The upshot of the talk was, as it always was, that they agreed once more to let things run on and perhaps something would turn up.

The next morning Father and Mother went back to New York, to finish the preparations for their adventure. Mother cried a little when she kissed Neale good-by, but Grandmother kissed her son without a quiver, though she clung to Grandfather's arm. She and Grandfather and Neale and old Si and Jennie stood in the front yard looking after the carriage. It was almost like seeing a newly married pair go off after the wedding.

Neale's mother kept turning to look back at them, her April face like a bride's, colored through tears by excitement and antic.i.p.ation. Neale stood up, taller than his tall old grandfather now, broad, ma.s.sive, his tanned face like a man's. But, to his amazement, there awoke in his heart for the last time, a little boy, a little boy who was frightened and grieved at being left alone.

Half-way down the hill, the carriage stopped and they saw Neale's mother spring out and run back up the hill, beckoning to Neale.

"Forgot something," conjectured Grandfather.

Neale bounded down towards her. They met half-way between the carriage and the house. Mother's face was still wet with her tears but she was not crying now. A glory was on her tremulous face. Neale never forgot how she looked at that moment.

There was something she was trying to tell him and although all she could bring out, as she took his big hands in hers was, "Neale, dear, dear Neale," she knew by the look on his face that she had told him.

The little boy in Neale's heart, appeased, consoled, comforted, melted away forever, without bitterness, without regrets. The over-grown young man looked down at his mother, with an absolute trust in her love, and a robust confidence in himself. "I'll be all right, Mother dear," he told her heartily, meaning a great deal more than he said.

Then she went back to her husband, and Neale went back to his punting.

As he ran furiously after the ball, reeking with sweat under the brazen August sun, it came to him suddenly, so that he stopped short for an instant to think of it, wonderingly, that he had never seen his father and mother look at each other, except with affection. And besides this old, old knowledge which had hung there so long he had never seen it before, there was a new picture ... the animation and excitement on their faces, as they talked of their setting off together for distant travels, the gaiety of Mother's laugh, as they told of the fun they were having to make ready for the unknown, to get the right clothes, to learn Spanish.... "I've been on the point of buying a mantilla," she had said.

"Don't you think I would look well in a mantilla, Neale?"

Mother had never seemed half as young to Neale as now. She must have been an awfully nice girl, he thought, going soberly to recover his ball.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Although he had of late seen very little of home, and had occasionally felt irked to know that his parents expected him to make a semi-regular appearance there, Neale found New York rather queer and empty at first with no background whatever but the football house.

He encountered something of the same queer, gone feeling as he lined up in the first game of the season, with all of the trusted Old Guard disappeared, with no Tod McAlpine beside him, on whom to leave the responsibility for the outcome of events. Of all the old supermen in whom he had put his trust, only Marshall the Captain was still there, at right guard. Things looked black to Neale. Such raw beginners could never hold together against any seasoned team.

And yet they did. Week after week of the early season, they registered victory after victory; never with sensational scores, but with steady defense that kept their goal line uncrossed, with drive enough to punch out a touch-down of their own. It came to Neale slowly that this was no kid team after all. It had about the usual proportion of seasoned players and recruits; only now he was one of the old timers. It came to him also that Bunny Edwards the Soph quarter was obviously trusting in him as he used to trust in Tod McAlpine. At first it was horrifying to Neale to have some one depending on _him_! He had all he could do to stand up under his own responsibility, heavy on his own shoulders for the first time. Presently he realized that possibly Tod McAlpine had had his own secret misgivings too, in the days when Neale depended on him.

It was by no means wholly physical and muscular, the hardening and maturing that went on in Neale, those first weeks of his last football season.

This deepening of his sense of responsibility deepened his capacity for emotion along with the rest of his personality. The other Seniors, even good old Gregg theorizing and spinning talk about things he'd read in books, seemed off in another world to Neale, a light, bright, boyish, somewhat foolishly unreal, although very care-free world. But although he sometimes groaned at the fierce, stark suffering which was the inevitable penalty of caring so fiercely and starkly about anything as he cared about football, he did not envy Gregg and the other outsiders.

Envy them? Heavens, no! They were playing at life; he was living!

Yes, he was living and at a higher emotional pitch than he had ever known. He did not think of himself as an individual. He was flesh of one flesh, bone of one bone with his teammates. Once in the Amherst game a smash into the line had piled up without gain. The heaped ma.s.s of legs and bodies squirmed itself apart, friends and enemies crawled to their position. All but one, and that was the big Slav tackle, who lay limp and white as if dead.

"Time out!"

Neale flung himself against Fate. He fell on his knees beside the prostrate man, and took the bullet head into his arms. "Mike," he pleaded. "Not now! _We need you, Mike!_" Like a mother with a baby lying between life and death, he hung over that coa.r.s.e, bruised face. All the love he had ever felt for any one seemed shallow compared to his yearning over this debauched, foul-mouthed, hairy boozer.

He could have kissed the ugly blue mug as the eyelids flickered, the color came back, and the giant rolled to his feet and lumbered back into the line.

The season rolled along. The luck seemed finally to have changed. They were almost through, with the best record in years. Then two days before the final game, Marshall the Captain broke a bone in his foot. The faces of the team were grave (all but that of Dodd, the sub thus let into the Varsity) as they gathered in the dressing-room before the game. The coach looked them over, casting about for the right note, and had the inspiration to lay by his usual impa.s.sioned, florid appeal.

"Nicholson will play center," he began, his plain, heavy words like iron; "Burke and Dodd guards; Mike and La.r.s.en tackles; Greenway and Huggins, ends; Edwards quarter. Crittenden and Wallace halves; Bas...o...b..full-back. Crittenden will act as Captain." He looked full at Crittenden, "It's the last time you'll wear the blue and white, Neale Crittenden!"

Neale throbbed like a great brazen bell, struck by the hammer.

Andrews turned his eyes on the team and made the rest of his speech short and hard.

"Boys, it's easy to lose and it's hard to win. Don't be fooled by the rooters saying you made a game fight. What _would_ you do? Run away?

Take it from me, there's a time in every game when either team can win.

It's the team that has the sand, that's got the guts to put in an extra pound _right then_, that wins! I'm not telling you this Cornell team is easy. They're d.a.m.ned hard. But you've got weight enough, you've got speed enough, you know football enough. Now you go out there on the field, and show me you've got guts enough to win!"

With set jaws and grim, resolute hearts, the team, Neale at their head, trotted out on the gridiron. "It's the last time you'll wear the blue and white, Neale Crittenden!" He was clanging to that note.

They were lucky to get through the first half with a clean slate.

Cornell came fast and hard, but time after time they held them and punted out of danger. The ten minutes' intermission seemed to last barely ten seconds and they were at it again, dead-locked, swaying from one forty-yard line to another. "Looks like a tie-game, barring a fluke," thought Neale, and then with an angry throb of alarm, "By G.o.d, I believe we're letting up! Here's where we put in that extra pound!"

"Six, n-int-e-e-n-f-o-r-t-y-f-i-v-e!" the quarter was droning. "No!"

cried Neale, "Change that! Four-seven-two-eight!" It was his own straight buck, and he went into the line with a headlong hurdle. "I'll give the signals for a play or two, Bunny," he called to the quarter as they lined up again, "Seven-fourteen-thirty-three," he barked and took the ball on a cross buck, rolling and plunging for four yards, "Three-seven-nine-four." Again he started on the cross buck, bluffed at receiving the ball, hit the defense head down, yelling, "Help me!" and just as he fell saw Wallace skirting outside of tackle with the delayed pa.s.s, stiff-arming the end, shaking off the defensive quarter and on for a good ten yards. As he got up, Neale grabbed Edwards round the neck and whispered, with lips close to his ear, "We've got 'em started, Bunny!

You run the plays now. Get the idea? Shoot 'em outside, till they open up, then plug Billy and Mike through the guards. Keep mixing 'em up, and speed, _speed_!"

Bunny got the idea. He snapped out his signals, and shot his offense like a boxer hammering a groggy opponent. With Mike back, he ran Neale and Wallace outside, inside, across, on the weak side: then suddenly dropped back to straight battering-ram football, and sent Mike at the apex of a straining, stamping tandem, straight through and over the defense to the fifteen yard line. The team was crazy with success--prancing like stallions. "Come on, boys!" Neale went a yard on a straight buck, dug his toe-cleats in as he fell, plunged and squirmed for another yard and a half. Wallace shot through a quick opening for three. With La.r.s.en back and first down, Billy sheered off inside for a couple of yards, the Swede got another two straight ahead, Mike running from position made only a bare yard, but enough!

"First down, to the line to go!" said the referee. Neale heard his signal. "d.a.m.n the torpedoes, go ahead!" he thought. He flew at the line, bone and muscle transfigured by flaming will--a hard body dove against his knees--he staggered, leaned forward, churned his knees up and down a tenth of a second that seemed to drag for an hour, forward he staggered, strained forward, then fell. When the ma.s.s got off him he found he had got to the two-yard line. "Give it to me again!" he whispered, pa.s.sing Bunny.

La.r.s.en stuck his blonde head close up to theirs, "For Christ's sake, let _me_ take it! It's my last game. I won't play no more after to-day!"

"Neither will I," thought Neale, but he nodded and they lined up with La.r.s.en back.

"Look out for a funny one," cried the Cornell quarter, as the signals began. "Cap and quarter had a consultation--"

As the center's fingers contracted for the snap-back, Neale shot out of his tracks, and crashed into the defensive half. "Got him flat-footed,"

he thought, remembering as they both went down to swing his feet wide in the hope of getting the defensive quarter as well. He rolled clear at once, and looked back to see if he could be of any help. It wasn't necessary. Practically all the two teams were heaped in a human haystack, from the base of which emerged a grinning blonde face. Under the face were two huge hands some six inches over the line, clutching the ball, on which emotional Swedish eyes were weeping beatific tears.

Neale kicked a fairly easy goal. The trainer let him suck a little water from a sponge, whispering out of the corner of his motionless mouth, "Andy says minute and a half to play. Hold the ball and line up slow!"

But the team had tasted too much blood to stall. They went down on the kick-off like a pack of wolf-hounds. They smashed two plays for a loss, and after a punt, they punched the ball to midfield before the whistle blew and the game was over.

Nicholson tossed the ball to Neale. "Here's your ball, Cap!"

Neale saw Mike Blahoslav kissing Bunny Edwards. He himself was hugging Gus La.r.s.en, when the pandemonium from the grand-stand struck them. He was lifted on a platform of shoulders and carried to the gate surrounded by a cheering, singing, crazy mob of rooters.

"That's so," he thought, "there _was_ a crowd looking on!" He had not thought of the bleachers, or heard a cheer since the second half began.

They packed into the 'bus, Varsity inside, scrub on top. The 'bus went off at a gallop. For a few blocks the rooters ran along, throwing cigarettes and cigars through the windows. Neale leaned back and luxuriously lit a cigar. He had been thinking about that first cigar for the last month. Oh, faugh! It tasted hot and dry and burned his mouth.

No matter! He threw it away and leaned back in a golden reverie.

Would he ever again know such blessed unalloyed content?

Probably not.