across the waters. Out of the corner of his eye he caught view of
the long observation-train, vibrant with animation, the rival
colours commingled so that all emblem of collegiate affiliation was
lost in a merger of quivering hue. A hill near the starting-line on
the other side of the river was black with spectators, who indeed
filled points of vantage all down the four miles of the course. The
clouds above the western hills were turning crimson; the waters had
deepened to purple and were still and silent.
"There, you hell-dogs!" The voice of the coxswain rasped in its
combativeness. "Out there is Shelburne; ahead of us at the line. Who
says it'll be the last time she'll be ahead of us?"
Along the beautiful line of brown, swinging bodies went a low growl,
a more vicious rattle of the oarlocks.
Suddenly as Jim Deacon swung forward, a moored skiff swept past his
blade, the starting-line.
"Weigh all." The coxswain's command was immediately followed by
others designed to work the boat back to proper starting-position.
Deacon could easily see the Shelburne crew now--big men all, ideal
oarsmen to look at. Their faces were set and grim, their eyes
straight ahead. So far as they gave indication, their shell might
have been alone on the river. Now the Baliol shell had made sternway
sufficient for the man in the skiff to seize the rudder. The
Shelburne boat was already secured. Astern hovered the referee's boat,
the official standing in the bow directing operations. Still astern
was a larger craft filled with favoured representatives of the two
colleges, the rival coaches, the crew-managers and the like.
"Are you all ready, Baliol?"
"Yes, sir." Deacon, leaning forward, felt his arms grow tense.
"Are you all ready, Shelburne?"
The affirmative was followed by the sharp report of a pistol. With a
snap of his wrist Deacon beveled his oar, which bit cleanly into the
water and pulled. There followed an interval of hectic stroking,
oars in and out of the water as fast as could be done, while spray
rose in clouds and the coxswain screamed the measure of the beat.
"Fine, Baliol." The coxswain's voice went past Deacon's ear like a
bullet. "Both away together and now a little ahead at forty-two to
the minute. But down now. Down--down--down--down! That's
it--thirty-two to the minute. It's a long race, remember.
Shelburne's dropping the beat, too. You listen to Papa, all of you;
he'll keep you wise. Number three, for God's sake don't lift all the
water in the river up on your blade at the finish. Shelburne's
hitting it up a bit. Make it thirty-four."
"Not yet." Deacon scowled at the tense little coxswain. "I'll do the
timing." Chick Seagraves nodded.
"Right. Thirty-two."
Swinging forward to the catch, his chin turned against his shoulder,
Deacon studied the rival crew which with the half-mile flags
flashing by had attained a lead of some ten feet. Their blades were
biting the water hardly fifty feet from the end of his blade, the
naked brown bodies moving back and forth in perfect rhythm and with
undeniable power registered in the snap of the legs on the
stretchers and the pull of the arms. Deacon's eyes swept the face of
the Shelburne coxswain; it was composed. He glanced at the stroke.
The work, apparently, was costing him nothing.
"They're up to thirty-four," cried Seagraves as the mile flags drew
swiftly up.
"They're jockeying us, Chick. We'll show our fire when we get ready.
Let 'em rave."
Vaguely there came to Deacon a sound from the river-bank--Shelburne
enthusiasts acclaiming a lead of a neat half a length.
"Too much--too much." Deacon shook his head. Either Shelburne was
setting out to row her rival down at the start, or else, as Deacon
suspected, she was trying to smoke Baliol out, to learn at an early
juncture just what mettle was in the rival boat. A game,
stout-hearted, confident crew will always do this, it being the part
of good racing policy to make a rival know fear as early as possible.
And Shelburne believed in herself, beyond any question of doubt.
And whether she was faking, or since Baliol could not afford to let
the bid go unanswered, a lead of a quarter of a length at the mile
had to be challenged:
"Give 'em ten at thirty-six!" Deacon's voice was thick with
gathering effort. "Talk it up, Chick."
From the coxswain's throat issued a machine-gun fusillade of
whiplash words.
"Ten, boys! A rouser now. Ten! Come on. One--two--three--four--oh,
boy! Are we walking! Five--six--are they anchored over there?
Seven--oh, you big brown babies! Eight--Shelburne, good
night--nine--wow!--ten!"
Deacon, driving backward and forward with fiery intensity, feeling
within him the strength of some huge propulsive machine, was getting
his first real thrill of conflict--the thrill not only of actual
competition, but of all it meant to him, personally: his father's
well-being, his own career--everything was merged in a luminous
background of emotion for which that glittering oar he held was the
outlet.
Shelburne had met the spurt, but the drive of the Baliol boat was
not to be denied. Gradually the two prows came abreast, and then
Deacon, not stopping at the call of ten, but fairly carrying the
crew along with him, swung on with undiminished ferocity, while
Seagraves' voice rose into a shrill crescendo of triumph as Baliol
forged to the lead.
"They know a little now." Deacon's voice was a growl as gradually he
reduced the beat to thirty-two, Shelburne already having diminished
the stroke.
Deacon studied them. They were rowing along steadily, the eyes of
their coxswain turned curiously upon the Baliol shell. He suspected
the little man would like nothing better than to have Baliol break
her back to the two-mile mark and thus dig a watery grave. He
suspected also, that, failing Baliol's willingness to do this, the
test would now be forced upon her. For Shelburne was a heavy crew
with all sorts of staying power. What Deacon had to keep in mind was
that his eight was not so rugged and had therefore to be nursed along,
conserving energy wherever possible.
It was in the third mile that the battle of wits and judgment had to
be carried to conclusion, the fourth mile lurking as a mere matter
of staying power and ability to stand the gaff. Deacon's idea was
that at present his crew was leading because Shelburne was not
unwilling for the present that this should be. How true this was
became evident after the two-mile flags had passed, when the
Shelburne oarsmen began to lay to their strokes with tremendous drive,
the boat creeping foot by foot upon the rival shell until the Baliol
lead had been overcome and Shelburne herself swept to the fore.
Deacon raised the stroke slightly, to thirty-three, but soon dropped
to thirty-two, watching Shelburne carefully lest she make a
runaway then and there. Baliol was half a length astern at the
two-and-a-half mile mark, passing which the Shelburne crew gave
themselves up to a tremendous effort to kill off her rival then and
there.
"Jim! They're doing thirty-six--walking away."
The coxswain's face was white and drawn.
But Deacon continued to pass up a thirty-two stroke while the
Shelburne boat slid gradually away until at the three-mile mark
there was a foot of clear water between its rudder and the prow of
the Baliol shell.
Deacon glanced at the coxswain. A mile to go--one deadly mile.
"Thirty-six," he said. "Shelburne's can't have much more left."
The time had passed for study now. Gritting his teeth, Deacon bent
to his work, his eyes fixed upon the swaying body of the coxswain,
whose sharp staccato voice snapped out the measure; the beat of the
oars in the locks came as one sound.
"Right, boys! Up we come. Bully--bully--bully! Half a length now. Do
you hear? Half a length! Give me a quarter, boys. Eh, Godfrey! We've
got it. Now up and at 'em, Baliol. Oh, you hell-dogs!"
As in a dream Deacon saw the Shelburne boat drift into view, saw the
various oarsmen slide past until he and the rival stroke were rowing
practically abeam.
"That's for you, Dad," he muttered--and smiled.
He saw the men swing with quickened rhythm, saw the spray fly like
bullets from the Shelburne blades.
"Look out." There was a note of anguish in Seagraves' voice.
"Shelburne's spurting again."
A malediction trembled upon Deacon's lips. So here was the joker
held in reserve by the rival crew! Had Baliol anything left? Had he
anything left? Grave doubt was mounting in his soul. Away swept the
Shelburne boat inches at a stroke until the difference in their
positions was nearly a length. Three miles and a half! Not an
observer but believed that this gruelling contest had been worked out.
Seagraves, his eyes running tears, believed it as he swung backward
and forward exhorting his men. Half a mile more! The crews were now
rowing between the anchored lines of yachts and excursion-craft. The
finish boat was in sight.
And now Deacon, exalted by something nameless, uttered a cry and
began to give to Baliol more than he really had. Surely, steadily,
he raised his stroke while his comrades, like the lion-hearts they
were, took it up and put the sanction of common authority upon it.
Thirty-four! Thirty-six! Not the spurt of physical prowess, but of
indomitable mentality.
"Up we come!" Seagraves' voice was shrill like a bugle. He could see
expressions of stark fear in the faces of the rival oarsmen. They
had given all they had to give, had given enough to win almost any
race. But here in this race they had not given enough.
On came the Baliol shell with terrific impulse. Quarter of a mile;
Shelburne passed, her prow hanging doggedly on to the Baliol rudder.
Victory! Deacon's head became clear. None of the physical torture he
had felt in the past mile was now registered upon his consciousness.
No thought but that of impending victory!
"Less than a quarter of a mile, boys. In the stretch. Now--my God!"
Following the coxswain's broken exclamation, Deacon felt an
increased resistance upon his blade.
"Eh?"
"Innis has carried away his oarlock." The eyes of the coxswain
strained upon Deacon's face.
Deacon gulped. Strangely a picture of his father filled his mind.
His face hardened.
"All right! Tell him to throw his oar away and swing with the rest.
Don't move your rudder now. Keep it straight as long as you can."
From astern the sharp eyes of the Shelburne cox had detected the
accident to Baliol's Number Six. His voice was chattering stridently.
Deacon, now doing the work practically of two men, was undergoing
torture which shortly would have one of two effects. Either he would
collapse or his spirit would carry him beyond the claims of
overtaxed physique. One stroke, two strokes, three strokes--a groan
escaped his lips. Then so far as personality, personal emotions,
personal feelings were concerned, Jim Deacon ceased to function. He
became merely part of the mechanism of a great effort, the principal
guiding part.
And of all those rowing men of Baliol only the coxswain saw the
Shelburne boat creeping up slowly, inexorably--eight men against
seven. For nearly a quarter of a mile the grim fight was waged.
"Ten strokes more, boys!"
The prow of the Shelburne shell was on a line with Baliol's Number
Two.
"One--two--three--four----" The bow of the Shelburne boat plunged up
abeam Baliol's bow oar.
"Five--six--God, boys!--seven----"
The voice of the coxswain swept upward in a shrill scream. A gun
boomed; the air rocked with the screech and roar of whistles.
Slowly Deacon opened his eyes. Seagraves, the coxswain, was standing
up waving his megaphone. Rollins, at Number Seven, lay prone over
his oar. Innis, who had broken his oarlock, sat erect; Wallace, at
Number Five, was down. So was the bow oar. Mechanically Deacon's
hand sought the water, splashing the body of the man in front of him.
Then suddenly a mahogany launch dashed alongside. In the bow was a
large man with white moustache and florid face and burning black eyes.
His lips were drawn in a broad grin which seemed an anomaly upon the
face of Cephas Doane.
If so he immediately presented a still greater anomaly. He laughed
aloud.
"Poor old Shelburne! I--George! The first in four years! I never saw
anything quite like that. We've talked of Baliol's rowing-spirit--eh!
Here, you Deacon, let me give you a hand out of the shell. We'll run
you back to quarters."
Deacon, wondering, was pulled to the launch and then suddenly
stepped back, his jaw falling, his eyes alight as a man advanced
from the stern.
"Dad!"
"Yes," chuckled Doane. "We came up together--to celebrate."
"You mean--you mean--" Jim Deacon's voice faltered.
"Yes, I mean--" Cephas Doane stopped suddenly. "I think in justice
to my daughter-in-law to be, Jane Bostwick, that some explanation is
in order."
"Yes, sir." Deacon, his arm about his father's shoulder, stared at
the man.
"You see, Dr. Nicholls had the idea that you needed a finer edge put
on your rowing spirit. So I got Jane to cook up the story about that
cashier business at the bank."
"You did!"
"Yes. Of course your father was appointed. The only trouble was that
Jane, bright and clever as she is, bungled her lines."
"Bungled!" Deacon's face cleared. "That's what Dr. Nicholls said
about her on the road, the day I bucked out. I remember the word
somehow."
"She bungled, yes. She was to have made it very clear that by
winning you would escape my alleged wrath--or rather, your father
would. I knew you would row hard for Baliol, but I thought you might
row superhumanly for your father."
"Well," Jim Deacon flushed, then glanced proudly at his father--
"you were right, sir--I would."
PROFESSOR TODD'S USED CAR
BY L. H. ROBBINS
From _Everybody's Magazine_
He was a meek little man with sagging frame, dim lamps and feeble
ignition. Anxiously he pressed the salesman to tell him which of us
used cars in the wareroom was the slowest and safest.
The salesman laid his hand upon me and declared soberly: "You can't
possibly go wrong on this one, Mr. Todd." To a red-haired boy he
called, "Willie, drive Mr. Todd out for a lesson."
We ran to the park and stopped beside a lawn. "Take the wheel," said
Willie.
Mr. Todd demurred. "Let me watch you awhile," he pleaded. "You see,
I'm new at this sort of thing. In mechanical matters I am helpless.
I might run somebody down or crash into a tree. I--I don't feel
quite up to it to-day, so just let me ride around with you and get
used to the--the motion, as it were."
"All you need is nerve," Willie replied. "The quickest way for you
to get nerve is to grab hold here and, as it were, drive."
"Driving, they say, _does_ give a man self-confidence," our
passenger observed tremulously. "Quite recently I saw an
illustration of it. I saw an automobilist slap his wife's face while
traveling thirty miles an hour."
"They will get careless," said Willie.
Mr. Todd clasped the wheel with quivering hands and braced himself
for the ordeal.
"Set her in low till her speed's up," Willie directed. "Then wiggle
her into high."
It was too mechanical for Mr. Todd. Willie translated with scornful
particularity. Under our pupil's diffident manipulation we began to
romp through the park at the rate of one mile an hour.
Willie fretted. "Shoot her some gas," said he. "Give it to her.
Don't be a-scared." He pulled down the throttle-lever himself.
My sudden roaring was mingled with frightened outcries from Todd.
"Stop! Wait a minute! Whoa! Help!"
Fortunately for my radiator, the lamp-post into which he steered me
was poorly rooted. He looked at the wreckage of the glass globe on
the grass, and declared he had taken as much of the theory of
motoring as he could absorb in one session.
"This is the only lesson I can give you free," said Willie.
"You'd better keep on while the learning's cheap."
To free education and to compulsory education Mr. Todd pronounced
himself opposed. Cramming was harmful to the student; the elective
method was the only humane one. He put off the evil hour by engaging
Willie as a private tutor for the remaining afternoons of the month.
I have met many rabbits but only one Todd. He would visit me in the
barn and look at me in awe by the half-hour. Yet I liked him; I felt
drawn toward him in sympathy, for he and I were fellow victims of
the hauteur of Mrs. Todd.
In my travels I have never encountered a glacier. When I do run
across one I shall be reminded, I am certain, of Mr. Todd's lady.
"So you are still alive?" were her cordial words as we rolled into
the yard on the first afternoon.
"Yes, my dear." His tone was almost apologetic.
"Did he drive it?" she asked Willie.
"I'll say so, ma'am."
She looked me over coldly. When she finished, I had shrunk to the
dimensions of a wheelbarrow. When Todd sized me up in the warehouse
only an hour before, I had felt as imposing as a furniture van.
"Put it in the barn," said Mrs. Todd, "before a bird carries it off."
I began to suspect that a certain little stranger was not unanimously
welcome in that household. For a moment I was reassured, but only
for a moment.
"John Quincy Burton says," she observed, "that a little old used car
like this is sometimes a very good thing to own."
"That is encouraging," said Todd, brightening. In his relief he
explained to Willie that John Quincy Burton drove the largest car in
the neighbourhood and was therefore to be regarded as an authority.
"Yes," Mrs. Todd concluded, "he says he thinks of buying one himself
to carry in his tool-box."
Willie was an excellent teacher, though a severe disciplinarian.
But by way of amends for the rigours of the training, Willie would
take Mr. Todd after the practice hour for a spin around the park. At
those times I came to learn that the collision I had had with a
trolley-car before Todd bought me had not left me with any
constitutional defect. I still had power under my hood, and speed in
my wheels. But what good were power and speed to me now? I doubted
that Todd would ever push me beyond a crawl.
Yet I had hope, for when his relaxation from the tension of a lesson
had loosened his tongue he would chatter to Willie about
self-confidence.
"Some day you say, I shall be able to drive without thinking?"
"Sure! You won't have to use your bean any more'n when you walk."
At nights, when no one knew, Mr. Todd would steal into the barn and,
after performing the motions of winding me up, would sit at the
wheel and make believe to drive.
"I advance the spark," he would mutter, "I release the brake, I set
the gear, and ever so gently I let in the clutch. Ha! We move, we
are off! As we gather speed I pull the gear-lever back, then over,
then forward. Now, was that right? At any rate we are going north,
let us say, in Witherspoon Street. I observe a limousine approaching
from the east in a course perpendicular to mine. It has the right of
way, Willie says, so I slip the clutch out, at the same time
checking the flow of gasoline...."
Thus in imagination he would drive; get out, crank, get in again,
and roll away in fancy, earnestly practising by the hour in the dark
and silent barn.
"I'm getting it," he would declare. "I really believe I'm getting it!"
And he got it. In his driving examination he stalled only once,
stopping dead across a trolley track in deference to a push-cart.
But he was out and in and off again in ten seconds, upbraiding me
like an old-timer.
Said the inspector, stepping out at last and surely offering a
prayer of thanks to his patron saint: "You're pretty reckless yet on
corners, my friend." But he scribbled his O.K.
The written examination in the City Hall Mr. Todd passed with high
honours. Willie, who was with us on the fateful morning, exclaimed
in admiration: "One hundred! Well, Mr. Todd, you're alive, after
all--from the neck up, at least."
In gratitude for the compliment, the glowing graduate pressed a
bonus of two dollars into the panegyrist's palm. "Willie," he exulted,
"did you hear the inspector call me reckless?"
I can scarcely think of the Todd of the succeeding weeks as the same
Todd who bought me. He changed even in looks. He would always be a
second, of course, but his frame had rigidity now, his lamps sparkled,
he gripped the wheel with purposeful hands and trampled the pedals
in the way an engine likes. In his new assurance he reminded me
strongly of a man who drove me for a too brief while in my younger
days--a rare fellow, now doing time, I believe, in the penitentiary.
No longer Todd and I needed the traffic cop's "Get on out of
there, you corn-sheller!" to push us past the busy intersection
of Broad and Main streets. We conquered our tendency to scamper
panic-stricken for the sidewalk at the raucous bark of a jitney bus.
In the winding roads of the park we learned to turn corners on two
wheels and rest the other pair for the reverse curve.
One remembered day we went for a run in the country. On a ten-mile
piece of new macadam he gave me all the gas I craved. It was the
final test, the consummation, and little old Mr. Todd was all there.
I felt so good I could have blown my radiator cap off to him.
For he was a master I could trust--and all my brother used cars,
whether manufactured or merely born, will understand what comfort
that knowledge gives a fellow. I vowed I would do anything for that
man! On that very trip, indeed, I carried him the last homeward mile
on nothing in my tank but a faint odour.
II
Mrs. Todd was one of those gentle souls who get their happiness in
being unhappy in the presence of their so-called loved ones. She was
perpetually displeased with Todd.
His Christian name was James, but she did not speak Christian to him.
When she hailed him from the house she called him "Jay-eems"--the
"eems" an octave higher than the "Jay."
He would drop the grease-can or the monkey-wrench to rush to her side.
"Look at your sleeves!" she would say. "Your best shirt!" Words
failing her, she would sigh and go into a silence that was worse
than words. He was a great burden to her.
Humbly he entreated her one day for an obsolete tooth-brush.
"I want to clean spark-plugs with it," he explained.
"Next," she replied, icily, "you'll be taking your little pet to the
dentist, I suppose."
From such encounters Jay-eems would creep back to the barn and seek
consolation in tinkering around me.
He liked to take the lid off my transmission-box and gaze at my
wondrous works. He was always tightening my axle-burrs, or dosing me
with kerosene through my hot-air pipe, or toying with my timer.
While he was never so smart as Willie about such things, he was
intelligent and quick to learn; and this was not surprising to me
after I discovered the nature of his occupation in life.
I had taken him to be a retired silk-worm fancier, a chronic juryman,
or something of the sort. But shiver my windshield if he wasn't a
professor in a college!
On the morning when first he dared to drive me to his work, the
college must have got wind of our coming, for the students turned
out in a body to cheer him as he steered in at the campus gate, and
the faculty gathered on the steps to shake his hand.
A bald-headed preceptor asked him if he meant to cyanide me and
mount me on a pin for preservation in the college museum. The
chancellor inquired if Todd had identified me. Todd said he had. He
said I was a perfect specimen of _Automobilum cursus gandium_, the
most beautiful species of the _Golikellece_ family. It was the
nearest he ever came to profanity in my hearing. I suppose he got it
from associating with Willie.
They demanded a speech, and he made one--about me. He said that my
name was _Hilaritas_, signifying joy. He said, among other
flattering things, that I was no common mundane contraption, though
such I might seem to the untutored eye. In their studies of the
Greek drama they had read of gods from the machine. I was a machine
from the gods. In my cylinders I consumed nectar vapour, in my
goo-cups ambrosia, in my radiator flowed the crystal waters of the
Fount of Bandusia.
Three other items of his eulogium I remember: The breath of Pan
inflated my tires, I could climb Olympus in high, and he, James Todd,
a mere professor in a college, while sitting at my wheel, would not
bare his head to Zeus himself, no, nor even to the chairman of the
college board of trustees.