Toward the end of the second half he was taken out of the game; as he left the field all the spectators whose sympathies were with Harvard stood up and cheered him.
“Why did he leave?” asked Ruth. “He’s not hurt, is he?”
“No, but the game’s won, and the coaches are sending Wilcox in to get his ‘H.’ Wilcox has been a substitute for three years, and this is his last chance.”
Ruth understood perfectly. She thought it probable that Lester had intimated to the coaches that it would be a nice thing to do. Certainly it was just the sort of thoughtful, generous act that she should expect of Lester.
Now that Lester was no longer playing, Ruth felt that the game had lost in interest. But it was soon over, and then Harvard undergraduates and graduates swarmed out on the field and proceeded to engage in the peculiar collegiate folk-dancing that symbolizes and celebrates victory. Behind the blaring brass band, which marched and countermarched, ranks of young men zigzagged tumultuously, passing at last, one after another in swift succession, under the crossbar of the goal while over it passed the equally swift procession of their hats—to be recovered or not, as the case might be, by the rightful owners. In this flinging away of cherished headgear there seemed to the observer an almost religious note of mad and joyous sacrifice, a note accented by the mystical dusk of the November afternoon that caused a lighted match to flare like an altar fire, and the end of a cigar to glow like a censer.
Ruth found the spectacle first ludicrous and then ridiculously emotional; she turned to David and saw what she interpreted as pious yearning in his eyes.
“David,” she said, giving him a little nudge, “you go down and throw your hat over the goal for me. I’ll wait here for you.”
“Would you mind? I’ll be right back.”
David was off instantly. Ruth watched him go springing down the tiers of seats, saw him sprint out on the field and get sucked into the mazes of the serpentining throng. She lost sight of him then and, raising her eyes, looked across the field to the sections that the Yale men and their friends occupied. A good many of them were stoically waiting to see the end of the demonstrations; they no longer waved their flags or raised their voices in fruitless cheers, but preserved a certain passive constancy in defeat that touched Ruth’s heart. “You poor things!” she thought. “It is hard, isn’t it? I’m glad I’m not feeling as you are.”
She was still contemplating them with this pharisaic yet not uncharitable thought when David rejoined her.