Still Jim Part 9

"Are you sore at me, Still?" asked Sara. "I wasn't roasting you, personally, last night."

Jim shook his head. Sara waited for words but Jim ate on in silence.

"Oh, for the love of heaven, come out of it!" groaned Sara. "Tell me what ails you, then you can go back in and shut the door. What has got your goat? You can think we foreigners are all rotters if you want to."

"You don't get the point," replied Jim. "I don't think for a minute that you newcomers haven't a perfect right to come over here. But I have race pride. You haven't. I can't see America turned from North European to South in type without feeling suffocated."

The young Greek stared at Jim fixedly. Then he shook his head. "You are in a bad way, my child. I prescribe a course at vaudeville tonight. I see you can still eat, though."

Jim stuck by his drill until fall. During these three months he pondered more over his father's and Exham's failure than he had for years. Yet he reached no conclusion save the blind one that he was going to fight against his own extinction, that he was going to found a family, that he was going to make the old Manning name once more known and respected.

It was after this summer that the presence of race barrier was felt by Jim and Sara. And somehow, too, after Pen's birthday there was a new restraint between the two boys. Both of them realized then that Pen was more to them than the little playmate they had hitherto considered her.

Jim believed that the kiss in the vestibule bound Pen to him irretrievably. But this did not prevent him from feeling uneasy and resentful over Sara's devotion to her.

Nothing could have been more charming to a girl of Pen's age than Sara's way of showing his devotion. Flowers and candy, new books and music he showered on her endlessly, to Mrs. Manning's great disapproval. But Uncle Denny shrugged his shoulders.

"Let it have its course, me dear. 'Tis the surest cure. And Jim must learn to speak for himself, poor boy."

So the pretty game went on. Something in Sara's heritage made him a finished man of the world, while Jim was still an awkward boy. While Jim's affection manifested itself in silent watchfulness, in un.o.btrusive, secret little acts of thoughtfulness and care, Saradokis was announcing Pen as the d.u.c.h.ess to all their friends and openly singing his joy in her beauty and cleverness.

For even at sixteen Pen showed at times the clear minded thoughtfulness that later in life was to be her chief characteristic. This in spite of the fact that Uncle Denny insisted on her going to a fashionable private school. She read enormously, anything and everything that came to hand.

Uncle Denny's books on social and political economy were devoured quite as readily as Jim's novels of adventure or her own Christina Rossetti.

And Sara was to her all the heroes of all the tales she read, although after the episode of the Sign and Seal some of the heroes showed a surprising and uncontrollable likeness to Jim. Penelope never forgot the kiss in the vestibule. She never recalled it without a sense of loss that she was too young to understand and with a look in her eyes that did not belong to her youth but to her Celtic temperament.

She looked Jim over keenly when the family came up from the sh.o.r.e and Jim was ready for his senior year. "You never were cut out for city work, Jimmy," she said.

"I'm as fit as I ever was in my life," protested Jim.

"Physically, of course," answered Pen. "But you hate New York and so it's bad for you. Get out into the big country, Still Jim. I was brought up in Colorado, remember. I know the kind of men that belong there. I love that color of necktie on you."

"Have you heard about the Reclamation Service?" asked Jim eagerly. Then he went on: "The government is building big dams to reclaim the arid west. It puts up the money and does the work and then the farmers on the Project--that's what they call the system and the land it waters--have ten years or so to pay back what it cost and then the water system belongs to them. They are going to put up some of the biggest dams in the world. I'd like to try to get into that work. Somehow I like the idea of working for Uncle Sam. James Manning, U.S.R.S.--how does that sound?"

"Too lovely for anything. I'm crazy about it. Sounds like Kipling and the pyramids and Sahara, somehow."

"Will you come out there after I get a start, Pen?" asked Jim.

"Gee! I should say not! About the time you're beginning your second dam, I'll be overwhelming the courts of Europe," Pen giggled. Then she added, serenely: "You don't realize, Still, that I'm going to be a d.u.c.h.ess."

"Aw, Pen, cut out that silly talk. You belong to me and don't you ever think your flirtation with Sara is serious for a minute. If I thought you really did, I'd give up the Reclamation idea and go into partnership with Sara so as to watch him and keep him from getting you."

"You and Sara would never get along in business together," said Pen, with one of her far-seeing looks. "Sara would tie you in a bowknot in business, and the older you two grow the more you are going to develop each other's worst sides."

"Nevertheless, Sara shall never get you," said Jim grimly.

Penelope gave Jim an odd glance. "Sara is my fate, Still Jim," she said soberly.

"Oh, pickles!" exclaimed Jim.

Pen tossed her head and left him.

It was in the spring of their senior year that Jim and Sara ran the Marathon. It was a great event in the world of college athletics. Men from every important college in the country competed in the tryout. For the final Marathon there were left twenty men, Sara and Jim among them.

The course was laid along Broadway from a point near Van Cortlandt Park to Columbus Circle, ten long, clean miles of asphalt. Early on the bright May morning of the race crowds began to gather along the course.

At first, a thin line of enthusiasts, planting themselves on camp stools along the curb. Then at the beginning and end of the course the line, thickened to two or three deep until at last the police began to establish lines. Mounted police appeared at intervals to turn traffic.

The crowd as it thickened grew more noisy. Strange college yells were emitted intermittently. Street fakirs traveled diligently up and down the lines selling college banners. At last, Broadway lay a shining black ribbon, bordered with every hue of the rainbow, awaiting the runners.

Uncle Denny had an elaborate plan for seeing the race. He and Jim's mother and Penelope established themselves at 159th street, with a waiting automobile around the corner. After the runners had pa.s.sed this point, the machine was to rush them to the grand stand at Columbus Circle for the finish.

The three stood on the curb at 159th street, waiting. It was mid-afternoon when to the north, above the noise of the city, an increasing roar told of the coming of the runners. Pen, standing between Uncle Denny and Jim's mother, seized a hand of each. Far up the shining black asphalt ribbon appeared a group of white dots. The roar grew with their approach.

Suddenly Penelope leaned forward. "Sara! Sara! Jim! Jim!" she screamed.

Four men were leading the Marathon. A Californian, a Wisconsin man, Jim and Sara. Sara led, then Jim and the Californian, then the Wisconsin man with not a foot between any two of them.

Jim was running easier than Sara. He had the advantage of less weight with the same height. Sara's running pants and jersey were drenched with sweat. He was running with his mouth dropped open, head back, every superb line of his body showing under his wet clothes. His tawny hair gleamed in the sun. No sculptured marble of a Greek runner was ever more beautiful than Sara as he ran the Marathon.

Jim was running "with his nerves," head forward, teeth clenched, fists tight to his side, long, lean and lithe. His magnificent head outlined itself for an instant against the sky line of the Hudson, fine, tense, like the painting of a Saxon warrior. Pen carried this picture of him in her heart for years.

The moment the boys had pa.s.sed, Uncle Denny made a run for the machine.

The three entered the grand stand just as the white dots appeared under the elevated tracks at 66th street. There was a roar, a fluttering of banners, a crash of music from a band and a single runner broke from the group and staggered against the line. Saradokis had won the race.

Jim was not to be seen. Uncle Denny was frantic.

"Where's me boy?" he shouted. "He was fit to finish at the Battery when he pa.s.sed us. Give me deck room here. I'm going to find him!"

CHAPTER VI

THE MARATHON

"I have seen a thing that humans call friendship. It is clearer, higher, less frequent than the thing they call love."

MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

At 66th street, Jim had pa.s.sed the Californian and caught up with Sara.

He held Sara's pace for the next block. Try as he would, the young Greek could not throw Jim off and instinct told him that Jim had enough reserve in him to forge ahead in the final spurt at Columbus Circle, six blocks away.

But at 63rd street something happened. A fire alarm was turned in from a store in the middle of the block. The police tried to move the crowd away without interfering with the race, but just as the runners reached the point of the fire, the crowd broke into the street. A boy darted in front of Sara and Jim, and Sara struck at the lad. It was a back-handed blow and Sara brought his elbow back into Jim's stomach with a force that doubled Jim up like a closing book. Sara did not look round. A policeman jerked Jim to his feet.

"After 'em, boy. Ye still can beat the next bunch!" cried the policeman.

But Jim was all in. The blow had been a vicious one and he swayed limply against the burly bluecoat.

"Dirty luck!" grunted the Irishman, and with his arm under Jim's shoulders he walked slowly with him to the rooms at Columbus Circle, where the runners were to dress. There Uncle Denny found Jim, still white and shaken, dressing slowly.

"What happened to you, me boy?" asked Uncle Denny, looking at him keenly.