Play the Game!

by Ruth Comfort Mitchell

"You cannot give it up, my poor small one. It will not give you up. It has you, one may truly say, by the throat!"

There was no use in arguing with her. The interim had to be filled until summer and home. She would do, docilely, whatever the Signorina wished.

Jimsy was happy and congratulatory about her concert but he took it no more seriously than Honor herself. His letters were full, in those days, of the unrest at Stanford. Certain professors had taken a determined stand against drinking; there was much agitation and bitterness on both sides. Jimsy was all for freedom; he resented dictation; he could hoe his own row and so could other fellows; the faculty had no right to treat them like a kindergarten. Honor answered calmly and soothingly; she managed to convey without actually setting it down on the page that Jimsy King of all people in the world should take care not to ally himself with the "wets," and he wrote back that he was keeping out of the whole mess.

It came, therefore, as a fearful shock, the letters and newspapers' account of the expelling of James King of Los Angeles, 'Varsity Captain and prominent in college theatricals, from Stanford University for marching in a parade of protest against the curtailing of drinking! She was alone in her room when she opened her mail and she sat very still for minutes with her eyes shut, her fingers gripping the tiny clasped hands on her ring. At last, "I'll never stop believing in you," she said, almost aloud.

Then she read Jimsy's own version of it. She always kept his letter for the last, childishly, on the nursery theorem of "First the worst, second the same, last the best of all the game."

"Skipper dearest," he wrote, in a hasty and stumbling scrawl, "I'm so mad I can hardly see to write. I'd have killed that prof if it hadn't been for Carter. This is how it happened. I'd been keeping out of the whole mess as I told you I would. That night I was digging out something at the Library and on my way back to the House I saw a gang of fellows in a sort of parade, and some one at the end caught hold of me and dragged me in. I asked him what the big idea was and he said he didn't know, and I was sleepy and when we came to the House I dropped out and went in. I wasn't in it ten minutes and I didn't even know what it was about. But when they called for every one who was in the parade next day I had to show up, of course. Well, they asked me about it and I told them just how it happened, and they said all right, then, I could go. I was surprised and thankful, I can tell you, because they'd been chopping off heads right and left, some of the best men in college. Well, just as I was going out through the door the old prof called me back and said he had one more thing to ask me. Did I consider that his committee was absolutely right and justified in everything they'd done? Well, Skipper, what could I say? I said just what you'd have said and what you'd have wanted me to say—that I did think they had been too severe and in some cases unjust and they canned me for it."

There was a letter from Stephen Lorimer, grave and distressed, substantiating everything that Jimsy had written. (He had taken the first train north and gone into the matter thoroughly with the men at the fraternity house, simmering with red rage, and the committee, regretful but adamant.) The college career, the gay, brilliant, adored college career of Jimsy King was at an end. Honor's stepfather had taken great care to have the real facts in Jimsy's case printed—he sent the clipping from the Los Angeles paper—and he had spent an evening with James King, setting forth the truth of the case. But the fact remained for the majority of people, gaining in sinister weight with every repetition, that the last of the "Wild Kings" had been expelled from Stanford University for drinking.

"Top Step," her stepfather wrote, "I'm sick with rage and indignation. Your mother is taking it very hard—as is most every one else. 'Expelled' is not a pretty word. I'm doing my level best to put the truth before the public, to show that your boy is really something of a hero in this matter, in that he might be snugly safe at this moment if he had been willing to tell a politic lie. You'll be unhappy over this, T. S., that's inevitable, but—I give you my word—you need not hang your head. Jimsy played the game."

Carter, who had written seldom since the happening of the summer in spite of her kind and casual replies to his letters, sent her now six reassuring pages. She was not to worry. Jimsy was really doing very well, as far as the drinking went, and he—Carter—would not let him do anything foolish or desperate in his indignation. Three times he repeated that she must not be anxious. A dozen times in the letter he showed her where she might well be anxious. The word beat itself in upon her brain until she could endure it no longer, and she went out through the pretty streets of Florence to the cable office and sent Stephen Lorimer one of her brief and urgent messages, "Anxious." Two days later she had his answer and it was as short as her own had been, "Come."

There was a stormy scene with the Signorina. The waves of her fury rolled up and up and broke, crashing, over Honor's rocklike calm. At last, breathless, her fat face mottled with temper, "Go, then," said the singer, and went out of the room with heavy speed and slammed the door resoundingly. But she went with Honor to her steamer at Naples and embraced her forgivingly. "Go with God," she wept. "Live a little; it is best, perhaps. Then, my good small one, come back to me."