IX.
Eleanor, passing the week-end with her New Haven cousins, crept stealthily downstairs at a piously early hour on Sunday morning—considering that it had taken her all night to go to sleep—to get the newspapers on the veranda. On the first page the figure of the young sage of Olympus stood out in a conventional border of great simplicity and effectiveness—it was laurel. Eleanor gathered her kimono about her, and dashed up to her bedroom to gloat in comfort.
There was little doubt in her mind that any intelligent man who read the Sunday papers would know Blanding's name, and what he had done. He had three-inch scareheads on the front page, and a biographical sketch on the second. An analysis of his system of coaching spilled over among the editorials; and the make-up man had been compelled to omit half the household department in order to include Hector's own story. And then there was a column by a Harvard expert to explain why Blanding's theory had been perfect; and six or seven columns by Yale experts to show how that theory could easily have been exploded if it could have been anticipated. Finally, in a casual paragraph tucked away among the sporting oddities of the day, was this statement: "In his spare moments, Coach Blanding also writes."
Eleanor hugged her knees, shivering, sighed luxuriously, and devoured every word. The rest of the family had to sound the tattoo on her door to obtain so much as the advertising sections.
It was late in the afternoon before he came to her. The distant cousin, who was a married reader of English romances, obligingly overstated a headache, and declined to appear, although she didn't hesitate to peer over the banisters while Hector was hanging up his hat.
"Well," said the smiling young man, "it wasn't so bad, after all, was it?"
"Bad! Oh, Hector! It was wonderful! My heart never went home until midnight! And when I remembered that once you were down there, playing like that—and I never saw you—I was so mad I just blubbered!"
"But we lost all four years I played."
"I wouldn't have cared—if I could only have seen you!"
"Not a lot to see," said Hector modestly.
"Have you read the papers?"
"I surely have."
"I'm proud of you, Hector! The only thing that bothers me is how you did it!"
"It's sort of curious," said Hector reminiscently. "I shouldn't wonder if it's the only time archæology ever won a football game. You see, sometimes a college education pays!"
"I don't see."
"Well, when I went up to Cambridge, there wasn't the ghost of a chance. The men were playing the old-fashioned game—they couldn't learn the new one. So I just naturally picked fellows with the right build and the right disposition, and taught them all I knew."
"But Mr.—Prince, isn't it?—he hadn't taught them."
"Tell me—when you were little, didn't you ever pretend you were somebody else—somebody you admired tremendously—and try very hard to do something just as that person did it? Copy-cat?"
"Why, yes, I did. If this is what you mean—I thought I told you once—I learned to swim that way."
"You didn't tell me. Tell me now."
Eleanor laughed excitedly.
"You remember Ethel Scott? Well, when I was twelve, and she was about eighteen, I thought she was the grandest girl in the world. I copied the way she walked and the way she did her hair —only mother caught me at it—and—and everything. And one day out at the lake she was swimming—she swam very well, you know—and she called me a baby because I couldn't. So I just pretended to myself that I was a big, beautiful girl, too, and I could ride and swim and talk just like Ethel Scott. And I tried to swim. Well, when I was trying to act like Ethel, she came ever so kindly, and showed me what to do, and I did it! I was too proud not to do it. And I was perfectly confident of myself because I wasn't me—I was Ethel, and Ethel could swim. Then I swam."
"That's it," said Hector. "Yesterday there were three sensitive boys on the field pretending in a very big, strong way that they were all Hector Blanding. You'll recollect what I told you about archæology—how it taught me to put myself in the place of the people I'm studying. I did it with those boys. I found out exactly what would influence them most, and got to work on their imaginations. Then we reversed it. They got to thinking they could do any old thing I could—and they did."
"But that isn't archæology—that's just wonderful, wonderful teaching!"
"Call it what you like," said Hector generously. "The point is that the score was ten to nothing. And—of course this isn't definite yet, but it's pretty certain—there seems to be a general impression that I'd better be head coach next year."
"Hector!"
"And I'd have to be in Cambridge from spring practice in April until after the game in November, so"
"Yes?"
"So I want you to marry me before Christmas. Will you, dear?"
Her eyes were filled with tears, and they were not altogether tears of happiness.
"Oh, Hector," she said miserably. "Your book!"
"I'd thought of that—but the book can wait. The world isn't exactly moaning for it, you know. And isn't it more important, anyway, to teach live men than to write about dead ones? Isn't it?"
"But—what would your father say?"
Hector got up and walked about the room. He took a vase from the table, examined it carefully, and set it down again. When he faced her, he was very grave, but the corners of his lips moved suspiciously.
"All dad wanted," he said, "was for me to be famous—or at least well known—in some line outside the underwear business. Don't you think I may be in time?"
"But this is different!"
"And, furthermore, you promised to marry me as soon as I seemed reasonably certain of success. Isn't ten to nothing—at New Haven, mind you—pretty reasonable?"
"If I could only think so!"
"But," he pleaded, "I'll write that long-winded book some time out of respect to father—you know I will. Don't you think I'm entitled to a little vacation out of respect to my wife? Besides, there's a smaller book I really must write first."
"But, Hector"
The young man, suddenly remembering that his favorite character in fiction was a hero who understood women, calmly gathered her into his arms and kissed her. His assumption of the character was dazzlingly successful.
"Oh!" she whispered. "I didn't know—I could want you so much! If it only weren't for your father—and I did so want you to be famous—with a book!"
The man from Olympus laughed.
"Why, my dear," he told her, between kisses, "I'll be famous inside of six months! It's a positive cinch! I've just promised to edit the next football guide!"