“Well, you see me,” said the girl, laughing up into his eyes with a frank, warm admiration in hers that made Captain Jack's heart quicken a bit in its steady beat. He was a young man with a normal appreciation of his own worth. She, young, beautiful, unspoiled, in the innocence of her girlish heart was flinging at him the full tribute of a warm, generous admiration with every flash of her black eyes and every intonation of her voice. Small wonder if Captain Jack found her good to look at and to listen to. Often during the walk home he kept saying to himself, “Jove, that McNish chap is a lucky fellow!” But McNish, taking his lonely way home, was only conscious that the evening had grown chilly and grey.
CHAPTER IX
THE DAY BEFORE
Business was suspended for the day in Blackwater. That is, men went through their accustomed movements, but their thoughts were far apart from the matters that were supposed to occupy their minds during the working hours of the day. In the offices, in the stores, in the shops, on the streets, in the schools, in the homes the one, sole topic of conversation, the one mental obsession was The Great Game. Would the Maitland Mill Hockey Team pull it off? Blackwater was not a unit in desiring victory for the Maitland Mill team, for the reason that the team's present position of proud eminence in the hockey world of Eastern Ontario had been won by a series of smashing victories over local and neighbouring rival teams. They had first disposed of that snappy seven of lightning lightweights, the local High School team, the champions in their own League. They had smashed their way through the McGinnis Foundry Seven in three Homeric contests. This victory attracted the notice of the Blackwater Black Eagles, the gay and dashing representatives of Blackwater's most highly gilded stratum of society, a clever, hard-fighting, never-dying group of athletes who, summer and winter, kept themselves in perfect form, and who had moved rapidly out of obscurity into the dazzling spotlight of championship over their district. For the sake of the practice in it and in preparation for their games in the Eastern Ontario Hockey League, they took on the Maitland Mill team.
It took the Black Eagles a full week to recover sufficient control to be able to speak intelligibly as to the “how” and “why” of that match. For the Mill team with apparent ease passed in thirteen goals under and over and behind and beside the big broad goal stick of Bell Blackwood, the goal wonder of the League; and the single register for the Eagles had been netted by Fatty Findlay's own stick in a moment of aberration. During the week following the Black Eagle debacle the various Bank managers, Law Office managers and other financial magnates of the town were lenient with their clerks. Social functions were abandoned. The young gentlemen had one continuous permanent and unbreakable engagement at the rink or in preparation for it. But all was in vain. The result of the second encounter was defeat for the Eagles, defeat utter, unmistakable and inexplicable except on the theory that they had met a superior team. Throughout the hockey season the Maitland Mill maintained an unbroken record of victory till their fame flew far; and at the close of the season enthusiasts of the game had arranged a match between the winners of the Eastern Ontario Hockey League, the renowned Cornwall team and the Maitland Mill boys. To-day the Cornwalls were in town, and the town in consequence was quite unfit for the ordinary duties of life. The Eagles almost to a man were for the local team; for they were sports true to type. Not so however their friends and following, who resented defeat of their men at the hands of a working class team.
Of course it was Jack Maitland who was responsible for their humiliation. It was he who had organised his fellow workmen, put them through a blood and iron discipline, filled them with his own spirit of irresistible furious abandon in attack which carried them to victory.
It was an old game with Jack Maitland. When a High School boy he had developed that spirit of dominating and indomitable leadership that had made his team the glory of the town. Later by sound and steady grinding at the game he had developed a style and plan of team play which had produced a town team in the winter immediately preceding the war that had won championship honors. Now with his Mill team he was simply repeating his former achievements.
It had astonished his friends to learn that Captain Jack was playing hockey again. He had played no game except in a desultory way since the war. He had resisted the united efforts of the Eagles and their women friends to take the captaincy of that team. The mere thought of ever appearing on the ice in hockey uniform gave him a sick feeling at his heart. Of that noble seven whom he had in pre-war days led so often to victory four were still “over there,” one was wandering round a darkened room. Of the remaining two, one Rupert Stillwell was too deeply engrossed in large financial affairs for hockey. Captain Jack himself was the seventh, and the mere sight of a hockey stick on a school boy's shoulder gave him a heart stab.
It was his loyal pal Patricia Templeton, who gave him the first impulse toward the game again. To her pleading he had yielded so far as to coach, on a Saturday afternoon, her team of High School girls to victory. But it was the Reverend Murdo Matheson who furnished the spur to conscience that resulted in the organising of the Maitland Mill team.