Now the celebration programme would have been halting and inadequate
if the Assistant Manager of the Yale Navy had not hurried to New Haven
on an earlier train. He had been in the car with John Hastings, and
took it for granted that the sweet-faced woman of the silvery hair must
be his mother. He was plunging through the crowd on the stone steps,
trying to rescue the oarsmen in order to head them toward the banquet
hall, when beneath the are light on the corner, a little way out of
the tumult, he saw the timid lady for whom he had felt much sympathy.
The Assistant Manager was ably fitted for his official task of looking
after details, because he fairly boiled over with initiative, and with
him to think was to act, as the powder speeds the bullet. He dashed
across to Mrs. Hastings, and said, with a hurried and apologetic bow:
"Beg pardon, but this is Jack Hastings' mother, are you not? Yes, thank
you, I was sure of it. It may seem presumptuous, but I have heard lots
about you, and Jack has convinced me that you are the finest mother in
the world, bar one. I have been so infern--so very busy since I got in
town from New London, that I have had no time to look up Jack. We want
him at the dinner, everybody does, and we want you just as much. In
fact, you must be my special guest, and hear the speeches, anyhow, if
you won't stay any longer. Jack's asleep, is he? Well, we'll wake him
up, all right."
The alarmed little mother tried to protest several things at once. Jack
had sworn he would not go to the dinner, and that he would break the
neck of the man who should try to rout him out. Of course, Jack would
not do that really, but he was all worn out and needed the rest. Please
not to disturb him, and she would not dream of going without him, and
she did not want to go at all. Her earnestness was almost tearful,
but the Assistant Manager, who had heard perhaps the first ten words,
darted off and was back with two young men whose fists were full of
cannon crackers. He had each fast by the coat-collar, and shoving them
into the foreground like a pair of marionettes, he breathlessly blurted:
"Mrs. Hastings, may I present Mr. Stower and Mr. 'Stuffy' Barlow, both
Seniors, highly dignified and proper persons? This is Jack Hastings'
mother. You are to escort Mrs. Hastings down to Harmonium Hall, and see
that she has a nice seat in the gallery or near the door. No trouble at
all, Mrs. Hastings, I assure you. Awfully glad to have had the honor of
meeting you. Good-bye. I'll run over to Jack's room and drag him down
there in five minutes."
Mrs. Hastings had all the sensations of being kidnapped. She tried to
protest, even to resist, but was like a leaf caught up in a torrent, as
Messrs. Barlow and Stower, both talking at once, handed her politely
but firmly into the depths of a hack, climbed in after her and slammed
the door.
Almost in a twinkling, as it seemed to the agitated mother, she was
being ushered carefully into a small music gallery overlooking the
banquet floor, where from a shadowy corner she could overlook the
festivities in semi-seclusion. She waited only until her genial
abductors were out of sight, and then slipped furtively toward the
stairs, intending, of course, to return to her boy if he did not appear
forthwith. Uneasy and fluttering, she was also keenly interested, for
had not John placed this picture before her, and what it had meant to
him in other years? He met her at the top of the stairway, looking
sheepish and alarmed. She tried to explain, but he cut her short with a
laugh:
"I know all about it, Little Mother. You fell a victim to the wiles of
a terrible set of villains. You couldn't help yourself. Neither could
I, when I heard how you had been spirited away. Now you are going to
stay and see the fun, aren't you?"
She tried to persuade him to leave her and take his seat with the
celebrants.
"No, I have lost my seat," said he, with the old shadow on his face.
"I don't belong there any more.... I don't want to be seen. But the
fellows promised not to give me away. It is pretty nervy for me to come
at all. But I am here only to escort you."
She took his hand and held it while they sat well back in a corner of
the gallery and watched the company trooping in. To the young oarsmen,
so clean-cut and strong, tired but happy, all their woes and fears
forgotten, this was their day of days. In a long row were seated the
University eight, the substitutes, and the Freshman crew, which had
also won its race. At the head of the table was "Big Bill" Hall, stout
oarsman of thirty years ago, now a much stouter citizen. The captain
of the crew was at his right, and at his left hand the beaming Head
Coach, burned as black as any Indian. In another group were the younger
coaches, most of them old strokes and captains, and mighty men at Yale
in their time. Other oarsmen of other days were welcomed, regardless of
the formality of invitation. Perhaps forty men around the board had
known the test of the four-mile course, brothers of the oar through
nearly two generations of rowing history.
The outcast was able to keep his poise until the Glee Club quartette
rose to sing, by special request of the Head Coach, "Jolly Boating
Weather." The first tenor had a sweet and sympathetic voice, and he had
heard the story of the singing of this song on the float just before
the race, wherefore he did the verses uncommonly well.
Then the old fellows, some with grizzled thatches, and some with
thatches scant and thin, had their innings and pounded the table to
emphasize their harmonious declaration that
"Twenty years hence such weather
Will tempt us from office stools.
We may be slow on the feather,
And seem to the boys old fools,
But we'll still swing together----"
The song carried to Hastings was the last straw to break the endurance
which had pulled him through the long, long day. He did not want his
mother to see his quivering lip, and he thought she would not perceive
that he was near to breaking down. Did she know? Why, she felt his
emotion in the hand she clasped tighter than before, she read his
thoughts in the very beat of his pulse, and when he whispered that he
must have caught a cold in the head because he was getting an attack of
sniffles, she needed no words to enlighten her understanding. If his
tears were those of a boy, then she thanked God she was childish enough
to feel with him at every step and turn of the way that was blocked by
the biggest sorrow of his life. She asked him whether he would like to
go home. He shook his head and said that he would stick it through to
the end.