When they were back at school Joe proceeded enthusiastically with his skating education. Fortunately there was cold weather from New Year’s Day on and plenty of hard ice. Confidence begets confidence, and Joe progressed, but he would never have thought of trying for hockey if Hal hadn’t suggested it. Hal was on the school team, and so was Bert Madden, and although Bert was rather less insistent than Hal, between them they finally persuaded Joe to try for the position of goal tend with the second team. Joe won the position after a bare fortnight of competition with Mac Torrey. In February he ousted Hendricks from in front of the first team’s cage, for, although Joe was still far from a really good skater, he could keep his feet under him remarkably when defending goal, had an almost miraculous ability to judge shots and stop them and could, and did, fight like a wildcat when his net was assailed. In the first game against Munson he did his share toward keeping the score as low as it was, and, although Holman’s returned to Warrensburg defeated,[150] it was generally acknowledged that Munson’s 14 points might well have been 20 had a less able goal tend than Joe been on the job. And the final Munson contest found Joe working even better under more trying circumstances. Joe, though, was not the real hero of that strange game. The real hero was—but let Alonzo Jones speak. To be quite frank, I was not pleased when, on returning to Holman’s in September, I found that faculty had put Pender in with me in Number 19 Puffer. Arthur Pugsby and I had arranged, as we believed, for Pug to move down from 32, where he wasn’t quite contented for the reason that the fellow he roomed with, Pete Swanson, wasn’t at all Pug’s sort. Swanson was absolutely all right, you understand, but he and Pug had very little in common, Swanson being rather a sporting chap and Pug caring for the scholarly side of life. Pug and I were extremely sympathetic, sharing many enthusiasms in common, such as Shelley and Keats and Walter Pater; also chess and anagrams. We even had similar tastes in food and drink, both being very fond of pastry and both preferring grape nuts to chopped walnuts on our sundaes. So, of course, we were both disappointed when we found that our plan had fallen through, and that Pug had to remain with an alien spirit like Swanson and[151] that I was doomed to companionship with a stranger, which, of course, Pender then was. But life is filled with disappointments which, however, may frequently be made less poignant by a cheerful fortitude.
My new roommate’s full name was Lamar Scott Pender, and he came from Maristown, Kentucky, where he had been attending a small school called, I believe, the Kentucky Academic Institute. I remember his saying that they had but twenty-eight pupils and thinking that its name was utterly disproportionate to its importance. In age he was my senior by a year, being sixteen and two months, but Pug always maintained that I would impress persons as being older than Pender. I suppose that was because I had always viewed life rather more seriously than most fellows do. I think that gives one an appearance of being older than one really is, don’t you? Pender was much of a gentleman, both in looks and behavior. I had always supposed that southern fellows were dark, but Pender wasn’t. He had sort of chestnut colored hair and a rather fair skin and blue eyes. He explained this by not being born very far south, but I don’t believe he was right about that. He had a taste for athletics, which I had not, but he was not by any means the addict that some fellows were; Swanson for instance. He tried football that fall, but didn’t succeed very well,[152] being dropped from the second team about the last of October. He took his rejection very cheerfully and joined the cross-country squad, and, I believe, did rather well in two or three runs that were held before Christmas vacation.
He entered in my class, upper middle, but he had to work pretty hard to keep up. He confessed that Holman’s was quite a different school from the one he had been attending. I think he would have made better progress had he taken his studies more seriously, but he had what might be called a frivolous propensity and was always looking for fun. We got on very well together after we had become really acquainted, which was probably about the middle of October. Until that time I think both Pug and I sort of held him under observation, as you might put it. Friendship is very sacred and one should be careful in the awarding of it. I don’t think that Pender realized that we were doubtful about him. If he did he never let on. But he was like that. I mean, he never looked very deeply below the surface of things. He saw only the apparent. Lots of times when Pug and I would go off together without inviting him to come along he seemed not to notice it at all, and acted just as if he didn’t care. Even after we had accepted him he never became really one of us. By that I mean that our tastes and his were dissimilar and that he never[153] came to care for the finer things of life, like Literature and the Fine Arts and Classical Music and Philosophical Thought. He was always an outsider, but Pug and I got so we were quite fond of him, being sorry for him at the same time on account of his limitations.
Others accepted him almost at once, but they were the casual sort; fellows who went in for athletics or sang on the Glee Club or just idled their time away in the pursuit of pleasure. Both Pug and I could see that Triangle and P. K. D. began to rush him in November, and if you happen to know those societies you’ll realize that Pender was rather superficial. Neither of us would ever have considered them. Although the fact is immaterial to this narrative, Pender went into Triangle in February, and as that was after the second hockey game with Munson, and as P. K. D. generally got most of the athletic heroes, there was some surprise. But I am far in advance of my story, and will now return to an evening soon after the first of December and proceed in chronological order.
Pug and I were playing chess when Lamar came in and, as was his lamentable habit, tossed his cap on the table so that the snowflakes on it were sprinkled all over the chessboard. I ought, perhaps, to say that by this time he was almost always called “Lamy”, but both Pug and I preferred to address[154] him as Lamar. I remonstrated with him for his carelessness and he laughed and said “Sorry, Jonesy,” and fell into a chair. While my name is, as I think I have neglected to state, Alonzo Jones, I have always objected to being called “Jonesy”, and I had told Lamar so frequently but without result. “Jonesy,” he went on, “have you got any skates?” I shook my head. “You, Pug?” he asked next. Pug also shook his head, scowling at the interruption, the game then being at an interesting and critical stage. Lamar sighed and drummed annoyingly on the table with his fingers. “Well, you know, I’ve got to have a pair, you fellows, and I’m stony broke. After Christmas—”
“Please desist,” I said. “We really can’t put our minds on this when you’re talking.”
Lamar grinned and started to whistle softly. After a minute Pug said: “You win, Lon. Care to try another?” I was about to say yes when Lamar jumped up and lifted the board from between us and tossed it on my bed.
“You really mustn’t,” he said. “You fellows will overwork your brains. Besides, I want to talk.”
Pug was quite sharp with him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He began talking about hockey. It seemed that there had been a call for hockey candidates and he had decided to report the next day. “Of course,” he explained, “there won’t be anything[155] but gymnasium work until after the holidays, and I don’t suppose I can wear skates in the gym, but just the same I’d feel a lot better if I had a pair of the things. It might help me to get the atmosphere, eh?”
I said I didn’t see the necessity, and asked him if he had played much hockey.
“Hockey?” he laughed. “I don’t even know what it’s like! All I do know is that you play it on ice, wearing skates and waving a sort of golf club at a ball.”
“Puck,” corrected Pug, still haughty.
“Come again?”
“I said ‘puck,’” replied Pug. “You don’t use a ball, but a hard rubber disk called a ‘puck.’”
“Oh, I see. Much obliged, Pug. You whack it through a sort of goal, eh?”
“Into a net, to be more exact. Do you skate well?”
Lamar laughed again. “About the way a hen swims,” he said.
“Then your chance of making the hockey team will be small,” answered Pug, with a good deal of satisfaction, I............