HERO WORSHIP
During his college course David made a number of visits to his old
school. He was interested in observing Ralph’s progress and hearing
his experiences and in reviving his own memories, but he enjoyed the
visits most for the opportunity they gave him to be again with Ruth
Davenport. He learned from Ralph that several of the unmarried masters
were attentive to her, and the information roused his jealousy and
resentment. Her dealings with two or three of those creatures in his
presence as she gave them tea filled him with gloom; he feared she had
learned to flirt. But afterwards, when she treated him with a special
consideration and interest, he knew that she really was not a flirt at
all, but just what she had always been, a kind, sweet-tempered, honest
girl. It did not excite his jealousy to have her ask him about Lester,
not even when she said that she thought Lester was the most attractive
person who had ever passed through the school. David knew that she had
always thought that, and, as it was true and Lester was his friend, it
was right that she should think it.
“Why doesn’t he come up to see us oftener, David?” she asked. “He’s too
busy with his new friends, I suppose.”
No, it wasn’t that, David was sure; but of course Lester was very busy,
with athletics and college organizations and――and――
“Studies, too,” said Ruth. “Poor Lester! But you must tell him, David,
that if he will only come up and see us I will promise not to lecture
him the way I used to do. How angry I once made him! Do you still help
him with his lessons?”
David assured her that he did not and that Lester was getting on very
well. When he returned to Cambridge from that visit, he told Lester of
Ruth’s interest and of the way some of the masters like young Blatch
and the middle-aged Manners seemed to be pursuing her. Lester scowled
and said that she was too good for any masters at St. Timothy’s.
“She’s grown prettier,” said David.
“It’s too bad a girl like that should be stuck up there in the country
by herself――no society but that of kids and school-teachers. I guess
I’ll have to go and see her some Sunday.”
The popular youth performed this missionary act more than once.
He returned with impressions of the old school that were vaguely
displeasing to David. The rector and the masters were “narrow” and
“provincial,” and the boys were an uncouth lot of young ruffians. As
for Ruth, however, she met the requirements even of Lester’s exacting
taste. There wasn’t a better-looking or better-dressed girl in Boston,
and he supposed she didn’t spend a tenth of what most of the Boston
girls spent on clothes. Really it would be a shame if young Blatch or
that pompous fool, Manners, should be successful in his grossly obvious
maneuvers and imprison her for life in that dull little community. A
girl with her looks and social gifts was qualified to take a prominent
place anywhere. Some old St. Timothy’s boy ought to rescue her from the
dismal fate that threatened.
“Of course she’s not very old yet,” David suggested.
Lester could not see anything reassuring in that fact. Just because
she was so young and inexperienced, had seen so little of the world
outside, she was all the more in danger of becoming the prey of a
greenhorn like Blatch or a fossil like Manners.
Convincing as was Lester’s eloquence upon the subject, the emotion that
inspired it seemed transitory; his visits to St. Timothy’s continued to
be infrequent, and as time passed without Ruth’s making the sacrifice
that he dreaded, his agitation on that score subsided. Moreover, he
had, as he often said, other things to think about than girls. The
senior year found him with popularity undiminished, yet disappointed
because an honor on which for two years he had counted had been denied
him. Although he was regarded as the most brilliant player on the
varsity football team, he had not been elected captain. He talked about
it freely with David, who felt that the prize should have been awarded
to him.
“They think I’m not steady enough to be captain,” said Lester. “I’m not
saying Farrar isn’t a better man for the job, but I don’t see why they
think I’m unsteady. I’ve never yet in any big game lost my head or my
nerve.”
“It isn’t that they think you’re unsteady,” David explained, “but
that they have an idea you’re too temperamental; it’s a part of being
brilliant. They think that, if you had the responsibility of being
captain, your own playing would suffer. In my opinion they’re wrong,
but it isn’t anything against you that there is that feeling.”
“Oh, it’s all right; I don’t want you to think I’m kicking. And it may
very well be that I wouldn’t show at my best under responsibility,
though I hate to think so.”
David himself was captain of his class eleven; he was not regarded as
too temperamental. Nearly every day after he had put his team through
their drill he would watch the last few minutes of the varsity eleven’s
practice; he would follow Lester’s work with special interest. Lester
was a picturesque player; he scorned the protection of a head guard,
and his fair hair shone even in the feeble November light and made him
recognizable for spectators who could not identify helmeted players. He
was the fleetest of all the backs; there was no one who was his peer
for running in a broken field; again and again during the practice
games the bleachers resounded with applause for the bareheaded figure,
the personification of indomitable energy and ingenious skill, who wove
and forced his way for twenty or thirty yards through furious attacking
foes. To the uncritical observer his achievements always seemed more
single-handed than they were; possibly in choosing to do without the
conventional headgear, and thus render himself more conspicuous, he
was aware that he must produce that effect. He often talked rather
patronizingly about people who had no sense of dramatic values.
David, in his brief daily glimpses of his friend’s showy performances,
felt occasional stings of envy through his thrills of admiration. What
a splendid thing to achieve, what an exploit forever after to look back
upon――making the varsity team! Since his first day as a freshman he
had hoped that some time he might accomplish it, and now here he was a
senior and not even a substitute――not even a substitute on the second
eleven!
It hurt him to find that Lester was reckoning his success in athletics
as a business asset on which to realize later.
“You’ve given up all idea of studying medicine?” David asked.
“Yes. I’m tired of study and examinations. I want to get to work and
make a pile of money. I feel I can do it, too, and I don’t feel I could
ever do it being a doctor. Besides, as I said, a varsity football
record that’s really good will give a man a great start in business,
and I might as well take advantage of it. A fellow with such a record
can begin in Boston or New York, and everybody on State Street or Wall
Street knows about him and is glad to see him. It would be foolish not
to make the most of an opportunity.”
David recognized the force of the argument and at the same time felt
that there was something distasteful in Lester’s readiness to lay hold
of it. He wondered why it was distasteful, and could not answer, except
that perhaps it represented a too egotistical and self-centered point
of view, one that was concerned with Lester’s future fortunes rather
than with the success of the team.
David’s own football performance was after all successful enough to
satisfy his modest soul. His team won the class championship, defeating
first the juniors and then the freshmen; David’s part in the victories
was conspicuous. He played at left end and was the strongest player
both in attack and in defense; when the deciding game had been won his
team mates bore him from the field in triumph, and the senior class,
assembling in front of the locker building, made his name the climax of
their cheers. That was gratifying enough to David; perhaps it brought
as much pleasure to the blind man and the girl who lingered beyond
the edge of the crowd. David had caught a glimpse of them among the
spectators when he had chased a ball that was kicked out of bounds;
he had felt at the moment a fresh flow of affection for Mr. Dean, a
sudden warm sense of Katharine Vance’s charm. He carried the ball out
and threw himself with new enthusiasm into the next play. The interest
that had caused those two to come and see this game――it must be well
repaid!
After he had dressed he hurried home――not to his college room, but to
his mother’s house. He found Katharine and Mr. Dean recounting his
achievements to a proud woman whose hands trembled so that she could
hardly make tea.
“David,” she said, “I couldn’t come and see you play; I’m always so
frightened for fear you’ll get hurt. They tell me you did splendidly.”
“The team did,” said David. “Weren’t you people nice to come down!”
“Katharine is an excellent interpreter,” remarked Mr. Dean. “I never
had a better pair of eyes. As for my ears, they were quite gratified by
what they heard at the end. It was a pity, Mrs. Ives, that you missed
that feature of the occasion.”
“Yes,” said David, pleased and embarrassed. “Wasn’t it silly of the
crowd?”
“If it was, then Mr. Dean and I were silly, too,” said Katharine. “We
hoped you heard us, we came out so strong on ‘I-i-i-ives!’ at the end.
I think that Mrs. Ives ought to know just how it sounded, don’t you,
Mr. Dean?”
“Quit it!” cried David; but Mr. Dean chuckled and said:
“Quite right, Katharine; you lead the cheering, and I’ll come in.”
“One, two, three,” said Katharine; and she and Mr. Dean, standing in
the middle of the room, shouted:
“Rah, rah, rah; rah, rah, rah; rah, rah, rah; I-i-ives!”
While the echoes died, remote sounds betrayed Maggie’s efforts to
suppress her mirth.
“Dear me, I do wish I’d been there!” said Mrs. Ives. “It makes me more
proud of you than ever, David.”
“Katharine’s a tease,” replied David. “But I shouldn’t have thought it
of Mr. Dean.”
After Katharine had gone, Mr. Dean asked David to describe the whole
game to him. “Of course,” said the blind man, “Katharine helped me
to follow it, but she didn’t know the players, and so we missed some
things. That first touchdown, just how was it made?”
So David described the game in detail and afterwards asked Mr. Dean
whether it had been on his initiative or on Katharine’s that he had
gone.
“Oh, Katharine suggested it. I shouldn’t have imposed myself on her.
But she came over here for me and fairly dragged me out of the house;
said she knew I wanted to go to David’s game. She’s a nice girl, David.”
“She’s about as good as they come.”
“Was she looking especially pretty to-day, David?”
“Why, I don’t know. Perhaps. What do you say, mother?”
“Yes, I think she was. She had on her new winter hat, and it was very
becoming.”
“What made you ask that question, Mr. Dean?”
“I wondered if it wasn’t the fact. Sometimes I seem to feel people’s
looks. Perhaps it’s the happiness in their voices――if it’s greater than
usual; perhaps it’s something too subtle to express. I did have the
feeling that Katharine was looking her prettiest to-day. You’d call her
a pretty girl, wouldn’t you?”
“In some ways; nice-looking; attractive,” qualified the scrupulous
David.
“She’s very pretty, she’s lovely,” declared Mrs. Ives, impatient
with her son for his reservations. “I don’t know where you’ll see a
prettier girl!”
“Well, there’s Ruth Davenport and Marion Bradley,” David suggested.
“Katharine may be just as attractive, but I don’t know that you would
call her as pretty. By the way, Lester has invited Ruth to come down to
the Yale game, and he’s asked me to look after her for him. I thought
it might be a good idea, mother, if you invited her to stay here that
night and had a little tea for her after the game.”
“Why, of course,” said Mrs. Ives; and Mr. Dean expressed his pleasure.
Ruth wrote that she was “thrilled” to accept the invitation. And on the
morning of the game, when David met her at the station, he thought that
he had never seen any one so happy. Indeed, for a long time afterwards
in musing moments the memory of her as she had appeared that day when
he first caught sight of her would arise before him――a slender figure
in a black pony coat with a white fur round her neck and a black velvet
hat on her head; she waved her white muff at him while a greeting
fairly glowed from her pink cheeks and bright eyes and laughing lips.
“Lester was sorry that he couldn’t meet you himself,” David said. “But
the morning of the game they have to keep quiet and avoid excitement.”
“Gracious! Would I be excitement?”
David reddened under Ruth’s merry glance. If Lester knew, wouldn’t he
want to kick him!
“I’m very well satisfied with the arrangement,” Ruth said. “I can see
Lester play, and I can sit and talk with you. It will all be such fun.
I’ve never seen a Harvard-Yale game. How nice of your mother to ask me
down for it! And what luck to have such a heavenly day! Oh, David, I
know I’m going to have the best time of my whole life!”
“If we lick Yale,” said David.
“I suppose that will be necessary. But I feel we shall; I feel that
nothing will happen to spoil the good time that I’m going to have.”
On the way to Cambridge David tried to tell her about Lester――his
brilliancy, his popularity, his magnificent success. But she turned
him from that theme and began putting questions about his own
accomplishments. She drew from him the admission that he had captained
his class eleven and that it had won the championship, that he had been
taken into a certain club, that he stood a chance of getting a degree
_magna cum laude_; afterwards David’s cheeks burned when he thought it
all over; he must have appeared a veritable monster of egotism. She
conducted her researches so skillfully that the quivering subject was
hardly aware of them even while reluctantly yielding up its riches.
David wondered how, when he had been making this egregious display of
himself, he could possibly have imagined that he was having a good time!
One thing he was sure of: if she enjoyed the day as much as she
appeared to do, her enjoyment was not wholly at his expense.
“It’s all such an adventure for me!” she confided to him. “I love to
get away from the school now and then and meet new people and see old
friends. Am I going to see Mr. Dean, David?”
“Of course you are. He’s looking forward to it. He told me to bring you
out to the house just as quick as I could. We’re to have an early lunch
and then start for the game. Afterwards mother has asked a few people
in for tea, and Lester’s coming.”
“Oh, what fun!” caroled Ruth. “And what a heavenly day! I hope every
one will have a good time to-day!”
“Every one except Yale,” said David, and she laughed.
“Can’t you sometimes enjoy a game even though you’re beaten, David?”
“I can,” he replied. “But Yale can’t.”
“My, but you’re prejudiced!”
He admitted that perhaps he was. “Of course Yale’s a great place, and
we should hate to have to get on without her. I dare say the Yale
men feel the same way about Harvard. And if it weren’t for Yale, we
shouldn’t be having this day, one of the finest days in the whole year.”
“Isn’t it!” cried Ruth. “Three cheers for Yale!”
In David’s eyes she radiated charm and happiness and good will, and her
least utterance sounded musical to his ears. He was sure that she must
inevitably win the heart of every man and woman that she met. There
was no question but that she won his mother’s. At luncheon Mrs. Ives
beamed over the good report that Ruth brought about Ralph. He was such
a nice boy; every one at St. Timothy’s liked him. Mr. Dean questioned
her eagerly about the masters and the life at the school. She gave him
lively answers filled with gay anecdotes.
After luncheon, when she and David were starting for the game, she said
to Mr. Dean, “I wish you were coming too.”
“I go only to David’s games now,” Mr. Dean answered with a smile. Then,
as she put her hand into his, he said: “It’s good to hear your voice
again, my dear. I should like to see how the little girl has grown.”
David saw Ruth’s eyes suddenly grow moist and bright. “I’m just the
same, Mr. Dean,” she replied, “though I hope my hair is generally
tidier than it used to be.”
She was silent for a while after leaving the house; David liked her
silence and the emotion that it signified. Wasn’t it her quick and soft
compassion that had always made big boys as well as little open-hearted
with Ruth?
Soon they were in the full tide of the stream that bubbled and rustled
and flashed and rippled on its flow to Soldiers’ Field. The sun was
shining; blue flags and crimson were waving; a brass band somewhere
ahead was braying; gray-headed graduates, fuzzy-chinned freshmen,
mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and sweethearts, all were bustling and
trudging, gay and eager; and the ceaseless cries of ticket speculators
and venders of souvenirs, banners, and toy balloons made the very air
alive with excitement. In all the throng no one’s face was brighter,
happier, more expectant than Ruth’s. And no one’s face was prettier,
thought David.
She was too much excited to talk, except in exclamations, too much
excited after they took their seats in the Stadium and looked down upon
the empty field and across at the bank of spectators who were cheering
for Yale and waving blue flags. All the preliminary cheering and
singing, the figures of the bareheaded cheer leaders leaping about in
front of the sections, brandishing megaphones and making every movement
of arm and leg and body in a kind of fanatical, frenzied unison, one
with another――all before a single athlete had put in an appearance――did
not strike either Ruth or David as ridiculous. David responded loyally
to every behest of the cheer leader immediately confronting him and in
the intervals pointed out the celebrities to Ruth. “That fellow who
leads our section is Henderson, captain of the crew; that’s Colby,
captain of the nine, next to him; there’s Burke, leader of the glee
club――” and so on. Ruth looked at each one with just a moment of
interest in the great man and then renewed her bright, wandering,
excited gaze over the whole lively, sparkling scene.
There was a more exuberant outbreak on the Yale side, and the Yale
eleven, attended by innumerable substitutes, came rushing on the field
in a grim and violent manner. Immediately there followed an exuberant
outbreak on the Harvard side, and the Harvard eleven, attended by
innumerable substitutes, came rushing on the field in a grim and
violent manner. They crouched and charged, then crouched and charged
again, while rampant individuals of apparently uncontrollable strength
and energy booted footballs to enormous heights and for unbelievable
distances.
“There’s Lester!” cried Ruth. “How nice that he’s not wearing a head
guard, for now I can always pick him out. But I do hope his head won’t
get hurt.”
“Lester never gets hurt,” David assured her.
Not only in the eyes of Ruth and David did Lester shine preëminent
that afternoon. He flashed out of scrimmages, carrying the ball; he
made long end runs, carrying the ball; he ran the ball back on kicks,
dodging and squirming through a broken field; he made the first
touchdown of the game, and a few minutes later the second. David
shouted himself hoarse over Lester’s exploits, and Ruth, though she did
not join in the cheering, had a proud and happy look in her eyes. He
was her hero; and perhaps even while he performed these wonderful feats
he thought of her.
Toward the end of the second half he was taken out of the game; as he
left the field all the spectators whose sympathies were with Harvard
stood up and cheered him.
“Why did he leave?” asked Ruth. “He’s not hurt, is he?”
“No, but the game’s won, and the coaches are sending Wilcox in to get
his ‘H.’ Wilcox has been a substitute for three years, and this is his
last chance.”
Ruth understood perfectly. She thought it probable that Lester had
intimated to the coaches that it would be a nice thing to do. Certainly
it was just the sort of thoughtful, generous act that she should expect
of Lester.
Now that Lester was no longer playing, Ruth felt that the game
had lost in interest. But it was soon over, and then Harvard
undergraduates and graduates swarmed out on the field and proceeded
to engage in the peculiar collegiate folk-dancing that symbolizes and
celebrates victory. Behind the blaring brass band, which marched and
countermarched, ranks of young men zigzagged tumultuously, passing
at last, one after another in swift succession, under the crossbar of
the goal while over it passed the equally swift procession of their
hats――to be recovered or not, as the case might be, by the rightful
owners. In this flinging away of cherished headgear there seemed to the
observer an almost religious note of mad and joyous sacrifice, a note
accented by the mystical dusk of the November afternoon that caused a
lighted match to flare like an altar fire, and the end of a cigar to
glow like a censer.
Ruth found the spectacle first ludicrous and then ridiculously
emotional; she turned to David and saw what she interpreted as pious
yearning in his eyes.
“David,” she said, giving him a little nudge, “you go down and throw
your hat over the goal for me. I’ll wait here for you.”
“Would you mind? I’ll be right back.”
David was off instantly. Ruth watched him go springing down the tiers
of seats, saw him sprint out on the field and get sucked into the mazes
of the serpentining throng. She lost sight of him then and, raising her
eyes, looked across the field to the sections that the Yale men and
their friends occupied. A good many of them were stoically waiting to
see the end of the demonstrations; they no longer waved their flags
or raised their voices in fruitless cheers, but preserved a certain
passive constancy in defeat that touched Ruth’s heart. “You poor
things!” she thought. “It is hard, isn’t it? I’m glad I’m not feeling
as you are.”
She was still contemplating them with this pharisaic yet not
uncharitable thought when David rejoined her.
“Goodness!” she said. “Is that _your_ hat, David?”
“Yes,” he admitted, fingering the battered ruin gingerly. “It got
stepped on.”
“A perfectly good hat a moment ago,” said Ruth. “Aren’t men silly!”
“It’s all in a good cause,” returned David with conviction.
In Mrs. Ives’s drawing-room an eager party assembled to greet the
conquering hero. Katharine Vance sat behind the tea-table; Marion
Bradley and half a dozen other young ladies, all decked out befittingly
either with crimson chrysanthemums or American-beauty roses, chatted
and watched the door through which Lester must enter. They were
interested, too, in Ruth; from one to another had passed the word that
she was the girl whom Lester had himself invited! Possibly it made
their scrutiny of her a little critical, but she was so full of joyous
expectancy that she was not aware of it. Besides, there were other old
friends from St. Timothy’s coming up to speak to her, and Mr. Dean sat
where he could hear her voice and so received much of her attention.
At last there was the entrance for which they all were waiting. It was
not at all in the manner of the conquering hero that Lester Wallace
presented himself, but rather as a laughing youth disposed to forestall
embarrassing compliments. He shook hands with every one, blushed
becomingly, and said little. Only Marion Bradley seemed to watch him
with a smile that might be interpreted as perhaps mildly disparaging,
gently mocking. David observed it and thought with indignation, “Pity
Marion can’t show a little enthusiasm for once!”
Perhaps Lester was not aware of any coolness; surely the interest shown
by the other young ladies was gratifying enough. But after he had
exchanged a few words with each of them, it was to Ruth that he turned
and with Ruth that he talked, even though he intentionally allowed the
magic of his smile and the glamour of his glance to shine for other
admiring eyes. He could not stop long; that evening the team were to
dine together and celebrate their victory. But he would be round the
next day with a motor car――if Ruth would go to drive with him?
Katharine Vance had been watching David perhaps no less than she had
been observing Lester. She had noticed that his eyes were turned most
of the time toward Ruth.
Later, when the guests had departed, David walked with Katharine to the
gate.
“Lester doesn’t seem a bit swelled up over it all does he?” he said.
“How fine it must be to be in his shoes!”
“I don’t care for so much hero worship,” Katharine replied. “It makes
me sort of mad. After all, David, it takes just as fine qualities to be
the hero of a scrub team as of the varsity.”