Chapter 22

'Bed-rock,' said his mother. 'If we have sixty thousand dollars a year after this, it's all we shall have.'

A low howl escaped from the stricken old man on the sofa.

Clarence betrayed no emotion.

'Ah,' he said, calmly. 'How did it happen?'

'I've just had a cable from Chicago, from your grand-pop. He's been trying to corner wheat. He always was an impulsive old gazook.'

'But surely,' said Clarence, a dim recollection of something he had heard or read somewhere coming to him, 'isn't cornering wheat a rather profitable process?'

'Sure,' said his mother. 'Sure it is. I guess dad's try at cornering wheat was about the most profitable thing that ever happened--to the other fellows. It seems like they got busy and clubbed fifty-seven varieties of Hades out of your old grand-pop. He's got to give up a lot of his expensive habits, and one of them is sending money to us. That's how it is.'

'And on top of that, mind you,' moaned Lord Runnymede, 'I lose my little veto. It's bitter--bitter.'

Clarence lit a cigarette and drew at it thoughtfully. 'I don't see how we're going to manage on twelve thousand quid a year,' he said.

His mother crisply revised his pronouns.

'We aren't,' she said. 'You've got to get out and hustle.'

Clarence looked at her blankly.

'Me?'

'You.'

'Work?'

'Work.'

Clarence drew a deep breath.

'Work? Well, of course, mind you, fellows _do_ work,' he went on, thoughtfully. 'I was lunching with a man at the Bachelor's only yesterday who swore he knew a fellow who had met a man whose cousin worked. But I don't see what I could do, don't you know.'

His father raised himself on the sofa.

'Haven't I given you the education of an English gentleman?'

'That's the difficulty,' said Clarence.

'Can't you do _anything_?' asked his mother.

'Well, I can play footer. By Jove, I'll sign on as a pro. I'll take a new name. I'll call myself Jones. I can get signed on in a minute. Any club will jump at me.'

This was no idle boast. Since early childhood Clarence had concentrated his energies on becoming a footballer, and was now an exceedingly fine goal-keeper. It was a pleasing sight to see him, poised on one foot in the attitude of a Salome dancer, with one eye on the man with the ball, the other gazing coldly on the rest of the opposition forward line, uncurl abruptly like the main-spring of a watch and stop a hot one. Clarence in goal was the nearest approach to an india-rubber acrobat and society contortionist to be seen off the music-hall stage. He was, in brief, hot stuff. He had the goods.

Scarcely had he uttered these momentous words when the butler entered with the announcement that he was wanted by a lady on the telephone.

It was Isabel, disturbed and fearful.

'Oh, Clarence,' she cried, 'my precious angel wonder-child, I don't know how to begin.'

'Begin just like that,' said Clarence, approvingly. 'It's topping. You can't beat it.'

'Clarence, a terrible thing has happened. I told papa of our engagement, and he wouldn't hear of it. He c-called you a a p-p-p--'

'A what?'

'A pr-pr-pr--'

'He's wrong. I'm nothing of the sort. He must be thinking of someone else.'

'A preposterous excrescence on the social cosmos. He doesn't like your father being an earl.'

'A man may be an earl and still a gentleman,' said Clarence, not without a touch of coldness in his voice.

'I forgot to tell him that. But I don't think it would make any difference. He says I shall only marry a man who works.'

'I am going to work, dearest,' said Clarence. 'I am going to work like a horse. Something--I know not what--tells me I shall be rather good at work. And one day when I--'

'Good-bye,' said Isabel, hastily. 'I hear papa coming.'

* * * * *

Clarence, as he had predicted, found no difficulty in obtaining employment. He was signed on at once, under the name of Jones, by Houndsditch Wednesday, the premier metropolitan club, and embarked at once on his new career.

The season during which Clarence Tresillian kept goal for Houndsditch Wednesday is destined to live long in the memory of followers of professional football. Probably never in the history of the game has there been such persistent and widespread mortality among the more distant relatives of office-boys and junior clerks. Statisticians have estimated that if all the grandmothers alone who perished between the months of September and April that season could have been placed end to end, they would have reached from Hyde Park Corner to the outskirts of Manchester. And it was Clarence who was responsible for this holocaust. Previous to the opening of the season sceptics had shaken their heads over the Wednesday's chances in the First League. Other clubs had bought up the best men in the market, leaving only a mixed assortment of inferior Scotsmen, Irishmen, and Northcountrymen to uphold the honour of the London club.

And then, like a meteor, Clarence Tresillian had flashed upon the world of football. In the opening game he had behaved in the goal-mouth like a Chinese cracker, and exhibited an absolutely impassable defence; and from then onward, except for an occasional check, Houndsditch Wednesday had never looked back.

Among the spectators who flocked to the Houndsditch ground to watch Clarence perform there appeared week after week a little, grey, dried-up man, insignificant except for a certain happy choice of language in moments of emotion and an enthusiasm far surpassing that of the ordinary spectator. To the trained eye there are subtle distinctions between football enthusiasts. This man belonged to the comparatively small class of those who have football on the cerebrum.

Fate had made Daniel Rackstraw a millionaire and a Radical, but at heart he was a spectator of football. He never missed a match. His library of football literature was the finest in the country. His football museum had but one equal, that of Mr Jacob Dodson, of Manchester. Between them the two had cornered, at enormous expense, the curio market of the game. It was Rackstraw who had secured the authentic pair of boots in which Bloomer had first played for England; but it was Dodson who possessed the painted india-rubber ball used by Meredith when a boy--probably the first thing except a nurse ever kicked by that talented foot. The two men were friends, as far as rival connoisseurs can be friends; and Mr Dodson, when at leisure, would frequently pay a visit to Mr Rackstraw's country house, where he would spend hours gazing wistfully at the Bloomer boots, buoyed up only by the thoughts of the Meredith ball at home.

Isabel saw little of Clarence during the winter months, except from a distance. She contented herself with clipping photographs of him from the sporting papers. Each was a little more unlike him than the last, and this lent variety to the collection. Her father marked her new-born enthusiasm for the game with approval. It had been secretly a great grief to the old gentleman that his only child did not know the difference between a linesman and an inside right, and, more, did not seem to care to know. He felt himself drawn closer to her. An understanding, as pleasant as it was new and strange, began to spring up between parent and child.

As for Clarence, how easy it would be to haul up one's slacks to practically an unlimited extent on the subject of his emotions at this time. One can figure him, after the game is over and the gay throng has dispersed, creeping moodily--but what's the use? Brevity--that is the cry. Brevity. Let us on.

The months sped by; the Cup-ties began, and soon it was evident that the Final must be fought out between Houndsditch Wednesday and Mr Jacob Dodson's pet team, Manchester United. With each match the Wednesday seemed to improve. Clarence was a Gibraltar among goal-keepers.

Those were delirious days for Daniel Rackstraw. Long before the fourth round his voice had dwindled to a husky whisper. Deep lines appeared on his forehead; for it is an awful thing for a football enthusiast to be compelled to applaud, in the very middle of the Cup-ties, purely by means of facial expression. In this time of affliction he found Isabel an ever-increasing comfort to him. Side by side they would sit, and the old man's face would lose its drawn look, and light up, as her clear young soprano pealed out over the din, urging this player to shoot, that to kick some opponent in the face; or describing the referee in no uncertain terms as a reincarnation of the late Mr Dick Turpin.

And now the day of the Final at the Crystal Palace approached, and all England was alert, confident of a record-breaking contest. But alas! How truly does Epictetus observe: 'We know not what awaiteth us round the corner, and the hand that counteth its chickens ere they be hatched oft-times doth but step on the banana-skin.' The prophets who anticipated a struggle keener than any in football history were destined to be proved false.

It was not that their judgement of form was at fault. On the run of the season's play Houndsditch Wednesday _v_. Manchester United should have been the two most evenly-matched teams in the history of the game. Forward, the latter held a slight superiority; but this was balanced by the inspired goal-keeping of Clarence Tresillian. Even the keenest supporters of either side were not confident. They argued at length, figuring out the odds with the aid of stubs of pencils and the backs of envelopes, but they were not confident. Out of all those frenzied millions two men alone had no doubts. Mr Daniel Rackstraw said that he did not desire to be unfair to Manchester United. He wished it to be clearly understood that in their own class Manchester United might quite possibly show to considerable advantage. In some rural league, for instance, he did not deny that they might sweep all before them. But when it came to competing with Houndsditch Wednesday--here words failed Mr Rackstraw.

Mr Jacob Dodson, interviewed by the _Manchester Weekly Football Boot_, stated that his decision, arrived at after a close and careful study of the work of both teams, was that Houndsditch Wednesday had rather less chance in the forthcoming tourney than a stuffed rat in the Battersea Dogs' Home. It was his carefully-considered opinion that in a contest with the second eleven of a village Church Lads' Brigade, Houndsditch Wednesday might, with an effort (conceding them that slice of luck which so often turns the tide of a game), scrape home. But when it was a question of meeting a team like Manchester United--here Mr Dodson, shrugging his shoulders despairingly, sank back in his chair, and watchful secretaries brought him round with oxygen.

Throughout the whole country nothing but the approaching match was discussed. Wherever civilization reigned, and in portions of Liverpool, one question alone was on every lip: Who would win? Octogenarians mumbled it. Infants lisped it. Tired City men, trampled under foot in the rush for their tram, asked it of the ambulance attendants who carried them to the hospital.

And then, one bright, clear morning, when the birds sang and all Nature seemed fair and gay, Clarence Tresillian developed mumps.

London was in a ferment. I could have wished to go into details, to describe in crisp, burning sentences the panic that swept like a tornado through a million homes. A little encouragement, the slightest softening of the editorial austerity and the thing would have been done. But no. Brevity. That was the cry. Brevity. Let us on.

Houndsditch Wednesday met Manchester United at the Crystal Palace, and for nearly two hours the sweat of agony trickled unceasingly down the corrugated foreheads of the patriots in the stands. The men from Manchester, freed from the fear of Clarence, smiled grim smiles and proceeded to pile up points. It was in vain that the Houndsditch backs and halfbacks skimmed like swallows about the field. They could not keep the score down. From start to finish Houndsditch were a beaten side.

London during that black period was a desert. Gloom gripped the City. In distant Brixton red-eyed wives faced silently-scowling husbands at the evening meal, and the children were sent early to bed. Newsboys called the extras in a whisper.

Few took the tragedy more nearly to heart than Daniel Rackstraw. Leaving the ground with the air of a father mourning over some prodigal son, he encountered Mr Jacob Dodson, of Manchester.

Now, Mr Dodson was perhaps the slightest bit shy on the finer feelings. He should have respected the grief of a fallen foe. He should have abstained from exulting. But he was in too exhilarated a condition to be magnanimous. Sighting Mr Rackstraw, he addressed himself joyously to the task of rubbing the thing in. Mr Rackstraw listened in silent anguish.

'If we had had Jones--' he said at length.

'That's what they all say,' whooped Mr Dodson, 'Jones! Who's Jones?'

'If we had had Jones, we should have--' He paused. An idea had flashed upon his overwrought mind. 'Dodson,' he said, 'look here. Wait till Jones is well again, and let us play this thing off again for anything you like a side in my private park.'

Mr Dodson reflected.

'You're on,' he said. 'What side bet? A million? Two million? Three?'

Mr Rackstraw shook his head scornfully.

'A million? Who wants a million? I'll put up my Bloomer boot against your Meredith ball. Does that go?'

'I should say it did,' said Mr Dodson, joyfully. 'I've been wanting that boot for years. It's like finding it in one's Christmas stocking.'

'Very well,' said Mr Rackstraw. 'Then let's get it fixed up.'

Honestly, it is but a dog's life, that of the short-story writer. I particularly wished at this point to introduce a description of Mr Rackstraw's country house and estate, featuring the private football ground with its fringe of noble trees. It would have served a double purpose, not only charming the lover of nature, but acting as a fine stimulus to the youth of the country, showing them the sort of home they would be able to buy some day if they worked hard and saved their money. But no. You shall have three guesses as to what was the cry. You give it up? It was Brevity--brevity! Let us on.

The two teams arrived at Mr Rackstraw's house in time for lunch. Clarence, his features once more reduced to their customary finely-chiselled proportions, alighted from the automobile with a swelling heart. Presently he found an opportunity to slip away and meet Isabel. I will pass lightly over the meeting of the two lovers. I will not describe the dewy softness of their eyes, the catching of their breath, their murmured endearments. I could, mind you. It is at just such descriptions that I am particularly happy. But I have grown discouraged. My spirit is broken. It is enough to say that Clarence had reached a level of emotional eloquence rarely met with among goal-keepers of the First League, when Isabel broke from him with a startled exclamation, and vanished; and, looking over his shoulder, Clarence observed Mr Daniel Rackstraw moving towards him.

It was evident from the millionaire's demeanour that he had seen nothing. The look on his face was anxious, but not wrathful. He sighted Clarence, and hurried up to him.

'Jones,' he said, 'I've been looking for you. I want a word with you.'

'A thousand, if you wish it,' said Clarence, courteously.

'Now, look here,' said Mr Rackstraw. 'I want to explain to you just what this game means to me. Don't run away with the idea I've had you fellows down to play an exhibition game just to keep me merry and bright. If Houndsditch wins today, it means that I shall be able to hold up my head again and look my fellow-man in the face, instead of crawling round on my stomach and feeling like a black-beetle under a steam-roller. Do you get that?'

'I do,' replied Clarence.

'And not only that,' went on the millionaire. 'There's more. I have put up my Bloomer boot against Mr Dodson's Meredith ball as a side bet. You understand what that means? It means that either you win or my life is soured for ever. See?'

'I have got you,' said Clarence.

'Good. Then what I wanted to say was this. Today is your day for keeping goal as you've never kept goal before. Everything depends on you. With you keeping goal like mother used to make it, Houndsditch are safe. Otherwise they are completely in the bouillon. It's one thing or the other. It's all up to you. Win, and there's four thousand pounds waiting for you above what you share with the others.'

Clarence waved his hand deprecatingly.

'Mr Rackstraw,' he said, 'keep your dross. I care nothing for money. All I ask of you,' proceeded Clarence, 'is your consent to my engagement to your daughter.'

Mr Rackstraw looked sharply at him.

'Repeat that,' he said. 'I don't think I quite got it.'

'All I ask is your consent to my engagement to your daughter.'

'Young man,' said Mr Rackstraw, not without a touch of admiration, 'I admire cheek. But there is a limit. That limit you have passed so far that you'd need to look for it with a telescope.'

'You refuse your consent?'

'I never said you weren't a clever guesser.'

'Why?'

Mr Rackstraw laughed. One of those nasty, sharp, metallic laughs that hit you like a bullet.

'How would you support my daughter?'

'I was thinking that you would help to some extent.'

'You were, were you?'

'I was.'

'Oh?'

Mr Rackstraw emitted another of those laughs.

'Well,' he said, 'it's off. You can take that as coming from an authoritative source. No wedding-bells for you.'

Clarence drew himself up, fire flashing from his eyes and a bitter smile curving his expressive lips.

'And no Meredith ball for you!' he cried.

Mr Rackstraw started as if some strong hand had plunged an auger into him.

'What?' he shouted.

Clarence shrugged his superbly-modelled shoulders in silence.

'Come, come,' said Mr Rackstraw, 'you wouldn't let a little private difference like that influence you in a really important thing like this football match, would you?'

'I would.'

'You would practically blackmail the father of the girl you love?'

'Every time.'

'Her white-haired old father?'

'The colour of his hair would not affect me.'

'Nothing would move you?'

'Nothing.'

'Then, by George, you're just the son-in-law I want. You shall marry Isabel; and I'll take you into partnership in my business this very day. I've been looking for a good able-bodied bandit like you for years. You make Captain Kidd look like a preliminary three-round bout. My boy, we'll be the greatest combination, you and I, that the City has ever seen. Shake hands.'

For a moment Clarence hesitated. Then his better nature prevailed, and he spoke.

'Mr Rackstraw,' he said, 'I cannot deceive you.'

'That won't matter,' said the enthusiastic old man. 'I bet you'll be able to deceive everybody else. I see it in your eye. My boy, we'll be the greatest--'

'My name is not Jones.'

'Nor is mine. What does that matter?'

'My name is Tresillian. The Hon. Tresillian. I am the younger son of the Earl of Runnymede. To a man of your political views--'

'Nonsense, nonsense,' said Mr Rackstraw. 'What are political views compared with the chance of getting a goal-keeper like you into the family? I remember Isabel saying something to me about you, but I didn't know who you were then.'

'I am a preposterous excrescence on the social cosmos,' said Clarence, eyeing him doubtfully.

'Then I'll be one too,' cried Mr Rackstraw. 'I own I've set my face against it hitherto, but circumstances alter cases. I'll ring up the Prime Minister on the phone tomorrow, and buy a title myself.'

Clarence's last scruple was removed. Silently he gripped the old man's hand, outstretched to meet his.

Little remains to be said, but I am going to say it, if it snows. I am at my best in these tender scenes of idyllic domesticity.

Four years have passed. Once more we are in the Rackstraw home. A lady is coming down the stairs, leading by the hand her little son. It is Isabel. The years have dealt lightly with her. She is still the same stately, beautiful creature whom I would have described in detail long ago if I had been given half a chance. At the foot of the stairs the child stops and points at a small, round object in a glass case.

'Wah?' he says.

'That?' said Isabel. 'That is the ball Mr Meredith used to play with when he was a little boy.'

She looks at a door on the left of the hall, and puts a finger to her lip.

'Hush!' she says. 'We must be quiet. Daddy and grandpa are busy in there cornering wheat.'

And softly mother and child go out into the sunlit garden.

IN ALCALA

In Alcala, as in most of New York's apartment houses, the schedule of prices is like a badly rolled cigarette--thick in the middle and thin at both ends. The rooms half-way up are expensive; some of them almost as expensive as if Fashion, instead of being gone for ever, were still lingering. The top rooms are cheap, the ground-floor rooms cheaper still.

Cheapest of all was the hall-bedroom. Its furniture was of the simplest. It consisted of a chair, another chair, a worn carpet, and a folding-bed. The folding-bed had an air of depression and baffled hopes. For years it had been trying to look like a bookcase in the daytime, and now it looked more like a folding-bed than ever. There was also a plain deal table, much stained with ink. At this, night after night, sometimes far into the morning, Rutherford Maxwell would sit and write stories. Now and then it happened that one would be a good story, and find a market.

Rutherford Maxwell was an Englishman, and the younger son of an Englishman; and his lot was the lot of the younger sons all the world over. He was by profession one of the numerous employees of the New Asiatic Bank, which has its branches all over the world. It is a sound, trustworthy institution, and steady-going relatives would assure Rutherford that he was lucky to have got a berth in it. Rutherford did not agree with them. However sound and trustworthy, it was not exactly romantic. Nor did it err on the side of over-lavishness to those who served it. Rutherford's salary was small. So were his prospects--if he remained in the bank. At a very early date he had registered a vow that he would not. And the road that led out of it for him was the uphill road of literature.

He was thankful for small mercies. Fate had not been over-kind up to the present, but at least she had dispatched him to New York, the centre of things, where he would have the chance to try, instead of to some spot off the map. Whether he won or lost, at any rate he was in the ring, and could fight. So every night he sat in Alcala, and wrote. Sometimes he would only try to write, and that was torture.

There is never an hour of the day or night when Alcala is wholly asleep. The middle of the house is a sort of chorus-girl belt, while in the upper rooms there are reporters and other nightbirds. Long after he had gone to bed, Rutherford would hear footsteps passing his door and the sound of voices in the passage. He grew to welcome them. They seemed to connect him with the outer world. But for them he was alone after he had left the office, utterly alone, as it is possible to be only in the heart of a great city. Some nights he would hear scraps of conversations, at rare intervals a name. He used to build up in his mind identities for the owners of the names. One in particular, Peggy, gave him much food for thought. He pictured her as bright and vivacious. This was because she sang sometimes as she passed his door. She had been singing when he first heard her name. 'Oh, cut it out, Peggy,' a girl's voice had said. 'Don't you get enough of that tune at the theatre?' He felt that he would like to meet Peggy.