Center Rush Rowland

“Wonder why he didn’t look it up,” remarked White. “He has a library of encyclopedias and reference books about a mile long.”

“Maybe he’d forgot how to spell the word,” suggested Gene. “I have!”

“Absolutely no criterion,” said Lyons. “‘Old Earnest’ has forgotten more than you ever knew or ever will know, you ignoramus.”

“Is that so? I’ll bet you you don’t know who the Peloponnesians were.”

“Don’t I? They were inhabitants of Peloponnesia. Ask me a hard one.”

“Well, where was Peloponnesia, then?”

“Oh, about half-way between Cumner and Springfield,” replied Lyons without hesitation. “Anybody knows that! By the way, Rowland, I don’t remember seeing you out.”

“Out?” asked Ira.

“Out for football, I mean. You’re trying, of course.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve never played football. I’d be no good, I guess.”

“Great Jumping Jehosaphat, man!” ejaculated Lyons. “That’ll never do! We’ve got to have you, Rowland. Why, if Driscoll knew there was a chap of your build who hadn’t showed up he’d be after you with a gun. Seriously, though, Rowland, I wish you’d come out and have a try. We really do need husky chaps like you. You’re built for a guard if any fellow ever was, isn’t he, Ray?”

“He certainly is,” replied White. “What do you weigh, Rowland?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t weighed for a long time. About a hundred and forty-one or – two, I guess.”

“A hundred and fifty-one or – two, more likely,” said Lyons. “But you’ll drop some of that. You’re a bit soft, I’d say. Haven’t you ever tried football at all?”

“No, and I’ve never seen it played but once. I never thought I’d care for it.”

“Oh, but you will,” replied Lyons confidently. “You’re bound to, once you get a taste of it. I wish you’d promise to report tomorrow, Rowland. I’m not exaggerating a bit when I say that we need men the worst way. These chaps will tell you the same thing.”

“We never needed them more,” said White. “I could easily be a pessimist on the football situation, Fred. We’ve never started off with a bigger handicap.”

“Oh, the fellows will turn out when they know they’re really needed,” said Gene comfortably. “You always have to coax them a bit.”

“I wasn’t thinking so much of getting material,” answered White gravely. “What’s bothering me – or would bother me if I let it – is the indifference. No one, except a dozen or two of us who play, cares much this year whether we have a team or don’t have one.”

“You’ll see them begin to sit up when you get started,” said Gene. “I’ll grant that football has rather soured at Parkinson, but any sort of a fairly decent team will find support.”

“We’ve got to find support,” said Captain Lyons grimly. “We haven’t enough money to print tickets for next week’s game. We need at least two hundred and fifty dollars to get to the Kenwood game. After that we’ll be able to clear up our debts.”

“Can’t you get tick for things until then?” asked Gene.

“Yes, but if we do we end the season the way we did last year. There were only twelve hundred and odd admissions to the game last year and our share was a bit over five hundred after expenses were paid. And when we had settled all our bills, most of which had run all season, we had ninety-something left. Spring expenses took about sixty and we began this Fall with about thirty dollars in the treasury. We’ve already spent it and a few dollars more. Lowell is advancing money from his own pocket for next week’s tickets. I’ve dug down once myself. The worst of it was that everything had given out together. Usually we start the season with half a dozen good balls and head harnesses and so on, but this year we were short on every blessed thing. The balls we’re using now aren’t fit to play with. I tried to get the Athletic Association to make us a donation, but Mr. Tasser said there was almost no money on hand, and what there was would be needed for other sports. I suppose he’s right, but when you consider that until last year football has always paid for itself and everything else, except baseball, it seems sort of tough.”

“Wouldn’t the students stand a small assessment?” asked Ira.

“They’d have to if they were assessed,” replied Lyons, “but faculty won’t allow it. The best we can do is ask for contributions, and that’s what we will have to do. Lowell wanted to do it last year, but Simpson – he was manager – was certain that the Kenwood game would go big and we’d have enough to settle everything up and leave a start for this year. You see, Rowland, the trouble is that we’ve had four perfectly punk football years running. It’s human nature, I suppose, to cheer for a winning team and turn your back on one that loses. Well, we’ve lost the Kenwood game three years out of four and tied it the other time, which was three seasons ago. Last year we started out nicely and won five or six games without a hitch. After that we had trouble. Our captain couldn’t get along with the coach and it came to a show-down and faculty supported the captain, which, to my thinking, it shouldn’t have, and Emerson left us about the first of November. Fortunately, we got Mr. Driscoll right away, but the fat was in the fire then, and ten coaches couldn’t have pulled things together in time for Kenwood. So we lost again. And now the school is soured on football. It’s tired of seeing the team beaten, naturally. I don’t blame it altogether.”

“I do,” said Gene warmly. “When a team’s in trouble is when the school ought to stand back of it.”

“Well, they stood back of us three years,” said Lyons pessimistically, “and it didn’t seem to do much good. There’s a fine, healthy ‘jinx’ doing business around here, I guess.”

“When does the meeting come off?” asked Ray White.

“It isn’t decided. We thought we’d better wait until we’d won a game or two – if we do. I’m glad we’ve got Mapleton and Country Day to start with. They ought to be easy.”

“Another thing,” remarked White, “is that we’ve got a punk schedule this year. We’ve dropped two of our best opponents.”

“They dropped us, didn’t they?” asked Gene. “You mean Harper’s and Poly-Tech?”

“They didn’t exactly drop us,” said Lyons. “They wanted a guarantee bigger than we could promise. We simply had to let them go. Lowell wants to put down the season ticket price to two dollars so as to get more fellows to buy them, but I don’t believe taking off a half dollar would make much difference. What we’ve got to do some way or other is get the school warmed up again. Of course one way to do it is to turn out a winning team, but – well, sometimes I wish someone else had the job. I can play football, after a fashion, but this thing of financing the team and worrying about the money end of it is too much for me!”

“It’s hard luck, Fred,” said Gene sympathetically. “But just you stick it out, old horse.”

“Oh, I’m not going to quit. Don’t worry about that. I’ll still be playing football on the twenty-second of November if I’m playing it all alone. Only it does bother a fellow to have to wonder where the next batch of tickets is coming from and whether there’ll be enough money at the end of the year to pay off the coach. Driscoll, by the way, has been bully about the salary business. We’re supposed to pay him five hundred at the beginning of the season and five hundred at the end, you know, but he says we can let it all go until November. That’ll help some!”

“What gets me,” observed White, “is why Tod Driscoll wants to fuss with a job like this, anyway. He ought to get three thousand dollars any day. He’s good, Driscoll is!”

“I don’t believe he will be back here next Fall,” said Lyons. “Not at a thousand dollars, anyway; and it isn’t likely we can pay more. I guess it will be a case of graduate coaching for us. Then – good night!”

“Aren’t graduate coaches satisfactory?” asked Ira.

“They are if they know their business,” replied Lyons, “but the ones that do are either drawing down good salaries coaching somewhere else, like Tom Nutting and Howard Lane, or they’re too busy to give more than a fortnight to the team. You can’t expect a man who is getting started in business to throw it up for two months to coach a football team. And you can’t expect a man who is getting twenty-five hundred or three thousand coaching some other team to leave his job and come here for a thousand. Unfortunately, Rowland, the fellows who would come for a thousand aren’t worth it. Good football players are plentiful, but good football coaches are as scarce as hens’ teeth.”

“I wonder,” mused Gene, “what would happen if every school coached itself. I mean, suppose it was agreed that no graduate was to have anything to do with the teams. What would it be like?”

“We’d all play punk football,” responded White, “but we’d have just as much sport. And a heap less trouble.”

“Schools wouldn’t stick to the agreement,” said Lyons. “They’d begin to sneak in fellows who weren’t real students so they could take hold of the teams.”

“Oh, come, Fred! There are some honest folks in the world,” protested Gene.

“A heap of them, son, but when it comes to winning at games there’s something a bit yellow about us. Fellows who wouldn’t crib at an exam, will do all sorts of shady tricks to put it over a rival team. I guess it’s because we want to win too hard. Still I’d like to see it tried out, that ‘no graduate need apply’ idea.”

“So would I,” said White, “but I’d rather some other school started it.”

“I’d certainly hate to see the scheme applied to track athletics,” said Gene, shaking his head dubiously. “It wouldn’t work there.”

“Wouldn’t work anywhere,” declared Lyons. “Not nowadays. Wait for the millennium. I guess we’ve bored Rowland stiff with all this serious guff. We aren’t always as dull as we are tonight, Rowland.”

“You haven’t bored me,” answered Ira, smiling. “I’ve been interested. Care to know what I’ve been thinking, Lyons?”

“Why, yes.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking that you’re pretty lucky.”

“Lucky! Who, me?”

“Yes. You see, you’ve got a fine, big man’s-size job, and if you manage to make – what do you say? – turn out a good team and get the school to support it you’ve really done something worth doing, haven’t you?”

“Gosh! Rowland’s a regular Little Sunbeam,” laughed Gene. “I’ll bet you never thought of it in that way, Fred.”

“I never did.” Lyons smiled and shook his head. “But there’s something in it, Rowland. There’s a lot in it, by Jove! Only thing is, you know, you’ve got to keep that in mind. If you don’t you’re likely to consider yourself in hard luck. I’ll try to see the bright side of it, Rowland.”

“I suppose that sounded cheeky,” said Ira. “I didn’t mean it to.”

“Not a bit! And I wasn’t sarcastic. I really do mean that I’ll try to keep in mind that it is a big job and that it’s worth doing. And,” he added warmly, “I’m mighty glad you said it. It’s going to help. But there’s another way you can help, Rowland, if you will.”

“How is that?”

“Come out and try for the team tomorrow. Will you?”

Ira hesitated. “I’d like awfully much to oblige you, Lyons, but I don’t want to do it. I’m quite certain that I’d never be any good at football. I guess it takes some quality I haven’t got. I don’t believe a fellow ever makes much of a success at a thing he hasn’t any – any inclination for. If you don’t mind, Lyons, I’d much prefer not to.”

“If it’s only not liking the game,” said Lyons, “you can take my word for it that you will like it after you get to know it better, and – ”

“It isn’t that altogether. I’m not a very brilliant fellow at studying, and, of course I did come here to learn. I don’t expect to go to college and so I want to make the most of this school. And I’m afraid that playing football would raise hob with studying. It does, doesn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” answered White. “Fred manages to keep his end up without trouble, and so do a lot of others.”

“Don’t lie to him,” said Lyons. “Football does play hob with your studies, Rowland. The only thing is that it lasts but a short while and it leaves you in mighty good shape to buckle down and get caught up. But it’s piffle to say that the two things mix well. They don’t. I’ve always managed to keep up fairly well in my classes, but how it will be this year I don’t know. Luckily, I’ve got a fairly easy term ahead of me. You do just as you think best about trying for the team, old man. We’d like mighty well to have you, and I think you’d make good, but if you think you’d better not, why, that’s your affair. Only, if you change your mind in the next fortnight and see your way to giving us a chance to use you, come on out. We need men – I mean likely ones: we’ve got a raft of the other sort – and we can find a place for you somewhere or I miss my guess.”

“Seems to me,” observed Ray White, “Rowland is rather losing sight of the question of duty.”

“I don’t think so,” answered Ira, before Gene could interpose. “Seems to me my duty is toward my dad, who is paying for my schooling. After that to myself. Then to the school.”

“Right,” said Lyons heartily.

“It’s a good thing every fellow doesn’t look at it that way, then,” grumbled White.

“If I thought I could help on the football team and still keep up my studies as I ought to I guess I’d join,” said Ira. “I’d like to do anything I could to help. But I don’t. Still, it’s all pretty new to me yet and maybe after I’ve been here another week I’ll have a better line on what’s going to happen. Maybe I can tell then how much work I’ll have to do.” He got up, smiling apologetically at them. “I’m sorry if I seem unpatriotic,” he added.

“Oh, don’t mind Ray,” said Gene. “He’s a sorehead. And don’t hurry off. The night is still extremely young.”

“Thanks, but I ought to be going. I’m glad to have met you all. Good night.”

“Good night, Rowland,” answered the football captain. “Don’t let anything we’ve said bother you. Do as you think best. Only remember there’s a trial awaiting you any time inside the next fortnight and help us out if you can.”

Ray White got up and followed Ira to the door. “Sorry if I was peevish,” he said, holding out his hand. “Forget it, Rowland. Get Gene to bring you up to my room some night, will you?”

CHAPTER IX

AN ULTIMATUM

Several days passed without incidents worth recording here. Life at Parkinson settled down into the groove that it was to follow for the next nine months and Ira found that his studies looked far less formidable on close acquaintance than they had at first. Ira had declared that he was not a brilliant fellow at studying, and he wasn’t, but he had the gift of application and an excellent memory, which, combined, are half the battle. The courses he had feared most, Greek and French, were proving easier than English, which he had not troubled about. But third year English at Parkinson was a stiff course and Ira’s grammar school preparation had not been very thorough. Greek he took to avidly, possibly because Professor Addicks was a very sympathetic teacher and managed to make his courses interesting. Mathematics came easily to him and his other studies – he was taking nineteen hours in all – were not troublesome. On the whole, he felt himself quite able to cope with his work, and wondered if he was not in duty bound to go out and save the destinies of the football team. Of course, putting it that way he had to smile, for he couldn’t imagine himself of any more use on the gridiron than nothing at all! Only, he reflected, if it would give Captain Lyons any satisfaction to have him there, perhaps, since it seemed quite possible to play football without flunking at recitations, he ought to put in an appearance. At all events, he would, he decided, wait a few days longer. There was no hurry.

For want of a better confidant, he put the case up to Humphrey Nead one evening. Humphrey told him he was silly not to grab the chance. “I wish,” he said, “they’d beg me to come out for the football team. You couldn’t see me, for dust! You’re in luck, Rowly.”

“Rowly” was Nead’s compromise between “Say!” and “Rowland” at this time. Ira didn’t like it overmuch as a nickname, but entered no protest. He was determined to make the best of Humphrey Nead as a roommate, and during the first week was careful to make no criticisms. When, however, he did criticise he did it effectively. The occasion was just a week after that first chance meeting with Nead. The latter had formed a habit of eating his dinners in the evenings downtown in the company of various “Jimmies” and “Billies” whose last names Ira never heard, or, hearing, forgot. Usually Humphrey didn’t return to the room until nearly ten o’clock. Sometimes it was nearer midnight, although, to do him justice, those occasions were few. On this particular evening, Ira, returning at half-past seven from Mrs. Trainor’s boarding house, where he had lately become a “regular” for dinners and suppers, found Humphrey stretched out on his bed, a book face-open on his chest and a dead cigarette between the fingers of a hand that hung over the edge. He was asleep. Although both windows were open the tobacco smoke still lingered. Ira frowned thoughtfully as he hung up his cap in the closet. Then, after a moment’s indecision, he walked across to the bed and shook the sleeper awake.

“Eh? Hello!” muttered Humphrey. “Must have fallen asleep.” He yawned widely, blinked and stretched himself. “What time is it? Had your dinner?”

“I’ve had my supper,” answered Ira.

“Oh, the dickens! I was going to get you to stand me a feed.”

“Sorry. Look here, Nead, you’ll have to stop that.”

“Stop what?” asked the other blankly.

Ira pointed to the cigarette still clutched in Humphrey’s fingers. Humphrey brought his hand up and looked. A brief expression of dismay changed to a grin.

“Caught in the act, eh? ‘Flagrante – ’ What’s the Latin of it, Rowly?”

“Never mind the Latin,” replied Ira grimly. “The English of it is that you’ve got to quit it in this room.”

“Who says so?” demanded Humphrey, scowling.

“I say so. Faculty says so, too.”

“Oh, piffle! Look here, faculty says you can smoke in your room if you’re a fourth year man. If a fourth year man can smoke, I can. It’s my own affair.”

“Faculty allows fourth year fellows to smoke pipes in their rooms if they have the written consent of their parents. You’re not a fourth year fellow, you haven’t the consent of your parents and that isn’t a pipe; it’s a cigarette.”

“Well, don’t lecture about it. There’s no harm in a cigarette now and then. Half the fellows in school smoke on the sly.”

“I don’t believe it,” denied Ira stoutly. “I don’t know one who does it.”

“Huh! You don’t know very many, anyhow, do you? And you’re such a nice, proper sort of chump that they wouldn’t do it when you were around, I guess.”

“Never mind that, Nead. This is as much my room as it is yours, and I don’t like cigarettes and won’t stand for them. We might as well understand each other now. Then there won’t be any further rowing.”

“Suppose I choose to smoke?” drawled Humphrey.

“Then you’ll have to find another room.”

“Yes, I will! Like fun! I suppose you’d go and tell faculty, eh?”

“I might, if I couldn’t stop it any other way,” returned Ira calmly. “But I don’t think it would be necessary.”

He viewed Humphrey very steadily and the latter, after an instant of defiant glaring, dropped his gaze uncertainly.

“Rough-stuff, eh?” he sneered. “Well, you’re a heap bigger than I am, and I guess you could get away with it. Anyway, I don’t care enough about smoking to fight.”

“Then I think I’d quit,” said Ira. “What’s the idea, anyway, Nead?”

“Oh, just for fun,” answered the other airily. “Haven’t you ever done it?”

“Once,” said Ira, with a fleeting and reminiscent smile. “I guess every fellow tries it once. I didn’t like it, though.”

“Of course not. You have to keep at it.” Humphrey laughed. “Gee, I was a wreck after my first attempt!”

“Seems to me that anything that has that effect on you can’t be especially good for you,” said Ira.

“Oh, a fellow doesn’t want to just do the things that are good for him. There’s no fun in that. Smoking cigarettes is like – like playing hookey when you’re a kid. You do it because it – it’s a sort of adventure, eh?”

“I suppose so,” agreed Ira. “Well, you’ve had your adventure, haven’t you? You’ve got all the fun out of it. What’s the use of keeping it up?”

Humphrey gazed at Ira thoughtfully. “Gee, that’s a new idea,” he chuckled. “Never thought of that! Maybe you’re right, old scout. Guess I’ll quit cigarettes and try something else. Burglary or – or murder, maybe.”

“Well, don’t practise at home,” laughed Ira. Then soberly: “I wish you’d agree to call it off on the cigarettes, though, Nead.”

“Oh, when you ask me nicely like that,” answered the other, “I don’t mind, I guess. But I won’t stand being bullied.” He blustered a bit. “You can’t scare me into doing things, Rowland, and you might as well learn that first as last.”

“I don’t want to scare you or bully you,” answered Ira. “Sorry if I went at it wrong.”

“Well, you did,” grumbled the other. He sat up and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. Then: “Tell you how you can square yourself, Rowly,” he said. “Lend me a quarter, like a good chap, will you? I’m stony.”

“Of course. But you don’t mean, really, that you’ve got no money?”

“Sorry to say I mean that exactly,” replied Humphrey with a grin.

“But – but you’ve been here only a week! What have you done – ”

“With my wealth?” prompted Humphrey as the other hesitated. “Well I’ve dropped about six dollars playing pool with those sharks down at the Central, and I’ve bought a lot of food and I’ve paid for a year’s subscription to the ‘Leader’ – didn’t want the silly paper, but a fellow cornered me – , and I’ve – oh, I don’t know! Money never sticks around me very long. But you needn’t worry about your quarter, because I’ve written home for more. I told mother I was taking an extra course in poolology and it was expensive!” He chuckled. “She’ll understand and come across.”

“I wasn’t worrying about my quarter,” answered Ira. “I was wondering what you expected to do for meals until the letter comes.”

“Well, I sort of intended going around to Mrs. Thingamabob’s with you tonight and signing on there until – for awhile. But you didn’t show up and I fell asleep.”

“Unless you arrange for regular board,” said Ira, “Mrs. Trainor will make you pay at every meal. You’d better let me lend you enough to see you through until you hear from your folks. How much will it take?”

Humphrey looked vastly surprised and a trifle embarrassed. “Why, that’s mighty decent of you, old scout!” he exclaimed. “But can you – I mean – ”

“I can let you have five dollars,” said Ira, “if that will do.”

“Honest? It won’t make you short? But I’ll give it back to you by Saturday. I wrote yesterday.”

“I can’t do it tonight,” said Ira. “I’ll have to get it out of the bank. But here’s thirty-five cents you can have.”

“Right-o! Thanks awfully, Rowly! You’re a brick. Sorry if I talked nasty.” He got up from the bed, viewing the cigarette stub whimsically. Then he scratched a match, lighted the cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke into the room. “Good-bye forever!” he exclaimed tremulously, and, turning to the window, flicked the cigarette out into the night. “Now for burglary!” Whereupon he picked up the coins Ira had put on the table, planted his cap rakishly over one ear, winked expressively and hurried out.

Ira, arranging his books for study, wished somewhat ruefully that he hadn’t jumped to conclusions by connecting the cigarette odour with Mart Johnston that time. He had met Mart two days before and that youth had passed him with a very cool and careless nod, evidently resentful because Ira had not accepted the invitation to call.

“I guess, though,” thought Ira, as he seated himself at the desk and sucked the end of a pencil, “he doesn’t care very much.”

Gene Goodloe he saw every day, sometimes only long enough to exchange greetings with, sometimes long enough for a chat. But he hadn’t been back to Number 30 Williams yet, nor had Gene, in spite of promises, called at “Maggy’s.” Captain Lyons and Raymond White were always genial when he met them, but it didn’t look much as if the acquaintances with those fellows were likely to expand. Several times Ira watched football practice, and, while he failed to discover anything about the game to captivate him, he viewed it with more interest since meeting Fred Lyons and learning what a difficult task the latter was undertaking. That Lyons had not exaggerated the attitude of the school toward the football team was made plain to Ira by the comments he heard at practice. It seemed the popular thing to speak with laughing contempt of the team and the football situation. The “Forlorn Hopes” was a favourite name for the players, while it seemed to be a generally accepted conclusion that Parkinson would go down in defeat again in November. All this made Coach Driscoll’s efforts to get additional candidates doubly difficult. Some fellows did go out, from a sense of duty, and at the end of the first week of school there were nearly eighty candidates on the field. That number looked large to Ira until he overheard one of the instructors remark to another one afternoon: “A most discouraging situation, isn’t it? Why, four years ago we used to turn out a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty boys, I’m afraid it will be the same old story again this Fall!”