Part 5

“Dolan and Breittmann, and Berty Jones, who was our quarterback and the only one in the crowd besides Dolan who had met Mr. Rooney, looked at each other and kind of grinned. Then Dolan says: 'Mr. Breittmann knows signals and will run through practice with us in the morning, but not Mr. Rooney. Mr. Breittmann, boys, used to be on the Yale scrub.'

“'Dem vas goot days, Chimmie,' says this here Breittmann, 'but der naturalist, Chimmie, he is also the good days. What?'

“The next day, just before the game, I got my first glimpse of this Rooney when he come downstairs with Breittmann and they both piled into a cab. He wore a long overcoat over his football togs, and he had so many headpieces and nose guards and things on to him all you could see of his face was a bit of reddish looking whisker at the sides.

“'He's Irish by the name,' says 1, 'and the way he carries them shoulders and swings his arms he must have learned to play football by carrying the hod.' He wasn't a big man, neither, and I thought he handled himself kind of clumsy.

“When we got out to the football field and that Lincoln College bunch jumped out of their bus and began to pass the ball around, the very first man we see is that there Jerry Coakley.

“Yes, sir, sold out!

“Dolan and me ran over to the Lincoln captain.

“'You don't play that man!' says Dolan, mad as a hornet, pointing at Jerry. Jerry, he stood with his arms crossed, grinning and chuckling to himself, bold as Abraham Lincoln on the burning deck and built much the same.

“'Why not?' says the college captain, 'he's one of our students.'

“'Him?' says I. 'Why, he's the village truck-driver here!' And that there Jerry had the nerve to wink at me.

“'Mr. Coakley matriculated at Lincoln College a week ago,' says the captain, Jerry he grinned more and more, and both teams had gathered into a bunch around us.

“'Matriculated? Jerry did?' says Jimmy Dolan. 'Why, it's all Jerry can do to write his name.'

“'Mr. Coakley is studying the plastic arts, and taking a special course in psychology,' says the captain.

“'Let him play, Dolan,' says Tom Sharp. 'Leave him to me. I'll learn him some art. I'll fix him!'

“'O, you Tom!' says Jerry, grinning good-natured.

“'O, you crook!' says Tom. And Jerry, still grinning good-natured, hands Tom one. It took the rest of the two teams to separate them, and they both started the game with a little blood on their faces. We made no further kick about Jerry playing. All our boys wanted him in the game. 'Get him!' was the word passed down the line. And after that little mix-up both sides was eager to begin.

“We kicked off. I noticed this here Rooney person got down after the kick-off rather slow, sticking close to his friend Breittmann. He was at left tackle, right, between Breittmann at guard, and Dolan, who played end.

“Jerry, he caught the kick-off and come prancing up the field like a prairie whirlwind. But Dolan and me got to him about the same time, and as we downed him Tom Sharp, quite accidental, stepped on to his head with both feet.

“'Foul!' yells the referee, running up and waving his hand at Tom Sharp. 'Get off the field, you! I penalize Kingstown thirty yards for deliberate foul play!'

“But Jerry jumped up--it took more'n a little thing like that to feaze Jerry--and shoved the referee aside.

“'No, you don't put him out of this game,' says Jerry. 'I want him in it. I'll put him out all right!'

“Then there was a squabble, that ended with half of both teams ordered off the field. And the upshot of which was that everybody on both sides agreed to abolish all umpires and referees, and get along without any penalties whatever, or any officials but the time-keeper. No, sir, none of us boys was in any temper by that time to be interfered with nor dictated to by officials.

“No, what followed wasn't hampered any by technicalities. No, sir, it wasn't drop the handkerchief. There wasn't any Hoyle or Spalding or Queensberry about it. It was London prize ring, _savate_, jiu juitsi and Græco-Roman, all mixed up, with everybody making his own ground rules. The first down, when Tom Sharp picked up that Lincoln College Captain and hit Jerry Coakley over the head with him, five Lincoln College substitutes give a yell and threw off their sweaters and run on to the field. Then we heard another yell, and our substitutes come charging into the fray and by the end of the first half there was eighteen men on each side, including three in citizens' clothes who were using brass knucks and barrel staves.”

Joe paused a moment, dwelling internally upon memories evidently too sweet for words. Then he sighed and murmured: “No, sir, the game ain't what it was in them days. Kick and run and forward pass and such darned foolishness! Football has went to the dogs!

“Well,” he resumed, flexing his muscles reminiscently, “neither side wasted any time on end runs or punts. It was punch the line, and then punch the line some more, and during the first ten minutes of play the ball didn't move twenty yards either way from the centre of the field, with a row on all the time as to whose ball it ought to be. As a matter of fact, it was whoever's could keep his hands on to it.

“It was the third down before I noticed this fellow Rooney particular. Then our quarterback sent a play through between guard and tackle. It was up to Rooney to make the hole for it.

“As the signal was give, and the ball passed back, Breittmann laid his arm across Rooney's shoulders, and I heard him say something in Dutch to him. They moved forward like one man, not fast, but determined like. A big college duffer tried to get through Rooney and spill the play. This here Rooney took him around the waist and slammed him on to the ground with a yell like a steamship that's discovered fire in her coal bunkers, and then knelt on the remains, while the play went on over 'em. I noticed Breittmann had a hard time getting Rooney off of him. They carried the fellow off considerably sprained, and two more Lincoln College fellows shucked their wraps and run in to take his place.

“The very next play went through the same hole, only this time the fellow that went down under Rooney got up with blood soaking through his shoulder padding and swore he'd been bit. But nobody paid any attention to him, and the Lincoln boys put Jerry Coakley in opposite Rooney.

“'You cross-eyed, pigeon-toed Orangeman of a hod-carrier, you,' says Jerry, when we lined up, trying to intimidate Rooney, 'I'll learn you football.'

“But Rooney, with his left hand hold of Breittmann's, never said a word. He just looked sideways up at Breittmann like he was scared, or mebby shy, and Breittmann said something in Dutch to him.

“That play we made five yards, and we made it through Jerry Coakley, too, Mr. Rooney officiating. When Breittmann got his friend off Jerry, Jerry set up and tried to grin, but he couldn't. He felt himself all over, surprised, and took his place in the line without saying a word.

“Then we lost the ball on a fumble, which is to say the Lincoln centre jumped on to Tom Sharp's wrists with both feet when he tried to pass it, and Jerry Coakley grabbed it. The first half closed without a score, with the ball still in the centre of the field.

“The second half, I could see right away, Jerry Coakley had made up his mind to do up Rooney. The very first play Lincoln made was a guard's back punch right at Rooney. I reckon the whole Lincoln team was in that play, with Jerry Coakley in the van.

“We got into it, too. All of us,” Joe paused again, with another reflective smile. Pretty soon he continued.

“Yes, sir, that was some scrimmage. And in the midst of it, whoever had the ball dropped it. But for a minute, nobody seemed to care. And then we discovered that them unsportsmanlike Lincoln College students had changed to baseball shoes with metal spikes between the halves. We hadn't thought of that.

“After about a minute of this mauling, clawing mess, right out of the midst of it rolled the ball. And then came this here Rooney crawling after it--_crawling_ I say!--on his hands and feet.

“He picked it up and straightened himself.

“'Run, Rooney, run!' says I. And he had a clear field. But he didn't seem to realize it. He just tucked that ball under one arm, and ambled.

“Half a dozen of us fell in and tried to make interference for him--but he wouldn't run; he just dog-trotted, slow and comfortable. And in a second Jerry Coakley sifted through and tackled him.

“Rooney stopped. Stopped dead in his track, as if he was surprised. And then, using only one hand--only one hand, mind you--he picked that there Jerry Coakley up, like he was an infant, give him one squeeze, and slung him. Yes, sir, Jerry was all sort of crumpled up when he lit!

“And he kept on, slow and easy and gentle. The Lincoln gang spilled the interference. But that didn't bother Rooney any. Slow and certain and easy he went down that field. And every time he was tackled he separated that tackier from himself and treated him like he had Jerry.

“Yes, sir, he strung behind him ten men out of the nineteen players Lincoln College had in that game, as he went down the field. From where I was setting on top of the Lincoln centre rush, I counted 'em as he took 'em. Slow and solemn and serious like an avenging angel, Mr. Rooney made for them goal posts, taking no prisoners, and leaving the wounded and dead in a long windrow behind him. It wasn't legalized football, mebby, but it was a grand and majestic sight to see that stoop-shouldered feller with the red whiskers proceeding calmly and unstoppably forward like the wrath of God.

“Yes, sir, the game was ours. We thought it was, leastways. All he had to do was touch that there ball to the ground! The whole of Kingstown was drawing in its breath to let out a cheer as soon as he done it.

“But it never let that yell. For when he reached the goal----”

Here Joe broke off again and chuckled.

“Say,” he said, “you ain't going to believe what I'm telling you now. It's too unlikely. I didn't believe it myself when I seen it. But it happened. Yes, sir, that nut never touched the ground with the ball!

“Instead, with the ball still under one arm, he climbed a goal post. Climbed it, I tell you, with both legs and one arm. And setting straddle of that cross bar believe me or not, he began to shuck. In front of all that crowd, dud after dud, he shucked.

“And there wasn't no cheers then, for in a minute there he set, _a monkey!_ Yes, sir, the biggest blamed monkey you ever seen, trying to crack that football open on a goal post under the belief that it was a cocoa-nut. Monkey, did I say? Monkey ain't any word for it! He was a regular ape; he was one of these here orang-outang baboons! Yes, sir, a regular gosh-darned Darwinian gorilla!”

Joe took a fresh light for his cigar, and cocked his eye again at my sporting supplement. “I notice,” he said, sarcastically, “Princeton had a couple of men hurt yesterday in the Yale game. Well, accidents is bound to happen even in ring-around-the-rosy or prisoner's base. What?”

TOO AMERICAN

Is it a real English cottage?” we asked the agent suspiciously, “or is it one that has been hastily aged to rent to Americans?”

It was the real thing: he vouched for it. It was right in the middle of England. The children could walk for miles in any direction without falling off the edge of England and getting wet.

“See here!” I said. “How many blocks from Scotland is it?”

“Blocks from Scotland?” He didn't understand.

“Yes,” I said, “blocks from Scotland.” I explained. My wife and I had been trying to get a real English accent. That was one of the things we had come to England for. We wanted to take it back with us and use it in Brooklyn, and we didn't want to get too near Scotland and get any Scottish dialect mixed up with it. It seemed that the cottage was quite a piece from Scotland. There was a castle not far away--the fifteenth castle on the right side as you go into England. When there wasn't any wind you didn't get a raw sea breeze or hear the ocean vessels whistle.

“Is it overgrown with ivy,” asked Marian, my wife.

Yes, it was ivy-covered. You could scarcely see it for ivy--ivy that was pulling the wall down, ivy as deep-rooted as the hereditary idea.

“Are the drains bad?” I asked.

They were. There would be no trouble on that score. What plumbing there was, was leaky. The roof leaked.

There was neither gas nor electricity, nor hot and cold water, nor anything else.

“I suppose the place is rather damp?” I said to the agent. “Is it chilly most of the time? Are the flues defective? Are the floors uneven? Is the place thoroughly uncomfortable and unsanitary and unhabitable in every particular?”

Yes, it had all these advantages. I was about to sign the lease when my wife plucked me by the sleeve in her impulsive American way. “Is there a bathroom?” she asked.

“My dear Mrs. Minever,” said the agent with dignity, “there is not. I can assure you that there are no conveniences of any kind. It is a real English cottage.”

I took the place. It was evening of the third day after we took possession that I discovered that we had been taken in. All the other Americans in that part of England were sitting out in front of their cottages trying to look as if they were accustomed to them, and we--my wife and Uncle Bainbridge and I--were sitting in front of ours trying to act as English as we knew how, when a voice hailed me.

“You are Americans, aren't you, sir?” said the voice.

The voice was anyhow; so we shamefacedly confessed.

“I thought you looked like it,” said the voice, and its owner came wavering toward us through the twilight.

“What makes you think we look like it?” I said, a trifle annoyed; for it had been my delusion that we had got ourselves to looking quite English--English enough, at least, so that no one could tell us in the faint light.

“Our clothes don't fit us, do they?” asked my wife nervously.

“They can't fit us,” said I; “they were made in London.”

I spoke rather sharply, I suppose. And as I was speaking, a most astonishing thing happened--the person I had been speaking to suddenly disappeared. He was, and then he was not! I sprang up, and I could tell from my wife's exclamation that she was startled, too. As for Uncle Bainbridge, he seldom gives way to emotion not directly connected with his meals or his money.

“Here, you!” I called out loudly, looking about me.

The figure came waveringly into view again.

“Where did you go to?” I demanded. “What do you mean by acting like that? Who are you, anyhow?”

“Please, sir,” said the wavery person, “don't speak so crosslike. It always makes me vanish. I can't help it, sir.”

He continued timidly:

“I heard a new American family had moved here and I dropped by to ask you, sir, do you need a ghost?”

“A ghost! Are you----”

“Yes, sir,” with a deprecating smile. “Only an American ghost; but one who would appreciate a situation all the more, sir, for that reason. I don't mind telling you that there's a feeling against us American ghosts here in England, and I've been out of a place for some time. Maybe you have noticed a similar feeling toward Americans? I'm sure, sir, you must have noticed a discrimination, and----”

“Don't say 'sir' all the time,” I told him.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he rejoined: “but it's a habit. I've tried very hard to fit myself to English ways and it's got to be second nature, sir. My voice I can't change; but my class--I was a barber in America, sir--my class I have learned. And,” he repeated rather vacantly, “I just dropped by to see if you wanted a ghost. Being fellow Americans, you know, I thought----” His voice trailed off into humble silence, and he stood twisting a shadowy hat round and round in his fingers.

“See here!” I said. “Should we have a ghost?”

“Beg pardon, sir, but how much rent do you pay?” I told him.

He answered politely but with decision, “Then, sir, in all fairness, you are entitled to a ghost with the place. It gives a certain tone, sir.”

“Why weren't we given one, then?” I asked

“Well----” he said, and paused. If a ghost can blush with embarrassment, he blushed. “You see,” he went on, making it as easy for me as he could, “English ghosts mostly object to haunting Americans, just as American ghosts find it difficult to get places in English houses and cottages. You see, sir, we are----”

He halted lamely, and then finished, “We're so _American_ somehow, sir.”

“But we've been cheated!” I said.

“Yes, sir,” said the American ghost, “regularly _had_” He said it in quite an English manner, and I complimented him on his achievement. He smiled with a child's delight.

“Would I do?” he urged again, with a kind of timid insistence.

My sympathies were with him. “You don't mind children?” I said. “We have two.”

“No,” he replied; “leastways, if they aren't very rough, I am not much frightened of them.”

“I guess,” I began, “that----” I was about to say that he would do, when my wife interrupted me.

“We do not want a ghost at all,” she said firmly.

“But, my dear----”

She raised her eyebrows at me, and I was silent. After looking from one to the other of us wistfully for a moment, the applicant turned and drifted away, vanishing dejectedly when he reached the gate.

“You heard what he said, Henry?” said my wife as he disappeared. “It is lucky that you have me by you! Do you want to saddle yourself with an American ghost? For my part, I will have an English ghost or none!”

I realized that Marian was right; but I felt sorry for the ghost.

“What did--the fellow--want?” roared Uncle Bain-bridge, who is deaf, and brings out his words two or three at a time.

“Wanted to know--if we wanted--a ghost!” I roared in reply.

“Goat? Goat? Huh-huh!” shouted Uncle Bain-bridge. “No, sir! Get 'em a pony--and a cart--little cart! That's the best--thing--for the kids!”

Uncle Bainbridge is, in fact, so deaf that he is never bothered by the noises he makes when he eats. As a rule when you speak to him he first says, “How?” Then he produces a kind of telephone arrangement. He plugs one end into his ear, and shoves a black rubber disk at you. You talk against the disk, and when he disagrees with you he pulls the plug out of his ear to stop your foolish chatter, and snorts contemptuously. Once my wife remarked to me that Uncle Bainbridge's hearing might be better if he would only cut those bunches of long gray hair out of his ears. They annoy every one except Uncle Bainbridge a great deal. But the plug was in, after all, and he heard her, and asked one of the children in a terrible voice to fetch him the tin box he keeps his will in.

Uncle Bainbridge is _my_ uncle. My wife reminds me of that every now and then. And he is rather hard to live with. But Marian, in spite of his little idiosyncrasies, has always been generous enough to wish to protect him from designing females only too ready to marry him for his money. So she encourages him to make his home with us. If he married at all, she preferred that he should marry her cousin, Miss Sophia Calderwod. That was also Miss Sophia's preference.

We did get a ghost, however, and a real English ghost. The discovery was mine. I was sitting in the room we called the library one night, alone with my pipe, when I heard a couple of raps in, on, about, or behind a large bookcase that stood diagonally across one corner. It was several days after we had refused the American applicant, and I had been thinking of him more or less, and wondering what sort of existence he led. One half the world doesn't know how the other half lives. I suppose my reflections had disposed my mind to psychic receptivity; for when I heard raps I said at once:

“Are there any good spirits in the room?” It is a formula I remembered from the days when I had been greatly interested in psychic research.

Rap! rap! came the answer from behind the bookcase.

I made a tour of the room, and satisfied myself that it was not a flapping curtain, or anything like that.

“Do you have a message for me?” I asked.

The answer was in the affirmative.

“What is it?”

There was a confused and rapid jumble of raps. I repeated the question with the same result.

“Can you materialize?”

The ghost rapped no.

Then it occurred to me that probably this was a ghost of the sort that can communicate with the visible world only through replying to such questions as can be answered by yes or no. There are a great many of these ghosts. Indeed, my experience in psychic research has led me to the conclusion that they are in the majority.

“Were you sent down by the agent to take this place?” I asked.

“No!” It is impossible to convey in print the suggestion of hauteur and offended dignity and righteous anger that the ghost managed to get into that single rap. I have never felt more rebuked in my life; I have never been made to feel more American.

“Sir or madam,” I said, letting the regret I felt be apparent in my voice, “I beg your pardon. If you please, I should like to know whose ghost you are. I will repeat the alphabet. You may rap when you wish me to stop at a letter. In that way you can spell out your information. Is that satisfactory?”

It was.

“Who are you?”

Slowly, and with the assured raps of one whose social position is defined, fixed, and secure in whatever state of existence she may chance to find herself, the ghost spelled out, “Lady Agatha Pelham.”

I hope I am not snobbish. Indeed, I think I have proved over and over again that I am not, by frankly confessing that I am an American. But at the same time I could not repress a little exclamation of pleasure at the fact that we were haunted by the ghost of a member of the English aristocracy. You may say what you will, but there is a certain something--a manner--an air--I scarcely know how to describe it, but it is there; it exists. In England, one meets it so often--I hope you take me.

My gratification must have revealed itself in my manner. Lady Agatha rapped out, if anything with more haughtiness than she had previously employed--yes, even with a touch of defiance:

“I was at one time a governess.”

I gradually learned that while her own family was as good as the Pelham family, Lady Agatha's parents had been in very reduced circumstances, and she had had to become a governess. When Sir Arthur Pelham had married her, his people acted very nasty. He hadn't any money, and they had wanted him to marry some. He got to treating her very badly before he died. And during his lifetime, and after it, Lady Agatha had had a very sad life indeed. Still, you know, she was an aristocrat. She made one feel that as she told her story bit by bit. For all this came very gradually, as the result of many conversations, and not at once. We speedily agreed upon a code, very similar to the Morse telegraphic code, and we still further abbreviated this, until our conversations, after a couple of weeks, got to be as rapid as that of a couple of telegraph operators chatting over the wires. I intimated that it must be rather rough on her to be haunting Americans, and she said that she had once lived in our cottage and liked it.

In spite of her aristocracy, I don't suppose there ever was a more domestic sort of ghost than Lady Agatha. We all got quite fond of her, and I think she did of us, too, in spite of our being American. Even the children got into the habit of taking their little troubles and perplexities to her. And Marian used to say that with Lady Agatha in the house, when Uncle Bain-bridge and I happened to be away, she felt so _safe_ somehow.