Part 24 (2/2)
We'll get you through. Have you learned those pieces I gave you?”
Billings straightened up and recited in a stumbling sing-song, ”As Sh.e.l.ley beautifully says, 'I could lie down like a sick child and weep ... and weep ... and weep!...'”
”'Away this life of woe,'” prompted Grant. ”And it's like a 'tired child.'... No, don't change it! It'll look less as if you were copying a crib if you don't get it quite right. All right for that. Now, let's have the other ones.”
At this point, Billings said violently in very forcible language, that poems were all such d.a.m.n silly rot he couldn't learn them. And Grant, unsurprised and peremptory, answered that it didn't make a d.a.m.ned bit of difference how silly and rotten they were, they could be learned.
”You've got brains enough to get a racing-dope sheet by heart, you can memorize poetry too. Now, your time's up. Beat it over to the Library where you can't talk and learn all _three_ pieces! Remember you're to work 'em in, no matter what he asks. And if you have a chance, praise Sh.e.l.ley and knock Matthew Arnold. That's his line.”
He turned to Neale, ”You're Greenway, aren't you, with two years'
conditions in French B?”
”No,” said Neale, ”I'm Crittenden.”
”Oh, are you? Not on my list. You ought to have reported before. I can't do everything at the last minute. No matter, I'll give you till Greenway shows up. He's only a sub-end anyway, and we're lousy with ends. What did _you_ flunk?”
”I didn't flunk anything,” Neale admitted, half-ashamed that he might be considered a grind.
Grant jumped up. ”What, _nothing_! And on the football squad, too.” He stared hard at Neale as at a strange animal, and conjectured aloud, ”Well, you must be a dub, of course. Never knew a Varsity man whose brain-cavity wasn't stuffed with cabbage-leaves.”
Neale apparently showed some of the alarm this caused him, for the upper-cla.s.sman added, ”Oh, you'll get your chance just the same. Judging by the number of b.o.o.bs Alpine and I are coaching, any dub who is eligible will have a smell at the Varsity, at least for the early games, till we can shove the regular Varsity men through their conditions.”
”EVERYBODY OVER TO THE GYM.,” roared a voice from the lower hallway.
Neale tossed his derby on one of the unpreempted cots and ran downstairs. As he bounded down flight after flight he could hear Grant leaning over the top banister yelling to the Manager to have Greenway found and delivered to him at once.
It was great to breathe the sweaty air of the dressing-room again, to strip and pull on your rough jersey and feel it rubbing the skin of your shoulders, great to hail the men you knew and have them slap you on the back.
”ALL OVER.... On the jump!” The squad clattered out, their cleats sc.r.a.ping and slipping on the marble steps.
Practice that afternoon was what the coaches called light--that is, no bones were broken: they fell on the ball, and it gladdened Neale's heart to see the new men hop into the air and bang down on one hip, just as he used to last season. They tackled the dummy, they went down under punts that sultry September afternoon--all of them, even the line men, time after time, till the sweat soaked even through their elbow-pads. Neale was dog-tired as he hobbled back to the dressing-room and pulled off his dripping jersey. What luxury to slip under the shower, hot first till the dirt was all off, then turn the handle, cool, cool, cooler, cold--to lean forward and feel it patter on your back, lean backward and feel the cold hard drops sting your face and chest. As he lay in Pompeian ease on the rubbing table, Josh went so far as to tell him that his muscles were in pretty fair shape compared to some of them. That was the timber-cruising trip. And how he tore into the roast-beef that night! It was good to be alive--to be a Soph.--to be on the football squad!
Grant's prophecy turned out correct. Four of the regular Varsity men were debarred by the faculty committee and the eligible subs made the most of their opportunity. One of the vacant places was left half-back and Neale, who that summer had grown some flesh and muscle on his lanky limbs and now weighed a hundred and sixty-three stripped, put his whole soul into the quest and nosed out Biffy McFadden for the job. McFadden knew more than Neale (the coach made no secret of Neale's lack of sophistication) but he weighed less and was only a little faster.
So Neale was given, although grudgingly, his chance and took it as though it had been his one chance to save his soul alive. He played against Rutgers, proud, half-scared, yet rea.s.sured at lining up by the side of big Tod McAlpine, and was fairly translated when he went over the line (just as easily as if it had been in practice) for one of Columbia's five touchdowns. Against Williams a week later, he played again and did nothing either very good or very bad. Just before the Harvard game, Garland was squeezed through a special examination in Latin and after that Neale had no chance for the Varsity. But he _was_ considered about neck and neck with Biffy as first sub for the back-field, and he and Biffy grew together in a loyal comrades.h.i.+p, as brothers-in-arms.
Like a young tree which suddenly puts out a long new shoot in a new direction, Neale learned a lot of things that autumn, different from anything he had learned before. In the first place, living in the constant unrepressed society of thirty other young men, he acquired a good deal of social ease of a rough-and-tumble sort, learned much profanity, many foul and a few funny stories by the aid of which he was able to piece together the isolated facts he had already picked up about s.e.x, and appear to his brothers a great deal more sophisticated than he was.
He also learned much technical football: to pick openings in a broken field, to jump from a crouching start the instant the ball began to move, to find his stride and be going at top speed in three paces, instinctively to hurdle when the defense was on the ground, to bull over it with churning knees when it was waist high, to lower his head and ram through when it was standing up, and always to kick, crawl, squirm the ball forward even if it was only a half an inch.
He learned a great deal more than that. All that autumn he played football, thought football, dreamed football, lived football. The savage Spartan football code was his code: to do anything, everything for a team-mate, for the team; to fight as hard in midfield with the score hopelessly against him as half a yard from the enemy's goal-line; to endure the agony of being tackled on muscle-bruised thighs, to get up and drive back as hard as ever into the line to the same certain torment; to go to any length to put an opponent out of the game--any length except being caught and having his team penalized by the officials; and no matter to what outbreaks of emotion his exhausted body and over-strained nerves might give way in the dressing-room, to walk out of it with his jaw set, his face impa.s.sive and never let an enemy rooter see a tear in his eye. It was by no means the education in the humanities and liberal arts with which the University was supposed to be providing him, but an education of a kind, it certainly was. Above all, at a period when his raw new personality was all one huge void, clamoring for something to fill it, football filled his life full to the brim. There was no vacuum left to be filled either by culture or deviltry.
All through the rest of that in-and-out season he played regularly at left half-back on the scrub, relis.h.i.+ng to the full those afternoons when the scrub, with all the best of the decisions, scored on a crippled Varsity; rejoicing even more (for it meant power to the team) when the Varsity struck its gait and pounded rough-shod over the bleeding and prostrate scrub.
After the season Neale found himself ent.i.tled to wear the ”Varsity stripe” and monogram. This gave him a certain position in his cla.s.s. He was somebody. Two fraternities made discreet overtures to him. Neale considered, encouraged Lamma Kappa Pi, which seemed to have more athletic men than the other, was duly pledged and initiated.
And now came a change in his manner of living. The chapter needed roomers to help pay the rent for the Frat. house. Couldn't Brother Crittenden move into a top-floor bedroom? Neale broached the subject to his father and mother, pointing out how much more time he would have for study if he lived near the University. They surprised him by treating the matter with unexpected solemnity and delaying decision for several days; but in the end they gave their consent.
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