Chapter 8

THE HARVARD FRESHMAN

For two or three days the intercourse between Irving and Westby was of the most formal sort. At table they held no communication with each other; in the class-room Irving gave Westby every chance to recite and conscientiously helped him through the recitation as much as he did any one else; in the dormitory they exchanged a cold good-night. Irving did not press Westby for a retraction of the charge which he had overheard the boy make; it seemed to him unworthy to dignify it by taking such notice of it. He knew that none of the boys really believed it and that Westby himself did not believe it, but had been goaded into the declaration in the desperate effort to maintain a false position. Irving wondered if the boy would not have the fairness to make some acknowledgment of the injustice into which his pride had provoked him.

And one day at luncheon, Westby turned to Irving and with an embarrassed smile said,

"Mr. Upton, do you get any news from your brother about the Harvard Freshman eleven?"

Carroll directed at Westby the quizzical look under which Irving had so often suffered. But Westby did not flinch; he waited for Irving's answer, with his embarrassed, appealing smile.

"I had a letter from him this morning," said Irving. "He writes that there is a chance of their coming up here to play the School eleven; I had asked him if that couldn't be arranged."

"Oh, really!" exclaimed Westby, in a tone of honest interest.

"When, Mr. Upton?" "Does he think they'll come?" "Does Lou Collingwood know about it?"

"I guess he knows as much as I do." Irving tried to answer the flood of questions. "He wrote officially to the captain at the same time that I wrote to Lawrence. If they come at all, it will be about a week before the St. John's game."

"When shall we know for sure?" asked Westby.

"It appears to be a question whether the Freshmen will choose to play us or Lakeview School. They want to play whichever team seems the stronger, and they're going to discuss the prospects and decide in a few days."

"I'm sure we're better than Lakeview," declared Blake. "You'll tell your brother we are, won't you, Mr. Upton?"

"I'll tell him that I understand we have a very superior team," said Irving. "I fancy he knows that it's as much as I can do to tell the difference between a quarterback and a goal post."

"You will admit, then, that there was some reason for my not believing you had a football brother, won't you, Mr. Upton?" Westby tried thus to beat a not wholly inglorious retreat.

"Every reason--until it became a matter of doubting my word," said Irving.

Westby crimsoned, and Irving felt that again he had been too severe with him; the boy had been trying to convey an apology, without actually making one; it might have been well to let him off.

But Irving reflected that the account was still far from even and that perhaps this unwonted adversity might be good for Westby. Irving did not realize quite how much teasing had been visited upon Westby in consequence of his disastrous error, or how humiliated the boy had been in his heart. For Westby was proud and vain and sensitive, accustomed to leadership, unused to ridicule; for two days now the shafts of those whom he had been in the habit of chaffing with impunity had been rankling. Because of this sensitive condition, the final rebuke at the luncheon table, before all the boys, cut him more deeply than Irving suspected. Afterwards Westby said to Carroll,--

"Oh, very well. If he couldn't accept my acknowledgment of my mistake, but had to jump on me again--well, it's just spite on his part; that's all. I don't care; I can let him alone after this. That seems to be what he wants."

"A month ago he wouldn't have asked more than that of you," observed Carroll. "And you didn't feel like obliging him then."

The implication that Irving had worsted him galled Westby.

"Oh," he retorted, "the best of jokes will wear out. Kiddy was a perfectly good joke for a while--"

Carroll annoyed him by laughing.

For one who had hitherto been indifferent to all forms of athletics, Irving developed a surprising interest in the game of football. Every afternoon he went to the field and watched the practice of the Pythian and Corinthian elevens. He had once thought the forward pass a detail incapable of engaging one's serious attention, and worthy of rebuke if attempted in dormitory; but after Lawrence wrote that in executing it he was acquiring some proficiency, Irving studied it with a more curious eye.

He wondered if Lawrence was as skillful at it as Collingwood, for instance; Collingwood had now learned to shoot the ball with accuracy twenty or twenty-five yards. Occasionally Irving got hold of a football and tested his own capacity in throwing it; his attempts convinced him that in this matter he had a great deal to learn. Looking back, he could comprehend Louis Collingwood's indignation and amazement at a master who would coldly turn away when a boy was trying to illustrate for him the forward pass.

One afternoon from watching the football practice Irving moved aside for a little while to see the finish of the autumn clay-pigeon shoot of the Gun Club.

There were only six contestants, and there were not many spectators; most of the boys preferred to stay on the football field, where there was more action; the second Pythians and second Corinthians were playing a match. But Irving had heard Westby talking at luncheon about the shoot and strolled over more from curiosity to see how he would acquit himself than for any other reason.

The trap was set in the long grass on the edge of the meadow near the woods; Allison was performing the unexciting task of pulling the string and releasing the skimming disks. When Irving came up, Smythe was finishing; he did not appear to be much of a shot, for he missed three out of the seven "birds" which Irving saw him try for.

Then it was Westby's turn. Westby had got himself up for the occasion, in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and leggings; he was always scrupulous about appearing in costumes that were extravagantly correct. He saw Irving and somewhat ostentatiously turned away.

Irving waited and looked on. Westby stood in an almost negligent attitude, with his gun lowered; the trap was sprung, the clay pigeon flew--and then was shattered in the midst of its flight. It seemed to Irving that Westby hardly brought his gun to his shoulder to take aim. It could not all be luck either; that was evident when Westby demolished ten clay pigeons in rapid succession. It was Carroll's turn now; Westby, having made his perfect score, blew the smoke from the breech and stood by.

Irving went up to him.

"I congratulate you on your shooting, Westby," he said. "It seems quite wonderful to a man who never fired a gun off but a few times in his life--and then it was a revolver, with blank cartridges."

Westby looked at him coolly. "It's funny you've never done anything that most fellows do," he observed. "Were you always afraid of hurting yourself?"

"I was offering my congratulations, Westby," said Irving stiffly, and walked away.

"Why did you go at him like that?" asked Carroll, who had heard the interchange.

"Oh," said Westby, "I wasn't going to have him hanging round swiping to me, soft-soaping me."

"I think he was only trying to be decent," said Carroll.

"I like a man who is decent without trying," Westby retorted.

Yet whether his nerves were a little upset by the episode or his eye thrown off by the wait, Westby did not do so well in the next round. The trap was set to send the birds skimming lower and faster; Westby missed two out of ten, and was tied for first place with Carroll. And in the final shoot to break the tie, Westby lost.

He shook hands with Carroll, but with no excess of good humor. He knew he was really the better shot, and even though Carroll was his closest friend, the defeat rankled.

At supper Blake congratulated Carroll across the table.

"You won, did you, Carroll?" asked Irving.

"Yes, sir--by a close shave."

"I'm sorry I didn't stay to see it." The remark was innocent in intention, but to Westby it seemed edged with malice--as if the master was exulting over his defeat.

Something in Westby's expression told Irving what the boy had inferred; Irving went afterwards to his room in a despondent mood. It didn't matter how hard he tried or what he did; he had not the faculty of winning and holding affection and respect. As it was with boys, so it would be with men. If only he could see how and why he failed, and could learn to correct his mistakes!

He felt of more importance in the School world when a letter from Lawrence was the first announcement that the Freshman eleven would come to play St. Timothy's. He asked Collingwood if he had had any word, and when Collingwood said no, he told him his brother's message.

"I don't believe there can be any mistake," said Irving. "He writes that it was decided only the night before. You'll probably receive the official communication in a day or two."

Collingwood was tremendously elated. "I knew we were better than Lakeview--but I was afraid they wouldn't realize it," he said. "Now we'll have to get ready and beat them. Anyway, if we can't do that, it will be the best kind of preparation for the St. John's game."

The official communication arrived; Collingwood rushed with it to the bulletin board in the Study building and posted it for all eyes to see. The same day he posted the School eleven, as it would line up in that game.

Westby was to be first substitute for Dennison at right half back. Westby had been playing a streaky game on the First Corinthians; on some days he was as brilliant a runner and tackler as there was in the School, and on other days he would lose interest and miss everything.

If he was disappointed at the preference given to Dennison, he did not show it; in fact, that he appeared on the list as substitute seemed to fill him with elation. He had never taken football quite so seriously as some of the others--as Collingwood and Dennison, for example; and therefore only a moderate success in it was for him a matter of gratification.

The training table was organized at once, but Westby was not admitted to it. There was not room for the substitutes; they were expected to do their own training. Westby was notoriously lax in that matter and had to be nagged constantly by Collingwood, whom he found some pleasure in teasing.

He would secure some forbidden article of food and ostentatiously appear to be eating it with the greatest enjoyment until he caught Collingwood's eye; a large circular doughnut or a chocolate eclair delicately poised between his thumb and finger were his favorite instruments for torturing his captain's peace of mind. He would contrive to be seen just as he was on the point of taking the first bite; then he would reluctantly lay the tidbit down.

"It's a hard life, this being a near athlete," he grumbled. "Sitting at a table with a lot of uncongenial pups like you fellows.--Mr. Upton, Blake's kicking me; make him quit, sir.--Not allowed to eat half the things the rest of you do, and not allowed either to get any of the training-table grub. Well, I never did think of self, so I can endure it better than most."

The others jeered. But Westby, however he might complain, was faithful at practice and accepted good-naturedly his position upon the second eleven, and the hard battering to which every one on the second eleven was subjected.

The day when he got round Morrill, the first eleven's left end, and scored a touchdown--the only one which in that week of practice the second eleven scored--brought him so much applause that he began really to think there might be a chance of his ousting Dennison from the regular position. When that notion entered his head he ceased to be facetious about the training; he became suddenly as serious as Collingwood himself. But in spite of that, he remained Dennison's substitute.

The Saturday set for the game with the Harvard Freshmen was an Indian Summer day. In the early morning mist wreathed the low meadows and the edges of the pond; it seemed later to dissipate itself through all the windless air in haze. The distant hills were blue and faint, the elms in the soft sunlight that filtered down had a more golden glow.

"Great day," was the salutation that one heard everywhere; "great day for the game."

Now and then in his morning classes Irving's thoughts would wander, there would be a gentle rush of excitement in his veins. He would turn his mind firmly back to his work; he did not do any less well that day because his heart was singing happily.

In three hours more--in two--in one--he was going to see Lawrence again; he wondered if he would find his brother much changed. Only two months had passed since they had parted; yet in that time how remote Lawrence had grown in Irving's eyes from the Lawrence of the Ohio farm!

The bell announcing the noon recess rang; Irving dismissed his last class. He hurried down the stairs almost as madly as the Fourth Formers themselves; the train on which the Harvard Freshmen were coming was due ten minutes before; already Lawrence and the others must have started on the two-mile drive out to the School.

In front of the Study building most of the older boys and many of the younger were congregated, awaiting the arrival of the visitors. Irving walked about among the groups impatiently, now and then looking at his watch. He passed Westby and Collingwood, who were standing together by the gate.

"Pretty nearly time for them, Mr. Upton," said Westby. "Feeling nervous, sir?"

There was more good nature in his smile than he had displayed towards Irving since the day of the track games.

"A little," Irving admitted, and at that moment some one shouted, "Here they come!"

Over the crest of the hill galloped four horses, drawing a long red barge crowded with boys. Collingwood climbed up on the gate-post.

"Now, fellows," he said, "when they get here, give three times three for the Freshmen."

The boys waited in silence. Irving strained his eyes, trying to distinguish the figures huddled together in the barge. The horses came down at a run, with a rattle of hoofs and harness; the driver flourished his whip over them spectacularly.

"Now then, fellows!" cried Collingwood. "Three times three for the Freshmen!"

And amidst the waving of caps as the cheers were given, Irving could see no one in the barge. Then when that cheer had subsided, one of the visitors stood up and took off his hat and shouted,--

"Three times three for St. Timothy's! One--two--three!" The fellows in the barge sent up a vigorous, snappy cheer, and then overflowed at back and sides. In the confusion and the crowd, Irving was still straining his short-sighted eyes in a vain attempt to discover Lawrence.

Suddenly he heard a shout,--"Hello, Irv!"--and there, a little way off, was Lawrence, laughing at him and struggling towards him through the throng. The boys understood and drew apart and let the two brothers meet.

"It's great to see you again, Irv," said Lawrence, when he could reach and grasp his brother's hand; he looked at Irving with the same old loving humor in his eyes.

"It's great to see you again, Lawrence," said Irving. He could not help being a little conscious and constrained, with so many eyes upon him.

He tucked one hand in his brother's arm and with the other reached for Lawrence's bag. Lawrence laughed, and with hardly an effort detached it from Irving's grasp.

"_You_ carry that, you little fellow! I guess not," he said.

Some of the boys heard and smiled, and Lawrence threw back at them a humorous smile; Irving blushed. He led Lawrence away, towards the Upper School. The other Freshmen were being conducted in the same direction by Collingwood and his team.

"Well," said Westby to Carroll in an outpouring of slang from the heart, "Kiddy's brother is certainly a peach of a good looker. I hope he'll bring him to lunch."