Stanford Stories Part 12

The ball comes down among the struggling players. Suddenly, out of that jumble of men darts a red-sleeved figure, dashing through the scattered field, bounding like a stag toward the Berkeley goal.

The expert eye of the a.s.sociate coach tells him that, by a marvellous piece of football instinct, Ashley has found his way through the confused teams, realizing that he is the only Stanford man on side, and has caught the ball on the fly and got clear with it. Though they understand nothing of this, the vast crowd goes shrieking to its feet.

The bewildered teams turn and follow close upon the flying figure, the speedy Berkeley right-half leading them. Back in the field stands the U.

C. fullback, grimly waiting. The two collide, and the chasing halfback gains; but the Berkeley back drops to the tackle a fraction of an instant too late and runs fair against a straight-arm. Tom Ashley, with the ball clutched tight against his breast, his set face gleaming white in the half-light, sprints down the long barred s.p.a.ce toward victory, keeping the distance between himself and the straining pack, running as only one man has ever run for Stanford.

And Diemann, tearing along the side-line, knows that Ashley himself never could have done it.

The fullback falls across the line, the ball gripped in his convulsive hold, just as the linesman's whistle blows. Diemann is there almost as soon. He keeps back the frenzied men crowding about them, and bends over the unconscious player, calling him "Fred" irrationally, while the place catches fire with the cardinal and Stanford goes mad on the field.

Ashley came to consciousness at the hotel. Diemann sat beside him, and Lyman and Dr. Forest stood by the window. The subst.i.tute fullback sat up.

"I felt faint just then," he said. "I couldn't help it; you know about it, Diemann." He looked at the other men.

"Did they get it over?" he asked.

Lyman ran across the room.

"Tom, old man," he said, choking, "you won it for us, and you'll never be forgotten, you and your run!"

The fullback looked at him blankly.

"My run?" he faltered.

Diemann came between them.

"Better lie down and rest a bit, my boy; you can talk later."

Then, turning to the others:

"You see," he whispered, "he's wandering a little yet."

TWO PIONEERS AND AN AUDIENCE.

Two Pioneers and an Audience.

"The Mother sits beside the bay, The bay goes down to wed the sea, And gone ye are, on every tide Wherever men and waters be!"

On the Sunday night following the Game the smoking-room at the Rho house held the greater part of the Chapter. As a rule, there were not so many loafing there Sunday nights; that time was generally given either to sentiment in other places, or to digging out Monday's work upstairs, while the fire burned for the two or three who seemed never to have any work more important than magazine reading or solitaire. To-night, however, nearly every one was gathered there, for two "old men" were visiting.

These old men had been out of college for two whole years. One of them was Ralph Shirlock. If you were at college in his days you knew him by sight, at least, though you were the mossiest dig that ever kept bright till morning the attic window of a prof's house on the Row. If you have come up to College since then, and are sufficiently posted to know that there have been other annuals before this one just issued by your friends the Juniors, you have found his picture or his name on every other page of the earlier editions. Harry Rice, who came with him, was not half so well known, save to the Faculty and the circle of the chapter. He was doing very well in business, people said, better than Shirlock, probably. Rice was a keen fellow, the new men could see that at a glance; but they did not put an arm about him instinctively in the after-dinner stroll, as they did about Shirlock.

The two alumni had spent Sunday calling upon the Faculty in Palo Alto and the Row, and in post-mortems with some of the football men in Encina. After dinner, the fellows sat out on the porch, strumming mandolins and singing. Shirlock had been a star on the Glee Club two years before, and he sang again the songs the college hummed after him in those days, while the upper-cla.s.smen looked at the Freshmen with a "now-you-see-what-you've-joined" expression, or nudged each other reminiscently, until the live-oaks in the pasture almost blended with the long shadows under them, and hoa.r.s.e-throated frogs were tuning up in the irrigating ditches. Then they formed four abreast and went down for the mail, humming a march song and lifting their hats in concert to Professor Stillwell and his wife, smiling from their porch. At the post-office the lines broke and the entire body, except the alumni, struggled into the over-crowded room ("the daily press" Pellams called it). This was hardly necessary, since one man could have opened the fraternity box and distributed the letters; but this is a distinct charm of Sunday evening at the post-office. Moreover, you never know who may be standing inside, and if you have forgotten to arrange things ahead it is sometimes well to be first.

The pleasant uncertainty of the evening mail being over, the fellows mixed a while with the sundry groups about the low red building, then joined forces again, and marched once around the Quad, arm in arm, a line of sixteen, while Bob Duncan, who had been prepped at a military school, shouted, "Change step, march," and "Left wheel, march," then home together, all but two or three, who were called the "Incurables,"

and who had plunged back into the shadow of the Quad for Chapel, perhaps, or some other form of Sabbath evening devotion. This breach of hospitality the alumni forgave, made indulgent by a sweet sympathy.

Alas for you, old worshippers at empty shrines! Those divine presences are gone, new and unknown deities queen it in the ancient temples. Go back to the hearth where some still know you and talk to the few who gather around you there, of the old days when you, too, placed your offering at celestial feet. These men of a new generation, sitting in places that once were yours, will listen indulgently to your stories of the past, and hear with patience the odious comparisons you inevitably make; they will thank you for the advice you give them, and say something pleasant about your college spirit; then in the morning when you have taken the early train back to the World, they will go down to the Quad with their books under their arms and something in their minds that is anything but your talk of the evening before; the College life will go on very much as if you had not been back, O wise fossils, and there will be new graduates going out to learn your lessons and new undergraduates who will pay no attention to them in turn. So be thankful for this brief hour before the fire, with its chat as light as the tobacco smoke floating over "old" man and Freshman lounging together, be glad of the fellowship that welcomes you, and be content.

Each couch in the smoking-room had its load of sprawling figures. The lights were out by this time and the Incurables had come back to the house and ferreted places for themselves among the tangled golf suits and 'Varsity sweaters. Duncan had a lamp on the table where he was "bossing a rabbit"; Pellams said this was the only kind of lab-work in zoology in which Bob could get credit. A pile of plates warmed before the fire where Smith was toasting crackers at the end of a sharpened stick. At the piano, Pellams was softly playing "barber shop" chords. It was all very lazy and comfortable. The alumni grew reminiscent.

"This noon while we were walking up from Palo Alto," said Shirlock, "Mrs. Stanford pa.s.sed us in her carriage, coming from Chapel, I suppose.

I asked Harry if he remembered how they used to drive about the place inspecting things, when the Senator was alive."

"Of course I do," spoke up Rice, "it seems odd that there are so few in college now who remember them together. To you fellows, I suppose, Mrs.

Stanford is the source of the University. To us who saw them stand together on the platform that day in October, '91, it is the two always."

"Harry, do you remember our serenade at the residence, after they returned from Washington the first time?"

"No," answered Rice, "I remember, but I wasn't there. We played a game somewhere that day and I stayed over and missed the fun."

"Tell us about it, Ralph," said Duncan, as he emptied the cubes of cheese into the chafing-dish.

"Well, you see," said Shirlock, unbraiding himself from two affectionate under-cla.s.smen on the couch and sitting up in the light, "the story really begins with the first football game, which came off in the spring of '92, and was ours, as every Freshman can tell you, even though he doesn't know just what is meant by 'Pioneers.' The day of the game, Whittemore, the captain, got a telegram from Washington wishing us luck in our first encounter, and that afternoon we sent back answer in much the same style that Caesar used on one occasion--I suppose the little man to my left here can give me the Latin words?" he added, rumpling the hair of a horizontal Freshman.

"Not long afterward the Senator and Mrs. Stanford came back from the East and someone over in the Hall proposed that we give them a welcome home. We could get a bigger demonstration there in those days than you can now, I'll bet; you know everybody who was anybody at all lived in Encina then; that was the center of the College life, politics began and grew up there, and it was over there in the old lobby that we started the Stanford spirit. Things were great, that first year. It's all right enough here by our own fireside, with our own little gang, but I tell you honestly if things could have lasted as they were that first year, I wouldn't have wanted to come over here. We were all together, right in line for everything, wise or foolish."

"It was the student body then, all right," put in Rice, "and we had the Faculty with us too whether we were around the gridiron, where they first had it, east of the cinder path, you know, learning the yell and incidentally getting the team into condition for that 14-10, or whether we were crawling by our lonelies through the fence over in the vineyard."

"The days of grapes, The days of sc.r.a.pes,"

sang Pellams from the piano.

"Were there any profs on that flat-car?" interrupted Duncan. He had come into College while a memory of that pioneer adventure yet lingered.

"It's unkind to remind us of that affair! No, I don't think there were.

The Faculty had their fun later, and we put mourning wreaths on several chairs in the dining-room."

"And you came mighty near getting a bouquet of the same kind, yourself,"

said Rice.

"What was it about the flat-car?" inquired a voice from the pillows.

"Oh," said Rice, "that was about the first of those senseless ebullitions of youth that the Shirlock person usually identified himself with. There was a flat-car standing outside Encina on the track there, just about where it turns and slopes down crosslots to the main track.

This is just what Ralph and his precious gang wanted, of course; they thought it would be a bit of innocent, boyish play to have a little free railroading, so they piled on and turned her loose and slid down to Mayfield. They barely stopped the car before she switched into the main line, and they all fell off into the gopher holes along the side and made for Mayfield, red-eyed. The Faculty raised Ned when they heard about it, which was proper."

"I hope the Freshmen will pay particular attention to Mr. Rice," said Shirlock. "He is a n.o.ble influence to any sweet, unfolding soul. I feel that I should have escaped a great deal of enjoyable sin had I only known him better those first few weeks."

Ralph got up for some cigarette tobacco from the skull on the mantelpiece.