He was received by the boys that night as a victorious diplomat returning from an international Congress. The only circumstance to mar his complete happiness was the reluctance of the school to believe that Varrell, and Varrell alone, deserved the credit for securing the evidence and for the successful presentation of it.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GREAT TRACK MEET
Two days of uneasiness and discussion, and the momentous Saturday was at hand. The indifference which Melvin felt at the beginning of the season, when the responsibilities of the management were loaded upon his shoulders, had long since vanished. He had begun with it as a task, as a burden to be borne because he could bear it better than any one else; he had put into it the best of his energy and the best of his thought, he had worried and sacrificed and labored for the cause. It seemed to him now almost as if the team were his, struggling for him and for the school. His anxiety could not have been greater if his own future happiness and the welfare of the school had really been dependent on the success of the team.
From the moment the news was received that the protest had been rejected, Dickinson ceased to be a mere ornament to the team and became a real captain. There was fire in him now, and determination and genuine enthusiasm. His whole attitude was one of confidence and of conscious power, that lifted the weakest man in the squad out of his humiliating sense of incapacity, and made him feel that he was one of a strong company led by a strong man, and himself capable of greater things than he had ever yet accomplished.
In the mass-meeting of the school the night before the games, when the boys gathered in loyal force to give their team a “send-off” for the morrow, nothing that was said by student or graduate or friend stirred such response in the hearts of the school as the short, plain, virile exhortation of the captain.
And no athletes need personal inspiration as do the members of a track team. The football player stands shoulder to shoulder with his fellows, the strong helps the weak and shares with him the glory of victory. The baseball score may show hits and errors against the same member of a winning team. The runner, on the other hand, enters the field alone, fights his brief battle unaided, and either fails his team wholly or makes an individual contribution to its success; he cannot be pushed on to victory by the efforts of another.
The wind was easterly on Saturday, bringing in from the sea a heavy thickness of atmosphere, yet with barely sufficient vitality to move the leaves. The air chilled like a March fog.
“What do you think of it?” asked Melvin, as he met Dickinson at breakfast.
“The weather? It’s bad on the nerves, but worse for the Hillburyites, who aren’t used to it as we are. I don’t mind it myself. All I ask is that we have no wind to buck against, and no rain.”