Bert wasn’t very good company that week. In the evenings he made a great pretence of studying, but Hugh’s stolen glances showed that his friend’s thoughts were far from his books. At times Bert was as gay as you please, but the gayety didn’t last long and while it did last struck Hugh as being decidedly forced. For the most part Bert was silent and morose. There were no more bickerings, but it was more to Hugh’s credit than Bert’s, for the latter on more than one occasion showed himself ready to quarrel on any provocation. As a result Hugh was less at home than usual. He spent much time with Pop Driver and Roy Dresser, over in Trow, and often dropped down the corridor to hobnob with Cathcart before bedtime. There was one good thing about the proctor and that was that you could always depend on finding him in his room except when he had a recitation. Now and then Hugh visited Nick, but Nick, unlike Cathcart, was almost never in. A couple of evenings Hugh went over to Lit for awhile, but he had a feeling that it was better taste to remain away from the society’s room until he was a full-fledged member. He very much wished that Bert would confide in him, so that whatever the trouble was they might talk it over like sensible beings. Somehow, he didn’t believe that gridiron difficulties quite explained his friend’s condition of mind. Instead, he shrewdly suspected that Bert’s poor performances in practice of late were the result of some secret worry and not the cause of it. All that Hugh could be certain of was that studies had nothing to do with it, for, while Bert was not a particularly studious fellow, he nevertheless managed to maintain an average standing and was seldom in trouble with the office.
Bert went back to left half on Wednesday and stayed there until the Rotan game. But even Hugh could see that he was having a hard time of it to keep Siedhof out, and there were times when no one could have criticized Coach Bonner had he pulled Bert back to the bench. Nick confided to Hugh one day that Bert was frightfully off his game, adding regretfully, “It’s got so I think twice before I give him the ball. And Bonner’s getting on to me, too. Bert’s got to brace up Saturday or Billy Siedhof will have his place. I’d like to know what the dickens is wrong with him! The best thing for him would be to get Davy to lay him off for three or four days. I suggested it to him yesterday and he nearly bit my head off. Ted’s got his eye on him, too, and Ted’s so set on winning this year that he’d fire his grandmother if she didn’t play well! Look here, ’Ighness, why don’t you sort of drop a hint to Bert, eh? I’ve tried it and only escaped death by instant flight.”
“So you want me to die, eh? I’d do it, only—well, Bert gets mad so easily now that it wouldn’t be much good.”
“I guess it wouldn’t. Well, it’s his funeral and he will have to make his own arrangements. Still, I hate to see him making such a mess of things without any reason that anyone can see. What the dickens is the matter, Duke? Has he hinted anything to you?”
“No, he hasn’t. All I know is——” Hugh hesitated a moment. “I don’t know anything, but this morning when I got the mail and took it up there was a letter for Bert from his father—I know the postmark and the writing, you see—and one from Needham, and he didn’t like either of them.”
“That isn’t much of a clue. He doesn’t like anything just at present. He doesn’t even like his fodder; doesn’t eat enough to keep alive. Oh, well, it will blow over, I guess. And I’ve got enough to worry about as it is, with a left side of the line that’s letting everything pile through it. Saturday’s game is going to be a slaughter of the innocents, Duke, you take it from me.”
Hugh, like Nick, had his own troubles during the next few days, for Coach Crowley tried him out at right end on the second, and as an end Hugh had much to learn. Just why, after the first ten-minute fiasco, Mr. Crowley sent him back again Hugh couldn’t understand. Hugh was boxed time after time, while the first team backs romped past, allowed himself to be drawn out of the play by the cunning Dresser until that youth laughed when he caught Hugh’s anxious regard, and twice overran the ball on kicks and felt like forty kinds of a fool. But Crowley yanked him hither and thither, bellowed things that he couldn’t more than half understand, threatened him with the bench regularly every second play—and kept him at it. Hugh told himself Thursday afternoon, as he made his way tiredly out of the field house and back to Lothrop, that he had forever settled his chances with the second and that he was not half sorry. But later, when he had eaten ravenously and rested, he decided that he was sorry, awfully sorry, and he neglected his next day’s Greek and mathematics while he frowningly studied a chapter entitled “How to Play the End Positions” in a book on football. After a half-hour of it he sighed and closed the volume.
“The chap who wrote that may know all about it, but he doesn’t play Dinny’s kind of football,” he reflected. “What I want is a book that will tell me how to keep Roy and Franklin from making me look like a guy! Still, I fancy Crowley won’t try me there again unless both Forbes and Bellows and that other chap get killed.”
But Hugh was wrong. The next day he was again back at the right end of the line and again Ayer yelped at him and Coach Crowley bellowed and Captain Myatt barked. But he did a little better today, just enough, probably, to keep Mr. Crowley from having him instantly drawn and quartered or immersed in boiling oil. Roy Dresser, who played left end on the first, found it harder to entice his opponent away from the play, and Franklin, at left tackle, discovered that he couldn’t always fool him. Still, Hugh missed an easy tackle on one occasion and let Nick slip past for a long gain while he ruefully picked himself from the ground and scraped the mud from his face. Mr. Crowley almost ate him for that and Neil Ayer evinced every desire to officiate with the vinegar and salt. That was a bad day for the second, on the whole, for the first ran up five scores in the twenty minutes of scrimmaging. What troubled Hugh quite as much as his own defects was the sorry performance put up by Bert on the enemy team. Bert fumbled miserably twice, and, while he usually gained when he had the ball, played in such a half-hearted manner that Coach Bonner was “on his neck” half the time. In the last of the second period, when substitutions on each team were numerous, Bert went out in favor of Siedhof. Hugh, too, severed his connection with the game then, and Forbes got back to his own.
On the bench, dragging the sleeves of his sweater across his chest, Hugh ventured a remark to Bert, but the result was not encouraging. Bert only growled. After that Hugh watched Forbes and earnestly tried not to indulge in uncharitable thoughts. But he couldn’t help feeling exultant when Vail and Bert swept around their left end, Vail carrying the pigskin, and spurned the recumbent form of Forbes underfoot. That was encouraging to Hugh. Even Forbes, it seemed, was by no means beyond the cunning wiles of the enemy. Then Davy Richards, the trainer, who had been up the field administering to a dislocated finger, hurried indignantly back to the bench and sent them scurrying to the showers.
That evening Hugh went back to the football book and discovered a trifle more of sense in what he read. After all, he concluded, perhaps the writer might last five minutes at end under Crowley. There was no work for the first team regulars on Friday, but the second-string players were lined up against the second for one twelve-minute period and barely saved their bacon by slipping Derry across the field unnoticed for a forward pass that brought a touchdown. Hugh congratulated himself that that play took place on the other side and that it was Bellows and not he who had to face the irate Mr. Crowley. Three minutes later, on the second’s thirty-five, first team tried the same trick on the other side and Hugh was fortunate enough to knock the ball down before the opposing left end could get it. For that he got a slap on the back from Myatt, a grin from Quarterback Ayer, and a grunt from Coach Crowley. Not much in the way of reward, perhaps, after all the scoldings he had suffered, but quite sufficient in Hugh’s estimation. Even though he was informed a minute later that he was the worst end that had ever donned canvas he refused to be dejected. “That,” he told himself hearteningly as he watched the opposing tackle and waited for the signal, “isn’t so. If I were as bad as that I wouldn’t be here.” Then he was trying to block off a big tackle, while Ayer’s voice shrilled “In! In!” and everything was excitedly confused and glorious. After another moment Hauser yanked him to his feet at the risk of dislocating his arm and Myatt shoved him into position again, and Quinn was crying: “Third down! Four to go!” and Ayer was barking his signals: “Manson back! 47—35—16!”
The game ended when Manson’s punt had dropped into the arms of a first-team back, and, muddy and warm and panting, they trotted up to the field house. It was worth all the hard knocks and harder words to feel the tingling rain of the hissing shower on naked body, and afterwards, Hugh, deliciously weary, slowly pulled his clothes on and went half asleep in the task of tying a shoelace and heard the babel of voices as in a dream until Ben Myatt, scantily wrapped in a monstrous bath towel, sank to the bench beside him with a deep sigh and murmured: “They didn’t do much with our wing today, Ordway, did they?”
And Hugh, emerging from his luxurious drowse, shook his head proudly and answered: “Rather not!” After which, with a supreme effort of the will, he finished tying that lace and got to his feet. Encountering the eyes of Forbes he smiled kindly but pityingly. It was too bad that Forbes was out of it. He was sorry for Forbes. But as events proved he need not have been.
He found Bert lying on the window-seat scribbling on a scratch-pad when he got back to Lothrop. Perhaps the afternoon’s rest had benefited the first-team player, for he was undeniably in better humor.
“What did they do to you, Hugh?” he asked as he tore a sheet from the pad and crumpled it in his hand. “Were they brutal?”
“Hardly! They scored once, but they wouldn’t have pulled that if we hadn’t been asleep. Derry took a pass about a foot from the side line and ran thirty yards.”
Bert laughed. “What were you fellows doing to let him get off like that? You must have been asleep!”
“I fancy we were,” acknowledged Hugh ruefully as he seated himself in the Morris chair and stretched tired legs across the rug. “I was awfully glad it wasn’t on my side.”
“I’ll bet you were! Who played halves for them?”
“Kinds was one. The other fellow I don’t know. Small and dark and awfully quick and squirmy.”
“Fearing. He’s going to make a bully half some day. He’s only a lower middler.” There was a pause and then: “Say, Hugh,” Bert went on carelessly, “you don’t happen to have any money you don’t want to use for a while, I suppose?”
“Money? How much?”
“Oh, a beast of a lot; thirty dollars. Twenty would do, I guess. It would do for a while, anyway.” Bert was much too casual to deceive the other and Hugh looked regretful.
“No, I haven’t more than six or seven, Bert. How soon would you have to have it?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. I only thought that if you did happen to have it——”
“I know, but I fancy I could get it in a few days. Only thing is the mater’s away just now.” He frowned thoughtfully. “What are you going to do, Bert? Buy something?”
“Sort of. It doesn’t matter a bit.” He yawned elaborately, tossed aside the block of paper and sat up. “I’d have to have it by Monday, anyway. Thanks just the same.”
“Monday! But this is Friday, and——”
“I know. Don’t bother. I tell you it doesn’t matter, Hugh.”
“Yes, but—if you want it—I say, now, I might telegraph, eh? But I dare say you could get it from home as soon as I could.”
“Well, the fact is——” Bert hesitated. “My dad’s shut down on me and won’t send me a cent beyond my allowance; and that’s only ten a month. Of course, he will come around in time; maybe in a month; but I’ve got to have—that is, I—I need twenty or thirty right now. I’ve sort of promised a man to let him have it Monday. It—it’s a debt. An old one. Things I bought last winter. Now he’s acting nasty and threatens to go to faculty if I don’t settle up.”
“But I thought we weren’t allowed to have any debts!”
Bert shrugged. “We aren’t supposed to, except by special arrangement. But most every fellow has things charged here in the village or over in Needham. Of course you’re supposed to settle at the end of term, and I meant to, but I was hard up and couldn’t. This Shylock bothered me all summer with bills and letters and things and I told him I’d pay when I got back. Well, I tried to, but dad got angry and said I was spending too much money and I’d have to get along on my allowance. And he told mother not to let me have it. So it’s a rotten outlook. Of course, if I can’t pay him right now, I can’t, and that’s all there is to it. Only if he should go to Charlie I’d get fired as quick as a wink.”
“That’s too bad,” said Hugh sympathetically. “We’ll simply have to dig up the money somewhere. Toss me that block, will you? And your pencil? Thanks. Now, let’s see. ‘Please send six pounds’—no, ‘thirty dollars——’” Hugh nibbled the pencil reflectively. “I’ve got about six dollars, though, so I’ll just ask for twenty-five. Thirty’s enough, old chap? You’re certain?”
“Yes, but I don’t believe you’d better, Hugh. I don’t know, after all, when I can pay it back. Maybe not until Christmas. I always get some extra money then. I guess Fallow and Turner will wait.”
“But there’d be no hurry about paying it back, Bert,” the other protested. “And my mother won’t mind sending it the least bit. I haven’t asked for any extra tin for a long time. You just sit tight, old dear, and leave it to me. ‘Please send twenty-five dollars at once. Important. Well. Love.’ That ought to do it. I say, though, maybe I’d better ask mother to telegraph it, eh? Then she’d surely get it here by Monday. Unless, that is, this doesn’t get to her in time. You see, she went away to make some visits the other day. She ought to be in Philadelphia tomorrow, but if she stayed over in New York—I fancy I’ll send a couple of these just to be on the safe side. Bound to fetch her that way, what?”
“It’s awfully decent of you,” said Bert gratefully. “Hope I’ll be able to do as much for you some day.”
“I hope you won’t need to,” laughed Hugh. “How do I get these off? I can telephone, can’t I?”
“Yes, and they’ll charge it to the school and you can settle with the office. I ought to offer to pay them myself, Hugh, but I’m just about strapped. You could add it to the rest, though.”
“Oh, rot! I’ll nip down and get them off now. If mother gets one of these tomorrow morning we might hear by afternoon, eh?”
When Hugh got back Bert was whistling merrily in his room.
“They said they’d get them off right away,” Hugh announced from the doorway. “So that’s all right, eh?”
“Yes,” replied Bert. “And I hope—— Well, anyway, I’m awfully much obliged, Hugh. To tell the truth I’ve been scared to death for a week for fear Fallow would turn up here at school.”
“Well, it won’t matter if he does now,” responded Hugh cheerfully. “Is—is that what’s been bothering you lately, old chap?”
Bert nodded. “Did you notice it?” he asked, mildly surprised.
“Did I notice it? Well, rather! You’ve been as—as grouchy as a bear.”
“Have I?” asked the other penitently. “I guess I have. I’m sorry, Hugh. I guess I was particularly nasty the other night, wasn’t I?”
“Well, you weren’t exactly sweet-tempered,” chuckled Hugh.
“I guess I was a regular beast. I wish you’d—er—forget it.”
“All right. I fancy I lost my temper a bit too.”
“I didn’t mean”—Bert spoke from behind a towel—“what I said about rooming with you, Hugh. I—I’m sorry I was such a cad.”
“Oh, don’t talk so sick,” muttered Hugh, backing away from the door. “I didn’t pay any attention to it. Now shut up. I’ve got to wash.”