IN THE LIME-LIGHT
The next morning Bert had apparently forgotten his grievance, although
he looked as if he had spent an unrestful night and was fidgety and
troubled. Hugh saw little of him until practice time. That afternoon
there was only light work for the players and the scrimmage with the
second team was short, if lively. Bert and Zanetti started the game and
later Bert went out in favor of Hugh, and Zanetti gave way to Vail. The
latter seemed as good as ever today and went to work with a will. Hugh,
during the time he was in the game, had few opportunities for offensive
work but made one good rush of some ten yards when he was let loose
outside left tackle. Siedhof played a few minutes in Hugh’s place at
the end of the scrimmage.
The first showed the effect of the week’s work and undoubtedly
displayed a better defence than theretofore. During the fifteen minutes
of actual playing time it scored twice on the second and held its
opponent safe.
Football enthusiasm had been rampant for over a week and already two
mass-meetings had been held. The third came off that Friday evening and
everyone piled into the assembly hall and cheered and sang and whooped
things up generally. The Mandolin and Banjo Club occupied the stage and
supplied music for the songs. Hugh secretly thought the enthusiasm a
bit “made-to-order” as he expressed it. But Hugh had not yet accustomed
himself to the idea of organized cheering, which he still considered a
trifle ridiculous. But he liked the singing and got into the songs with
a will. Captain Trafford predicted victory for the Scarlet-and-Gray;
Coach Bonner warned them against overconfidence, and Mr. Smiley quoted
much Latin and made them laugh frequently. As a demonstration of
loyalty and faith in the team the meeting was a great big success, but
it didn’t affect the result of next week’s game the least particle,
and so, in Hugh’s mind, was rather a waste of energy. Even Wallace
Cathcart attended, and Hugh, to his surprise, caught him with his mouth
very wide open and his face very red, cheering like mad. The first and
second team players sat together in front and Hugh found himself beside
Tom Hanrihan. Hanrihan had displayed a kindly interest in Hugh’s career
from the first, and tonight, in a lull between a cheer for Coach
Bonner and a song, he said confidentially:
“You’re doing fine, Hobo. Just you keep it up, son, and you’ll have
your letter. If you do you’ll be one of the youngest fellows to get it.
Bonner can’t keep you out of that game if he wants to, by gum! I sized
you up right the first day I saw you; remember? Yes, sir, I liked your
style right then, and I told Bonner so, too. I sort of discovered you,
Hobo, and if you don’t play a regular star game next week I’ll beat you
up!”
Then the mandolins and guitars and banjos struck up “Here We Go!” and
Hanrihan and Hugh, the latter referring to the printed slip in his
hand, joined in the rollicking refrain:
“Grafton! Grafton! Here we go,
Arm in arm with banners flying!
Pity, pity any foe
When it hears us loudly crying:
‘Grafton! Grafton! Rah, rah, rah!’
All together! Now the chorus:
‘Grafton! Grafton! Rah, rah, rah!’
Victory today is for us!”
Finally, “Nine long ‘Graftons,’ fellows, and put some pep into it!”
and then the exodus, with much scraping of settees and laughing and
whistling. And afterwards, for Nick and Guy Murtha and Harry Keyes and
Hugh, a Welsh rarebit in Nick’s room, made over an alcohol lamp and
extremely hot with cayenne pepper!
Southlake Academy was the visitor the next afternoon. Southlake had
played Mount Morris earlier in the season and had been soundly drubbed
by the score of 19 to 0. But Grafton did not hope to make so good a
showing. Nor did she. Southlake was a better team that day than she
had been when the Green-and-White had vanquished her, and she soon
proved the fact. Coach Bonner started with two substitutes in the line,
Hanrihan for Captain Trafford and Willard for Musgrave at center. But
Musgrave was hurried in before the game was five minutes old and,
although Captain Ted stayed out of the conflict until the third period
began, he, too, had to be sent to the relief. The back-field was Blake,
Winslow, Vail and Keyes during the first half. Then Weston took Nick’s
place, Siedhof went in for Vail, and Leddy played full. Hugh was half
sorry and half glad that he was being kept out. He wanted to play
hard enough, but he feared that if he did go in it would be in place
of Bert, and their relations were strained enough as it was. Bert
had hardly spoken a word, civil or otherwise, to his roommate since
yesterday’s practice!
There was no scoring on either side until the second period was ten
minutes along. Then a lucky fluke gave Grafton the ball on Southlake’s
twenty-two yards and she took it over in seven smashing attacks on
the center. Keyes missed goal. After that Southlake sprang some open
plays which, if they didn’t gain very much ground, considerably worried
and exasperated the enemy, who, for a while, didn’t know how to meet
them. Still, the nearest Southlake came to a score was getting down
to Grafton’s seventeen yards, where she was held for downs, and Keyes
kicked out of danger.
Hugh watched the work of the half-backs attentively. Vail was covering
himself with glory and Bert was doing considerably better on attack
than he had been doing of late, but was frightfully weak on defence.
Time after time he was outside the play entirely, while, when he did
get into it, he was quite as likely to miss his tackle as make it.
Even Hugh, who was desperately anxious to make the best of Bert’s
performance, could not fail to see that he was trying the patience of
his team-mates and, probably, of Mr. Bonner as well.
Southlake tried two forward passes in the third period and again got
within scoring distance. She faked a drop-kick and sent a back on a
wide run around Roy Dresser’s end and Roy, for once, was neatly boxed.
Bert was the man to stop the runner and Bert made a miserable failure
of the attempt, getting his man and then losing him again. Just how
Yetter got into the affair was a mystery, but it was the left guard who
pulled the Southlake runner down just short of the goal line.
Franklin had been showing distress for some time and now Parker was
sent in to play left tackle. At the same time Keyes was put back
again, and it was perhaps the big full-back’s presence which stopped
the enemy’s advance. Two tries lost her a yard and then she tried a
drop-kick and it was Keyes who leaped into the path of the ball and
beat it down. Southlake recovered on the fifteen, but she fumbled a
minute or two later and the pigskin was Grafton’s.
It was then that the Scarlet-and-Gray showed real form. From her own
fifteen-yard line to the middle of the field she went in five plays,
Keyes and Roy Dresser bringing off a forward pass that covered more
than half the distance, and Vail and Siedhof, and once Keyes, plunging
through the line for the balance. A second attempt at a forward pass
grounded, but Vail got away outside the Southlake right tackle and
reeled off fifteen yards, and from there down to the sixteen Grafton
plugged relentlessly. There was a mistake in signals then and some four
yards was lost, and Weston elected to try a goal from the field and
Captain Trafford went back. But the line weakened somewhere and Ted
had no chance to kick and Weston, holding the ball for him near the
thirty-yard line, could only snuggle it beneath him and yell, “Down!”
It was then that Coach Bonner beckoned Hugh from the bench. “Go ahead,”
he said, “and see what you can do. Tell Weston to use Number 17,
Ordway.”
Hugh pulled off his sweater and legged it across with upraised hand,
and the stand cheered him. Bert saw him coming and began to tug at his
head harness. Then he stopped and waited.
“You’re off,” said Hugh. “May I have that, please?”
[Illustration: “‘You’re off,’ said Hugh. ‘May I have that, please?’”]
Bert handed over the leather guard silently, but his expression wasn’t
pleasant and Hugh heartily wished that the coach had chosen Zanetti
instead of him. But there was no time for regrets then. He whispered
his instructions to the quarter-back, repeated them in reply to Captain
Ted’s anxious question, pulled the head guard on and sprang into place.
It was third down and about fifteen to go. Weston called the signals,
Trafford crossed to the other side of Parker, and Keyes stepped farther
back and held his hands out, the halves crouched wide apart, and
Weston, stooping behind Musgrave, repeated the signals. Then the ball
came back, straight and fast, and Hugh snuggled it in the crook of his
arm, started quickly, and, running low and hard, swept past his line
on the heels of Siedhof, while Weston and Keyes sped toward the other
end. For a moment, a critical length of time just then, Southlake lost
sight of the ball. When she had solved the play Siedhof had spun a
Southlake tackle from the path, and Hugh had responded to the frantic
cry of “_In! In!_” and was through. Siedhof met the charge of a half,
but went down in the encounter, and Hugh, twisting aside, circled out,
passed the twenty-yard line, dodged another back and, with the hue and
cry close behind, raced over the remaining four trampled white marks
and was only stopped when a despairing quarter, wrapping tenacious arms
about his legs, brought him to earth well back of the goal line!
Grafton shouted herself hoarse, only letting up for a minute while
Keyes directed the ball and subsequently booted it deftly over the bar.
After that Grafton played on the defensive for the rest of that period
and the next, and, although there were some anxious moments, kept what
she had earned. While 13 to 0 didn’t sound as well as 19 to 0, it
perhaps stood for quite as much if we consider the fact that Southlake
was a stronger team today than when she had met Mount Morris.
Being a hero is a trying business, as Hugh soon discovered. Naturally
somewhat retiring, he disliked the sudden publicity that enveloped him,
and, being modest, he felt uncomfortable under the praise bestowed
on him. Fellows took, he thought, a ridiculous amount of pains to go
out of their way to shake his hand or even slap him familiarly on the
shoulder and tell him what a wonder he was. He knew very well that he
wasn’t a wonder and he didn’t like being called one. He belonged, in
part at least, to a people who abhor being conspicuous and who view
askance anything savoring of hysteria, and, in spite of his American
experiences, he had not lost those feelings. No, on the whole the
succeeding week was not a very comfortable one for Hugh. He hoped that
after a day or two the school would cease its “bally nonsense,” but he
was reckoning without the fact that it was wrought up to a fine state
of tension and that the tension increased every hour as the Mount
Morris game approached. Consequently the “bally nonsense” continued and
Hobo Ordway was never allowed to get out of the lime-light for a minute.
But what troubled Hugh far more than fame and its consequences was
Bert’s attitude. After the Southlake game no one, and surely not
Bert, doubted for an instant that Hugh had won his position. Another
fellow might have swallowed the lump in his throat and smiled, or,
being resentful, might have hidden the fact. But not so Bert. He made
no secret to Hugh or anyone else that he thought he had been badly
treated. Or perhaps, which is more likely, he pretended to think
so. At all events, life in Number 29 was difficult and increasingly
unpleasant. Bert seldom spoke unless addressed by Hugh and then
answered coldly and sneeringly. By the middle of the next week Hugh
kept away from the study as much as he could and gave up trying to
bridge the chasm. On one occasion, driven out of his usual patience
by a surly response, he got thoroughly angry and wanted to fight on
the spot. Bert, though, refused to afford him that much satisfaction,
telling him sarcastically that if he (Hugh) got hurt and couldn’t play
they’d surely lose the game!
Nick and Pop each told Bert that he was making an utter ass of himself,
but beyond such satisfaction as they got from airing their opinion,
nothing came of it.
There was light work on Monday for the regulars, although those who
had not participated strenuously in Saturday’s contest were given the
usual medicine. On Tuesday there was a hard practice, and, in the
evening, an hour’s signal drill in the gymnasium. The program was the
same the next day. That afternoon, Bert, if he still entertained hopes,
must have seen the futility of them. For he spent the whole period of
scrimmaging on the bench and saw Hugh occupying the place he had looked
on as his. Although no official statement to the effect was made by
the coaches, it was generally understood that the line-up that day
was the one which would face Mount Morris on Saturday. Of course Bert
would get into the game for a while beyond the shadow of a doubt, but
that brought no satisfaction to him. What increased his sense of injury
was the fact that the day before, playing two of the four ten-minute
periods against the scrubs, he had held his own with any of them. And
he knew now that if he could only get in on Saturday he could play the
game of his life!
Perhaps it was a final realization of his defeat that changed his
attitude toward Hugh that evening. When both boys were back in the
study after the signal work in the gymnasium Bert volunteered a remark
in a very casual but surprisingly inoffensive voice. Hugh answered
in kind, and, rather embarrassedly, they fell into a discussion of
the plays they had rehearsed, of the team’s chances, and of kindred
subjects. Then, when Hugh had gone to bed and his light was out,
Bert’s voice reached him from his doorway.
“Say, Hugh!”
“Yes?”
An instant’s silence, and then: “I’m sorry I’ve been such a rotter.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Bert!”
“Yes, but――――” Another silence, and finally: “It isn’t all right at
all! I――oh, well, what’s the use? I’m sorry. I guess that’s the whole
yarn. It isn’t your fault, you know, and I――I hope you do fine, old
man! Just rip ’em right up the back!”
“Thanks,” replied Hugh in the darkness, “but I wish it were going to
be you, Bert, honest! I don’t want to play a mite. I’m beastly sorry
I――I――――”
“Oh, rot!”
“But I am, though! I feel an awful ass, if you know what I mean;
butting in like this and doing you out of your place on the team when
I can’t begin to play the way you do, old chap! It――it’s piffling
poppycock! That’s what it is! Piffling poppycock!”
He appeared to derive a lot of satisfaction from the phrase, and Bert
heard him mutter it over again to himself as he felt his way into the
room and sat on the foot of Hugh’s bed.
“No,” he said, tucking his feet up out of the draft from the open
window, “no, that’s not true. You play just as good a game as I ever
did, Hugh. You can’t get around that. And what’s a heap more, you’re
steady. I never was. I’d play good enough one day and then be perfectly
rotten the next, maybe. What gets me, though, is how the dickens you
ever learned in only about eight weeks!”
“Oh, I don’t know. And, anyhow, that’s got nothing to do with it. I
never imagined that I’d get in your way, Bert. If I had I’d never have
gone in for the silly game. Now look what’s happened!”
“Well, what has happened? I’m out and you’re in because you deserve to
be. Besides, there’s another year coming, isn’t there? Football doesn’t
stop after Saturday, you know.”
“That’s taking it mighty well,” said Hugh warmly. “But――just the same I
don’t like it. It makes me feel an awful rotter, an out-and-out rotter,
old chap! If there was any way to――to――to back out――――”
“Don’t be a chump! There isn’t, and if there was you’d have no
right――――”
“Why not? I know there isn’t, of course, but I don’t see why I
shouldn’t have the say about playing. Of course I can’t go to Mr.
Bonner and say ‘Look here, you know, I’ve changed my silly mind and
don’t think I’ll play Saturday.’ That wouldn’t do, of course. But, just
the same, it’s tommyrot to say I haven’t the right, you know.”
“You haven’t,” declared Bert decidedly. “The team needs you and it’s up
to you to do your level best.”
“My level best is no better than yours, though; not so good, in fact.
How do you know that I won’t have stage-fright Saturday and drop the
ball or――or try to swallow it? You can’t make me believe that if
something happened so I couldn’t play you wouldn’t do just as well and
probably better than I would!”
“I don’t know what I’d do,” answered Bert thoughtfully. “Yes, I do,
though, old man. I’ve got a perfectly magnificent hunch that I’d play
good ball if I got a chance. But that’s got nothing to do with it. I
shan’t have the chance unless Bonner puts me in for a little while at
the end. He probably will, you know; after we’ve got the thing cinched
or we’re so far behind that nothing matters!”
“Well, there it is, then!” said Hugh triumphantly. “You _know_ what you
can do and I don’t! What I say is――――”
Bert laughed. “Oh, you dry up and go to sleep, Hugh. It’s all right,
old man. I did act like a beast, and I’m sorry, and I beg your pardon.
And that’s all of that, I guess. For the rest of it, I hope you’ll play
a rattling good game, Hugh, and if I’m to substitute you I hope I won’t
get in at all. Good night!”
“Well, but――now hold on, old dear! I want to tell you――――”
“Not tonight. It’s after eleven. Go to sleep.”
Hugh grunted as he heard the bed creak in the other room. Then he
thumped his pillow and settled down again.
“Just the same,” he murmured, “it’s piffling poppycock! That’s just
what it is, piffling poppycock!”