CHAPTER XVIIIA NEW PLAY IS TRIED OUT
Clif didn’t take Walter Treat into his confidence that night. Not that he didn’t thoroughly trust Walt’s discretion, but there was no sense in taking chances. He wanted to stay awake, and listen for sounds outside or in the Hall that would announce Tom’s surreptitious return; for Loring’s absolute confidence in Wattles’s powers of persuasion had ultimately convinced Clif that Tom would return; but after a heroic effort lasting some fifteen or twenty minutes he had to give it up, and when Tom’s fortunes again engrossed his mind, it was twenty-two minutes past seven on Friday morning. Clif made a record toilet, and was on his way to Number 34 before Walter was more than half dressed. Billy Desmond was alone in the room when Clif got there, but a mere glance at Tom’s tumbled bed told the story.
“All right?” whispered Clif hoarsely.
“Guess so,” Billy chuckled. “He’s gone to wash. All I know is that he was in bed when I woke up, and I had the dickens of a time getting him out. He’s still half asleep.”
Tom staggered in a moment later, looking rather haggard, and very, very sleepy. His greeting to Clif was a wan smile, but while he struggled into his clothesand Clif kept an anxious eye on his watch, he narrated his adventures briefly, yawning cavernously the while. “We got here about five minutes to twelve and stopped the car over on Stoddard Street,” he concluded. “Then Wattles and I went up the lane a ways, and headed for East. Wattles had my bag. I’d forgotten about the brook, and it was pretty dark, and so Wattles stepped right into it. Luckily the bag got away from him and landed on the bank. I helped him out, and we got in Loring’s window, and I stuck the bag in his closet and came on up here.”
“And no one saw you?” asked Clif anxiously.
“I don’t—” Tom yawned widely—“think so.”
“Fool’s luck,” commented Billy, slipping into his coat, and heading for the door. “That’s all I’ve got to say!”
“Go roll your hoop,” said Tom without rancor.
“Just the same, Tom, you know you were an absolute dumbbell, now don’t you?” demanded Clif, as he held the other’s jacket and tried to hurry him into it.
“I guess so. I don’t know. How much time we got?”
“Minute and a quarter.”
“Fine. I’ve made it in fifty seconds flat. Come on!”
That afternoon Loring did not attend practice. Instead, he and Tom sat at opposite sides of the table in Loring’s room and Tom, alternately despairing and hopeful, worked on that theme. Loring gave no aid in the actual writing, nor even in the composition, buthe did make helpful suggestions when Tom faltered, and he did suggest numerous changes in spelling. It was close to five o’clock when the minimum of five hundred words was finally attained—with one word to spare, according to Tom’s sixth count—and Tom hurried across to West and delivered the result to Mr. Wyatt. “Alick” glanced briefly at the three pages. Then:
“Did you have any help on this?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. If I hadn’t I’d never have got it written!”
“How much help, Kemble, and from whom?”
“Loring Deane, sir. I wrote it all myself. He didn’t tell me what to say, but he kept after me until I’d done it, and he sort of suggested things to—to write about.”
“In your opinion then, it represents your efforts, and not Deane’s?”
“Yes, sir! And, Mr. Wyatt, it was some effort!”
“Alick’s” customary gravity cracked just a little. “Well, all right, my boy. I’ll let you be the judge. Now see if you can’t come to class a lot better prepared than you have been. And about that paragraph structure business, Kemble. When do you want to make up on that? This evening all right for you?”
“Oh, gosh, Mr. Wyatt! Give me another day, won’t you? I haven’t had time to study that at all, sir!”
“If you’d kept up with the course, Kemble, you wouldn’t have to study it now. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Tom sadly.
“Yes, and you’d be playing football to-day, too. You know, Kemble, I told you when you first came that I meant to teach you English. Remember? I might have turned you down, and with good reason, in which case you wouldn’t be here to-day. But I stretched a point and passed you, giving you fair warning, though, that I meant to ride you hard, my boy. You can’t truthfully say that I didn’t warn you of what was coming to you, can you?”
“No, sir, I understood. And I started out all right, too, didn’t I, Mr. Wyatt? Wasn’t I doing pretty well until—until just lately?”
“You’ve never done ‘pretty well,’ Kemble, but you did show me for a while that you were trying, and as long as I knew that I didn’t turn the screws. But about two weeks ago you stopped trying. I warned you several times, but you appeared to think I didn’t mean it.”
“I got sort of busy about football, Mr. Wyatt. They made me captain of the Scrub, and there was a good deal to—think about, and—”
“Yes, I know all that. Football is a fine game, Kemble, and I’ve never said a word against it. But football isn’t what you came here for. At least, I hope it isn’t. In any case, it isn’t what your parents sent you to Wyndham to learn, and the sooner you realize that the better for you. I’ll give you until Monday on that examination, but you must be prepared then. Come to me here at seven Monday evening, and I’ll hear you.”
“Monday?” exclaimed Tom relievedly. “Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Wyatt. I’ll have it Monday all right! You see if I don’t!”
“You’llsee if you don’t,” responded the instructor grimly.
By not watching the Scrub Team practice that afternoon Loring missed something that would have interested him. The First called off the scrimmage, choosing to spend the time in perfecting certain plays to be used on the morrow against Toll’s, and so Mr. Babcock, following “G. G.’s” example, devoted much of the session to a general preparation for the Minster High School game. But he also found time to try out two of Loring’s plays, one of them the forward-pass strategy that had aroused Tom’s interest. He had no intention of using them against Minster, and so the plays did not get beyond the first stage of development. They were explained and the players were placed in their correct positions, and then, several times at a walk and several times at full speed, they were enacted against an opposing line of ten substitutes. The forward-pass play was rather intricate at first, or seemed so, and perhaps it was just as well that Loring wasn’t there to watch the players get tangled up. Their efforts would doubtless have made him exceedingly nervous! But the last time that Heard tossed the ball back to Clif and Clif swept it forward down the field the performance went with a very fair degree of snap and smoothness. What Mr. Babcock’s verdict on the play was did not appear. The second play, though,held forth small promise, and Clif didn’t have to await “Cocky’s” judgment to know that it would not be added to the Scrub’s equipment.
Loring, learning from Clif that the forward-pass play had been experimented with, looked for some word from Mr. Babcock, but none came that evening, nor the next day. In fact, the following week was well along before Loring heard again from the Scrub coach. That Friday evening was largely spent by Loring and Clif in trying to get Tom to acknowledge that he had been several sorts of an idiot and that he owed them the deepest gratitude for rescuing him from a ruinous position. Tom, however, preferred to argue about it. At heart, he knew that he had acted foolishly, and was tremendously grateful, but he didn’t intend to say so in so many words. The best they could get from him was the acknowledgment that, now that hewasback, he was glad of it, and that it was decent of them to take so much trouble about him. He tried to get Loring—and, afterwards, Wattles—to tell him how much the kidnaping expedition had cost so that he could pay back the money. But Loring wouldn’t tell, and Wattles’s countenance was absolutely vacant when he was questioned on the subject. He couldn’t seem to remember a thing! In the end Tom gave up in despair and nursed a mild grouch for some minutes. It was dissipated, however, when Loring got Wattles to tell about falling into the brook. Not that Wattles was intentionally humorous. Quite the contrary. That was what made it so funny.
The First Team departed for Toll’s Academy at eleven-thirty the next forenoon, twenty-eight strong. The game would be the last real test before Wolcott was encountered, and so the result was awaited with a good deal of interest. Wolcott had defeated Toll’s by 26 to 9 and Coach Otis’s warriors hoped to at least equal that creditable performance. The students sent the team off with confident and vociferous cheers before they piled into dining hall for an early dinner that would permit them to follow at one o’clock. Of course not all the fellows made the trip, and amongst the half-hundred or so who remained at Wyndham, were, besides the Scrub Team members, Tom and Loring.
Tom had somewhat testily declared his intention of spending the afternoon in study, but Loring and Clif had only grinned. The picture of Tom occupied in the pursuit of knowledge while the Fighting Scrub battled with an enemy somehow lacked distinctness! Anyhow, Tom didn’t spend that afternoon in Number 34 West. He occupied Wattles’s stool beside Loring’s chair, which had been wheeled to the corner of the grand stand, and he and Wattles, the latter slightly in the background, watched proceedings with about equal interest. It was a good game, a hard, fast, close contest that wasn’t decided until, in the fourth period, while the small audience held its collective breath, Hoppin, sent in for the purpose, added a goal to the Scrub’s second touchdown. Scrub had set out with the intention of beating Minster High as thoroughly as theFirst had, but when the second quarter had ended with the score Minster High 6, Wyndham Scrub 6, that laudable ambition had been modified. The Scrub concluded on second thought to be satisfied with any sort of a victory!
Jimmy Ames, back once more on the team, contributed a good share toward the Scrub’s triumph, for it was Jimmy who found a ball that no one seemed to have any interest in at the moment, and, tucking it into the crook of an elbow, sped thirty-eight yards with it, and placed it three streaks distant from the Minster goal-line. Johnny Thayer advanced it six and Lou Stiles two yards. Then Heard, officiating in Tom’s former position, got almost free outside tackle on the right, and was piled up on the one yard, and from there, although he had to make three tries, Johnny took it across. Sim Jackson fumbled a poor pass from “Babe,” and there was no goal. That was in the first period. Minster scored her six points in the second, aided by a fumble by Sim and a long forward-pass that swept the visitors from just past midfield to Scrub’s twenty-six yards. Twice Minster fooled the defenders by the antiquated fullback run from kicking position play, and finally tossed the pigskin across the center for a twelve yard gain and a touchdown. Minster, though, had even poorer luck than the Scrub when it came to the try-for-point, for the ball eluded the kicker entirely and rolled back to the twenty yards before it was recovered. A subsequent desperate attempt to run it back to the line wasupset—as was the runner—by Clif, who made what was possibly the one perfect tackle of his football career to date.
Minster’s second score followed closely on the beginning of the second half, and this time a blocked punt gave her her chance. Johnny Thayer got the ball away nicely enough, but in some manner a Minster forward leaked through “Babe,” and his nose got squarely in the path of the ball. There was no question about that, for the evidence was prominent all during the rest of the battle! The ball rebounded, probably in great astonishment, and was secured by a Minster guard on Scrub’s seventeen yards. From there the visitors took it by short and certain plunges across the line in just eight plays, and, although the pass was good this time, and although the Minster quarter had plenty of time to kick, the pigskin, perhaps still unnerved by its recent experience, went wide of the goal. So when, in the middle of the final period, Clif, taking a forward-pass from Thayer on Minster’s twenty-six yards, scampered with it across the last trampled white mark, victory depended on the try-for-point. And when “Hop” took Stiles’s place and sent the “old melon” fair and true across the bar the small contingent of Wyndhamites made enough noise for a whole cheering section!
News of the Wyndham-Toll’s game didn’t reach the school until just before supper time, but when it came it was wonderful! Wyndham 33, Toll’s 6! The Dark Blue had bettered Wolcott’s score by ten points! It hadscored one more touchdown than Wolcott and been scored against less! Wyndham went in to supper in a joyous and rather noisy state. And later in the evening, when the First came rolling up the driveway in the two big busses that had taken them back and forth over the road, it was given a welcome worthy of a triumphant Cæsar.