Play the Game! by Ruth Comfort Mitchell

  CHAPTER XIII

  There were telegrams from Stephen Lorimer and the doctor; James King'scondition remained unchanged. Honor and Jimsy decided to return at once,but Richard King flatly refused to let them go. The next train afterHonor's had been held up just beyond Cordoba by a band of brigands,supposed to be a section of Villistas, the passengers robbed andmistreated and three of the train men killed.

  "Not a step without an escort," said Jimsy's uncle.

  Then Jimsy's new friend came to the rescue. He was eager to get home butcannily aware of his own especial risk,--two wealthy Americans havingbeen recently taken and held for ransom. He had influence at theCapital; he wrote and telegraphed and the replies were suave andreassuring; reliable escort would be furnished as soon aspossible,--within the week, it was hoped. Meanwhile, there was nothingfor it but to wait. He went back to the _hacienda_ where he had beenvisiting, and life--the merry, lyrical life of _El Pozo_, moved forward.Jimsy's only woe was that he was condemned by her own decision to shareHonor lavishly with his uncle and aunt and their friends and Carter."Skipper, after all these years, leaving me for a darn' tea!"

  "Jimsy, dear," she scolded him, "you know that it's the very least I cando, now isn't it--honestly? Think how lovely she's been to us, and howmuch it means to her, having people here. And we've got all our livesahead of us, Jimsy! Be good! And besides"--she colored a little andhesitated--"it's--not kind to Cartie." Then, at the sobering of hisface, "You know he--cares for me, Jimsy, and I don't believe it's justcricket for us to--to sort of wave our happiness in his face all thetime."

  He sighed crossly. "But--good Lord, Skipper,--he's got to get used toit!"

  "Of course,--but need we--rub it in, just now?" The fact was that Honorwas anxious. Carter was pallid, haggard, morose. The brief flare ofcomposure with which he had greeted her was gone; he showed visibly andunpleasantly what he was suffering at the sight of their vivid andhearty happiness. Mrs. King had commented pityingly on it to Honor andit was simply not in the girl to go on adding to his misery. She beganto be very firm with Jimsy about their long walks or rides alone; sheaccepted all Mrs. King's invitations and plans for them; she includedCarter whenever it was possible. These restrictions had naturally theresult of making Jimsy the more ardent in their scant privacy, andHonor, amazingly free from coquetry though she was, must have sensed it.Perhaps the truth was that she had in her, after all, something ofMildred Lorimer's feeling for values and conventions; having flown fromFlorence to Cordoba to her lover she was reclaiming a little of heraloofness and cool ladyhood by this discipline. But she was entirelyhonest in her wish to spare Carter so far as possible. Once, when Jimsywas briefly away with his Yaqui henchman she asked Carter to walk withher, but he decided for the dim _sala;_ the heat which seemed toinvigorate and vitalize Jimsy left him limp and spent.

  He brushed her generalities roughly aside. "Are you happy, Honor?"

  She lifted her candid eyes to his bleak young face. "Yes, Cartie.Happier than ever before--and I've been happy all my life."

  He was silent for a moment as if sorting out and considering the thingshe might say to her. "Well, you have a marvelous effect on Jimsy. Idon't believe he's taken a drop since you've been here."

  "He hasn't touched a drop since he came to Mexico, Carter,--Mr. Kingtold me that, and Jimsy told me himself!" Honor was a little declamatoryin her pride and he raised his eyebrows.

  "Really?" He limped over to the table where the smoking things were andthe decanter of whiskey and siphon of soda. "Let me have a look...." Hepicked up the decanter and held it to the light. "The last time I lookedat it, it came just to the top of the design here,--and it does yet.Yes, it's just where it was."

  "Carter! I call that spying!"

  He turned back to her without temper. "I call it looking after myfriend," he said gently. "I don't suppose you've let him tell you verymuch about what happened at college?"

  "No, Carter. What's the use of it, now? He wrote it all to me, but theletter must have passed me. It's a closed chapter now."

  "I hope to God it will stay closed," he said, haggardly. "But I'mafraid, Honor; I'm horribly afraid for you."

  "I'm not afraid, Carter,--for myself or for Jimsy." She got up andwalked to the window; she was aware that she hated the dimness of the_sala_; she wanted the honest heat of the sun. "Look!" she said, gladly.Carter limped slowly to join her. Jimsy King was swinging toward themthrough the brazen three o'clock glare, his Yaqui Juan by his side. Theywere a sightly and eye-filling pair. They might have been done in bronzefor studies of Yesterday and To-day. "_Look_!" said Honor again. "Oh,Carter, do you think any--any horrible dead trait--any clammy deadhand--can reach up out of the grave to pull him down?"

  Carter was silent.

  A high and cleanly anger rose in the girl. "Carter, I don't want to hurtyou,--oh, I know I hurt you all the time, in one way, and I can't helpthat,--I don't want to be unkind, but--are you sure it isn't becauseyou--care--for me that you have this hopeless feeling about Jimsy?" Shefaced him squarely and made him meet her eyes. "Carter! Tell me."

  His unhappy gaze struggled with her level look and slipped away. "Ofcourse I want you myself, Honor. I want you--horribly, unbearably, but Ido honestly feel it's wrong for you to marry Jimsy King."

  "But, Carter--see how nearly his father won out! Every one says that ifhis mother had lived--And his Uncle Richard! He's absolutely free fromit, now. And the very look of Jimsy is enough to show you----"

  But Carter had turned and was staring moodily at the decanter. "It comesso suddenly, Honor ... with such frightful unexpectedness. Remember,when we were youngsters, the World's Biggest Snake, 'Samson,'--exhibitedin a vacant store on Main Street, and how keen we all were about him?"

  Honor kindled to the memory. "I adored him. He had a head like a nicesetter's and he wasn't cold or slimy a bit!"

  "Remember what the man told us about his hunger? How he'd go threemonths without anything, and then devour twenty live rabbits andchickens and cats?"

  She nodded, frowning. "I know. It was awful."

  "But the point was the suddenness. They never knew when the hunger wouldseize him. The fellow said that it came like a flash. He was gentle as alamb for weeks on end--and then it came. He'd pounce on the keeper's petrabbit--his dog--the man himself if he were within reach. He was anutterly changed creature; he was just--an _appetite_." He stood staringsomberly at the decanter. "That's the way it comes, Honor."

  It seemed to be getting dimmer and dimmer in the _sala_. Honor foundherself wishing with all her heart for her stepfather. Stephen Lorimerwould know how to answer; how to parry,--to combat this thing. She felther own weapons clumsy and blunt, but such as they were she would usethem.

  "But it isn't coming ever again, Carter! I tell you it isn't coming! AndI want you to stop saying and thinking that it is! Now I'm going toJimsy!"

  In the wide out-of-doors, under the unbelievably blue sky and thestinging sun, with Jimsy and Yaqui Juan, life was sound and whole again.The Indian, tall as a pine, looked at her with eyes of respectfuladoration and smiled his slow, melancholy smile, as she swung off withthe boy, down the path which led to the old well.

  "Juan approves of me, doesn't he?" said Honor, contentedly.

  "Of course; you're my woman!" She loved his happy impudence. "Aren'tyou, Skipper?" They had passed the twist in the path--the path which waslike a moist green tunnel through the tropic jungle--which hid them fromthe house and she halted and went swiftly into his arms.

  "Yes, Jimsy! _Yes!_ And--I've been stingy and mean to you but I won'tbe, any more. Carter must just--stand things."

  "_Skipper!_" He wasn't facile with words, Jimsy King, but he was able tomake himself clear.

  "Jimsy, isn't it wonderful--the all-rightness of everything? Beingtogether again, and----"

  "Going to be together always! And my job waiting! Isn't the old boy awonder? I saw him, just now. He says he's heard from Mexico City andit's O. K. to start Thursday. They're going to send the escort."
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  "In two days," said Honor, blissfully, "we'll be on our way home! Jimsy,in two days!"

  But in two days dizzyingly, terrifyingly much had happened. The pleasantlittle comedy of life at _El Pozo_ had changed to melodrama, crude andstrident. They had been attacked by a band of _insurrectos_, a wing ofVilla's hectic army, presumably; the _peons_, with the exception of thehouse servants and Yaqui Juan, had gone gleefully over to the enemy;Richard King had been wounded in his hot-headed defense of his_hacienda_, shot through the shoulder, and was running a temperature;the telephone wires were cut; infinitely worse than all, the besiegershad taken possession of the well and they were entirely without water.

  There had been, of course, the usual supply in the house at the time ofthe attack and it had been made to last as long as was humanly possible,the lion's share going to the wounded man, but they had arrived, now, atthe point of actual suffering. His role of helpless inaction was anintolerable one for Jimsy King to play. To know that--less than aquarter of a mile away, down the moist green path through the tropicverdure--was the well; to see Honor's dry lips and strained eyes,Carter's deathly pallor, to hear his uncle, out of his head, mercifully,most of the time, begging for water, meant a constant battle withhimself not to rush out, to make one frantic try at least, but he knewthat the deeper courage of patient waiting was required of him. Theycould only conjecture what the invaders meant to do,--whether theyintended to have them die of thirst, whether they meant to rush thehouse when it suited their pleasure--raggedly fortified and guarded byJimsy and Carter and the half dozen of the faithful. Jimsy had talkedthe latter probability over steadily with Honor and she understood.

  "Jimsy," she managed not to let her teeth chatter, "it's like a playor--or a Wild West tale, isn't it? Like a 'Frank Merriwell'--rememberwhen you used to adore those things?"

  "No, Skipper, it's not like a 'Frank Merriwell'; he could always _do_something...." Jimsy's strong teeth ground together.

  "Yes--'Blooey, blooey! Fifteen more redskins bit the dust!'"

  "Skipper, you _wonder_! You brick!"

  "Jimsy, I--there's no use talking about things that may never happen,because _of course_ help will get here, but if it should not--if theyshould rush us, and we couldn't keep them out"--her hoarse voicefaltered but her eyes held his--"you won't--you wouldn't let them--takeme, Jimsy?"

  "No, Skipper."

  "Promise, Jimsy?"

  "Promise, Skipper. 'Cross my heart!'" The old good foolish words of theold safe days, here, now, in this hideous and garish present!

  With that pledge she was visibly able to give herself to a livelierhope. "But of course Yaqui Juan got through to the Grants' _hacienda_!Can you imagine him failing us, Jimsy?"

  He shook his head. "He'll make it if any man living could." The Indianhad slipped through the _insurrectos_ in the first hour, as soon as ithad been known that the wires were cut. Unless the Grants, too, werebesieged, they would be able to telephone for help for _El Pozo_, andif they were likewise in duress, Yaqui Juan would go on to the next_rancho_,--on and on until he could set the wheels of rescue in motion."I wish to God I had his job. _Doing something_----"

  Carter came into the _sala_. He was terrifyingly white but with anadmirable composure. "Steady, old boy," he said, putting his frail handon Jimsy's shoulder. "Sit tight! We depend on you. And you're doing"--helooked at the decanter, as if measuring its contents with hiseye--"gloriously, splendidly, old son! I know the strain you're under.You're a bigger man even than I thought you were, Jimsy."

  Honor went away to sit with Mrs. King and the sick man and both boysstared unhappily after her. "If Skipper were only out of this----" Jimsygroaned.

  "And whose fault is it that she's in it?" Carter snarled. Two red spotssprang into his white cheeks.

  "Why--Cart'!" Jimsy backed away from him, staring.

  "Whose fault is it, I say?" Carter followed him. "If she hadn't beenterrified over you, if she hadn't the insane idea of duty and loyalty toyou, would she have come? Would she?"

  Jimsy King sat down and looked at him, aghast. "Good Lord,Cart'--that's the truth! That shows what a mutt I am. It hasn't struckme before. It's all my fault."

  "Whatever happens to Honor--_whatever happens to her_--and deathwouldn't be the worst thing, would it?--it's your fault. Do you hearwhat I say? It's all your fault!" In all the years since he had knownhim Jimsy had never seen Carter Van Meter like this,--cool Carter, withhis little elegancies of dress and manner, his studied detachment. Thiswas a different person altogether,--hot-eyed, white-lipped, snarling."Your fault if she dies here, dies of thirst; your fault if they get inhere and carry her off, those filthy brutes out there."

  "They'll never ... get her," said Jimsy King. His face was scarlet andhe was breathing hard and clenching and unclenching his hands.

  "Yes," Carter sneered, "yes! I know what you mean! You feel very heroicabout it. You feel like a hero in a movie, don't you? Noble of you,isn't it? Slay the heroine with your own hands rather than let her----"

  "Oh, for God's sake, Cart'!" Jimsy got up and came toward him. "Cut itout! What's the good of talking like that? We're in it now, all of us,and we've got to stick it out. I know it's harder on you because you'renot strong, but----"

  "Damn you! 'Not strong--' Not built like an ox--muscles in my braininstead of my legs! Because I cared for something else besides rollingaround in the mud with a leather ball in my arms----"

  "Key down, old boy." Jimsy was cool now, unresentful; he understood.Poor old Cart' ... he couldn't stand much suffering.

  "That's how you got Honor, when she was a child, with no sense ofvalues, but you haven't held her! You can't hold her."

  "Cart', I'm not going to get sore at you. I know you're about all in.You don't know what you're saying."

  "Don't I? Don't I? You listen to me. Honor Carmody never really lovedyou; it was a silly boy-and-girl, calf love affair, and when sherealized it she stood by, of course,--she's that sort. She kept theletter of her promise, but she couldn't keep the spirit."

  "Key down, old top," said Jimsy King again, grinning. "I'm not going toget sore, but I don't want to use up my breath laughing at you._Skipper_--going back on me!" He did laugh, ringingly.

  "She hasn't gone back on you; except in her heart. Good God, JimsyKing, what do you think you are to hold a girl like that--with hertalent and her success and her future? She's only stuck by you becauseit was her creed, that's all."

  "Look here, Cart', I'm not going to argue with you. It's not on thesquare to Skipper even to talk about it, but don't be a crazy fool.Would she have come to me here--from Italy, if she didn't----"

  "Yes. Yes, she would! She's pledged to see it through--to stand by youas all the other miserable women have stood by the men of yourfamily,--if you're cad enough to let her."

  That caught and stuck. "If I'm--cad enough to let her," said Jimsy in acuriously flat voice. But the mood passed in a flash. "It's no usetalking like that, Carter. Of course I know I'm not good enough orbrainy enough--or _anything_ enough for Skipper, but she thinks I am,and----"

  "You poor fool, she doesn't think so. I tell you she's only standing bybecause she said she would. I tell you she cares for some one else."

  "That's a lie," said Jimsy King with emphasis but without passion. Thestatement was too grotesque for any feeling over it.

  Carter stopped raving and snarling and became very cool and coherent."I think I can prove it to you," he said, quietly.

  "You can't," said Jimsy, turning and walking toward the door.

  "Are you afraid to listen?" He asked it very quietly.

  "No," said Jimsy King, wheeling. "I'm not afraid. Go ahead. Get it offyour chest."

  "Well, in the first place,--hasn't she kept you at arm's length here?Hasn't she insisted on being with other people all the time,--on havingme with you?"

  "Cart', I hate to say it, but that's because she's sorry for you."

  "And for herself."

  The murky dimness of the _sala_ was pressing in o
n Jimsy as it had onthe girl, that other day. He was worn with vigil and torn with thirst,sick with dread of what might any moment come to them,--with remorse forbringing Honor there, tormented with his helplessness to save her. Evenat his best he was no match for the other's cleverness and now he was inthe dust, blaming and hating himself. He stood there in silence,listening, and Carter's hoarse voice, Carter's plausible words, went onand on. "But I don't believe it," Jimsy would say at intervals. "Shedoesn't care for you, Cart'. She's all mine, Skipper is. She doesn'tcare for you."

  "Wait!" Carter took out his wallet of limp leather with his initials onit in delicately wrought gold letters and opened it. "I didn't mean toshow you this, but I see that I must. It was last summer. I--I lost myhead the night before we sailed, and let Honor see.... Then I askedher.... I didn't say, 'Will you marry me?' because I knew there was nohope of that so long as she thought there was a chance of saving you bystanding by you. I asked her--something else. And she sent me this wireto the boat at Naples."

  Jimsy did not put out his hand to take the slip of paper which Carterunfolded and smoothed and held toward him. It was utterly still in the_sala_ but from an upper room came the sound of Richard King's voice,faint, thick, begging for water, and from somewhere in the distance amuffled shot ... three shots.

  Carter held the message up before Jimsy's eyes:

  Carter Van Meter care Purser S. S. _Canopic Naples_ Yes. HONOR.