The Plastic Age Percy Marks (read full novel txt) 📖

Sanford takers. By the day of the game his safe held thousands of dollars, most of it wagered at five to three, Raleigh offering odds. There was hardly an alumnus who did not prove his loyalty to Sanford by visiting Mac’s back room and putting down a few greenbacks, at least. Some were more loyal than others; the most loyal placed a thousand dollars⁠—at five to two.

There was rain for two days before the game, but on Friday night the clouds broke. A full moon seemed to shine them away, and the whole campus rejoiced with great enthusiasm. Most of the alumni got drunk to show their deep appreciation to the moon, and many of the undergraduates followed the example set by their elders.

All Friday afternoon girls had been arriving, dozens of them, to attend the fraternity dances. One dormitory had been set aside for them, the normal residents seeking shelter in other dormitories. No man ever objected to resigning his room to a girl. He never could tell what he would find when he returned to it Monday morning. Some of the girls left strange mementos.⁠ ⁠…

No one except a few notorious grinds studied that night. Some of the students were, of course, at the fraternity dances; some of them sat in dormitory rooms and discussed the coming game from every possible angle; and groups of them wandered around the campus, peering into the fraternity houses, commenting on the girls, wandering on humming a song that an orchestra had been playing, occasionally pausing to give a “regular cheer” for the moon.

Hugh was too much excited to stay in a room; so with several other freshmen he traveled the campus. He passionately envied the dancers in the fraternity houses but consoled himself with the thought, “Maybe I’ll be dancing at the Nu Delt house next year.” Then he had a spasm of fright. Perhaps the Nu Delts⁠—perhaps no fraternity would bid him. The moon lost its brilliance; for a moment even the Sanford-Raleigh game was forgotten.

The boys were standing before a fraternity house, and as the music ceased, Jack Collings suggested: “Let’s serenade them. You lead, Hugh.”

Hugh had a sweet, light tenor voice. It was not at all remarkable, just clear and true; but he had easily made the Glee Club and had an excellent chance to be chosen freshman song-leader.

Collings had brought a guitar with him. He handed it to Hugh, who, like most musical undergraduates, could play both a guitar and a banjo. “Sing that ‘I arise from dreams of thee’ thing that you were singing the other night. We’ll hum.”

Hugh slipped the cord around his neck, tuned the guitar, and then thrummed a few opening chords. His heart was beating at double time; he was very happy: he was serenading girls at a fraternity dance. Couples were strolling out upon the veranda, the girls throwing warm wraps over their shoulders, the men lighting cigarettes and tossing the burnt matches on the lawn. Their white shirtfronts gleamed eerily in the pale light cast by the Japanese lanterns with which the veranda was hung.

Hugh began to sing Shelley’s passionate lyric, set so well to music by Tod B. Galloway. His mother had taught him the song, and he loved it.

“I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me⁠—who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, Sweet!”

Two of the boys, who had heard Hugh sing the song before, hummed a soft accompaniment. When he began the second verse several more began to hum; they had caught the melody. The couples on the veranda moved quietly to the porch railing, their chatter silent, their attention focused on a group of dim figures standing in the shadow of an elm. Hugh was singing well, better than he ever had before. Neither he nor his audience knew that the lyric was immortal, but its tender, passionate beauty caught and held them.

“The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream⁠—
The champak odors fail
Like sweet-thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine
O beloved as thou art!

“Oh lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my cheeks and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;
Oh! press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last.”

There was silence for a moment after Hugh finished. The shadows, the moonlight, the boy’s soft young voice had moved them all. Suddenly a girl on the veranda cried, “Bring him up!” Instantly half a dozen others turned to their escorts, insisting shrilly: “Bring him up. We want to see him.”

Hugh jerked the guitar cord from around his neck, banded the instrument to Collings, and tried to run. A burst of laughter went up from the freshmen. They caught him and held him fast until the tuxedo-clad upper-classmen rushed down from the veranda and had him by the arms. They pulled him, protesting and struggling, upon the veranda and into the living-room.

The girls gathered around him, praising, demanding more. He flushed scarlet when one enthusiastic maiden forced her way through the ring, looked hard at him, and then announced positively, “I think he’s sweet.” He was intensely embarrassed, in an agony of confusion⁠—but very happy. The girls liked his clean blondness, his blushes, his startled smile. How long they would have held him there in the center of the ring while they admired and teased him, there is no telling; but suddenly the orchestra brought relief by striking up a foxtrot.

“He’s mine!” cried a pretty black-eyed girl with a cloud of bobbed hair and flaming cheeks. Her slender shoulders were bare; her round white arms waved in excited, graceful gestures; her corn-colored frock was a gauzy mist. She clutched Hugh’s arm. “He’s mine,” she repeated shrilly. “He’s going to dance with me.”

Hugh’s cheeks burned a