Part 10 (1/2)

I am sorry, John, but there seems nothing to do but for you to leave college and work. For your mother's sake, I wish we could avoid it; but we must wait and work and tackle it again. Your first term expenses are paid, so stay until the term is out. Perhaps Mr. Hicks can give you a job in one of his steel mills again, but we must work our own way, son. Don't lose courage, we'll fight this out together with the memory of your promise to your dying mother to spur you on. The road may be long and rocky but we'll make it. Just work and save, and in a year or two you can start at college again. You can study at night, too, and keep on learning.

I'll write later. Stay at college till the term is up, and in the meantime try to land a job. However, you won't have any trouble to do that. Keep your nerve, boy, for your mother's sake. It's a hard blow, but we'll weather it, never fear, and reach port.

Your father,

JOHN THORWALD, SR.

P.S. I am sailing on the Valkyrie today, will write you on my return to New York, in a few weeks.

Theophilus looked at the ma.s.sive young Norwegian, who had taken this solar-plexus blow with that same stolid apathy that characterized his every action. He wanted to offer sympathy, but he knew not how to reach Thor. He fully understood how terrific the blow was, how it must stagger the big, earnest Freshman, just as he, after ten years of grinding toil, of sacrifice, of grim, unrelenting determination, had conquered obstacles and fought to where he had a clear track ahead. Just as it seemed that fate had given him a fair chance, with his father rescued and five thousand dollars to give him a college course, this terrible misfortune had befallen him.

Theophilus realized what it must mean to this huge, silent Hercules, just making good his promise to his dying mother, to give up his studies, and go back to work, toil, labor, to begin all over again, to put off his college years.

”Leave me, please,” said Thor dully, apparently as unmoved by the blow as he had been by Theophilus' appeal. ”I--I would like to be alone, for awhile.”

Left alone, John Thorwald stood by the window, apparently not thinking of anything in particular, as he gazed across the brightly lighted Quad. The huge Freshman seemed in a daze--utterly unable to comprehend the disaster that had befallen him; he was as stolid and impa.s.sive as ever, and Theophilus might have thought that he did not care, even at having to give up his college course, had not the Senior known better.

Across the Quadrangle, from the room of the Caruso-like Juniors, accompanied by a melodious banjo-tw.a.n.ging, drifted:

”Though thy halls we leave forever Sadly from the campus turn; Yet our love shall fail thee never For old Bannister we'll yearn!

”'Bannister, Bannister, hail, all hail!'

Echoes softly from each heart; We'll be ever loyal to thee Till we from life shall part.”

Strangely enough, the behemoth Thorwald was not thinking so much of having to give up his studies, of having to lay aside his books and take up again the implements of toil. He was not pondering on the cruelty of fate in making him abandon, at least temporarily, his goal; instead, his thoughts turned, somehow, to his experiences at old Bannister, to the football scrimmages, the noisy sessions in ”Delmonico's Annex,” the college dining-hall, to the skylarking he had often watched in the dormitories. He thought, too, of the happy, care-free youths, remembering Hicks, good Butch Brewster, loyal little Theophilus; and as he reflected, he heard those Juniors, over the way, singing. Just now they were chanting that exquisitely beautiful Hawaiian melody, ”Aloha Oe,” or ”Farewell to Thee,”

making the words tell of parting from their Alma Mater. There was something in the refrain that seemed to break down Thor's wall of reserve, to melt away his aloofness, and he caught himself listening eagerly as they sang.

Somehow he felt no desire to condemn those care-free youths, to call their singing silly foolishness, to say they were wasting their time and their fathers' money. Queer, but he actually liked to hear them sing, he realized he had come to listen for their saengerfests. Now that he had to leave college, for the first time he began to ponder on what he must leave. Not alone books and study, but--

As he stood there, an ache in his throat, and an awful sorrow overwhelming him, with the richly blended voices of the happy Juniors drifting across to him, chanting a song of old Ballard, big Thor murmured softly:

”What did little Theophilus say? What was it Shakespeare wrote? Oh, I have it:

”'This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong-- To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.'”

CHAPTER X

THOR'S AWAKENING

”There's a hole in the bottom of the sea, And we'll put Bannister in that hole!

In that hole--in--that--hole-- Oh, we'll put Bannister in that hole!”

”In the famous words of the late Mike Murphy,” said T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., ”the celebrated Yale and Penn track trainer, 'you can beat a team that can't be beat, but--you can't beat a team that won't be beat!' Latham must be in the latter cla.s.s.”

It was the Bannister-Latham game, and the first half had just ended.

Captain Butch Brewster's followers had trailed dejectedly from Bannister Field to the Gym, where Head Coach Corridan was flaying them with a tongue as keen as the two-edged sword that drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. A cold, bleak November afternoon, a leaden sky lowered overhead, and a chill wind swept athwart the field; in the concrete stands, the loyal ”rooters” of the Gold and Green, or of the Gold and Blue, s.h.i.+vered, stamped, and swung their arms, waiting for the excitement of the scrimmage again to warm them. Yet, the Bannister cohorts seemed silent and discouraged, while the Latham supporters went wild, singing, cheering, howling. A look at the score-board explained this:

END OF FIRST HALF: SCORE: Bannister ........ 0 Latham ........... 3