XXV
At the very end of the first half, when the Princeton sections experienced the unforeseen glow of a possible victory, George caught a glimpse of Lambert and Wandel close to the barrier, as if they had left their places to catch someone with the calling of time. Just then the horn scrunched its anxious message. George called.
"Lambert Planter!"
Stringham paused, grinning.
"Come over here, you biting bulldog."
Lambert made his way through the barrier and grasped Stringham's hand.
"Come along to the dressing-room," Stringham suggested, cordially. "Nice bulldog, although once I loved to see Morton chew you up."
Lambert glanced down.
"Thanks. I'd better stay here. One of my runners is off, Stringham."
"Then sit with the boys next half," Stringham said. "Coming, Morton?"
George shook his head, and urged the anxious coach away, for Wandel had caught his eye.
"Tell them to keep their heads," George called after Stringham. "If they keep their heads they've got Harvard beaten."
He glanced inquiringly at Wandel.
"Why not cease," Wandel said, "imagining yourself a giddy, heroic cub? Come up and sit with mature people the last half."
The invitation startled George. Then Sylvia wasn't there?
"Is Sylvia all right?" he asked Lambert under his breath.
Lambert was a trifle ill at ease.
"Oh, quite. Betty asked us to get you. Wants to see you. Have my place. I'm going to accept Stringham's fine invitation, and sit here with the young—a possible Yale scout on the Princeton side-lines."
"Stringham's no fool," George laughed. "Anyway, he has you fellows beaten right now."
Lambert thrust his hand in his pocket.
"How much you got?"
Wandel grasped George's arm.
"Come with me before you get in a college brawl."
"Plenty when we're not chaperoned, Lambert," George called, and followed Wandel through the restless crowd and up the concrete steps.
Was Sylvia really there? Was he going to see her? The idea of finding him had sprung from Betty, and Lambert had been ill at ease.
He saw Betty and her father and mother, then beyond them, a vacant place between, Sylvia to whom the open air and its chill had given back all her dark, flushed brilliancy. Wandel slid through first, and made himself comfortable at Sylvia's farther side. George followed, stopping to speak to the Alstons, to accept Betty's approving glance.
"Conspirator!" he whispered, and went on, and sat down close to Sylvia, and yielded himself to the delight of her proximity. She glanced at him, her colour deepening.
"Betty said it was all right, and I must. So many people——"
The air was sharp enough to make rugs comfortable. He couldn't see her hands because they were beneath the rug across her knees, a covering she shared with Wandel and him.
As he drew the rug up one of his hands touched hers, and his fingers, beyond his control, groped for her fingers. He detected a quick, nervous movement away; then it was stopped, and their hands met, clasped, and clung together.
For a moment they looked at each other, and knew they mustn't, since there were so many people; but the content of their clasped hands continued because it couldn't be observed.
The supreme football player sat there staring at a blur of autumn colour between the lake and the generous mouth of the stadium; and, when the second half commenced, saw, as if from an immeasurable distance, pygmy figures booting a football, or carrying it here and there, or throwing each other about; and he didn't know which were Harvard's men or which were Princeton's, and he didn't seem to care——
Vaguely he heard people suffering. A voice cut through a throaty and grieving murmur.
"Somebody's lost his head!"
"What's the matter?" he asked Sylvia.
"George! You're destroying my hand."
Momentarily he remembered, and relaxed his grasp, while she added quickly:
"But I don't mind at all, dear."