“I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said, avoiding Mr. Adams’s eye. “I’m just a little off my feed. I shall be all right by to-night.”
“It’s always better to attend to these things at the outset,” rejoined the teacher. “The doctor wouldn’t hurt you.”
“I don’t want him!” persisted Roger, fretfully. “He’d just stir me up.”
Mr. Adams observed him with curiosity. Here was a childish unreasonableness which he had never before seen in Roger Hardie. “I’ll wait till to-night, then. Isn’t there something Mrs. Adams or I could do to make you more comfortable? Shouldn’t you like something to read, or some one to read to you?”
Roger thanked him, but thought he should take a little nap and then perhaps go for a walk. So Mr. Adams was induced to leave, and Roger lay back on his couch, with eyes staring wide open and thoughts pounding hard. He had staved off the doctor for a time at least.
As he lay there assuring himself that nothing could be the matter with his heart and that he should certainly be quite well by night, reviling himself for being such a fool as to fall ill on the eve of a race and vowing that he would row anyway, Dunn came softly in on new rubber-soled shoes. He was going to Cambridge to see the Harvard-Princeton game, but before he went he wanted to express his sympathy and offer consolation. Dunn did not use these trite expressions nor did he talk like a phrase book of etiquette, but he meant well and Roger understood him. The consolation took the form of a lurid, six weeks’ novel which Dunn commended as “pretty fair.” An hour with this pretty fair tale of Jason’s lending was about all Roger could stand; he threw it down gladly when Mike appeared to invite him to go out and watch the game between the Weary-Willies and the Easy-Resters which Mike was to umpire.
He fared forth, therefore, with Mike, and established himself at the shady end of the players’ bench, prepared to be quietly amused. Dickie Sumner thrust a sheet of paper and a pencil into his hand and bade him keep score. It was a great game and most amusing, but totally devoid of quiet. The Easy-Resters rested not at all, but tore up and down the foul lines, jeering at the battery of their opponents and abusing the umpire. The Weary-Willies answered unweariedly jeer for jeer. When, in the middle of the fifth inning, the E-R’s assaulted Mike, and, sweeping him off the field, dragged Roger out to take his place, the new umpire could not for the life of him determine whether the score stood seven to six in favor of the E-R’s or six to five for the W-W’s. So he left Mike to continue the score after his own fashion, and devoted himself to securing order on the diamond and enforcing his decisions by threats of injury from the baseball bat with which he had armed himself.
The game was over, and the players were arguing noisily about the score—Mike had made the E-R’s pay dearly for the violence offered to the sacred person of the umpire—before Roger bethought himself of his illness. He was apprised of it now by a sensation of faintness, and a startling dizziness that fell upon him suddenly and for the moment frightened him with the fear that he was the victim of one of the “spells” to which, as he vaguely knew, people with weak hearts are subject. But the fear was overborne by a fierce determination that surged up in a defiant flood, insisting that the undesired was the untrue. It was not his heart! His heart was as strong as any one’s, whatever his father might fancy. He would not be ill, he would row! He set his teeth and clenched his fists and steered his way straight for the house. There he threw himself into a chair in the common room, and taking up a paper, turned to the sports page, on which a reporter had given his opinion as to the probable outcome of the schoolboy races. Newbury was picked for first place, with a good fighting chance for Bainbridge Latin,—both coached by Lanning. Westcott’s was the best of the Caffrey crews, but did not look like a winner; the Back Bay boys rowed in good form, but they lacked the power of the big men in the other boats. While form was unquestionably an important element in the success of a crew, mere style could never take the place of endurance and strength.
So much Roger at last comprehended after several readings and with much effort to control his trembling hands and wavering eyes. He put down the paper in disgust, and resting his heavy head on his hand, mingled in a dizzy confusion despairing self-reproach and genuine prayers for help.
The dizziness had worn off, but the weakness still remained, and the consciousness of this weakness undermined the props of determination as fast as they were set up. The boys were gathering for dinner; they threw curious and not unsympathetic glances at the disconsolate figure in the lounging chair, and talked in tones uncommonly subdued of the effect Hardie’s illness would have on the chances of the crew. Presently Felton came in from the long corridor, surveyed the room, and catching sight of Hardie in the chair slapped him roughly on the shoulder.