The intensity and seriousness of the football season abetted Stover in
his new attitude of Napoleonic seclusion by leaving him little time for
the lighter side of college pleasures. Every hour was taken up with the
effort of mastering his lessons, which he then regarded, in common with
the majority of his class, as a laborious task, a sort of necessary
evil, the price to be paid for the privilege of passing four years in
pleasant places with congenial companions.
After supper he returned immediately to his rooms, where presently a
succession of visiting sophomores, members of the society campaign
committees, took up the first hours. These inquisitorial delegations,
formal, stiff, and conducted on a basis of superior investigation,
embarrassed him at first. But this feeling soon wore off with the
consciousness that he was a subject of dispute; and, secure in the
opportunity that would come to him with the opening of the winter-term
period of elections, his interest was directed only to the probable
selection among his classmates.
By the middle of October the situation at Yale field had become
critical. The earlier games had demonstrated what had been foreseen--the
weakness and inexperience of the raw material in hand. Serious errors in
policy were committed by Captain Dana, who, in the effort to find some
combination which would bolster up the weak backfield, began a constant
shifting of the positions in order to experiment with heavier men
behind the line. A succession of minor injuries arrived to further the
disorganization. The nervousness of the captain communicated itself to
the team, harassed and driven in the effort for accomplishment. That
there was serious opposition among the coaches to these new groping
policies every man saw plainly; yet, to Stover's amazement, the
knowledge remained within the team, impregnated with the spirit of
loyalty and discipline.
After three weeks of brilliancy at his natural position of end, buoyed
up by the zest of confidence and success, he was abruptly called to one
side.
"Stover, you've played behind the line, haven't you?" said Dana.
"A couple of games at school, sir," he answered hastily, "just as a
makeshift."
"I'm going to try you at fullback."
"At fullback?"
"Get into it and see if you can make good."
"Yes, sir."
He went without spirit, sure of the impossibility of the thing, feeling
only the humiliation and failure that all at once flung itself like a
storm-cloud across his ambition. A coach took charge of him, running
over with him the elementary principles of blocking and plunging.
When he lined up, it was with half of the coaching force at his back.
"Come on, Stover; get into it!"
"Wake up!"
"Get your head down!"
"Keep a-going!"
"Ram into it!"
"Knock that man over!"
"Knock him _over_!"
He went into the line blindly, frantically, feeling for the first time
that last exhausting, lunging expenditure of strength that is called
forth with the effort to fall forward when tackled. Nothing he did
satisfied. It was a constant storm of criticism, behind his back, in his
ears, shrieked to his face:
"Keep your feet--oh, keep your feet!"
"Smash open that line!"
"Rip open that line!"
"Hit it--hit it!"
"Hard--harder!"
"Go on--don't stop!"
A dozen times he flung his meager weight against the ponderous bodies of
the center men, crushed by the impact in front, smothered by the surging
support of his own line behind, helpless in the grinding contention,
turned and twisted, going down in a heap amid the shock of bodies,
thinking always:
"Well, the darn fools will find out just about how much use I am here!"
When the practise ended, at last, Dana called on Tompkins.
"Joe, take Stover and give him a line on the punting, will you?"
"I say, he's been worked pretty hard," said the coach with a glance.
"How about it?" said Dana quickly.
"All right," said Stover, lying gloriously. At that moment, aching in
every joint, he would have given everything to have spoken his mind.
Instead he brought forth a smile distinguished for its eagerness, and
said, "I'd like to get right at it, sir."
"Fullback's the big problem," said Tompkins, as they started across the
field. "Bangs can fill in at end, but we've got to get a fullback that
can catch punts, and with nerve enough to get off his kicks in the face
of that Princeton line."
"I'll do my best, sir," said Stover, with a sinking feeling.
For twenty minutes, against the rebellion of his body, he went through a
rigorous lesson, improving a little in the length of his punts, and
succeeding fairly well in holding the ball, which came spinning end over
end to him from the region of the clouds.
"That'll do," said Tompkins, at last.
"That's all?" said Stover stoically, picking up his sweater.
"That's all." Tompkins, watching him for a moment, said suddenly:
"Stover, I don't know whether Dana'll keep you at full or not, but I
guess you'll have to get ready to fill in. Come over to the gym lot
every morning for about half an hour, and we'll see if we can't work up
those punts."
"Yes, sir."
They walked out together.
"Stover, look here," said Tompkins abruptly, "I'm going to speak
straight to you, because I think you'll keep your mouth shut. We're in a
desperate condition here, and you know it. There's only one man in
charge at Yale, now and always, and that's the captain. That's our
system, and we stand or fall by it; and in order that we can follow him
four times out of five to victory, we've got sometimes to shut our eyes
and follow him down to defeat. Do you get me?"
"I think I do."
"No matter what happens, no criticism of the captain--no talking
outside. You may think he's wrong, you may know he's wrong, but you've
got to grin and bear it. That's all. Remember it--a close mouth!"
But it required all Stover's newly learned stoicism to maintain this
attitude in the weeks that arrived. After a week he was suddenly
returned to his old position, and as suddenly redrafted to fullback when
another game had displayed the inadequacy of the regular. From a
position where he was familiar with all the craft of the game, Stover
suddenly found himself a novice whom a handful of coaches sought
desperately to develop by dint of hammering and driving. His name no
longer figured in the newspaper accounts as the find of the season, but
as Stover the weak spot on the eleven. It was a rude discipline, and
more than once he was on the point of crying out at what seemed to him
the useless sacrifice. But he held his tongue as he saw others, seniors,
put to the same test and giving obedience without a word of criticism
for the captain, who, as every one realized, face to face with a
hopeless outcome, was gradually going to pieces.
Meanwhile Dopey McNab was just as zealously concerned in the pursuit of
his classic ideal, which, however, was imagined more along the lines of
such historic scholars as Verdant Green, Harry Foker, and certain heroes
of his favorite author, Charles Lever.
The annoyance of recitations by an economical imagination he converted
into periods of repose and refreshing slumber behind the broad back of
McMasters, who, for a certain fixed portion of tobacco a week, agreed to
act as a wall in moments of calm and to awake him with a kick on the
shins when the summons to refuse to recite arrived.
Having discovered Buck Waters as a companionable soul, congenially
inclined to the pagan view of life, it was not long before the two
discovered the third completing genius in the person of Tom Kelly, who,
though a member of the Sheff freshman class, immediately agreed not to
let either time, place, or conflicting recitations stand in the way of
that superior mental education which must result from the friction of
three such active imaginations.
The triumvirate was established on a firm foundation on the day after
Kelly's ambitious but unsuccessful attempt to hit the moon with a
pool-ball, and immediately began a series of practical jokes and larks
which threatened to terminate abruptly the partnership or remove it
bodily to an unimaginative outer world.
McNab, like most gentlemen of determined leisure, worked indefatigably
every minute of the day. Having slept through chapel and first
recitation, with an occasional interruption to rise and say with great
dignity "Not prepared," he would suddenly, about ten o'clock in the
morning, awake with a start, and drifting into Stover's room plaster his
nose to the window and restlessly ask himself what mischief he could
invent for the day.
After a moment of dissatisfied introspection, he would say fretfully:
"I say, Dink?"
"Hello!"
"Studying?"
"Yes."
"Almost finished?"
"No."
"What are you doing, McCarthy?"
"Boning out an infernal problem in spherical geometry."
"I gave that up."
"Oh, you did!"
"Sure, it's too hard--what's the use of wasting time over it, then?
What do you say to a game of pool?"
"Get out!"
"Let's go for a row up on Lake Whitney."
"Shut up!"
"Come over to Sheffield and get up a game of poker with Tom Kelly."
At this juncture, Stover and McCarthy rising in wrath, McNab would beat
a hurried retreat, dodging whatever came sailing after him. Much
aggrieved, he would go down the hall, trying the different doors, which
had been locked against his approach.
About this time Buck Waters, moved by similar impulses, would appear and
the two would camp down on the top step and practise duets, until a
furious uprising in the house would drive them ignominiously on to the
street.
Left to their own resources, they would wander aimlessly about the city,
inventing a hundred methods to accomplish the most difficult of all
feats, killing time.
On one particular morning in early November, McNab and Buck Waters,
being refused admission to three houses on York Street, and the affront
being aggravated by jeers and epithets of the coarsest kind, went arm in
arm on mischief bent.
"I say, what let's do?" said McNab disconsolately.
"We must do something new," said Buck Waters.
"We certainly must."
"Well, let's try the old clothes gag," said McNab; "that always amuses a
little."
Reaching the thoroughfare of Chapel Street, McNab stationed himself at
the corner while Waters proceeded to a point about half-way down the
block.
Assuming a lounging position against a lamp-post, McNab waited until
chance delivered up to him a superhumanly dignified citizen in top hat
and boutonnière, moving through the crowd with an air of solid
importance.
Darting out, he approached with the sweep of an eagle, saying in a
hoarse whisper:
"Old clothes, any old clothes, sir?"
His victim, frowning, accelerated his pace.
"Buy your old clothes, sir, buy 'em now."
Several onlookers stopped and looked. The gentleman, who had not turned
to see who was addressing him, said hurriedly in an undertone:
"No, no, nothing to-day."
"Buy 'em to-morrow--pay good price," said McNab peevishly.
"No, no, nothing to sell."
"Call around at the house--give good prices."
"Nothing to sell, nothing, I tell you!"
"Buy what you got on," said McNab at the psychological moment, "give you
five dollars or toss you ten or nothinks!"
"Be off!" said the now thoroughly infuriated victim, turning and
brandishing his cane. "I'll have you arrested."
McNab, having accomplished his preliminary rôle, retreated to a safe
distance, exclaiming:
"Toss you ten dollars or nothinks!"
The now supremely self-conscious and furious gentleman, having rid
himself of McNab, immediately found himself in the hands of Buck Waters,
who pursued him for the remainder of the block, with a mild obsequious
persistency that would not be shaken off. By this time the occupants of
the shop windows and the loiterers, perceiving the game, were in roars
of laughter, which made the passage of the second and third victims a
procession of hilarious triumph for McNab and Waters.
Tiring of this, they locked arms again and, taking by hazard a side
street, continued their quest for adventure.
"Mornings are a dreadful bore," said McNab, pulling down his hat.
"They certainly are."
"Who was the old duck we tackled first?"
"Don't know--familiar whiskers."
"Seemed to me I've seen him somewhere."
"Say, look at the ki-yi."
"It's a Shetland poodle."
"It's a pen-wiper."
Directly in front of them a shaggy French poodle, bearing indeed a
certain resemblance to both a Shetland pony and a discarded pen-wiper,
was gleefully engaged in the process of shaking to pieces a rubber which
it had stolen.
"If it sees itself in a mirror it will die of mortification," said Buck
Waters.
"And yet, Buck, he's happier than we are," said McNab, who had been
unjustifiably forced to flunk twice in one morning's recitation.
"I say, Dopey," said Waters in alarm, "quit that!"
"I will."
"Look at the fireworks," said Waters, stopping suddenly at a window,
"pin-wheels, rockets, Roman candles."
"What are they doing there this time of the year?" said McNab angrily.
"Election parade, perhaps."
"That's an idea to work on, Buck."
"It certainly is."
"We must tell Tom Kelly about that."
"We will."
"Why, there's that ridiculous ki-yi again!"
"He seems to like us."
"I'm not complimented."
At this moment, with the poodle sporting the rubber about fifteen feet
ahead of them, they beheld an Italian barber lolling in the doorway of
his shop, as profoundly bored by himself as they affected to be in
conjunction.
"Fine dog," said the barber with a critical glance.
"Sure," said McNab, halting at once.
The poodle, for whatever reason, likewise halted and looked around.
"Looka better, cutta da hair."
"You're right there, Columbus," assented Buck Waters. "His fur coat
looks as though it came from a fire sale."
"He ought to be trim up nice, good style."
"Right, very, very right!"
"Give him nice collar, nice tuft on da tail, nice tuft on da feet."
"Right the second time!"
"I clip him up, eh?" said the barber hopefully.
"Why not?" said McNab, looking into the depth of Buck Waters's eyes.
"Why not, Beecher?" said Waters, giving him the name of the President of
the College Y. M. C. A.
"I think it an excellent suggestion, Jonathan Edwards," said McNab
instantly.
With considerable strategic coaxing, the dog was enticed into the shop,
where to their surprise he became immediately docile.
"You see he lika da clip," said the barber enthusiastically, preparing a
table.
"He's a very intelligent dog," said McNab.
"You've done much of this, Columbus?" said Waters with a business-like
air.
"Sure. Ten, twenta dog a day, down in da city."
"Edwards, we shall learn something."
The dog was induced to come on the table, and Waters delegated to hold
him in position.
"Something pretty slick now, Christopher," said McNab, taking the
attitude a connoisseur should take. "Explain the fine points to us, as
you go along."
"Sure."
"I like the way he handles the scissors, Beecher--strong, powerful
stroke."
"He's got a good batting eye, too, Edwards."
"My, what a nice clean boulevard!"
"Just see the hair fly."
"It'll certainly improve the tail."
"Clip a little anchor in the middle of the back."
"Did you see that?"
"I did."
"He's a wonder."
"He is."
"Columbus, a little more off here--oh, just a trifle!"
"First rate; shave up the nose and part the whiskers!"
"Look at the legs, with the dinky pantalets--aren't they dreams?"
"I love the tail best."
"Why, Columbus is an artist. Never saw any one like him."
"Would you know the dog?"
"Why, mother wouldn't know him," said McNab solemnly.
"All in forty-three minutes, too."
"It's beautifully done, beautifully."
"Exquisite!"
The barber, perspiring with his ambitious efforts, withdrew for a final
inspection, clipped a little on the top and to the side, and signified
by a nod that art could go no further.
"Pretta fine, eh?"
"Mr. Columbus, permit me," said Waters, shaking hands.
McNab gravely followed suit. The dog, released, gave a howl and began
circling madly about the room.
"Open the door," shouted McNab. "See how happy he is!"
The three stationed themselves thoughtfully on the doorstep, watching
the liberated poodle disappear down the street in frantic spirals, loops
and figure-eights.
"He lika da feel," said the barber, pleased.
"Oh, he's much improved," said Waters, edging a little away.
"He fine lookin' a dog!"
"He'll certainly surprise the girls and mother," said McNab, shifting
his feet. "Well, Garibaldi, ta-ta!"
"Hold up," said the barber, "one plunk."
"One dollar, Raphael?" said Buck Waters in innocent surprise. "What for,
oh, what for?"
"One plunk, clippa da dog."
"Yes, but Garibaldi," said McNab gently, "that wasn't our dog."
"Shall we run for it?" said Waters, as they went hurriedly up the block.
"Wait until Garibaldi gives chase--we must be dignified," said McNab,
with an eye to the rear.
"Dagos have no sense of humor. Here he comes with a razor--scud for it!"
They dashed madly for the corner, doubled a couple of times, joined by
the rejuvenated friendly poodle, and suddenly, wheeling around a corner,
ran straight into the dean, who as fate would have it, was accompanied
by the very dignified citizen who had been the first victim of their old
clothes act and upon whom the frantic poodle, with canine expressions of
relief and delight, immediately cast himself.
"Buck," said McNab, half an hour later, as they went limply back,
"Napoleon would have whipped the British to an omelet at Waterloo if
he'd known about that sunken road."
"We are but mortals."
"How the deuce were we to know the pup belonged to Professor Borgle, the
eminent rootitologist?"
"Well, we paid the dago, didn't we?"
"That was outrageous."
"I say, Dopey, what'll you do if they fire us?"
"Don't joke on such subjects."
"Dopey," said Waters solemnly, "while the dean has the case under
consideration, just to aid his deliberations, I think we had
better--well, study a little."
"I suppose we must flirt with the text-books," said McNab, "but let's do
it together, so no one'll suspect."