“Here! no quitting!”
“Cowards!”
“Come back!”
“Shut up; it’s the football crowd!”
“Oh, football, eh?”
“Right.”
“Splendid!”
Stover with a serious face, shook hands with Troutman, a red-haired fellow with sharp advancing features who said impressively:
“Mr. Stover, I wish to express for my friends the gratification, the extreme gratification, the extreme moral gratification we feel at seeing a football—a football candidate showing such moral courage—moral—it’s wonderful—it moves me. Mr. Stover, I’d like to shake your hand.”
Dink laughed and escaped, seeing, in a last glance at the vaporous fitful room, Troutman solemnly giving his hand to Waters, whom he was congratulating on his extreme moral courage in remaining.
Tommy Bain, in the confusion, slipped out unnoticed and joined them. The last swollen burst of the song was shut from them. They went back toward the campus in twos and threes, over the quiet, moist pavement, past the noisy windows of Mory’s—where no freshmen need apply—to the Common, where suddenly, in the moonlit shadow of a great elm, they found a vociferous group with Tom Kelly and McNab in the midst.
At this moment something fell from the skies within perilous distance.
“What the deuce is that?” said Hungerford, jumping back.
“Why, it’s a pool-ball,” said Stone, stooping down.
Another fell, just missing Hunter’s shoulders.
“It’s Kelly,” said Bain, “and he’s firing at us.”
With a rush they joined the group, to find Kelly, determined and enthusiastic, solemnly discharging his ammunition at the great bulbous moon that was set lumberingly above them. They joined the group that surrounded him, expostulating, sober or fuddled:
“Don’t be an ass, Tom.”
“The cops are coming.”
“I say, come on home.”
“How many more has he got?”
“Get him home, you fellows.”
“Stop him.”
Meanwhile, abetted by the admiring, delighted McNab, Tom Kelly, taking the most solicitous aim, was continuing his serious efforts to hit the moon with the pool-balls which he had procured no one knew how.
“I say, McNab,” said Stover, drawing him aside, “better get him to stop now. Too many cops around. Use your influence—he’ll listen to you.”
McNab’s sense of responsibility having thus become violently agitated, he wabbled up to the laboring Kelly, and the following historic dialogue took place:
“I say, Tom, old fellow, you know me, don’t you? You know I’m a good sort, don’t you—one of the finest?”
“I know you, Dopey McNab; I’m proud to know you.”
“I want to speak a word with you seriously.”
“What?”
“Seriously.”
“Say on.”
“Now, seriously, Tom, do you think you can hit it?”
“Don’t know; going to try’s much as in me. Biff!”
“Hold up,” said McNab, staying his hand. “Tom, I’m going to appeal to you as man to man.”
“Appeal.”
“You understand—as man to man.”
“Sure.”
“You’re a man; I’m a man.”
“The finest.”
“Now as man to man, I’m going to tell you the truth.”
“The whole truth?”
“Solemn truth.”
“Tell on.”
“You can’t hit it.”
“Why not?”
“Tom, it’s too—too far away!”
The two shook hands solemnly and impressively.
“Can’t hit it—too far away,” said Kelly, with the pool-ball clutched tight. “Too far away, eh?”
“My dear Tom,” said McNab, tearfully breaking the news, “it’s too far—entirely too far away. You can’t reach it, Tom; believe me, as man to man—you can’t, you can never, never hit it.”
“I know I can’t, Dopey,” said Kelly, in an equally mournful tone, “I know all that. All that you say is true. But, Dopey, suppose I should hit it, suppose I should, just think—think—how my name would go reeling and rocking down to fushure generations! Biff!”
They left McNab overcome by the impressiveness of this argument, busily gathering up the pool-balls, resolved that every opportunity should be given Kelly to rank among the immortals.
Stover would have liked to stay. For the moment, almost a rebellion swept over him at the drudgery to which he had condemned himself in his ambition. He saw again the low table, through the smoke, and Buck Waters’s jovial pagan face leading the crowd in lazy, carefree abandon. He felt that liberty, that zest of life, that wild spirit of youth for which he yearned and of which he had been defrauded by Le Baron’s hand, that hand which had ruthlessly torn away the veil. Something leaped up within him—a longing to break the harness, to jump the gate and go heels in the air, cavorting across unfenced meadows. He rebelled against the way that had been marked out for him. He rebelled against the self-imposed discipline, and, most of all, he rebelled against the hundred eyes under whose inspection he must now inevitably walk.
Ahead of them to the left, across by Osborne, came the gay, defiant singing of a group of upper classmen returning to the campus:
“For it’s always fair weather
When good fellows stand together,
With a stein on the table
And a good song ringing clear.”
The echo came to him with a certain grim mockery. There would be very little of that for him. It was to be four years, not of pleasure and inclination, but of seriousness and restraint, if he continued in his decision. For a moment the pagan in him prevailed, and he doubted. Then they passed across High Street, and at their sides the dead shadow of the society tomb suddenly intruded upon them. Which of the group at the end of the long three years would be of the chosen? Which would lead?
“Well, fellows, we go this way,” said Bain’s methodical voice. “Drop around at the rooms soon. Good night.”
Stover, Hunter, and Bain for the moment found themselves together, each striving for the same social honor, each conscious that, whatever an established system might bring to them, with its enforced comradeship, among them would always be the underlying contending spirit of variant ambitions.
Stover felt it keenly, almost with a sharp antagonism that drove from him finally the slumbering rebellion he had felt all that night—the tugging at the bridle of consciousness which had been imposed upon him. This was a bigger thing, a thing that wakened in him the great instincts of combat. He would be
