September, 1902.
After the first day's practice Neale and Biffy McFadden were jogging
back to the dressing-room together.
"Great, isn't it?" grunted Biffy, rubbing his jersey sleeve over his
sweaty forehead. "Looks like a job for either you or me."
"I'll have to step lively, if I get the job. Just you wait till I get
some of the fat off me. I'm soft yet." He thought bitterly of time
wasted on the hotel piazza.
"Soft? Hell!" cried Biffy. "All I'll say is I hope you never tackle me
when you're hard--thought you'd slapped me with a piece of lead pipe
just after I caught that punt."
McAlpine and Andrews were standing outside the Gym. door. Neale stopped
to shake hands with his Captain whom he had not seen before practice.
McAlpine punched him appraisingly in the abdomen.
"Not so bad. Some fat but there's muscle behind it."
Neale made way for Atkins of the '99 team, an alumnus always hanging
around the squad every season. He was supposed to be devoting his
heart's blood to bond-brokerage, down on Wall Street, but, a wistful
exile from the world to which he had given the passion of his youth, he
always came uptown in the fall to watch football practice. Also, which
was of much more importance, he spent his summer vacation looking up
available football material, "out in the bushes" as he expressed it. He
now stopped in front of the Captain with a grin of pride, and jerking
his head towards an approaching player, he inquired, "Well, how about
him?"
McAlpine replied with enthusiasm, "Built like a piano, isn't he? Where'd
you raise him?"
Neale followed their eyes and saw a squat, swarthy,
two-hundred-and-fifty-pound linesman rolling past them towards the Gym.
door.
"Where'd I raise him? Stole him from the U. of P. Father's something or
other up in the coal-fields--oodles of money. Son was all set up to go
to Pennsy, but we got him down here and led him up and down the Great
White Way a couple of nights. Nobody could coax him away now--unless
there's a University at Paris."
McAlpine stared after the powerful back and shoulders filling the
doorway. "God, what a brute! Baby hippo walking on his hind legs. What's
his breed anyway?"
"Some sort of hunky. I'm not up on their stud book, but I'd say off-hand
he's a cross between a Slovak cart-horse and a Ruthenian wild boar--lots
of space in his garret, but you can't hurt him with a pick-ax."
"But, how in merry hell, are we going to keep him eligible? What courses
did you get him entered for?"
"Oh, assorted snap courses--English Lit. mostly. And he has a tame tutor
that lives with him and does the studying. How'd you suppose he ever got
through High School?"
Neale left them talking and stepped into the Gym., admiring enviously
the massive bone-structure of the new student of English Literature.
* * * * *
There were horribly emotional ups and downs in the Junior football
season for Neale, ups and downs that ploughed and harrowed his young
soul, planted many seeds in his heart, and left him at the end of the
season with so much new knowledge of himself and others to digest, with
experiences so rich and varied, dark and brilliant, to look back on,
that he needed the entire rest of the year to grow up to them. The other
students, those who did not play football, seemed to him like little
boys, fooling around with marbles and kites, so little did they know of
the black depths of depression and despair, and the hard-won heights of
exultation which crammed his own personal life full, and gave him a
premature maturity of experience, like that of a boy who has been
through a war.
The day after his third game on the Varsity, Father called him on the
telephone and asked if he couldn't come home and have dinner with them
to celebrate his success--would that be breaking training? Oh, no, Neale
answered, not if he got back to the house at nine. So he went home to a
specially good dinner, just the kind he remembered as a little boy, when
there was company. They talked football mostly: that meant he and Father
talked and Mother saw to it that the plates of her two men were filled.
After dinner they went into the library, the library where he had first
plunged into the world of books, and there he and Mother sat on the
sofa, while Father sat in his own chair, and they visited some more.
Neale found it surprisingly easy to talk to his parents now, almost as
easy as if they were strangers. During the last year he had lived away
from them except for week-ends and short visits. In that time he had
acquired a little perspective; and the new shell to his personality had
set hard enough so that he no longer felt an irritable, shame-faced
distaste of being looked at by people who had known him as a little boy.
Great Scott! Had he _ever_ been a little boy? The college Junior looked
around on the walls, books and furniture that had not changed a hair and
remembered with difficulty that he had once been a care-free child in
these surroundings.
When he went away, he shook hands with his father, as he always did, and
stooped from his great height to kiss his mother as he always did. Why
not? It did not occur to him that he might not kiss his mother.
* * * * *
But apparently it had occurred to her, for when she felt on her lips the
cool, fresh, boyish, matter-of-fact pressure of his lips, she gave a sob
and flung her arms around him, holding him close and crying a little on
his shoulder.
* * * * *
Why, dear old Mother! What was the matter with her? Neale put both arms
around her and gave her a great hug, as he used to when he came home
from West Adams.
It had done him good to see his folks, he thought, as he strode off down
the familiar, but not much-loved city street. He thought affectionately
about his father and mother for quite a time thereafter, as far as the
ferry-house indeed, when the build of a deck-hand reminded him of the
new Swede on the team. After that he thought football intensively, a
strong color of Junior cock-sureness tinging all his thoughts. He was
making the team! He wasn't so worse! How green, how incredibly green the
thumb-fingered Freshies were who came out to try for the squad. And he
had beaten Biffy to it, although Biffy had almost killed himself with
trying.
The weak opponents of the preliminary season were easily swamped.
McAlpine, Rogers, Neale, with one of the tackles back, the big Swede,
Gus Larsen, or Atkins' coal miner (whose name, Vaclav Blahoslav, stumped
the squad till it was shortened to "Mike") tore over Rutgers, Fordham,
Hamilton and the other small fry. True, the battering-ram machine broke
tragically down before Princeton's even stronger attack, but none of the
blame for that attached to Neale. He was kept out of that game by a
wrenched ankle, and Biffy's rotten luck let him into the line-up for the
first defeat of the season. Neale really had luck on his side, he
thought with some complacency. By next Saturday his ankle was all right
again and he trotted out on Franklin Field supremely confident, trotted
out to fall straight into the black depths of the bottomless pit.
For after that swelling supreme self-confidence came a queer slowness of
mind. He found it hard to keep his thoughts on his work as they ran
through signals. His eyes kept straying to the rioting, flag-waving
grand-stands. The whistle blew, the kick-off came straight to Neale. For
the first time since Freshman year he felt a sinking dread that he might
fumble. The ball hit him on the chest and bounded off. Tod McAlpine fell
on it and the rushing game began.
For the first half it was anybody's game. Either team when it got the
ball could gain but could not score. Something was the matter with
Neale. He wasn't all there. He knew he was playing mechanically, but
couldn't seem to summon the energy to do better.
He sat listless, almost sullen while Andrews harangued the team between
the halves. He was hardened by this time to the Neapolitan frenzy of
emphasis which marked exhortations to play your best football or die.
He'd do his best, he told himself, looking down at his feet. Nobody
could do any more.
The second half began with an exchange of punts. Playing behind the
cyclopean Mike, Neale hadn't much work to do on the defensive, but once
Mike was boxed out on a straight buck, Neale shot his body in to plug
the hole and turning, caught a bony knee in the back, right over the
kidneys. As he lay on the ground gasping for breath, he could see that
he hadn't even stopped the play. It had gone over him for two yards. Oh,
Hell! What was the use? How his back ached! The Penn. quarter seemed to
know he was feeling wobbly. All the plays were coming at him and Mike,
and most of them got by. Where _was_ the ball? Sometimes it came
straight through and the next minute on the same formation swung
outside--and Neale uselessly buried under the interference. He'd have to
stop it somehow--soon. He glanced back out of the corner of his eye, and
saw the goal posts less than five yards behind. The Penn. formation was
on his side again. Mike charged like a buffalo. Neale rushed in behind
him, but blindly. Then all at once he picked out the man with the
ball--too late. His sideways drive for a tackle missed and as he fell,
his arms empty, he saw the red-and-blue jersey go over the line.
He got up shaken, feeling very sick of himself, not meeting anybody's
eye. While Penn. was kicking the goal, Neale saw Biffy come bounding out
from the side-lines, "I'm to take Crittenden's place," he reported.
It was like a blow in the face. And he had earned it. Neale walked to
the bench, took a blanket, looking carefully away from the sub who held
it out to him, wrapped himself up, forced his face into its usual
expression of impassivity and watched the game. It was not much to
watch: Columbia badly up in the air, Pennsy getting stronger every
minute.
He dreaded the post-mortem at the football house, and took as deserved
Andrews' verdict. "Crittenden, you were a total loss. I knew you weren't
much of a defensive back, but I didn't suppose a whale like you would
let a skinny little runt of a Penn. sub ride you back five yards and
dump you on your tail."
Day after day went by, with Neale in exile, playing once more on the
scrub. The night before the Brown game, when the line-up was announced,
he got together a show of good-will as he shook hands with Biffy and
wished him luck. But he lay awake in the dark that night, heartbroken,
sternly motionless and rigid on his cot, his great hands clenched hard.
It was his virgin sorrow, the first real suffering he had ever known.
The first real sorrow of most lives is usually tempered to the softness
of immature hearts by the self-preserving instinct to lay the blame on
something or somebody else, by merciful self-pity. But for Neale there
was no Fate, nor chance, nor enemy, nor fickleness of woman on whom to
lay the blame. There was no one to blame but himself, and before his
time, he felt the pure rigor of this knowledge cut deep like a clean
steel blade. It cut out a part of his boyishness forever. It was the
first scar of the initiation into manhood. Neale stood up to it like a
man, although so young a man. "No squealing!" he commanded himself
savagely.
The next day he sat all through the game on the edge of the subs' bench,
his big muscles quivering with readiness to respond to an order to jump
into the game, his heart sick, sick within him because the order did not
come. Nobody so much as looked his way. There he sat, a big, useless
lump.
"What's the matter with me?" he cried out behind his Iroquois mask of
insensibility, "I've got the strength. I've got the speed. _Am I a
quitter?_" The sweat stood out on him at the idea, and at first,
helpless before the dramatic quality of young imagination, he felt that
must be the answer. Yes, he was a quitter. As well die, and be done with
it.
Then the nucleus of what was to become Neale hardened itself against
this easy, inverted sentimentalism, and small as the nucleus was, it set
itself to consider the matter in judicial, objective judgment. Neale
went over his football for the last week as though it had been that of
another player. "I did quit in the Penn. game. But other fellows have
had a slump and pulled out of it. And since then, by God, I've played
myself out in every practice. I've given all there was to give and then
some!"
He held up his head at this. And yet, if he wasn't a quitter, what _was_
the matter with him? "Biffy isn't any world-beater. Yet he must be
better than I am, or Andrews wouldn't give him my place. _Andrews is
square._" He said that with the accent of the mystic who affirms that
God is good; and it was very much the same sort of corner-stone in the
house he was building to live in.
* * * * *
Along in the second half, Atkins (the grad. who had discovered Mike),
stopped his caged-tiger prowl up and down the side lines and dropped
into an empty space beside Neale. "Look at that!" he cried suddenly,
"Did you see that?"
Neale had noticed nothing in particular--just a general tangle of brown
and blue jerseys. "I don't think they gained," he said.
"Great Scott, no! Haven't you any eyes? They lost about half-a-yard. The
Brown left-half tripped over Mike's legs, but if he'd been a foot
further out, he'd be going yet. McFadden was suckered."
Neale took his eyes for a moment from the field to look around
wonderingly at Atkins. He had never thought of him before except with
pity as an old exile, who couldn't play any more. Could he really see
all that in a play, see just what every man had done? Atkins went on
now, stiffening with his concentration like a pointer dog. "There it
goes again--see, he's charging right on top of Mike. Just luck if he
gets the man--missed him! It was Tod who stopped the play. Next time
they hit the left side of our line, watch the way Rogers handles it."
Atkins bit savagely on a mouthful of gum, "There!" He dug his finger
nails into Neale's wrist. Neale could see Rogers rock a second,
undecided, on tip-toe; side-step an interferer; and then shoot his body
like a projectile into the play. "Spilled 'em for a yard-and-a-half
loss: that's the stuff!"
He looked around sharply at Neale. "If _you_ could use your head like
that, you'd be worth something to the team."
Neale stared at him, his young face candid with the astonishment of
feeling a brand-new idea inserting itself into his mind. Maybe _that_
was what was the matter with his game.
He reached up, as he would have said, to the upper story, and turned
back to watch the game with new eyes, eyes sharpened by intelligence. He
concentrated on the back-field defense and began for the first time to
understand the inwardness of it. He couldn't attain Atkins' hawk-like
vision of the play and what every man in the back field had done; but he
made out a great deal more than he ever had before.
* * * * *
Next Monday at practice Atkins came and stood behind Neale (the
bond-selling business never seemed to exist for Atkins during football
season). To Neale, as he played on the scrub, Atkins poured out his
accumulated tactical lore, the wisdom that choked and strangled him
because he was no longer allowed to put it into action. Seizing on
Neale, whom he did not know personally at all, he forced his way into
Neale's attention and held it fiercely on the business of playing
football intelligently.
"Have a look! Have a look! Secondary defense finds the play before it
stirs out of its tracks! No, you shouldn't have tried a tackle that
time," he yanked Neale to his feet, "they were too bunched. I made just
that break in the Princeton game in '99 and I've never forgiven myself.
If you'd spilled the interference, your end would have got the runner.
Watch the ball! don't run in till you _know_ where it is--and then _go
to it_! Sometimes you can tell by the back's eyes, give themselves away
by looking where they're going to go, but an old hand will cross you on
purpose. The knees are safer, mostly they lean a little just before the
ball goes back. Got to use old head! Bill Morley himself couldn't stop a
play if he didn't know where it was. Ah! _that's_ the stuff! That was
just right--not too soon or too late--and see how easy it was!"
Day after day the Wall Street bond-broker wrestled with Neale's latent
acuteness and forced it into action. With shame, with praise, with
reproach and enthusiasm, he drew out of Neale more than Neale had
dreamed could be there. If one--even one--of the teachers of English or
Greek or chemistry or economics had taught Neale as this
semi-illiterate, wealthy young barbarian taught him...! If Neale had
given even a tenth as much attention to any of his courses...!
Neale clambered up over himself, raging with hope; up over his first
realization that there was infinitely more to this problem than he had
ever supposed; over his next, that he did not know even the rudiments of
the game he had thought he knew so well; over his occasional glimmers of
understanding, why he failed sometimes and succeeded at other times;
over an increasing percentage of successes, and finally stood, a little
giddy with the new height, on the peak towards which Atkins had urged
him, where he waited clear-headed, strong, confident, behind the tackle,
hoping the next play would come his way.
The play did come his way. The Varsity tried out against the scrub its
new delayed pass from close formation. To the left it worked very well.
But when they tried it to the right, Neale dropped Rogers for a loss,
three times in succession. The look on Atkins' face was glory.
The next afternoon Neale was back on the Varsity and Biffy on the scrub.
There was a pang in his beatitude, a painful moment of generous distress
when Biffy came up to congratulate him. The two hard-faced,
frowsy-headed, gum-chewing young savages gripped each other's hands in
an inexpressive silence; and each saw deep into the other's big heart as
he was rarely, in all his life thereafter, to look into any other human
being's inner chamber.
Biffy carried it off splendidly, Neale thought, but he couldn't fool a
man who had just been there himself. He felt sorry for Biffy. He
remembered to be sorry for Biffy till the whistle blew for the Annapolis
game.