Left Tackle Thayer

CHAPTER XXIII

CLINT HAS STAGE-​FRIGHT

The in­struc­tor and the phys­ical di­rec­tor had ap­proached with­out a sound of warn­ing, and Pen­ny, Clint and Dreer, the lat­ter ex­hibit­ing an ev­ident de­sire to ef­face him­self, stared in sur­prise for a mo­ment. And at the same time Beau­fort, rais­ing him­self weak­ly on one el­bow, gazed be­wil­dered­ly from Pen­ny to the faces of the new­com­ers.

“I'm not through,” he mut­tered thick­ly. “Wait--a minute!”

“I think you are through, Beau­fort,” said Mr. Da­ley cold­ly. “Pick up your coat, please, and put it on. Durkin, do the same.”

Silent­ly they obeyed, Mr. Con­klin help­ing the dazed Beau­fort to his un­steady feet. He had a bleed­ing nose and one eye looked far from its best. For his part, Pen­ny, al­though ev­ident­ly dis­tressed, showed on­ly a bruised cheek.

“Don't go, Dreer,” said Mr. Da­ley. Dreer halt­ed in his elab­orate­ly un­in­ter­est­ed de­par­ture. “Now, then, boys, what does this mean? Don't you know that fight­ing is barred here? And don't you think that, if you had to try to kill each oth­er like two wild an­imals, you might--er--have cho­sen some day oth­er than the Sab­bath?”

No one had any re­ply to make. “Well,” con­tin­ued the in­struc­tor in his care­ful way, “why don't you--er--say some­thing? Who be­gan this and what was it about?”

“Durkin shied a stone at us as we were go­ing down the hill,” said Dreer, “and when we told him to stop it he--he want­ed to fight.”

“That was the way of it, Beau­fort?”

“Aw, find out,” growled Beau­fort. “I don't have to ac­count to you for what I do.”

“Keep a civ­il tongue, Beau­fort,” coun­selled Mr. Con­klin, “or it may prove bad for you, my boy.”

“You've been told be­fore that you must keep off school prop­er­ty,” said Mr. Da­ley, oth­er­wise known as “Ho­race.”

“I'm not on school prop­er­ty,” replied Beau­fort de­fi­ant­ly.

“You're not now, but you have been or you wouldn't be here. Af­ter this kind­ly re­main away from the school en­tire­ly. We've had trou­ble with you be­fore.”

“Sure and you'll have more if you get gay,” an­swered the oth­er with a grin. “When any­one throws stones at my head he gets licked for it.”

“Did you do that, Durkin?”

“No, sir,” replied Pen­ny qui­et­ly. “Thay­er and I were ly­ing un­der the rock here when those fel­lows came up the hill. They saw us and went on up. Then, pret­ty soon, they came down again and Beau­fort pre­tend­ed I'd thrown a stone at him and came over here and in­sist­ed on a scrap.”

“Pre­tend­ed you threw it? What for?”

“Oh, it's some of Dreer's fun­ny work,” replied Pen­ny. “He had it in for me be­cause--for some­thing that hap­pened a while back, and he got Beau­fort to pick a quar­rel with me.”

“What was the some­thing that hap­pened, Durkin?”

“I'd rather not say, Mr. Da­ley. It--it had noth­ing to do with this.”

“What do you say, Thay­er?”

“Pen­ny's told it just the way it hap­pened, sir. Beau­fort want­ed to fight and Pen­ny wouldn't un­til Beau­fort made him. There wasn't any stone thrown, Mr. Da­ley.”

Mr. Da­ley looked puz­zled. “Well,” he said, “you'd bet­ter all re­turn to hall for the rest of the day. You'll--er--you'll prob­ably hear from this lat­er.” Beau­fort took his de­par­ture non-​cha­lant­ly, whistling as he made his way through the woods. Dreer stood not on the or­der of his go­ing, but was over the wall al­most be­fore the in­struc­tor had fin­ished speak­ing. Pen­ny and Clint fol­lowed more leisure­ly, leav­ing Mr. Da­ley and Mr. Con­klin in pos­ses­sion of the field of bat­tle. They too, how­ev­er, present­ly con­tin­ued their in­ter­rupt­ed walk.

“What do you make of it, Jim?” asked Mr. Da­ley. Mr. Con­klin smiled and shook his head.

“Oh, I fan­cy Durkin told it straight. It's some pri­vate feud we hap­pened on. Too bad we didn't fol­low our first in­ten­tion and go to­ward the vil­lage.”

Mr. Da­ley looked doubt­ful. “I'm sor­ry about Durkin,” he said re­gret­ful­ly. “Mr. Fer­nald has been try­ing to se­cure a schol­ar­ship for him at one of the col­leges, and this--er--af­fair will, I fear, dis­please him.”

Mr. Con­klin shot a quick glance at the oth­er. “Oh, so you think you'll have to re­port it, eh?”

“Nat­ural­ly!”

“Hm. Well, all right. On­ly it some­how seems to me that as they were off of school prop­er­ty and were set­tling an af­fair in a per­fect­ly reg­ular way it might be over­looked with­out any harm, Ho­race. You know best, of course. That's just my no­tion.”

“But that would be en­cour­ag­ing fight­ing here, Jim, and you know what the rules are. I--I wish I might--er--for­get it, but I don't think I con­sci­en­tious­ly can.”

Mr. Con­klin nod­ded. Af­ter a mo­ment he said, with a chuck­le: “That was a clever punch of Durkin's. I'm glad we got there for the knock-​out.”

“Durkin ap­peared much lighter than Beau­fort, too,” replied Mr. Da­ley, un­will­ing ad­mi­ra­tion in his voice. “I won­der how he hap­pens to be so--er--clever.”

“Be­cause he took box­ing lessons with me for two years,” an­swered Mr. Con­klin un­hesi­tat­ing­ly. “We used to have box­ing, you know. That was be­fore your time, though. I re­mem­ber now that Durkin, al­though a mere kid, was very quick and took to it like a duck to wa­ter. It was a great mis­take to abol­ish box­ing. There's no bet­ter ex­er­cise, and none more use­ful.”

“But doesn't it--er--en­cour­age just this sort of thing?” asked Mr. Da­ley, with a back­ward tilt of his head.

“Not a bit,” replied the oth­er stout­ly. “On the con­trary, if a boy can put on a pair of gloves and harm­less­ly pound an­oth­er boy about a bit--or get pound­ed about--it sat­is­fies the de­sire for fistic en­counter that's a part of ev­ery fel­low's make-​up, and he's a lot less like­ly to be quar­rel­some. Be­sides, Ho­race, it's a fine ex­er­cise for the body and brain and eyes.”

“Brain?” ques­tioned Mr. Da­ley smil­ing­ly.

“Un­doubt­ed­ly! Try it some time and see if it isn't. You've got to think quick, look quick and act quick. If I had my way box­ing would be com­pul­so­ry, by George!”

Mr. Da­ley shook his head doubt­ful­ly. “You may be right,” he said, “but it seems to me that teach­ing a boy how to fight is go­ing to make him want to. That's the way it goes with oth­er things, Jim. Give a boy lessons in swim­ming and he wants to swim; teach him--er--how to jump--”

“Teach him how to box and he wants to box. Cer­tain­ly, but that doesn't mean that he wants to go around pick­ing quar­rels and fight­ing with bare fists. You might as well say that learn­ing to fence makes you want to go out and stab folks with a rapi­er! And look at the ev­idence pre­sent­ed awhile ago. Beau­fort un­doubt­ed­ly picked that quar­rel. There can't be any doubt of that. We know his record. Beau­fort, I'll wa­ger, nev­er took a box­ing les­son in his life. He showed it. The chap who knew how to box, Durkin, had to be forced to fight.”

“You'll con­vince me in a minute,” laughed Mr. Da­ley, “that if I want to keep out of trou­ble I'll have to learn to use my fists!”

“It would be a good thing if you did,” re­spond­ed the oth­er. “Come over to the gym some af­ter­noon and have a go at it!”

“That would be set­ting a fine ex­am­ple, wouldn't it?”

“As a mat­ter of fact, it would,” replied Mr. Con­klin earnest­ly. “I wish I could con­vince Fer­nald of it!”

Mean­while, Clint and Pen­ny, both chas­tened and un­easy, were re­view­ing the episode in Pen­ny's room.

“I sup­pose he will re­port it,” said Pen­ny. “If he does, and Mr. Fer­nald be­lieves Dreer's sto­ry, it'll cost me that schol­ar­ship.”

“I don't see why he should be­lieve Dreer any more than you and me,” Clint ob­ject­ed.

“I'm afraid he will want to. He hates to have fel­lows fight. I'm glad you kept out of it, any­way.”

“I'm not! It wouldn't have made so much dif­fer­ence with me, Durkin.”

“You might have been put on pro­ba­tion Thay­er, and that would have kept you off the foot­ball team.”

“Pro­ba­tion just for--for that?” ex­claimed the oth­er in­cred­ulous­ly.

“Wouldn't be sur­prised,” replied Pen­ny. “Josh is ra­bid on the sub­ject. Well, there's no use cry­ing over spilled milk. And, any­how, I'm glad I did it! On­ly I wish it had been Dreer in­stead of Beau­fort!”

“So do I,” mut­tered Clint.

Amy, when he heard of it, was dev­as­tat­ed with sor­row. “And I wasn't there!” he wailed. “Just my sil­ly luck! Tell me about it. You say Pen­ny knocked him out!”

The next forenoon the sum­mons came from the Of­fice and at twelve o'clock Pen­ny, Clint and Dreer were ad­mit­ted to the in­ner sanc­tu­ary one at a time and grilled by Mr. Fer­nald. Pen­ny's fore­bod­ings were none too dis­mal, as events proved. Pro­ba­tion was award­ed to Pen­ny and Dreer, while Clint was un­mer­ci­ful­ly lec­tured. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, their sense of hon­our kept both Pen­ny and Clint silent as to the un­der­ly­ing cause of the af­fair, and the prin­ci­pal's ef­forts to find out why Dreer should have set Beau­fort to pick a quar­rel with Pen­ny, as both Pen­ny and Clint claimed, were un­suc­cess­ful. Nat­ural­ly enough, Dreer him­self failed to throw light on this mat­ter. Mr. Fer­nald re­fused to be­lieve that any boy would de­lib­er­ate­ly seek the help of an­oth­er to ad­min­is­ter pun­ish­ment to a third. He was will­ing to ex­on­er­ate Pen­ny and Clint from the charge of throw­ing stones, but in­sist­ed that it al­ways took two to make a quar­rel and that if Pen­ny had cho­sen to ob­serve the rules of the school he could have done so. For his part, Clint left the in­ner of­fice feel­ing that he had been ex­treme­ly lucky to have es­caped hang­ing or life im­pris­on­ment, to say noth­ing of pro­ba­tion! Poor Pen­ny was pret­ty down­cast, Amy was fu­ri­ous and de­clared his in­ten­tion of go­ing to Mr. Fer­nald and telling the re­al truth of the whole af­fair. But Pen­ny wouldn't lis­ten to that.

“You can't do it, Byrd,” he said.

“Why can't I?” Amy de­mand­ed.

“Be­cause it wouldn't be de­cent,” replied Pen­ny earnest­ly. “You know that. A fel­low can't--can't tell tales, you see.”

“But, hang it all, you're let­ting Dreer get away with it! He bust­ed your fid­dle and set Beau­fort on you and all he gets is a month's pro! And he doesn't care whether he's on pro or not. It doesn't make any dif­fer­ence to him. You're the one who's get­ting the short end of it. You're los­ing your schol­ar­ship as sure as shoot­ing!”

“Yes, but a fel­low can't blab,” still in­sist­ed Pen­ny.

Amy ar­gued and stormed and threat­ened to go in­to Num­ber 15 and knock Har­mon Dreer in­to a cocked-​hat, but in the end he had to sub­side. Pen­ny in­sist­ed on tak­ing his medicine.

Clint was as sor­ry as pos­si­ble for Pen­ny, but he didn't have much time for sym­pa­thy. With prac­tice on Mon­day af­ter­noon foot­ball af­fairs at Brim­field start­ed on their last lap. On­ly Mon­day, Tues­day and Wednes­day were left for re­al work. Af­ter that on­ly sig­nal prac­tice and black­board lec­tures re­mained. Andy Miller showed up again, and with him two oth­er coach­es who had ab­sent­ed them­selves for a few days, and life be­came once more ter­rif­ical­ly stren­uous for the 'var­si­ty play­ers. Saun­ders got back in­to prac­tice that af­ter­noon, but it was plain that his in­jury still in­con­ve­nienced him and he was not al­lowed to take part in the forty-​five-​minute scrim­mage. Clint held down the left tack­le po­si­tion and held it down pret­ty well. Al­though he had no sus­pi­cion of it, his per­for­mance that af­ter­noon set­tled def­inite­ly his sta­tus, and on the way to the gym­na­si­um af­ter­wards Mr. De­tweil­er ranged him­self along­side, slid an arm over Clint's shoul­der and said:

“Thay­er, we're go­ing to play you on Sat­ur­day. Saun­ders isn't in shape, I'm sor­ry to say, and won't be able to do more than take your place for awhile if nec­es­sary. You've done well. I want to give you cred­it for that. You're not a per­fect tack­le yet, my boy, but we've all got hopes of you and we ex­pect you to give a good ac­count of your­self against Claflin. And I ex­pect to see you play bet­ter Sat­ur­day by fifty per cent than you've played yet. How do you feel about it?”

Clint couldn't have said just how he did feel, and was re­lieved when, see­ing his em­bar­rass­ment, Mr. De­tweil­er went on en­cour­ag­ing­ly. “What­ev­er you do, don't get scared. Just re­mem­ber that, while win­ning from Claflin is a big­ger thing than win­ning from any oth­er team we've met, Claflin isn't very dif­fer­ent, af­ter all. They may play a lit­tle bet­ter foot­ball, but they're just as li­able to make mis­takes, just as li­able to go to pieces in a pinch. Make up your mind that we've got a bet­ter team than they have and that we're go­ing to ev­er­last­ing­ly smear them! And then go ahead and prove it. You'll be up against a good man on at­tack, this fel­low Ter­rill, but don't let that make you ner­vous. Re­mem­ber that he's prob­ably just as much afraid of you as you are of him, Thay­er. If you can get around him a cou­ple of times at the start you'll have him on the run for the rest of the game. So jump in­to him the minute the game be­gins and let him see that he's up against a re­al hard propo­si­tion. Mean­while, do your lev­el best to smooth down your play­ing. You've got the right ideas; just de­vel­op them. Make them go. Put a lit­tle more hump in­to your work. You'll find you can do about twice as well as you've been do­ing, if you put your mind on it. And re­mem­ber too, Thay­er, that I'm look­ing to you to vin­di­cate my choice of you. Don't give any­one a chance to say af­ter the game that I'd have done bet­ter if I'd picked Cup­ples or Trow for the place. All right. Take care of your­self.” And Mr. De­tweil­er gave Clint a part­ing thump at the gym­na­si­um door.

Events passed at an amaz­ing speed for the next few days. Clint moved at times in a wak­ing dream, and Amy, tap­ping his head sig­nif­icant­ly, spoke to him sooth­ing­ly and hoped that the trou­ble would not prove per­ma­nent. Clint had a way of sud­den­ly wak­ing, at the most in­op­por­tune mo­ments, to the fact that he was due to play left tack­le on the Brim­field Foot­ball Team against Claflin School in a few days, and when he did he in­vari­ably ex­pe­ri­enced an ap­palling sick feel­ing at the pit of his stom­ach and be­came for the mo­ment in­ca­pable of speech or ac­tion. When this oc­curred in class dur­ing, say, a fal­ter­ing elu­ci­da­tion of the Il­iad, it pro­duced any­thing but a favourable im­pres­sion on the in­struc­tor. For­tu­nate­ly, while ac­tu­al­ly en­gaged in out-​guess­ing Lee, of the sec­ond, or break­ing through the none too vul­ner­able Pryme, or rac­ing down the field un­der one of Har­ris's punts, he had no time to think of it and so was spared the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of sus­pend­ed an­ima­tion at what would have been a most un­for­tu­nate time. His ap­petite be­came de­cid­ed­ly capri­cious. And the capri­cious­ness in­creased as Sat­ur­day drew near. Al­so, the sink­ing sen­sa­tions to which he had be­come a prey at­tacked him more of­ten. He drove Amy to de­spair by pre­dict­ing all sorts of dire­ful things. He was sure that he wouldn't be able to do any­thing with Ter­rill, the Claflin right end. He was moral­ly cer­tain that he was go­ing to dis­grace him­self and the school. He was even in­clined to think, rather hope­ful­ly, as it seemed to Amy, that he would be tak­en vi­olent­ly ill be­fore Sat­ur­day.

“You'll make _me_ ill!” de­clared Amy. “Hon­est, Clint, you talk like a de­ment­ed duck! Buck up! What's the mat­ter with you? Any­one would think you were go­ing to be hung Sat­ur­day in­stead of play foot­ball!”

“I al­most wish I were,” mur­mured Clint de­ject­ed­ly.

But if Clint was trou­bled with fore­bod­ings, not so the school at large. En­thu­si­as­tic mass-​meet­ings were held al­ter­nate evenings and the new songs were re­hearsed and the cheers which were to bring ter­ror to the en­emy were thun­dered with a mighty zest. Brim­field re­fused to even con­sid­er de­feat. Pa­rades be­came a fre­quent pro­ceed­ing. By Wednes­day it was on­ly nec­es­sary for a fel­low to step out on The Row and shout “Brim­field!” to have a pro­ces­sion form al­most in­stant­ly!

The last prac­tice took place Wednes­day af­ter­noon and for a sol­id forty-​five min­utes the 'var­si­ty did its lev­el best to to­tal­ly an­ni­hi­late the sec­ond team, and al­most suc­ceed­ed. Things went with a most en­cour­ag­ing bang that day. Even Coach Robey was seen to smile, which, dur­ing prac­tice, was a most ex­traor­di­nary thing for him to do. The 'var­si­ty had to work for what it got, but got it. Three touch­downs and a field-​goal was the sum of its at­tain­ment, while the sec­ond, fight­ing fierce­ly, man­aged to push Otis over for a score in the third pe­ri­od. Af­ter­ward the sec­ond cheered the 'var­si­ty, was hearti­ly cheered in re­turn and then trot­ted back to the gym­na­si­um no longer ex­is­tent as a team.

The most en­thu­si­as­tic meet­ing of the Fall was held that evening and was fol­lowed by a very ri­otous pa­rade dur­ing which much red-​fire was set off. The pro­ces­sion in­vad­ed the vil­lage and brought the in­hab­itants to their doors in alarm. It paused at Coach Robey's board­ing place and cheered and de­mand­ed a speech. Coach Robey, how­ev­er, was not at home. Nei­ther was Mr. De­tweil­er, to whose abode the fel­lows next made their way. But they didn't care much. They great­ly pre­ferred hear­ing them­selves to lis­ten­ing to any­thing the coach­es might have to say. Fi­nal­ly they re­turned to Main Hall, in­dulged in one fi­nal burst of tu­mult and dis­band­ed. Clint, hear­ken­ing from his room, where, quite alone, he was sup­posed to be dili­gent­ly pur­su­ing his stud­ies, had an­oth­er and worse at­tack of nerves!

There was sig­nal prac­tice Thurs­day for a short time in the af­ter­noon, and in the evening a black­board talk in the gym­na­si­um. Af­ter that Clint re­turned to Tor­rence and made be­lieve study un­til he could crawl in­to bed. Amy did what he could to take his mind from foot­ball, but his ef­forts were not very suc­cess­ful. Just when he thought he had Clint thor­ough­ly in­ter­est­ed in his con­ver­sa­tion Clint would give a sud­den start and blurt out: “I'll nev­er re­mem­ber the sig­nals, Amy! I know I won't!” or “Gee, I wish it was over!”

Those were try­ing times in Num­ber 14.