“They will be stated fully at the meeting of the committee which I shall call,” answered John, recovering himself. “I merely desired to give you notice that I had received the protest.”
He turned and bent his steps toward his allies at the dressing rooms, driving two urchins in flight before him. Long before his pompous strut brought him to the Newbury end of the locker building, the two young scouts had burst in among the Westcott players with a whoop and a yell, had gathered about them in a trice an elbowing crush of the dressed and half-dressed, and with mutual support and interruption, were devoting themselves to the delectable task of relating the news. The audience listened wild-eyed, questioned, and exploded in exclamations. When the fire of questions slackened and the exclamations began to pop, Dunn seized his suit-case and silently stole away. This crowd was no place for him.
CHAPTER XI
A FRUITLESS INTERVIEW
When the Westcott boys gathered Monday morning at the corner outside the school building, every third comer bore a newspaper in his hand and hot indignation in his heart. Only those who did not read the papers, and had not learned the news which Mike and Dickie brought to the quarters, wore the complacent smile which they had carried from the field on Saturday.
President John’s friends, the reporters, had done their work thoroughly. While most of the Sunday journals merely announced the result of the game, or gave a few inches of space to a more or less inaccurate description, the Trumpeter and the Mail each sacrificed to it the best part of a column on the page devoted to sports, introduced by heavy headlines such as: WESTCOTT’S KNEW THE SIGNALS. SENSATIONAL CHARGES AGAINST BACK BAY BOYS. GAME PROTESTED. INTERVIEW WITH PRES. SMITH! From the interview it appeared that President John saw the affair in a very serious light; that the league stood for the highest ideals in sport,—a familiar phrase in the mouth of its president,—and would certainly deal sternly with dishonorable practices of any kind. A special meeting of the managing committee of the league was to be called immediately to consider the protest. If the charge should be sustained, clearly the only fair course would be to declare the game forfeited to Newbury, the score to stand on the record as one to nothing.
To say that the Westcott lads felt indignant at being thus advertised as unscrupulous cheats when they knew themselves absolutely innocent, is like describing a raving maniac as the victim of hallucination. They boiled and bubbled with rage. If President John had shown himself at the corner of Otway Street at that moment, they would have flown to mob him, though every bell in the Westcott school were clanging in their ears. But as the exalted official did not present himself to be mobbed, and the school gong did ring, they filed obediently in, and taking their seats, brooded in sullen bitterness on the outrage. A boy’s sense of justice—or, as some one has better expressed it, sense of injustice—is always morbidly keen. The boys at Westcott’s were used to a life in which the good things flowed in on them naturally, with few questions as to whether they were deserved or undeserved. Good behavior, fair work, regard for their parents’ wishes, constituted the price they were expected to pay; even on this discounts were sometimes allowed. Flat over-riding of just rights had entered into their experience as little as physical hardship. They reared against the blow like a young, high-spirited horse which feels for the first time the sting of a cruel whip.
After the morning Scripture reading, to which, it is to be feared, few gave heed, Mr. Westcott called Harrison and Wilmot into his office, where he kept them for a quarter of an hour. The other football men, if they could have had their hearts’ desire, would have sat outside the office, matching expletives, until their comrades should come forth and give them the history of the interview. This being for obvious reasons impossible, the excited lads kept their curiosity under control and went about their morning tasks with what interest they could muster,—wrestling, nauseated, with the dullness of Burke on Conciliation, abusing good English by turning it into worse than peasant German, and finding Cicero’s maledictions on Catiline but weak and watery dilutions compared with the things they could say of President John Smith. Dunn alone of those especially concerned studied that morning with absolute diligence; he did this in self-defence, to keep his thoughts from a subject—more disagreeable than lessons—to which they would wander if his grip upon them slackened but a moment.
At the lunch hour the ban was raised. A crowd packed itself about Harrison and Wilmot as soon as the two got within the lunch-room door, demanding news, and news condensed. “What did he say? What are you going to do?” was the burden of the questions, but they fell like a hailstorm in various forms and at various angles, from scores of lips at once. Harrison was staggered, but not Wilmot, whose nimble wit served an ever nimble tongue.
“He says we’ve disgraced the school,” said Wilmot, with a tragic gesture. “We’ve got to go to Mr. Smith and apologize and—”