IV

When John Hastings drifted down to the wharf nearest the railroad

station, he laid an almost aimless course. While he could not see the

race, he was drawn to the harbor into which flowed the river, the river

by whose bank, five miles away, his comrades were waiting for the

summons, and perhaps even then singing "Jolly Boating Weather," as it

was never sung at any other time.

Through the maze of fragile shipping flying the flags of a dozen

yacht clubs threaded a naphtha launch hurrying toward the bridge,

the cock-pit gay with white gowns and blue uniforms, and Yale colors

fluttering at bow and stern. The outcast bestowed no more than a

scowling glance on the glittering, humming pleasure craft, and was

about to saunter shoreward with a vague intent of hovering near the

telegraph office until the result of the race should be known, when the

beckoning flurry of several handkerchiefs delayed his retreat.

He walked to the end of the wharf in idlest curiosity, and the

possibility staggered him only an instant before he knew the fact.

There was no mistaking the trim and jaunty figure in the bow for any

one else than Cynthia Wells herself, as she flicked the steering wheel

over and ran the craft close to the stringpiece, while the sailor

in the stern held fast with a boat hook. Her voice was lifted in

peremptory command:

"Scramble right down here this minute, and tumble aboard, Jack. We are

awfully late already. Broke down on the way from the _Diana_. I don't

know what in the world you are doing here, but we can't pass such an

image of desolation. Hurry, please. I am the skipper to-day."

Jack would have vastly preferred to run away. This meeting was not at

all what he had planned. His misery loved company limited to one, and

that one was hedged about by half a dozen laughing men and girls out

for a holiday lark. He realized how sorry a figure of a man he was in

this scene, but retreat meant cowardly flight, and there was the shadow

of consolation in being near her. The grip of "Dickie" Munson's hand

spelled understanding of the situation as the classmate said:

"We're tickled to death to kidnap you this way, Jack. It's a tough day

for you, I know, but you must not miss the race. Get forward. There's

room by Miss Wells, and, of course, she is dying to see you."

When he found himself standing by the side of Cynthia, she was alert

and absorbed in steering the launch with confident ease toward the

swirling channel between the arches of the bridge, where small craft

darted and drifted in common eagerness to find positions along the last

mile of the swarming course.

The jolly wind whipped a straying lock of gold-shot hair across her

eyes, and she brushed it aside with an impatient gesture. Her adorable

face, warm with the glow of many summer days of sun and breeze, was

set in serious alertness. Standing straight and tall, head thrown back

and shoulders squared, the poise and look of her were as athletic as

the bearing of the man at her side. With her mind wholly intent on the

business in hand, she said crisply:

"I have the right of way over that tub to port. Why doesn't he head

inshore? How is the tide through that middle arch, Jack? You ought to

know."

He made brief reply. Unreasonably sensitive, he did not realize that

her preoccupation was essential. At the least, he had expected she

would speak some ready word of the sympathy he craved, because he stood

for a tragedy in which she ought to show concern. Did she not know,

could she not feel what this flight up the course meant to him, "Jack

Hastings, Number Five"? But the girl at the wheel was too busy even to

note the gloom in his face, as she shot the launch into a roomy berth

near the three and a half mile flag, at the edge of the streak of open

water. Then Cynthia turned to Hastings, held out a firm brown hand, and

said with a happy smile:

"There, congratulate me. Could your coxswain, with his absurd little

megaphone and all his importance, do a neater trick of steering than

that? Now, you poor unfortunate boy, I am ready to hear all about your

troubles. We heard yesterday, when we came ashore at New London, that

you had been evicted, or had gone on strike, or something of the sort.

Are you all broken up over it, and how did it happen? I am terribly

disappointed, too. I came on to see you win a race. I don't care a rap

for the other heroes. Poor old Jack! He looks as if he were chief

mourner."

She patted his hand with a motherly air, and the mourner sighed

heavily. Evidently she was making a gallant effort to hide her genuine

emotion from the alien company. He tried to imitate her lightness of

manner as he replied, with a laugh that was a trifle shaky:

"Yes, I have been out of the crew four days, Cynthia, and it seems

four years. It was awfully good of you to pick me up, but I don't know

whether I am glad or not. Perhaps you ought to have left me alone."

"And why, Mister Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance? Didn't you want

to see me?"

There was archness in the query, even a trace of pretty coquetry in

her air. Where was the kinship of souls, that wonderful symphony of

understanding he had dreamed of as come true? With a fierce onset of

earnestness, he confided:

"I wanted to see you more than any one else in the world. I wanted to

see you more than I wanted to see my mother. She is looking for me

now. She is on that train up yonder. It has been a pretty hard day for

me, and I thought it would be for you."

She tried to make amends:

"Why, of course, it is a dreadful disappointment for you, and for me,

and for all your friends, Jack. But aren't you glad it gave you the

chance to be here? I certainly am. And I'm trying to make the best of

it, and so must you. You are the same old Jack, you know, in the crew

or out."

The first smile in days broke over his face. If he was the same old

Jack to her, the rest of the world could go hang. He was about to tell

her what he ached to reveal in a rush of pent-up desire, what the Crew

stood for, and how much of his life was bound up in it. She caught the

kindling light in his face, and before he spoke, she thought this light

was all for her. That his interest should be absorbed in the crew,

rather than in Miss Cynthia Wells, piqued her, even now, as he began:

"I was afraid the crash was coming for some time. Nobody can know

how I hoped and worried through those weeks, when I felt that I was

slipping back. I did not write you about it, because I could not

believe there was any serious danger of my being thrown out at the last

moment, and I knew it would harrow you to share this worry with me.

I--I--wanted your----"

The classmate behind him jumped to his feet and shouted:

"There they come! Yale! Yale! Yale!"

Hastings glanced along the water level up-river. Two black dots were

visible, each fluttering thread-like tentacles. Abreast of them trailed

the observation train, like a huge serpent of gaudy hues. He bit his

lip and trembled with sudden excitement, while Cynthia Wells stood, one

hand shading her eyes, so eagerly intent that it was plain that she had

forgotten the oarsman out of the shell. The sea of blue, rippling along

the train, told him that Yale was leading. He shut his eyes, fearing,

until it sickened him, that some accident might happen to Yale, even

with what seemed to be a safe lead.

V

To those who did not know, the winners seemed to be playing with

rowing as they swept toward the finish. With no apparent effort the

blue-tipped blades flashed in and out, without even a feather of

spray. Forward and back again rocked eight bare backs, working as if

coupled on the same connecting rod. Hands slipped easily into arched

and heaving chests, and shot out with lightning speed; slow, slower,

swooped the shoulders squared beneath necks like fluted columns and

heads poised with airy grace. As Hastings leaned far out on the bow

of the launch, waving his hat in a fury of approval, the shell rushed

by him not twenty feet away, and the complaining roar of the slides

was music in his ears. He could feel with that agony of effort to keep

in form when every muscle cried out in rebellion, and the choking

fight for breath, and yet, with it all, the glory of making the swing

and catch fairly lift the quivering shell. And he knew, also, the

intoxication of the sight of the Harvard crew laboring astern, as seen

through eyes half blinded with sweat.

Hastings was lifted out of himself until he saw his crew cease rowing

and the oars trail like the wings of a tired bird. Then the defeated

crew went past him. There were breaks in the swing, heads nodded on

the catch, backs were bending, and bodies swaying athwartships. It was

anything now to cross the line and rest.

Hastings had a new realization of what these whipped oarsmen felt, they

whose high hopes were wrecked, whose labor, as long and as faithful as

that of the winners, had gone for nought. After all, he did not belong

with the winners, he was one of the losers, and he wished he might

shake their hands. He cheered with all his voice, and Number Five of

Harvard turned a drawn face to this salutation so close at hand, and

in a quick glance recognized his dethroned rival, whom he had once

met on the lawn at Gales Ferry. The man in the boat flashed a smile

of comradeship to the man in the launch, and both felt better for the

incident.

Cynthia was clapping her hands, then she tore the violets from her gown

and flung them as far as she could toward the distant crew.

"Yale! Yale!" she cried. "Cast off. I want to work the launch down that

way to see them. Wasn't it glorious? Oh, I never saw anything half so

fine. I want to shake their hands, every one of that beautiful, blessed

crew. I'd give ten years of my life to be one of those men at this

moment."

She had not looked at Jack, but he was determined to obtrude himself

somehow.

"How about the man who worked just as hard, and gets none of this hero

worship? Doesn't he deserve anything from you?"

"Poor old Jack!" she said tenderly. "Why, I forgot all about you for a

little while. It is a shame you are not there. You ought to have tried

just a little bit harder, hadn't you? Now you can't be a hero, but

don't you care. We are all sorry as sorry as can be."

The launch had daringly poked a passage close to the float on to which

the crew was now clambering from the shell. Big brown, half-naked

men were hugging each other, and clumsily dancing in stockinged feet.

Eagerly Cynthia asked her companion:

"Do tell me which is which, Jack. I want to be able to know them all by

name. Which is the Stroke, and which is the man at Number Five? I want

to see if he looks like you."

Hastings gave the information very soberly. The Stroke caught sight of

his clouded face, and yelled to his fellows:

"Hey, here's Jack Hastings! Three long cheers for him. Are you ready?"

The cheer given by men still struggling to regain their normal

breathing came so gratefully to John Hastings that he felt like

whimpering, because _they_ understood. The launch was deftly steered

alongside the float, and grabbing the outstretched hand of Hastings,

the Stroke nearly pulled him overboard, as he whispered:

"Jack, I am glad you could see the race with the Only One. It must have

helped you over the rough places. There is nothing like it when things

look blue. God bless you both. Where is your mother? Be sure to come

down to New Haven to-night, won't you?"

The Stroke jumped to help load the oars on the coaching launch just as

Cynthia said to Hastings:

"Why didn't you present me? I think you are a stupid old Jack."

Where was his mother? Guilty and ashamed, he stammered:

"Please set me ashore anywhere as soon as you can, and I shall be

eternally grateful."

She pouted.

"Do you want to leave me so soon? Certainly, I will put you ashore if

you wish. You have been as cross as a bear. You must do penance by

coming off to dinner to-night."

"Thanks, I have another engagement," said he shortly.

The observation train had gone to the station, and it must be emptied

of its freight by this time. There was no more time for talk with

Cynthia, and he did not know what else to say to her to whom the day

was an outing, vastly exciting and enjoyable. Still, he sought one last

word of sincere realization of his ill fortune, and found no response

to his own heart hunger. He said "Good-bye," as he stepped ashore, and

holding her hand for a moment:

"I am glad that you have had such a pleasant afternoon, Cynthia. A

friend in need is a friend indeed."

The tribute touched and pleased her, and the irony of it wholly escaped

her, as she gayly called after him:

"Be sure you don't forget to look us up to-night."