Diemann saw Ashley spring up, slap the grimy moleskins of the men
nearest him, and get back into position to kick. Stanford was standing
on her own goal line. He saw the ball snapped back; the fullback kicked
it, in time; then, instead of the long, curving drive that was to save
the day, he saw the ball rise almost straight in the air above the
teams, and he groaned aloud as the Berkeley men broke through, and
people with delirious laughter waved the blue and gold frantically about
him.
The ball comes down among the struggling players. Suddenly, out of that
jumble of men darts a red-sleeved figure, dashing through the scattered
field, bounding like a stag toward the Berkeley goal.
The expert eye of the associate coach tells him that, by a marvellous
piece of football instinct, Ashley has found his way through the
confused teams, realizing that he is the only Stanford man on side, and
has caught the ball on the fly and got clear with it. Though they
understand nothing of this, the vast crowd goes shrieking to its feet.
The bewildered teams turn and follow close upon the flying figure, the
speedy Berkeley right-half leading them. Back in the field stands the U.
C. fullback, grimly waiting. The two collide, and the chasing halfback
gains; but the Berkeley back drops to the tackle a fraction of an
instant too late and runs fair against a straight-arm. Tom Ashley, with
the ball clutched tight against his breast, his set face gleaming white
in the half-light, sprints down the long barred space toward victory,
keeping the distance between himself and the straining pack, running as
only one man has ever run for Stanford.
And Diemann, tearing along the side-line, knows that Ashley himself
never could have done it.
The fullback falls across the line, the ball gripped in his convulsive
hold, just as the linesman's whistle blows. Diemann is there almost as
soon. He keeps back the frenzied men crowding about them, and bends over
the unconscious player, calling him "Fred" irrationally, while the place
catches fire with the cardinal and Stanford goes mad on the field.
* * * * *
Ashley came to consciousness at the hotel. Diemann sat beside him, and
Lyman and Dr. Forest stood by the window. The substitute fullback sat
up.
"I felt faint just then," he said. "I couldn't help it; you know about
it, Diemann." He looked at the other men.
"Did they get it over?" he asked.
Lyman ran across the room.
"Tom, old man," he said, choking, "you won it for us, and you'll never
be forgotten, you and your run!"
The fullback looked at him blankly.
"My run?" he faltered.
Diemann came between them.
"Better lie down and rest a bit, my boy; you can talk later."
Then, turning to the others:
"You see," he whispered, "he's wandering a little yet."
TWO PIONEERS AND AN AUDIENCE.
Two Pioneers and an Audience.
"The Mother sits beside the bay,
The bay goes down to wed the sea,
And gone ye are, on every tide
Wherever men and waters be!"
On the Sunday night following the Game the smoking-room at the Rho house
held the greater part of the Chapter. As a rule, there were not so many
loafing there Sunday nights; that time was generally given either to
sentiment in other places, or to digging out Monday's work upstairs,
while the fire burned for the two or three who seemed never to have any
work more important than magazine reading or solitaire. To-night,
however, nearly every one was gathered there, for two "old men" were
visiting.
These old men had been out of college for two whole years. One of them
was Ralph Shirlock. If you were at college in his days you knew him by
sight, at least, though you were the mossiest dig that ever kept bright
till morning the attic window of a prof's house on the Row. If you have
come up to College since then, and are sufficiently posted to know that
there have been other annuals before this one just issued by your
friends the Juniors, you have found his picture or his name on every
other page of the earlier editions. Harry Rice, who came with him, was
not half so well known, save to the Faculty and the circle of the
chapter. He was doing very well in business, people said, better than
Shirlock, probably. Rice was a keen fellow, the new men could see that
at a glance; but they did not put an arm about him instinctively in the
after-dinner stroll, as they did about Shirlock.
The two alumni had spent Sunday calling upon the Faculty in Palo Alto
and the Row, and in post-mortems with some of the football men in
Encina. After dinner, the fellows sat out on the porch, strumming
mandolins and singing. Shirlock had been a star on the Glee Club two
years before, and he sang again the songs the college hummed after him
in those days, while the upper-classmen looked at the Freshmen with a
"now-you-see-what-you've-joined" expression, or nudged each other
reminiscently, until the live-oaks in the pasture almost blended with
the long shadows under them, and hoarse-throated frogs were tuning up in
the irrigating ditches. Then they formed four abreast and went down for
the mail, humming a march song and lifting their hats in concert to
Professor Stillwell and his wife, smiling from their porch. At the
post-office the lines broke and the entire body, except the alumni,
struggled into the over-crowded room ("the daily press" Pellams called
it). This was hardly necessary, since one man could have opened the
fraternity box and distributed the letters; but this is a distinct charm
of Sunday evening at the post-office. Moreover, you never know who may
be standing inside, and if you have forgotten to arrange things ahead it
is sometimes well to be first.
The pleasant uncertainty of the evening mail being over, the fellows
mixed a while with the sundry groups about the low red building, then
joined forces again, and marched once around the Quad, arm in arm, a
line of sixteen, while Bob Duncan, who had been prepped at a military
school, shouted, "Change step, march," and "Left wheel, march," then
home together, all but two or three, who were called the "Incurables,"
and who had plunged back into the shadow of the Quad for Chapel,
perhaps, or some other form of Sabbath evening devotion. This breach of
hospitality the alumni forgave, made indulgent by a sweet sympathy.
Alas for you, old worshippers at empty shrines! Those divine presences
are gone, new and unknown deities queen it in the ancient temples. Go
back to the hearth where some still know you and talk to the few who
gather around you there, of the old days when you, too, placed your
offering at celestial feet. These men of a new generation, sitting in
places that once were yours, will listen indulgently to your stories of
the past, and hear with patience the odious comparisons you inevitably
make; they will thank you for the advice you give them, and say
something pleasant about your college spirit; then in the morning when
you have taken the early train back to the World, they will go down to
the Quad with their books under their arms and something in their minds
that is anything but your talk of the evening before; the College life
will go on very much as if you had not been back, O wise fossils, and
there will be new graduates going out to learn your lessons and new
undergraduates who will pay no attention to them in turn. So be thankful
for this brief hour before the fire, with its chat as light as the
tobacco smoke floating over "old" man and Freshman lounging together, be
glad of the fellowship that welcomes you, and be content.
Each couch in the smoking-room had its load of sprawling figures. The
lights were out by this time and the Incurables had come back to the
house and ferreted places for themselves among the tangled golf suits
and 'Varsity sweaters. Duncan had a lamp on the table where he was
"bossing a rabbit"; Pellams said this was the only kind of lab-work in
zoology in which Bob could get credit. A pile of plates warmed before
the fire where Smith was toasting crackers at the end of a sharpened
stick. At the piano, Pellams was softly playing "barber shop" chords. It
was all very lazy and comfortable. The alumni grew reminiscent.
"This noon while we were walking up from Palo Alto," said Shirlock,
"Mrs. Stanford passed us in her carriage, coming from Chapel, I suppose.
I asked Harry if he remembered how they used to drive about the place
inspecting things, when the Senator was alive."
"Of course I do," spoke up Rice, "it seems odd that there are so few in
college now who remember them together. To you fellows, I suppose, Mrs.
Stanford is the source of the University. To us who saw them stand
together on the platform that day in October, '91, it is the two
always."
"Harry, do you remember our serenade at the residence, after they
returned from Washington the first time?"
"No," answered Rice, "I remember, but I wasn't there. We played a game
somewhere that day and I stayed over and missed the fun."
"Tell us about it, Ralph," said Duncan, as he emptied the cubes of
cheese into the chafing-dish.
"Well, you see," said Shirlock, unbraiding himself from two affectionate
under-classmen on the couch and sitting up in the light, "the story
really begins with the first football game, which came off in the spring
of '92, and was ours, as every Freshman can tell you, even though he
doesn't know just what is meant by 'Pioneers.' The day of the game,
Whittemore, the captain, got a telegram from Washington wishing us luck
in our first encounter, and that afternoon we sent back answer in much
the same style that Caesar used on one occasion--I suppose the little man
to my left here can give me the Latin words?" he added, rumpling the
hair of a horizontal Freshman.
"Not long afterward the Senator and Mrs. Stanford came back from the
East and someone over in the Hall proposed that we give them a welcome
home. We could get a bigger demonstration there in those days than you
can now, I'll bet; you know everybody who was anybody at all lived in
Encina then; that was the center of the College life, politics began and
grew up there, and it was over there in the old lobby that we started
the Stanford spirit. Things were great, that first year. It's all right
enough here by our own fireside, with our own little gang, but I tell
you honestly if things could have lasted as they were that first year, I
wouldn't have wanted to come over here. We were all together, right in
line for everything, wise or foolish."
"It was the student body then, all right," put in Rice, "and we had the
Faculty with us too whether we were around the gridiron, where they
first had it, east of the cinder path, you know, learning the yell and
incidentally getting the team into condition for that 14-10, or whether
we were crawling by our lonelies through the fence over in the
vineyard."
"The days of grapes,
The days of scrapes,"
sang Pellams from the piano.
"Were there any profs on that flat-car?" interrupted Duncan. He had come
into College while a memory of that pioneer adventure yet lingered.
"It's unkind to remind us of that affair! No, I don't think there were.
The Faculty had their fun later, and we put mourning wreaths on several
chairs in the dining-room."
"And you came mighty near getting a bouquet of the same kind, yourself,"
said Rice.
"What was it about the flat-car?" inquired a voice from the pillows.
"Oh," said Rice, "that was about the first of those senseless
ebullitions of youth that the Shirlock person usually identified himself
with. There was a flat-car standing outside Encina on the track there,
just about where it turns and slopes down crosslots to the main track.
This is just what Ralph and his precious gang wanted, of course; they
thought it would be a bit of innocent, boyish play to have a little free
railroading, so they piled on and turned her loose and slid down to
Mayfield. They barely stopped the car before she switched into the main
line, and they all fell off into the gopher holes along the side and
made for Mayfield, red-eyed. The Faculty raised Ned when they heard
about it, which was proper."
"I hope the Freshmen will pay particular attention to Mr. Rice," said
Shirlock. "He is a noble influence to any sweet, unfolding soul. I feel
that I should have escaped a great deal of enjoyable sin had I only
known him better those first few weeks."
Ralph got up for some cigarette tobacco from the skull on the
mantelpiece.
"Well, the Faculty were with us in about everything," he went on,
rolling a cigarette; "many of them lived in the Hall then."
"Yes, a number did," put in Rice. "Do you remember, Ralph, the night
that Professor Torts had his little beer-and-skittles party in his
lair, and Burns, who roomed across the passage and who was the worst
bummer in Encina, went down to Fessler, and complained that he couldn't
study because of the noise in that number? And Fessler forgot who roomed
there and came up and gave them Tartarus through the keyhole and nearly
dropped when Torts opened the door?"
"We all enjoyed that," answered Shirlock. "Why, the profs used to come
to our feeds and jolly up with the crowd. Often they were the best fun
there. It's different now."
"Oh, I don't know," said Duncan, "they come over off and on, now. Doc
Jordan was here last Sunday to dinner, and Diemann drops in sometimes;
last year he came a lot."
"Oh, they come over all right," sighed Pellams from the piano. "I had a
report to make one day. I didn't have it done, and I bribed Ted to go
down and tell Engbee I was sick in bed. I was playing cards in here when
Sniffles rushed in and told me the old boy was coming up the street. I
smelt danger and tumbled into bed like a six-day bicyclist, and fixed my
face up with some grease paint and magnesia. Sure enough, he came in,
darkly suspicious, thought he had me all right, but he found a wreck
that melted him. His wife sent me a bunch of violets next morning. For
my part I don't like the Faculty for intimate friends," and Pellams
played "Comrades" with the soft pedal down.
"It's not the same thing, though, really," persisted Shirlock. "They may
come over here to dinner or perhaps to a smoker, but it's always
Professor So-and-So; his chair is a little higher than any of yours, and
he never forgets the family waiting for him in the Row; in those first
days the family was in most cases beyond the Rockies, or as yet a dream,
and it wasn't always easy to pick out the professor from the jumble of
story-tellers on the bed.
"Of course, it was all too good to last," the alumnus went on
thoughtfully, "and it wasn't natural it should. We weren't so many then.
When the number increased, I suppose the relations had to change and the
different cliques must separate. I'll admit that there is more in the
life now, it's more complex, there are more institutions and more ways
of having joy; but those were good old days, those first days in Encina
when the crowd was one.
"I can see them now, can't you, Harry? out on the veranda and the steps
of the Hall after dinner, with the fellows playing ball on the lawn, and
other men sitting up on their window-ledges. The night I started to tell
you about, when we went to serenade Mr. and Mrs. Stanford, we got the
mandolin fellows, the beginning of your present club, and fell in
behind them and started off down the road, past the mausoleum and
through the vineyard--never broke ranks there, either, we were on our
good behavior, besides, it was Spring--and so on over to the house,
where we drew up, and the mandolins played their piece, then we gave the
yell--it was only a few months old, that yell, but it had been loud
enough to knock out a twenty-five-year-old one we met up in town not
long before, and we were proud of it.
"During the pause that followed, the front door opened and the Senator
stepped out on the porch; a lamp shone on his gray head and on us
fellows in a big black crowd on the gravel below, looking up at him and
cheering. When we stopped he said, very much as though a friend had
driven up, "Gentlemen, will you come in?" and the whole two hundred of
us piled over the piazza, getting a grasp of his hand as we came into
the hall, and a word from Mrs. Stanford, who stood beside him. They took
us into the library; we formed a hollow square, two rows deep on the
sides, and the Founders came into the square and talked to us. I
remember that Mrs. Stanford said, 'We were very glad, young gentlemen,
to hear of your success in baseball,' and what a chill it gave us, just
convalescing from the football fever; but we forgave the mistake when
she asked, a minute later, 'Which is Mr. Clemans?' That blushing hero
with the other ten we forced into the center to be congratulated, and we
sang the new song, 'Rush the Ball Along,' until the bric-a-brac
trembled.
"When we were quiet again, the Senator talked to us informally, as
though we were in reality his children as he had said we were to be. It
was an earnest talk, about his ideals of what the University was yet to
be, and his hope for their fulfillment; of economy and judicious living;
and of endeavor to be of use to the world. It was a privilege to stand
there listening. He appealed to each one of us individually. We could
not know then how few more such opportunities we were to have. When he
had finished, the dining-room doors slid back--it was a put-up job, that
serenade--and it was Mrs. Stanford's turn. After the supper, we gathered
for a little personal talk with both of them, then we had some more
mandolin music, and Baker sang 'Suwanee River' to Capron's
accompaniment.
"That evening brought the Founders pretty close to the crowd. It was a
good thing to have happen, it began things right. Then, you know, he
died suddenly, in vacation. I was in Yosemite. When term opened, it was
hard to get used to seeing her driving around the campus alone. I don't
think any of the people who came after those early days can ever be so
loyal to the Founders, to the person of one and the memory of the other,
as we are. I'm sure none of us who went over serenading that night will
ever forget it. It's one of the Pioneer memories."
Both graduates were looking into the fire. Freshman Haviland snored
softly in the window seat. The eyes of the rest of the chapter were
fastened on the chafing-dish. Shirlock's story had seemed pretty long
and the rarebit sent out a tantalizing odor.
Duncan called out, "Supper's ready, children," and the heated plates
came clattering up from the hearth, bringing the visitors back from the
far echoes of their own beginnings to the noisy unconcern of a Freshman
year that knew a kind, white-bearded face from pictures only, and never
could understand.
FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT.
For the Sake of Argument.
"For we are frank and twenty
And the spring is in the air!"
HOVEY.
"Well!" said Miss Meiggs, spreading across her lap one of the Beta Rhos'
new monogrammed napkins, "I must say _your_ being here is a surprise."
Pellams answered in vague interrogation, not a little surprised,
himself, to be caught at a "girl-supper." Now that he was cornered, it
would be uselessly impolite to tell her how the Chapter had reasoned and
pleaded with him until at the last minute "Cap" Smith ruined his clever
escape by catching him midway down a porch pillar. Smith, sitting on the
other side of Katharine Graham and wearing the smile of satisfied
revenge, would doubtless enjoy telling it. There was so much of genial
malevolence in that smile that Pellams, the woman-hater, who knew only
enough of the co-eds to avoid them, wondered what sort of a girl he had
been placed next to at supper. He had an intuitive idea that she had
been given him by general consent. An experienced society man would have
scented this at once in the company of Mrs. Perkins, for when there is
a choice of tables, chapter-mothers are apt to sit where there is the
least sentiment; but this was the Junior's debut, practically, and he
was conscious of little more than that the fellows had it "in" for him,
and that this girl had begun the conversation by a personal remark.
"I judged," the girl was saying, not having waited for any explanation,
"that in the milder forms of social entertainment you were somewhat out
of your element."
Pellams had missed his guess. On sitting down to their small table, he
had decided that the conversation would naturally split into two
divisions of three rather than into three couples, for Mrs. Perkins,
Professor Grind and this Meiggs girl would enjoy themselves together,
leaving him to share Smith's talk with Miss Graham, whose eyes had
somehow an engaging twinkle. The idea was rudely dispelled by Miss
Meiggs's immediate and decidedly personal attack. At least, he would
have preferred to talk about other people, but he faced the music.
"Oh, I disapprove of them only for myself," he replied, "not for
others."
"And why for yourself, particularly?"
The face of the Glee Club's comedian had assumed just the right
seriousness.
"Because I'm more than susceptible and I don't want to run risks."
"Your time has come at last, then," put in his captor, Smith, with a
gallant look at Miss Meiggs.
"Not at all," retorted Pellams, whose combative sense was less rusty
than his skill in compliment. "If I'd been afraid of one exposure like
this, do you think I'd have suggested being on deck to-night?"
Smith, with a fresh memory of their struggle, laughed at this blocking
move. Katharine Graham, although she did not laugh, enjoyed Pellams's
unconscious "like this." She was a Theta Gamma with Miss Meiggs, and of
late there had been a little rift in their sisterly love.
The older girl was not disconcerted. She had her estimate of Pellams
Chase, and he was not disproving it. There were certain things she had
long wanted the chance to say to him.
"I admire your self-restraint under temptation," she said; "it is
characteristic of you in other circumstances, I believe"--this with
discreet emphasis--"but, really, why should you dread letting _this_
susceptibility get the better of you?"
Pellams caught the faint sneer in the words. He hoped that Mrs. Perkins
had been talking just then to her Faculty partner. Increasing his
affected earnestness, he replied:
"Because, when you get gone, it is bound to knock scholarship."
Here Smith giggled audibly, for Katharine and he were really feigning
talk, being more entertained by the couple across the cloth. Katharine
knew that by this last statement Pellams had sounded a dominant note in
the soul of her opinionated sister. She was not surprised, then, when
Miss Meiggs turned more fully toward the woman-hater.
"Tell me, are you one of these people who think co-education an evil?"
"I'm afraid I am." The speech gave Pellams a certain pleasure. There was
nothing about this partner they had given him that tended toward
converting him to the Chapter's point of view as to the advantage of
girls at college.
"Of course," continued she, "I do not take your remark about scholarship
as worthy of consideration in your case, because I am in one or two of
your classes, when you attend them," and Pellams, listening, gave thanks
that he and Professor Grind opposite had no such relation; "but
monopolized time is really the cry of a good many who would wish to
work, and it is all wrong. There is no reason why we should not come
here and work with you, combining friendship and study. Our presence
here is, in a way, preventive of many worse things."
Pellams turned his empty salad plate between his fingers.
"Well," he drawled, "I'm not sure I know what you mean by the worse
things, and I've never been to another college, except Berkeley but I
can't believe as much time is spent on them as some people here give to
girls," this with a dreamy look over Smith's head; "the cigarette heart
can't be much worse than what takes men out of college here, and if you
refer to beer----"
"I _do_ refer to beer," said Miss Meiggs, in an iced voice.
"Oh, no!" expostulated the Junior, spreading his hands, "they couldn't
do it!" He looked at her frankly. "You get a head after too much beer,"
he went on, reckless as to pronouns and listening professors, "and you
stay sober and work, for awhile, any way. In co-education you don't get
any such call-down until the Committee meets."
"Don't let him tease you, Miss Meiggs," put in Mrs. Perkins, frowning
mildly at Pellams because of Professor Grind's sphinx-like smile; "he's
making it all up out of his inner consciousness, like the German
philosopher and the--elephant, wasn't it, Professor Grind?"
"Yes?" answered Miss Meiggs, with a world of irony packed into the
syllable; "your inner consciousness, then, Mr. Chase, proves rather
forcibly that in one case the influence is against refinement, while in
the case of co-education it is all for it. You will grant that, I
think?"