CHAPTER III
THE “IMPOSSIBLE FELLOW”
Dobbins was gone the better part of half an hour and when he finally returned his expression showed that he had met with failure. “Still,” he explained hopefully, “Hoyt says he will give me the first vacancy that turns up. Sometimes fellows have to drop out after school begins, he says. Fail at exams or something. He says maybe he can put me somewhere else within a week. Mind you, he doesn’t promise, but I made a pretty good yarn of it, and I guess he will do it if he possibly can.” Joe Dobbins chuckled reminiscently. “I told him that if he didn’t separate us I wouldn’t answer for what happened. Said we’d already had two fights and were spoiling for another. Said you’d pitched my things out the window and that I’d torn up all your yellow neckties. Maybe he didn’t believe all I told him: he’s a foxy little guy: but I guess I got him thinkin’, all right!”
“You needn’t have told him all that nonsense,” demurred Myron. “He will think I’m a – a – ”
“Not for a minute! I told him you were a perfect gentleman. Incompatibility of temperament is what I called it. He said why didn’t I leave off the last two syllables. Well, that’s that, kiddo – I mean Foster. Better leave it lay until we see what happens, eh?”
“Not at all. I shall send this telegram, Dobbins. I don’t believe he has any idea of – of doing anything about it.”
“We-ell, you’re the doctor, but – Say, where’ll you go if you leave this place?”
“I don’t know yet. There are plenty of other schools around here, though. There’s one up the line a ways. I think it’s called Kenwood. Or there’s – ”
“Kenwood? Gee, boy, you don’t want to go there! Don’t you read the crime column in the papers? Why, Kenwood is filled with thugs and hoboes and the scum of the earth. A feller on the train told me so coming down here. Parkinson and Kenwood are rivals: get it? You don’t want to throw down this place and take up with the enemy, eh?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” Myron objected. “I’m not a Parkinson fellow. And I dare say that Kenwood is quite as good a school as Parkinson.”
But Joe Dobbins shook his head. “That feller on the train talked mighty straight. I wouldn’t like to think he was lying to me. He said that Kenwood was – was – now what was it he said? Oh, I got it! He said it was an ‘asylum for the mentally deficient.’ Sounds bad, eh?”
“Rot!” grunted Myron. “I’m going over to the telegraph office.”
“All right. If the Big Boss drops in I’ll tell him.”
When Myron had gone Joe promptly removed coat and vest once more, dropped his suspenders about his hips and kicked off his shoes. “Might as well be comfortable when His Majesty’s away,” he sighed. “Gee, but he’s the limit, now ain’t he? I suppose I ought to have spanked him when he called me a stable – or whatever it was. But I dunno, he’s sort of a classy guy. Guess he isn’t so worse if you hack into him. Bark’s a little punk, but the wood’s all right underneath, likely. Don’t know if I could stand living with him regular, though. Not much fun in life if you can’t slip your shoes off when your feet hurt. Well, I guess I’ll get these satchels emptied. What was it he called those bureaus, now? Chiff – chiff – I’ll have to get him to tell me that again. One thing, Joey: living with Mr. Foster’ll teach you manners. Only I’d hate to think I’d ever get to wearing a lemon-yellow necktie!”
Still feeling deeply wronged and out-of-sorts, Myron made his way back to Maple Street and set out toward the business part of Warne. The breeze that had made the late September afternoon fairly comfortable had died away and the maples that lined the broad, pleasant thoroughfare drooped their leaves listlessly and the asphalt radiated heat. Myron wished that he had shed his waistcoat in the room. Students were still arriving, for he passed a number on their way to the school, bags in hands, and several taxis and tumble-down carriages went by with hilarious occupants oozing forth from doors and windows. One of the taxi drivers honked brazenly as his clattering vehicle passed Myron and the latter glanced up in time to receive a flatteringly friendly wave and shout from Eddie Moses. Myron frowned. “Folks here are a lot of savages,” he muttered.
The telegram despatched, he made his way to a nearby drug store, seated himself on a stool and asked for a “peach-and-cream.” The freckle-faced, lanky youth behind the counter shook his head sadly. “Ain’t got no peach today. I can give you vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, rasp – ”
“I didn’t mean syrup. Haven’t you any fruit? I want a peach-and-cream.”
“Don’t know what that is. Anyway, we ain’t got it. How about a chocolate sundae with puffed rice? Lots of the fellers call for them.”
“No, thanks.” Myron descended from the stool and went out, more than ever assured of the undesirability of Parkinson School as a place of sojourn. Think of a town where you couldn’t get a peach-and-cream! Why, even the smallest shops in Port Foster knew what a peach-and-cream was! He cast contemptuous looks upon the modest stores and places of business along Adams Street, and even the new Burton Block over on the corner of School Street, six stories high and glittering with broad glass windows, only drew a word of derision. “Suppose they call that thing a skyscraper,” he muttered. “Huh! Puffed rice!”
Returning, he went through School Street to Washington Avenue. The south side of that shady thoroughfare, called Faculty Row, presented a pleasing vista, in each direction, of neat lawns and venerable elms and glowing beds of flowers. Here and there a sprinkler tossed its spray into the sunlight. Myron had to acknowledge, albeit grudgingly, that Port Foster had nothing prettier to offer. Facing him, across the Avenue, since School Street ended there, was the main gate to the campus, and straight ahead a shady tunnel roofed with closely-set linden trees led the eyes to the gleaming façade of Parkinson Hall, which, unlike the other school buildings, was of light-hued sandstone and was surmounted by an imposing dome. From the gate in front of him two other similar paths led diagonally away, and choosing the right-hand one Myron found grateful relief from the sun. He removed his hat and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with an immaculate handkerchief, and when he had finished returned the handkerchief to his breast pocket very carefully, allowing a corner – it happened to be the corner bearing the embroidered monogram – to protrude carelessly.
As he neared Sohmer he passed a group of four boys lying on the grass beneath the trees. Their conversation dwindled as he approached, ceased entirely as he came abreast and then went on again subduedly after he had gone by. His former irritation returned. What was there about him to make fellows stare or giggle or smile? Even down town he had noticed it, and now, although he could not hear what was being said behind him, he felt that he was being discussed. He was conscious of being better dressed than any of the boys he had seen yet, there was nothing unusual in his looks so far as he knew and he believed that he carried himself and walked in an ordinary manner. He decided again that they were all a lot of savages or “small town” gykes. He was glad he was leaving them tomorrow.
Back in Number 17, he found that Dobbins had gone out. In the bedroom that remarkable youth’s suit of rough red-brown material – it was much too heavy for summer wear and reminded Myron somewhat of a horse-blanket – that he had worn on his arrival lay carelessly tossed across a bed. It was the bed that Myron had chosen for himself, and he distastefully removed the clothes to the other one. As he did so he looked for the maker’s tag inside the collar and smiled ironically when he read “Bon Ton Brand.”
“Ready-made,” he murmured.
Dobbins had decorated the top of his chiffonier with two photographs and Myron examined them. One was a group picture of four persons; a woman rather thin and angular but with a kind and sweet face, a girl of some fourteen years, awkward and staring, and two younger girls, the littlest perhaps six. All were dressed in their finest and all, at least to Myron’s sophisticated sight, were dowdy. He concluded that the persons were Dobbins’ mother and sisters. The second photograph was a more ambitious affair and showed a man of about forty years. He had a square, much seamed face from which two keen eyes looked straight at the beholder. A funny little patch of beard adorned the chin and above it a wide mouth was drawn severely down at the corners. In the photograph the man looked stern and hard and even cross, Myron thought, but there was something nice about the countenance in spite of that, something suggesting that behind the weathered face were clean thoughts and kindliness.
“That’s the Spruce Gum King,” he reflected. “I guess if he hadn’t been scared at the camera he’d have looked rather a fine old chap, in spite of the little bunch of whiskers. He looks something like Dobbins, too: same sort of eyes and – and same expression about the chin. Only Dobbins is more lazy and good-natured, I guess.”
Later, his trunks came – there were two of them – and he had the expressman set them behind the door, one atop the other. There was no sense in opening them, for his kit-bag provided all he needed for the night. By that time it was nearing the supper hour and there was a rustling in the leaves of the lindens and the air was cooler. He told himself that whether Dobbins ever returned was nothing to him, and yet he found himself listening for the other’s heavy tread in the corridor. He wondered where Dobbins had gone, and rather resented his absence. The magazine which he had been reading beside the open window ceased to hold his attention and he glanced at his watch. A quarter to six. The supper hour was six o’clock. He had looked that up in his copy of the school catalogue. And you ate in Alumni Hall, which, as the plan of the school showed, was the building on the extreme left of the line. Finally Myron stripped to his waist and had a good splurge with soap and water. Some kindly soul had supplied a towel and it wasn’t until he was through using it that he saw the inscription “Dobbins” on one end.
“Well, how was I to know?” he grumbled. “Maybe I’d better dig into the trunk and get out a few of my own.”
But after supper would do, and just now he was feeling decidedly hungry, and washing up had refreshed him and made life look more pleasant. He hoped there would be something fit to eat, but he didn’t expect it. He was getting back into his clothes when the approach of his temporary room-mate was announced from some distance down the hall by the clump-clump of heavy shoes. Dobbins was peculiarly ungentle with doors. He flung them open and didn’t care what happened to them afterwards. In the present case the door crashed back against the trunks behind it with a most annoying bang, but Dobbins didn’t appear to have heard it. He was strangely attired, was Dobbins, and Myron, one arm in his shirt, gazed in astonishment and for a moment forgot to go on with his dressing.
A faded yellowish-brown jersey with half of the left sleeve missing and the other torn and mended – and torn and not mended – was surmounted by a canvas football jacket held together down the front with a black shoe-lace and a piece of twine. The jacket was so old and stained that Myron could easily believe it an heirloom, something handed down through generations of football-playing Dobbinses! A pair of rather new khaki pants, woollen stockings of brown twice ringed with light blue that well matched the jersey in condition, and scuffed and scarred football shoes completed the costume. Dobbins’ hair was every which way and there was more or less dirt on his broad countenance through which the perspiration had flowed in little rivulets with interesting results.
“Hello, kiddo!” Dobbins greeted jovially. “How’s the grouch coming on? Say, they’ve got a swell gridiron here; two or three of ’em, in fact. Wonderful turf. It’s a pleasure to fall on it, honest! Hear from your old man yet?”
“Hardly,” replied Myron drily. “What have you been doing?”
“Me? Sweating, son, mostly. Practising football some, too.”
“Oh! I didn’t know you played.”
“Me? That guy Camp and I wrote the rules! Looks like we had enough fellers to build forty teams. Must have been ’most a thousand of ’em over there. Every time I turned around I trod on some one. You didn’t go over, eh?”
“No, I – I was busy. Besides, I didn’t know they were holding practice today. I supposed they’d start tomorrow.”
“Been at it three days already, I hear. Got a coach here that looks like he knew his business, Foster. Ever try football?”
“I’ve played some,” answered Myron, with a smile that seemed to combine patience and pity. “I expect to go out for it when I get settled somewhere.”
“Still thinking of leaving, are you? You’re going to lose a mighty good school, son. I sure do like this place. Well, I’ve got a hunger like a river-boss. Guess I’ll get back to store clothes and find the trough. You going now?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well, tell ’em to save a little of everything for me.” Dobbins’ voice came muffled from above the basin in the bedroom, and Myron, remembering the towel, hurried out.
CHAPTER IV
MYRON DECIDES TO STAY
At dining hall it appeared that places had not yet been assigned and Myron was conducted to a seat between a large, stout youth who seemed afflicted with asthma and a shy, red-cheeked boy who promptly upset his glass of milk when Myron asked for the biscuits. Rather to his surprise, the food was excellent and plentiful. There were many tables, each seating ten boys, and most of them were filled when Myron reached the hall. There was a good deal of noise, as was natural when nearly four hundred normally healthy boys were being fed. At Myron’s table no one appeared to be acquainted with any one else and in consequence there was little conversation. The asthmatic youth wheezily ventured a remark, but Myron’s reply was not encouraging and the youth gave all his attention again to dropping bits of biscuit in his stewed pears and salvaging them noisily. Myron was glad when the stout chap, finding nothing else to devour, sighed heavily and left the table. His place was filled again, however, a moment later by a clean-cut fellow of about nineteen years, a good-looking, neatly-dressed boy of what Myron mentally called his own sort. Conversation with him seemed natural and desirable, and Myron broke the ice by offering the biscuits. The newcomer accepted one, said “Thanks” politely and cast a brief and appraising glance over his neighbour.
“They’re not bad,” said Myron.
“No, they never are,” answered the other. “I wonder if you can reach the butter.”
Myron could and did. “Not up to the biscuits,” he offered.
“No? What seems to be wrong with it?”
“Too salty for me.”
“I see. Well, you’d naturally like it fresh.”
Myron shot a covert and suspicious glance at the other. It seemed to him that there had been a faint emphasis on the word “fresh.” Perhaps he had only imagined it, though, for his neighbour’s expression was quite guileless. He was leisurely buttering a portion of the biscuit and appeared to have forgotten Myron’s existence. Myron felt faintly uncomfortable and applied himself silently to his food. Across the board another chair was pushed back and, almost before its occupant was out of it, again taken. Myron observed rather annoyedly that the new occupant of the place was Dobbins. He nodded across and dropped his eyes to his plate. He hoped that Dobbins wouldn’t try to converse. Somehow, he didn’t want the chap at his right to think him a friend of Dobbins’. But Dobbins, after an approving look about the table, did just what Myron had hoped he wouldn’t do.
“How you making out, Foster?” he inquired. “Grub meeting your approval?”
“Yes, thanks,” responded Myron coldly.
“That’s good. I see you – Hello!”
“Hello,” said the boy at Myron’s right affably. “How do you feel now?”
“Great! It sure was hot, though. Bet you I dropped five pounds this afternoon. But I’ll get it back right now if they’ll give me half a chance!” Dobbins chuckled and Myron’s neighbour smiled responsively. Myron wondered how Dobbins and this chap beside him happened to be so chummy. He wondered still more when, a minute later, his neighbour changed his seat for one just vacated beside Dobbins, and entered into an animated conversation with him. Myron couldn’t catch more than an occasional word above the noise of talking and clattering dishes, but he knew that the subject of their discourse was football. He was glad when he had finished his supper and could leave the table.
There was a reception to the new students that evening at the Principal’s residence, but Myron didn’t go. What was the use, when by noon tomorrow he would have shaken the dust of Warne from his shoes and departed for a school where fellows of his station and worth were understood and appreciated? Joe Dobbins, however, attended and didn’t get back to the room in Sohmer until nearly ten o’clock, by which time Myron had exhausted all the reading matter he could find and, pyjama-clad, was sitting at a window and moodily looking out into the dimly lighted yard. Joe entered in his usual crash-bang manner and breezily skimmed his hat toward the table. It missed the table and went to the floor, where, so far as its owner was concerned, it was allowed to stay. Myron reflected that it wasn’t hard to account for the battered condition of that hat.
“Heard from your old man yet?” asked Joe, dropping into a chair and stretching his long legs across the floor.
“Meaning my father?” asked Myron stiffly.
“Yep. Has he telegraphed?”
“No, unless he’s sent a night message. He might. Sometimes he doesn’t get back from the yard until rather late.”
“Yard? What sort of yard?”
“Shipyard. He builds boats.”
“Oh, boatyard, you mean. I know a fellow in Portland has a boatyard. Makes some crackajack sloops.”
“We build ships,” corrected Myron patiently. “Battleships, passenger ships, cargo carriers and such. Some of them are whopping big ones: sixteen and eighteen thousand tons.”
“Gosh! I’d like to see that place. I suppose you’ll be going to work with him when you get through here.”
“Not exactly. I shall go through college first, of course.”
“Oh! Well, say, honest injun, Foster, do you think a college course cuts any ice with a fellow? The old man says I can go to a college – if I can get in, – but I don’t know. I wouldn’t get through until I was twenty-two or twenty-three, and seems to me that’s wasting a lot of time. What do you think?”
“Depends, I suppose, on – on the individual case. If you feel that you want to get to work in the chewing-gum factory and can’t afford to go through college – ”
“Where do you get that chewing-gum factory stuff?” asked Joe.
“Why, I thought you said your father made spruce gum.”
“No, the Lord makes it. The old man gathers it and sells it. Spruce gum is the resin of spruce trees, kiddo.”
“Oh,” said Myron vaguely. “Well, I dare say he will need you to help him gather it. In your case, Dobbins, going through college might be wasting time.”
Joe laughed.
“What’s the joke?” asked the other suspiciously.
“Well, I was having what you call a mind picture of the old man and me picking that gum. Know how many tons of the stuff he handles in a year? Nearly a hundred and thirty: about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds! He has over a hundred pickers employed, and buys a lot from fellows who pick on their own hook.”
“Oh!” said Myron. “Well, how was I to know? You distinctly said the Lord made it and your father gathered it, didn’t you?”
“That’s right; my error, kiddo – ”
“Kindly cut out that – ”
“Sorry; I forgot. Well, I don’t have to worry about college just yet, do I? We’ll see first if I can stick here long enough to get my time! I wouldn’t mind playing football on a good college team, though: Harvard or Yale or Dartmouth or one of those big ’uns.”
“Probably not,” replied Myron drily. “Nobody would. I wouldn’t myself.” Somehow he managed to convey the impression that in his case such a thing was not only possible but probable, but that for Joe to set his hopes so high was absurd. Joe’s greenish-grey eyes flickered once, but he made no comment. Instead:
“You played much?” he asked.
“Quite a bit,” answered the other carelessly. “I captained the Port Foster High team last fall.”
“Must have then! Where’d you play?”
“Position? Left half. End the year before that. What do you play?”
“Me? Oh, most anything in the line. I’m not fussy. Played tackle most of last year. Like to play guard better, though. Football’s a great game, isn’t it?”
“Not bad,” acknowledged Myron. “By the way, who was the fellow you were so thick with at supper tonight?”
“Him? Name’s Keith or something. Played on last year’s team and was coaching the linemen today. Nice guy. Bet he can play, too.”
“Looked rather light to me,” commented Myron.
“Think so? Maybe. Anyway, he knows how to drill the line, or I’m a Dutchman. What time is it? I’m getting sleepy. You weren’t over at the party, were you?”
“No, it didn’t interest me. As I’m not going to stay, why be bored by that sort of thing?”
“Hm,” said Joe.
“What’s ‘Hm’ mean?”
“Nothing. Just thinking. Say, what’s your objection to this place, Foster? If it’s just me, why, say, I’ll get out gladly. Fellow I met tonight told me he has a dandy room in the village. I’m not fussy about living on the campus.”
“Oh, it isn’t just that,” said Myron. “I don’t like the – the atmosphere here.”
“Well, it is sort of close tonight, but I guess it would be anywhere in this part of the country. September’s likely to – ”
“I wasn’t referring to the air,” corrected the other loftily. “I used the word in its other sense.”
“Didn’t know it had another sense,” said Joe cheerfully. “All right. But I was just thinking that if you had to have this place to yourself I could beat it, and no hard feelings.”
“They’d stick some one else in here, I guess. Besides, I wouldn’t want to put you out. After all, you’ve got as much right here as I have, I suppose.” That statement had a rather dubious sound, however, and again Joe’s eyes flickered and the very ghost of a smile hovered for an instant about the corners of his wide mouth.
“Yeah, but the next chap might be more your style, Foster. I’m sort of rough-and-ready, I guess. Don’t run much to etiquette and wouldn’t know what to do in one of those silk collars you wear. I should think they’d make your neck awfully warm.” And Joe ran a finger around inside his own very low linen collar apprehensively.
“I hope I haven’t said anything to make you think that I – that you – ”
“Oh, no, you haven’t said anything: at least, not much: but I can see that I’d be persona non compos, or whatever the word is, around these diggings. You think it over and let me know. I guess that Hoyt guy wouldn’t mind if I got a room outside somewhere. Well, here’s where I hit the hay.”
“There’s no sense in my thinking it over,” answered Myron a bit querulously, “as I tell you I’m not going to stay here.”
“Don’t think there’s any doubt about it, eh?”
“Certainly not!”
“All right. I was only thinking that if you did stay – ”
“I haven’t the least intention of staying. I wish you’d get that fixed in your mind, Dobbins.”
“Sure! I’ll go to sleep and dream about it!”
If Myron dreamed of anything he had no recollection of having done so in the morning. He awoke in a far more cheerful frame of mind to find a cool and fragrant breeze flapping the curtain and a patch of golden sunlight lying across his bed. He had slept like a log. A glance at the neighbouring bed showed that Joe Dobbins was up, although Myron’s watch proved the time to be still short of seven-thirty. From across the campus a bell was ringing loudly. It was doubtless that sound that had awakened him. Usually he turned over and had a nap before getting up, but this morning, although he buried his head in the pillow again, sleep didn’t return to him. Perhaps it was just as well, he reflected, for that telegram from his father ought to be along soon, and he would probably have a busy morning getting away. So far he had not considered what he would do in case they couldn’t take him at Kenwood. He rather hoped they could, though. It would be a big satisfaction, and an amusing one, too, to play on the Kenwood eleven and show these unappreciative fellows at Parkinson what they had missed! Myron could play football and knew it, and knew as well that in losing his services Parkinson was losing something worth while. It would be fun to say carelessly to some Parkinson fellow after he had aided Kenwood to beat her rival: “Yes, I did think of going to your school: in fact, I actually spent a night there: but they treated me rather rotten and I got out. They promised me a room to myself, you know, and then tried to make me go in with another chap. It was rather coarse work, and I told them so before I left.” Whereupon the Parkinson boy would tell it around and there’d be regrets galore.
That was a pleasing dream, and under the exciting influence of it Myron jumped out of bed and sought a bath. While he was shivering in the icy water he recalled the fact that there was such a thing as chapel or morning prayers or something, and he wondered if he was under obligations to attend that ceremony. He decided the question in the negative and, returning to his room, dressed leisurely, selecting a grey tie with a yellow figure and a yellow handkerchief with a narrow grey border. The bell had long since ceased its clamour and peace had settled over the yard. Dressed, he went downstairs. In the corridor, close by the entrance, was a notice board and a letter rack. He didn’t bother to peruse the few notices nor would he have paid any attention to the rack had his fleeting glance not been arrested by the sight of a buff envelope. He stopped and looked more closely. It was a telegram and, yes, it was addressed to Myron W. Foster, Parkinson School, Warne, Mass. In blue pencil was “S 17.”
At last! He took it to the entrance and paused on the top step in the sunlight and tore off an end of the envelope very carefully. Then he withdrew the folded sheet of buff paper and with a satisfied smile began to read it. But the smile vanished in the next instant and, although he read the message through a second and even a third time, he could not make the sense of it correspond with his expectation.
“Your mother and I very sorry about your room letter from school arrived after your departure explaining satisfactorily Think you had better stay there however for the present and arrange for single suite when same can be had Love from us both Father.”