IV
When John Hastings drifted down to the wharf nearest the railroad station, he laid an almost aimless course. While he could not see the race, he was drawn to the harbor into which flowed the river, the river by whose bank, five miles away, his comrades were waiting for the summons, and perhaps even then singing "Jolly Boating Weather," as it was never sung at any other time.
Through the maze of fragile shipping flying the flags of a dozen yacht clubs threaded a naphtha launch hurrying toward the bridge, the cock-pit gay with white gowns and blue uniforms, and Yale colors fluttering at bow and stern. The outcast bestowed no more than a scowling glance on the glittering, humming pleasure craft, and was about to saunter shoreward with a vague intent of hovering near the telegraph office until the result of the race should be known, when the beckoning flurry of several handkerchiefs delayed his retreat.
He walked to the end of the wharf in idlest curiosity, and the possibility staggered him only an instant before he knew the fact. There was no mistaking the trim and jaunty figure in the bow for any one else than Cynthia Wells herself, as she flicked the steering wheel over and ran the craft close to the stringpiece, while the sailor in the stern held fast with a boat hook. Her voice was lifted in peremptory command:
"Scramble right down here this minute, and tumble aboard, Jack. We are awfully late already. Broke down on the way from the Diana. I don't know what in the world you are doing here, but we can't pass such an image of desolation. Hurry, please. I am the skipper to-day."
Jack would have vastly preferred to run away. This meeting was not at all what he had planned. His misery loved company limited to one, and that one was hedged about by half a dozen laughing men and girls out for a holiday lark. He realized how sorry a figure of a man he was in this scene, but retreat meant cowardly flight, and there was the shadow of consolation in being near her. The grip of "Dickie" Munson's hand spelled understanding of the situation as the classmate said:
"We're tickled to death to kidnap you this way, Jack. It's a tough day for you, I know, but you must not miss the race. Get forward. There's room by Miss Wells, and, of course, she is dying to see you."
When he found himself standing by the side of Cynthia, she was alert and absorbed in steering the launch with confident ease toward the swirling channel between the arches of the bridge, where small craft darted and drifted in common eagerness to find positions along the last mile of the swarming course.
The jolly wind whipped a straying lock of gold-shot hair across her eyes, and she brushed it aside with an impatient gesture. Her adorable face, warm with the glow of many summer days of sun and breeze, was set in serious alertness. Standing straight and tall, head thrown back and shoulders squared, the poise and look of her were as athletic as the bearing of the man at her side. With her mind wholly intent on the business in hand, she said crisply:
"I have the right of way over that tub to port. Why doesn't he head inshore? How is the tide through that middle arch, Jack? You ought to know."
He made brief reply. Unreasonably sensitive, he did not realize that her preoccupation was essential. At the least, he had expected she would speak some ready word of the sympathy he craved, because he stood for a tragedy in which she ought to show concern. Did she not know, could she not feel what this flight up the course meant to him, "Jack Hastings, Number Five"? But the girl at the wheel was too busy even to note the gloom in his face, as she shot the launch into a roomy berth near the three and a half mile flag, at the edge of the streak of open water. Then Cynthia turned to Hastings, held out a firm brown hand, and said with a happy smile:
"There, congratulate me. Could your coxswain, with his absurd little megaphone and all his importance, do a neater trick of steering than that? Now, you poor unfortunate boy, I am ready to hear all about your troubles. We heard yesterday, when we came ashore at New London, that you had been evicted, or had gone on strike, or something of the sort. Are you all broken up over it, and how did it happen? I am terribly disappointed, too. I came on to see you win a race. I don't care a rap for the other heroes. Poor old Jack! He looks as if he were chief mourner."
She patted his hand with a motherly air, and the mourner sighed heavily. Evidently she was making a gallant effort to hide her genuine emotion from the alien company. He tried to imitate her lightness of manner as he replied, with a laugh that was a trifle shaky:
"Yes, I have been out of the crew four days, Cynthia, and it seems four years. It was awfully good of you to pick me up, but I don't know whether I am glad or not. Perhaps you ought to have left me alone."
"And why, Mister Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance? Didn't you want to see me?"
There was archness in the query, even a trace of pretty coquetry in her air. Where was the kinship of souls, that wonderful symphony of understanding he had dreamed of as come true? With a fierce onset of earnestness, he confided:
"I wanted to see you more than any one else in the world. I wanted to see you more than I wanted to see my mother. She is looking for me now. She is on that train up yonder. It has been a pretty hard day for me, and I thought it would be for you."
She tried to make amends:
"Why, of course, it is a dreadful disappointment for you, and for me, and for all your friends, Jack. But aren't you glad it gave you the chance to be here? I certainly am. And I'm trying to make the best of it, and so must you. You are the same old Jack, you know, in the crew or out."
The first smile in days broke over his face. If he was the same old Jack to her, the rest of the world could go hang. He was about to tell her what he ached to reveal in a rush of pent-up desire, what the Crew stood for, and how much of his life was bound up in it. She caught the kindling light in his face, and before he spoke, she thought this light was all for her. That his interest should be absorbed in the crew, rather than in Miss Cynthia Wells, piqued her, even now, as he began:
"I was afraid the crash was coming for some time. Nobody can know how I hoped and worried through those weeks, when I felt that I was slipping back. I did not write you about it, because I could not believe there was any serious danger of my being thrown out at the last moment, and I knew it would harrow you to share this worry with me. I—I—wanted your——"
The classmate behind him jumped to his feet and shouted:
"There they come! Yale! Yale! Yale!"
Hastings glanced along the water level up-river. Two black dots were visible, each fluttering thread-like tentacles. Abreast of them trailed the observation train, like a huge serpent of gaudy hues. He bit his lip and trembled with sudden excitement, while Cynthia Wells stood, one hand shading her eyes, so eagerly intent that it was plain that she had forgotten the oarsman out of the shell. The sea of blue, rippling along the train, told him that Yale was leading. He shut his eyes, fearing, until it sickened him, that some accident might happen to Yale, even with what seemed to be a safe lead.