For after that swelling supreme self-confidence came a queer slowness of mind. He found it hard to keep his thoughts on his work as they ran through signals. His eyes kept straying to the rioting, flag-waving grand-stands. The whistle blew, the kick-off came straight to Neale. For the first time since Freshman year he felt a sinking dread that he might fumble. The ball hit him on the chest and bounded off. Tod McAlpine fell on it and the rushing game began.
For the first half it was anybody's game. Either team when it got the ball could gain but could not score. Something was the matter with Neale. He wasn't all there. He knew he was playing mechanically, but couldn't seem to summon the energy to do better.
He sat listless, almost sullen while Andrews harangued the team between the halves. He was hardened by this time to the Neapolitan frenzy of emphasis which marked exhortations to play your best football or die. He'd do his best, he told himself, looking down at his feet. Nobody could do any more.
The second half began with an exchange of punts. Playing behind the cyclopean Mike, Neale hadn't much work to do on the defensive, but once Mike was boxed out on a straight buck, Neale shot his body in to plug the hole and turning, caught a bony knee in the back, right over the kidneys. As he lay on the ground gasping for breath, he could see that he hadn't even stopped the play. It had gone over him for two yards. Oh, Hell! What was the use? How his back ached! The Penn. quarter seemed to know he was feeling wobbly. All the plays were coming at him and Mike, and most of them got by. Where was the ball? Sometimes it came straight through and the next minute on the same formation swung outside—and Neale uselessly buried under the interference. He'd have to stop it somehow—soon. He glanced back out of the corner of his eye, and saw the goal posts less than five yards behind. The Penn. formation was on his side again. Mike charged like a buffalo. Neale rushed in behind him, but blindly. Then all at once he picked out the man with the ball—too late. His sideways drive for a tackle missed and as he fell, his arms empty, he saw the red-and-blue jersey go over the line.
He got up shaken, feeling very sick of himself, not meeting anybody's eye. While Penn. was kicking the goal, Neale saw Biffy come bounding out from the side-lines, "I'm to take Crittenden's place," he reported.
It was like a blow in the face. And he had earned it. Neale walked to the bench, took a blanket, looking carefully away from the sub who held it out to him, wrapped himself up, forced his face into its usual expression of impassivity and watched the game. It was not much to watch: Columbia badly up in the air, Pennsy getting stronger every minute.
He dreaded the post-mortem at the football house, and took as deserved Andrews' verdict. "Crittenden, you were a total loss. I knew you weren't much of a defensive back, but I didn't suppose a whale like you would let a skinny little runt of a Penn. sub ride you back five yards and dump you on your tail."
Day after day went by, with Neale in exile, playing once more on the scrub. The night before the Brown game, when the line-up was announced, he got together a show of good-will as he shook hands with Biffy and wished him luck. But he lay awake in the dark that night, heartbroken, sternly motionless and rigid on his cot, his great hands clenched hard. It was his virgin sorrow, the first real suffering he had ever known. The first real sorrow of most lives is usually tempered to the softness of immature hearts by the self-preserving instinct to lay the blame on something or somebody else, by merciful self-pity. But for Neale there was no Fate, nor chance, nor enemy, nor fickleness of woman on whom to lay the blame. There was no one to blame but himself, and before his time, he felt the pure rigor of this knowledge cut deep like a clean steel blade. It cut out a part of his boyishness forever. It was the first scar of the initiation into manhood. Neale stood up to it like a man, although so young a man. "No squealing!" he commanded himself savagely.
The next day he sat all through the game on the edge of the subs' bench, his big muscles quivering with readiness to respond to an order to jump into the game, his heart sick, sick within him because the order did not come. Nobody so much as looked his way. There he sat, a big, useless lump.
"What's the matter with me?" he cried out behind his Iroquois mask of insensibility, "I've got the strength. I've got the speed. Am I a quitter?" The sweat stood out on him at the idea, and at first, helpless before the dramatic quality of young imagination, he felt that must be the answer. Yes, he was a quitter. As well die, and be done with it.