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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.
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.
On the curbing, fakirs are selling shining red Christmas berries and violets and great bursting carnations, and chrysanthemums like yellow ostrich-plumes. Through all this splendor you keep close to Professor Diemann, for you know he is going to the hotel where the team is, and that stalwart lineman you are thinking of most to-day is up there with them.
Some fifteen minutes later, the two came down the corridor toward the training table. "Good-night, Ashley." "Won't you stay to dinner, Diemann?" "No, I must go down, and you are late as it is. Hurry along in." "All right. I'm not going stale if I can help it. I just felt a little faint over there; I got pretty tired."
He said to Professor Diemann, 'They know I never was a quitter. Do you think he would like a practice like this?"
Diemann, peering out into the deepening gloom toward the bay shore 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.
Then the rubber comes in and you slip away, wondering why the beneficence of the Creator to man on earth should have made one fellow like your idol up there on the bed and another like you, crawling unnoticed into the street, throwing out your thin, incapable legs in a quick walk to join your crowd at the restaurant. Diemann found Ashley quiet in his room.
If it were Fred, he would appear in the play, he would come at a time like that, if there is anything in it." Diemann gripped his handle-bar tightly as he shot through the sandstone gates. "Oh," he thought, "whatever it is, if it would only come stronger, if I could only be sure!"
He had been punting too slowly; the other line could surely get through and block his kick, and there were only two minutes to play. Diemann, rigid with anxiety, saw that a Stanford man still lay on the ground. Straining his eyes through the dusk, a glance at the team told him that it was Ashley. The drawn muscles of the instructor's legs trembled, the blood beat in his temples.
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.
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