Convincing as was Lester’s eloquence upon the subject, the emotion that inspired it seemed transitory; his visits to St. Timothy’s continued to be infrequent, and as time passed without Ruth’s making the sacrifice that he dreaded, his agitation on that score subsided. Moreover, he had, as he often said, other things to think about than girls. The senior year found him with popularity undiminished, yet disappointed because an honor on which for two years he had counted had been denied him. Although he was regarded as the most brilliant player on the varsity football team, he had not been elected captain. He talked about it freely with David, who felt that the prize should have been awarded to him.
“They think I’m not steady enough to be captain,” said Lester. “I’m not saying Farrar isn’t a better man for the job, but I don’t see why they think I’m unsteady. I’ve never yet in any big game lost my head or my nerve.”
“It isn’t that they think you’re unsteady,” David explained, “but that they have an idea you’re too temperamental; it’s a part of being brilliant. They think that, if you had the responsibility of being captain, your own playing would suffer. In my opinion they’re wrong, but it isn’t anything against you that there is that feeling.”
“Oh, it’s all right; I don’t want you to think I’m kicking. And it may very well be that I wouldn’t show at my best under responsibility, though I hate to think so.”
David himself was captain of his class eleven; he was not regarded as too temperamental. Nearly every day after he had put his team through their drill he would watch the last few minutes of the varsity eleven’s practice; he would follow Lester’s work with special interest. Lester was a picturesque player; he scorned the protection of a head guard, and his fair hair shone even in the feeble November light and made him recognizable for spectators who could not identify helmeted players. He was the fleetest of all the backs; there was no one who was his peer for running in a broken field; again and again during the practice games the bleachers resounded with applause for the bareheaded figure, the personification of indomitable energy and ingenious skill, who wove and forced his way for twenty or thirty yards through furious attacking foes. To the uncritical observer his achievements always seemed more single-handed than they were; possibly in choosing to do without the conventional headgear, and thus render himself more conspicuous, he was aware that he must produce that effect. He often talked rather patronizingly about people who had no sense of dramatic values.
David, in his brief daily glimpses of his friend’s showy performances, felt occasional stings of envy through his thrills of admiration. What a splendid thing to achieve, what an exploit forever after to look back upon—making the varsity team! Since his first day as a freshman he had hoped that some time he might accomplish it, and now here he was a senior and not even a substitute—not even a substitute on the second eleven!
It hurt him to find that Lester was reckoning his success in athletics as a business asset on which to realize later.
“You’ve given up all idea of studying medicine?” David asked.
“Yes. I’m tired of study and examinations. I want to get to work and make a pile of money. I feel I can do it, too, and I don’t feel I could ever do it being a doctor. Besides, as I said, a varsity football record that’s really good will give a man a great start in business, and I might as well take advantage of it. A fellow with such a record can begin in Boston or New York, and everybody on State Street or Wall Street knows about him and is glad to see him. It would be foolish not to make the most of an opportunity.”