THE BRIGHT TOKEN
"Here, take this—it's your token of good luck," she had said. That was twenty years ago, when she was a wistful, dark-eyed slip of a girl and he a wiry, sandy-haired bundle of nerves that football authorities insisted on dubbing the best quarterback in Harvard history, a man who would certainly be accorded All-American honors at the conclusion of the season.
It was a bare hour before the game that he had met her in a secluded spot in the shadow of the stands. A cold rain was falling which, most every one admitted, made a Yale victory look overwhelmingly certain. He could remember how the delicately traced fingers had clung to the lapel of his sweater, and how, when he had started to take leave of her for the locker room, she had restrained him.
The fingers had gone to her throat, had fumbled there an instant, and had undone the slip of a crimson bow which had been caught at the collar of her waist. Tinglingly he could recall how she had commanded him to hold out his right wrist, how sheepish he had felt when she had tied the bow about it—and yet how proud! He had kissed it then and she had laughed, a laugh of nervous admiration, and patted him on the arm. And he had gathered her into one last, impulsive embrace and whispered, "My darling wife!"
Ah, that was twenty years ago! Twenty years! And yet memory made it yesterday; for to-day Carrington R. Davies was going back—back to the scene of it all—back to witness the annual clash with the Yale Bulldogs, and to sit in the stands where he would be pointed out as one of Harvard's greatest old-time football heroes.
Every year since his graduation, C. R. D. had gone back on the occasion of the Yale game—gone either to Cambridge or New Haven—and he intended to keep on doing it as many years as he was permitted to draw breath.
As Davies took the train at the Grand Central Station, New York, he glanced apprehensively at the gray sky overhead and hoped that the weather man who had prophesied rain was wrong. Harvard would need a dry field this year to stand an even chance at winning. Her back field was light, fast, and shifty. It depended on a quick get-away and a sure under-footing. Yale's eleven was solid, heavy from end to end, with a stubborn defense that had allowed but two touchdowns so far that season, and a pile-driving back field that moved slowly but surely behind a battering forward wall. If it rained, Davies reflected, Harvard's last vestige of hope was due to be trampled in the mud.
And yet twenty years before, almost to the day, with a driving rain falling and Yale dangerously near Harvard's goal in the last quarter, the game locked in a grim nothing-nothing tie, a bespattered, sandy-haired youth with a crimson bow encircling his right wrist, had scooped up a fumble at his very goal line and dodged and slipped through the whole Eli team for a frenzied touchdown.
The final score of that heart-blasting contest had been five to nothing, and the sensational length-of-the-field run had clinched for the Harvard quarterback his right to All-American honors. The feat was talked about yet, wherever Harvard men gathered who had witnessed the spectacle of victory jerked from the grinning jaws of defeat. At the Harvard Club on Forty-fourth Street, New York, Carrington frequently ran into brother alumni who said, "I remember you when——" and then he was forced to listen to their versions of his crowning football achievement.
Davies found solace in going over old times. The Harvard Club was his haven of refuge. He was one of the best known men there. To enter the dining room was to nod to men at practically every table. There was a joy in feeling that he was among friends; in having his praises sung to younger grads by those who had chummed with him in college; to have his football prowess perpetuated by retelling.
It was nothing to C. R. D. that he was recognized also as one of the leading architects in New York City. He had worked hard the past twenty years, but perhaps it was not so much because he had yearned to go forward as it was to keep him from thinking too much on certain closed incidents of his life.
At times, like this morning, he found himself trying to piece together what his father, Martin S. Davies, would have told him had he not died with the words on his lips. It was only four years back. The elder Davies had been stricken suddenly while Carrington was in the West, and a wire had brought the son on the first train. He was told, on arrival, that the father was desperately ill; that he had held to the weakening thread of life and consciousness because of a strong-willed desire to impart some vital information to his son.
However, when Carrington Davies had been led into the sick room, the father, overcome with emotion, died from the shock, his fingers clutching the arms of his son, his eyes set upon his son's face, and the words: "Your wife—I—she's at——" trailing off into the darkness with him.
For days after, when all his father's effects had been painfully gone over, Davies had sat in frenzied study. It had been years since he had given serious thought to the brief, tragic romance of his college days. He had suffered keenly for a time, but his father's counsel had held weight with him, held weight even though he could never forget the girl, nor that day of days when she had plighted her faith in him with the dainty crimson bow and he had gone out on the field of battle feeling like a gladiator. A silly, lovesick fool he had been, perhaps, on that glorious day; but no incident in his entire life thereafter quite came up to this.
When he had become older and more mature, when he had reached an age at which he could better judge the sort of woman he should marry, Davies, as his father said he would, had come upon the discovery that all feminine creatures were hopeless bores. Thus his unattached state grew to be recognized as perennial, and whatever romance he enjoyed came to him through the cultivated channels of his memory.
How angry his father had been when he had found that Davies had secretly married! The boy had written home for the family blessing and had received, by return mail, the family curse. Carrington Davies came of too good and wealthy a stock to have been inveigled into marrying a nobody, his proud parents told him. Why, the girl was an orphan, her parents had been dead some years, and she was employed at serving in a quaint little tea room under the brow of the university.
It was quite natural that a girl of her circumstances should have roped Davies in. Any girl who had really cared would have insisted that he wait until after graduation. Should this marriage become known to college authorities, Davies would be expelled. And then where would he be? Disgraced! His career ruined! And ruined by a girl who had cleaved to him only for the money that he represented!
Martin S. Davies made a special, hurried trip to Cambridge to make his son see all these points. And the elder man brought plenty of money to make any others concerned see as he wanted them to see. The affair was successfully hushed up. Carrington Davies, threatened with being disowned if he did not do exactly as his father dictated, had stood by powerless.
He reflected now that this had been the biggest mistake of his life. But years of strict obedience to his parent had awed him, awed him into letting his father approach Hazel Nubbins, the girl who had so shortly before become his wife. What the elder Davies said to her or what proposition he made, the son never knew. But he recalled the satisfied expression his father wore on returning from the interview, when he said:
"It's all right, son. I've fixed everything. Now, for God's sake don't ever get into a jam like this again!"
And the next day Carrington Davies heard that the girl had left the place of her employ, pleading ill health. Weeks later, when he had come out of the daze occasioned by these happenings, Davies had been unable to obtain any information as to Hazel's whereabouts. And gradually, as the weeks stretched out into months, the whole affair shaped itself into the memory of a vaguely pleasant dream which had turned out a blundering nightmare.
Now, as he sped over the rails on the football special bound for Cambridge, his thoughts came racing back to the present at the dash of something against his window, a something that left a running streak.
"Rain!" exclaimed Davies disappointedly. "Drizzling, cold rain! The devil hang the weather man, anyhow!"
As the trip progressed the rain did likewise, true to forecast. At twelve fifteen, when the special arrived at Brighton, a stop one mile from the stadium, Davies stepped into a sullen, sweeping downpour. There was little hilarity among the detraining football followers, and crimson colors gave way to the somber black of umbrellas. Davies raised his coat collar and pulled down his hat brim, making a dash for a store front that carried a light-lunch sign.
It seemed that almost every one else made a dash for the same place at the same time, and the race proved a dead heat with the first fifty. These just managed to squeeze inside, Davies being about the forty-seventh by half an elbow and several sore toes. It made him feel as if he was bucking the line again; only there was little relish to it this time, with the general pell-mell and every one calling out his order in place of the familiar, "Rah, rahs!"
Just how Davies at last came by a Swiss-cheese sandwich and a cup of pleasantly hot and fragrant coffee he never quite knew. He just found himself jostled along, automatically holding out his hands when he came up against the counter, taking what was thrust into them, putting it out of sight as quickly as possible, while some one behind him was fighting for his place, and then following the path of least resistance, which led to the cashier's perch where the extent of his hasty appetite was checked up in so many cents.
After that Davies discovered himself once more in the rain, feeling strangely alone and just a little bit dazed. It was early yet. He had half a notion to go up to the locker room and see the boys. He had done this in other years, had even sat in the dugout with them and had thrilled at the imagining that his presence had inspired them; but somehow, this day, Davies felt his inadequacy. It was a sort of left-out feeling; more than that, a sensing that his sun had set, that perhaps he had worn the halo of gridiron hero too long, and that his friends might have been humoring him.
It was such dampening, disconsolate thoughts as these that prompted Davies to hail a taxicab and go directly to the stadium. He would refrain from his usual haunts this year and, through this refraining, see if he was missed. It was quite possible, did he not remind Harvard, year by year, as to just who he was, that the old college would forget him. He must remember that the world lived largely in the present while he had been living largely in the past.
The rain had abated somewhat when Carrington emerged from the taxi and joined the wet line of Harvard and Yale enthusiasts crowding through the main entrance. There was life here; the atmosphere of expectancy that was bred by the very outline of the stadium, the concrete sides of which had rocked with throat-tearing sounds, time on time. How could one's blood help but warm, even under the pelting of rain, at the memories intrusted to the historic amphitheater of sport in which so many athletic classics had been staged? Davies' heart leaped as he came inside the stadium and got his first glimpse of the green-sodded gridiron, now spotted with pools of water, the goal posts looking sleek.
Already the stands were alive with huddled humanity and bobbing umbrellas. Yellow slickers, dotted through the field of black, made Davies think of a checkered taxicab. He cursed himself for not having brought his own raincoat along. In years gone by he could have been wet to the skin and not minded it, but now he was conscious of a desire for dry comfort. Certainly he couldn't be getting old!
By game time the stadium was a howling, wet mass. The rain had subsided to a spraylike drizzle, and Carrington, after a minute study of the sky line, decided that this improvement was the best which could be hoped for.
The conditions underfoot were bad. The sod was soggy and slippery. Punters, in practice, stationed themselves with great care before getting off their kicks. Even then the punting experts were observed to retain their footing, at times, with difficulty. Davies shook his head forebodingly. There was nothing encouraging to the Crimson in the outlook.
The sons of Old Eli were cheering their steam-roller eleven to the echo. As Davies compared the heavy Yale line with the noticeably thinner Harvard wall, he shuddered instinctively as he thought of these men taking the impact of what was due to come. He was seized with a sense of futility at the very outset, and a ready sympathy for the Harvard back field. He had been in just such a position years before when it seemed as though he was battering his head against the side of a brick building, and all for naught, it seemed, too—only that he knew he should keep on battering, battering, just for the Crimson, the dear old Crimson.
Plunk! The hollow, wet sound of toe meeting pigskin and a mud-spattered object turning end over end, with beneath it—jerseyed figures charging! Harvard had kicked off!
Davies rose spontaneously from his seat and added his puny voice to the maelstrom of noise. On the Yale ten-yard line a blue-clad man pulled down the mud-spattered object and, clutching it firmly against his chest, took a few slipping side-steps to dodge an eager tackler. The Eli succeeded in this, only to crash directly into the arms of a second Harvard tackler, who bore him to the sodden earth on the Blue's fifteen-yard stripe. Davies sank back into his seat with a sigh of relief. The first prickling moment of the game was over.
There were, though, further prickling moments to come. On the first play Yale launched a line-smashing offensive, aiming her backfield men at different points on the Harvard forward wall. It was slip-slosh-bang, slip-slosh-bang! There were slow, heavy shiftings, then a mud-smeared man with the ball diving through a hole for one, two, three, or five yards—sometimes ten. Yielding, always stubbornly, but always yielding, the slender Harvard line bent back and back under the savage, relentless onslaught of unmuzzled Yale Bulldogs thirsting for the blood of victory. Davies wore his voice to shreds trying to stop Yale's advance.
It was no use. This was one of those days when all the cheering that could be martialed, and all the resistance that could be offered against the foe, availed but little. Thwarted from a touchdown by the Crimson's grim stand on their very goal line, Nixon, Yale's star kicker, dropped back and booted the dripping-wet ball between the uprights for a spectacular field goal which shot the Elis into a three-point lead.
In the second quarter, facing the same bitter opposition and impeded by the slow, heavy conditions underfoot, Yale satisfied herself with battering the Crimson eleven back until, clawing at one another on the Harvard twenty-yard mark, Nixon mechanically duplicated his first field goal to bring his team's score for the half up to six points. Yale supporters shrieked their joy. The Harvard stands roared loyal encouragement, then lapsed into mournful silence.
During the intermission, Davies confessed to himself that he had never seen a "fightinger" team except, perhaps, the eleven that had fought that memorable battle back in 1905. Here were Crimson gridiron gladiators who made the heart burst with pride; who, though being slowly ground into defeat, were displaying Spartanlike valor; who, by the inspired nature of their resistance, were putting gnawing lumps in the throats of their ardent followers. Ah, this was a contest worth watching, a combat which would go down in history, a story of how a slight Harvard eleven, struggling against tremendous odds, had all but wrested victory from one of the most powerful Yale machines of all time!
When the teams reappeared on the field for the second half, Davies felt the years fall away as in a strange dream. He began to wax exultant about the weather, remembering with what grim satisfaction he had rubbed his nose in the wet dirt behind Yale's goal line after his sensational dash the length of the gridiron twenty years ago—yesterday? No, twenty years——
A frenzied cheer brought Davies back to the present. Yale had kicked off, and Harvard, receiving, had run the ball back fifteen yards. First down on their twenty-one yard line! Broadhurst, slim-figured Harvard quarterback, seemed a dynamo of pep from the way he was barking out signals and urging the utmost from his men. Another cheer, more frenzied than the first, burst out as a Crimson back slid around right end for a four-yard gain. The next play netted seven yards around the same end and a first down. Harvard rooters went crazy and Davies went with them.
Given cause for hope in the first worth-while ground gained against the powerful Yale eleven, the Harvard team threw its whole remaining force into the drive. For seven pulsating minutes it seemed as though the Crimson could not be denied a touchdown. Yard after yard was torn off on slipping end runs and slashing plunges through the line. Davies forgot some of the sympathy he had felt for the team of his Alma Mater. It was now risen to the heights of David against Goliath.
Alas, though, with the ball on Yale's five-yard mark and the Harvard, stands wildly intreating a touchdown, Broadhurst, trying to carry the ball himself, fumbled! The pigskin was seen to strike the ground and then to be swallowed up by a cloud of flying forms. When the referee had dug through the confused mass of arms and legs, he found the ball in Yale's possession, and Harvard's big glimmer of hope immediately vanished. Broadhurst, who but a second before had been credited with putting the driving force into Harvard's great attack, was now roundly censured as the blunderer who had blown the golden opportunity. The quarterback was a sophomore, Davies learned from the talk of some of the more recent Harvard graduates near by.
Overjoyed at having brought a stop to the one serious threat of the enemy, the Yale team lined up on their four-yard mark and held like a stonewall while the great Nixon got off a forty-yard punt from behind his own goal line.
With the punch gone from Harvard's attack, the Crimson made but a scant yard in two downs; then the little Broadhurst threw a long forward pass. The play was well screened; but an alert son of Yale, keenly on the job, managed to intercept the ball. He was thrown in his tracks.
It was growing dark, with the lowering clouds threatening a genuine deluge. A chilling gust of wind whistled through the stadium. Some of the less hardened "rooters" got up and began forcing their way toward the exits. A gloomy silence hung over the field.
Once more in swing, the Yale steam roller got under way. It took up its old battering tactics—slip-slosh-bang, slip-slosh-bang. There was nothing sensational in its movement, just methodical. And back—ever back—though courageously resisting, went the Crimson line. A flock of substitutes came running out now. The ball was on Harvard's twenty-three yard line, four minutes more to play. The substitutes brought a new, if hopeless touch of spirit to the Harvard eleven. They were ambitious, almost pathetically so in the circumstances, to make a good showing in their fleeting chance for glory.
"Touchdown, touchdown, touchdown!" the Yale supporters began to chant in monotonous fashion. It was not a question now of who would win, but could Yale go over the goal line in the time that was left? Harvard had put up a surprising battle against an eleven which had been favored to defeat her by at least twenty points. And Yale was a bit miffed at this, sternly desirous of adding to the score by hammering through for a touch down. A victory won solely through the talented toe of the great Nixon was hardly sufficient tribute to the supposed offensive power of the team itself.
There were two minutes left to play when Yale brought up on Harvard's three-yard line for a first down. Behind the battered and tottering Crimson wall a figure raved and ranted and roared, entreating his teammates to stave off the Bulldog's advance. He stamped from end to end in the churned up sod, prodding each player in a vicious manner. But there was no visible stiffening of the Harvard defense at the savage barking of its quarterback. The team was crushed after having done its best to no avail.
"Look at that bird begging his line to hold and he the one who made that costly fumble!" cried a Yale supporter, who somehow had obtained a seat in the Harvard sections. It was next to that of Davies'. "Wonder if he thinks they'll pay any attention to him now?"
Davies felt like making some hot retort to this, but he didn't. He decided to salve his feelings in a cigar and to escape the agony of watching Old Eli crush the Crimson under the added weight of a touchdown. As Davies lighted up, the lowering clouds spread wide apart, letting down sheets of driving rain.
"A good thing it's almost over," he told himself. "About time for one more play. Well, I don't suppose we could have expected anything different, with the odds against us, and the weather, but if Broadhurst had only——"
Settling back in his seat, Davies was gloomily conscious of the hosts of Yale rising to their feet with a stupendous din. His view was blotted from the gridiron by flashing arms and wildly lurching forms. But Davies was no longer interested. There was no use, he thought, in getting excited over a Yale touchdown.
While all was confusion about him, Davies sat still, puffing on his cigar.
But the cheering kept up! There was a different note in it now, a great, heart-rending groan that was drowned out by an ear-bursting, joyous roar.
Davies looked up wonderingly. "Say, what's happening?"
Just how Davies got to a standing position on his seat he never knew. But he was suddenly and overwhelmingly conscious of a most unusual sight. Crossing the Harvard thirty-yard line, running toward the distant Yale goal with head down, straight into the driving rain, was the slim-lined figure of the Harvard quarterback—the ball tucked under his right arm.
Behind the speeding man with the ball, trailed three desperate Yale players, while another was cutting across the gridiron in the hope of intercepting the Crimson runner from in front. Back near the Harvard goal line, teammates on both sides, now completely out of play, yelled encouragement to pursuers and the one pursued.
Davies, eyes glued on Broadhurst, jabbed out an arm and grabbed the Yale supporter by the shoulder. "Yea! How'd we get the ball?" the hero of twenty years before demanded.
"Let go my collar bone!" The Yale fan winced, trying to jerk away.
"All right; but how'd we get the ball?" persisted Davies.
"Nixon fumbled on your goal line. What's the matter, you poor fish! Why don't you watch the game?"
Davies was watching it now for dear life. The slender Harvard quarterback was being pressed from front and back. He had been forced close to the side line in an effort to evade the tackler who was lumbering at him across water-soaked sod. But, it was now evident that Broadhurst must face this peril. The soggy condition underfoot had made it impossible for him to evade the Eli even by keeping close to the side line. There was no turning outward. To do so would carry the ball out of bounds. And any hesitancy or slowing up would close the distance between the Crimson runner and the three Yale men who kept doggedly pounding along after him.
Instinctively Davies stiffened his right arm and pushed it out violently. For one heart-quaking second it seemed to him that the years had rolled back and that he was carrying the ball. He sensed acutely the sensation that must be Broadhurst's, and he suddenly found himself shrieking: "Give him the straight arm! Give him the straight arm! Give him the——!"
And as if, from out that mad pandemonium of sound, Broadhurst had heard and heeded, the Harvard quarterback ran directly at the oncoming tackler; then, when it appeared as though Broadhurst must go down with arms reaching out to encircle him, he jabbed a mud-stained hand straight from the shoulder, catching the Yale man in the face.
The impact almost threw Broadhurst from his feet, but he saved himself by a quick jump to the side and, a slipping lurch which shook a foot loose from the last frantic grab of the tackler as he dived head foremost into a muddy sheet of water.
"Atta boy! Atta boy!" cried Davies, no longer accountable for what he might say or do.
The man with the ball now had a clear field and was crossing the fifty-yard line. The going was difficult, each step uncertain. Several times he all but fell, the ground was so heavy and sodden that it seemed almost as if Broadhurst were running in one spot, his feet slipping under him. And with the tread-mill effect it looked as though the three frenzied pursuers were gaining.
In Yale territory now, the bleak goal posts looming up in front of him, Broadhurst chanced a glance back over his shoulder. What he saw was none too reassuring. The Yale stands broke into a roar of insane entreaty. A Yale man was at Broadhurst's very heels, and Broadhurst was crossing Old Eli's ten-yard line with a touchdown in sight! It was but a matter of seconds. If the Crimson runner could be overtaken, Harvard's last bubble of hope would be punctured.
"Yea! He's got him!" yelled the Yale supporter, crashing Davies over the head.
"He hasn't, either!" the Harvard grad shouted, with a shove which all but upset the rival rooter. "Look at that, will you?"
At the four-yard line the Yale tackler left his feet in a frantic dive. He struck the man with the ball just below the knees, and Broadhurst crumpled forward, giving a tugging leap. It may have been due to the fact that he was soaked to the skin and that the tackler's hands were wet and chilled; at any rate, the Eli's grip slipped to one leg, and, instead of going down, Broadhurst strained along, dragging his tackler after him. As he reached the goal line the two other Yale men sailed through the air and hit him. All four went down in a splashing fall. Then every one in the stands went wild.
With the strength of a team gone delirious with joy, the Crimson players took their positions in front of the Yale goal and prepared for the play which would give them a try at the extra point after touchdown. The stands rocked with tributes of noise, bestowing upon Broadhurst one of the most deafening ovations ever accorded a gridiron hero. He had fittingly redeemed himself. His blood-tingling length-of-the-field run in the last minute of play had tied the score at six to six.
Davies waited only long enough to see the water-soaked ball sail between the uprights for the winning point. Then he clambered over the seats and cut across the outraged gridiron in the direction of the clubhouse, unmindful of the fact that the mud had sucked off both his rubbers.
At the clubhouse, Carrington Davies encountered unexpected opposition in gaining admittance. It seemed that no one had known who he was and, what was more, no one seemed to care after being informed. Such crass ignorance irritated Davies greatly, but he held his patience. The disregard shown him was only due to the prevailing excitement. If any one of them had only stopped to think!
At last Davies rushed to the door and slid past, picking a hole between the burly door-tender and a rather uppish young substitute who C. R. D. ardently hoped would never become a regular.
Once inside, the going was easier. Players in different stages of dressing, and others still under the showers, glanced at him curiously as his eyes sought out but one individual—the Harvard quarterback.
"Where's Broadhurst?" Davies asked of the Crimson man nearest him.
"Other side of the lockers," the individual addressed answered gruffly. Then, as Davies followed the direction, he mumbled: "Who let that bird in?"
The latest Harvard hero was lacing a shoe when the former All-American quarterback came upon him. Davies paused a moment, looking down at the slim-lined figure sitting on the bench. He watched the slender fingers as they plucked feverishly at the shoe strings.
Evidently the boy was in a great hurry, Davies thought. He probably wanted to get out—to meet his sweetheart and to hear her tell him how wonderful she thought he was. Davies felt a gripping pang. He knew all about it. He had been there—exactly in Broadhurst's shoes—twenty years before.
After what seemed a dragging century, the young fellow finished lacing the shoe, looked up, and started. "Oh! I—I beg your pardon. Did you want to see me?"
Now that his opportunity for congratulation had come, Davies for some unknown reason, felt suddenly small and insignificant. He felt the clear blue eyes of the new Harvard star boring into his with kindly inquiry, and for once in his life old C. R. D. found himself stammering.
He did manage to extend his hand.
"I—I just wanted to tell you how much I—that is—it did me lots of good to see—— Oh, hang it! Signals over! What I mean to say is that I've followed Harvard football for over twenty years. You see, my name's Carrington R. Davies."
The Harvard quarterback continued shaking the stranger's hand politely; but there was no sign of recognition at mention of the name, only a slight frowning of the eyebrows.
C. R. D. noted this and his stammering became several degrees worse. "I—I—used to play quarterback on the Crimson, too."
The other's eyebrows lifted at this.
"And I—and I—— Well, of course you wouldn't remember; but it was just such a day as this—twenty years ago—that I—— Perhaps you've heard tell of it?" C. R. D. brought up lamely, loath to relate the entire incident and hoping that Broadhurst would recall hearing of it.
The Harvard quarterback shook his head, but there was an interested gleam in his eyes. "Why, no. I'm sorry, sir; but I——"
"Well," the former All-American quarterback broke in desperately, "I made a ninety-five-yard run for a touchdown in the last minute of play and won the game against Yale, much as you did—to-day."
There was a deep-throated chuckle from young Broadhurst. "Then it's you, sir, who deserve congratulations!"
"No, no. That's not the point," insisted Davies, with a sense of giddy bungling. "That's really not the point. I just mentioned it because I—because I couldn't help thinking of it, that's all. I couldn't help thinking of myself from the moment I saw you out there, free, with the game at stake, making for the Yale goal. It was just like looking at a moving picture of myself—twenty years ago. You'll pardon me, Broadhurst, I know. Nothing's ever gripped me like that run of yours this afternoon. Nothing!"
Davies was in the swing of things now. He had recovered from his embarrassment and was pouring out his feelings in a flow of words which tumbled over themselves to get expressed. Broadhurst was the one who was embarrassed this time. He looked down at the floor and shifted his feet awkwardly and tried to draw away his hand, but the stranger only gripped it the tighter.
The Harvard quarterback shot a glance about the locker room, relieved to see that no one appeared to be noticing them. Every one was interested in his own business, anxious to get outside and join the victory-crazed celebrators.
"I was with you every step of the way," Davies went on. "When you slipped, I slipped. When you straight-armed the Yale man, I straight-armed him, too. Everything you did all the way to the goal line, I did. It was almost uncanny. Even when they tackled you as you went over for a touchdown and pounded you into the mud—that's just what happened to me. So I have you to thank more than to congratulate, Broadhurst, for we both know what it means to have done our best for the good old Crimson. And you have helped me to live over one of the happiest, most thrilling moments of my life!"
The Harvard quarterback withdrew his hand. The stranger turned away to hide eyes which brimmed with tears.
"I—I'm glad, sir," was all that Broadhurst could think of to say.
Davies stiffened, chagrined at himself for his show of feeling. He was a silly, sentimental old fool, inflicting his childishness upon a gentlemanly young fellow who was too kind and sportsmanlike to show distaste or offense. But why should any one else be interested in his, Carrington R. Davies' feelings, or the fact that, twenty years before, he had scored a touchdown?
"Well, I'm keeping you from going out. I'll be taking leave," remarked the All-American quarterback, backing off apologetically.
"Don't be in a hurry," Broadhurst said, reaching out for his dress shirt, but obviously glad to be about his business. "I'll be through in a minute and then——"
Whatever else the Harvard quarterback may have said was lost upon Davies. He was quite instantly, unexpectedly, and acutely made conscious of something extremely coincidental. The arm that reached out to take the shirt from the locker had the slip of a crimson bow tied about the wrist.
Davies rubbed a hand across his eyes and looked again. How he had missed seeing that bow before he could not understand. But it was certainly there. Infernally peculiar! It was certainly there.
Broadhurst, noting the stranger's stunned expression, stopped, his shirt half on, to inquire what was the matter.
"Why—why nothing—only that bow. You—you'll probably think me odd—but, do you mind my—my taking a good look at it?"
The Harvard quarterback held out his arm with a slight gesture of impatience. Davies took the hand and studied the bit of ribbon. Of course, it wasn't—but didn't it beat the devil how everything had worked out this day? Either that or he was suddenly losing his mind. Perhaps that was it. He had brooded so long over the affair of his youth that at last it had affected his brain.
The ribbon was wet—and soiled—and—this, he thought, could easily be his imagination—it was actually a trifle faded. But it did look strangely familiar, strangely like the one that a dear, trusting girl had tied about his wrist, and that he had sealed there with a kiss twenty years before. It was infernally peculiar. That was all there was to it. Infernally peculiar!
Davies straightened up, to find the Harvard quarterback at the point of exasperation.
"I don't blame you for thinking me out of my mind," sympathized C. R. D. "And I may be, for all I know. So many ungodly things have happened to me to-day. But—if it's not being too personal—where did you get that bow? From your sweetheart?"
There was almost a contemptuous note in Broadhurst's voice as he started to button his shirt. "No! My mother."
Davies felt his knees give way beneath him and he dropped down heavily upon the bench, staring up at the Harvard quarterback, unbelievingly. "Your—your mother?"
"Yes. What's wrong with that?" demanded Broadhurst, picking up collar and tie. "It's a good-luck charm," he explained curtly; then he added with a smile: "And it sure worked to-day!"
"A—a good-luck charm?" echoed Davies weakly. "A good-luck—— Say! Your mother—I mean, is your father—living?"
The Harvard quarterback paused in his tying of a four-in-hand to shoot a puzzled glance at the evidently insane stranger. "No, sir. He died before I was born."
"Oh, I see," Davies mumbled, conscious of his heart thumping in his ears. "But your name—Broadhurst? Was that your father's?"
This question was almost too much for the latest Harvard hero. He spun his locker door shut with a bang. "Why certainly!" Then, wheeling upon his questioner, he asked: "Why wouldn't it be?"
"I—I thought perhaps your mother might have married again and that you—you took the name of your—your stepfather," hazarded Davies.
"See here. I don't know what you're driving at, but I don't like your insinuations. My mother was married only once, and she——"
"Listen!" broke in Davies excitedly. "If I'm not badly mistaken, your real name's Carrington R. Davies. I mean—perhaps not Carrington R.—but Davies anyway!"
"You don't know what you're talking about. My name's Carrington Nubbins Broadhurst!"
"Carrington Nubbins. It is! Well, why didn't you say so? But you're all wrong on the last name. Where's your mother? I've got to see her. Why, confound it, old boy, I'm your father!"
Five palpitating seconds of electrifying silence followed Davies' fervent outburst. Then C. R. D. spoke again, in a voice that was husky with pent-up emotion and the shock of it all.
"Where's your mother? I've been twenty years trying to find her. Oh, God, this is wonderful! You—my son!"
Still the young man who went by the name of Broadhurst stood, unspeaking, undecided as to what to make of this rabidly serious personage who, not alone satisfied with claiming prestige for performing a gridiron feat similar to his, was now trying to claim a part in his parentage.
"It was twenty years ago," explained Davies appealingly, "almost to the day, when, just before the game with Yale, I met your mother—met her in a secluded spot under the stands. There was a cold rain falling, and I can remember how we pressed up close against the stands to keep from getting soaked. And she took that little crimson bow from about her neck and tied it around my wrist. I can even recall exactly what she said. It was, 'Here, take this—it's your token of good luck.'" Davies' voice broke at this and tears glazed the eyes of even the Harvard quarterback.
"I—I guess there must be something to it, all right," confessed the youth who had been surnamed Broadhurst, the name his mother had taken. "That's just what mother did this afternoon—insisted on meeting me under the stands, and—and tied on this bow—and said those same words!"
It was a peculiar sight—had any one been there to see it—a grown-up man and a growing man clasping hands, their faces wet and streaked.
"I'm taking mother to dinner tonight," said the younger man softly, after what seemed like an hour of understanding silence.
"No—you mean that I'm taking mother and you," corrected the old-time player firmly. Then, leaning over, he touched the crimson bow reverently and asked: "I—I wonder if you'd let me wear that to-night? I want her to see me with it on. I want her to know that Davies played the game!"