“I’ll count on you, then, in the election. Of course, I don’t want the office, but we can’t have those fellows running things to suit themselves all the time. It’s contrary to the whole spirit of the place. I wish you’d see Lord and Kendrick and get them with us. They’d bring others.”
“I’ll do all I can,” said Sam, cordially.
CHAPTER VII
MR. WORLDLY WISEMAN
The blow fell; Hillbury routed the Seaton eleven with ease. Sam had his mother and twelve-year-old sister down for the occasion. They came gay-trimmed and expectant, surveyed the room with critical but forgiving eyes, took luncheon at the Sedgwicks’, saw the game, and departed by an evening train, witnessing with unsympathetic curiosity the noisy antics of the victors as they trooped to their special. Duncan happened in at 7 Hale while the visitors were there. He had the courtesy to hide any indifference which he may have felt to the Archer family. As a result, Mrs. Archer found him most agreeable, and she gave cordial expression to her opinion that Sam had been fortunate in his room-mate. Peck listened politely and made an acceptable response, but Sam, with a haste which surprised his dear mother, switched the conversation to another track.
After his guests had departed Sam returned to his room and fell to brooding on the disappointments of life. Being new to the school and loyal, he was sensitive to the humiliation of the defeat by Hillbury; he likewise felt his loneliness in the big school in which he knew so many slightly and cared especially for no one who cared for him. His relations with Duncan kept him at a distance from Duncan’s friends. In spite of his championship of Mulcahy he did not find that young man wholly satisfying as a companion. The temptation to find relief in wrong ways came up before him in a vaguely attractive form, not strong enough to upset his moral balance, but effectively adding to his sense of isolation. John Fish in the room below had planned to celebrate the victory. The victory failing, John had resigned himself to celebrating defeat. He did this by stealing out of town to a neighboring city, whence he would steal back in the early morning with gross boasts of his achievements ready for trustworthy ears. John Fish was one of those who never refuse themselves what they crave if gratification is possible. He was too coarse and too vulgar to exert a winning influence on Archer, but the thought of him to-night gave a pessimistic trend to our young man’s philosophy. He looked abroad through blue spectacles upon a world of injustice in which the wicked triumphed. There was Birdie Fowle, who never did anything worse than make a noise or throw water out of a window, and yet was deep in Mr. Alsop’s bad books; the wise ones declared that Birdie wouldn’t last long in school. John Fish, meanwhile, went his quiet way unsuspected. Mr. Alsop always had a good word for him as an orderly and serious-minded youth; yet his sins compared to Fowle’s were as boiler plate to blotting-paper.
Sam took up his French books to get ready for Monday’s examination. Mr. Alsop was young and strenuous, a good teacher, but saturated with the conviction of his own importance, and ambitious for distinction as a driver. He boasted that he tolerated no sluggards in his courses; he prided himself on his keenness in detecting the goats before their whiskers had begun to appear. The result was that many slow-minded sheep got the credit of being goats, and many a wily old goat palmed himself off as an innocent lamb. Mr. Alsop meant well, but went wrong; and being wholly satisfied with the rectitude of his intentions, he was the last to discover the crookedness of his course. More than one unscrupulous idler, by pretending that he was struggling hard against natural inability, secured better marks than he deserved. Others—among them Sam—who said less and actually struggled more were predestined from the beginning to D’s and E’s. Sam felt that nothing short of a series of phenomenal examination books could propitiate fate. Convinced that the scales were weighted against him, he worked half-heartedly. It was with a sense of relief, after a quarter of an hour of unprofitable study on his French, that he hailed the interruption of Mulcahy.
“Plugging to-night?” asked the caller, in a tone of surprise, as he dropped indolently into a comfortable chair and hoisted his feet to the top of a table.
“It’s got to be done,” replied Sam; “why not to-night?”
“Because on the night of a Hillbury game nobody expects to do anything. If we had won, you’d have been out all the evening celebrating.”