Play the Game! Part 5

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 spoke brightly, rea.s.suringly. "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?"

"_Very_ rarely, 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 perfect _wizard_! 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 cla.s.s-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; he _was_ it!" It was going to be fine for him at Stanford, Honor's mothering thought raced ahead. The more he 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? A _B_. A measly _B_. 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 b.o.o.b, 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. _Knowing_ things 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.

CHAPTER V

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 Bougainvillaea 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 st.u.r.dy 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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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.