It was the air Stover loved. He waited respectfully, while Le Baron shook a score of hands, impatient for the moment to begin and the opportunity to have his name told from lip to lip.
“I’m going to be captain at Yale,” he said to himself, with a sudden fantastic, grandiloquent fury. “I will if it’s in me.”
“We’ll run down to Heub’s,” said Le Baron, free at last, “get a good last meal before going into training. You look in pretty fit shape.”
“I’ve kept so all summer.”
“Who’s over in your house?”
Stover named them.
“They weren’t my crowd at Andover, but they’re good fellows,” said Le Baron, listening critically. “Hunter especially. Here we are.”
A minute later they had found a table in the restaurant crowded with upper classmen, and Le Baron was glancing down the menu.
“An oyster cocktail, a planked steak—rare; order the rest later.” He turned to Stover. “Guess we’d better cut out the drinks. We’ll stand the gaff better tomorrow.”
There was in his voice a quiet possession, as if he had already assumed the reins of Stover’s career.
“Are you out for the eleven again?” said Stover respectfully.
“Yes. I’ll never do any better than a sub, but that’s what counts. We’re up against an awfully stiff proposition this year. The team’s got to be built out of nothing. There’s Dana, the captain, now, over at the table in the corner.”
“Where?” said Stover, fired at the thought.
Le Baron pointed out the table, detailing to him the names of some of the coaches who were grouped there.
When Stover had dared to gaze for the first time on the face of the majestic leader, he experienced a certain shock. The group of past heroes about him were laughing, exchanging reminiscences of past combats; but the face of Dana was set in seriousness, too sensitive to the responsibility that lay heavier than the honor on his young shoulders. Stover had not thought of his leader so.
“I guess it’s going to be a bad season,” he said.
“Yes; we may have to take our medicine this year.”
Several friends of Le Baron’s stopped to shake hands, greeting Stover always with that appraising glance which had amused him in Reynolds who had first sat in inquisition.
He began to be conscious of an ever-widening gulf separating him and Le Baron, imposed by all the subtle, still uncomprehended incidents of the night, which gradually made him see that he had found, not a friend, but a protector. A certain natural impulsiveness left him; he answered in short sentences, resenting a little this sudden, not yet defined sense of subjection.
But the hum of diners was about him, the unknown intoxication of lights, the prevailing note of joy, the free concourse of men, the vibrant note of good fellowship, good cheer, and the eager seizing of the zest of the hour. The men he saw were the men who had succeeded—a success which unmistakably surrounded them. He, too, wished for success acutely, almost with a throbbing, gluttonous feeling, sitting there unknown.
All at once Dana, passing across the room, stopped for a handshake and a word of greeting to Le Baron. Stover was introduced, rising precipitately, to the imminent danger of his plate.
“Stover from Lawrenceville?” said Dana.
“Yes, sir.”
The captain’s eye measured him carefully, taking in the wiry, spare frame, the heavy shoulders, and the nervous hands, and then stayed on the clean-cut jaw, the direct blue glance, and the rebellious rise of sandy hair.
“End, of course,” he said at last.
“Yes, sir.”
“About a hundred and fifty-four?”
“One hundred and fifty, sir, stripped.”
“Ever played in the back field?”
“No, sir.”
“Report with the varsity squad tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s a type of man we’re proud of,” said Le Baron. “Came here from Exeter, waited at Commons first two years; everyone likes him. He has a tough proposition here this year, though—supposing we dig out.”
In the room the laughter was rising, and all the little nervous noises of the clash of plate and cutlery. Stover would have liked to stay, to yield to the contagion, to watch with eager eyes the opposite types, all under the careless spell of the beginning year.
The city was black about them as they stepped forth, the giant elms flattened overhead against the blurred mists of the night, like curious water weeds seen from below.
They went in silence directly toward the campus. Once or twice Le Baron started to speak and then stopped. At length he said:
“Come this way.”
They passed by Osborne Hall, and the Brick Row with the choked display of the Co-op below, and, crossing to the dark mass of the Old Library, sat down on the steps.
Before Stover stretched all the lighted panorama of the college and the multiplied strewn lights against the mysteries of stone and brick—lights that drew him to the quiet places of a hundred growing existencies—affected him like the lights of the crowded restaurant and the misty reflections of the glassy streets. It was the night, the mysterious night that suddenly had come into his boyish knowledge.
It was immense, unfathomable—this spectacle of a massed multitude. It was all confounded, stirring, ceaseless, feverish in its brilliant gaiety, fleeting, transitory, mocking. It was of the stage, theatric. It brought theatric emotions, too keenly sensitized, too sharply overwhelming. He wished to flee from it in despair of ever conquering, as he wished to conquer, this world of stirring ambitions and shadowy and fleeting years.
“I’m going to do for you,” said Le Baron’s voice, breaking the charm—“I’m going to do what someone did for me when I came here last year.”
He paused a moment, a little, too, under the spell of the night, perhaps, seeking how best to choose his words.
“It is a queer place you’re coming into, and many men fail for not understanding it in time. I’m going to tell you a few things.”
Again he stopped. Stover, waiting, heard across
