Stover at Yale. Owen Johnson
The third bout went to the sophomores, Regan, the choice of the class, being nowhere to be found. But the victory was with the freshmen, who, knit suddenly together by the consciousness of a power to rise to emergencies, carried home the candidates in triumph.
McCarthy, with his arms around Stover as he had done in the old school days after a grueling football contest, bore Dink up to their rooms with joyful, bearlike hugs. Other hands were on him, wafting him up the stairs as though riding a gale.
"Here, let me down will you, you galoots!" he cried vainly from time to time.
Hilariously they carried him into the room and dumped him down. Other freshmen, following, came to him, shaking his hand, pounding him on the back.
"Good boy, Stover!"
"What's the use of wrestling, anyhow?"
"You're it!"
"We're all for you!"
"The old sophomores thought they had it cinched."
"Three cheers for Dink Stover!"
"One more!"
"And again!"
"Yippi!"
McCarthy, doubled up with laughter, stood in front of him, gazing hilariously, proudly down.
"You old Dink, you, what right had you to go out for it?"
"None at all."
"How the deuce did you have the nerve?"
"How?" For the first time the question impressed itself on him. He scratched his head and said simply, unconscious of the wide application of what he said: "Gee! guess I didn't stop to think how rotten I was."
He went to bed, gorgeously happy with the first throbbing, satisfying intoxication of success. The whole world must be concerned with him now. He was no longer unknown; he had emerged, freed himself from the thralling oblivion of the mass.
CHAPTER VI
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