THE YALE CUP
With the passing of the Hillbury meet, Archer’s career as a school
athlete was at an end. He played tennis and scrub ball, but this
was play, not work. His training now was for quite another kind of
contest--the final wrestling match with the college examinations. He
shared as a helpless onlooker in the disaster of the annual ball game,
when Noyes’s nine after a hard fight took the Seatonians into camp.
The football men were the only victors of the year, since even in
tennis honors were divided. Sam smiled to himself somewhat grimly as he
considered how fortune had cooperated with Mulcahy in his ambitions for
the Yale Cup. Against the background of defeated teams, the football
men bulked large as athletes.
Mrs. Archer came up to be present at the festivities of graduation
week. With Mrs. Sedgwick and Margaret, she started early for the
chapel exercises with which the school year formally closed. As they
crossed the yard, the seniors were forming in a long, uneven double
line that extended from the steps of the main school building across
the lawn toward the outer fence. Late risers were scurrying from the
dormitories, struggling, on the run, to work their arms into the
sleeves of their gowns and at the same time to keep their mortar-boards
safely balanced on their heads. The marshals were zealously and more
or less effectually ordering the jeering battalion. Sam, looking like
a giant in the ample gown that covered his bony length, raised his cap
over a face glowing with satisfaction as the three visitors passed the
head of the line, hurrying to reach their places before the procession
took the right of way. “He’s a dear boy,” thought the mother with
pride, “if he is not a genius. He does the best he can.”
They were given seats on the side aisle, well to the front; the middle
section was reserved for the class. Before the platform stood a heavy
table. On it were the score of prizes to be assigned, piles of books,
impressive envelopes containing the money awarded, and in the midst,
towering in cold stateliness above two minor brethren, the shining
form of the Yale Cup. Solemn faces of benefactors and famous graduates
looked down disapprovingly from the walls; there had been no such
lavish display of prizes in the simple old days when they were members
of the school, reciting Latin and Greek by candlelight to austere,
dignified gentlemen who revered Cicero as the model for all language
and ignored French and German as the lingo of dancing-masters and
fiddlers. Flanking the platform and facing the audience, ran a long
line of chairs--“for the faculty,” whispered Mrs. Sedgwick, who had
been present on such occasions before.
Presently the tramp of feet was heard, and the seniors filed in for
their last chapel service. They stood, when they reached their places,
waiting for the dignitaries, who were not slow to appear. The principal
entered with the president of the board of trustees, two clergymen
from abroad, others of the trustees who were in town, and a venerable
alumnus or two to whom the school would do honor. These took places on
the platform, in the alcove behind the reading desk. After them came
the faculty, a motley line, in which staid elderly men, of the wisdom
which is born of long intercourse with boys, touched shoulders with
youths fresh from the university--in whom self-confidence and zeal
must still do duty for ripe experience and sound judgment. When all
were placed, the visiting clergymen conducted the simple devotional
exercises, the hymns rolling with resonant vigor from two hundred
masculine throats. Then the president of the board of trustees,
encumbered by many typewritten sheets, came forward beside the desk for
the formal business of the day.
He began by addressing certain neatly worded compliments to the
graduating class. In this task, which was in the line of his daily
work as an advocate before important courts, he acquitted himself with
dignity and impressiveness. When, however, he came to the reading
of the list of those entitled to diplomas, his experience in public
speaking availed him little. He waded on, undaunted, through fourscore
names, pronounceable and unpronounceable, drawn from all races and
all lands. As each name was read or attempted, its claimant rose in
response, until every wearer of a gown was on his feet. Then the
diplomas were passed out in bunches to chosen delegates, who delivered
them to their proper owners.
With a feeling of relief the president laid aside the catalogue of
seniors, and took up the short list of honor men. After this he passed
to those of the school who had earned “honorable mention,” finding new
pitfalls in untried combinations of letters which stood for certain
deserving members of lower classes. With the next sheet began the
announcement of prize-winners.
Here was the climax of the day. Many were the boys who listened with
quick-beating hearts, hoping to hear the sound of their names; and many
there were who listened in vain. The president announced the prize and
the award; the secretary of the faculty took the prize from the table
and handed it to the principal; the principal delivered it into the
hands of its owner. As one and another came forward, flushed with
happy embarrassment, and received the reward of his labor, the school
gave abundant applause, those who had nourished no hopes and those who
had hoped in vain uniting in generous congratulation of the victors.
So went the Latin prizes, the Greek prizes, the prizes in English
composition, in Mathematics, in Bible study, in History; the prize for
general excellence in studies and that for physical development. Sam’s
interest was keen in the result, for he hoped to see his room-mate
honored as a Latinist. He chuckled with delight as Moorhead was called
a second time to the gift table, and brought back a sample from the
pile of twelve large volumes of Shakespeare as a prize in English.
There were but three or four awards still to be made when Sam, seeing
the secretary reach for the big three-handled cup that mounted guard
over the remaining envelopes and books, knew that the time for
Mulcahy’s prize had come. He glanced backward curiously over his
shoulder at the astute strategist who sat a few seats away, and marked
with amused interest the artful mask of indifference which the young
man wore. So fascinating was this study of Mulcahy the expectant, and
Mulcahy the ready-to-be-surprised, that Sam very impolitely kept his
eyes on the face in the row behind until the president had finished
the long description: “The Yale Cup, given by the Yale Club of Boston
to the Senior who best combines proficiency in athletics with good
standing in his studies.” As the reader paused, Sam faced front and
prepared to applaud the name of John Joseph Mulcahy,--but the name the
president read was “Samuel Wadsworth Archer”!
The applause thundered forth sudden and sharp, no perfunctory service
of courtesy, but a burst of enthusiastic approval that swept the whole
student company. It rose and fell and rose again, vehement and long
drawn out. The boys in front twisted their heads around as they strove,
still beating their palms, to catch a glimpse of the winner; those in
the seats behind craned their necks with the same laudable design.
And Sam sat with downcast eyes and glowing cheeks, hearing but not
believing, stupidly delaying the exercises, yet hardly daring to answer
the summons; until Westbrook, who sat beside him, stopped clapping
long enough to dig him in the ribs with a sharp elbow and enjoin him:
“Go and get it, you fool. Don’t you see you’re keeping the whole
business waiting?” To this exhortation Sam gave heed.
During the remainder of the exercises Sam sat with the precious cup
clutched beneath his gown, ecstatically demanding of himself again
and again how it could possibly be, and pitying the unfortunate whose
deep-laid plans had gone so wholly wrong. When the audience was
dismissed, he was at once overwhelmed by boys who insisted on shaking
his hand and slapping his shoulder and telling him that the award was
“just right,”--and, of course, handling the cup.
Mrs. Archer, on her side, was a general target for congratulations.
She received them with the composure of a mother who is never wholly
surprised at any honor bestowed upon her son; but in her eyes burned
a light of happiness and excitement that belied her quiet manner, and
her gaze would wander to the group of gowns that thronged her tall son
and hid the white gleam of silver from the sight of the unprivileged
curious.
“How did he happen to get it?” she asked Dr. Leighton, as the teacher
came to offer his compliments. “I’m sure he hadn’t the slightest
expectation of its coming to him.”
“Of course he didn’t expect it,” returned Dr. Leighton. “The boy who
deserves such a prize rarely expects it. I can tell you how it came to
be awarded to him, because I was on the committee. He won it by good
honest work. It was what he accomplished, not what he chanced to do,
that turned the scales in his favor.”
Mrs. Archer’s look indicated that she was not quite sure that she
understood; but before she could ask further, her son broke through
the circle of students, and came, sheepishly dangling the cup by one
of its heavy handles, to greet his mother. Sam was not sufficiently
experienced in prize-winning to take his honors easily, especially
when Margaret Sedgwick roguishly assumed a clean record of A’s as a
part of his title to the cup, and insisted on knowing all details. He
managed to escape these embarrassing attentions by calling up Moorhead
and presenting him as the banner prize-catcher of the class; and
presently, on the pretext of helping his room-mate carry home his load
of Shakespeares, he succeeded in getting safely away.
The next morning when Sam called at the Sedgwicks’ to see his mother,
he found her on the garden piazza, with a Boston paper on her lap.
“There’s a whole column here about the Commencement,” she said, as Sam
sat down beside her. “Don’t you want to see it?”
Sam laughed contentedly. “I don’t need to read about it; I was there.”
“And beside it is a report from the Hillbury Commencement, too. Prizes
aren’t so plenty in Hillbury. There seem to be hardly half as many as
are given here.”
The prizes at Hillbury possessed small interest for Sam. He was
satisfied to lounge quietly in the comfortable chair, let his eyes
wander over the profusion of gay flowers in the old-fashioned garden,
and gloat in silence on the fact that school recitations were, for him,
forever finished. All at once he straightened up in his chair and
demanded:--
“Who got the Yale Cup down there? I wonder if it’s any one I know?”
“In Hillbury?” answered Mrs. Archer, taking up the paper again. “Let
me see--the Orton prize, the Harper prize, the--oh, yes, the Yale Cup:
Winthrop Joy Kilham.”
“Kilham!” cried Sam, in a sudden accession of spirit. “Kilham! That’s
great! The judges hit the bull’s-eye that time, for sure!”
[Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]