, some entering collegian who incurred the wrath, deserved or
otherwise, of the students. In his Freshman first term, T. Haviland Hicks,
Jr., indignant at the way little Theophilus Opperdyke, the timorous,
nervous "grind," had been alarmed at the idea of being hazed, had by a
sensational escape from a room locked, guarded, and filled with Sophomores,
gained immunity for himself and the boner for all time, thus winning the
loyal, pathetic devotion of the Human Encyclopedia. As a Sophomore, by
crushing James Roderick Perkins' Napoleonic ambition to upset tradition,
and make Freshmen equal with upperclassmen, Hicks had turned that
aggressive youth's tremendous energy in the right channels, and made him a
power for good on the campus.
And, a Junior, he had saved good Deacon Radford. When that serious youth, a
famous prep. quarter, entered old Bannister, the students were wild at the
thought of having him to run the Gold and Green team, but to their dismay,
he refused either to report for practice or to explain his decision. Hicks,
promising blithely, as usual, to solve the mystery and get Deke to play,
discovered that the youth's mother, called "Mother Peg" by the collegians,
was head-waitress downtown at Jerry's and that she made her son promise
not to own the relationship, and that while she worked to get him through
college, Deacon would not play football. The inspired Hicks had gotten
Mother Peg to start College Inn, and board Freshmen unable to get rooms
in the dormitories, and Deacon had played wonderful football. For this
achievement, the original youth failed to get glory, for he sacrificed it,
and swore all concerned to secrecy.
"But Roddy and Deke were different," reflected Hicks, pondering seriously.
"Both had been to Prep. School, and they understood college life and campus
spirit. It was Roddy's tremendous ambition that had to be curbed, and Deke
was the victim of circumstances. But Thorwald--it is just a problem of how
to awaken in him an understanding of college spirit. The fellows don't
understand him, and--"
A sudden thought, one of his inspirations, assailed the blithesome Hicks.
Why not make the fellows understand Thor? Surely, if he explained the
"Billion-Dollar Mystery," as he humorously called it, and told why
Thorwald, as yet, had no conception of college life, in its true meaning,
they would not feel bitter against him; perhaps, instead, though regretful
at his decision not to play the game, they would all strive to awaken the
stolid Colossus, to stir his soul to an understanding of campus
tradition and existence. But that would mean--"I surely hate to lose my
Billion-Dollar Mystery!" grinned T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., remembering
the intense indignation of his comrades at his Herman-Kellar-Thurston
atmosphere of mystery, "It is more fun than, my 'Sheerluck Holmes'
detective pose or my saengerfests. Still, for old Bannister, and for Thor."
It would seem only a trifle for the heedless Hicks to give up his mystery,
and tell Bannister all about Thor; yet, had the Hercules reconsidered, and
played football, the torturesome youth would have bewildered his colleagues
as long as possible, or until they made him divulge the truth. He dearly
loved to torment his comrades, and this had been such an opportunity for
him to promise nonchalantly to produce a Herculean full-back, then, to
return to the campus with the Prodigious Prodigy in tow, and for him to
perform wonders on Bannister Field, naturally aroused the interest of the
youths, and he had enjoyed hugely their puzzlement, but now--
"Say, fellows," he interrupted an excited conversation of a would-be
Committee of Ways and Means to make Thor play football, "I have an
announcement to make."
"Don't pester us, Hicks!" warned Captain Butch Brewster, grimly. "We love
you like a brother, but we'll crush you if you start any foolishness,
and--"
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., with the study-table between himself and his
comrades, assumed the attitude of a Chautauqua lecturer, one hand resting
on the table and the other thrust into the breast of his coat, and
dramatically announced:
"In the Auditorium--at the regular mass-meeting tonight--T. Haviland Hicks,
Jr., will give the correct explanation of Thor, the Prodigious Prodigy, and
will solve the Billion-Dollar Mystery!"