Stover fondly dreamed, that night, of his triumphal appearance on the field the following day, greeted by admiring glances and cordial handshakes, placed at once on the second eleven, watched with new interest by curious coaches, earning an approving word from the captain himself.
When he did come on the field, embarrassed and reluctantly conscious of his sudden leap to world-wide fame, no one took the slightest notice of him. Tompkins did not vouchsafe a word of greeting. To his amazement, Dana again passed him over and left him restless on the bench, chafing for the opportunity that did not come. The second and the third afternoon it was the same—the same indifference, the same forgetfulness. And then he suddenly realized the stern discipline of it all—unnecessary and stamping out individuality, it seemed to him at first, but subordinating everything to the one purpose, eliminating the individual factor, demanding absolute subordination to the whole, submerging everything into the machine—that was not a machine only, when once accomplished, but an immense idea of sacrifice and self-abnegation. Directly, clearly visualized, he perceived, for the first time, what he was to perceive in every side of his college career, that a standard had been fashioned to which, irresistibly, subtly, he would have to conform; only here, in the free domain of combat, the standard that imposed itself upon him was something bigger than his own.
Meanwhile the college in all its activities opened before him, absorbing him in its routine. The great mass of his comrades to be gradually emerged from the blurred mists of the first day. He began to perceive hundreds of faces, faces that fixed themselves in his memory, ranging themselves, dividing according to his first impression into sharply defined groups. Fellows sought him out, joined him when he crossed the campus, asked him to drop in.
In chapel he found himself between Bob Story, a quiet, self-contained, likable fellow, popular from the first from a certain genuine sweetness and charity in his character, son of Judge Story of New Haven, one of the most influential of the older graduates; and on the other side Swazey, a man of twenty-five or six, of a type that frankly amazed him—rough, uncouth, with thick head and neck, rather flat in the face, intrusive, yellowish eyes, under lip overshot, one ear maimed by a scar, badly dressed, badly combed, and badly shod. Belying this cloutish exterior was a quietness of manner and the dreamy vision of a passionate student. Where he came from Stover could not guess, nor by what strange chance of life he had been thrown there. In front of him was the great bulk of Regan, always bent over a book for the last precious moments, coming and going always with the same irresistible steadiness of purpose. He had not been at the wrestling the opening night, he had not been out for football, because his own affairs, his search for work, were to him more important; and, looking at him, Stover felt that he would never allow anything to divert him from his main purpose in college—first, to earn his way, and, second, to educate himself. Stover, with others, had urged him to report for practise, knowing, though not proclaiming it, that there lay the way to friendships that, once gained, would make easy his problem.
"Not yet, Stover," said Regan, always with the same finality in his tone. "I've got to see my way clear; I've got to know if I can down that infernal Greek and Latin first. If I can, I'm coming out."
"Where do you room?" said Stover.
"Oh, out about a mile—a sort of rat-hole."
"I want to drop in on you."
"Come out sometime."