When Barclay laid aside the letter, his long and ascetic face held an expression of enthusiastic delight. The one dissipation and hobby of Barclay’s studious existence was checkers. He held a college-wide reputation as a “grind” of the most pronounced type. Barclay did not look down on the usual pleasures and frolics of the undergraduate; they simply had for him no appeal. He had nothing against football or baseball or track athletics; but he felt no enthusiasm for any of them.
Of course he was always glad when the college teams won; he was “patriotic” to a high degree, and sometimes, when the bonfires burned and the students cheered and sang, he acknowledged a wish, lying deep down in his heart, that he, too, might be able to derive pleasurable emotions from such celebrations. Barclay, in short, loved Xenophanes and Xenophon; and next to them, checkers.
Before he went to bed that night he answered the Yale man’s letter; indorsed the project voluminously; pledged immediate cooperation, and remained fraternally his, Simonides P. Barclay.
I have no intention of specifying in detail the steps which resulted in the formation of the Intercollegiate Checkers Association. Barclay and Larkin wrote to each other at least every other day, and at the end of three weeks the matter was settled—not, perhaps, just as they had hoped for. Barclay had labored heroically to find a membership for the Checkers Club, but without avail. None wanted to join. Many scoffed, and instead of enthusiasm, he awakened only ridicule. And the Yale man reported like results. So when the rival teams met in a private room in Young’s Hotel one December day, they consisted of just Larkin, Yale, ’99, and Barclay.
The tournament was held behind tightly closed doors; consequently I am unable to report the play for the reader’s benefit. Enough that deep silence and undoubted skill held sway until dusk, at which time the two teams passed into the dining-hall and ate a dinner, at which much good feeling was displayed by both, and at which the day’s play was rehearsed scientifically, from oysters to coffee. The teams then shook hands and parted at the entrance.
Barclay boarded a car and returned to college, filled with overwhelming triumph. He had won three out of the seven games and drawn two. The checkers championship rested with Harvard!
Such a spirit of jubilation possessed Barclay that when he reached his unadorned room and had changed his gold-rimmed glasses for his reading spectacles, he found that Greek for once did not satisfy. He tried light reading in the form of a monograph on the origin of Greek drama, but even then his attention wandered continually. He laid down the book, wiped his glasses thoughtfully and frowned at the green lamp-shade. Plainly something was wrong; but what? He pondered deeply for several minutes. Then his brow cleared, and he settled his “specs” over his lean nose again; he had found the trouble.
“The victory,” said Barclay, soberly, to the lamp-shade, “demands a celebration!”
The more he thought of it the more evident it appeared that the day’s triumph over the Yale Checkers Club deserved some sort of a public jubilee. He might, considered Barclay, put his head out of the window and cheer. But he wasn’t sure that he knew how. Or he might shoot off a revolver—if he had one. Or he might start a bonfire—ah, that was it; a bonfire! The idea appealed strongly to him; and he remembered that as a boy on a New Hampshire farm bonfires had ever moved him strangely.
He arose and thrust his feet into a pair of immense overshoes, tied a muffler about his long neck, donned his worn ulster, turned down the lamp, and passed out of the room. Yes, he would celebrate with a bonfire. A victory over Yale at checkers was quite as important in Barclay’s estimation as a triumph over the blue-stockinged football warriors.