“HIS GRACE, THE DUKE”
Hugh Ordway was a success from the start. Everyone who met him found
him interesting and attractive. They didn’t put it in just that way.
Nick said: “His Grace, the Duke of Glyndestoke, is a little bit of
all-right.” Pop Driver said, “A clever lad, that Ordway. Bring him over
some evening, Bert.” Tom Hanrihan said, “Ordway’s got the stuff in
him, Coach. He’ll bear watching. Doesn’t know a thing about football,
but he’s a regular wonder at doing what he’s told to. Makes some of
the others over there look like regular bone-heads.” Mr. Rumford,
House Master at Lothrop Hall, confided to Mrs. Rumford at dinner one
evening during the first week of school that “Ordway, in 29, is a most
interesting boy, my dear. I wish you’d remember to have him in for
dinner some Sunday. The fellow actually thinks for himself.”
Perhaps of equal importance, however, was Bert’s verdict, since,
willy-nilly, the two boys were doomed to daily companionship. Bert’s
verdict was delivered to himself three days after Hugh’s advent. “He’s
a queer duffer, but I like him,” said Bert. What was doubtless equally
fortunate was the fact that Bert’s liking was returned and perhaps with
more enthusiasm. Hugh had felt rather strange, and, although he had
tried not to show it, a little bit homesick at first, and Bert, more
from a sense of duty than from affection at that stage, had taken him
under his wing and done everything possible to make things easy for
him. As Nick had remarked, entering school in the third year had its
difficulties. Your classmates had formed their associations and your
position was a good deal like that of a fifth hand at whist. You were
not especially needed, and, while welcome enough to look on, there was
no place for you at the table. But Bert’s efforts, coupled with Hugh’s
personality, had succeeded, to continue the metaphor, in squeezing the
newcomer up to the table. If at present Hugh was not actually taking
part in the game, at least he was where he could enjoy seeing it. And
for this Hugh was grateful.
As a matter of fact, he had come to Grafton with many misgivings. He
had spent most of his sixteen years in England, only coming across
to this country at long intervals and for brief stays. At such times
his mother’s house on the East Shore in Maryland had been opened up
for two or three months, infrequently for a longer period, and Hugh
had lived a life not greatly different from his life in England. His
father, a member of Parliament, and holding a position under the
government, seldom accompanied them across. Within the last three
years Hugh’s visits in the United States had occurred annually and had
lasted longer, for his mother, whose idea it was to have Hugh educated
in America, thought it well for him to know the country better than he
did. Consequently, they had traveled a good deal last year and the year
before, accompanied invariably by a tutor. That would not have been
an American youth’s notion of ideal sight-seeing, but Hugh had been
brought up with, first a governess, and, subsequently, a tutor at his
elbow, and was thoroughly used to having them around. Nevertheless,
when, last year, the Balliol College tutor had been left behind and
a young, red-headed, and extremely energetic graduate of Yale had
appeared at Shorefields and taken the boy in charge, Hugh had welcomed
the change.
That fall and during part of the following winter Hugh had been coached
for Grafton School. He had, for instance, a far more mature outlook
but Mr. Fairway wouldn’t hear of it. Why waste a year, he asked, when,
with a little harder work, he could enter the upper middle? Hugh, who
had no great enthusiasm for the program in any case, agreed that to
waste a year would be a criminal matter and set diligently to work
unlearning not a little of what his English tutor had taught him. When,
in January, they had returned to London he was pronounced ready for
Grafton, his name was entered for admission the next September and he
had contracted a certain amount of pleasurable anticipation, most of
which, however, evaporated before he was once more headed across the
ocean in August. By that time a realization of the fact that this New
England preparatory school for which he was booked was quite dissimilar
to any school of which he had knowledge, that the fellows he would meet
there were different from him in manners and point of view, that, in
short, he was taking a plunge into a strange pool filled with strange
fishes, filled him with alarm. That he managed to conceal any sign of
it was creditable. But he had found the school not so different, after
all, from those he knew of, and the fellows were far less strange in
their ways, views and speech than he had expected. Perhaps he did not
actually give Bert the credit for bringing all this about, but he did
somehow arrive at the conclusion that his roommate had worked something
in the nature of a miracle in his behalf, and his gratitude, although
not expressed in words, was deep and evident. Gratitude even when out
of proportion to benefits bestowed is pleasant to the recipient, and
doubtless the fact that Hugh was grateful and wanted Bert to know it
had something to do with the latter’s liking for the younger boy.
That difference in age――it was in reality a matter of eight months――was
not greatly apparent. In some ways Hugh seemed older than Bert. He
had expected to enter the lower-middle class, on life and things in
general. Bert sometimes felt annoyingly young and thoughtless during
their discussions. Hugh had studied so many things out that Bert had
never even considered, and studied them out, too, to a conclusion
which, right or wrong, was at least something to tie to. Bert’s
convictions were few and concerned matters close at hand. Hugh’s
had to do with the most extraordinary things: American politics,
the British foreign policy, income taxation, home rule for Ireland,
back-court versus net play in tennis, woman suffrage, the abolition
of the stymie in golf, fancy waistcoats, farming as a profession, and
many, many more. Once Bert asked curiously if all English fellows
bothered themselves with as many things as Hugh did and failed to get
any information because Hugh forgot the question in trying to establish
himself as only a half-Englishman. (“Fifty-fifty,” suggested Bert,
which expression on being explained was seized on joyfully by Hugh and
added to his rapidly increasing collection of slang phrases.)
Next to Bert, Hugh’s liking was given to Nick Blake, and then to Pop
Driver, and after that, I suspect, to Guy Murtha. But Hugh had a
fine capacity for liking everyone he met, finding, often to Bert’s
amusement, qualities worthy of admiration in the fellows whom Bert
had long since set down as utterly hopeless. Nick and Guy were daily
visitors at Number 29, and many quite remarkable discussions took place
up there under the roof, discussions usually conducted principally by
Hugh and Guy, with Nick supplying a light comedy seasoning and Bert
acting the rôle of audience and, generally, deciding the matter in the
end. For, although frequently Bert found the argument too deep for him,
he could sum up and award a verdict like a judge of the Supreme Court!
That study up there was a very attractive room now. Hugh had not
brought a great deal with him in the way of pictures, but what he
had brought were interesting and, as Nick said, gave tone. Bert’s
wall decorations ran to “shingles” and framed posters, although he
was the proud possessor of a good etching of sheep by Monks, and a
rather jolly coaching print. Then there was a six-foot silk banner
of vivid scarlet, with the word “Grafton” in gray letters, along
one wall, and a captured Mount Morris pennant, green and white, and
showing battle marks, over the window-seat. The pillows were the usual
strange collections of all hues and styles, many of them, of course,
running to scarlet-and-gray. Hugh’s contributions were photographs,
some quite large and all handsomely framed. The one that produced the
most interest on the part of visitors was the picture of his home in
England. It was just like the baronial manors and lordly castles you
read about, Nick declared, and when he got enormously rich he was going
to buy one just like it. It was a stone building, with the stones set
in a peculiarly haphazard fashion, and it rambled over the best part
of an acre, or seemed to. There were turrets and battlements, and much
very orderly ivy, and the remains of a moat, and many stately trees
and a “front yard,” as Nick called it, that looked like two or three
perfectly level golf links thrown into one! That photograph was a
never-ceasing source of joy to Nick, and if he was there when a new
visitor arrived he always haled the latter up to see it.
“Our ancestral home,” he would explain, to Hugh’s embarrassment,
“Lockley Manor, Glyndestoke, Hants, England, by Jove!”
There was a smaller photograph of the home in Maryland, but that was
less impressive and more like what Nick had seen. The two or three
English country views interested him more. “This,” he would inform the
newcomer, “is a view of the spinney back of the home farm. And here we
have the bridge at Glyndestoke, with the Old Inn in the distance. Right
there is where Ordway catches his salmon for breakfast. Every morning
when it’s rainy enough he saunters down that road there accompanied by
the head gamekeeper and two or three assistant gamekeepers and a few
dozen gillies and fishes up a salmon. That is, he gets the salmon on
the hook, but, bless your simple heart, he doesn’t pull him in. Oh,
dear no! Rather not! I should say otherwise and vastly to the contrary.
That’s where the first assistant gamekeeper has his innings, d’ye see?
The first assistant gamekeeper takes the rod and plays the fish while
the head gamekeeper stands ready with the landing-net. It’s all very
simple, you see. Nothing irksome about it all. Ordway seldom gets tired
fishing. He――――”
“Oh, I say, Nick, cut it out, like a good chap!” Hugh would beg. “Stuff
a pillow in his mouth, someone, please!”
Nick had various sobriquets for Hugh. Sometimes he was “Your Grace,”
sometimes “The Duke of Glyndestoke,” sometimes just “’Ighness.”
Eventually, though, it was Nick who discovered in the school catalogue,
when that was issued in October, that Hugh’s full name as there set
down was Hugh Oswald Brodwick Ordway, and, in consequence of the
initials, promptly dubbed him “Hobo!”
Possibly it was its absolute incongruity that made that nickname
instantly popular. At all events, while Hugh’s more intimate friends
did not ordinarily call him “Hobo,” others and the school in general
did. But that was later, when Hugh, greatly to his surprise, found
himself a rather important person at Grafton.
Meanwhile, in that first fortnight of the fall term, Hugh was a very
busy youth. He pegged away unfalteringly at football and began to like
it, in spite of the drudgery. He weathered two cuts in the squad and
saw other fellows with far more experience released to private life
or their class teams. When, the second Saturday after the opening of
the term, Grafton played the local high school and won without trouble
by the score of 26–0, Hugh saw the game from the stand, and, with Guy
Murtha to elucidate obscure points, enjoyed it vastly. High School
presented a team badly in need of practice and Grafton ran rings about
her and could have scored at least twice more had Coach Bonner thought
fit to let her do so. But when the third period was a few minutes old
and the score was 20–0, he began to send in second-string players, with
the result that Grafton’s offensive powers waned perceptibly. One more
touchdown was secured against the opponent in the last few minutes of
the final period when Siedhof, who had substituted Bert Winslow at
left half, secured the ball after High School had blocked Nate Leddy’s
try-at-goal. Siedhof picked the ball literally from a High School
forward’s hands and in some miraculous manner swung around and dodged
and feinted his way through a crowded field and over six white lines
to a score. Leddy missed the goal and play ended soon after. Grafton
showed the benefit of those ten days of ante-season practice so long
as her first-string men were in the line-up, and, on the whole, coach,
captain, players, and supporters were well satisfied with the showing
made in that first contest.
Hugh gained more knowledge of the finer points of football that
evening when Nick, Pop Driver, Guy and Bert threshed it all out in
Number 29. Much of the discussion went over his head, but he awoke to
the realization that there was a great deal more to football than
meets the eyes of the spectator. Nick and Bert argued for ten minutes
over one play which had gone awry. Bert declared that it shouldn’t
have been called for in the circumstances and Nick proved, to his own
satisfaction at least, that it was fundamentally, psychologically,
scientifically correct. Whereupon Pop, who had listened without
comment, informed Nick that he was wrong. And, for some reason, Nick
and everyone else accepted the dictum without question. Much technical
talk followed, and Hugh was soon beyond his depth, but he tried hard
to understand and stored up a fine collection of questions to ask Bert
later.
But other interests besides football demanded Hugh’s attention. He was
nominated for election to “Lit” by Bert and seconded by Nick and Pop.
The Literary Society and The Forum were the rival social and debating
clubs. Secret organizations of any sort were tabooed at Grafton,
although there was, or was said to be, a certain lower middle-class
society known as “Thag” which was supposed to exist in defiance of the
law. If it really existed outside the imaginations of lower middlers
it was of such slight consequence that faculty winked at it. Hugh
might have been put up for The Forum instead of “Lit” had he wished,
for Guy was an enthusiastic member of the older club and did his best
to get Hugh’s permission to nominate him. Hugh, though, with no real
preference, felt that he ought to allow Bert to decide the matter for
him, and Bert naturally claimed his chum for his own society.
Hugh was also elected, much less formally, to the Canoe Club, and, at
Bert’s urging, attended several trials for the Glee Club, to which he
was eventually admitted. The elections to The Forum and the Literary
Society took place in January, but candidates were meanwhile admitted
to a quasi-membership that gave them the use of the club rooms and
allowed them to attend meetings, without participation in debates or
affairs.
In the class rooms Hugh progressed well, for the fiery-locked Mr.
Fairway had done his work thoroughly. In fact, Hugh began his career at
Grafton most satisfactorily, and progressed serenely and pleasantly and
without especial incident along the stream of school life until, just
two weeks to a day after his arrival, he struck his first snag.