THE THREE MISSES BENEDICT AT YALE
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.
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.