CHAPTER XIXBAD NEWS
In Loring’s room that Sunday morning the steam radiator was hissing softly, perhaps at the chill, damp current of air blowing in on it from the partly opened window, the floor was liberally strewn with pages, and sections of three Sunday papers and three youths, one for each paper, sat or sprawled about in lazy comfort. Wattles, just a trifle more proper and solemn than on week-days, with his best dark suit on, and his black derby immaculately brushed, had left a moment before for the village, a prayer-book and hymnal firmly clutched in one hand. Wattles always left early for church, walked slowly, and with dignity, and, having reached the small edifice at the far end of the village, spent a pleasant quarter of an hour watching the arrival of the other members of the congregation. After his departure Tom rescued the comic supplement from beside his chair, and gave it his attention. So long as Wattles, redolent of sabbatical decorum, had been there he had not had the courage to show interest in it. He felt that Wattles would strongly, if silently, disapprove; and since the incident at Danbury Tom had entertained for Wattles a vast respect. His enjoyment of the highly colored pages was, though, speedily interrupted by Clif.
“Did you see what Yale did to the Army, Tom?”
“No, I wasn’t able to get over to New Haven.”
“Weren’t you, really? Well, Yale piled up 31 to Army’s 10.”
“I was just reading it,” said Loring, coming into view from behind his paper. “Yale’s finally got a winning team, I think.”
“That’s what you hear every year,” said Clif. “Then it doesn’t come off! Still, she must be a heap better this year to run up 31 against Army. Brown didn’t do so badly, either.”
“What did she do?” inquired Tom innocently. “Beat Vassar?”
“She beat St. Bonaventure, 19 to 0, and that’s—”
“Saint Who? What high school’s that, Clif?”
“Shut up! It’s the ‘high school’ that scored against Cornell two or three weeks ago, and a team that can do that—”
“Where do you get that stuff? Everybody scores on Cornell. It’s quite the proper thing to do this year. Colgate did it, and Williams, and now Dartmouth.”
“Yes, and what was Cornell doing while Dartmouth made a little old seven points?”
“That’s what I was wondering,” replied Tom. “Maybe she was having afternoon tea, eh?”
“Seems to me,” laughed Loring, “you chaps are mightily interested in games that don’t mean much to you. What about Wolcott’s showing against Riverside Military? It doesn’t make our score against Toll’s look so fine, eh?”
“I guess Riverside’s pretty weak,” said Tom. “What’s she done this season, anyway?”
“I don’t know much about her,” answered Loring, “but 41 to 0 is an awful score! It looks as if Wolcott might still have an edge on us, Tom. What I don’t understand, though, is about that fellow Grosfawk. He played only part of the time yesterday, and nothing is said about him. I thought he was Wolcott’s particular wonder, and that they were building a bunch of plays around him.”
“It is sort of queer,” said Tom. “The way they tell it here, Grosfawk was the whole thing last year when they played us. This year you don’t hear anything about him.”
“He’s only a substitute, as I figure it,” remarked Clif. “You see him getting in now and then, but he’s never in the first line-up.”
“Maybe it’s strategy,” Tom offered. “Maybe they’re trying to make us think he’s not much so we won’t worry about him. Then they’ll start him, and he will run rings around us, like last year.”
“Well, I suppose Mr. Otis knows what’s doing,” said Loring. “Mr. Hilliard, and the fellows who went over yesterday to see Wolcott play, have probably brought back some dope.”
“‘Pinky’ is all right,” observed Tom, “but it seems to me that ‘G. G.’ ought to have gone himself. By the way, they say he didn’t come back to school.”
“Who, Pinky? I saw him at prayers this morning,” said Clif.
“No, you dumbbell, ‘G. G.’ Billy said he was feeling rotten about the time the game was over, and they stopped at a drug store afterwards and ‘G. G.’ got dosed up there, and then went on home. Back to-morrow, I suppose. Say, how badly was Fargo hurt? Anyone know?”
“You hear all sorts of yarns,” said Clif. “Guy Owens, the yellow haired fellow who helps manage, said that Fargo would be laid up most of the week. Then I heard that he got hurt in the same leg last year, and that the doctor told him he oughtn’t to play any more.”
“Imagine ‘Big Bill’ paying any attention to that,” chuckled Tom. “Well, we won’t need him next Saturday, I suppose. This High Point game is a cinch, they say. Guess he will be right there on both feet the week after!”
“From what I get about yesterday’s merry little fracas, it was a regular humdinger,” said Clif. “I’d like to have seen it. Toll’s roughed it up considerable. One of her fellows was put out by the referee, they say.”
“Sure it wasn’t the umpire?” asked Tom mildly.
“Well, umpire then. Anyway, our bunch got pretty well bunged up. Raiford’s wearing plaster all over his face to-day.”
“Must be an improvement,” said Tom. “I never did like Raiford’s face.”
Mr. Otis was not back the next day when the First got out for practice and Mr. Hilliard, his assistant, tookcharge. There was no scrimmage with the Scrub, for the First, while it had run up a big score against its adversary on Saturday, had found plenty of opposition, and not a few of the players were nursing wounds. “Big Bill” Fargo didn’t even put in an appearance, although most of the temporary invalids sat on the bench or, draped in their blankets, followed the drill. The Scrub, left to its own devices, took up that new forward-pass play and another, of Mr. Babcock’s devising, and worked at them until they were running quite smoothly. Of course, however, as Loring realized, the forward-pass play couldn’t be fairly judged until it had been tried out in actual playing. The opposition put up by the Scrub Team substitutes, with “Cocky” at left guard to make up the eleven, provided no real test for the play.
That evening, after spending the whole afternoon groaning and writhing in Number 34, Tom faced Mr. Wyatt across that well-remembered desk and somehow floundered through an examination. Mr. Wyatt displayed no enthusiasm over the performance, but he did say, somewhat wearily, at the end: “All right, Kemble. I haven’t the heart to say what I ought to. Please go before I give way to unmanly emotion!”
“Yes, sir,” said Tom. “Thanks!”
Deserted by his chums—for Clif, too, had failed to show up after supper—Loring sat in his chair with the chess-board before him. He had started to work out a problem, but had not got far with it. Another problem,having nothing to do with chess, had substituted itself, and for a long while Loring sat and tapped the black queen against the edge of the board, and stared intently at nothing. Then, he set the board aside and propelled the chair across to the door and through it, and made his slow way around to West Hall. “Babe” Ridgway happened along and pushed him the last part of his journey, depositing him by request in the reading room. Loring was seeking something he was not at all certain existed in the reading room, and it took him several minutes, and much dexterous filling and backing between chairs and tables and shelves—fortunately the room was not well occupied—to discover that it did exist. Having secured it, he made out a slip with the date and his name, and put it in the clip beside the wide, shallow shelf. Then, with the issues of the daily paper published at the nearest metropolis of the state from the middle of September to last Saturday in front of him, he returned to his room. To his right as he left the reading room, beyond the library, a considerable throng of fellows were congregated around the recreation room doorway, and some subject of more than ordinary interest appeared to engross them, for every one seemed to be talking at once and there was quite an atmosphere of excitement down there. But, although mildly curious, Loring preferred not to venture into the crowd with his chair, and so made his way back to East Hall. Once there, he devoted the rest of the time before study hour, and much time thereafter to a careful and thoughtful perusalof the many papers he had brought back with him; or, to be more exact, to certain items in those papers.
Tom, coming downstairs after that enervating experience in Mr. Wyatt’s study, saw the crowd at the end of the corridor, and joined it as fast as he could. An acquaintance named Bumstead, a slight, sandy haired youth, who wore big, round spectacles, and whom Tom disliked cordially, presented himself as the nearest source of information. Bumstead turned incredulous, but joyous eyes on the inquirer.
“Say, haven’t you heard?” he exclaimed almost shrilly. “Gee, where have you been?”
“Picking daisies,” replied Tom impatiently. “Spill it!”
“Otis is sick, and can’t come back the rest of the season! He’s got the ‘flu’! They just got word from him.”
“Roll your hoop!” said Tom incredulously. “Who says so?”
“Gee, it’s true! Ask any one. Faculty’s called a meeting of the Athletic Committee, too. This evening. In ‘Pinky’s’ room. Ask any one.”
“If ‘G. G.’s’ so blamed sick how could he write and tell about it?” demanded Tom witheringly. “Of course, I’m not saying he hasn’t got the ‘flu’; lots of folks have it; but it’s crazy to say he isn’t coming back.”
“Maybe he didn’t write himself,” said Bumstead. “Maybe it was the doctor or some one. Anyway—”
But Tom had caught sight of Joe Whitemill, of the First Team, and he plowed his way through to him.
“What’s it all about, Whitemill?” he asked anxiously. “Is ‘G. G.’ really out of it?”
“Eh? Oh, hello, Kemble. Yes, that’s the way we get it. He’s down with influenza, and the doctor says he won’t be able to do any more coaching this season. I don’t know where the story came from, though. Every one has it, but no one knows where it started. For my part—”
“It’s straight goods,” interrupted Jimmy Ames, appearing at Tom’s side. “Mr. Connover told Dave Lothrop and Dave spilled it a few minutes ago. Faculty’s sent word to the Committee to get busy, and there’s going to be a meeting in a few minutes.”
“But, Great Heck!” exclaimed Tom. “What—what—why, that’ll play the very dickens, won’t it?”
Whitemill grinned, but the grin held no humor. “Oh, no, not at all! Swapping coaches ten days before the big game is a mere trifle, Kemble. It’s easy when you—”
“There won’t be any swapping,” predicted Jimmy. “Where’d we get a new coach now? Anyway, he wouldn’t know the team, and he’d be worse than none. ‘Pinky’ will take Otis’s place, of course.”
“That’s so,” said Tom. “Well—but, heck, fellows, it’s going to make a difference! How does ‘Pinky’ know what Otis was going to do? Or does he know?”
“Search me,” said Whitemill despondently. “I suppose they’ve talked things over a good deal, though.Anyway, we’ll pull through somehow. Hang it, we’ll beat that bunch without any coach at all if we have to!”
“Spoken like a hero!” commented Jimmy Ames. “Just the same, if I had anything up on the Wolcott game I’d begin to hedge just about now, old dear. Say, Dave’s fit to be tied, fellows. He was talking about canceling the game, and all that stuff a few minutes ago up in ‘Swede’s’ room.”
“Cancel the game!” growled Whitemill. “I’ll say not! That would be a swell thing to do! Gosh, I’d rather get licked to smithereens than not play at all! Besides, why, thunder, Jimmy, you can’t crawl out of a game just because you’ve lost your coach! What’s the matter with Dave, anyway?”
“Oh, he was just getting rid of some of his peeve, I suppose,” said Jimmy. “Just talking to relieve his mind. I don’t blame him, though, for being a mite upset. Gosh, he’s captain, and if this thing’s as bad as they say it is—”
“There’s the gong,” broke in Tom. “A grand lot of studying we’ll do to-night! Say, where’s ‘Pinky’? Any one seen him? Why doesn’t some one ask him what the real facts are?”
“You do it,” suggested Whitemill. “He’s probably in just the right temper to answer fool questions.”
“Fool questions be blowed!” called Tom after the halfback’s retreating form. “How come we fellows haven’t some right to know what’s going on, you big cheese?”
“Just what is it you’d like to know?” inquired a voice at Tom’s back. Tom, startled, turned to find Mr. Hilliard facing him soberly from the foot of the stairs. Tom swallowed. Then, conscious of the sudden silence that had fallen about him, he recovered his assurance.
“About Mr. Otis, sir,” he answered. “They say he’s sick and won’t be able to come back all season. I—we’d like to know if that’s true.”
“Quite true, Kemble,” replied “Pinky” gravely. “Mr. Otis has contracted influenza, and, so his doctor writes us, is a very sick man. Even if he recovers within the customary time he will not be in condition to continue his work here with the Team. It is a very unfortunate happening, both for Mr. Otis and for the School, but we must all make the best of it. The gong has rung, fellows.”