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 Miss Bruce-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 to _you_, you've got to do your
best--and--and _be_ your 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--
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!_
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!_
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. He _mustn't_."
Miss Bruce-Drummond looked at her friend's stepdaughter. "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!
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 the solid, 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 a game; 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, is _that_ a 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 silent figure 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.
"The psychology 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.' _Would_ you 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. "I _knew_...." 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 Jimsy King, 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!_
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, and grin, 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!
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!_
It was gay, mocking, scatheless, inexorable. You _couldn't_ beat L. A.
High. Honor swayed and swung to it. Use your team and your tricks and
your dry-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 back for
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 in
_his_ way. 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--_please_ don'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 dark house where so many "Wild Kings" had lived
and moved and had their unhappy being--"I couldn't _bear_ it 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 had never 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.