“Catch every punt—get off every kick—make every tackle.”
In the morning it was the same refrain, which never left him. He rose tired, with a limpness in every muscle, his head heavy as if bound across with biting bonds. He stood stupidly holding his wash-pitcher, looking out of the window, saying:
“Good heavens! it’s only a few hours off now.”
Then he began feebly to wash, repeating:
“Get off every kick—every kick.”
Breakfast passed like a nightmare. He put something tasteless into his mouth, his jaws moved, but that was all. The brisk walk to chapel restored him somewhat, and the consciousness of holding himself before the gaze of the crowd. After first recitation, Regan joined him, and together they went across the campus, no longer the campus of the University, but beginning to swarm with strangers, and strange colors amid the blue.
“How are you feeling?” said Regan in a fatherly sort of way, as they went through Phelps and out on to the Common.
“Tom, my shoes stick to the ground, my knees are made of paper, and I’m hollow from one end to the other.”
“Fine!”
“Oh, is it?”
“You’ll be a bundle of fire on the field.”
“Let’s not walk too far. We want to keep fresh,” said Stover, feeling indeed as though every step was draining his energy.
“Rats! let’s saunter down Chapel Street and see the crowds come in.”
“You old rhinoceros, have you any nerves?”
“Lots, but they’re a different sort. By George, isn’t it a wonderful sight?”
Side by side with Regan, a certain shame steadied Stover. They went silently through the surging, arriving multitude, all intoxicated with the joy and zest of the great game. In and out, newsboys howling papers with headlines and pictures of the team thrust their wares before their eyes, while a pestiferous swarm of strange peddlers shrieked:
“Get your colors here!”
“Get your winnin’ color.”
Suddenly Stover saw a headline—his name and the caption:
Stover the Weak Spot
“Let’s get a paper,” he said, nervously drawn to it.
“No you don’t,” said Regan, who had seen it. “Come on, now, get out of here, someone might walk on your foot or stick a hatpin in your eye.”
“What time is it?”
“Time to be getting back.”
“Tom, do you know how much I weigh?” said Stover irrelevantly.
“What the deuce?”
“I weigh one hundred and forty-one pounds,” said Stover solemnly, as though imparting a State secret.
“Go on, be loony if you want,” said Regan. “I’ve seen bruisers before a fight act like high school girls. If you’ve got something on your mind, why talk it out, it’ll do you good.”
“It’s awful—it’s awful,” said Stover, shaking his head.
“What’s awful?”
“It’s awful to think I’m the weak spot, that if they only had a decent fullback there would be a chance. I’ve no right there—everyone knows it, and everyone’s groaning about it.”
“Go on.”
“That’s all,” said Stover, a little angry.
“Well, then come on, I’m getting hungry.”
“Hungry! Tom, I’d like to knock the spots out of you,” said Dink, laughing despite himself.
“Dink, old bantam,” said Regan, resting his huge paw on Stover’s shoulder in rough affection, “you’re all right. I say so and I know it. Now shut up and come on.”
X
Almost before he knew it Stover was in the car and the wheels were moving at last irresistibly toward the field. There was no longer any pretense in those last awful moments that had in them all the concentrated hopes and fears of the weeks that had rushed away. The faces of his own teammates were only gray faces without identity. He saw someone’s lips moving incessantly, but he did not remember whose they were. Opposite him, another man was bending over, his head hidden in his hands. Someone else at his side was nervously locking and unlocking his fingers, breathing short, hard breaths. He remembered only the stillness of it all, the forgetfulness of others, the set stares, and Charlie de Soto fidgeting on the seat and nervously humming something irrelevant.
Caught up in this unreasoning intensity of a young nation, filled, too, with this exaggerated passion of combat, Stover leaned back limply. Outside, the street was choked with hilarious parties packed in rushing carriages, blue or orange-and-black. Horns and rattles sounded like tiny sounds in his ears, and his eyes saw only grotesque blurred shapes that swept across them.
“I’ll get ’em off—they won’t block any on me—they mustn’t,” he said to himself, closing his eyes.
Then, on top of the draining weakness that had him in its grip, came a sudden feeling of nausea, and he knew suddenly what the man opposite him with his head in his hands was fighting. He put his arms over the ledge of the door, and rested his head on them, too weak to care that everyone saw him, gulping in the stinging air in desperation.
All at once there came a grinding jerk and the car stopped. From the inside came Tompkins’ angry, rasping voice:
“Everyone up! Get out there! Quick! On the jump!”
Instinctively obedient, the vertigo left him, his mind cleared. He was out in the midst of the bobbing mass of blue sweaters, moving as in a nightmare through the black spectators, seeing ahead the mammoth stands, hearing the dull, engulfing roars as one hears at night the approaching surf.
Then they were struggling through the human barriers, and he saw something green at the bottom of a stormy pit, and a great growing roar of welcome smote him as of a descending gale, the hysterical cry of the American multitude, a roar acclaiming Yale.
“All ready!” said Dana’s unrecognizable voice somewhere ahead. “On the trot, now!”
Instantly he was sweeping on to the field and up along the frantic stands of suddenly released blue. All indecision, all weakness, went with the first hoarse cry from his own. Something hot and alive seemed to flow back into his veins, and with every stride the
