Part 5

The boy straightened himself and threw back his wide shoulders, because his mother saw no cause for reproach in his downfall. But he did not want to see the crew again, and he wished to avoid the riotous celebration soon to burst. Obviously the best plan was to go to New Haven at once, where they could find refuge in his rooms, and pack his trunk for the vacation departure.

To him this little journey from New London was a panic flight, to her it was made radiant by the one fact that her boy had come back to her. After dinner, in a quiet corner of the college town, they went to his rooms on the campus. The sight of the two twelve-foot oars on the walls, his own trophies of two victories, their handles stained dark with the sweat of his hands, made her turn to him as they entered:

"Nothing can ever take those away from you, with all their splendid story of success."

The boy looked at them for an instant, then brushed a hand across his tired young eyes.

"Better make kindling of them," he said. "Look at that one over there. I won it as a raw, overgrown Freshman, and three years later I can't do as well as I did then. Matthews, 'the sub,' will hang my third oar on his wall next year. I am going to curl up on the window-seat and rest a while, Mother. I feel all played out."

She, too, was very tired, but felt that her son had need of her, and she tried to soothe him to sleep, and smiled as she found herself half unconsciously humming a slumber-song she had crooned to him twenty years before. Her photograph was on his desk, and framed near it the winsome face of Cynthia Wells, and she crossed the room to look closely and comprehendingly at the girl who had acted in her own world as naturally as had the youth in his. When she returned to the window, her son was asleep, and she softly kissed him.

Looking across the green, she saw a blaze of red fire that colored the evening sky. Rockets and Roman candles began to spangle the illumination, and presently the far-away blare of a brass band crept nearer. She knew that these were signs of the home-coming of the crew, of the celebration whose glories Jack had eloquently portrayed. It was not disloyalty to him that she should want to see what it was like, although she knew he would not want to be there. Yet feeling traitorish qualms, she scribbled a little note, saying she had gone out for a "breath of fresh air," and stole down the staircase.

When she came to the corner the procession was rioting up Chapel Street toward the campus. The band preceded a tally-ho, on top of which were the heroes in their white boating uniforms, nervously dodging innumerable fiery darts aimed straight at them by wild-eyed admirers on the pavement. Behind, surging from curb to curb, skipped thousands of students and townspeople, arm in arm, in common rapture. The wavering line of fireworks told that the tail of the parade was blocks and blocks away.

The coach was stopped at the corner of the campus, as a hundred agile figures swarmed up the wheels, and dragged the crew to earth, from which they were instantly caught up, and borne on tossing shoulders to the stone steps of the nearest recitation hall. There they were held aloft, still struggling, while cheers greeted each by name.

VII

Now the celebration programme would have been halting and inadequate if the Assistant Manager of the Yale Navy had not hurried to New Haven on an earlier train. He had been in the car with John Hastings, and took it for granted that the sweet-faced woman of the silvery hair must be his mother. He was plunging through the crowd on the stone steps, trying to rescue the oarsmen in order to head them toward the banquet hall, when beneath the are light on the corner, a little way out of the tumult, he saw the timid lady for whom he had felt much sympathy. The Assistant Manager was ably fitted for his official task of looking after details, because he fairly boiled over with initiative, and with him to think was to act, as the powder speeds the bullet. He dashed across to Mrs. Hastings, and said, with a hurried and apologetic bow:

"Beg pardon, but this is Jack Hastings' mother, are you not? Yes, thank you, I was sure of it. It may seem presumptuous, but I have heard lots about you, and Jack has convinced me that you are the finest mother in the world, bar one. I have been so infern--so very busy since I got in town from New London, that I have had no time to look up Jack. We want him at the dinner, everybody does, and we want you just as much. In fact, you must be my special guest, and hear the speeches, anyhow, if you won't stay any longer. Jack's asleep, is he? Well, we'll wake him up, all right."

The alarmed little mother tried to protest several things at once. Jack had sworn he would not go to the dinner, and that he would break the neck of the man who should try to rout him out. Of course, Jack would not do that really, but he was all worn out and needed the rest. Please not to disturb him, and she would not dream of going without him, and she did not want to go at all. Her earnestness was almost tearful, but the Assistant Manager, who had heard perhaps the first ten words, darted off and was back with two young men whose fists were full of cannon crackers. He had each fast by the coat-collar, and shoving them into the foreground like a pair of marionettes, he breathlessly blurted:

"Mrs. Hastings, may I present Mr. Stower and Mr. 'Stuffy' Barlow, both Seniors, highly dignified and proper persons? This is Jack Hastings' mother. You are to escort Mrs. Hastings down to Harmonium Hall, and see that she has a nice seat in the gallery or near the door. No trouble at all, Mrs. Hastings, I assure you. Awfully glad to have had the honor of meeting you. Good-bye. I'll run over to Jack's room and drag him down there in five minutes."

Mrs. Hastings had all the sensations of being kidnapped. She tried to protest, even to resist, but was like a leaf caught up in a torrent, as Messrs. Barlow and Stower, both talking at once, handed her politely but firmly into the depths of a hack, climbed in after her and slammed the door.

Almost in a twinkling, as it seemed to the agitated mother, she was being ushered carefully into a small music gallery overlooking the banquet floor, where from a shadowy corner she could overlook the festivities in semi-seclusion. She waited only until her genial abductors were out of sight, and then slipped furtively toward the stairs, intending, of course, to return to her boy if he did not appear forthwith. Uneasy and fluttering, she was also keenly interested, for had not John placed this picture before her, and what it had meant to him in other years? He met her at the top of the stairway, looking sheepish and alarmed. She tried to explain, but he cut her short with a laugh:

"I know all about it, Little Mother. You fell a victim to the wiles of a terrible set of villains. You couldn't help yourself. Neither could I, when I heard how you had been spirited away. Now you are going to stay and see the fun, aren't you?"

She tried to persuade him to leave her and take his seat with the celebrants.

"No, I have lost my seat," said he, with the old shadow on his face. "I don't belong there any more.... I don't want to be seen. But the fellows promised not to give me away. It is pretty nervy for me to come at all. But I am here only to escort you."

She took his hand and held it while they sat well back in a corner of the gallery and watched the company trooping in. To the young oarsmen, so clean-cut and strong, tired but happy, all their woes and fears forgotten, this was their day of days. In a long row were seated the University eight, the substitutes, and the Freshman crew, which had also won its race. At the head of the table was "Big Bill" Hall, stout oarsman of thirty years ago, now a much stouter citizen. The captain of the crew was at his right, and at his left hand the beaming Head Coach, burned as black as any Indian. In another group were the younger coaches, most of them old strokes and captains, and mighty men at Yale in their time. Other oarsmen of other days were welcomed, regardless of the formality of invitation. Perhaps forty men around the board had known the test of the four-mile course, brothers of the oar through nearly two generations of rowing history.

The outcast was able to keep his poise until the Glee Club quartette rose to sing, by special request of the Head Coach, "Jolly Boating Weather." The first tenor had a sweet and sympathetic voice, and he had heard the story of the singing of this song on the float just before the race, wherefore he did the verses uncommonly well.

Then the old fellows, some with grizzled thatches, and some with thatches scant and thin, had their innings and pounded the table to emphasize their harmonious declaration that

"Twenty years hence such weather Will tempt us from office stools. We may be slow on the feather, And seem to the boys old fools, But we'll still swing together----"

The song carried to Hastings was the last straw to break the endurance which had pulled him through the long, long day. He did not want his mother to see his quivering lip, and he thought she would not perceive that he was near to breaking down. Did she know? Why, she felt his emotion in the hand she clasped tighter than before, she read his thoughts in the very beat of his pulse, and when he whispered that he must have caught a cold in the head because he was getting an attack of sniffles, she needed no words to enlighten her understanding. If his tears were those of a boy, then she thanked God she was childish enough to feel with him at every step and turn of the way that was blocked by the biggest sorrow of his life. She asked him whether he would like to go home. He shook his head and said that he would stick it through to the end.

VIII

Speeches were in order, and the presiding alumnus hove himself out of his chair, and hammered the table with the rudder of the winning shell, thoughtfully lifted and provided by the able Assistant Manager. There were cheers for "Big Bill" Hall, of the '73 crew, more cheers for Yale, and before the uproar was quiet his great voice rose above it as he began to speak. Presiding Judge of the Supreme Court of a New England State when at home, he was all a Yale man come back to his own upon such occasions as this, and because Yale men loved him they called him "Big Bill."

"When we get into the big world beyond the campus," he began, "it may seem to some that this intensity of purpose, this absorption in a sport, were childish, yet we do not regret those convictions, we are proud of them, for these same qualities make for manhood in the larger duties of a wider horizon. And, after all, are the things for which we are striving in after years any more worth while? Are they always sweetened and uplifted by so much devotion, unselfishness, loyalty, and singleness of purpose? Are they thrilled by as fine a spirit of manliness? We hear it said that the old Yale spirit is losing its savor, that men are working for themselves rather than for the college, that they hold in light esteem things that were sacred and vital to us. I do not believe these criticisms are true.

"The young man I wished most to see is not here to-night. He would not come to help us celebrate a victory over an ancient and honorable foe. He believes that he has lost the respect of his comrades and that he has been proven a failure. For three years he has been a University oar. This season he could not keep his weight down to the limit of former years, he found that he could not keep up with the eight--although he tried as never before--and he was not helping the crew. The day came when he had to be removed, and he experienced as bitter disappointment as could befall a young man of spirit and pluck. The coaches and captain expected that he would throw up training, leave the Quarters and go home. It was the natural thing to do, because he was cut to the soul, and it was like attending his own funeral services to hang around the place.

"Without a word he slipped into the place of a substitute, and did a substitute's work as long as there was need of it. I venture to say that he would have scrubbed out the boathouse if it would have been of service to the crew. Do you know why he took this stand? Not because he did not care, but because he cared so much. When he offered to help as a substitute he said:

"'If I can help the Yale shell to go faster by being out of it, I am glad of it. That is what I am rowing for. And if I can be of any use as a substitute, why, that is what I am here for, too. It is all for Yale, isn't it?'

"He did not know that he was overheard. It was not meant to be overheard. But it expressed his whole attitude, and he stood by it to the end. You youngsters who licked Harvard to-day deserve all the praise and rejoicing that comes to you. We are all proud of you, and we know how hard and well you have worked. But while you are the heroes of this celebration, _the_ hero did not row with you. His name is 'Jack' Hastings, the man who was glad to help a Yale crew go faster by getting out of it.

"And when you hear it said that the Yale spirit is dying out, I want you to think of that remark. That man absorbed the spirit right here that made him take that view as a matter of course. It was because he did not think of anything else to be done under the circumstances that he epitomized the spirit that will make this old place great as long as it stands. Endowments and imposing buildings can never breed that spirit. It grows and blossoms as the fruitage of many generations of tradition, and when Yale loses it, she is become an empty shell, a diploma factory, and no longer a nursery of the right kind of manhood needed in this country.

"Three long cheers for 'Jack' Hastings, who, if he did not help to win this race, will help to win races long after he is gone from the campus world; and so long as his words are remembered Yale men on football field, on track and diamond, and on the dear old Thames will feel their inspiration. Are you ready?"

The men rose the length of the table and shouted, with napkins waved on high. Before the last "rah, rah, rah, Hastings, Hastings, Hastings," subsided, the Assistant Manager had become red in the face and exceedingly uneasy. He wrestled with a weighty ethical problem, because while he had pledged his word not to reveal the secret of Hastings' presence within sight and sound of this ovation, he realized that to lead him in would be a crowning and dramatic episode. A compromise was possible, however, and he slipped around the table and whispered in the ear of "Big Bill" Hall.

In the gallery the little mother had shrunk farther back into the shadows, half afraid of this uproar, yet happier than ever before in her life. She looked at her boy, sitting close beside her, his face hidden so that she could not see the illuminating joy in it, the dazed look of unreality, as if he were coming through dreamland. There was no surprise in her mind. Of course, this triumph was no more than what was due, and she could have hugged the massive chairman as a person of excellent discernment. The boy whispered:

"He does not really mean it, Mother. There is some mistake. He has been out of college so long that he does not know what things mean."

She patted his burning cheek and whispered:

"Why, I knew it all the time. But you would not believe it if your mother said you were a hero. I wonder how the Head Coach feels now? I wish I----"

With a quick leap Jack had wrenched himself away and was clattering down the stairs. He had seen the whispered conference and "Big Bill" Hall staring up at the gallery, and fearing that he was trapped and betrayed, he fled into the street and was running for the nearest corner before the Assistant Manager could pass through the hall to the foot of the stairs. The conspirator had not promised silence regarding Hastings' mother, and before she knew what was happening he was by her side, so quickly that she thought it was Jack returned to her. As she looked up in alarm, the Assistant Manager had her reluctant hand, and was insisting upon leading her to the railing of the little gallery. She gazed at the upturned faces, and there was a moment of expectant silence. Then Judge Hall shouted the command: "Three long cheers for Jack Hastings' mother."

She was trembling now, and the lights and faces below swam in a mist of tears, as she timidly bowed. Then, as the full realization of the tribute swept over her like an engulfing wave, she became youthfully erect, she smiled, and blew kisses with both her slender hands toward the long table. She was thanking them in behalf of her boy, that was all, because they too understood. Certain that he must be waiting not far away, she bowed again, and hurried down the stairs, meeting the Head Coach in the hall. His face was serious, his manner abashed, as he said:

"I want to ask whether you will shake hands with me, Mrs. Hastings. I am proud that you do me the honor. I wish to tell you something more than you have heard to-night, and I am going to tell it to all the men, when I return to the room. Your son was too heavy to handle himself as well as he did last year and the year before. But I believe he would have rowed in the race if a mistake had not been made. I found out when it was too late that his rigging, or measurements, in the shell was not right for him, and it would have made considerable difference if he could have been shifted in time. It was wholly my fault, and nobody else was to blame in any way. I can never make it up to him, and my only consolation is that you have found what I have learned, that he is a good deal finer man than we thought him, and an honor to Yale beyond all the rest of us. You must hate me, more than any one else in the world. I remember how my mother shared my joys and sorrows in the crew."

The mother put out her hand again, and clasped that of the Coach, as she said simply, but with a catch of emotion in her voice:

"I did hate you to-day. I thought you had broken my boy's heart. Now I have to thank you. God's ways are not our ways, and I rejoice that while I have lost a captain of the crew, I have gained a man, every inch of him, tried in the fire and proven. This is the happiest night of my life. I would rather have heard the speech of Judge Hall, and the cheers that followed it, than to have my son in four winning crews and captain of every one of them. Of course he is a hero. Didn't you know that?"

The Head Coach started to speak, when the elbow of "Big Bill" Hall nudged him. The bulk of him filled the passage-way, and his voice boomed out into the night:

"If you don't bring that boy around to the hotel to see me in the morning, I will take back all I have said about him, Mrs. Hastings. Now I know where he gets all his fine qualities."

She blushed and courtesied, and the two men escorted her to the pavement, as John Hastings slipped from a doorway across the street and came over to them. His mother's escort, believing that he had been no nearer the banquet than this, made a rush for him, which he nimbly dodged, and slipped his mother's arm in his.

"He is mine now," said she. "He has a previous engagement, and, besides, I don't want him spoiled. Good-night to you. Come along, Jack, you are not too big to mind your mother, are you?"

The two walked slowly across the Green toward the campus. The communion of their uplifted souls was perfect, their happiness almost beyond words. She was first to break this rare, sweet silence, and strangely enough, she said nothing about the vindication and the triumph. Looking up into his face she almost whispered:

"Are you caring so much that Cynthia disappointed you to-day, dear boy of mine? Does it hurt and rankle? I could see it in your eyes to-night. Do you want to marry her very much? Are you sure of your heart?"

He winced a little and held her arm tighter than before, as he replied:

"Little Mother, it has been my first real love story, as you know. The thought of her has helped me over many a rough place. Before to-day she was always so quick to understand. And--and she seemed to like me better than any other fellow she knew. I was fairly aching to be worthy of her, to make my place in the world for her. I wasn't conceited enough to think she loved me. I was only hoping that some day--Any man has a right to do that, has he not?"

It was not easy for the mother to say what she wished to tell him, but at length her response was:

"I don't want you to think I am criticising her, or sitting in judgment, but you must not let her mar your faith and hope and happiness. I want to help you to guard those precious gifts. You must not blame her too much. You have been believing that she understood you, because you would have it that way. She is no older than you, a girl of twenty, accustomed to a wholly different life from yours. She was flattered by your attention, for you were a great man in her eyes. She liked you because no one can help liking you. But it made a difference when you were a hero knocked off his pedestal. And yet you expected to find in her sympathy a balm that even your mother could not give. Poor lad, mothers are handy sometimes, but most boys do not find it out until their mothers are gone from them."

"I thought I knew her so well," said he, after another silence. "It looks as if I had amused her and nothing more. But I have found you, and I have fallen head over heels in love with you, Little Mother, all over again, and I am going to kiss you right under this electric light."

Even yet she was not sure that she had sounded the depths of the ache in his heart, but as she looked up at the light in his campus rooms she said softly:

"Some day you will understand, and will thank God your mother understood. He giveth you the victory unforeseen."

CORPORAL SWEENEY, DESERTER

"I'll be gettin' five years--five years at least."

The surging fear became fixed in these words, and they, in turn, swung in with the cadenced tramp of Corporal Sweeney, the other prisoner, the sentry, and the young lieutenant along the Chien-men Road toward the American camp and the guard-house. As the refrain rolled itself over in the brain of the corporal, he discovered that he was muttering it aloud when the other prisoner said explosively:

"I know you will, and so will I; but, by ----, I'm going to make a run for it!"

"You're the silliest fool in Peking if you do," replied the corporal. "An' where would you be after runnin' to? No place to----"

He checked himself and turned his head. The sentry and the lieutenant were at their heels, but in the clamor of the crowded thoroughfare the talk had been unheard. A swirl of Chinese street merchants was scattering from in front of a German wagon-train, a troop of Bengal Lancers clattered recklessly into the ruck, and the road flung the tangled traffic to and fro between its walls, like a tide in a mill-race. The corporal muttered again to the scowling man beside him:

"Nothin' doin'. Sure to be captured this side Tientsin. Forget it. You're crazier than thim----"

A shout in his ear made him jump aside, and he saw the sentry lurch against the flank of a transport camel and lose his footing as a cart-wheel struck him from behind. The loaded rifle fell on the chaotic stone flagging. The other prisoner heard the crash and knew what it meant. Here seemed the chance he sought, but instead of doubling into one of the crooked side streets, he broke away down the middle of the Chien-men Road, and the traffic opened up for him, as the crowd, grasping as by instinct what was happening, scattered in panic.