The Guarded Heights Part 31

"I can guess what house I'm going to on Prospect Street."

"Which?" Bailly sighed.

"To the very home of reaction," George laughed. "But it's easier to reform from the inside."

"No," Bailly said, gravely. "The chairs are too comfortable."

He pressed George's arm.

"It isn't the clubs here that worry me in relation to you. It's the principle of the lights behind the railing in the restless world. Try not to surrender to the habit of the guarded light."

George was glad when Stringham called from the field.

"Jump in here, Morton!"

He took his turn at the dummy scrimmage. Such exercise failed to offer its old zest, nor was it the first day he had appreciated that. The intrusion of these unquiet struggles might be responsible, yet, with them determined in his favour, his anxiety did not diminish. Was Bailly to blame with his perpetual nagging about the outside world where grave decisions waited? George frankly didn't want to face them. They seemed half-decipherable signposts which tempted him perplexingly and precariously from his path. What had just happened, added to the pa.s.sage of a year and his summer in Wall Street, had brought that headlong world very close, had outlined too clearly the barriers which made it dangerous; so even here he spent some time each night studying the changing lines in the battle for money.

Yet Goodhue, with a settled outlook, shared George's misgivings at the field.

"It isn't the fun it was Freshman year," he grumbled one night. "We used to complain then that they worked us too hard. Now I don't believe they work us hard enough."

That was a serious doubt for two men who realized they alone might save inferior if eager material from defeat; and it grew until they resumed surrept.i.tiously the extra work they had attempted hitherto only outside of the season or just at its commencement. Then it had not interfered with Green's minutely studied scheme of physical development. Now it did. The growth of their worry, moreover, measured the decline of their condition. These apprehensions had a sharper meaning for George than for his room-mate. Almost daily he saw his picture on the sporting pages of newspapers. "Morton of Princeton, the longest kicker in the game." "The keystone of the Princeton attack." "The man picked to lead Stringham's hopes to victory over Harvard and Yale." And so on. Exaggeration, George told himself, that would induce the university, the alumni, the Baillys, Betty, and Sylvia--most of all Sylvia--to expect more than he could reasonably give at his best.

"Don't forget you've promised to take care of Lambert Planter----"

In some form Betty repeated it every time George saw her. It irritated him--not that it really made any difference--that Lambert Planter should occupy her mind to that extent. No emotion as impersonal as college spirit would account for it; and somehow it did make a difference.

George suspected the truth a few days before the Harvard game, and persuaded Goodhue to abandon all exercise away from Green's watchful eye; but he went on the field still listless, irritable, and stale.

That game, as so frequently happens, was the best played and the prettiest to watch of the season. George wondered if Sylvia was in the crowd. There was no question about her being at New Haven next week. He wanted to save his best for that afternoon when she would be sure to see him, when he would take her brother on for another thrashing. But it wasn't in him to hold back anything, and the cheering section, where Squibs sat, demanded all he had. To win this game, it became clear after the first few plays, would take an exceptional effort. Only George's long and well-calculated kicking held down the Harvard attack. Toward the close of the first half a fumble gave Princeton the ball on Harvard's thirty-yard line, and Goodhue for the first time seriously called on George to smash the Harvard defence. With his effort some of the old zest returned. Twice he made it first down by inches.

"Stick to your interference," Goodhue was begging him between each play.

Then, with his interference blocked and tumbling, George yielded to his old habit, and slipped off to one side at a hazard. The enemy secondary defence had been drawing in, and there was no one near enough to stop him within those ten yards, and he went over for a touchdown, and casually kicked the goal.

When, a few minutes later, he walked off the field, he experienced no elation. He realized all at once how tired he was. Like a child he wanted to go to Stringham and say:

"Stringham, I don't want to play any more games to-day. I want to lie down and rest."

He smiled as he dreamed of Stringham's reply.

It was Stringham, really, who came to him as he sat silently and with drooping shoulders in the dressing-room.

"What's wrong here? When you're hurt I want to know it."

George got up.

"I'm not hurt. I'm all right."

Green arrived and helped Stringham poke while George submitted, wishing they'd leave him alone so he could sit down and rest.

"We've got to have him next week," Stringham said, "but this game isn't won by a long shot."

"What's the matter with me?" George asked. "I'll play."

He heard a man near by remark:

"He's got the colour of a Latin Salutatorian."

They let him go back, nevertheless, and at the start he suffered his first serious injury. He knew when he made the tackle that the strap of his headgear snapped. He felt the leather slide from his head, experienced the crushing of many bodies, had a brief conviction that the sun had been smothered. His next impression was of bare, white walls in a shaded room. His brain held no record of the hushing of the mult.i.tude when he had remained stretched in his darkness on the trampled gra.s.s; of the increasing general fear while subst.i.tutes had carried him from the field on a stretcher; or of the desertion of the game by the Baillys, by Betty and her father, by Wandel, the inscrutable, even by the revolutionary Allen, by a score of others, who had crowded the entrance of the dressing room asking hushed questions, and a few moments later had formed behind him a silent and frightened procession as he had been carried to the infirmary. Mrs. Bailly told him about it.

"I saw tears in Betty's eyes," she said, softly, "through my own. It was so like a funeral march."

"And you missed the end of the game?" George asked.

She nodded.

"When my husband knew Harvard had scored he said, 'That wouldn't have happened if George had been there.' And it wouldn't have."

But all George could think of was:

"Squibs missed half a game for me, and there were tears in Betty's eyes."

Tears, because he had suggested the dreadful protagonist of a funeral march.

His period of consciousness was brief. He drifted into the darkness once more, accompanied by that extraordinary and seductive vision of Betty in tears. It came with him late the next morning back into the light.

Sylvia's portrait was locked in a drawer far across the campus. What superb luxury to lie here with such a recollection, forecasting no near physical effort, quite relaxed, dreaming of Betty, who had always meant rest as Sylvia had always meant unquiet and absorbing struggle.

He judged it wise to pretend to be asleep, but hunger at last made him stir and threw him into an anxious agitation of examinations by specialists, of conferences with coaches, and of doubts and prayers and exhortations from everyone admitted to the room; for even the specialists were Princeton men. They were non-committal. It had been a nasty blow. There had been some concussion. They would guarantee him in two weeks, but of course he didn't have that long. One old fellow turned suspiciously on Green.

"He was overworked when he got hurt."

"I'll be all right," George kept saying, "if you'll fix a headgear to cover my new soft spot."

And finally:

"I'll be all right if you'll only leave me alone."

Yet, when they had, Squibs came, totally forgetful of his grave problems of the cla.s.ses, foreseeing no disaster nearly as serious as a defeat by Yale--"now that we've done so well against Harvard, and would have done better if you hadn't got hurt"--limping the length of the sick-room until the nurse lost her temper and drove him out. Then Goodhue arrived as the herald of Josiah Blodgett, of all people.

"This does me good," George pled with the nurse.

And it did. For the first time in a number of weeks he felt amused as Blodgett with a pinkish silk handkerchief ma.s.saged his round, unhealthy face.

"Thought you didn't like football," George said.

"Less reason to like it now," Blodgett jerked out. "Only sensible place to play it is the front yard of a hospital. Thought I'd come down and watch you and maybe look up what was left afterward."