CHAPTER XIIIHERO WORSHIP
During his college course David made a number of visits to his old school. He was interested in observing Ralph’s progress and hearing his experiences and in reviving his own memories, but he enjoyed the visits most for the opportunity they gave him to be again with Ruth Davenport. He learned from Ralph that several of the unmarried masters were attentive to her, and the information roused his jealousy and resentment. Her dealings with two or three of those creatures in his presence as she gave them tea filled him with gloom; he feared she had learned to flirt. But afterwards, when she treated him with a special consideration and interest, he knew that she really was not a flirt at all, but just what she had always been, a kind, sweet-tempered, honest girl. It did not excite his jealousy to have her ask him about Lester, not even when she said that she thought Lester was the most attractive person who had ever passed through the school. David knew that she hadalways thought that, and, as it was true and Lester was his friend, it was right that she should think it.
“Why doesn’t he come up to see us oftener, David?” she asked. “He’s too busy with his new friends, I suppose.”
No, it wasn’t that, David was sure; but of course Lester was very busy, with athletics and college organizations and—and—
“Studies, too,” said Ruth. “Poor Lester! But you must tell him, David, that if he will only come up and see us I will promise not to lecture him the way I used to do. How angry I once made him! Do you still help him with his lessons?”
David assured her that he did not and that Lester was getting on very well. When he returned to Cambridge from that visit, he told Lester of Ruth’s interest and of the way some of the masters like young Blatch and the middle-aged Manners seemed to be pursuing her. Lester scowled and said that she was too good for any masters at St. Timothy’s.
“She’s grown prettier,” said David.
“It’s too bad a girl like that should be stuck up there in the country by herself—no society but that of kids and school-teachers. I guess I’ll have to go and see her some Sunday.”
The popular youth performed this missionary act more than once. He returned with impressions of the old school that were vaguely displeasing to David. The rector and the masters were “narrow” and “provincial,” and the boys were an uncouth lot of young ruffians. As for Ruth, however, she met the requirements even of Lester’s exacting taste. There wasn’t a better-looking or better-dressed girl in Boston, and he supposed she didn’t spend a tenth of what most of the Boston girls spent on clothes. Really it would be a shame if young Blatch or that pompous fool, Manners, should be successful in his grossly obvious maneuvers and imprison her for life in that dull little community. A girl with her looks and social gifts was qualified to take a prominent place anywhere. Some old St. Timothy’s boy ought to rescue her from the dismal fate that threatened.
“Of course she’s not very old yet,” David suggested.
Lester could not see anything reassuring in that fact. Just because she was so young and inexperienced, had seen so little of the world outside, she was all the more in danger of becoming the prey of a greenhorn like Blatch or a fossil like Manners.
Convincing as was Lester’s eloquence upon the subject, the emotion that inspired it seemed transitory; his visits to St. Timothy’s continued to be infrequent, and as time passed without Ruth’s making the sacrifice that he dreaded, his agitation on that score subsided. Moreover, he had, as he often said, other things to think about than girls. The senior year found him with popularity undiminished, yet disappointed because an honor on which for two years he had counted had been denied him. Although he was regarded as the most brilliant player on the varsity football team, he had not been elected captain. He talked about it freely with David, who felt that the prize should have been awarded to him.
“They think I’m not steady enough to be captain,” said Lester. “I’m not saying Farrar isn’t a better man for the job, but I don’t see why they think I’m unsteady. I’ve never yet in any big game lost my head or my nerve.”
“It isn’t that they think you’re unsteady,” David explained, “but that they have an idea you’re too temperamental; it’s a part of being brilliant. They think that, if you had the responsibility of being captain, your own playing would suffer. In my opinion they’re wrong, but it isn’t anything against you that there is that feeling.”
“Oh, it’s all right; I don’t want you to think I’m kicking. And it may very well be that I wouldn’t show at my best under responsibility, though I hate to think so.”
David himself was captain of his class eleven; he was not regarded as too temperamental. Nearly every day after he had put his team through their drill he would watch the last few minutes of the varsity eleven’s practice; he would follow Lester’s work with special interest. Lester was a picturesque player; he scorned the protection of a head guard, and his fair hair shone even in the feeble November light and made him recognizable for spectators who could not identify helmeted players. He was the fleetest of all the backs; there was no one who was his peer for running in a broken field; again and again during the practice games the bleachers resounded with applause for the bareheaded figure, the personification of indomitable energy and ingenious skill, who wove and forced his way for twenty or thirty yards through furious attacking foes. To the uncritical observer his achievements always seemed more single-handed than they were; possibly in choosing to do without the conventional headgear, and thus render himself more conspicuous, he was aware that he must producethat effect. He often talked rather patronizingly about people who had no sense of dramatic values.
David, in his brief daily glimpses of his friend’s showy performances, felt occasional stings of envy through his thrills of admiration. What a splendid thing to achieve, what an exploit forever after to look back upon—making the varsity team! Since his first day as a freshman he had hoped that some time he might accomplish it, and now here he was a senior and not even a substitute—not even a substitute on the second eleven!
It hurt him to find that Lester was reckoning his success in athletics as a business asset on which to realize later.
“You’ve given up all idea of studying medicine?” David asked.
“Yes. I’m tired of study and examinations. I want to get to work and make a pile of money. I feel I can do it, too, and I don’t feel I could ever do it being a doctor. Besides, as I said, a varsity football record that’s really good will give a man a great start in business, and I might as well take advantage of it. A fellow with such a record can begin in Boston or New York, and everybody on State Street or Wall Street knowsabout him and is glad to see him. It would be foolish not to make the most of an opportunity.”
David recognized the force of the argument and at the same time felt that there was something distasteful in Lester’s readiness to lay hold of it. He wondered why it was distasteful, and could not answer, except that perhaps it represented a too egotistical and self-centered point of view, one that was concerned with Lester’s future fortunes rather than with the success of the team.
David’s own football performance was after all successful enough to satisfy his modest soul. His team won the class championship, defeating first the juniors and then the freshmen; David’s part in the victories was conspicuous. He played at left end and was the strongest player both in attack and in defense; when the deciding game had been won his team mates bore him from the field in triumph, and the senior class, assembling in front of the locker building, made his name the climax of their cheers. That was gratifying enough to David; perhaps it brought as much pleasure to the blind man and the girl who lingered beyond the edge of the crowd. David had caught a glimpse of them among the spectators when he had chased a ball that was kicked out of bounds; he had feltat the moment a fresh flow of affection for Mr. Dean, a sudden warm sense of Katharine Vance’s charm. He carried the ball out and threw himself with new enthusiasm into the next play. The interest that had caused those two to come and see this game—it must be well repaid!
After he had dressed he hurried home—not to his college room, but to his mother’s house. He found Katharine and Mr. Dean recounting his achievements to a proud woman whose hands trembled so that she could hardly make tea.
“David,” she said, “I couldn’t come and see you play; I’m always so frightened for fear you’ll get hurt. They tell me you did splendidly.”
“The team did,” said David. “Weren’t you people nice to come down!”
“Katharine is an excellent interpreter,” remarked Mr. Dean. “I never had a better pair of eyes. As for my ears, they were quite gratified by what they heard at the end. It was a pity, Mrs. Ives, that you missed that feature of the occasion.”
“Yes,” said David, pleased and embarrassed. “Wasn’t it silly of the crowd?”
“If it was, then Mr. Dean and I were silly, too,” said Katharine. “We hoped you heard us,we came out so strong on ‘I-i-i-ives!’ at the end. I think that Mrs. Ives ought to know just how it sounded, don’t you, Mr. Dean?”
“Quit it!” cried David; but Mr. Dean chuckled and said:
“Quite right, Katharine; you lead the cheering, and I’ll come in.”
“One, two, three,” said Katharine; and she and Mr. Dean, standing in the middle of the room, shouted:
“Rah, rah, rah; rah, rah, rah; rah, rah, rah; I-i-ives!”
While the echoes died, remote sounds betrayed Maggie’s efforts to suppress her mirth.
“Dear me, I do wish I’d been there!” said Mrs. Ives. “It makes me more proud of you than ever, David.”
“Katharine’s a tease,” replied David. “But I shouldn’t have thought it of Mr. Dean.”
After Katharine had gone, Mr. Dean asked David to describe the whole game to him. “Of course,” said the blind man, “Katharine helped me to follow it, but she didn’t know the players, and so we missed some things. That first touchdown, just how was it made?”
So David described the game in detail andafterwards asked Mr. Dean whether it had been on his initiative or on Katharine’s that he had gone.
“Oh, Katharine suggested it. I shouldn’t have imposed myself on her. But she came over here for me and fairly dragged me out of the house; said she knew I wanted to go to David’s game. She’s a nice girl, David.”
“She’s about as good as they come.”
“Was she looking especially pretty to-day, David?”
“Why, I don’t know. Perhaps. What do you say, mother?”
“Yes, I think she was. She had on her new winter hat, and it was very becoming.”
“What made you ask that question, Mr. Dean?”
“I wondered if it wasn’t the fact. Sometimes I seem to feel people’s looks. Perhaps it’s the happiness in their voices—if it’s greater than usual; perhaps it’s something too subtle to express. I did have the feeling that Katharine was looking her prettiest to-day. You’d call her a pretty girl, wouldn’t you?”
“In some ways; nice-looking; attractive,” qualified the scrupulous David.
“She’s very pretty, she’s lovely,” declared Mrs. Ives, impatient with her son for his reservations.“I don’t know where you’ll see a prettier girl!”
“Well, there’s Ruth Davenport and Marion Bradley,” David suggested. “Katharine may be just as attractive, but I don’t know that you would call her as pretty. By the way, Lester has invited Ruth to come down to the Yale game, and he’s asked me to look after her for him. I thought it might be a good idea, mother, if you invited her to stay here that night and had a little tea for her after the game.”
“Why, of course,” said Mrs. Ives; and Mr. Dean expressed his pleasure.
Ruth wrote that she was “thrilled” to accept the invitation. And on the morning of the game, when David met her at the station, he thought that he had never seen any one so happy. Indeed, for a long time afterwards in musing moments the memory of her as she had appeared that day when he first caught sight of her would arise before him—a slender figure in a black pony coat with a white fur round her neck and a black velvet hat on her head; she waved her white muff at him while a greeting fairly glowed from her pink cheeks and bright eyes and laughing lips.
“Lester was sorry that he couldn’t meet youhimself,” David said. “But the morning of the game they have to keep quiet and avoid excitement.”
“Gracious! Would I be excitement?”
David reddened under Ruth’s merry glance. If Lester knew, wouldn’t he want to kick him!
“I’m very well satisfied with the arrangement,” Ruth said. “I can see Lester play, and I can sit and talk with you. It will all be such fun. I’ve never seen a Harvard-Yale game. How nice of your mother to ask me down for it! And what luck to have such a heavenly day! Oh, David, I know I’m going to have the best time of my whole life!”
“If we lick Yale,” said David.
“I suppose that will be necessary. But I feel we shall; I feel that nothing will happen to spoil the good time that I’m going to have.”
On the way to Cambridge David tried to tell her about Lester—his brilliancy, his popularity, his magnificent success. But she turned him from that theme and began putting questions about his own accomplishments. She drew from him the admission that he had captained his class eleven and that it had won the championship, that he had been taken into a certain club, that he stooda chance of getting a degreemagna cum laude; afterwards David’s cheeks burned when he thought it all over; he must have appeared a veritable monster of egotism. She conducted her researches so skillfully that the quivering subject was hardly aware of them even while reluctantly yielding up its riches. David wondered how, when he had been making this egregious display of himself, he could possibly have imagined that he was having a good time!
One thing he was sure of: if she enjoyed the day as much as she appeared to do, her enjoyment was not wholly at his expense.
“It’s all such an adventure for me!” she confided to him. “I love to get away from the school now and then and meet new people and see old friends. Am I going to see Mr. Dean, David?”
“Of course you are. He’s looking forward to it. He told me to bring you out to the house just as quick as I could. We’re to have an early lunch and then start for the game. Afterwards mother has asked a few people in for tea, and Lester’s coming.”
“Oh, what fun!” caroled Ruth. “And what a heavenly day! I hope every one will have a good time to-day!”
“Every one except Yale,” said David, and she laughed.
“Can’t you sometimes enjoy a game even though you’re beaten, David?”
“I can,” he replied. “But Yale can’t.”
“My, but you’re prejudiced!”
He admitted that perhaps he was. “Of course Yale’s a great place, and we should hate to have to get on without her. I dare say the Yale men feel the same way about Harvard. And if it weren’t for Yale, we shouldn’t be having this day, one of the finest days in the whole year.”
“Isn’t it!” cried Ruth. “Three cheers for Yale!”
In David’s eyes she radiated charm and happiness and good will, and her least utterance sounded musical to his ears. He was sure that she must inevitably win the heart of every man and woman that she met. There was no question but that she won his mother’s. At luncheon Mrs. Ives beamed over the good report that Ruth brought about Ralph. He was such a nice boy; every one at St. Timothy’s liked him. Mr. Dean questioned her eagerly about the masters and the life at the school. She gave him lively answers filled with gay anecdotes.
After luncheon, when she and David were starting for the game, she said to Mr. Dean, “I wish you were coming too.”
“I go only to David’s games now,” Mr. Dean answered with a smile. Then, as she put her hand into his, he said: “It’s good to hear your voice again, my dear. I should like to see how the little girl has grown.”
David saw Ruth’s eyes suddenly grow moist and bright. “I’m just the same, Mr. Dean,” she replied, “though I hope my hair is generally tidier than it used to be.”
She was silent for a while after leaving the house; David liked her silence and the emotion that it signified. Wasn’t it her quick and soft compassion that had always made big boys as well as little open-hearted with Ruth?
Soon they were in the full tide of the stream that bubbled and rustled and flashed and rippled on its flow to Soldiers’ Field. The sun was shining; blue flags and crimson were waving; a brass band somewhere ahead was braying; gray-headed graduates, fuzzy-chinned freshmen, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and sweethearts, all were bustling and trudging, gay and eager; and the ceaseless cries of ticket speculators and venders of souvenirs,banners, and toy balloons made the very air alive with excitement. In all the throng no one’s face was brighter, happier, more expectant than Ruth’s. And no one’s face was prettier, thought David.
She was too much excited to talk, except in exclamations, too much excited after they took their seats in the Stadium and looked down upon the empty field and across at the bank of spectators who were cheering for Yale and waving blue flags. All the preliminary cheering and singing, the figures of the bareheaded cheer leaders leaping about in front of the sections, brandishing megaphones and making every movement of arm and leg and body in a kind of fanatical, frenzied unison, one with another—all before a single athlete had put in an appearance—did not strike either Ruth or David as ridiculous. David responded loyally to every behest of the cheer leader immediately confronting him and in the intervals pointed out the celebrities to Ruth. “That fellow who leads our section is Henderson, captain of the crew; that’s Colby, captain of the nine, next to him; there’s Burke, leader of the glee club—” and so on. Ruth looked at each one with just a moment of interest in the great man and then renewed her bright, wandering, excited gaze over the whole lively, sparkling scene.
There was a more exuberant outbreak on the Yale side, and the Yale eleven, attended by innumerable substitutes, came rushing on the field in a grim and violent manner. Immediately there followed an exuberant outbreak on the Harvard side, and the Harvard eleven, attended by innumerable substitutes, came rushing on the field in a grim and violent manner. They crouched and charged, then crouched and charged again, while rampant individuals of apparently uncontrollable strength and energy booted footballs to enormous heights and for unbelievable distances.
“There’s Lester!” cried Ruth. “How nice that he’s not wearing a head guard, for now I can always pick him out. But I do hope his head won’t get hurt.”
“Lester never gets hurt,” David assured her.
Not only in the eyes of Ruth and David did Lester shine preëminent that afternoon. He flashed out of scrimmages, carrying the ball; he made long end runs, carrying the ball; he ran the ball back on kicks, dodging and squirming through a broken field; he made the first touchdown of the game, and a few minutes later the second. David shouted himself hoarse over Lester’s exploits, and Ruth, though she did not join in the cheering,had a proud and happy look in her eyes. He was her hero; and perhaps even while he performed these wonderful feats he thought of her.
Toward the end of the second half he was taken out of the game; as he left the field all the spectators whose sympathies were with Harvard stood up and cheered him.
“Why did he leave?” asked Ruth. “He’s not hurt, is he?”
“No, but the game’s won, and the coaches are sending Wilcox in to get his ‘H.’ Wilcox has been a substitute for three years, and this is his last chance.”
Ruth understood perfectly. She thought it probable that Lester had intimated to the coaches that it would be a nice thing to do. Certainly it was just the sort of thoughtful, generous act that she should expect of Lester.
Now that Lester was no longer playing, Ruth felt that the game had lost in interest. But it was soon over, and then Harvard undergraduates and graduates swarmed out on the field and proceeded to engage in the peculiar collegiate folk-dancing that symbolizes and celebrates victory. Behind the blaring brass band, which marched and countermarched, ranks of young men zigzagged tumultuously,passing at last, one after another in swift succession, under the crossbar of the goal while over it passed the equally swift procession of their hats—to be recovered or not, as the case might be, by the rightful owners. In this flinging away of cherished headgear there seemed to the observer an almost religious note of mad and joyous sacrifice, a note accented by the mystical dusk of the November afternoon that caused a lighted match to flare like an altar fire, and the end of a cigar to glow like a censer.
Ruth found the spectacle first ludicrous and then ridiculously emotional; she turned to David and saw what she interpreted as pious yearning in his eyes.
“David,” she said, giving him a little nudge, “you go down and throw your hat over the goal for me. I’ll wait here for you.”
“Would you mind? I’ll be right back.”
David was off instantly. Ruth watched him go springing down the tiers of seats, saw him sprint out on the field and get sucked into the mazes of the serpentining throng. She lost sight of him then and, raising her eyes, looked across the field to the sections that the Yale men and their friends occupied. A good many of them were stoicallywaiting to see the end of the demonstrations; they no longer waved their flags or raised their voices in fruitless cheers, but preserved a certain passive constancy in defeat that touched Ruth’s heart. “You poor things!” she thought. “It is hard, isn’t it? I’m glad I’m not feeling as you are.”
She was still contemplating them with this pharisaic yet not uncharitable thought when David rejoined her.
“Goodness!” she said. “Is thatyourhat, David?”
“Yes,” he admitted, fingering the battered ruin gingerly. “It got stepped on.”
“A perfectly good hat a moment ago,” said Ruth. “Aren’t men silly!”
“It’s all in a good cause,” returned David with conviction.
In Mrs. Ives’s drawing-room an eager party assembled to greet the conquering hero. Katharine Vance sat behind the tea-table; Marion Bradley and half a dozen other young ladies, all decked out befittingly either with crimson chrysanthemums or American-beauty roses, chatted and watched the door through which Lester must enter. They were interested, too, in Ruth; from one to another had passed the word that she was the girl whomLester had himself invited! Possibly it made their scrutiny of her a little critical, but she was so full of joyous expectancy that she was not aware of it. Besides, there were other old friends from St. Timothy’s coming up to speak to her, and Mr. Dean sat where he could hear her voice and so received much of her attention.
At last there was the entrance for which they all were waiting. It was not at all in the manner of the conquering hero that Lester Wallace presented himself, but rather as a laughing youth disposed to forestall embarrassing compliments. He shook hands with every one, blushed becomingly, and said little. Only Marion Bradley seemed to watch him with a smile that might be interpreted as perhaps mildly disparaging, gently mocking. David observed it and thought with indignation, “Pity Marion can’t show a little enthusiasm for once!”
Perhaps Lester was not aware of any coolness; surely the interest shown by the other young ladies was gratifying enough. But after he had exchanged a few words with each of them, it was to Ruth that he turned and with Ruth that he talked, even though he intentionally allowed the magic of his smile and the glamour of his glanceto shine for other admiring eyes. He could not stop long; that evening the team were to dine together and celebrate their victory. But he would be round the next day with a motor car—if Ruth would go to drive with him?
Katharine Vance had been watching David perhaps no less than she had been observing Lester. She had noticed that his eyes were turned most of the time toward Ruth.
Later, when the guests had departed, David walked with Katharine to the gate.
“Lester doesn’t seem a bit swelled up over it all does he?” he said. “How fine it must be to be in his shoes!”
“I don’t care for so much hero worship,” Katharine replied. “It makes me sort of mad. After all, David, it takes just as fine qualities to be the hero of a scrub team as of the varsity.”