The Guarded Heights
confident that the Yale team could not prevent his taking the ball over
in the next few plays.
"I will! I will! I will!" he said to himself.
Alone, he felt, he could overcome that five yards against the eleven of
them.
"Let's have it, Dicky," he whispered. "I'm going over this play or the
next. Shoot me outside of tackle."
On the first play Goodhue fumbled, and a Yale guard fell on the ball.
George stared, stifling an instinct to destroy his friend. The chance
had been thrown away, and his head made him suffer more and more. Then
he saw that Goodhue wanted to die, and as they went back to place
themselves for the Yale kick, George said:
"You've proved we can get through them. Next time!"
Would there be a next time? And Goodhue didn't seem to hear. With all
his enviable inheritance and training he failed to conceal a passionate
remorse; his conviction of a peculiar and unforgivable criminality.
In the dressing-room a few minutes later some of the players bitterly
recalled that ghastly error, and a coach or two turned furiously on the
culprit. It was too bad Squibs and Allen weren't there to watch
George's white temper, an emotion he didn't understand himself, born, he
tried to explain it later, of his hurt head.
"Cut that out!" he snarled.
The temper of one of the coaches--an assistant--flamed back.
"It was handing the game on a----"
George reached out and caught the shoulders of that man who during the
season had ordered him around. The ringing in his head, the increasing
pain, had destroyed all memory of discipline.
"Say another word and I'll throw you out of here."
The room fell silent. Some men gasped. The coach shrank from the furious
face, tried to elude the powerful grasp. Stringham hurried up. George
let the other go.
"Mr. Stringham," he said, quietly, "if there's any more of this I'll
quit right now, and so will the rest of the team if they've any pluck."
Stringham motioned the coach away, soothed George, led him to a chair,
where Green and a doctor got off his battered headgear. George wanted to
scream, but he conquered the brimming impulse, and managed to speak
rationally.
"You've done all you can for us. We've got to play the game ourselves,
and we're not giving anything away. We're not making any mistakes we can
help."
Goodhue came up and gripped his shoulder. The touch quieted him.
"This man oughtn't to go back, Green," the doctor announced.
George stiffened. He hadn't made that score. He hadn't smashed Lambert
Planter half enough. Better to leave the field on a stretcher, and in
darkness again, than to quit like this: to walk out between the halves;
not to walk back. He began to lie, overcoming a physical agony of which
he had never imagined his powerful body capable.
"No, that doesn't hurt, nor that," he replied, calmly, to the doctor's
questions. "Don't think I'm nutty because I lost my temper. My head's
all right. That gear's fine."
So they let him go back, and he counted the plays, willing himself to
receive and overcome the pounding each down brought him, continuing by
pure force of will to outplay Lambert; to save his team from dangerous
gains, from possible scores; nearly breaking away himself half-a-dozen
times, although the Princeton eleven was tiring and much of the play was
in its territory.
The sun had gone behind heavy clouds. A few snowflakes fluttered down.
It was nearly dark. In spite of his exertions he felt cold, and knew it
for an evil sign. Once or twice he shivered. His throbbing head gave him
an illusion of having grown enormously so that it got in everybody's
way. Instinctively he caught a Yale forward pass on his own thirty-yard
line and tore off, slinging tacklers aside with the successful fury of a
young bull all of whose dangerous actions are automatic. He had come a
long way. He didn't know just how far, but the Yale goal posts were
near. Then, quite consciously, he saw Lambert Planter cutting across to
intercept him. The meeting of the two was unavoidable. He thought he
heard Lambert's voice.
"Not past me!"
Lambert plunged for the tackle. George's right hand shot out and smashed
open against Lambert's face. He raced on, leaving Lambert sprawled and
clawing at the ground.
The quarterback managed to bring him down on the eight-yard line, then
lost him; yet, before George could get to his feet others had pounced,
and his heavy, awkward head had crashed against the earth again.
They dragged him to his feet. For a few moments he lurched about,
shaking off friendly hands.
"Only five minutes more, George," somebody prayed.
Only five minutes! Good God! For him each moment was a century of
unspeakable martyrdom. Flecks of rain or snow touched his face, lifted
in revolt. The contact, wet and cold, cleared his brain a trifle--let in
the screaming of the multitude, hoarse and incoherent, raised at first
in thanksgiving for his run, then, after its close, altering to menacing
disappointment and command. What business had they to tell him what to
do? Up there, warm and comfortable, undergoing no exercise more violent
than occasional excited rising and sitting down, they had the selfish
impudence to order him to make a touchdown. Why should he obey, or even
try? He had done his job, more than any one could reasonably have asked
of him. He had outplayed Lambert, gained more ground than any man on the
field, made more valuable tackles. Could he really impress Sylvia any
further? Why shouldn't he walk off now in the face of those unjust
commands to the rest he had earned and craved with all his body and
mind?
"Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown! Morton! Morton! Morton!"
Damn them! Why not, indeed, walk off, where he wouldn't have to listen
to that thoughtless and autocratic impertinence?
He glanced down at his blackened hands, at his filthy breeches, at his
jersey striped about the sleeves with orange; and with a wave of
self-loathing he knew why he couldn't go. He had sworn never to wear
anything like livery again, yet here he was--in livery, a servant to men
and women who asked dreadful things without troubling even to
approximate the agony of obedience.
"I'll not be a servant," he had told Bailly.
Bailly had made him one after all, and an old phrase of the tutor's
slipped back:
"Some day, young man, you'll learn that the world lives by service."
George had not believed. Now for a moment his half-conscious brain knew
Bailly had been right. He had to serve.
He knocked aside the sponge Green held to his face. He indicated the
bucket of cold water the trainer had carried out.
"Throw it over my head," he said, "the whole thing. Throw it hard."
Green obeyed. He, too, who ought to have understood, was selfish and
imperious.
"You make a touchdown!" he commanded hoarsely.
The water stung George's eyes, rushed down his neck in thrilling
streams, braced him for the time. The teams lined up while the
Princeton stands roared approval that their best servant should remain
on the job.
Goodhue called the signal for a play around the left tackle. Every Yale
player was confident that George would take the ball, sensed the
direction of the play, and, over-anxious, massed there, all but the
quarter, who lay back between the goal posts. George saw, and turned
sharply, darting to the right. Suddenly he knew, because of that
over-anxiety of Yale, that he had a touchdown. Only the Yale quarterback
had a chance for the tackle, and he couldn't stop George in that
distance.
Out of the corner of his eye George noticed Goodhue standing to the
right and a little behind. He, too, must have seen the victorious
outcome of the play, and George caught in his attitude again that air of
a unique criminal. They'd hold that fumble against Dicky forever
unless--if Goodhue had the ball the Yale quarter couldn't even get his
hands on him until he had crossed the line.
"Dicky!"
The dejected figure sprang into action. Without weighing his sacrifice,
without letting himself think of the crime of disobeying a signal, of
the risks of a hurried throw or of another fumble, George shot the ball
across, then forged ahead and put the Yale quarterback out of the play,
while Goodhue strolled across the line and set the ball down behind the
goal posts.
As he went back to kick the goal George heard through the crashing
cacophony from the stands Goodhue's uncertain voice:
"Why didn't you make that touchdown yourself? It was yours. You had it.
You had earned it."
"It was the team's," George answered, shortly. "I might have been
spilled. Sure thing for you."
"You precious idiot!" Goodhue whispered.
As George kicked the goal there came to him again, across his pain, that
sensation of being on a road he had not consciously set out to explore.
He wondered why he was so well content.
Eternity ended. With the whistle and the crunching of the horn George
staggered to his feet. Goodhue and another player supported him while
the team clustered for a cheer for Yale. The Princeton stands were a
terrific avalanche descending upon that little group. Green tried to
rescue him, shouting out his condition; but the avalanche wouldn't have
it. It dashed upon him, tossed him shoulder high, while it emitted
crashing noises out of which his name emerged.
Goodhue was up also, and the others. Goodhue was gesturing and talking,
pointing in his direction. Soon Goodhue and the others were down. The
happy holocaust centred its efforts on George. Why? Had Goodhue given
things away about that touchdown? Anyhow, they knew how to reward their
servants, these people.
They carried George on strong shoulders at the head of their careening
procession. His dazed brain understood that they desired to honour the
man who had done the giant's share, the one who had made victory
possible, and he sensed a wrong, a sublime ignorance or indifference
that they should carry only him. The victory went back of George Morton.
He bent down, screaming into the ears of his bearers.
"Squibs Bailly! He found me. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have played
to-day. Bailly, or let me down! Bailly made that run! I tell you, Bailly
played that game!"
In his earnestness he grew hysterical.
Maybe it was because they wanted to humour the hero, or perhaps they
caught his own hysteria, realizing what Bailly had done for him. They
stopped in front of the stands to which Bailly's bad foot had condemned
him during this triumphant march. They commenced a high-pitched, frantic
chant.
"We want Squibs Bailly! We want Squibs Bailly! We want Squibs Bailly!"
George waved his hands, holding the column until the slender figure,
urged by the spectators remaining in the stands, came down with
difficulty and embarrassment to be caught and lifted tenderly up beside
George.
Then, with these two aloft in the very front, the wild march was resumed
through the Yale goal posts while Squibs' wrinkled face twitched, while
in his young eyes burned the unsurpassable light of a hopeless wish
miraculously come true.
XXVII
Green rescued George when his head was drooping and his eyes blurred. He
got him to the gymnasium and stretched him out there and set the doctors
to work on his head.
A voice got into George's brain. Who was talking? Was it Goodhue, or
Stringham?
"I guess you can see him, but he's pretty vague. Played the whole game
with a broken head. Lied to the doctors."
George forced his eyes open. Lambert Planter, still in his stained
football clothes, bent over him.
"Hello, Planter!"
Lambert grasped the black hand.
"Hello, George Morton!"
That was all. Lambert went away, but George knew that what he had really
said was:
"It's only what you've made of yourself that counts."
XXVIII
At Princeton they kept him in the infirmary for a few days, but he