Stover fondly dreamed, that night, of his triumphal appearance on the
field the following day, greeted by admiring glances and cordial
handshakes, placed at once on the second eleven, watched with new
interest by curious coaches, earning an approving word from the captain
himself.
When he did come on the field, embarrassed and reluctantly conscious of
his sudden leap to world-wide fame, no one took the slightest notice of
him. Tompkins did not vouchsafe a word of greeting. To his amazement,
Dana again passed him over and left him restless on the bench, chafing
for the opportunity that did not come. The second and the third
afternoon it was the same--the same indifference, the same
forgetfulness. And then he suddenly realized the stern discipline of it
all--unnecessary and stamping out individuality, it seemed to him at
first, but subordinating everything to the one purpose, eliminating the
individual factor, demanding absolute subordination to the whole,
submerging everything into the machine--that was not a machine only,
when once accomplished, but an immense idea of sacrifice and
self-abnegation. Directly, clearly visualized, he perceived, for the
first time, what he was to perceive in every side of his college career,
that a standard had been fashioned to which, irresistibly, subtly, he
would have to conform; only here, in the free domain of combat, the
standard that imposed itself upon him was something bigger than his own.
Meanwhile the college in all its activities opened before him,
absorbing him in its routine. The great mass of his comrades to be
gradually emerged from the blurred mists of the first day. He began to
perceive hundreds of faces, faces that fixed themselves in his memory,
ranging themselves, dividing according to his first impression into
sharply defined groups. Fellows sought him out, joined him when he
crossed the campus, asked him to drop in.
In chapel he found himself between Bob Story, a quiet, self-contained,
likable fellow, popular from the first from a certain genuine sweetness
and charity in his character, son of Judge Story of New Haven, one of
the most influential of the older graduates; and on the other side
Swazey, a man of twenty-five or six, of a type that frankly amazed
him--rough, uncouth, with thick head and neck, rather flat in the face,
intrusive, yellowish eyes, under lip overshot, one ear maimed by a scar,
badly dressed, badly combed, and badly shod. Belying this cloutish
exterior was a quietness of manner and the dreamy vision of a passionate
student. Where he came from Stover could not guess, nor by what strange
chance of life he had been thrown there. In front of him was the great
bulk of Regan, always bent over a book for the last precious moments,
coming and going always with the same irresistible steadiness of
purpose. He had not been at the wrestling the opening night, he had not
been out for football, because his own affairs, his search for work,
were to him more important; and, looking at him, Stover felt that he
would never allow anything to divert him from his main purpose in
college--first, to earn his way, and, second, to educate himself.
Stover, with others, had urged him to report for practise, knowing,
though not proclaiming it, that there lay the way to friendships that,
once gained, would make easy his problem.
"Not yet, Stover," said Regan, always with the same finality in his
tone. "I've got to see my way clear; I've got to know if I can down that
infernal Greek and Latin first. If I can, I'm coming out."
"Where do you room?" said Stover.
"Oh, out about a mile--a sort of rat-hole."
"I want to drop in on you."
"Come out sometime."
"Drop in on me."
"I'm going to."
"I say, Regan, why don't you see Le Baron?"
"What for?"
"Why, he might--might give you some good tips," said Stover, a little
embarrassed.
"Exactly. Well, I prefer to help myself."
Stover broke out laughing.
"You're a fierce old growler!"
"I am."
"I wish you'd come around a little and let the fellows know you."
"That can wait."
"I say, Regan," said Stover suddenly, "would you mind doing the waiting
over at our joint?"
"Why should I?"
"Why, I thought," said Stover, not saying what he had thought, "I
thought perhaps you'd find it more convenient at Commons."
"Is that what you really thought?" said Regan, with a quizzical smile.
The man's perfect simplicity and unconsciousness impressed Stover more
than all the fetish of enthroned upper classmen; he was always a little
embarrassed before Regan.
"No," he said frankly, "but, Regan, I would like to have you with us,
and I think you'd like it."
"We'll talk it over," said Regan deliberately. "I'll think it over
myself. Good-by."
Stover put out his hand instinctively. Their hands held each other a
moment, and their eyes met in open, direct friendship.
He stood a moment thoughtfully, after they had parted. What he had
offered had been offered impulsively. He began to wonder if it would
work out without embarrassment in the intimacy of the eating-joint.
The crowd that they had joined--as Gimbel had predicted--had taken a
long dining-room cheerily lighted, holding one table, around which
sixteen ravenous freshmen managed to squeeze in turbulent, impatient
clamor.
Bob Story, Hunter and his crowd, Hungerford and several men from Groton
and St. Mark's, Schley and his room-mate Troutman made up a coterie that
already had in it the elements of the leadership of the class.
As he was deliberating, he perceived Joe Hungerford rolling along, with
his free and easy slouch, immersed in the faded blue sweater into which
he had lazily bolted to make chapel, a cap riding on the exuberant
wealth of blond hair. He broached the subject at once:
"Say, Hungerford, you're the man I want."
"Fire away."
Stover detailed his invitation to Regan, concluding:
"Now, tell me frankly what you think."
"Have him with us, by all means," said Hungerford impulsively.
"Might it not be a little embarrassing? How do you think the other
fellows would like it?"
"Why, there's only one way to take it," said Hungerford directly. "Our
crowd's too damned select now to suit me. We need him a darn sight more
than he needs us."
"I knew you'd feel that way."
"By George, that's why I came to Yale. If there are any little squirts
in the crowd think differently, a swift kick where it'll do the most
good will clear the atmosphere."
Stover looked at him with impulsive attraction. He was boyish,
unspoiled, eager.
"Now, look here, Dink--you don't mind me calling you that, do you?"
continued Hungerford, with a little hesitation.
"Go ahead."
"I want you to understand how I feel about things. I've got about
everything in the world to make a conceited, pompous, useless little ass
out of me, and about two hundred people who want to do it. I wish to
blazes I was starting where Regan is--where my old dad did; I might do
something worth while. Now, I don't want any hungry, boot-licking little
pups around me whose bills I am to pay. I want to come in on your scale,
and I'm mighty glad to get the chance. That's why my allowance isn't
going to be one cent more than yours; and I want you to know it. Now, as
for this fellow Regan--he sounds like a man. I tell you what I'll do.
I'll fix it up in a shake of a lamb's tail."
"Question is whether Regan will come," said Stover doubtfully.
"By George, I'll make him. We'll go right out together and put it to
him."
Which they did; and Regan, yielding to the open cordiality of
Hungerford, accepted and promised to change at the end of his week.
In the second week, having satisfactorily arranged his affairs--by what
slender margin no one ever knew--Regan reported for practise. He had
played a little football in the Middle West and, though his knowledge
was crude, he learned slowly, and what he learned he never lost. His
great strength, and a certain quality which was moral as well as
physical, very shortly won him the place of right guard, where with each
week he strengthened his hold.
Regan's introduction at the eating-joint had been achieved without the
embarrassment Stover had feared. He came and went with a certain natural
dignity that was not assumed, but was inherent in the simplicity of his
character. He entered occasionally into the conversation and always,
when the others were finished and tarrying over the tobacco, brought his
plate to a vacant place and ate his supper; but, that through, though
often urged, went his purposeful way, with always that certain solitary
quality about him that made approach difficult and had left him
friendless.
On the fourth afternoon of practise, as Stover, restraining the raging
impatience within him, resolved that at all costs he would not show the
chafing, went to his place on the imprisoning bench, watching with
famished eyes the contending lines, Dana, without warning, called from
the open field:
"Stover! Stover! Out here!"
He jumped up, oblivious of everything but the sudden thumping of his
heart and the curious stir in the ranks of the candidates.
"Here, leave your sweater," shouted Tompkins, who had repeated the
summons.
"Oh, yes."
Clumsily entangled in the folds of his sweater, he struggled to emerge.
Tompkins, amid a roar of laughter, caught the arms and freed him,
grinning at the impetuousness with which Stover went scudding out.
On the way he passed the man he was replacing, returning rebelliously
with a half antagonistic, half apprehensive glance at him.
"Take left end on the scrub," said Dana, who was not in the line of
scrimmage. "Farley, give him the signals."
The scrub quarter hastily poured into his ears the simple code. He took
up his position. The play was momentarily halted by one of the coaches,
who was hauling the center men over the coals. Opposite Stover, Bangs,
senior, was standing, legs spread, hands on his hips, looking at him
with a look Stover never forgot. For three years he had plugged along
his way, doggedly holding his place in the scrubs, patiently waiting for
the one opportunity to come. Now, at last, after the years of servitude,
standing on the coveted side of the line, suddenly here was a freshman
with a big reputation come in the challenge that might destroy all the
years of patience and send him back into the oblivion of the scrubs.
Stover understood the appealing fury of the look, even in all the
pitilessness of his ambition. Something sharp went through him at the
thought of the man for whose position, ruthlessly, fiercely, he was
beginning to fight.
Five or six coaches, always under the direction of Case, head coach,
were moving restlessly about the field, watching for the first
rudimentary faults. One or two gave him quick appraising looks. Stover,
moving restlessly back and forth, his eyes on the ground, too conscious
of the general curiosity, awaited the moment of action. The discussion
around the center ended.
"Varsity take the ball," called out Dana; "get into it, every one!"
The two lines sprang quickly into position, the coaches, nervous and
vociferous, jumping behind the unfortunate objects of their wrath, while
the air was filled with shrieked advice and exhortation.
"On the jump, there, Biggs!"
"Charge low!"
"Oh, get down, get down!"
"Break up this play!"
"Wake up!"
"Smash into it!"
"Charge!"
"Now!"
"Block that man!"
"Throw him back!"
"Get behind!"
"Push him on!"
"Shove him on!"
"Get behind and shove!"
"Shove!"
"Shove! Oh, shove!"
Attack and defense were still crude. The play had gone surging around
the opposite end, but in a halting way, the runner impeded by his own
interference. Stover, sweeping around at full speed, was able to down
the half from behind, just as the interference succeeded in clearing
the way. At once it was a chorus of angry shouts, each coach descending
on the particular object of his wrath.
"Beautiful!"
"You're a wonder!"
"What are you doing,--growing to the ground?"
"What did I tell you?"
"Say, interference, is this a walking match?"
"Wonderful speed--almost got away from the opposite end."
"Say, Charley, a fast lot of backs we've got."
"Line 'em up!"
Two or three plays through the center, struggling and squirming in the
old fashion of football, were succeeded by several tries at his side.
Stover, besides three years' hard drilling, had a natural gift of
diagnosis, which, with the savagery of his tackling, made him, even at
this period, an unusual end, easily the best of the candidates on the
field. He stood on guard, turning inside the attack, or running along
with it and gradually forcing his man out of bounds. At other times he
went through the loose interference and caught his man with a solid
lunge that was not to be denied.
The varsity being forced at last to kick, Bangs came out opposite him
for that running scrimmage to cover a punt that is the final test of an
end.
Stover, dropping a little behind, confident in his measure of the man,
caught him with his shoulder on the start, throwing him off balance for
a precious moment, and then followed him down the field, worrying him
like a sheep-dog pursuing a rebellious member of his flock, and caught
him at the last with a quick lunge at the knees that sent him sprawling
out of the play. Up on his feet in a minute, Stover went racing after
his fullback, in time to give the impetus of his weight that sent him
over his tackle, falling forward.
"How in blazes did that scrub end get back here?" shouted out Harden, a
coach, a famous end himself. He came up the field with Bangs, grabbing
him by the shoulder, gesticulating furiously, his fist flourishing,
crying:
"Here, Dana, give us that play over again!"
A second time Bangs sought to elude Stover, goaded on by the taunts of
Harden, who accompanied them. Quicker in speed and with a power of
instinctive application of his strength, Stover hung to his man, putting
him out of the play despite his frantic efforts.
Harden, furious, railed at him.
"What! You let a freshman put you out of the play? Where's your pride?
In the name of Heaven do something! Why, they're laughing at you,
Ben,--they're giving you the laugh!"
Bangs, senior society man, manager of the crew, took the driving and the
leash without a protest, knowing though he did that the trouble was
beyond him--that he was up against a better man.
Suddenly Harden turned on Stover, who, a little apart, was moving
uneasily, feeling profoundly sorry for the tanning Bangs was receiving
on his account.
"Look here, young fellow, you're not playing that right."
Stover was amazed.
"What's the first thing you've got to think about when you follow down
your end?"
"Keep him out of the play," said Stover.
"Never!" Harden seized him by the jersey, attacking with his long
expostulating forefinger, just as he had laid down the law to Bangs.
"Never! That's grand-stand playing, my boy; good for you, rotten for the
team. The one thing you've got to do first, last, and always, is to
know where the ball is and what's happening to it. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Now you didn't do that. You went down with your eyes on your man only,
didn't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"You never looked at your back to see if he fumbled, did you?"
"No, sir."
"And if he had, where'd you have been? If he holds it all right, knock
over your end, but if he fumbles you've got to beat every one to it and
recover it. You're one of eleven men, not a newspaper phenomenon--get
that in your head. You didn't know I was trying you out as well as
Bangs. Now let it sink into you. Do you get it?"
"Yes, sir, thank you," said Stover, furious at himself, for if there was
one thing that was instinctive in him it was this cardinal quality of
following the ball and being in every play.
It was a day of the hardest, trying alike to the nerves of coaches and
men, when the teams were driven without a rest, when tempers were
strained to the snapping point, in the effort to instil not so much the
details of the game as the inflaming spirit of combat.
It was dusk before the coaches called a halt to the practise and sent
them, steaming and panting, aching in every joint, back to the gymnasium
for a rub-down.
Climbing wearily into the car to sink gratefully into a seat, Dink
suddenly, to his confusion, found himself by the side of Bangs.
"Hello," said the senior, looking up with a grin, "I hope every muscle
in your body's aching."
"It certainly is," said Stover, relieved.
Bangs looked at him a long moment, shook his head, and said:
"I wish I could drop a ton of brick on you."
"Why?"
"I've plugged away for years, slaved like a nigger at this criminal
game, thought I was going to get my chance at last, and now you come
along."
"Oh, I say," said Stover in real confusion.
"Oh, I'll make you fight for it," said the other, with a snap of his
jaws. "But, boy, there's one thing I liked. When that old rhinoceros of
a Harden was putting the hooks into me, you never eased up for a
second."
"I knew you'd feel that way."
"If you'd done differently I'd slaughtered you," said Bangs. "Well, good
luck to you!"
He smiled, but back of the smile Stover saw the cruel cut of
disappointment.
And this feeling was stronger in him than any feeling of elation as he
returned to his rooms, after the late supper. He had never known
anything like the fierceness of that first practise. It was not play
with the zest he loved, it was a struggle of ambitions with all the
heartache that lay underneath. He had gone out to play, and suddenly
found himself in a school for character, enchained to the discipline of
the Cæsars, where the test lay in stoicism and the victory was built on
the broken hopes of a comrade.
For the first time, a little appalled, he felt the weight of the
seriousness, the deadly seriousness of the American spirit, which seizes
on everything that is competition and transforms it, with the savage
fanaticism of its race, for success.