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Show j EATS in the front row'" Star- ii row eaid jubilantly, aB ho de tached himself from the long I line of ticket-buyers "But I wouldn't jl have got them If they hadn't been returned just as I got to the window. I Want to go in now?" I "All right." Peyton agreed. II It struck Starrow that his compan-! compan-! ion wa not showing the proper degree de-gree of enthusiasm. "It's too bad 1t ii isn't your own game," he went on, as I they made their way into the little dingy, darkened theater. 'Say, j wouldn't It be great to see yourself ; making that end-run?" j "Yes, I'd like to see it," Peyton ad- 1 mitted, unemotionally. , fi He did not seem in the mood for 1 1 ' j talking, but Starrow went on unde- I terred "Heavens! You must be a i, homesick guy Harvard football in the blograph and alone in St Louie on Christmas Did you get anything I I m your stocking'" I I "Nothing " Peyton's indifference I . , was not assumed There was only one i thing he wanted Denied that, the I H beet gifts of the magi counted for I ', nothing. I "H His meager response seamed to t lence Starrow. They sat without talk-ing, talk-ing, watching the people come in. Over the house lay the quiet of a V.J5j Christmas audience the pitiful quiet Lv'ljl of forlorn remnants of humanity who, simply r forget, fill up a holiday with I H makeshift entertainment A woman j neT an5 there, sitting solitary in the 'vjf stuffy looking boxes, added a toucli of rV,H extra desolation But. gradually, as i . I the gallery began to whistle and cat cH its impatienre, the place assumed! PfeJ the superficial cheer that comes with "fft '.1 noise. - Pejton, swaying mentally in an i L'l overmastering fit of homesickness,) tr,ed to a grip on himself The ''1 depressed, weak kneed-looking oiches I tra crawled from underneath the I - i stage. Ah, there would be music! j That at least might take hJm out oft ' "L! himself But. no; his homesickness. inundated him in another weakening 1 r; flood; for they had begun to scrape' j'J through a medley of college songa J "Fair Harvard." "Boola Boola," "Tho I H I Undertaker's Bong," "Up the Street," S. ji "For God, for Country, and for Yale' I "Veritas" He leaned on the arm of I nls chair, one hand over his eyes i.-'J The theater darkened He took no notice. A cone of brilliant light shot frVrt from the balcony straight at the big tV white screen; wavered, and danced upon it. But his attitude did not change. It stabbed the center In a circle of light and zip! Peyton sat up. 15$: There, printed on ihs white rec-! Bvjl tangle, as if by a flash of lightning,' EQ towered the stadium. Empty, its , af&S tiered height rose in a long, gray ' EjaMl curve against the sky A half-oval of fmfeft the deserted field stretched out to SSrcjt meet him. It looked exactly as he b3&9 had seen it one moonlit night. In a HRl "daily" written about It. he remem- Kal bered he had compared It, In high- BBa flown schoolboy English, to the Coli- jgjffi seum. 9B Curiously enough, he did not. im- M mediately think of football in connec-: mH tlon with it. Class day came back to BBW) nim, and the incongruous aspect of j HB the stadium as he came marching in j with '07 Directly in front the students squatted on the grass At the right, .forming a background for them, ih "set" of the Greek play cut the grid ; iron in two. At the left, flowing down , over the crimson-hung tiers of seats from the hot blue sky, poured an avalanche of girls bunches and rafts' and slathers of girls, girls of all ages, girls of all slzeB, girls of all sbapps, bl ue girls and pink girls, green girls and yellow girls, lavender girls and . brown girls, white, red, and black girls, girls in foamy, fiouncy, petal things that were dresses; girls undpr huge, rainbow wreaths of flowers that were hats; hats under huce. lustrous bubbles that were parasol6. He re- raembered that Lawrenc e. mBrching by his side, had looked up and-said ! Close as bonbons in a box.'' Pey-i Pey-i ton thought tbem more like that mad ; huddle of blossoms in his aunt's old- fashioned garden in Gloucester Now the muhl-oolored throng were ap r-lauding 'S2, jubilant on its twenty-fifth twenty-fifth anniversary Now he could hear , the cheers of '08, !09, '10. following j '82. Now be could hear the roar that j went up from both audience and 'alumni when '07 marched In. He could hear every sound of it; he would hear that until he died And it was all over now the four most wonderful wonder-ful years a man ever spent. The picture of the stadium stayed on the sheet only a short moment, but in that time he lived over an intense afternoon. The stadium vanished from the screen; now the blograph had them at Harvard Square on the day of a Kreat game the old familiar picture of an old familiar confusion. A pro-ceeelon pro-ceeelon of trolley-cars unloaded a mob of spectators, which ran like a flood through tho mob of curious onlookers, packing the square and overflowing into itB confluent streets. Everywhere swarmed boys selling score-cards, flags, flowera. badges, miniature foot balls, all manner of gimcrack sou-1 venirs. The sputtering blograph flashed again This time it was the bridge, with the same old crowd advancing at the same old snail's pace, and fling Ing abroad, Peyton had no doubt, the same old jokes. The machine, it seemed, was following that crowd Now the boathouse slipped into the picture, now the training quarters, and now the interior of the stadium again. Not empty this time; the seats were almost filled. But spectators were still pouring out of the. ohimney-Hke entrances. The ushers were leaping up the aisles, two steps at a time, doflectlng tho thick streams up, down, across, into Bcores of tiny currents. At the very top a row of heads made black blobs on the sky line. Above stretched the aerial banners that al-Wfs al-Wfs graCl a biK Btadium game This was the enemy's side; banners bearing the word "Yale," pennants! displaying the letter "Y." proclaimed it The girls, beginning to roll themselves them-selves in extra wraps, wore hug bunches of violets. As plainly as though the picture had been colored, he saw that their streamers and tassels tas-sels were of Yale blue The scene shifted. Pevton jumped ! again. It was the Harvard side thlsj A GIFT BY BIOGR.APH Qy IVEZ ffAYNES GfLLMO&E 'time the flags, the pennants, the moi.ster bunches of chrysanthemums, all shouted the fact to him. This picture vanished It was pliin that che blograph-operator had moved I down close to the audience, and was j beginning to present a panoramic view of the spectators. Smooth as a river the old familiar (audience flowed past him; the cbr ing sections crowded with hats, like pin-cuahions studded with hliok-lie.idod hliok-lie.idod pins, proud fathers, prouder jmolhers, superior little brothers, ex-j ex-j cited little sisters ; graduates, rang-i rang-i ing from last year's crop to alumui i of thirty years; critical prep-school I boys, giggling boarding school girls, I Radcllffe girls, all rambridge, nearly all Boston, and a little of all its suburbs su-burbs HI I Peyton was on his feet. The panorama had vanished. Into its place leaped a picture of tho Harvard Har-vard half of the stadium. And the , whole Harvard side was rising with ; the steady movement upward of a I tidal-wave cresting to break. All the flags, banners, and pennants had cut loose to make havoc of the sky-line , On the gridiron, a half-dozen yell-leaders, yell-leaders, megaphones in hand, arms whirling, looked like- mechanical toys wound up to work together. He could fairly hear the deep, "Harvard! Harvard Har-vard I Harvard! " He knpw what was happening. He had seen that mag-1 nlflcent concerted movement many times. The team had come on Starrow pulled him back into his seat. Unheeding, Peyton bent forward over the orchestra-rail, bursting with eagerness. Would the picture ever j change? There they were, running: toward him over the field. Afar off j they might have been buffalo Now ! ha could make out tho "H's" on their breasis Ho caught a face bire and there The herd spread out like a fan and fell into the well-known formation Holley. the easy-moving fullback, had stepped back for a kick. Peyton could almost hear the plunk of the ball and the thumping feet of the ends as they coursed down under the punt. He examined them critically. Even allowing for the exaggerated speed of the blograph he could see how easily they moved, how perfect , was their condition. 1a his own thews t I W u he could feel again that powerful zest of the man trained to the minute, as he romes to the mark for his supreme-effort supreme-effort The Yale Bide was next, and the reception, equally frantic, of their team This series vanished, and In Its place came a prolonged close view of each of the sections. Peyton jumped again The pictures were so near and the figures so big, it was 'like being in front of the seats There was Moulton, '04 MoUlton who, he thought, was In New Orleans How the douce did he Great Scott! there was Wright, '05, with Doris Nason He didn t even know they knew each other There was a whole bunch of! Hasty Pudding fellows What a good time they were having' There were the Hiltona and the Morrows and i the Galleghers. all talking, laughing, i waving flags to each other, exchang-1 ing chaff, examining score-cards And, by love, there In the front row, big as life, happy In a holiday seriousness, were Mllly and Ted Dunton, his cousins He caught himself just In time. He had started to yell over the footlights. Mllly was getting to be an awfullv pretty girl. How becoming those furs were to her! She pulled a bunch of envelopes from her muff and, charac 'eristically, she looked them over. Ted. saucer-eyed, with the fiVrce concentration con-centration of a prep-boy. had Interest for nothing but the field. The team must still be practising Peyton could tell from the lack of tensity in the audience. Rut what in the world was Mllly doing? There were letters and a package under her srm. Peyton suddenly understood. Mllly was a senior at Radcliffe Coming down from Fay House to meet Ted at Harvard Har-vard Square, she had scooped her mail off tho letter-board. She glanced at the letters and. without opening them, put them back In her muff. The package evidently Interested her; she looked it all over. I It interested Pevton also, there was something familiar about It. A huge. ! jet-black signature dashed a slanting j :ourse over one ooraer. Suddenly he recognized It. Tt was the trademark of the St. Louis photographer who had. recently, taken his pictures. He himself had sent Mllly that package six weeks ago Grinning to himself, ! Peyton watched her open it Her ' unfeigned delight in the picture was pleusant; Peyton's spirits lightened a little. Equally amusing was Ted's swift, grunpj, unseeing glance. And then It was curious It had never occurred to him to anticipate j this Constance Terry came walking j down the aisle with Lawrence Graves. ! Peyton knew her the moment she appeared at the top of the picture. And so real she seemed that he shrank back in his seat. He watched her progress, not breathing Down she came, growing bigger with each step down, down, down. She was going to sit in the front row with Mllly. There was something almost al-most dramatic about this entrance. Looking from her height over the field, she seemod to be gazing straight into bis eyes. There was something j curious about her gaze, it was as if she looked hard at something that she did not see. Peyton's devouring glance noted that she had lost none of her beauty; the spirited grace of her figure, the lovely lift of a red upper lip over a rod lower one, the j long, straight eyelashes, the thick, black brows, that in anger made thun der-clouds of her gray eyes His memory mem-ory limned all the colors that the bio graph left out "Deuced pretty girl." Starrow commented, com-mented, ' that one that's taking a seat in the front row." Peyton did not answer. Mllly had risen. There were quick greetings, and the party seated Itself. Something Lawrence was saying gave him the center of the stage. Con stance, not listening, turned her at tentlon again to the field; again, apparently, ap-parently, she looked straight into Pey-I Pey-I ton's eyes. The strange expression came back Into her face Her look was absent, apathetic almost un- happy What could be the matter? Was It possible that Lawrence had not proposed pro-posed yet he knew Lawrence's ways with girls and that she was perplexed, per-plexed, perhaps grieving over the J ominslon'' He wondered why Law I rence delayed, for there was no doubt 61 the genuineness of his "case" on Constance Terry. Certainly it was not fear of a refusal In all Lawrence Law-rence s meteoric amorous career. Peyton Pey-ton had never known him to fall. Peyton tried to imagine himself I holding off one minute after he had seen that he had any show with Con-j stance Terry. Not that he had any Idea that he could complicate Lawrence's Law-rence's suit He had left Cambridge i the moment he found himself in love I with the girl his room-mate had j Picked. He could renounce, but he could not stay and day by day face his renunciation. Milly's lips moved. Constance with-: drew her wandering, unseeing gaze from the field. The two girls talked ' The picture passed Peyton had i liv,d through the longest five minutes 1 of his life. Peyton threw himself into the game I with a fierce Intensity. At first there were moments when he lost himself so completely that he thought himself him-self fighting with the Harvard eleven. Starrow would wake him with a "Say, cut it out, will you: you re pushing me Into the aisle ' But, after ,a while, Constance's face kept coming between him and the struggling heap en the gridiron. His yearning for an ! other glimpse of her began to absorb ;hls interest in the game. He spent : the last minutes of the first half I thrashing impatiently in his scat- He groaned with impatience when j he saw that the blograph, instead of I turning bac' od the spectators be-; be-; fween halves, still trained itself on the gridiron It wa3 Just a flashing picture of the Yale eleven trotting wearily to its quarters, circled and surrounded by trainers, coaches, rub- i bers, and tho privileged spectators of the side lines Would it never go back to the stands? Ah. there they were scattering glimpses of the spectators, at first only quivering, waving throngs in ! which he could not recognize a face. ' Once the band must have broken inroj he "Marseillaise"; for, sudrienlv. the. whole Harvard section arose, lifting their hat6 three times and in perfect unison Mechanically, true to an old training-, Peyton started to rise too i But again. Starrow held him down. Finally, when he thought he could Stand the BUBPense no loneer ram. the section-pictures; the group he I longed to iee In the midst of a storm-center of howling Harvard en thulasts, Constance sat. still lancuid. still distrait fn another second Peyton Pey-ton was sorry that his wish had' been granted For Lawrence, taking advantage ad-vantage of the preoccupation of the rest of the party, was devoting hlm-eW hlm-eW to her. A jealousy, as hot as flame, excoriated Peyton as he noted the little intimacies of his attitude I Lawrence questioned and explained He leaned over her to adjust wraps , obviously in no need of adjustment. Though his suffering grew Intense Peyton could not take bis eves away i Once it came over him how strange it was,- The tragedy of his life was' being played there before a theatorfu! of holiday riffraff, and no one suspected sus-pected it No one about him had an eve for his little group. Not a man about him but was watching the shrieking, jumping, cheering, flag wav- log crowd that surged about the iov , ers. Followed more pictures of the Harvard Har-vard sections; followed many of the Yale sections, but Peyton did not see them He did not even look at them. The second half was close Peyton summoned all the mental strength that was in him to concentrate on the game. And at first he thought that he was going to be successful, that his mind had adjusted itself to the situation. But, after a brief Interval, his longing, his impatience began to grind in him again. He churned restlessly rest-lessly in his chair. He studied the audience about him. It must have been somewhere along here that he failed to see that long run on a for- i ward pass the sensational play of the season by which the game was won. At the end It was a relief to cheer with the handful of Harvard men who sprang up from different parts of the auditorium and. following the motions of the yell-leader in the biograph, shouted themselves hoarse. But. in a moment, his heart was thumping in a very madness of yearning, pointed by the anguish of uncertainty. Biting his lips, he watched the long line of undergraduates un-dergraduates zigzagging over the field , in the wake of the band. When, at last, the biograph began to show section sec-tion views of the dispersing audience, he gripped the orchestra-rail hard. If it came it would be his last view of her until until when? he wondered. won-dered. Until, best man at their wedding, wed-ding, he would watch her drive off with Lawrence. He clenched his hands. Again the picture' Unmindful of the others, his burning eyes riveted themselves on Constance. The group had risen, waiting for the crowd to thin. Mllly was talking. In the midst of her narrative, she handed to Constance Con-stance the package that contained Peyton's picture. Without stopping, sho swept the two men on In her talk J Constance pulled the picture out of A Its wrappings. Peyton watched her. And he paw in a brief moment h aaw a grcnt deal He saw the P'O-nounced P'O-nounced start that shook her at the sight of it. He saw the quick, furtive glance she gave at her unnotlcing (Companions. He saw her turn he. back to them and. like one famished, look at it again, holding it In her unconsciousness, unnecessarily closs to her face. He saw her start to put it back into the paper, but. changing ; her mind, look at it again, a long, close gaze. He saw her turn ft over as if she expected some writing. And he saw but now more with the eyes :f of the soul than of the bodv the emotion that seemed to vitalize her whole figure, to shine through her 1 wistful face, to make light in her somber eyes. ' Siy, what's your rush?" StarreW remonstrated as Peyton made a flying leap into an open space which offered a swifter egress. "Oh. I say, excuse me, Starrow, Peyton exclaimed. "I've got to get to a long-distance telephone." And then. j n utter forgetful ness of a statcmen. j he had prevlrusly made, "I want to thank somebody for a Christmas gift i I've Just received." J Copyright, The frank A. Munsey Co.), 1 |