The Praying Skipper, and Other Stories

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

VII

Now the celebration programme would have been halting and inadequate if the Assistant Manager of the Yale Navy had not hurried to New Haven on an earlier train. He had been in the car with John Hastings, and took it for granted that the sweet-faced woman of the silvery hair must be his mother. He was plunging through the crowd on the stone steps, trying to rescue the oarsmen in order to head them toward the banquet hall, when beneath the are light on the corner, a little way out of the tumult, he saw the timid lady for whom he had felt much sympathy. The Assistant Manager was ably fitted for his official task of looking after details, because he fairly boiled over with initiative, and with him to think was to act, as the powder speeds the bullet. He dashed across to Mrs. Hastings, and said, with a hurried and apologetic bow:

"Beg pardon, but this is Jack Hastings' mother, are you not? Yes, thank you, I was sure of it. It may seem presumptuous, but I have heard lots about you, and Jack has convinced me that you are the finest mother in the world, bar one. I have been so infern—so very busy since I got in town from New London, that I have had no time to look up Jack. We want him at the dinner, everybody does, and we want you just as much. In fact, you must be my special guest, and hear the speeches, anyhow, if you won't stay any longer. Jack's asleep, is he? Well, we'll wake him up, all right."

The alarmed little mother tried to protest several things at once. Jack had sworn he would not go to the dinner, and that he would break the neck of the man who should try to rout him out. Of course, Jack would not do that really, but he was all worn out and needed the rest. Please not to disturb him, and she would not dream of going without him, and she did not want to go at all. Her earnestness was almost tearful, but the Assistant Manager, who had heard perhaps the first ten words, darted off and was back with two young men whose fists were full of cannon crackers. He had each fast by the coat-collar, and shoving them into the foreground like a pair of marionettes, he breathlessly blurted:

"Mrs. Hastings, may I present Mr. Stower and Mr. 'Stuffy' Barlow, both Seniors, highly dignified and proper persons? This is Jack Hastings' mother. You are to escort Mrs. Hastings down to Harmonium Hall, and see that she has a nice seat in the gallery or near the door. No trouble at all, Mrs. Hastings, I assure you. Awfully glad to have had the honor of meeting you. Good-bye. I'll run over to Jack's room and drag him down there in five minutes."

Mrs. Hastings had all the sensations of being kidnapped. She tried to protest, even to resist, but was like a leaf caught up in a torrent, as Messrs. Barlow and Stower, both talking at once, handed her politely but firmly into the depths of a hack, climbed in after her and slammed the door.

Almost in a twinkling, as it seemed to the agitated mother, she was being ushered carefully into a small music gallery overlooking the banquet floor, where from a shadowy corner she could overlook the festivities in semi-seclusion. She waited only until her genial abductors were out of sight, and then slipped furtively toward the stairs, intending, of course, to return to her boy if he did not appear forthwith. Uneasy and fluttering, she was also keenly interested, for had not John placed this picture before her, and what it had meant to him in other years? He met her at the top of the stairway, looking sheepish and alarmed. She tried to explain, but he cut her short with a laugh:

"I know all about it, Little Mother. You fell a victim to the wiles of a terrible set of villains. You couldn't help yourself. Neither could I, when I heard how you had been spirited away. Now you are going to stay and see the fun, aren't you?"

She tried to persuade him to leave her and take his seat with the celebrants.

"No, I have lost my seat," said he, with the old shadow on his face. "I don't belong there any more.... I don't want to be seen. But the fellows promised not to give me away. It is pretty nervy for me to come at all. But I am here only to escort you."

She took his hand and held it while they sat well back in a corner of the gallery and watched the company trooping in. To the young oarsmen, so clean-cut and strong, tired but happy, all their woes and fears forgotten, this was their day of days. In a long row were seated the University eight, the substitutes, and the Freshman crew, which had also won its race. At the head of the table was "Big Bill" Hall, stout oarsman of thirty years ago, now a much stouter citizen. The captain of the crew was at his right, and at his left hand the beaming Head Coach, burned as black as any Indian. In another group were the younger coaches, most of them old strokes and captains, and mighty men at Yale in their time. Other oarsmen of other days were welcomed, regardless of the formality of invitation. Perhaps forty men around the board had known the test of the four-mile course, brothers of the oar through nearly two generations of rowing history.

The outcast was able to keep his poise until the Glee Club quartette rose to sing, by special request of the Head Coach, "Jolly Boating Weather." The first tenor had a sweet and sympathetic voice, and he had heard the story of the singing of this song on the float just before the race, wherefore he did the verses uncommonly well.

Then the old fellows, some with grizzled thatches, and some with thatches scant and thin, had their innings and pounded the table to emphasize their harmonious declaration that

"Twenty years hence such weather

Will tempt us from office stools.

We may be slow on the feather,

And seem to the boys old fools,

But we'll still swing together——"

The song carried to Hastings was the last straw to break the endurance which had pulled him through the long, long day. He did not want his mother to see his quivering lip, and he thought she would not perceive that he was near to breaking down. Did she know? Why, she felt his emotion in the hand she clasped tighter than before, she read his thoughts in the very beat of his pulse, and when he whispered that he must have caught a cold in the head because he was getting an attack of sniffles, she needed no words to enlighten her understanding. If his tears were those of a boy, then she thanked God she was childish enough to feel with him at every step and turn of the way that was blocked by the biggest sorrow of his life. She asked him whether he would like to go home. He shook his head and said that he would stick it through to the end.