Play the Game! by Ruth Comfort Mitchell
CHAPTER II
The "Wild Kings" had lived in their fine old house ever since theneighborhood could remember. The first and probably the wildest of themhad come out from Virginia when Los Angeles was still a drowsing Spanishvillage, bringing with him an aged and excellent cellar and a flock ofnegro servants. Honor's Carmody grandmother could remember thepicturesqueness of his entourage, of James King himself, thehard-riding, hard-drinking, soft-spoken cavalier with his proud, palewife and his slim, high-stepping horses and his grinning blacks. Thegeneral conviction was, Grandmother Carmody said, that he had come--orbeen sent--west to make a fresh start. There was something ratherpathetically naive about that theory. There could never be a fresh startfor the "Wild Kings" in a world of excellent cellars and playing cards.In a surprisingly short time he had re-created his earlier atmospherefor himself--an atmosphere of charm and cheer and color ... and prideand shame and misery, in which his wife and children lived and moved andhad their being. In the early eighties he built the big beautiful houseon South Figueroa Street, moved the last of his negro servitors and thelast of his cellar and his young family into it and died. Since that dayKings had come and gone in it, big, bonny creatures, liked and sighedover, and the house was shabby now, cracked and peeling for the want ofpaint, the walks grass-grown, the lawn frowzy, lank and stringy curtainsat the dim windows. There were only three bottles of the historic cellarleft now, precious, cob-webbed; there was only one of the blacks, anancient, crabbed crone of the second generation, with a witch's hand atcookery and a witch's temper. And there were only James King III andJames King IV, his son, Honor's Jimsy, left of the line in the old home.The negress fed and mended them; an infrequent Japanese came in to makefutile efforts on house and garden.
The neighbors said, "How do you do, Mr. King? Like summer, really, isn'tit?" and looked hastily away. One never could be sure of finding himquite himself. Even if he walked quite steadily he might not be able totalk quite steadily, but he was always a King, always sure of hismanner, be he ever so unsure of his feet or his tongue. He had beenworse since his wife died, when the boy was still a toddler. She was aslim, sandy-haired Scotch girl with steady eyes and a prominent chin,who had married him to reform him, and the neighbors were beginning tothink she was in a fair way to compass it when she died. No one had everbeen able to pity Jeanie King; she had been as proud as the pale ladywho came with the first "Wild King" from Virginia. There was that aboutthe Kings; it had to be granted that their women always stuck; they musthave had compensating traits and graces. No King wife ever gave up ordeserted save by death, and no King wife ever wept on a neighbor'sshoulder.
And now they had all wandered back to Virginia or up to Alaska or downto Mexico, and there was not an uncle or cousin of his tribe left in LosAngeles for Jimsy King; only his bad, beloved father, coming home atnoon in rumpled evening dress, but wearing it better and more handily,for all that, than any other man on the block.
It was agreed that there was no chance for Jimsy to escape the heritageof his blood. People were kind about it, but very firm. "If his motherhad lived he might have had a chance, the poor boy," Mrs. Lorimer wouldsigh, "but with that father, and that home life, and that example----"
"My dear," said Stephen Lorimer, "can't you see what you are doing? By_you_ I mean the neighborhood. You are holding his heredity up like ahoop for him to jump through!"
Honor's stepfather held that there might be a generous share of thefirm-chinned Scotch mother in Jimsy. Certainly it was a fighting chance;he was living in a day of less warmth and color than his father and hisforbears; there were more outlets for his interest and his energy. Hisfather, for instance, had not played football. Jimsy had played as soonas he could walk alone--football, baseball, basketball, handball, waterpolo; life was a hard and tingling game to him. "It's an even chance,"said Stephen Lorimer, "and if Honor's palling with him can swing it, canwe square it with ourselves to take her away from him?" He carried hispoint, as usual, and the boy and the girl started in at Los Angeles Highon the same day. Honor decided on the subjects which Jimsy could mostsafely take--the things he was strongest in, the weak subjects in whichshe was strong. There was an inexorable rule about being signed up byevery teacher for satisfactory work on Friday afternoon before aSaturday football game; it was as a law of the Medes and Persians; eventhe teachers who adored him most needs must abide by it. There was nocajoling any of them; even the pretty, ridiculously young thing whotaught Spanish maintained a Gibraltar-like firmness.
"You'll simply have to study, Jimsy, that's all," said Honor.
"Study, yes, but that's not learning, Skipper!" (She had been that eversince her first entirely seaworthy summer at Catalina.) "I can study, ifI have to, but that's not saying I'll get anything into my sconce! I'mpretty slow in the head!"
"I know you are," said Honor, sighing. "Of course, you've been so busywith other things. Think what you've done in athletics!"
"Fast on the feet and slow in the head," he grinned. "Well, I'll dietrying. But you've got to stand by, Skipper."
"Of course. I'll do your Latin and English and part of your Spanish."
"Gee, you're a brick."
"It's nothing." She dismissed it briefly. "It's my way of doingsomething, Jimsy, that's all. It's the only way I can be on the team."She glowed pinkly at the thought. "When I sit up on the bleachers andsee you make a touchdown and hear 'em yell--why I'm _there_! I'm on theteam because I've helped a little to keep you on the team! It almostmakes up for having to be a girl. Just for the moment, I'm not sittingup high, clean and starched and safe; I'm on the field, hot and muddyand with my nose bleeding, _doing_ something for L. A.! I'm _there_!"
Jimsy slapped her on the shoulder like a man and brother. "You're_there_ all the time, Skipper! You're there a million!"
He made the first team the first day he went out to practice. There wasno denying him. He captained the team the second year and every yearuntil he graduated, a year late for all his friend's unwearying toil. Asa matter of fact they did not make a special effort to get him throughon time; the team needed him, the squad needed him, L. A. needed him. Itwas more like a college than a High School in those days, with itsnumbers and its spirit, that strong, intangible evidence of things notseen. There was something about it, a concentrated essence of Jimsy Kingand hundreds of lesser Jimsy Kings, which made it practicallyunconquerable. In the year before his final one the team reached itsshining perfection and held it to the end. It is still a name to conjurewith at the school on the hill, Jimsy King's. The old teachers remember;the word comes down. "A regular old-time L. A. team--the fightingspirit. Like the days of Jimsy King!"
Other teams might score on them; frequently they could not, but whenthey did the rooting section was not dashed. It lifted up its multiplevoice, young, insolent, unafraid, in mocking song, and Honor Carmody,just on the edge of the section, beside her stepfather, sang with them:
_You can't beat L. A. High!_ _You can't beat L. A. High!_ _Use your team to get up steam_ _But you can't beat L. A. High!_
It rolled out over the football field and echoed away in the softSouthern California air. It was gay, inexorable; you _couldn't_ beatL. A. High, field or bleachers.
Stephen Lorimer never missed a game. His wife went once and never again.
"I suppose I am too sensitive," she said, "but I can't help it. It's theway I'm made. I simply cannot endure seeing anything so brutal. I can'tunderstand those young girls ... and the _mothers_!" Two of her own wereon the second team, now, but she never saw them play, and they came inthe back way, after games and practice, sneaking up to Honor's room withtheir black eyes and their gory noses for her capable first aid. Shewas not one, Mildred Lorimer, into whose blood something of the iron hadentered. Her boys bewildered her as they grew and toughened out of babyfiber. She was a little unhappy about it, but she was more beautifulthan she had ever been in her life, and freer, with the last littleLorimer shifting sturdily for himself and his father more in love withher tha
"Yes," she said, nodding her head, "it is a voice. It is a voice. Alittle teaching, yes; this Barrett woman who was once my pupil, she willbe safe with her. Not too much; not too much singing. Finish yourschool, my little one. Then you shall come over to me for a year, yes?We shall see what we shall see!" She patted her cheek and sent her outof the room ahead of Stephen.
"Well?" he wanted to know.
"But yes, a voice, as I have said. Send her to me when her schooling isover."
"She has a future?"
The great contralto shrugged her thick shoulders. "I fear not. I thinknot."
His face lengthened. "Why?"
"Because, my friend, she will care more for living. She will not care sogreatly to _get_, that large child. She will only _give_. She has notthe fine relentless selfishness to make the artist. Well, we shall see.Life may break her. Send her to me. In two years, yes? No, no, I willhave no thanks. It is so small a thing to do.... One grows fat and old;it is good to have youngness near. Now, go, my friend. I shall gargle mythroat and sleep." She gave him a hot, plump hand to kiss.
Honor was not especially impressed. She rather thought, when the timecame, she should prefer to go to Stanford, but she liked her musiclessons, meanwhile. It filled up her time, the business of singing, inthat last year when she was more or less marking time and helping Jimsythrough.
Her stepfather watched her with growing amazement. So far as any onemight judge, and to Mrs. Lorimer's tearful relief, Honor's attitudetoward the last of the "Wild Kings" was at seventeen what it had been attwelve, at six.
"I was right, wasn't I?" Stephen wanted to know.
"Well ... if you can only keep on being right about it! I'm so thankfulabout her singing. That year abroad will be wonderful. She'll meet newpeople ... real men."
"Young Jimsy is exhibiting every known symptom of becoming a real man."
"Yes, but he's a King."
"That appears to be the universal opinion regarding him."
"Stephen _dear_, don't be ridiculous! You've always been as bewitchedabout the boy as Honor herself." Mrs. Lorimer was dressed for a luncheonand her husband, heavy-eyed and flushed of face, had cut short his latemorning sleep to drive her. She was still for him the everlasting Helen.
"Mildred," he said, quitting the battlefield for the eternal balcony,"do you know that you are lovelier this instant than you were the day Imarried you?"
Mrs. Lorimer knew it quite well. It was due somewhat to good managementas well as luck, and she liked having the results appreciated. She lethim kiss her, carefully, because she had her hat on.
The elder James King did not seem to age with the years. "He is,"Stephen Lorimer said facetiously, "only too well preserved!" His mannerand mode of life remained the same, save that he lost more heavily atcards. For the first time in its history the old King place wasmortgaged. In a day when every one who was any one, as Honor's motherput it, was getting a motor car, the Kings had none. Jimsy, of course,rode regally in every one else's. The Lorimers had two, an electric inwhich Honor's mother glided softly with her little whirring bell fromclubs to luncheons and from luncheons to teas, and a rough and readyseven-passenger affair into which the whole tribe might be piled, andwhich Honor Carmody drove better than her stepfather, who was apt todream at the wheel. On Sundays Stephen Lorimer took them all, Jimsy,Honor, Billy and Ted Carmody, the Lorimer twins and the last littleLorimer, on motor picnics to the beach. They drove to Santa Monica, downthe Palisades, up the narrow, winding, wave-washed road to the MalibouRanch and built a fire and broiled chops and made coffee and bakedpotatoes, after their swim, ate like refugees and slept like puppies onthe sand. In the afternoon, when they came back to the gracious oldhouse in its wide garden on South Figueroa Street Mildred Lorimer wouldbe waiting, in a frock he loved, to give her husband his tea, cool,lovely, remote from the rougher fun of life.
In the evenings--Sunday evenings--Honor held her joyous At Homes. Threeor four favored girls and a dozen boys came to supper, a loud, hilariousmeal. Takasugi, the cook, and Kada, the second boy, were given theirfreedom. Honor, in the quaint aprons her stepfather had picked up hereand there over the world, pink, capable, with the assistance of Jimsyand her biggest brothers, got supper.
It was a lively feast. Jimsy King, in one of Kada's white jackets,waited on the table. They ate enormously, and when they had finishedthey pronounced their ungodly grace--a thunderous tattoo on the tableedge, begun with palms and finished with elbows--
None-but-the-righteous-shall-be-SAVED!--
followed, while the cups and plates were still leaping and shuddering,with its secular second verse--
My-sister-Mary-walks-like-THIS!
"Well, Top Step," said Stephen one of those evenings, "eleven boysbeside the stand-by Jimsy. Fair to middling popularity, I should say!"
"Popularity?" She opened her candid eyes wide at him. "Why, Stepper, youknow it's not that! They don't come to see me! They don't mind me, ofcourse, but it's the eats, and meeting each other,--and mostly Jimsy, Iguess! Mercy,--the chocolate's boiling over!"
She clearly believed it, and it was more or less true. The Carmody homeof a Sunday night was a sort of glorified club house without rules ordues or by-laws. It was the thing to do, if one were so lucky. It ratherplaced a boy in the scheme of things to be one of "the Sunday-nightbunch." Jimsy was the Committee on Membership.
"Let's have that Burke boy out to supper Sunday, shan't we?" Honor wouldsay. "He's doing so well on the team."
"No," Jimsy would answer, definitely. "Not at the house, Skipper." Honoraccepted his judgments unquestioningly. Some way, with the deep wisdomof boys, he knew, better than she could, that the young Burke person wasbetter on the field than in the drawing-room. There was nothing snobbishin their gatherings; shabby boys came, girls who had made their ownlittle dimity dresses. It was the intangible, inexorable caste of thebest boyhood, and Honor knew, comfortably, that her particular Kingcould do no wrong.
The rooting section had a special yell for Jimsy, when he had sped downthe field to a touchdown or kicked a difficult goal. It followed theregular High School yell, hair-lifting in its fierceness:
King! King! King! K-I-N-G, King! G-I-N-K, Gink! He's the King Gink! He's the King Gink! He's the King Gink! K-I-N-G, King! KING!
and Honor utterly agreed with them.