Stanford Stories Part 10

"Shadows, you say, mirages of the brain!

I know not, faith, not I; Is it more strange the dead should walk again Than that the quick should die?"

ALDRICH.

"Frank Lyman, Football Manager, Stanford University:

"Blake died three forty-five. Body going East. I return five train. DIEMANN."

When he had sent this message to the University, the instructor in Psychology went gloomily down to the Third and Townsend Street station.

There was nothing more to be done just then. He had telegraphed to the dead athlete's parents; the undertakers had their instructions about shipping the body to Ohio, and the hospital bills would be arranged for later. He slipped into a single seat at the back of the car to avoid the chance of a travelling acquaintance. Now that the business part of it was over, he could not talk to anyone.

The whole thing had been so sudden that it was hard to feel the truth.

Barely a week ago he had stood on the practice field at the University, following Blake's splendid play and listening to the shouting of the crowded bleachers, who idolized their great fullback with the absolute idolatry of a college crowd. It was not easy to believe that all this physical manhood, all this intellectual promise, had been snuffed out like a candle before their very eyes.

Diemann pressed his face against the car window and stared out at the terraced produce gardens slipping dimly by in the early November dusk.

Between him and the dead fullback there had been such companionship as comes now and then to an instructor under thirty and a man nearing the end of his college course. When Diemann, just home from Germany, came West to teach Psychology, he found young Blake the college hero. The new instructor had himself been a noted back; he still hovered somewhere between enthusiast and fiend. At Stanford he at once identified himself with the football men, and they welcomed him gladly as a.s.sistant coach.

During that first season, two years ago, he had come to know and like Fred Blake. Later, the fullback took Diemann's course in Psychology, and to the elder man's gratification, developed a pa.s.sion for the subject.

The instructor recognized the quality of the athlete's mind, and before long the two were working together, reading and discussing along the line of the teacher's special interest.

Coming home from the sober materialism of Leipzig, Diemann had realized more fully than ever how thoroughly the interest in matters occult had pervaded the mind of his native country. To this department of Psychology he turned with an admitted interest in things unseen and a confidence in the restraint of his University training. He felt that he stood barely upon the threshold of the subject, held back by material prejudice and the conservatism of little faith; yet his enthusiasm grew daily. He weighed the evidence of phenomena with an impartiality that other people p.r.o.nounced belief. The att.i.tude of those about him was for the most part unsympathetic. Some to whom he had made furtive confidences called him "spooky," a spiritualist; but he was merely an investigator, trying to be fair. It was an alluring study; perhaps he ran the risk of over-enthusiasm--he had known people who had spiritualized the palpably material--but he was guarding against this danger; it would take an exceptional impulse ever to get him to that point.

It might be that some such temptation was coming to him now. He had just seen his friend pa.s.s into perfect knowledge. Blake had said something to him at the last that still ran in his ears, above the rumble of the train. "I will come back, if there is anything in it all."

Diemann, peering out into the deepening gloom toward the bay sh.o.r.e faintly white in the luminous mist, thought over this last interview of theirs; he was finding it hard to realize that their friendship had ended.

Only eight days before, he remembered, Blake first complained. It was at the practice, and Diemann had given him a shot about his listless work.

Fred had answered:

"I can't help it, Die; I feel dead, somehow. I'm afraid I'm going stale, after all."

He recalled the drawn look on Fred's face. But the boy would come out the next night, for there was only a week before the team would leave for the Springs, and so much had to be done that the captain simply couldn't lay off. Toward the end of the practice, he collapsed. With his arm over Lyman's shoulder he had gone back to the Hall, dragging his feet heavily, while the crowd sat on the bleachers, quiet and frightened. Then the pain came, tearing its way into the heroic body, and the specialist hurriedly summoned from San Francisco had said that they must get him to the hospital.

Now it was all over, and Diemann was following his melancholy telegram to college. He could guess the effect of the news. A week ago the knowledge of Blake's illness had staggered them; the college had grown sick at heart; the city papers published details and the hopes of Berkeley bounded to certainty of victory, for there was only one Blake.

Without him the Stanford team was nothing exceptional, and common estimate gave the chance to California. The Stanford management did the only thing they could do by putting in Ashley, the scrub fullback; but this did not help matters materially. Ashley was a man of beautiful physique, and the most conscientious player on the field. There he stopped. He utterly lacked the head-work that Blake put into the game.

For the star fullback had possessed the football instinct. Beyond his quickness and dash, he had the mysterious faculty of staying with the ball. If he were breaking the line, he placed the hole the fraction of an instant before anyone else perceived it. They used to put him at quarterback in defensive work, and he knew by inspiration where the play was going, so that the line felt confident with him at their backs.

Tom Ashley had nothing of all this. He punted as well as the 'Varsity man, generally better, at the beginning of the season; but was slow with his kick, often fatally slow when the 'Varsity broke through the scrub line. He was late in starting, too, though a strong runner when out in the field. The chief beauty of his game was a quick and certain straight-arm. At another time he might have easily been the 'Varsity fullback, for he put up a hard, steady game from one end of the season to the other; but he had come to college with Blake, and the position had been out of the question. Besides, there were a couple of star halves; he was not good at end, either. So he staid on the Scrub eleven, and worked doggedly for three years.

Diemann lay back in the car seat and aimlessly thought of his work with the subst.i.tute the week of Fred's illness. He had done his best with Ashley, trying to instill into him something of the other's style and dash. He had talked with him long and carefully, showing him the subtle points of Blake's game. During the few practices following the star's departure he had watched the new man faithfully through every play, giving him all his time. He was sorry for the sub. A man could be placed in no more exacting position.

Ordinarily, such a chance would have been a G.o.d-send to a scrub player, for the second-eleven man is the type of the Great Unthanked. Diemann thought of the three months through which the scrub trains religiously, sacrificing beloved pipe, or sorority dance, or week's end trip to Mayfield, or to the Orpheum in town; leaving the "gang" singing in the moonlit Quad, while he turns in at ten according to pledge; faring day after day on the same service of rare beef and oatmeal water; getting pounded and battered about over a hard field every afternoon. Ashley had had three years of this sort of thing--and all for what? At best, to squat in football clothes on the side-lines, Thanksgiving day, with Blake's or Smith's sweater around his neck, waiting for the accident that may give the game to Berkeley at the same time that it lets him trot out on the field, while the crowd calls out to him encouragingly, although they are sick at heart. He goes through each season borne up by the excitement, working breast to breast with the honored 'Varsity, but lost in their mighty shadow. When the big day comes he slips back into the great, wild crowd that lifts the team to its shoulders; worship is not for him, no, nor remembrance either, in that hour of homage. Such men, to the bleachers, are but working material for the 'Varsity; the scrub player is part of an inorganic thing--until his chance comes.

Yet, when fortune gave Ashley his chance he was not to be envied. To be put suddenly, at the last moment almost, into the shoes of the college hero, when the hopes of the University had been centered in that one man, this was too much for any fellow. In his docile way the subst.i.tute went into the trying place, working along as faithfully, and to all appearance with as little concern, as in his old position. Secretly, the responsibility wore upon him. It was a hopeless undertaking to be like Blake; but everybody expected it of him. He tried his best to grasp the patient coaching of Diemann and to put it in play at the right time, but he never seemed quick enough; that cursed slowness of his came in to show how futile it all was. Everything he did or could do as a football man was made negative by the fact that he was in Blake's place. It was a hard graft.

Diemann had known all along what the fellow was suffering, and he pitied him. According to Ashley's room-mate, the boy talked in his sleep, all night sometimes, chiefly about Blake and the play. If they did not look sharp, the coach said to himself, there might be another stale man on their hands.

Diemann had been thinking of this that very morning when he got the doctor's telegram. The shock had driven out every thought of Ashley and the team. All through his work with the sub it had not occurred to him that anything fatal could come to Blake, he had been doing so well; then, without warning, came the message saying that he was sinking. He had got there just in time. Now it was all over and he was going back to college, where Fred would never hear them shout for him again, never feel an arm about him in the long walks over the hills.

When the train drew into Palo Alto, Frank Lyman, the football manager, quiet and sober-faced, stood under the station-light.

"Can you come to dinner with me?" asked Diemann.

The two rode along under the oaks to the instructor's Palo Alto boarding-house. When they were alone upstairs, the manager said:

"Will you tell me about it? You got up there all right?"

"Yes," said the other, slowly; "not any too soon. The boy was conscious at the last, and knew me and talked a bit. It was all football, pretty much. I don't think he was quite clear enough to talk about other things."

"What did he say--that is, anything special?"

"No; he said he was more than sorry that he wasn't going to get in the game; it was his last and he wanted to play, but, of course, it wasn't his fault, and the college wouldn't think he had thrown them down. He'd never been a quitter, he said."

"No, never," said the manager.

"He went on in that strain a good deal; said that he wished that he could have stayed longer, just to play for them again. At the end he pressed my hand and said: 'I'll come back somehow, Die, if there is anything in it.'"

The Psychology instructor had spoken half in revery. He added quickly: "He was pretty well gone then, poor old chap, and wandering a little, and soon after that, why, he went over the line."

He was sorry for having let that sentence slip out. The student would not understand it; he could not know what those last words of Blake's had meant to him, who saw their meaning. Lyman would only think it a bit of ghastly humor that need not have been repeated. But the manager did not take it so, evidently.

"That reminds me of something, Diemann," he said. "I haven't talked it over with anyone yet, because everybody is sour-balled enough as it is.

It's about Ashley. I'm afraid he is going stale."

"Yes?" said Diemann, with dull interest, "I've rather been afraid of it."

"Of course, I knew he was up on his toes about his job, but I didn't know just how bad it was until this afternoon. You see, you weren't here, and after practice there were things to speak about, so I walked over to the Hall with him. Then I thought I'd rub him myself, because Billy is overworked, you know. He didn't answer questions for a time, but lay quite still and looked at me, yet I don't think he saw me at all. He began to talk away, speaking of himself, in the third person, mind you, and about his poor play and all that. He was as clean nutty as any man you ever saw; as near as I could make out he thought he was Fred."

Diemann faced the manager.

"What time was this, Frank?"

"About five, I think. Shortly afterward I got your telegram. He went on giving the straightest kind of football talk; but he was no more himself all the time than I am he. This went on for several minutes; then he got clear again. Pretty soon he rose and said he was faint, but guessed he was all right. I didn't know whether to speak to the doctor or not. Now, that sort of thing won't do; the man can't have such attacks and keep in shape. If he goes stale, where will we be?"

"He talked like Blake, did he?"

"Yes, really he did. He had even Fred's little way of sliding over his r's. Being troubled about having Fred's place has unstrung him. You've noticed his absent-mindedness out on the field? I know Ashley pretty well; he's always been sensitive as to what people think about him; he likes to feel that he's doing what you expect of him. He was struck on the head to-day; I don't doubt that's what made him a little off.

Still, his nervous condition must be bad."

Diemann rose and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

"Yes," said he, thoughtfully, "we must watch him. Perhaps we ought to speak to Dr. Forest; but I'll look after him a while first."

"Very well. We won't have any practice to-morrow, out of respect to Fred; we couldn't stand it, any of us; that will give Ashley a rest, then Friday we have the last practice before going to the Springs."

"I am going up there with you. I think I'll turn in early to-night; I'm pretty well knocked. I'll see you in the Quad before noon to-morrow."