Part 5 (1/2)
It was nine o'clock, one night two weeks after the day when John Thorwald, better known as Thor, the Prodigious Prodigy, so mysteriously produced by Hicks, had stolidly paralyzed old Bannister by unemotionally stating his decision to play no more football. Since then, to quote the Phillyloo Bird, ”Bannister has staggered around the ring like a prizefighter with the Referee counting off ten seconds and trying to fight again before he takes the count.” In truth, the students had made a fatal mistake in building all their hopes of victory on that blond giant, Thor; seeing his wonderful prowess, and beholding how, in the first week of the season, the Norwegian Colossus had ripped to shreds the Varsity line which even the heavy Ballard eleven of the year before could not batter, it was but natural that the enthusiastic youths should think of the Champions.h.i.+p chances in terms of Thor. For one week, enthusiasm and excitement soared higher and higher, and then, to use a phrase of fiction, everything fell with a dull, sickening thud!
In vain did Coach Corridan, the staff of a.s.sistant Coaches, Captain Butch Brewster, and others strive to resuscitate football spirit; nightly ma.s.s-meetings were held, and enough perfervid oratory hurled to move a Russian fortress, but to no avail. It was useless to argue that, without Thor, Bannister had an eleven better than that of last year, which so nearly missed the Champions.h.i.+p. The campus had seen the ma.s.sive Thor's prodigies; they knew he could not be stopped, and to attempt to arouse the college to concert pitch over the eleven, with that mountain of muscle blotting out vast sections of scenery, but not in football togs, was not possible.
”One thing is sure,” spoke Dad Pendleton seriously, gazing gloomily from the window, ”unless we get Thor in the line-up for the Big Games, our last hope of the Champions.h.i.+p is dead and interred! And I feel sorry for the big fellow, for already the boys like him just about as much as a German loves an Englishman; yet, arguments, threats, pleadings, and logic have absolutely no effect on him. He has said 'No,' and that ends it!”
”He doesn't understand things, fellows,” defended T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., with surprising earnestness. ”Remember how bewildered he seemed at our appeal to his college spirit, and his love for his Alma Mater. We might as well have talked Choctaw to him!”
Butch Brewster, Socks Fitzpatrick, Dad Pendleton, Beef McNaughton, Deacon Radford, Monty Merriweather, and Shad Fishpaw well remembered that night after Thor's tragic decision, when they--part of a Committee formed of the best athletes from all teams, and the most representative collegians of old Bannister, had invaded Thor's room in Creighton Hall, to wrestle with the recalcitrant Hercules. Even as Hicks spoke, they visioned it again.
A cold, cheerless room, bare of carpet or pictures, with just the study-table, bed, and two chairs. At the study-table, his huge bulk sprawling on, and overflowing, a frail chair, they had found the ma.s.sive John Thorwald laboriously reading aloud the Latin he had translated, literally by the sweat of his brow. The blond Colossus, impatient at the interruption, had shaken his powerful frame angrily, and with no regard for campus tradition, had addressed the uppercla.s.smen in a growl: ”Well, what do you want? Hurry up, I've got to study.”
And then, to state it briefly, they had worked with (and on) the stolid Thorwald for two hours. They explained how his decision to play no more football would practically kill old Bannister's hopes of the Champions.h.i.+p, would a.s.sa.s.sinate football spirit on the campus, and cause the youths to condemn Thor, and to ostracise him. Waxing eloquent, Butch Brewster had delivered a wonderful speech, pleading with John Thorwald to play the game. He tried to show that obviously uninterested mammoth that, like the Hercules he so resembled, he stood at the parting of the ways.
”You are on the threshold of your college career, old man!” he thundered impressively, though he might as well have tried to shoot holes in a battles.h.i.+p with a pop-gun, ”What you do now will make or break you. Do you want the fellows as friends or as enemies; do you want comrades.h.i.+p, or loneliness and ostracism? You have it in your power to do twothings, to win the Champions.h.i.+p for your Alma Mater, and to win to yourself the entire student-body, as friends; will you do that, and build a firm foundation for your college years, or betray your Alma Mater, and gain the enmity of old Bannister!”
Followed more fervid periods, with such phrases as, ”For your Alma Mater,”
”Because of your college spirit,” ”For dear old Bannister,” and ”For the Gold and Green!” predominating; all of which terms, to the stolid, unimaginative Thorwald being fully as intelligible as Hindustani. They appealed to him not to betray his Alma Mater; they implored him, for his love of old Bannister; they besought him, because of his college spirit; and all the time, for all that the Prodigious Prodigy understood, they might as well have remained silent.
”I will tell you something,” spoke Thor, at last, with an air of impatient resignation, ”and don't bother me again, please! I have come to Bannister College to get an education, and I have the right to do so, without being pestered. I pay my bills, and I am ent.i.tled to all the knowledge I can purchase. I look from my window, and I see boys, whose fathers are toiling, sacrificing, to send them here. Instead of studying, to show their grat.i.tude, they loaf around the campus, or in their rooms, tw.a.n.ging banjos and guitars, singing silly songs, and sky-larking. I don't know what all this rot is you are talking of; 'college spirit,' 'my Alma Mater,' and so on. I do not want to play football; I do not like the game; I need the time for my study, so I will not play. Both my father and myself have labored and sacrificed to send me to college. The past five years, with one great ambition to go to college and learn, I have toiled like a galley-slave.
”And now, when opportunity is mine, do you ask me to ? You want me to loaf around, wasting precious time better spent in my studies. What do I care whether the boys like me, or hate me? Bah! I can take any two of you, and knock your heads together! Their friends.h.i.+p or enmity won't move me. I shall study, learn. I will not waste time in senseless foolishness, and Iplay football again.”
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. was silent as he stood by the window of his room, gazing down at the campus where the collegians were gathering before marching to the Auditorium for the nightly ma.s.s-meeting that would vainly strive to arouse a fighting spirit in the football ”rooters.” That blithesome, heedless, happy-go-lucky youth was capable of far more serious thought than old Bannister knew; and more, he possessed the rare ability to read character; in the case of Thor, he saw vastly deeper than his indignant comrades, who beheld only the surface of the affair. They knew only that John Thorwald, a veritable Colossus, had exhibited football prowess that practically promised the State Champions.h.i.+p to old Bannister, and then--he had quit the game. They understood only that Thor refused to play simply because he did not want to, and as to why their appeals to his college spirit and his love for his Alma Mater were unheeded they were puzzled.
But the gladsome Hicks, always serious beneath his cheerful exterior, when old Bannister's interests were at stake, or when a collegian's career might be blighted, when the tragedy could be averted, fully understood. Of course, as originator of the Billion-Dollar Mystery, and producer of the Prodigious Prodigy, he knew more about the strange John Thorwald than did his mystified comrades. He knew that Thor, as he named him, was just a vast hulk of humanity, stolid, unimaginative of mind, slow-thinking, a dull, unresponsive ma.s.s, as yet unstirred by that strange, subtle, mighty thing called college spirit. He realized that Thor had never had a chance to understand the real meaning of campus life, to grasp the glad fellows.h.i.+p of the students, to thrill with a great love for his Alma Mater. All that must come in time. The blond giant had toiled all his life, had labored among men where everything was practical and grim. Small wonder, then, that he failed utterly to see why the youths ”loafed on the campus, or in their rooms, tw.a.n.ging banjos and guitars, singing silly songs, and skylarking.”
”I must save him,” murmured Hicks softly, for the others in his room were talking of Thor. ”Oh, imagine that powerful body, imbued with a vast love for old Bannister, think of Thor, thrilling with college spirit. Why, Yale's and Harvard's elevens combined could not stop his rushes, then. I must save him from himself, from the condemnation of the fellows, who just don't understand. I must, some way, awaken him to a complete understanding of college life in its entirety, but how? He is so different from Roddy Perkins, or Deke Radford.”
It seemed that the lovable Hicks was destined to save, every year of his campus career, some entering collegian who incurred the wrath, deserved or otherwise, of the students. In his Freshman first term, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., indignant at the way little Theophilus Opperd.y.k.e, the timorous, nervous ”grind,” had been alarmed at the idea of being hazed, had by a sensational escape from a room locked, guarded, and filled with Soph.o.m.ores, gained immunity for himself and the b.o.n.e.r for all time, thus winning the loyal, pathetic devotion of the Human Encyclopedia. As a Soph.o.m.ore, by crus.h.i.+ng James Roderick Perkins' Napoleonic ambition to upset tradition, and make Freshmen equal with uppercla.s.smen, Hicks had turned that aggressive youth's tremendous energy in the right channels, and made him a power for good on the campus.
And, a Junior, he had saved good Deacon Radford. When that serious youth, a famous prep. quarter, entered old Bannister, the students were wild at the thought of having him to run the Gold and Green team, but to their dismay, he refused either to report for practice or to explain his decision. Hicks, promising blithely, as usual, to solve the mystery and get Deke to play, discovered that the youth's mother, called ”Mother Peg” by the collegians, was head-waitress downtown at Jerry's and that she made her son promise not to own the relations.h.i.+p, and that while she worked to get him through college, Deacon would not play football. The inspired Hicks had gotten Mother Peg to start College Inn, and board Freshmen unable to get rooms in the dormitories, and Deacon had played wonderful football. For this achievement, the original youth failed to get glory, for he sacrificed it, and swore all concerned to secrecy.
”But Roddy and Deke were different,” reflected Hicks, pondering seriously.
”Both had been to Prep. School, and they understood college life and campus spirit. It was Roddy's tremendous ambition that had to be curbed, and Deke was the victim of circ.u.mstances. But Thorwald--it is just a problem of how to awaken in him an understanding of college spirit. The fellows don't understand him, and--”
A sudden thought, one of his inspirations, a.s.sailed the blithesome Hicks.
Why not make the fellows understand Thor? Surely, if he explained the ”Billion-Dollar Mystery,” as he humorously called it, and told why Thorwald, as yet, had no conception of college life, in its true meaning, they would not feel bitter against him; perhaps, instead, though regretful at his decision not to play the game, they would all strive to awaken the stolid Colossus, to stir his soul to an understanding of campus tradition and existence. But that would mean--”I surely hate to lose my Billion-Dollar Mystery!” grinned T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., remembering the intense indignation of his comrades at his Herman-Kellar-Thurston atmosphere of mystery, ”It is more fun than, my 'Sheerluck Holmes'
detective pose or my saengerfests. Still, for old Bannister, and for Thor.”
It would seem only a trifle for the heedless Hicks to give up his mystery, and tell Bannister all about Thor; yet, had the Hercules reconsidered, and played football, the torturesome youth would have bewildered his colleagues as long as possible, or until they made him divulge the truth. He dearly loved to torment his comrades, and this had been such an opportunity for him to promise nonchalantly to produce a Herculean full-back, then, to return to the campus with the Prodigious Prodigy in tow, and for him to perform wonders on Bannister Field, naturally aroused the interest of the youths, and he had enjoyed hugely their puzzlement, but now--
”Say, fellows,” he interrupted an excited conversation of a would-be Committee of Ways and Means to make Thor play football, ”I have an announcement to make.”
”Don't pester us, Hicks!” warned Captain Butch Brewster, grimly. ”We love you like a brother, but we'll crush you if you start any foolishness, and--”
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., with the study-table between himself and his comrades, a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of a Chautauqua lecturer, one hand resting on the table and the other thrust into the breast of his coat, and dramatically announced:
”In the Auditorium--at the regular ma.s.s-meeting tonight--T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., will give the correct explanation of Thor, the Prodigious Prodigy, and will solve the Billion-Dollar Mystery!”