HUGH GOES TO THE VILLAGE
There was the lightest sort of practice on Thursday for the regular,
but the third-string players, reinforced by three or four first subs,
among them Bert, gave the second a hard tussle for two fifteen-minute
halves. Hugh didn’t see that game, for with the other first-choice
players he was dispatched to the showers the minute practice was done,
but he heard about it afterwards from Peet, who, at least according to
his own story, was the one particular bright spot in the second team’s
back-field. Peet wasn’t a very eloquent conversationalist and his
report was vague and jerky, but Hugh gathered that Bert had more than
distinguished himself that afternoon. There had, said Peet, been one
burst through the whole second team that had netted forty-odd yards.
And he had frequently piled through Myatt and Bowen for three and four
at a whack. You just couldn’t stop him! He’d gained two once with both
Hanser and Ayer hanging around his neck! And, in the end, he had
crashed his way through the second team’s center from the six yards for
the only touchdown scored by the substitutes. Hugh was very glad and
hoped that Coach Bonner, who, according to Peet, had watched the game
through, would change his mind and let Bert start on Saturday.
That was the second team’s final game of the season and they won it
10 to 6. When it was over they cheered the first team, the coaches,
the school, themselves and whatever else they could think of, and
joyfully――and perhaps a little regretfully――disbanded.
Bert was in good spirits that evening. He had had a fine time in the
game and told Hugh all about it while they sat on the steps of Lothrop
after supper and waited until it was time to go over to the mass
meeting. But when Hugh suggested that perhaps, because of the good
showing he had made, Mr. Bonner might put him into the line-up instead
of one Hobo Ordway, Bert shrugged.
“He won’t. I know Bonner pretty well. Anyway, I don’t care so much
now. I had a bully time knocking around this afternoon and I’ll get
a whack at Mount Morris if only for five minutes or so, I guess, and
that’ll do. What time is it? We’ve got to sit on the stage tonight
like a lot of wax figures. That’s what I always feel like when I’m on
exhibition. Joe Leslie’s going to talk tonight. Have you heard him? Oh,
yes, he jawed at Lit one time you were there, didn’t he? Well, he’s a
dandy at it and no mistake. Joe always calls the turn, too. Last year
he said we’d lose and we did. Year before he said neither team would
score more than once, and, by Jove, he was right then, too. We played
a nothing-to-nothing tie! Joe knows football from A to Izzard, and he
would have been a peach of a player if he could have gone in for it.”
“What was the trouble?”
“Folks didn’t want him to. He――what?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Thought you did. Well, let’s go over.”
Sitting on the stage to be admired was a little uncomfortable, Hugh
thought, even though he and Bert secured chairs in the third row and
were not much in evidence from the floor. As on previous occasions of
the kind, the Mandolin and Banjo Club did its best――and sometimes it
sounded like its worst!――speeches were made, cheers were given and
songs were sung. To the delight of everyone, the prophetic Joe Leslie,
senior class president, predicted a Grafton victory, although he warned
his hearers that the team would have to work for it and that its margin
of points would be scanty. Joe could talk to the fellows in what Vail,
who sat at Hugh’s other side, called “words of one syllabub,” and he
was always a big success as a speaker. Tonight he had his audience with
him from the first moment and before he was through had worked them up
to such a stage of enthusiasm that they threatened to lift the roof off
the building.
When the meeting was over the football players disappeared quickly,
for tonight and tomorrow night they were supposed to be in bed by ten
o’clock, and, lest they be disturbed, all noise in rooms or corridors
after that hour was taboo. Hugh, who had been noticeably distrait all
the evening save when Joe Leslie’s eloquence had absorbed him, piled
promptly into bed, beating the clock by ten minutes. Bert was disposed
toward conversation, but found scant encouragement from his chum, and
at ten all lights were out in Number 29. Bert was just falling into a
delicious state of drowsiness when a sound from the opposite bedroom
brought him back to consciousness and he sat up suddenly. It seemed to
him that Hugh had said “That’s it!” very loudly. However, as all was
silent, he concluded that he had dreamed it, and so sank back again and
went to sleep.
The next forenoon, clad in a yellow slicker, since it was drizzling,
Hugh inconspicuously let himself out the service door on the basement
floor of Lothrop, climbed two fences, cut across a corner of a meadow,
and finally, a bit wet as to lower extremities, reached the village
road and trudged off into the mist. He was back a half-hour later,
in time for French, and, so far as he knew, his absence was passed
unnoticed.
It drizzled all day, and toward evening grew colder. The gridiron,
covered with a sprinkling of marsh hay, remained deserted. At four
o’clock the team met in the gymnasium and had a half-hour’s drill on
signals, and then again, at half-past eight, there was a blackboard
talk. But the day went slowly to most of the fellows and the weather
affected tight-strung nerves, and everyone from Coach Bonner down to
the least important third-string substitute was heartily glad when
bedtime came. The school held an impromptu celebration――if you can call
it a celebration when the thing to be celebrated hasn’t occurred――on
the campus and did a good deal of singing and cheering and shouting
while it marched around the buildings. But the drizzle soon discouraged
it and long before ten o’clock Grafton School was as quiet as the
proverbial mouse. Hugh had a good deal of trouble getting to sleep
that night. He could hear Bert’s hearty and regular snores from the
opposite room and envied him. Probably, he reflected, Bert had a clear
conscience, while his own――well, he didn’t quite know whether it was
clear or not. He only knew that he had done something that morning
which might or might not prove to have been for the best. Sometimes,
he concluded, as he thumped his pillow into a new shape, life was most
beastly complicated.
When he awoke after a none too refreshing night it was still dull and
foggy outside, although the drizzle had ceased. There was a light glaze
of ice over everything and the limbs of the trees outside the windows
crackled when a slight puff of wind blew the gray mist across the
campus. It was a dispiriting scene, Hugh thought, but Bert, who came
yawning in a moment later, appeared to find it quite to his liking.
“Ugh! Put that window down! Say, this is a bully day for the game,
isn’t it? Just snappy enough!”
“The field will be wet, though, won’t it?” asked Hugh.
“Not to mention. The sun will be out before noon, and that hay will
keep it pretty dry, anyway. Had your bath――pardon me, tub?”
“No. You go ahead if you like.”
“All right, your ’Ighness, I’ll do that very thing. Say, what’s wrong
with you? Got the pip or anything? You look like a last summer’s
straw!”
“Me? Oh, I’m all right, I fancy, thanks. I――didn’t sleep very well.”
Bert chuckled and playfully shied a pillow at him. “Nerves, me dear
boy, nerves! You’ll feel better after you’ve got some food――that is,
chow, inside you. I’ll yell if there’s a tub not working.”
Bert’s prediction was verified. Hugh did feel better after his
breakfast. Possibly the discovery that he was not the only fellow at
the training table that morning who resembled a last summer’s straw
helped as much as the food. As has been said before, Hugh had a horror
of being “different.”
There was no school that day. Experience had proved to the faculty that
holding recitations on the morning of the Big Game was about as useless
a thing as could be imagined. Many fellows headed for the village
shortly after breakfast, but the players were not allowed that means of
working off any superabundance of spirits. Instead, being instructed
to remain out of doors as much as possible, they dawdled around from
one set of steps to another and tried to be very jovial and carefree.
The sun came through about ten and the trees glittered as though strung
with diamonds. Then the diamonds turned into very wet water and dripped
down fellows’ necks.
Bert and Hugh and Nick and several others were seated on the steps of
Trow at about ten-thirty. Talk had been desultory and fragmentary for
some time, and Nick, the only one of the group apparently unaffected by
nerves, had just informed the rest candidly but for their own good that
they were a “bunch of nuts,” when Mr. Bonner came into view down the
steps of School Hall, looked this way and that and then walked briskly
along to Trow. He had the appearance of one who, having completed a
home-run, is informed by the umpire that he is out for not having
touched second. Every fellow in the group there knew that something had
greatly disturbed the coach’s equanimity, and when, pausing a dozen
yards away, he called to Hugh, his tone confirmed the look on his face.
“Ordway, please!” he called. “Just a moment!”
Hugh arose and wormed his way between the others. Probably they all
glanced curiously at him as he passed down the steps, but I doubt if
any save Bert read the expression on his face aright. To Bert it was
one of relief.
Hugh joined Coach Bonner and together they walked toward School Hall
and disappeared through the entrance. Speculation was rife in front of
Trow. Nick shook his head dubiously.
“Something’s gone to pot,” he said.
“Faculty’s jumped on Hobo, probably,” suggested another. “Thought,
though, he was rather a shark for study.”
“It isn’t that,” said Nick. “What do you think, Bert?”
But Bert only shook his head. If it was what he really thought, it
wasn’t a thing for him to talk about.
Five minutes later Hugh came out of School Hall and walked toward
them again. Seeing his face, Nick breathed easier. If it was anything
bad the Duke wouldn’t smile like that. When he reached the steps Hugh
stopped. By that time the smile didn’t look so good to Nick. There was
something not quite regular about it!
“Anything wrong?” asked Yetter.
“Rather, in a way,” answered Hugh. Bert noticed that his friend
avoided looking at him as he made the announcement. “My folks――that
is, my mother doesn’t want me to play. She telegraphed the faculty.
Bonner――Bonner’s a bit――peevish.”
The silence was broken by the dry tones of Nick.
“Strange he should be,” he murmured.
Hugh nodded, smiled, and turned away in the direction of Lothrop. A
chorus of regrets, of protests, of questions went after him, but he
kept on. Bert watched him disappear into the building before he jumped
up and hurried after.
“What,” demanded Bert, as he closed the door behind him, “what is
this――this”――unconsciously he adopted Hugh’s phrase of the other
evening――“this piffling poppycock?”
Hugh, standing at the window, one knee on the cushion, turned and
smiled conciliatingly. “Mother telegraphed to faculty. She doesn’t want
me to play. She――she’s afraid I’d get hurt, don’t you know. Of course,
it’s bally nonsense, but there you are, what?”
Bert advanced into the room and shied his cap to the table. Then he
plunged his hands in his pockets and observed sweetly:
“Must have been an awful surprise to you!”
Hugh colored. “Well, there it is, eh?”
“Most breaks your heart, doesn’t it?” continued Bert with suspicious
sympathy.
“Oh, well, now, old chap, of course a fellow’s disappointed, and all
that, but――――”
Then Bert let loose. I’m not going to try to say what he did, partly
because it was all dreadfully incoherent and partly because he used
expressions and called names that barely escaped being in shocking bad
taste. One of the nicest things he called Hugh was a “dunder-headed
ass”! And Hugh took it all quite good-naturedly and very calmly, even
seating himself as though in order to listen more attentively. And
when, at last, Bert petered out for lack of breath or language, Hugh
only grinned at him!
“You can’t prove anything you’ve said,” he remarked finally, just when
Bert showed a disposition to go on again. “And, anyway――――”
“I don’t have to prove it; I _know_ it!” bellowed the other. “I’m not a
complete fool!” He glared at Hugh a space longer and then subsided in
the Morris chair. “What――what did you do it for, Hugh?” he asked almost
pathetically.
Hugh blustered weakly. “I haven’t said I’d done anything, have
I? That’s your story. If you don’t believe me when I tell you
that――that――――”
“Well, go on,” said Bert sarcastically.
But Hugh didn’t. “Anyway, it’s done and that’s all there is to it.
What’s the good of cutting up rough?”
“Hugh, you’re an ass.”
Hugh smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “I say, you know, you’ve told
me that before a number of times.”
“And I tell it to you again, you――you chump! If this ever gets out
Bonner will scalp you and the school will chase you from here to the
Junction!”
“Why should it get out, as you say? And――and what is there to get out,
anyway?”
“There’s this. You wrote home and got your mother to send that
telegram, and if that isn’t――――”
“I didn’t!” denied Hugh.
“You didn’t! Look here, can you look me in the eyes and say you didn’t
put your mother up to it?”
“I didn’t write home,” replied Hugh evasively.
“Oh, that’s it! You telegraphed! Of course you did! And that’s what you
were thinking of when you said ‘Oh!’ or something when we were talking
about Joe Leslie. That put the silly stunt into your head, didn’t it?”
“I say, what’s the good of getting all excited about it?” said Hugh
soothingly. “It’s quite all right, old dear. All you’ve got to do, you
know, is calm down and go in this afternoon and give ’em ballywhack!”
Bert was silent for a moment. Then: “What did Bonner say?” he demanded.
Hugh smiled ruefully. “He was crusty a bit, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I do,” said Bert grimly. “Does he――suspect anything?”
“Oh, dear, no! Why should he?”
“Well, he might. Hang it, Hugh, I’ve got a half a mind not to play!”
Hugh laughed. “Change it, old dear! Bonner’s fit to be tied now. If you
tried anything like that on he’d just simply blow up――_Bing!_ Just like
that! Don’t be a silly ass, please.”
“But, Hugh, I wish you hadn’t! I feel so mean, don’t you see? And
suppose Bonner doesn’t put me in, after all! Suppose he plays Siedhof
or Zanetti! Suppose, even if he does put me in, I don’t play decently,
or――――”
“Suppose you’re a piffling idiot, and shut up! Bonner’s got to put you
in. And you’ve got to play the way you did Thursday and you’re going
to! Now come on out and get some air.”
Bert didn’t stir at once, though. Instead, he studied his knuckles a
long moment, leaning forward in his chair. Then, rather huskily: “Hugh,
you’re a mighty good sort,” he faltered. “And I’ve been such a rotter
that I don’t see why you want to――to――――”
“Piffling poppycock!” said Hugh.