Stover at Yale

I

Dink Stover, freshman, chose his seat in the afternoon express that would soon be rushing him to New Haven and his first glimpse of Yale University. He leisurely divested himself of his trim overcoat, folding it in exact creases and laying it gingerly across the back of his seat; stowed his traveling-bag; smoothed his hair with a masked movement of his gloved hand; pulled down a buckskin vest, opening the lower button; removed his gloves and folded them in his breast pocket, while with the same gesture a careful forefinger, unperceived, assured itself that his lilac silk necktie was in snug contact with the high collar whose points, painfully but in perfect style, attacked his chin. Then, settling, not flopping, down, he completed his preparations for the journey by raising the sharp crease of the trousers one inch over each knee—a legendary precaution which in youth is believed to prevent vulgar bagging. Each movement was executed without haste or embarrassment, but leisurely, with the deliberate savoir faire of the complete man of the world he had become at the terrific age of eighteen.

In front of him spasmodic freshmen arrived, struggling from their overcoats in embarrassed plunges that threatened to leave them publicly in their shirt sleeves. That they imputed to him the superior dignity of an upper classman was pleasurably evident to Stover from their covert respectful glances. He himself felt conscious of a dividing-line. He, too, was a freshman, and yet not of them.

He had just ended three years at Lawrenceville, where from a ridiculous beginning he had fought his way to the captaincy of the football eleven and the vice-presidency of the school. He had been the big man in a big school, and the sovereign responsibilities of that anointed position had been, of course, such that he no longer felt himself a free agent. He had been of the chosen, and not all at once could he divest himself of the idea that his slightest action had a certain public importance. His walk had been studiously imitated by twenty shuffling striplings. His hair, parted on the side, had caused a revolution among the brushes and stirred up innumerable indignant cowlicks. His tricks of speech, his favorite exclamations, had become at once lip-currency. At that time golf and golf-trousers were things of unthinkable daring. He had given his approval, appeared in the baggy breeches, and at once the ban on bloomers had been lifted and the Circle had swarmed with the grotesqueries of variegated legs for the first time boldly revealed. He had stood between the school and its tyrants. He had arrayed himself in circumstantial attire—boiled shirt, high collar, and carefully dusted derby—and appeared before the faculty with solemn, responsible face no less than three separate times, to voice the protest of four hundred future American citizens: first, at the insidious and alarming repetition of an abhorrent article of winter food known as scrag-birds and sinkers; second, to urge the overwhelming necessity of a second sleighing holiday; and, third and most important, firmly to assure the powers that be that the school viewed with indignation and would resist to despair the sudden increase of the already staggering burden of the curriculum.

The middle-aged faculty had listened gravely to the grave expounder of such grave demands, had promised reform and regulation in the matter of the sinkers, granted the holiday, and insufficiently modified the brutal attempt at injecting into the uneager youthful mind a little more of the inconsequential customs of the Greeks and Romans.

The Doctor had honored him with his confidence, consulted him on several intimate matters of school discipline—in fact, most undoubtedly had rather leaned upon him. As he looked back upon the last year at Lawrenceville, he could not help feeling a certain wholesome, pleasant satisfaction. He had held up an honest standard, he had played hard but square, disdained petty offenses, seen to the rigorous bringing up of the younger boys, and, as men of property must lend their support to the church, he had even publicly advised a moderate attention to the long classic route which leads to college. He had been the big man in the big school; what new opportunity lay before him?

In the seat ahead two of his class were exchanging delighted conjectures, and their conversation, coming to his ears clearly through the entangled murmur of the car, began to interest him.

“I say, Schley, you were Hotchkiss, weren’t you?”

“Eight mortal years.”

“Got a good crowd?”

“No wonder-workers, but a couple of good men for the line. What’s your Andover crowd like?”

“We had a daisy bunch, but some of the pearls have been sidetracked to Princeton and Harvard.”

“Bought up, eh?”

“Sure,” said the speaker, with the profoundest conviction.

“Big chance, McNab, for the eleven this year,” said Schley, in a thin, anemic, authoritative sort of way. “Play football yourself?”

“Sure—if anyone will kick me,” said McNab, who in fact had a sort of roly-poly resemblance to the necessary pigskin. “Lord, I’m no strength-breaker. I’m a funny man, sidesplitting joker, regular cut-up—didos and all that sort of thing. What are you out for?”

“A good time first, last, and always.”

“Am I? Just ask me!” said McNab explosively; and in a justly aggrieved tone he added: “Lord, haven’t I slaved like a mule ten years to get there! I don’t know how long it’ll last, but while it does it will be a lulu!”

“My old dad gave me a moral lecture.”

“Sure. Opportunity—character—beauty of the classics—hope to be proud of my son—you’re a man now—”

“That’s it.”

“Sure thing. Lord, we’ll be doing the same twenty-five years from now,” said McNab, who thus logically and to his own satisfaction disposed of this fallacy. He added generously, however, with a wave of his hand: “A father ought to talk that way—the right thing—wouldn’t care a flip of a mule’s tail for my dad if he didn’t. And say, by gravy, he sort of got me, too—damned impressive!”

“Really?”

“Honor bright.” A flicker of reminiscent convictions passed over McNab’s frolicking face. “Yes, and I made a lot of resolutions, too—good resolutions.”

“Come off!”

“Well, that was day before yesterday.”

The train started with a sudden crunching. A curious, excited thrill possessed Stover. He had embarked, and the quick plunge into the darkness of the long tunnel had, to his keenly sentimental imagination, something of the dark transition from one world into another. Behind was the known and the accomplished; ahead the coming of man’s estate and man’s freedom. He was his own master at last, free to go and to come, free to venture and to experience, free to know that strange, guarded mystery—life—and free, knowing it, to choose from among it many ways.

And yet, he felt no lack of preparation. Looking back, he could honestly say to himself that where a year ago he had seen darkly now all was clear. He had found himself. He had gambled. He had consumed surreptitiously at midnight a sufficient quantity of sickening beer. He had consorted with men of uncontrollable passions and gone his steady path. He had loved, hopelessly, madly, with all the intensity and honesty of which he was capable, a woman—a slightly older woman—who had played with the fragile wings of his boy’s illusion and left them wounded; he had fought down that weakness and learned to look on a soft cheek and challenging eye with the calm, amused control of a man, who invincibly henceforth would cast his life among men. There was not much knowledge of life, if any, that could come to him. He did not proclaim it, but quietly, as a great conviction, heritage of sorrow and smashing disillusionments, he knew it was so. He knew it all—he was a man; and this would give him an advantage among his younger fellows in the free struggle for leadership that was now opening to his joyful combative nature.

“It’ll be a good fight, and I’ll win,” he said to himself, and his crossed arms tightened with a quick, savage contraction, as if the idea were something that could be pursued, tackled, and thrown headlong to the ground.

“There’s a couple of fellows from Lawrenceville coming up,” said a voice from a seat behind him. “McCarthy and Stover, they say, are quite wonders.”

“I’ve heard of Stover; end, wasn’t he?”

“Yes; and the team’s going to need ends badly.”

It was the first time he had heard his name published abroad. He sat erect, drawing up one knee and locking his hands over it in a strained clasp. Suddenly the swimming vista of the smoky cars disappeared, rolling up into the tense, crowded, banked arena, with white splotches of human faces, climbing like daisy fields that moved restlessly, nervously stirred by the same expectant tensity with which he stood on the open field waiting for his chance to come.

“I like a fight—a good fight,” he said to himself, drawing in his breath; and the wish seemed but a simple one, the call for the joyful shock of bodies in fair combat. And life was nothing else—a battle in the open where courage and a thinking mind must win.

“I’ll bet we get a lot of fruits,” said Schley’s rather calculating voice.

“Oh, some of them aren’t half bad.”

“Think so?”

“I say, what do you know about this society game?”

“Look out.”

“What’s matter?”

“You chump, you never know who’s around you.” As he spoke, Schley sent an uneasy glance back toward Stover, and, dropping his voice, continued: “You don’t talk about such things.”

“Well, I’m not shouting it out,” said McNab, who looked at his more sophisticated companion with a little growing antagonism. “What are you scared about?”

“It’s the class ahead of you that counts,” said Schley hurriedly, “the sophomore and senior societies; the junior fraternities don’t count; if you’re in a sophomore you always go into them.”

“Never heard of the sophomore societies,” said McNab, in a maliciously higher tone. “Elucidate somewhat.”

“There are three: Hé Boulé, Eta Phi, and Kappa Psi,” said Schley, with another uneasy, squirming glance back at Stover. “They’re secret as the deuce; seventeen men in each—make one and you’re in line for a senior.”

“How the deuce did you get on to all this?”

“Oh, I’ve been coached up.”

Something in the nascent sophistication of Schley displeased Stover. He ceased to listen, occupying himself with an interested examination of the figures who passed from time to time in the aisle, in search of returning friends. The type was clearly defined; alert, clean-cut, self-confident, dressed on certain general divisions, affecting the same style of correct hat and collar, with, as distinguishing features, a certain boyish exuberance and a distinct nervous energy.

At this moment an abrupt resonant voice said at his side:

“Got a bit of room left beside you?”

Stover shifted his coat, saying:

“Certainly; come on in.”

He saw a man of twenty-two or -three, with the head and shoulders of a bison, sandy hair, with a clear, blue, steady glance, heavy hands, and a face already set in the mold of stern purpose. He stood a moment, holding a decrepit handbag stuffed to the danger point, hesitating whether to stow it in the rack above, and then said:

“Guess I won’t risk it. That’s my trunk. I’ll tuck it in here.” He settled in the vacant seat, saying: “What are you—an upper classman?”

Something like a spasm passed over the well-ironed shoulders of Schley in front.

“No, I’m not,” said Stover, and, extending his hand, he said: “I guess we’re classmates. My name’s Stover.”

“My name’s Regan—Tom Regan. Glad to know you. I’m sorry you’re not an upper classman, though.”

“Why so?” said Stover.

“I wanted to get a few pointers,” said Regan, in a matter-of-fact way. “I’m working my way through and I want to know the ropes.”

“I wish I knew,” said Stover, with instinctive liking for the blunt elemental force beside him. “What are you going to try?”

“Anything—waiting, to start in with.” He gave him a quick glance. “That’s not your trouble, is it?”

“No.”

“It’s a glorious feeling, to be going up, I tell you,” said Regan, with a sudden lighting up of his rugged features. “Can hardly believe it. I’ve been up against those infernal examinations six times, and I’d have gone up against them six more but I’d down them.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Pretty much everywhere. Des Moines, Iowa, at the last.”

“It’s a pretty fine college,” said Stover, with a new thrill.

“It’s a college where you stand on your own feet, all square to the wind,” said Regan, with conviction.

“That’s what got me. It’s worth everything to get here.”

“You’re right.”

“I wonder if I could get hold of some upper classman,” said Regan uneasily.

That this natural desire should be the most unnatural in the world was already clear to Stover; only, somehow, he did not like to look into Regan’s eyes and make him understand.

“How are you, Stover? Glad to see you.”

Dink, looking up, beheld the erect figure and well-mannered carriage of Le Baron, a sophomore, already a leader of his class, whom he had met during the summer. In the clean-cut features and naturally modulated voice there was a certain finely aristocratic quality that won rather than provoked.

Stover was on his feet at once, a little embarrassed despite himself, answering hurriedly the questions addressed to him.

“Get your room over in York Street? Good. You’re in a good crowd. You look a little heavier. In good shape? Your class will have to help us out on the eleven this year.”

Stover introduced Regan. Le Baron at once was sympathetic, gave many hints, recommended certain people to see, and smilingly offered his services.

“Come around any time; I’ll put you in touch with several men that will be of use to you. Get out for the team right off—that’ll make you friends.” Then, turning to Stover, he added, with just a shade of difference in his tone: “I was looking for you particularly. I want you to dine with me tonight. I’ll be around about seven. Awfully glad you’re here. At seven.”

He passed on, giving his hand to the right and left. Stover felt as if he had received the accolade. Schley ahead was squirmingly impressed; one or two heads across the aisle turned in his direction, wondering who could be the freshman whom Le Baron so particularly took under his protection.

“Isn’t he a king?” he said enthusiastically to Regan, with just a pardonable pleasure in his exuberance. “He made the crew last year—probably be captain; subtackle on the eleven. I played against him two years ago when he was at Andover. Isn’t he a king, though!”

“I don’t know,” said Regan, with a drawing of his lips.

Stover was astounded.

“Why not?”

“Don’t know.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Hard to tell. He sizes up for a man all right, but I don’t think we’d agree on some things.”

The incident momentarily halted the conversation. Stover was a little irritated at what seemed to him his companion’s oversensitiveness. Le Baron had been more than kind in his proffer of help. He was at a loss to understand why Regan should not see him through his eyes.

“You think I’m finicky,” said Regan, breaking the silence.

“Yes, I do,” said Stover frankly.

“I guess you and I’ll understand each other,” said Regan, approving of his directness. “Perhaps I am wrong. But, boy, this place means a great deal to me, and the men that are in it and lead it.”

“It’s the one place where money makes no difference,” said Stover, with a flash—“where you stand for what you are.”

Regan turned to him.

“I’ve fought to get here, and I’ll have a fight to stay. It means something to me.”

The train began to slacken in the New Haven station. They swarmed out on to the platform amid the returning gleeful crowd, crossing and intercrossing, caught up in the hubbub of shouted recognition.

“Hello, Stuffy!”

“There’s Stuffy Davis!”

“Hello, boys.”

“Oh, Jim Thompson, have we your eye?”

“Come on.”

“Get the crowd together.”

“All into a hack.”

“Back again, Bill!”

“Join you later. I’ve got a freshman.”

“Where you rooming?”

“See you at Mory’s.”

Buffeted by the crowd they made their way across the depot to the street.

“I’m going to hoof it,” said Regan, extending his hand. “Glad to have met you. I’ll drop in on you soon.”

Stover watched him go stalwartly through the crowd, his bag under one arm, his soft hat set a little at defiance, looking neither to the right nor left.

“Why the deuce did he say that about Le Baron?” he thought, with a feeling of irritation.

Then, obeying an impulse, he signaled an expressman, consigned his bag, and made his way on foot, dodging in and out of the rapidly filled hacks, where upper classmen sat four on the seat, hugging one another with bearlike hugs.

“Eh, freshman, take off that hat!”

He removed his derby immediately, bowing to a hilarious crowd, who rocked ahead shouting back unintelligible gibes at him.

Others were clinging to car steps and straps.

“Hello, Dink!”

Someone had called him but he could not discover who. He swung down the crowded street to the heart of the city in the rapid dropping of the twilight. There was a dampness underfoot that sent to him long, wavering reflections from early streetlamps. The jumble of the city was in his ears, the hazy, crowded panorama in his eyes, at his side the passing contact of strangers. Everything was multiplied, complex, submerging his individuality.

But this feeling of multitude did not depress him. He had come to conquer, and zest was in his step and alertness in his glance. Out of the churning of the crowd he passed into the clear sweep of the city Common, and, looking up through the mist, for the first time beheld the battlements of the college awaiting him ahead, lost in the hazy elms.

Across the quiet reaches of the Common he went slowly, incredibly, toward these strange shapes in brick and stone. The evening mist had settled. They were things undefined and mysterious, things as real as the things of his dreams. He passed on through the portals of Phelps Hall, hearing above his head for the first time the echoes of his own footsteps against the resounding vault.

Behind him remained the city, suddenly hushed. He was on the campus, the Brick Row at his left; in the distance the crowded line of the fence, the fence where he later should sit in joyful conclave. Somewhere there in the great protecting embrace of these walls were the friends that should be his, that should pass with him through those wonderful years of happiness and good fellowship that were coming.

“And this is it—this is Yale,” he said reverently, with a little tightening of the breath.

They had begun at last—the happy, carefree years that everyone proclaimed. Four glorious years, good times, good fellows, and a free and open fight to be among the leaders and leave a name on the roll of fame. Only four years, and then the world with its perplexities and grinding trials.

“Four years,” he said softly. “The best, the happiest I’ll ever know! Nothing will ever be like them—nothing!”

And, carried away with the confident joy of it, he went toward his house, shoulders squared, with the step of a d’Artagnan and a song sounding in his ears.