“No, I don’t. I did, but I don’t want to any more.”
Mulcahy, disappointed here, had other forms of amusement. That afternoon Sam dropped in at the Sedgwicks’ to call, and allowed himself to be persuaded to stay to dinner, at which meal he proved to his own satisfaction that the disasters of the day had not affected his appetite. Afterward he lingered in the society of Mrs. Sedgwick and Miss Margaret as long as it seemed decent, and departed for his room reasonably comforted in mind. As he crossed the street, in the rear of the Academy buildings, two familiar figures appeared opposite him under a gaslight and got away quickly into the darkness. They were John Fish and Mulcahy, each with an overcoat on his arm.
The next day John Fish was at church, wedged into the corner of a pew. He slept during most of the service. Mulcahy stayed in his room; his report next day informed the authorities that he had been suffering from an attack of indigestion. Fish took a long nap in the afternoon. He told Mr. Alsop, as they walked to dinner together, that he liked to pass Sunday quietly. Mulcahy was well enough to be present at the Christian Fraternity in the evening.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CHALLENGE
The Christmas vacation brought Sam a chance to consider his school experiences away from the school atmosphere. He did this in part deliberately, in part by an unconscious process of comparison of school standards with home standards, the hard facts of student life with the fine and high ideals of his father and mother. Certain phases of schoolboy morality he talked over with Mr. Archer, who, pleased to receive the confidence of his son, met frankness with frankness and cleared Sam’s mind of many a harassing doubt. The quiet trust of his parents braced the boy strongly against the influence of evil.
Sam went back to school resolved that if he could not have the intimacy of the best he would at least not associate with the worst; if he could not be popular with those whom he respected, he would not seek the favor of those whom he could not respect. He was convinced that he was not marked for great distinction in his school career. He might, by keeping eternally at it, in course of time make a fair showing as a hurdler; he could always get good marks in mathematics and history; he could maintain friendly relations with a good many fellows. More than this, however, was not to be hoped for. He could not, if he would, go on a still-hunt for honors after the calculating fashion with which Mulcahy was scheming to gain possession of the Yale Cup. He was not made that way.
The work of the winter was for Sam uneventful and plodding. He toiled with sullen aversion on his French, with devotion on his Greek, with calm satisfaction on his mathematics and history, with resignation on his other subjects. In the gymnasium he practised pole-vaulting; and on the wooden track outside, with Collins’s assistance, he struggled with dashes and starts and hurdles, and met discouragement with a laugh. He managed also to find free intervals for a little reading. On the whole the laborious life proved not unpleasant, and time slipped rapidly away.
Besides himself, Jones and Mulcahy were the chief exponents of the art of pole-vaulting. Jones was the star of the school, brilliant and unapproachable. He could do ten feet whenever he wanted to, and was deemed capable of very much better performances. Mulcahy started with nine feet, and Sam with eight feet six. After a month’s work, Mulcahy had climbed to nine three and Sam to nine feet. They practised at different times, but each listened greedily to reports of the other’s progress, and while openly depreciating his own powers, hoped from day to day to discover the precious knack of combining spring and throw, which would put him well ahead of his rival. Mulcahy was handicapped by his weight, Sam by his length and slowness.
The intimacy between the two was lapsing. The process was slow, because Sam was too good-natured to quarrel openly and Mulcahy too thick-skinned to be sensitive to ordinary chilliness of treatment. Sam put himself to some inconvenience to be absent from his room when he thought Mulcahy might call; he likewise cultivated a friendship with Kendrick, whom Mulcahy disliked. In time Mulcahy awoke to the fact that Archer’s neglect was intentional, and accepted the rebuff as he would have accepted the final refusal of an expected purchaser to take a book. While there was no open break between them, Sam shrewdly suspected that to reject Mulcahy as a friend was to invite him as an enemy.