A heavy fall of snow upon the old streets of New Haven had not
succeeded in blocking the wheels of progress of that merriest season
of the collegiate year, known to the university world as “Prom Week.”
For three days a crowd of fair visitors and their chaperons had trod
the round of gayeties; had frequented the concerts, germans, teas,
and receptions; they were now drawing breath and gathering energy
for the last crucial test of physical endurance, the ball called the
Junior Promenade.
For, to properly celebrate this time-honored and brilliant
affair, custom decrees that the list of thirty or more dances
and intermissions printed upon the ball-card presented to each
damsel crossing the threshold of this hall of raptures shall, long
beforehand, have been filled with names by the brother, cousin,
or admirer having the list in charge. It follows naturally that
by the time not only all these dances are accomplished but every
“intermission” has been spent in an impromptu dance to the music of
the band, alternating with the orchestra, night has brightened into
dawn.
[Illustration: THE THREE MISSES BENEDICT AT YALE.]
When the girls are finally induced by their exhausted matrons to
withdraw from the giddy whirl, they leave behind a set of men,
wild-eyed, and wilted as to shirt-fronts, cuffs, and collars, but
undaunted in spirit. These men, the givers of the ball, then go away
to their dormitories to snatch an hour or two of slumber before
chapel, which has, not infrequently, been attended by beings in
ulsters worn over evening clothes. It was to such tireless devotees
rather invigorating than depressing to see snowflakes come trooping
down upon the final scenes of their three-days’ gayety. Toward nine
o’clock P.M. the streets were encumbered by lumbering old hacks
pulling up before doors to receive their loads of hooded and cloaked
figures, then driving with them at a furious pace to the door of
the armory where the “Prom” is given, and dashing off again to
secure new fares. The drivers of these vehicles, known by name to
most of the students, extend to the university and its doings an
almost parental indulgence. To the guests who are aiding to make the
occasion brilliant they are suave beyond imagination; solicitous of
comfort, descending from their perches to open the carriage doors,
and assisting parlously at the elbow of the lady entering or getting
out. Little of the evening’s fun is to be theirs, honest fellows, but
they are sustained through the chilly vigils of the night by _esprit
de corps_ and a brave desire to keep up the credit of their town.
Quite early in the fray one of these hacks disgorged under the
armory’s awning a party consisting of a mother, two daughters, and
a girl cousin, all three of the young women marked with the same
general characteristics of family, but differing in feature and
degree of beauty. The mother, a stout, comely body, with diamond
butterflies quivering about the base of a tall, black aigrette that,
springing from her hair, swept the carriage top as she sat, emerged
with a look denoting resolution to carry on the struggle of spirit
against flesh to the bitter end. For was not her only son, her
pride and joy, leader of the revels as head of the floor committee
of the “Prom”? Not for worlds would she have given up the wearying
privilege of sitting out the ball. Never, in her own palmiest days,
had she drawn near to a scene of gayety with a more proud sense of
identification than to-night, when she shone in the reflected glory
of her handsome boy!
Jack Benedict was, on his part, modest, as becomes the truly great!
An immense favorite with his class, he had been one of those fellows
who sail serenely through college life, winning, without apparent
effort, honors toiled for by others without success. A good scholar,
an athlete of renown, frank, cordial, sympathetic, he was put
forward by the vote of his comrades whenever opportunity occurred to
represent them before the world; the election to his present post
being upon one of these occasions.
Fresh-faced, clear-eyed, smiling, dressed in immaculate attire,
the tall young hero advanced to meet his mother and, giving her
his arm, conducted the party along the length of the large hall to
a box fitted up for the friends of the committee of management.
The girls following them were immediately surrounded by a throng
of men, consulting their dance programmes and receiving with pride
their compliments upon the charming arrangements of the hall. It had
already been decided among the opinion-makers that the three Misses
Benedict were the stars of the festive week, and their approbation of
the scene was generally awaited.
The vast inclosure of the armory was lined to its arched roof with
breadths of semi-transparent stuff, alternatively pale lavender and
yellow in tint, giving it a delightfully fresh and blossomy effect.
From the ceiling, lighted by veiled electric bulbs, depended a
racing-shell filled with flowers and a floral football, emblems of
the University’s late prowess in the athletic world. From high stands
on either side of the hall the band, or else the orchestra, clashed
forth unceasingly enlivening strains. Beneath one or the other of
these draped eyries were seen to disappear during the progress of
the ball panting and perspiring men, who went away wilted after
saltatory toil--but returned arrayed in the glory of fresh linen,
white collars, and cuffs immaculate. Around the walls, hung with
tapestry and placques of flowers, were ranged the boxes severally
sold at auction to the highest bidder among the classmen who desired
thus proudly to extol the ladies of their visiting families and
parties. In these dainty nooks were assembled treasures from many a
college sitting-room. Easy-chairs, rugs, lamps, draperies, tables,
cushions--above all, cushions!--of every size, material, and color,
were brought hither by their owners or borrowers from acquiescent
friends, to make resting-places for the chaperons, and, when
possible, the girls.
The wide, crash-covered floor, soon covered with whirling figures,
became a dazzling kaleidoscope. The suggestion presented by the
sight was one of extraordinary brilliancy and lightness. It was as
if the Genius of American youth were abroad and at his best. No face
there that did not gleam with happiness, no foot that did not spring
with rapturous life. Of those encumbrances of an ordinary ball-room,
the sad, the sour, the world-weary, the middle-aged, none was
discernible. The young men and maidens prominent in this function,
gathered from far and near in the broad Republic, were types of
blended races, or pure Americans such as one may hardly see elsewhere
in an Eastern festivity; and the conventional uniformity of a dance
in New York, Boston, or Philadelphia was thus most agreeably varied.
And through all was apparent to older eyes the joy of living and
being that comes only in the first quarter of the century of life.
“Are you satisfied with it, madre?” asked Benedict, as he stopped in
his evening’s toil to bend affectionately over his mother, where she
sat in front of the committee-box, her satin and jet rustling in the
breeze created by an ostrich-feathered fan.
“Satisfied? Indeed I am! It is a perfectly enchanting scene,” said
the biased critic. “And your decorations are really admirable. I
never saw such a well-managed dance. But, my dearest boy, can’t you
sit down and take a moment’s rest? You will really wear yourself out.”
“No fear of that,” quoth Jack, inflating his broad chest. “After
to-night we shall all lapse into ‘innocuous desuetude,’ and there’ll
be full time to repose. I hope you and the other mothers can hold
out. You won’t see much of your charges, I’m afraid.”
Mrs. Benedict laughed cheerily. “Dear me, no; they only rush back
to be pinned or put to rights, and are off again. As to keeping
the faces, much less the names, of their partners in mind, I can’t
pretend to do it. Agnes and Margaret, being older, take it with more
composure, but Lou flies about as if she were on wings instead of
high heels. It was a whim of Agnes and Margaret to come dressed alike
in those blue satin gowns with the chiffon ruffles, and I must say
they are becoming. I am proud of our dear girls’ looks, aren’t you?”
“I should think so,” said Jack, starting with something of a blush
as she repeated this query. He had been straining his gaze over the
revolving crowd, in the effort to identify not his sisters, Lou and
Margaret--pretty blonde girls of eighteen and twenty--but his cousin
Agnes, a tall and rather stately young woman, a year older than
Margaret, whom he had his own private reasons for not allowing to get
far out of his sight or thoughts.
Agnes, the orphan daughter of a good-for-nothing cousin of Mr.
Benedict’s, had a year or two before, after the death of her father,
been taken by these kindly people to reside under their roof in New
York. When it was Jack had first owned to himself that he loved
her he could not exactly say. But her clear, pale beauty, the soft
luster of her hazel eyes, her somewhat foreign grace of speech and
manner--born of wide wanderings in Continental cities--had begun by
captivating his imagination, and ended by exciting his enthusiastic
affection. Now he thought no vision of his future was complete
without Agnes installed in its penetralia. And as yet she had no idea
of it.
Knowing that his parents would disapprove of love-making between the
cousins until Jack had at least been long enough out of college to
see his way clear to an independence, he had had the rare strength of
mind to keep his passion to himself. Not even his mother suspected
what a cable had been thrown out to annex her bonny craft to this
landing-stage for life!
One person only had shared in his secret, and he a classmate bound to
Jack by the most intimate of college ties, the man of all others in
the University whom Jack most admired and trusted. This was Hubert
Russell, who, coming a stranger to Yale from his birthplace in a far
Western town, had remained an enigma to the many, although treasured
by the few who had found him out. Russell was known as a brilliant
scholar, but had never been called a “grind.” His isolation seemed to
be a thing of preference.
To the society of women his objection was apparently insuperable. No
threshold in the hospitable town had been crossed by him for social
purposes. Jack Benedict, who alone seemed to exercise over him the
magnetism that drew him from his shell, had often talked to Russell
about his own family, and had striven without success to induce his
friend to visit them in the holidays. Russell had listened with a
sort of fascinated reserve to Benedict’s happy boyish confidences,
but had not responded to them in kind until one evening in junior
year over their pipes in Jack’s sitting-room. Then he had blurted
out a sad tale of his father’s disgrace and imprisonment and death
in the penitentiary, following the embezzlement of trust-funds
confided to his keeping. This awful chapter had left upon the boy’s
mind an indelible imprint. To remove the effect of it his mother
had strained every nerve to send him to an Eastern University. At
the beginning of freshman year he had lost his mother, too; and
since then the spell of darkness had reassumed its sway over Hubert
Russell. Benedict, a wholesome, happy fellow, born to no great
inheritance of riches, and having his own way to hew in the world’s
wilderness, then set himself to the task of restoring Russell’s tone
of mind and of dissipating in him the uncertainty as to his right of
place among people of unblemished honor and respectability. Little by
little he had succeeded in bringing about this result. In his zeal
to win Russell’s full confidence he had poured out his own--had even
told him of his love for the radiant cousin, Agnes Benedict, whom
Jack hoped one day to win for his wife.
During the past days of gayety Russell had been more miserably shy
and reserved than ever. In vain had Jack urged him to call upon or
make acquaintance with his family. As a last resort he had gone to
Russell’s room that afternoon, and had shot into the letter-slit upon
the locked door a note inclosing a ticket for the “Prom,” begging
Hubert to look in at the ball, if only for a glance in passing, at
Jack’s people in their box. While Jack now stopped to speak to his
mother he saw, with curious elation and surprise, Russell standing a
little distance away, talking with one of the tutors. Before he had
time to beckon his friend, his sister Louisa and their cousin Agnes
hurried together into the box, forsaking each the young man who had
escorted her, to have some trifling repair to her toilette made by
Mrs. Benedict.
“Oh, Jack!” exclaimed his madcap sister, “I am too happy for
anything, and Agnes should be, if she is not, for she has evidently
captivated the best-looking man in the room--next to you, of
course--that tall, dark one over there. He has done nothing but gaze
after her in a moony, melancholy way, while _I_ am dying to know him.
Do fetch him here _now_, and introduce him, there’s a dear. Only give
me half a chance and I can make him forget Agnes, I’ll promise you.”
“That?” said Jack, identifying at last the individual she was trying
to point out, and watching for the effect of his revelation upon his
family. “I am not surprised that you want to know him. That is my
best friend, Hubert Russell.”
“Is _that_ Russell?” said the three women in concert. To them he had
long been a household word.
“Yes, and he came here to please me, dear old chap. The trouble is, I
don’t know whether he’ll have the courage to follow it up by being
presented to you.”
“Lou does not know why he was so interested in Agnes--my Agnes,” he
added to himself, striving to repress the exultation of his heart as
he looked upon her he loved.