Up the Street/Chapter 3

Hector's housekeeper, who disapproved only of dust, cigar ashes, and girls, ushered the visitor into his study at fifty-nine minutes past two. They found him scribbling squares and circles on the blank pages at the back of a loose-leaf notebook labeled "History 8a."

"Why, Hector!" exclaimed the searcher after wisdom. "I didn't suppose that silly system had to do with mathematics!"

"This isn't mathematics. Sit down, won't you?"

"It looks like geometry," declared Eleanor, taking the only chair not preempted by calfskin bindings. "It surely isn't history—unless it's one of those war maps full of hollow squares and things."

Hector laughed, and pushed the notebook across the desk.

"When I came to run over the notes," he said, "I found a diagram of a trick play from regular formation, so I was working it out. Like everything else on paper—from trick plays to high finance—I don't see how you can stop it."

"I never could understand you at all," she conceded frankly. "When you have those tortoise-rimmed glasses on, you look as though you thought in Sanskrit, and didn't know a football from an ostrich egg—and when you take them off, you look like a composite photograph of all the college posters from the year one. You're a regular trust, aren't you? How did you ever manage to do it?"

"It certainly isn't altogether my fault," he owned. "I can't explain how I did it. It came as natural to play football as it did to study history. Do you follow football? You see, in this play the quarter back stands as close to center as he can get"

"The quarter back? That duck's egg thing?"

Hector nodded.

"I can't draw a free-hand circle and get it round—can you? Yes, the quarter back's the duck's egg. Now, each of these men follows the dotted line. Right half back smashes into the line as a blind—it looks like a simple delayed pass. Left half goes out here, very wide. Full back is outside him, and a little behind. Now, if the end was pulled in by the fake line plunge, left half has a clear field. As a matter of fact, the end won't be pulled in, probably. He'll hesitate, and when he sees the half back carrying the ball, apparently without interference, he'll dive for him. Well—the half back simply passes the ball to the full back, who's still farther out in the field; puts the end out of the play himself, and there you are!"

Eleanor stared dumbly at the extremely lucid diagram.

"What a tremendous waste of time!" she commented. "I don't mean to criticize you, Hector, but if men want to play football, why don't they just go out and play it, without planning beforehand? I should think you'd take all the spontaneity out of it!"

"Let's see—you've never seen a big game, have you?"

"I saw all the high-school games until two years ago."

"I mean a really big game?"

"No," said Eleanor, turning to the first page of the historical notes. "I have a cousin in New Haven, but somehow I never went. What funny handwriting, Hector—it doesn't look like yours at all."

"The lecturer talked too fast," said Hector, sighing a little. "And he used all short words, too. If you'll let me tear out those pages in the back—there! now you can keep the book. Perhaps I'd better explain the first few lectures to you."

At a quarter past three the pupil looked her young instructor squarely in the eyes, and interrupted him in the middle of a sentence.

"Hector!" she said. "I didn't suppose you or anybody else could talk like that! Why, I haven't understood a single word you've said!"

Hector, somewhat disconcerted at the indifferent compliment, stammered. "You—you looked so intelligent—I thought you were following very nicely."

"Following! I hadn't even started! Miss Jenks was cleverer than I thought. You don't honestly like this sort of thing, do you?"

"Like it? Why, I don't know that I ever considered liking it. I had to specialize in something, and this was it."

"Is—is your book like this?"

"More so."

"If you had to do it—if you were going into teaching," she said thoughtfully, "I could—how you can keep at it for fun is beyond me!"

The heir to the sacred trust gazed calmly over his tortoise-rimmed spectacles.

"To tell the truth, I wouldn't keep at it ten minutes longer if it weren't for father."

Eleanor asked the question tacitly.

"Fame," said Hector dryly. "It's my only chance. It's all I know. It's rather an odd trick, too—to get anywhere in archæology you've got to live the other man's life; you've got to project your personality into his. You've got to think with him, work with him, be with him. You've got to know instinctively how a mason at Tiryns felt when he cemented a wall, and what sensations a Carthaginian had when he was pounding clamshells for dye. It's almost a detective instinct—and—and self-hypnosis. You remember the man who lost a cow, and found her by hunting in the places he thought he'd have gone to if he'd been a cow? Well, I can put myself absolutely in the place of the people I'm studying, and that's why I can do research work. That's all I know—that trick. Now, it was father's dream to have our name associated with something besides mesh underwear. This book is a beastly bore—it may take several years even for the rough draft, and then I'll be elected to the Academy, and wear whiskers. That's a certain kind of fame, you know—father didn't specify the kind he wanted. He told me once that he'd be happy if no intelligent man could see the name of Blanding without knowing instantly who he was and what he'd done. So—I'm sticking to archæology."

"But if that was all he wanted, you've got it already. Blanding underwear"

"You forget," he prompted, "that it isn't Blanding underwear except in Olympus. The trade-mark is Olympic underwear."

"Change the trade-mark."

"It's too valuable, and, besides"

"Oh, all right—I admire you, Hector, and I'm almost afraid of you—but I think you could do a lot better for yourself if you'd only look around a bit. I'd like to see you in something more human—like teaching, or traveling for your health. Now, let's begin over again."

"As many times as you like," promised Hector, regarding her with a queer inward sensation of pleasurable discomfort. She reminded him of apt quotations from Horace, Heine, Goethe, Tennyson, and Eugene Field, but he thought it best not to distract her attention by quoting them to her. "Turn back to 'Introductory Remarks,' " said Hector patiently.