There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night,Ten to make and the match to win;A bumping pitch and a blinding light,An hour to play and the last man in,And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coatOr the selfish hope of a season's fame,But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote—Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night,Ten to make and the match to win;A bumping pitch and a blinding light,An hour to play and the last man in,And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coatOr the selfish hope of a season's fame,But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote—Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night,
Ten to make and the match to win;
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in,
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote—
Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
Jimsy King, who was lolling on the couch, sat up, his eyes kindling. "Gee...." he breathed. Honor's cheeks were scarlet and she was breathing hard and fast. Only the new boy was unmoved, his pale face still pale, his shadowed eyes calm. Stephen Lorimer kept that picture of them always in his heart;it was, he came to think, symbol and prophecy. He swung into the second verse, his voice warming:
The sand of the desert is sodden red;Red with the wreck of a square that broke;The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,And the regiment blind with dust and smoke:The River of Death has brimmed his banks;And England's far, and Honor a name,But the voice of a school boy rallies the ranks—Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
The sand of the desert is sodden red;Red with the wreck of a square that broke;The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,And the regiment blind with dust and smoke:The River of Death has brimmed his banks;And England's far, and Honor a name,But the voice of a school boy rallies the ranks—Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
The sand of the desert is sodden red;
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke:
The River of Death has brimmed his banks;
And England's far, and Honor a name,
But the voice of a school boy rallies the ranks—
Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
His own voice shook a little on the last line and he was a trifle amused at his emotionalism. He tried to bring the moment sanely back to the commonplace. "Corking for a song, Top Step. I'll hammer out some chords ... doesn't need much." He looked again through the strangely charged atmosphere of the quiet room, at the three big children. Jimsy King was on his feet, shaken out of the serene insolence of his young stoicism, his hands opening and shutting, swallowing hard, and Honor, the boy-girl, Jimsy's sturdy Skipper, was crying, frankly, unashamed, unaware, the tears welling up out of her wide eyes, rolling down her bright cheeks. Only Carter Van Meter sat as before, a little withdrawn, a little aloof, in the shadow.
When they told Marcia Van Meter (Mrs. Horace Flack) that her little boy would always be lame, that not one of the great surgeon-wizards on either side of the Atlantic—not all the king's horses and all the king's men could ever weight or wrench or force the small, thin left leg down to the length of the right, she vowed to herself that she would make it up to him. She was a pretty thing, transparently frail and ethereal-looking, who had always projected herself passionately into the lives of those about her—her father's and mother's—the young husband's who had died soon after her son was born—and now her boy's. While he was less than ten years old it seemed to her that she compassed it; if he could not race and run with his contemporaries he rode the smartest of ponies and drove clever little traps; if he might not join in the rough sports out of doors he had a houseful of brilliant mechanical toys; he lived like a little Prince—like a little American Prince with a magicbottomless purse at his command. But when he left his little boyhood behind she discovered her futility; she discovered the small, pitiful purchasing power of money, after all. She could not buy him bodily strength and beauty; she could not buy him fellowship in the world of boys; he was forever looking out at it, wistfully, disdainfully, bitterly, through his plate glass window.
She spent herself untiringly for him,—playmates, gifts, tutors, journeys. Her happiest moments were those in which he said, "Mother, I'd like one of those wireless jiggers,"—or a new saddle-horse, or a new roadster—and she was able to answer, "Dearest, I'll get it for you! Mother'll get it for you to-morrow!"
But the days when she could spell omnipotence for him were fading away. He wanted now, increasingly, things beyond her gift. He was a clever boy, proud, poised. He learned early to wear a mask of indifference about his lameness, to affect a coolness for sports which came, eventually, to be genuine. He studied easily and well; he could talk with a brilliancy beyond his years. He learned—astonishingly, at his age—to get his deepest satisfactions from creature comforts—his quietly elegant clothes, his food, his surroundings. Mrs. Van Meter had high hopesof the move to Los Angeles; he was to be benefited, body and brain. She was a little anxious at finding they had moved into a neighborhood of boys and girls; Carter was happier with older people, but he seemed to like these lively, robust creatures surprisingly. Weeks, months, a year, went by. Carter, less than a year older than Jimsy King but two years ahead of him in his studies, was doing some special work at the University of Southern California, but his time was practically his own—to spend with Honor and Jimsy. Honor and Jimsy showed, each of them, the imprint of their association with him. They had come to care more for the things he held high ... books ... theaters ... dinners at the Crafts Alexandria ... Grand Opera records on the victrola ... more careful dress.
"Carter has really done a great deal for those children," Mildred Lorimer told her husband, complacently.
"Yes," Stephen admitted. "It's true. He has. And"—he sighed—"they haven't done a thing for him."
"Stephen dear,—what could they do—crude children that they are, beside a boy with his advantages? What could they do for him?—Make him play football? What did you expect them to do?"
"I don't know," he said, moodily, "but at any rate they haven't done it."
Jimsy King was going—by the grace of his own frantic eleventh hour efforts and his teachers' clemency and Honor Carmody—to graduate. Barring calamities, he would possess a diploma in February. Honor was tremendously earnest about it; Carter, to whom learning came as easily as the air he breathed, faintly amused. She thought, sometimes, for brief, traitorous moments, that Carter wasn't always good for Jimsy.
"You see," she explained to her stepfather, "Carter doesn't realize how hard Jimsy has to grind for all he gets. Even now, Stepper, after being here a year, he actually doesn't realize the importance of Jimsy's getting signed up to play. It's a strange thing, with all his cleverness, but he doesn't, and he's always taking Jimsy out on parties and rides and things, and he gets behind in everything. I think I'll just have to speak to him about it."
He nodded. "That's a good idea, Top Step. Do that."
She grew still more sober. "Another thing, Stepper ... about—about Mr. King's—trouble. Of course, you and I have never believed that Jimsyhadto inherit it, have we?"
"No. Not if people let him alone. His life, his training, his environment, are very different—more wholesome, vital. The energy which his grandfather and his uncles and his father had to find a vent for in cards and drink Jimsy's sweated out in athletics."
"Yes. But—just the same—isn't it better for Jimsy to keep away from—from those things?"
"Naturally. Better for anybody."
She sighed. "Carter doesn't think so. He says the world is full of it—Jimsy must learn to be near it and let it alone."
"That's true, in a sense, T. S...."
"I know. But—sometimes I think Carter deliberately takes Jimsy places to—test him. Of course he thinks he's doing right, but it worries me."
Stephen Lorimer smoked in silence. He had his own ideas. "Better have that talk with him," he said.
Honor found the talk oddly disturbing. Carter was very sweet about it as he always was with her, but he held stubbornly to his own opinion.
"Look here, Honor, you can't follow Jimsy through the world like a nursemaid, you know."
"Carter! I don't mean——"
"He's got to meet and face these things, to fight what somebody calls 'the battle of his blood.' Youmustn't wrap him up in cotton wool. If he's going, to be bowled over he might as well find it out. He must take his chances—just as any other fellow—just as I must."
"Oh, but, Carter, you know you're strong, and——"
Suddenly his pale face was stung with hot color. "Honor," he leaned forward, "you think I'm strong, inanyway? You don't consider me an—utter weakling?"
She looked with comprehending tenderness at his crimson face. "Why, Carter, dear! You know I've never thought you that! There are more ways of being—being strong than—than just with muscles and bones!"
He reached out and took one of her firm, tanned hands in his, and she had never seen him so winningly wistful, so wistfully winning. "I thought," he said, very low, "that was the only kind of strength that counted with you. Then—I do count with you, Honor? I do?"
She was a little startled, a little frightened, wholly uncomfortable. There was something in Carter's voice she didn't understand ... something she didn't want to understand. She pulled her hand away and managed her boyish grin. "Of course youdo,—goose! And you'll count more if you'll help me to look after Jimsy and have him graduate on time!" She got up quickly as her stepfather came into the room, and Carter went home, crossing the street with the rather pathetic arrogance of his halting gait, his head held high, tilted a little back, which gave him the expression of looking down on a world of swift striders.
He found his mother reading before a low fire. "Well, dearest?" She smiled up at him, yearningly.
He stood looking down at her, his face working. "Mother, I want Honor Carmody."
"Carter!"
"I want Honor Carmody." He rode over her murmured protests. "I know I'm only nineteen. I know I'm too young—she's too young. I'd expect to wait, of course. But—I want her."
Marcia Van Meter's heart cried out to her to say again as she had said all through his little-boy days, "Dearest, Mother'll get her for you! Mother'll get her for you to-morrow!" But instead her gaze went down to the page she had been reading ... the last scene in "Ghosts," where Oswald Alving says:
"Mother, give me the sun! The sun!! The Sun!!!" She shivered and shut the book with emphasis and threw it on a near-by chair. She spokebrightly, reassuringly. "I'm sure she's devoted to you, dear. You are the best of friends, and that's enough for the present, isn't it?"
"No."
"Dearest, you've said yourself that you realize you're too young for anything serious, yet. Why can't you wait contentedly, until——"
"There's some one else. There's Jimsy."
"Carter, I'm sure they're like brother and sister. They have been playmates all their lives. That sort of thing rarely merges into romance."
"Doesn't it?" His voice was seeking, hungry. "Honestly?"
"Veryrarely, dear, believe me!" She sped to comfort him. "Besides, her people, her mother, would never want anything of that sort ... the taint in his blood ... the reputation of his family.... Mrs. Lorimer says they've always been called the 'Wild Kings.' Of course Jimsy seems quite all right, so far, and I hope and pray he always may be—he's a dear boy and I'm very fond of him—but, as he grows older and is beset by more temptations——"
The boy relaxed a little from his pale rigidity and sat down opposite his mother. He held out his hands to the fire and she saw that they were trembling."Yes," he said, "I've thought of that. I've thought of that. Perhaps, when he gets to college—up at Stanford, away from Honor—I've thought of that!" He bent his head, staring into the fire.
His mother did not see the expression on his face. "Besides, dear, Honor's going abroad next year, for her voice. She'll meet new people, form new ties——"
"That doesn't cheer me up very much, Mother."
"I mean," she hastened, "it will break up the life-long intimacy with Jimsy. And perhaps you and I can go over for the summer, and take her to Switzerland with us. Wouldn't that be jolly? You know, dear," she hesitated, delicately, "while we know that money isn't everything, you are going to have far more to offer a girl, some day, than poor Jimsy King."
"And less," said Carter Van Meter.
He found Honor a little constrained at their next meeting and he hurried to put her at her old time ease with him. He steered the talk on to the coming football game and Honor was herself. Los Angeles High School, champion of Southern California, was to meet Greenmount, the northern champion, and nothing else in the world mattered very much to her and to Jimsy.
"It's so perfect, Carter, to have it come in Jimsy's last year,—to win the State Championship for L. A. just before he leaves."
"Sure of winning?"
"It will be pretty stiff going. They're awfully good, Greenmount. Not as good as we are, on the whole, but they've got a punter—Gridley—who's a perfectwizard! If they can get within a mile of our goal, he can put it over! But—we've got to win. We've simply got to—and 'You can't beat L. A. High!'"
She went to watch football practice every afternoon and Carter nearly always went with her. In the evenings Jimsy came over for her help with his lessons. He had studied harder and better, this last year; his fine brain was waking, catching up with his body, but he was busier than ever, too, and his "Skipper" had still to be on deck. He was discovered, that last year, to have an unsuspected talent, Jimsy King. He could act. His class-play was an ambitious one, a late New York success, a play of sport and youngness, and Jimsy played the lead. "No," the pretty Spanish teacher said, "he didn't play that part; hewasit!" It was going to be fine for him at Stanford, Honor's mothering thought raced ahead. The morehe had to do, the more things he was interested in....
He came in grinning a few nights before the championship game. "Say, Skipper, what do you think they gave me on that essay? AB. A measlyB. Made me so sore I darn near told 'em who wrote it!"
"Jimsy! You wrote it yourself, really. I just smoothed it up a little."
"Yep, just a little! Well, either they're wise, or they just figured it couldn't be a top-notcher if I'd written it!" He cast himself on the couch. "Gee, Skipper, I can't work to-night! I'm a dying man! That dinner Carter bought me last night——"
"Jimsy! You didn't—break training?"
"No. But I skated pretty close to the edge. You know, it's funny, but when I'm out with Carter I feel like such a boob, not daring to eat this or that, or smoke or—or anything." Heresy this, from the three years' captain of L. A. High who had never considered any sacrifice worth a murmur which kept him fit for the real business of life. "Somehow, he's so keen, he makes me wish I had more in my head and—and less in my heels! You know what I mean, Skipper. He does make me look like a simp, doesn't he?"
"No," said Honor, definitely. "Why, Jimsy,you're a million times bigger person than Carter. Everybody knows that.Knowingthings isn't everything—knowing what to wear and how to order meals at the Alexandria and reading all the new books and having been to Europe. Those things just fill in for him; they make up—a little—for the things you've had."
"Do you mean that, Skipper? Is that straight?"
"Of course, Jimsy—cross my heart!" It was curious, the way she was having to comfort Jimsy for not being Carter, and Carter for not being Jimsy.
It rained the day of the game. It had been sulking and threatening for twenty-four hours, and Honor wakened to the sound of a sluicing downpour. She ran to her window, which looked out on the garden. The long leaves of the banana tree were flapping wetly and the Bougainvillæa on the summerhouse looked soaked and sodden. Somewhere a mocking bird was singing deliriously, making his tuneful fun of the weather. Honor went down to breakfast with a sober face.
They had a house-guest, a friend of her stepfather's, an Englishwoman, a novelist. She was a brisk, ruddy-skinned creature, with crisp sentences and sturdy legs in thick stockings, and she was taking a keen interest in American sport. "Oh, I say," she greeted Honor, "isn't this bad for your match?"
"Yes, Miss Bruce-Drummond, it is. We were hoping for a dry field. They're more used to playing in the mud than we are. But it'll be all right."
"I'm fearfully keen about it.—No, thank you—my mother was Scotch, you see, and I don't take sugar to my porridge. Salt, please!" She turned to Stephen Lorimer. "I've been meaning to ask you what you think of Arnold Bennett over here?"
Honor's stepfather flung himself zestfully into the discussion. He liked clever women and he knew a lot of them, but he had been at some pains not to marry one. Mildred Lorimer, beside the shining copper coffee percolator, looked a lovely Vesta of the hearth and home.
Honor wished she might take a pleat in the fore-noon. She didn't see how she was going to get through the hours between breakfast and the time to start for the game. It was a relief to see Jimsy coming across the lawn at ten o'clock. She ran out to meet him.
"Hello, Jimsy!"
"'Lo, Skipper. Isn't this weather the deuce?"
"Beastly, but it doesn't really matter. We're certain to——" she broke off and looked closely at him. "Jimsy, what's the matter?"
"Oh ... nothing."
"Yes, there is! Come on in the house. There's no one home. Stepper's driving MissBruce-Drummond and Muzzie's being marcelled." She did not speak again until they were in the living room. "Now, tell me."
"Why—it's nothing, really. Feeling kind of seedy, that's all. Didn't have much sleep."
"Jimsy! You didn't—you weren't out with Carter?"
"Just for a little while. We went to a Movie. Coach told us to—keep our minds off the game. But I was home and in the house at nine-thirty. It was—Dad. He came in about midnight. I—I didn't go to bed at all."
"Oh...." Her eyes yearned over him, over them both. "Jimsy, I'm so terribly sorry. Is he—how is he now?"
"Sleeping. I guess he'll sleep all day. Gee—I wish I could!" His young face looked gray and strained.
The girl drew a long breath. "Jimsy, you've got to sleep now. You've got to put it—you've got to put your father away—out of your mind. You don't belong to him to-day; you belong to the team; you belong to L. A.... No matter what's happening toyou, you've got to do your best—and—andbeyour best."
"If I can," he said, haggardly.
"Lie down on the couch."
"Oh, I don't want to lie down, Skipper—I'll just——"
"Lie down on the couch, Jimsy!" She herded him firmly to the couch, tucked a soft, flat pillow under his head, threw a light afghan over him. Then she opened a window wide to the wet sweet air and drew the other shades down, and came to sit on the floor beside him, talking all the time, softly, lazily, about the English lady novelist who didn't take sugar "to" her porridge ... about the giddy mocking bird, singing in the rain ... about a new book which Carter thought was wonderful and which she couldn't see through at all ... until his quick, burdened breathing yielded to a long relaxing sigh like that of a tired puppy, and the hope of L. A. High and the last of the "Wild Kings" slept. She mounted rigid guard over him for three hours, banishing the returned stepfather and house-guest, keeping her noisy little brothers at bay. She had ordered a strictly training-table luncheon for one o'clock for her charge, and while the clock was striking the hour Kada brought the tray. Jimsy was still sleeping. Honor looked at him, hesitating, then she ran to the piano and struck her stepfather's rousing chords and began to sing:
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night,Ten to make and the match to win—
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night,Ten to make and the match to win—
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night,
Ten to make and the match to win—
At the first line he stirred, at the second he rubbed his eyes, and at the third he was sitting up and listening. She swung into the finish, and as always, it ran away with her. She had never gotten over the first choking thrill at the words:
Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
Jimsy King came to stand beside her. His hair was mussed and his face flushed, and there was a sleep-crease on one cheek, but his eyes were clear and steady. "It's O. K., Skipper," he said. "I can. I'm going to. I will."
Carter Van Meter drove Honor and Stephen Lorimer and Miss Bruce-Drummond in his newest car and the four of them sat together on the edge of the rooting section.
It was still raining a little, teasingly, reluctant to leave off altogether, and the field was a batter of mud. The rooting section of L. A. High was damp but undaunted. The yell leaders, vehement, piercingly vocal, conducted them into thunderous challenges:
Ali beebo! Ali by-bo!Ali beebo by-bo bum!Catch 'em in a rat trap,Put 'em in a cat trap,Catch 'em in a cat trap,Put 'em in a rat trap!Ali beebo! Ali by-bo!Ali beebo by-bo bum!
Ali beebo! Ali by-bo!Ali beebo by-bo bum!Catch 'em in a rat trap,Put 'em in a cat trap,Catch 'em in a cat trap,Put 'em in a rat trap!Ali beebo! Ali by-bo!Ali beebo by-bo bum!
Ali beebo! Ali by-bo!
Ali beebo by-bo bum!
Catch 'em in a rat trap,
Put 'em in a cat trap,
Catch 'em in a cat trap,
Put 'em in a rat trap!
Ali beebo! Ali by-bo!
Ali beebo by-bo bum!
The bleachers rocked and creaked and swayed with the rhythm of it. "My word!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond. She listened fascinatedly to their deafening repertoire. Greenmount's supporters, a rather forlorn little group of substitutes, with the coach and trainer and a teacher or two, and a pert fox terrier wearing their colors on his collar, elicitated a brief, passing pity from Honor. They looked strange and friendless, these smart Northern prep-schoolers. The L. A. rooters conscientiously gave their opponents' yell and received a spatter of applause. The Northerners trotted out on the field and were hospitably cheered.
"There, Stepper," said Honor, tensely, "that's Gridley—the tallest one,—see? Last on the right?"
"So, that's the boy with the beamish boot, eh?"
"Yes. He mustn't get a chance. Hemustn't."
Miss Bruce-Drummond looked at her friend'sstepdaughter. "You're frightfully keen about it, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Honor, briefly.
"I daresay I shall find it very different from Rugby, but I expect I shall be able to follow it if you'll explain a bit."
Honor did not answer. She was standing up, yelling with all the strength of her lusty young lungs, as the Southern champions came out. Then the rooting section made everything that they had said and done before seem like a lullaby; it seemed to the Englishwoman she had never known there could be such noise. Her head hummed with it:
King! King! King!K-I-N-G, King!G-I-N-K, Gink!He's the King Gink!He's the King Gink!He's the King Gink!K-I-N-G, King! KING!
King! King! King!K-I-N-G, King!G-I-N-K, Gink!He's the King Gink!He's the King Gink!He's the King Gink!K-I-N-G, King! KING!
King! King! King!
K-I-N-G, King!
G-I-N-K, Gink!
He's the King Gink!
He's the King Gink!
He's the King Gink!
K-I-N-G, King! KING!
Honor sat down again, her fists clenched, her lower lip between her teeth. If only it were time to begin ... time for the kick-off! This was always the worse part, just before.... It was L. A.'s kick-off. The whistle sounded, mercifully, and with thesolid, satisfying impact of leather against leather she relaxed. It was on. It had started. All the weeks of waiting for the championship game were over. This was the game, and it was just like any other game; Jimsy was there—here, there, everywhere, and they would fight, fight. And you couldn't beat L. A. High. The mud was horrible. It took grace and fleetness and made a mock of them; both teams were playing raggedly. Well, of course they would, at first; it was so frightfully important. They would shake down into form in a moment.
"I don't believe," cut in the fresh, crisp voice of Miss Bruce-Drummond, "that I quite understand what a 'down' is. Would you mind explaining it to me?"
"Why," said Honor, without turning her head, "they have three downs in which to make——" she was on her feet again, screaming, "Come on! Come on! Come—oh——"
Jimsy King, with the mud-smeared ball under his arm, had made fifteen precious yards before he was tackled. He was up in a flash, wiping the mud off his face, grinning. The rooters split the soft air asunder.
Stephen Lorimer looked at Honor and at Carter Van Meter. He always felt sorry for the boy at agame; he looked paler and frailer than ever in contrast with the hearty young savages on the field, and he was never able really to give himself to the agony and wild joy of it.
Honor forced herself to sit still, her elbows on her knees, her hot face propped on her clenched hands. They were playing better now, all of them, but it wasn't brilliant football; it couldn't be. It would be a battle of dogged endurance.
"I say, my dear, isthata down?" the English novelist wanted to know.
"Yes," said Honor, patiently. "That's a down, and now there'll be another because they have——" again she cut short her explanation and caught hold of her stepfather's arm. "Stepper! Look!Gridley isn't playing!"
He stared. "Really, Top Step? Why, they surely——"
"I tell you he isn't playing. See,—there he is, on the side-lines, in the purple sweater!"
"Well, so much the better for L. A.," said Carter, easily.
Honor shook her head. "I don't understand it." She began, oddly, to feel herself enveloped in a fog of depression, of foreboding. Again and again her eyes left the play to rest unhappily on the silentfigure in the purple sweater. Jimsy was playing well; every man on the team was playing well; but they were not gaining. Jimsy King, on whose heels were always the wings of Mercury, could not get up speed in that mud,—a brief flash, no more. She began to bargain with the gods of the gridiron; at first she had been concerned with scoring in the first five minutes of play; then she had remodeled her petition ... to score in the first half. Now, her throat dry, she was aching with the fear of being scored upon ... counting the minutes yet to play, speeding them in her heart. It was raining hard again. The rooting section, in spite of the frantic effort of the hoarse yell leaders, was slowing down. What was it?—The rain? The mud? Was Jimsy not himself, not the King Gink? Was his heart with his father in the darkened room in the old King house?
"Of course, I'm not up on this at all, but I'm rather afraid your young friends are getting the worst of it, my dear!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond, cheerily.
"It's the longest first half I ever saw in my life," said Honor, between clenched teeth.
"Ah, yes,—I daresay it does seem so to you, but I expect they keep the time very carefully, don't you?" She looked the girl over interestedly. "Thepsychology of this sort of thing is ver-r-ry entertaining," she said to Stephen Lorimer.
"Less than five minutes, T. S.," said her stepfather, comfortingly.
"You know, I'm afraid you'll think me fearfully dull," said the Englishwoman, conversationally, "but I'm still not quite clear about a 'down.'Wouldyou mind telling me the next time they do one?—Just when it begins, and when it ends?"
"One's ended now," said Honor, bitterly, "and we've lost the ball,—on our twenty yard line. We've lost the ball."
"Ah, well, my dear, I daresay you'll soon get it back!"
Honor sprang to her feet with a cry which made people turn and look at her. "Look there!Look!See what they're doing?" One of the Greenmount players had been called out by the coach and had splashed his way to the side-lines, to be patted wetly on the back and wrapped in a damp blanket. That was well enough. That was the usual thing. But the unusual, the astounding thing was that two of the Greenmount team had slopped to the side-lines and picked up Gridley, divested now of his purple sweater, bodily, in their arms, and carried him, dry-shod, over the slithering mud. Honor gave a gasping moan."Iknew...." There was a dead, sick silence on the bleachers. The rain sluiced down. Somewhere in a near-by garden another giddy mocking bird sang deliriously in the stillness. Tenderly as two nurses with a sick man, the bearers set Gridley down. Slowly, solemnly, he stepped off the distance to the quarter back; briskly, but with dreadful thoroughness, the men who had carried him wiped the mud from his feet with a towel and took their places to defend him from the wild-eyed L. A. men, poised, breathless, menacing. There was a muttering roar from the bleachers, hoarsely pleading, commanding—"Block-that-kick!Block-that-kick!Block-That-Kick!" The kneeling quarter back opened his muddy hands; the muddied oval came sailing lazily into them.... There was the gentle thud of Gridley's toe against the leather, and then—unbelievably, unbearably, it was an accomplished fact, a finished thing. Gridley had executed his place kick. They were scored on. It stood there on the board, glaring white letters and figures on black:
GREENMOUNT 4 L. A. HIGH 0
At first Honor's own woe engulfed her utterly. For the first instant she wasn't even aware of JimsyKing, standing alone, his arms folded across his chest, staring down the field; of his men, wiping the mud out of their eyes and looking at him, looking to him; of the stunned rooters. But at the second breath she was awake, alive again, tense, tingling, bursting with her message for them all, keeping herself by main force in her place. Jimsy King never saw any one in a game; he never knew any one in a game; people ceased to exist for him while he was on the field. But to-day, in this difficult hour, she was to see him turn and face the bleachers and rake them with his aghast and startled eyes until he found her. She was on her feet, in her white jersey suit and her blue hat and scarf—L. A.'s colors—waving to him, looking down at him with all her gallant soul in her eyes. It seemed to her as if she must be saying it aloud; as if she must be singing it:
Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
Then the bleachers and the players saw the Captain of the L. A. team turn and wade briskly down the field to Gridley. They saw him hold out his muddy hand; they heard his clear, "Peach of a kick!" They saw him give the Northerner's hand a hearty shake; they saw him fling up his head, andgrin, and face the grandstand for a second, his eyes seeking.... They saw him rally his men with a snapped-out order,—and then they were on their feet, shouting, screaming, stamping, cheering:
KING! KING! KING!
KING! KING! KING!
KING! KING! KING!
The yell leaders couldn't get hold of them; there was no need. Every man was his own yell leader. They yelled for Gridley and for Greenmount (why worry, when Jimsy clearly wasn't worried?) and for their own team, man by man, and the call of time for the first half failed to make the faintest dent in their enthusiasm.
"But"—said Miss Bruce-Drummond, her mouth close to Honor's ear—"you haven't won, have you?"
"Not yet!" Honor shouted. "Wait!" She began to sing with the rest:
You can't beat L. A. High!You can't beat L. A. High!Use your team to get up steam,But you can't beat L. A. High!
You can't beat L. A. High!You can't beat L. A. High!Use your team to get up steam,But you can't beat L. A. High!
You can't beat L. A. High!
You can't beat L. A. High!
Use your team to get up steam,
But you can't beat L. A. High!
It was gay, mocking, scatheless, inexorable. Youcouldn'tbeat L. A. High. Honor swayed and swung to it. Use your team and your tricks and yourdry-shod men to kick, but you couldn't beat L. A. High. And it appeared, in fact, that you couldn't, for Jimsy King's team went into the second half like happy young tigers, against men who were a little tired, a little overconfident, and in the first ten minutes of play the King Gink, mud-smeared beyond recognition, grinning, went over the line for a touchdown, and nobody minded much Burke's missing the goal because they had won anyway:
GREENMOUNT 4 L. A. HIGH 5
and the championship, the state championship, stayed south, and it suddenly stopped raining and the sun came out gloriously after the reckless manner of Southern California suns, and everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
Honor, star-eyed, more utterly and completely happy and content than she had ever been in her life, turned penitently to Miss Bruce-Drummond. "When we get home," she said, "I'll explain to you exactly what a 'down' is!"
They waited to see the joyous serpentine, to watch Jimsy's struggles to get down from the shoulders of his adorers who bore him the length of the field and back, and then Carter drove them home and went backfor the Captain, who would be showered and dressed by that time. They were both dining with Honor, but Jimsy looked in on his father first.
"Gusty says he's slept all day," he reported to Honor. He kept looking at her, with an odd intensity, all through the lively meal. She had changed her wet white jersey for one of her long-lined, cleverly simple frocks of L. A. blue, and her honey-colored braids were like a crown above her serene forehead.
"You know, Stephen," said Miss Bruce-Drummond while they were having their coffee in the living room, "of course you know that both those lads are in love with your nice girl."
"Do you see it, too?"
She laughed. "I may not know what a 'down' is, but I've still reasonably sharp eyes in my head. And the odd thing is that she doesn't know it."
"Isn't it amazing? I'm watching, and wondering."
"It's a pretty time o' life, Stephen," said one of the clever women he hadn't wanted to marry.
"'Youth's sweet-scented manuscript,' Ethel," said Honor's stepfather.
"Jimsy, will you come here a minute?" Honor called from the dining-room door.
"Yes, Skipper!" He was there at a bound.
"Don't you think your father would like this water-ice? I think he could—I believe he might enjoy it."
He took the little covered tray out of her hands. "I'll bet he will, Skipper. You're a brick. Come on over with me, will you—and wait on the porch?"
She looked back into the roomful. "Had I better? I don't suppose they'll miss me for a minute——"
But Carter Van Meter was coming toward them, threading his way among people and furniture with his slight, halting limp. He looked from one to the other, questioningly.
"Taking this over to my Dad," Jimsy explained. "Back in a shake."
"I see. How about a ride to the beach? Supper at the ship-hotel? Celebrate a little?"
"Deuce of a lot of work for Monday," Jimsy frowned. "Haven't studied a lick this week."
Carter laughed. "Oh, Monday's—Monday! Come along! We can't"—he turned to Honor—"be by ourselves to-night, with the celeb. here. Honor has to stay and play-pretty with her."
"Well ... if we don't make it too late——"
Jimsy turned and sped away with Honor's offering for James King.
Honor looked at Carter. His eyes were very bright; he looked more excited, now, some way, than he had at the game. Poor old Carter. He wanted, she supposed, to do something for Jimsy ... to give him a wonderful party ... to spend money on him ... to excel and to shine inhisway. But—the ship-hotel—and his father over there all day in the darkened room—For the first time in her honest life she stooped to guile. "I'll be down in a minute, Carter," she said and ran upstairs, through the hall, down the backstairs, cut through the kitchen and across the wet and springy lawn to the King place.
She waited in the shadow of the house until he came out.
"Jimsy!"
"Skipper!"
"I slipped out—sh ... Jimsy, I—pleasedon't go with Carter to-night! I don't mean to interfere or—or nag, Jimsy,—you know that, don't you?" She slipped a little on the wet grass in her thin slippers, and laid hold of his arm to steady herself. "But—it worries me. You're the finest, the most wonderful person in the world, and I trust you more than I trust myself, but—I know how boys are about—things—and—" she turned her face to the darkhouse where so many "Wild Kings" had lived and moved and had their unhappy being—"I couldn'tbearit if——"
It began to rain again, softly, and they moved unconsciously toward the shelter of the porch.
"You were so splendid to-day! I haven't had a chance to tell you ... shaking hands with him, being so——"
"You made me," said Jimsy King. Then, at her murmured protest. "You did. You made me, just as you've made me do every decent thing I've ever done. I'm just beginning to see it. I guess I'm the blindest bat that ever lived. Of course I won't go with Cart' to-night. I won't do anything you don't——"
Honor had mounted two steps, to be under the roof of the porch, and now, turning sharply in her gladness, the wet slipper slipped again, and she would have fallen if he had not caught her.
"Skipper!"
"It's—it's all right!" said Honor in a breathless whisper. "I'm all right, Jimsy. Let me——"
But Jimsy King would not let her go. He held her fast with all his football strength and all his eighteen years of living and loving, and he said over and over in the new, strange voice she hadnever heard before, "Skipper! Skipper! Skipper!"
"Jimsy ... what—what is happening to us? Jimsy, dear, we never before—Jimsy, are we—are we—Is this being—in love?"
And the mocking-bird of the morning, mounted on the wet Bougainvillæa on the summerhouse in Honor's garden, explained to them in a mad, exultant, thrilling burst of song.
"At least," Mildred Lorimer wept, "atleast, Stephen, make them keep it a secret! Make them promise not to tell a living soul—and not to act in such a way as to let people suspect! I think"—she lifted tragic, reproachful eyes to him—"you ought to do what you can, now, considering that it's all your fault."
"Some day," said her husband, sturdily, "it will be all my cleverness ... all my glory. I did honestly believe it was a cradle chumship which wouldn't last, Mildred. I thought it would break of its own length. But I'm glad it hasn't."
"Stephen, howcanyou? One of the 'Wild Kings'—I cannot bear it. I simply cannot bear it." She clutched at her hope. "She must go abroad even sooner than we planned—andstayabroad. Stephen, you will make them keep it a secret from every one?"
"They've already told Carter. Told him just after they'd told me."
"Oh, poor, poor Carter!" There was a note of fresh woe in her voice.
He turned sharply to look at her. "So, that's where the pointed patent leather pinches, Mildred?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've been hoping it would be Carter?"
"Dearest, I've looked upon them all as children.... It was the merest ... idea ... thought. Mrs. Van Meter is devoted to Honor, Carter is an unusual boy, and they're exceptional people. And he—of course, I mean in his boyish way—adoresHonor. This will be a cruel blow for him." She grieved. "Poor, frail boy...."
Stephen Lorimer smoked in silence for a moment. "I fancy Carter will not give up hope. There's nothing frail about his disposition. His will doesn't limp."
"Well, I certainly hope he doesn't consider it final. I don't. I consider it a silly boy-and-girl piece of sentimental nonsense, and I shall do everything in my power to break it up. I consider that my child's happiness is at stake."
"Yes," said her husband, "so do I." He got up and went round to his wife's chair and put penitent arms about her and comforted her. After all, he could afford to be magnanimous. He was going towin his point in the end, and meanwhile it would be an excellent thing for the youngsters to have Mildred doing everything in her pretty power to break it up. She might just as well, he believed, try to put out the hearth fire with the bellows.
With her daughter she became motherly and admonitory in her official third person. "Mother wants only your happiness; you know that, dear."
"Well, then, there's nothing to worry about," said Honor, comfortably, "for you want me to be happy and I can't be happy unless it's with Jimsy, so you'll have to want me to have Jimsy, Muzzie!"
"Mother wants real happiness for you, Honor, genuine, lasting happiness. That's why she wants you to be sure. And you cannot possibly be sure at your age."
"Yes, I can, Muzzie," said Honor, patiently. "Surer than sure. Why,—haven't I always had Jimsy,—ever since I can remember?BeforeI can remember? He's part of everything that's ever happened to me. I can't imagine what things would be like without him.I won't imagine it!" Her eyes darkened and her mouth grew taut.
"But you'll promise Mother to keep it a secret? You'll promise me faithfully?"
"Of course, Muzzie, if you want me to, but I can'tsee what difference it makes. I'll never be any surer than I am now,—and I can't ever know Jimsy any better than I do now. Why"—she laughed—"it isn't as if I had fallen in love at eighteen, with a new person, some one I'd just met, or some one I'd known only a little while, like Carter! If I felt like this about Carter I'd think it was reasonable to 'wait' and be 'sure.'" She was aware of a new expression on her mother's lovely face and interpreted it in her own fashion. "I'm sorry if you don't like our telling Carter, Muzzie. We did it before you asked us not to, you know. He's always with us and I'm sure he'd have found out, anyway." She smiled. "Carter's funny about it. He acts—amused—as if he were years and years older, and we were babies playing in a sand box or making mud pies." It was clear that his amusement amused her, just as her mother's admonition amused her: nothing annoyed or disturbed her,—her serenity was too deep for that. Her fine placidity was lighted now with an inner flame, but she was very quiet about her happiness; she was not very articulate in her joy.
"Mother cannot let you go about unchaperoned with Jimsy, Honor. People would very soon suspect——"
"I don't think they would, Muzzie," said Honor,calmly. "None of the other mothers are so particular, you know. Most of the girls go on walks and rides alone. But we won't, if you'd rather not. Stepper will go with us, or Billy, or Ted."
Mrs. Lorimer sighed. She could envisage just how much efficient, deterrent chaperonage her husband would supply.
She watched them set off for the Malibou Ranch the next Sunday morning rather complacently, however. She had seen to it that Carter was of the party. To be sure, he was in the tonneau with Stephen Lorimer and the young Carmodys and Lorimers and the heroic-sized lunch box and the thermos case, while Jimsy and Honor sat in front, but at least he was there. There would be no ignoring Carter, as they might well ignore her husband and sons.
Carter, talking easily and intelligently to his host about the growing problem of Mexico, quietly watched the two in front. They were not talking very much. Jimsy was driving and he kept his eyes on the road for the most part, and Honor sat very straight, her hands in her lap. Only once Carter saw, from the line of his arm, that Jimsy had put his left hand over hers, and when it happened he stopped short in the middle of his neat sentenceand an instant later he said, coloring faintly,—"I beg your pardon, Mr. Lorimer,—you were saying?"
Stephen Lorimer felt an intense pity for him but he did not see any present or future help for his misery. Therefore, when they had finished their gypsy luncheon and the younger boys were settling it by a wild rough-house before their swim and Jimsy rose and said, "Want to walk up the coast, Skipper?" and Honor said, "Yes,—just as soon as I've put these things away," he went deliberately and seated himself beside Carter and began to read aloud to him from the Sunday paper.
He looked up from the sheet to watch the boy's face as the others set off. Carter pulled himself to his feet. He ran his tongue over his lips in rare embarrassment. "I—don't you feel like a stroll, too, Mr. Lorimer? After that enormous lunch, I——"
Honor's stepfather grinned. "Well, I don't feel like a stroll in that direction, Carter. Let 'em alone,—shan't we?" He included him in the attitude of affectionate indulgence. "I've been there myself, and you will be there—if you haven't been already." He patted the sand beside him. "Sit down, old man. This editorial sounds promising."
But Carter would not be denied. "Mr. Lorimer, you don't consider it—serious, do you?"
"About the most serious matter in the world, I should say, Carter."
The boy refused the generalization. "I mean, between Honor and Jimsy?" He was visibly expecting a negative answer. "I know that Mrs. Lorimer doesn't."
"Well, I disagree with her. I should say, with average youngsters of their age that it was as transient as—as the measles. But they aren't average, Carter."
"I know that. At least, Honor isn't."
"Nor Jimsy. I sometimes think, Carter, that fellows of our type, yours and mine," he was not looking at him now, he was running his long fingers lazily through the hot and shining sand, "are apt to be a little contemptuous in our minds of his sort. Being rather long on brain, we fancy, we allow ourselves a scorn of the more or less unadorned brawn. And yet,—they're the salt of the earth, Carter; they're the cities set on hills. They do the world's red-blooded vital jobs while we—think. And Honor's not clever either; you know that, Carter. All the sense and balance and character in the world, Top Step, God love her, but not a flash of brilliancy. They'recapitally suited. Sane, sound, sweet; gloriously fit and healthy young animals—" this was calculated cruelty; Carter might as well face things; there would be a girl, waiting now somewhere, no doubt, who wouldn't mind his limp, but Honor must have a mate of her own vigorous breed,—Honor who had always and would always "run with the boys,"—"who will produce their own sort again."
The boy's mouth was twisted. "And—and how about his blood—his heredity? Isn't he one of the 'Wild Kings'?"
"You know," Stephen lighted a cigarette, "I don't believe he is! He's got their looks and their charm, but I'm convinced he's two-thirds Scotch mother,—that sturdy soul who would have saved his father if death hadn't tricked her. And I'm rather a radical about heredity, anyway, Carter. It's gruesomely overrated, I think. What is it?—Clammy hands reaching out from the grave to clutch at warm young flesh—and pollute it? Not while there are living hands to beat them off!" He began to get vehement and warm. There was to be a chapter on heredity in that book of his, one day. "It's a bogy. It goes down before environment as the dark before the dawn. Why, environment's a vital, flesh and blood thing, fighting with and for us every instant! Icould take the offspring of Philip the Second and Great Catherine and make a—a Frances Willard or a Jane Addams of her,—ifpeople didn't sit about like crows, cawing about her parents and her blood and her heritage. Even dry, statistical scientists are beginning——"
And while like the Ancient Mariner he held Carter Van Meter on the sunny sand Honor and Jimsy walked sedately up the shore. They were a little ill at ease, both of them. It was the first time since—as Honor put it to herself—"it had happened" that they had been quite alone with each other in the hard, bright daylight. There had been delectable moments on the stairs, on the porch, stolen seconds in the summerhouse, but here they were on a blazing Sunday afternoon under a turquoise sky, with a salt and hearty wind stinging their faces, all by themselves. They would not be quite out of sight of the rest, though, until they rounded the next turn in the curving road. Jimsy looked back over his shoulder, obviously taking note of the fact. He knew that Honor knew it, too, and the sight of her hot cheeks, her resolute avoidance of his eyes put him suddenly at ease.
"I guess," he said, casually, "this is kind of like Italy. Fair enough, isn't it?"
"Heavenly," said Honor, a little breathlessly. "Italy! Just think, Jimsy,—next year at this time I'llbein Italy!"
"Gee," he said, solemn and aghast, "gee!" They had passed the turn and instantly he had her in a tense, vise-like hug. "No, you won't. No, you won't.I won't let you.I won't let you go 'way off there, alone, without me. I won't let you, Skipper, do you hear?" Suddenly he stopped talking and began to kiss her. Presently he laughed. "I've always known I was a poor nut, Skipper, but to think it took me eighteen years to discover what it would be like to kiss you!" He took up his task again.
"Oh," said Honor, gasping, pushing him away with her hands against his chest—"you wouldn't have hadtime!"
"I could have dropped Spanish or Math'," he grinned. "Come on,—let's go further up the coast. Some of those kids will be tagging after us, or Carter."
"Not Carter. Stepper's reading to him. He won't let him come."
"One peach of a scout, Stephen Lorimer is," said the boy, warmly. "Best scout in the world."
"He's the best friend we've got in the world, Jimsy," she said gravely.
"I know it. Your mother's pretty much peeved about it, Skipper."
"Yes, she is, just now. Poor Muzzie! I'm afraid I've never pleased her very much. But she gets over things. She'll get over it when—when she finds that wedon'tget over it!" She held out her hand to him and he took it in a hard grip, and they swung along at a fine stride, up the twisting shore road. They came at last to the great gate which led into the Malibou Ranch and they halted there and went down into a little pocket of rocks and sand and sun and sat down with their faces to the shining sea.
He kissed her again. "No; you can't go to Italy, Skipper. That's settled."
"Then—what are we going to do, Jimsy dear?"
"Why, we'll just get—" his bright face clouded over. "Good Lord, I'm talking like a nit-wit. We've got to wait, that's all. What could I do now? Run up alleys with groceries? Take care of gardens?"
"Notmygarden! You don't know a tulip from a cauliflower!"
"No, I'll have to learn to do something with my head and my hands,—not just my legs! I guess life isn't all football, Skipper."
"But I guess it's all a sort of game, Jimsy, and we have to 'play' it! And it wouldn't be playingthe game for our people or for ourselves to do something silly and reckless. This thing—caring for each other—is the wisest, biggest thing in our lives, and we've got to keep it that, haven't we?"
He nodded solemnly. "That's right, Skipper. We have. I guess we'll just have to grit our teeth and wait—gee—three years, anyway, till I'm twenty-one! That's the deuce of a long time, isn't it? Lord, why wasn't I born five years before you? Then it would be O. K. Loads of girls are married at eighteen."
"You weren't born five years before me because then it would have spoiled everything," said Honor, securely confident of the eternal rightness of the scheme of things. "You would have been marching around in overalls when I was born, and when I was ten you would have been fifteen, and you wouldn't havelookedat me,—and now you'd be through college and engaged to some wonderful Stanford girl! No, it's perfectly all right as it is, Jimsy. Only, we've just got to be sensible."
"Well, I'll tell you one thing right now, Skipper, I'm not going to wait five or six years. I'm going to go two years to college, enough to bat a little more knowledge into my poor bean, and then I'm coming out and get a job,—and get you!" He illustrated thefinal achievement by catching her in his arms again.
When she could get her breath Honor said, "But we needn't worry about all of it now, dear. We haven't got to wait the four—or six years—all at once! Just a month, a week, a day at a time. And the time will fly,—you'll see! You'll have to work like a demon——"
"And you won't be there to help me!"
"And there'll be football all fall and baseball all spring, and theatricals, and we'll write to each other every day, won't we?"
"Of course. But I write such bone-headed boob letters, Skipper."
"I won't care what they're like, Jimsy, so long as you tell me things."
"Gee... I'm going to be lost up there without you, Skipper."
"You'll have Carter, dear."
"I know. That'll help a lot. Honestly, I don't know how a fellow with a head like his puts up with me. He forgets more every night when he goes to sleep than I'll ever know. He's a wonder. Yes, it sure—will help a lot to have Carter. But it won't be you."
"Jimsy, have you told—your father?"
He nodded. "Last night. He was—he's beenfeeling great these last few days. He was sitting at his desk, looking over some old letters and papers, and I went in and—and told him."
"What did he say?"
"He didn't say anything at first. He just sat still for a long time, staring at the things he'd been reading. And then he got out a little old leather box that he said was my mother's and unlocked it and took out a ring." Jimsy thrust a hand deep into a trouser pocket and brought out a twist of tissue paper, yellowed and broken with age. He unwrapped it and laid a slender gold ring on Honor's palm.
"Jimsy!" It was an exquisite bit of workmanship, cunningly carved and chased, with a look of mellow age. There were two clasped hands,—not the meaningless models for wedding cakes, slim, tapering, faultless, but two cleverly vital looking hands, a man's and a woman's, the one rugged and strong, the other slender and firm, and the wrists, masculine and feminine, merging at the opposite side of the circle into one. "Oh ..." Honor breathed, "it's wonderful...."
"Yes. It's a very old Italian ring. It was my great-grandmother's, first. It always goes to the wife of the eldest son. My Dad says it's supposed to mean love and marriage and—and everything—'theendless circle of creation,' he said, when I asked him what it meant, but first he just said, 'Give this to your girl and tell her tohold hard. Tell her we're a bad lot, but no King woman ever let go.'"
Suddenly and without warning, as on the day when Stephen Lorimer had first read the Newbolt poem to them, Honor began to cry.
"Skipper! Skipper,dearest—" she was in the young iron clasp of his arms and his cheek was pressed down on her hair. "What is it? Skipper, tell me!"
"Oh," she sobbed, clinging to him, "I can't bear it, Jimsy! All the years—all those splendid men, all those faithful women, 'holding hard' against—against——"
He gathered her closer. "My Dad's the last of 'em, Skipper. He's the last 'Wild King.' It stops with him. I told him that, and he believes me. Do you believe me, Skipper?"
She stopped sobbing and looked up at him for a long moment, her wet eyes solemn, her breath coming in little gasps. Then—"I do believe you, Jimsy," she said. "I'll never stop believing you."
He kissed her gravely. "And now I'll show you the secret of the ring." He took it from her and pressed a hidden spring. The clasped hands slowlyparted, revealing a small intensely blue sapphire. "That's for 'constancy,' my Dad says." He put it on her finger. "It just fits!"
"Yes. And it just fits—us, too, Jimsy. The jewel hidden ... the way we must keep our secret. Muzzie won't let me wear it here, but I'll wear it the minute I leave here,—and every minute of my life. It was wonderful for your father to let us have it—when we're so young and have so long to wait!"
"He said—you know, he was different from anything he's ever been before, Skipper, more—more like his old self, I guess—he said it would help us to wait."
"It will," said Honor, contentedly, tucking her hand into his again. They sat silently then, looking out at the bright sea.