Right Guard Grant

CHAPTER III

ENTER MR. ELDRED CHICHESTER STAPLES

Eldred Chichester Staples had not arrived by the time Leonard had unpacked his bag. His trunk, which was to have joined him inside an hour, according to the disciple of Ananias who had accepted his claim check, had not appeared, and, since it was dinner time now, Leonard washed, re-tied his scarf, used a whisk brush rather perfunctorily and descended the stairs in search of food. It wasn’t hard to find Lawrence Hall. All he had to do was follow the crowd, and, although the entire assemblage of some four hundred students was not by any means yet present, there were enough on hand to make a very good imitation of a crowd. Leonard endured some waiting before he was assigned a seat, but presently he was established at a table occupied by five others – there were seats for four more, but they weren’t claimed until supper time – and was soon enjoying his first repast at Alton. The food was good and there was plenty of it, but none too much for the new boy, for his breakfast, partaken of at home before starting the first leg of his journey to New York City, was scarcely a memory. He followed the example of his right-hand neighbor and ordered “seconds” of the substantial articles of the menu and did excellently. Towards dessert he found leisure to look about him.

Lawrence Hall was big and airy and light, and although it accommodated more than twenty score, including the faculty, the tables were not crowded together and there was an agreeable aspect of space. The fellows about him appeared to be quite the usual, normal sort; although later on Leonard made the discovery that there was a certain sameness about them, somewhat as though they had been cut off the same piece of goods. This sameness was rather intangible, however; he never succeeded in determining whether it was a matter of looks, manner or voice; and I doubt if any one else could have determined. Dinner was an orderly if not a silent affair. There was an ever-continuing rattle of dishes beneath the constant hum of voices and the ripples of laughter. Once a dish fell just beyond the screen that hid the doors to the kitchen, and its crash was hailed with loud hand-clapping from every quarter. After awhile the scraping of chairs added a new note to the pleasant babel, and, contributing his own scrape, Leonard took his departure.

He had seen a notice in the corridor of Academy Building announcing the first football practice for three o’clock, and he meant to be on hand, but more than an hour intervened and he wondered how to spend it. The question was solved for him when he reached the walk that led along the front of the dormitories, for there, before the entrance of Haylow, a piled motor truck was disgorging trunks. His own proved to be among them, and he followed it upstairs and set to work. It wasn’t a very large trunk, nor a very nobby one, having served his father for many years, before falling to Leonard, and he was quite satisfied that his room-mate continued to absent himself. He emptied it of his none too generous wardrobe, hung his clothes in his closet or laid them in the drawers of his chiffonier, arranged his small belongings before the mirror or on the table and finally, taking counsel of a strange youth hurrying past in the corridor, lugged the empty trunk to the store-room in the basement. Then, it now being well past the half-hour, he changed into an ancient suit of canvas, pulled on a pair of scuffed shoes and set forth for the field.

The hot weather still held, and, passing the gravel tennis courts, a wave of heat, reflected from the surface, made him gasp. The gridiron, when he reached it, proved to have suffered in many places from the fortnight of unseasonable weather and lack of rain. Half a dozen fellows, dressed for play, were laughingly squabbling for a ball near the center of the field, and their cleats, digging into the dry sod, sent up a cloud of yellow dust. Early as he was, Leonard found at least a score of candidates ahead of him. Many of them had, perhaps wisely, scorned the full regalia of football and had donned old flannel trousers in lieu of padded canvas. A perspiring youth with a very large board clip was writing busily in the scant shade of the covered stand, and a short, broadly-built man in trousers and a white running shirt, from which a pair of bronze shoulders emerged massively, was beside him. The latter was, Leonard concluded, the coach. He looked formidable, with that large countenance topped by an alarming growth of black hair, and Leonard recalled diverse tales he had heard or read of the sternness and even ferocity of professional football coaches. Evidently football at Alton Academy was going to prove more of a business than football at Loring Point High School!

This reflection was interrupted by a voice. A large youth with rather pale blue eyes that, nevertheless, had a remarkable sparkle in them had come to a stop at Leonard’s elbow. “I’ve accumulated seventeen pounds this summer,” the chap was saying, “and it cost the dad a lot of good money. And now – ” his blue eyes turned from Leonard and fell disapprovingly on the sun-smitten gridiron – “now I’m going to lose the whole blamed lot in about sixty minutes.” He looked to Leonard again for sympathy. Leonard smiled doubtfully. It was difficult to tell whether the stranger spoke in fun or earnest.

“If it comes off as easy as that,” he replied, “I guess you don’t want it.” Looking more closely at the chap, he saw that, deprived of those seventeen pounds, he would probably be rather rangy; large still, but not heavy. Leonard judged that he was a backfield candidate; possibly a running half; he looked to be fast.

“I suppose not,” the fellow agreed in doubtful tones. “Maybe it isn’t losing the weight that worries me so much as losing it so quick. You know they say that losing a lot of weight suddenly is dangerous. Suppose it left me in an enfeebled condition!”

Now Leonard knew that the chap was joking, and he ventured a laugh. “Maybe you’d better not risk it,” he said. “Why not wait until to-morrow. It might be cooler then.”

“I would,” replied the other gravely, “only Johnny rather leans on me, you know. I dare say he’d be altogether at a loss if I deserted him to-day. Getting things started is always a bit of a trial.”

“I see. I suppose Johnny is the coach, and that’s him up there.” Leonard nodded in the direction of the black-haired man on the stand.

“Him or he,” answered the other gently. “You’re a new fellow, I take it. Fresh?”

Leonard, nettled by the correction, answered a bit stiffly, “Sophomore.”

The tall youth gravely extended a hand. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to the finest class in the school.”

Leonard shook hands, his slight resentment vanishing. “I suppose that means that you’re a soph, too.”

The fellow nodded. “So far,” he assented. Then he smiled for the first time, and after that smile Leonard liked him suddenly and thoroughly. “If you ask me that again after mid-year,” he continued, “you may get a different answer. Well, I guess I’d better go up and get Johnny started. He’s evidently anxious about me.” He nodded once more and moved past Leonard and through the gate to the stand. Leonard had not noticed any sign of anxiety on the coach’s countenance, but it wasn’t to be denied that the greeting between the two was hearty. Leonard’s new acquaintance seated himself at the coach’s side and draped his long legs luxuriously over the back of the seat in front. The youth with the clip looked up from his writing and said something and the others threw their heads back and laughed. Leonard was positively relieved to discover that the coach could laugh like that. He couldn’t be so very ferocious, after all!

The trainer appeared, followed by a man trundling a wheelbarrow laden with paraphernalia. The throng of candidates increased momentarily along the side-line and a few hardy youths, carrying coats over arms, perched themselves on the seats to look on. Leonard again turned to observe the coach and found that gentleman on his feet and extending his hand to a big chap in unstained togs. The two shook hands, and then the big fellow turned his head to look across the field, and Leonard saw that he was Gordon Renneker. A fifth member had joined the group, and him Leonard recognized as the boy who had accompanied Renneker into the office. Leonard surmised now that he was the captain: he had read the chap’s name but had forgotten it. After a moment of conversation, during which the other members of the group up there seemed to be giving flattering attention to Renneker’s portion, the five moved toward the field, and a minute later the business of building a football team had begun.

Coach Cade made a few remarks, doubtless not very different from those he had made at this time of year on many former occasions, was answered with approving applause and some laughter and waved a brown hand. The group of some seventy candidates dissolved, footballs trickled away from the wheelbarrow and work began. Leonard made one of a circle of fifteen or sixteen other novices who passed a ball from hand to hand and felt the sun scorching earnestly at the back of his neck. Later, in charge of a heavy youth whose name Leonard afterwards learned was Garrick, the group was conducted further down the field and was permitted to do other tricks with the ball – two balls, to be exact. They caught it on the bound, fell on it and snuggled it to their perspiring bodies and then again, while they recovered somewhat of their breath, passed it from one to another. In other portions of the field similar exercises were going on with other actors in the parts, while, down near the further goal balls were traversing the gridiron, propelled by hand or toe. Garrick was a lenient task-master, and breathing spells were frequent, and yet, even so, there were many in Leonard’s squad who were just about spent when they were released to totter back to the benches and rinse their parched mouths with warm water from the carboy which, having been carefully deposited an hour ago in the shade of the wheelbarrow, was now enjoying the full blaze of the westing sun. Leonard, his canvas garments wet with perspiration, his legs aching, leaned against the back of the bench and wondered why he wanted to play football!

Presently he forgot his discomforts in watching the performance of a squad of fellows who were trotting through a signal drill. Last year’s regulars these, he supposed; big, heavy chaps, most of them; fellows whose average age was possibly eighteen, or perhaps more. The quarterback, unlike most of the quarters Leonard had had acquaintance with, was a rather large and weighty youth with light hair and a longish face. His name, explained Leonard’s left-hand neighbor on the bench, was Carpenter. He had played on the second team last year and was very likely to prove first-choice man this fall. He was, the informant added admiringly, a corking punter. Leonard nodded. Secretly he considered Mr. Carpenter much too heavy for a quarterback’s job. The day’s diversions ended with a slow jog around the edge of the gridiron. Then came showers and a leisurely dressing; only Leonard, since his street clothes were over in Number 12 Haylow, had his shower in the dormitory and was wearily clothing himself in clean underwear and a fresh shirt when the door of the room was unceremoniously opened and he found himself confronted by a youth whose countenance was strangely familiar and whom, his reason told him, was Eldred Chichester Staples, his poetic roommate. Considering it later, Leonard wondered why he had not been more surprised when recognition came. All he said was: “Well, did you get rid of the whole seventeen?”

CHAPTER IV

LEONARD GETS PROMOTION

Eldred Chichester Staples appeared to be no more surprised than Leonard. He closed the door, with the deftness born of long practice, with his left foot, sailed his cap to his bed and nodded, thrusting hands into the pockets of his knickers.

“The whole seventeen,” he answered dejectedly. “Couldn’t you tell it by a glance at my emaciated frame?”

Leonard shook his head. “You look to me just hungry,” he said.

“Slim” Staples chuckled and reposed himself in a chair, thrusting his long legs forward and clasping lean, brown hands across his equator. “Your name must be Grant,” he remarked. “Where from, stranger?”

“Loring Point, Delaware.”

“We’re neighbors then. My home’s in New Hampshire. Concord’s the town.”

“Isn’t that where the embattled farmers stood and – and fired – er – ”

“The shot that was heard around the world? No, General, you’ve got the dope all wrong. That was another Concord. There aren’t any farmers in my town. Come to think of it, wasn’t it Lexington, Massachusetts, where the farmers took pot-shots at the Britishers? Well, never mind. I understand that the affair was settled quite amicably some time since. Glad to be here, General?”

“I think so. Thanks for the promotion, though. I’m usually just ‘Len.’”

“Oh, that’s all right. No trouble to promote you. What does ‘Len’ stand for?”

“Leonard.”

“Swell name. You’ve got the edge on the other Grant. Ulysses sounds like something out of the soda fountain. Well, I hope we’ll hit it off all right. I’m an easy-going sort, General; never much of a scrapper and hate to argue. Last year, over in Borden, I roomed with a chap named Endicott. Dick was the original arguer. He could start with no take-off at all and argue longer, harder and faster than any one outside a court of law. I was a great trial to him, I suspect. If he said Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote ‘The Merchant of Venice’ I just said ‘Sure, Mike’ and let it go at that. Arguing was meat and drink to that fellow.”

“And what became of him? I mean, why aren’t you – ”

“Together this year? He didn’t come back. You see, he spent so much time in what you might call controversy that he didn’t get leisure for studying. So last June faculty told him that he’d failed to pass and that if he came back he’d have about a million conditions to work off. He did his best to argue himself square, but faculty beat him out. After all, there was only one of him and a dozen or so faculty, and it wasn’t a fair contest. At that, I understand they won by a very slight margin!”

“Hard luck,” laughed Leonard. “I dare say he was a star member of the debating club, if there is one here.”

“There is, but Dick never joined. He said they were amateurs. What do you say to supper? Oh, by the way, you were out for football, weren’t you? What’s your line?”

“I’ve played guard mostly.”

“Guard, eh?” Slim looked him over appraisingly. “Sort of light, aren’t you?”

“I guess so,” allowed Leonard. “Of course, I don’t expect to make the first; that is, this year.”

Slim grinned wickedly. “No, but you’ll be fit to tie if you don’t. Take me now. Last year I was on the second. Left end. I’m only a soph, and sophs on the big team are as scarce as hen’s teeth. So, of course, I haven’t the ghost of a show and absolutely no hope of making it. But if I don’t there’s going to be a heap of trouble around here!”

“Well, I suppose I have a sneaking hope,” acknowledged Leonard, smiling.

“Sure. Might as well be honest with yourself. As for playing guard, well, if you got hold of a suit about three sizes too large for you, stuffed it out with cotton-batting and put heel-lifts in your shoes you might stand a show. Or you might if it wasn’t for this fellow Renneker. I dare say you’ve heard about him? He’s ab-so-lutively sure of one guard position or the other. And then there’s Smedley and Squibbs and Raleigh and Stimson and two-three more maybe If I were you, General, I’d switch to end or quarter.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to elbow you out,” laughed Leonard.

“That’s right.” Slim grinned. “Try quarter then. We’ve got only two in sight so far.”

Leonard shook his head. “Guard’s my job,” he said. “I’ll plug along at it. I might get on the second, I dare say. And next year – The trouble is, I can’t seem to grow much, Staples!”

“Better call me ‘Slim.’ Everybody else does. Well, you know your own business best. Only, if you tell Johnny that you belong to the Guard’s Union and that the rules won’t allow you to play anything else, why, I’m awfully afraid that the only thing you’ll get to guard will be the bench! Let’s go to chow.”

At the door of the dining hall they parted, for Slim’s table was not Leonard’s. “But,” said the former, “I guess we can fix that to-morrow. There are a couple of guys at our table that don’t fit very well. I’ll arrange with one of them to switch. Care to go over to Mac’s this evening? Being a newcomer, you’re sort of expected to. They’ll be mostly freshies, but we don’t have to stay long. I’ll pick you up at the room about eight.”

Under Slim’s guidance Leonard went across to the Principal’s house at a little after the appointed hour and took his place in the line that led through the front portal and past where Doctor McPherson and Mrs. McPherson were receiving. Slim introduced the stranger and then hustled him away into the library. “Might as well do it all up brown,” he observed sotto voce. “Met any of the animals yet?”

“Animals?” repeated Leonard vaguely.

“Faculty,” explained Slim. “All right. We’ll find most of ’em in here. They can see the dining room from here, you’ll observe, and so they sort of stand around, ready to rush the minute the flag goes down. Not so many here yet. Try to look serious and intellectual; they like it. Mr. Screven, I want you to meet my friend Grant. General, this is Mr. Screven. And Mr. Metcalf. Mr. Metcalf wrote the French and Spanish languages, General.”

“If I had, Staples, I’d have written them more simply, so you could learn them,” replied the instructor with a twinkle.

“Touche!” murmured Slim. “Honest, though, I wasn’t so rotten, was I, sir?”

“You might have been much worse, Staples. Don’t ask me to say more.”

“Well, I’ll make a real hit with you this year, sir. They say Sophomore French is a cinch.”

“I trust you’ll find it so,” replied Mr. Metcalf genially. “Where is your home, Mr. Grant?”

Presently Slim’s hand tugged him away to meet Mr. Tarbot and Mr. Kincaid and Mr. Peghorn, by which time Leonard couldn’t remember which was which, although Slim’s running comment, en route from one to another, was designed to aid his friend’s memory. “Peghorn’s physics,” appraised Slim. “You won’t have him, not this year. He’s a bit deaf. Left ear’s the best one. Don’t let him nail you or he’ll talk you to death. Here we are.”

There were others later, but Leonard obtained sustenance before meeting them, for Slim so skillfully maneuvered that when the dining room doors were thrown open only a mere half-dozen guests beat him to the table. To the credit of the faculty be it said that Mr. Kincaid only lost first place by a nose. The refreshments were satisfactory if not elaborate and Slim worked swiftly and methodically, and presently, their plates well piled with sandwiches, cake and ice-cream, the two retired to a corner. The entering class was large that fall and, since not a few of the other classes were well represented, the Doctor’s modest residence was crowded. Slim observed pessimistically that he had never seen a sorrier looking lot of freshies.

“How about last year?” asked Leonard innocently.

“The entering class last year,” replied Slim with dignity, “was remarkably intelligent and – um – prepossessing. Every one spoke of it. Even members of the class themselves noticed it. Want another slice of cake?”

Leonard rather pitied some of the new boys. They looked so timid and unhappy, he thought. Most of them had no acquaintances as yet, and although the faculty members and some of the older fellows worked hard to put them at their ease they continued looking like lost souls. Even ice-cream and cake failed to banish their embarrassment. The Principal’s wife, good soul, haled them from dark corners and talked to them brightly and cheerfully while she thrust plates of food into their numbed hands, but so soon as her back was turned they fled nervously to cover again, frequently losing portions of their refreshments on the way. Reflecting that even he might do some small part to lighten the burden of gloom that oppressed them, he broached the subject to Slim when that youth had returned with another generous wedge of cake. But Slim shook his head.

“I wouldn’t,” he said. “Honestly, General, they’re a lot happier left alone. I’m supposed to be on the welcome committee myself, but I’m not working at it much. Fact is, those poor fish had a lot rather you didn’t take any notice of them. They just get red in the face and fall over their feet if you speak to ’em. I know, for I was one myself last year!”

“Somehow,” mused Leonard, “I can’t imagine it.”

“Can’t you now?” Slim chuckled. “I want you to know that the shrinking violet hasn’t a thing on me. Chuck your plate somewhere and let’s beat it. There’s no hope of seconds!”

Back in Number 12 Haylow they changed to pajamas and lolled by the window, through which a fair imitation of a cooling breeze occasionally wandered, and proceeded to get acquainted. It wasn’t hard. By ten o’clock, when the light went out, they were firm friends and tried.

The business of settling down consumed several days, and as the Fall Term at Alton Academy began on a Thursday it was Monday before Leonard really found himself. Slim was of great assistance to him in the operation and saved him many false moves and unnecessary steps. As both boys were in the same class Leonard had only to copy Slim’s schedule and, during the first day, follow Slim dutifully from one recitation room to another, at the end of each trip renewing Wednesday evening’s acquaintance with one or another of the faculty members, though at a distance. In various other matters Slim was invaluable. Thursday evening Leonard took his place at Slim’s table and so enlarged his circle of speaking acquaintances by eight. Several of the occupants of the board Leonard recognized as football candidates. There was, for instance, Wells, universally known as “Billy,” heir apparent to the position of left tackle, and Joe Greenwood, who might fairly be called heir presumptive to the fullback position, only one Ray Goodwin thus far showing a better right. There was, also, Leo Falls, who, like Leonard, was a candidate for guard. Thus, five out of the ten were football players, a fact which not only made for camaraderie, but provided a never-failing subject for conversation. Of the others at the table, two were freshmen, likeable youngsters, Leonard thought; one was a sober-faced senior named Barton, and the other two were juniors who, being the sole representatives of their class there, were banded together in an offensive and defensive alliance that, in spite of its lack of numbers, was well able to hold its own when the question of class supremacy was debated. On the whole, they were a jolly set, and Leonard was thankful to Slim for securing him admission to them; even though, as Slim reminded him, several of them would be yanked off to the training table not later than next week.