Short Stories for English Courses Part 21

Then came an error of judgment--a midnight decision demanded of a f.a.gged mind--and his 0.K. was scrawled upon the first sheet of a story of embezzlement in Wall Street. By an incredible blunder the name of the fugitive cas.h.i.+er was coupled with that of the wrong bank. Publication of the Chronicle story started a terrific run on this innocent inst.i.tution, which won its libel suit against the newspaper in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars.

The managing editor, two reporters, and the copy-reader who had handled the fatal ma.n.u.script, were swept out of the building by one cyclonic order from the owner thereof. Henry Seeley accepted his indirect responsibility for the disaster in grim, manly fas.h.i.+on, and straightway sought another berth befitting his journalistic station. But his one costly slip was more than a nine-days' scandal along Park Row, and other canny proprietors were afraid that he might hit them in the very vital regions of their pockets. Worse than this, his confidence in himself had suffered mortal damage. The wear and tear of his earlier years had left him with little reserve power, and he went to pieces in the face of adverse fortune.

"Worked out at forty-five," was the verdict of his friends, and they began to pity him.

The will to succeed had been broken, but Seeley might have rallied had not his wife died during the ebb-tide of his affairs. She had walked hand in hand with him since his early twenties, her faith in him had been his mainstay, and his happiness in her complete and beautiful. Bereft of her when he stood most in need of her, he seemed to have no more fight in him, and, drifting from one newspaper office to another, he finally eddied into his old "shop"

as a drudging copy-reader and an object of sympathy to a younger generation.

There was one son, strong, bright, eager, and by dint of driving his eternally wearied brain overtime, the father had been able to send him to Yale, his own alma mater. More or less pious deception had led young Ernest Seeley to believe that his father had regained much of his old-time prestige with the Chronicle and that he had a hand in guiding its editorial destinies. The lad was a Freshman, tremendously absorbed in the activities of the autumn term, and his father was content that he should be so hedged about by the interests of the campus world as to have small time or thought for the grizzled, taciturn toiler in New York.

This was the kind of man that trudged heavily into the little German cafe of an early morning after his long night's slavery at the copy-desk. His mind, embittered and sensitive to slights like a raw nerve, was brooding over the open taunt of the night city editor, who had been an office boy under him in the years gone by.

From force of habit he seated himself at a table in the rear of the room, shunning the chance of having to face an acquaintance.

Unfolding a copy of the city edition, which had been laid on his desk damp from the press-room, Seeley scanned the front page with scowling uneasiness, as if fearing to find some blunder of his own handiwork. Then he turned to the sporting page and began to read the football news.

His son Ernest had been playing as a subst.i.tute with the university eleven, an achievement which stirred the father's pride without moving his enthusiasm. And the boy, chilled by his father's indifference, had said little about it during his infrequent visits to New York. But now the elder Seeley sat erect, and his stolid countenance was almost animated as he read, under a New Haven date line:

"The Yale confidence of winning the game with Princeton to-morrow has been shattered, and gloom enshrouds the camp of the Elis to- night. Collins, the great full-back, who has been the key-stone of Yale's offensive game, was taken to the infirmary late this afternoon. He complained of feeling ill after the signal practice yesterday; fever developed overnight, and the consulting physicians decided that he must be operated on for appendicitis without delay. His place in the Princeton game will be filled by Ernest Seeley, the Freshman, who has been playing a phenomenal game in the back-field, but who is so lacking in experience that the coaches are all at sea to-night. The loss of Collins has swung the betting around to even money instead of 5 to 3 on Yale."

The elder Seeley wiped his gla.s.ses as if not sure that he had read aright.

Ernest had seemed to him no more than a st.u.r.dy infant and here he was, on the eve of a champions.h.i.+p football battle, picked to fight for the "old blue." The father's career at Yale had been a most honorable one. He, too, had played on the eleven and had helped to win two desperate contests against Princeton. But all this belonged to a part of his life which was dead and done for. He had not achieved in after years what Yale expected of him, and his record there was with his buried memories.

Supper was forgotten while Henry Seeley wondered whether he really wanted to go to New Haven to see his boy play. Many of his old friends and cla.s.smates would be there and he did not wish to meet them.

And it stung him to the quick as he reflected:

"I should be very happy to see him win, but--but to see him whipped! I couldn't brace and comfort him. And supposing it breaks his heart to be whipped as it has broken mine? No, I won't let myself think that. I'm a poor Yale man and a worse father, but I couldn't stand going up there to-day."

Even more humiliating was the thought that he would shrink from asking leave of the city editor. Sat.u.r.day was not his "day off,"

and he so greatly hated to ask favors at the office, that the possibility of being rebuffed was more than he was willing to face.

Into his unhappy meditations broke a boisterous hail:

"Diogenes Seeley, as I live. Why, you old rascal, I thought you were dead or something. Glad I didn't get foolish and go to bed.

Here, waiter, get busy."

Seeley was startled, and he looked much more distressed than rejoiced as he lumbered from his table to grasp the outstretched hand of a cla.s.smate. The opera-hat of this Mr. Richard Giddings was c.o.c.ked at a rakish angle, his blue eye twinkled good cheer and youthful hilarity, and his aspect was utterly care-free.

"How are you, d.i.c.k?" said Seeley, with an unusual smile which singularly brightened his face. "You don't look a day older than when I last saw you. Still cutting coupons for a living?"

"Oh, money is the least of my worries," gayly rattled Mr.

Giddings. "Been doing the heavy society act to-night, and on my way home found I needed some sauerkraut and beer to tone up my jaded system. By Jove, Harry, you're as gray as a badger. This newspaper game must be bad for the nerves. Lots of fellows have asked me about you. Never see you at the University Club, n.o.body sees you anywhere. Remarkable how a man can lose himself right here in New York. Still running the Chronicle, I suppose."

"I'm still in the old shop, d.i.c.k," replied Seeley, glad to be rid of this awkward question. "But I work nearly all night and sleep most of the day, and am like a cog in a big machine that never stops grinding."

"Shouldn't do it. Wears a man out," and Mr. Giddings sagely nodded his head. "Course you are going up to the game to-day. Come along with me. Special car with a big bunch of your old pals inside.

They'll be tickled to death to find I've dug you out of your hole.

h.e.l.lo! Is that this morning's paper? Let me look at the sporting page. Great team at New Haven, they tell me. What's the latest odds? I put up a thousand at five to three last week and am looking for some more easy money."

The alert eye of the volatile Richard Giddings swept down the New Haven dispatch like lightning.

With a grievous outcry he smote the table and shouted:

"Collins out of the game? Great Scott, Harry, that's awful news.

And a green Freshman going to fill his shoes at the last minute. I feel like weeping, honest I do. Who the deuce is this Seeley? Any kin of yours? I suppose not or you would have bellowed it at me before this."

"He is my only boy, d.i.c.k," and the father held up his head with a shadow of his old manner. "I didn't know he had the ghost of a show to make the team until I saw this dispatch."

"Then, of course, you are coming up with me," roared Mr. Giddings.

"I hope he's a chip of the old block. If he has your sand they can't stop him. Jumping Jupiter, they couldn't have stopped you with an axe when you were playing guard in our time, Harry. I feel better already to know that it is your kid going in at full-back to-day."

"No, I'm not going up, d.i.c.k," said Seeley slowly. "For one thing, it is too short notice for me to break away from the office, and I--I haven't the nerve to watch the boy go into the game. I'm not feeling very fit."

"Stuff and nonsense, you need a brain cure," vociferated Richard Giddings. "You, an old Yale guard, with a pup on the team, and he a Freshman at that! Throw out your chest, man; tell the office to go to the devil--where all newspapers belong--and meet me at the station at ten o'clock sharp. You talk and look like the oldest living grad with one foot in the grave."

Seeley flushed and bit his lip. His dulled realization of what Yale had been to him was quickened by this tormenting comrade of the brave days of old, but he could not be shaken from his att.i.tude of morbid self-effacement.

"No, d.i.c.k, it's no use," he returned with a tremulous smile. "You can't budge me. But give my love to the crowd and tell them to cheer for that youngster of mine until they're blue in the face."

Mr. Richard Giddings eyed him quizzically, and surmised that something or other was gravely wrong with his grizzled cla.s.smate.

But Seeley offered no more explanations and the vivacious intruder fell to his task of demolis.h.i.+ng sauerkraut with great gusto, after which he nimbly vanished into a cruising hansom with a sense of having been rebuffed.

Seeley watched him depart at great speed and then plodded toward his up-town lodgings. His sleep was distressed with unhappy dreams, and during a wakeful interval he heard a knock at his sitting-room door.

An office boy from the Chronicle editorial rooms gave him a note and waited for an answer.

Seeley recognized the handwriting of the managing editor and was worried, for he was always expecting the worst to happen. He sighed with relieved surprise as he read:

"MY DEAR MR. SEELEY:

"Please go to New Haven as soon as possible and do a couple of columns of descriptive introduction of the Yale-Princeton game.

The sporting department will cover the technical story, but a big steamboat collision has just happened in North River, two or three hundred drowned and so on, and I need every man in the shop. As an old Yale player I am sure I can depend on you for a good story, and I know you used to do this kind of stuff in fine style."

Seeley fished his watch from under a pillow. It was after ten o'clock and the game would begin at two. While he hurried into his clothes he was conscious of a distinct thrill of excited interest akin to his old-time joy in the day's work. Could he "do this kind of stuff in fine style"? Why, before his brain had begun to be always tired, when he was the star reporter of the Chronicle, his football introductions had been cla.s.sics in Park Row. If there was a spark of the old fire left in him he would try to strike it out, and for the moment he forgot the burden of inertia which had so long crushed him.

"But I don't want to run into d.i.c.k Giddings and his crowd," he muttered as he sought his hat and overcoat. "And I'll be up in the press-box away from the mob of old grads. Perhaps my luck has turned."

When Henry Seeley reached the Yale field the eleven had gone to the dressing-rooms in the training house, and he hovered on the edge of the flooding crowds, fairly yearning for a glimpse of the Freshman full-back and a farewell grasp of his hand. The habitual dread lest the son find cause to be ashamed of his father had been shoved into the background by a stronger, more natural emotion.

But he well knew that he ought not to invade the training quarters in these last crucial moments. Ernest must not be distraught by a feather's weight of any other interest than the task in hand. The coaches would be delivering their final words of instruction and the old Yale guard could picture to himself the tense absorption of the scene. Like one coming out of a dream, the past was returning to him in vivid, heart-stirring glimpses. Reluctantly he sought his place in the press-box high above the vast amphitheatre.

The preliminary spectacle was movingly familiar: the rippling banks of color which rose on all sides to frame the long carpet of chalked turf; the clamorous outbursts of cheering when an eddy of Yale or Princeton undergraduates swirled and tossed at command of the dancing dervish of a leader at the edge of the field below; the bright, buoyant aspect of the mult.i.tude as viewed en ma.s.se.

Seeley leaned against the railing of his lofty perch and gazed at this pageant until a sporting editor, long in harness, nudged his elbow and said:

"h.e.l.lo! I haven't seen you at a game in a dozen years. Doing the story or just working the press-badge graft? That namesake of yours will be meat for the Tigers, I'm afraid. Glad he doesn't belong to you, aren't you?"

Seeley stared at him like a man in a trance and replied evasively:

"He may be good enough. It all depends on his sand and nerve. Yes, I am doing the story for a change. Have you the final line-up?"