As she grew clearer-eyed, she saw that one was a little too short, another too lean, but he of the rosette was perfect. The others leaped, with him, doing the same feats, but as distances were increased, and the number of camels and horses grew, the others stood by to see him make his renowned double somersault over a herd of animals. When the applause broke out she joined it, while her temples throbbed with emotion. To see him bow and kiss his fingers to the audience was a revelation of manly grace and courtesy. He moved under the curtain, bowing still to the cheering crowd.
Once more he came back later on, leading a woman by the hand. She too was in tights throughout, and like him she walked with a calm and powerful movement, but she seemed petty beside him.
Something new seized upon Rose's heart, a cold contraction that she had never felt, and her teeth pressed together. She wondered if the woman were his wife.
The woman seized a rope with her right arm and was drawn to the tent roof. He took a strap in his mouth and was drawn to his trapeze also. There, in mid-air, they performed their dangerous evolutions. It was all marvelous and incredible to the country girl.
She heard him clap his hands, then his glorious voice rang above the music, and the lithe figure of his companion launched itself through the air, was caught by the shoulders in his great hands, thence with a twist he tossed her, and hooked her by the hands.
Each time, the blood surged into Rose's throat as if to suffocate her. A horrible fear that was a pleasure, some way, rose and fell in her. She could not turn away her head. She must look.
She was a powerful girl, and the idea of fainting had never come to her, but when at the conclusion, he dropped in a revolving ball into the net far beneath, she turned sick and her eyes seemed to whirl in their sockets. Then as he leaped to the ground, bowing and smiling, the blood rushed back to her face, and the perspiration stood like rain on her face.
Thereafter riders came, and the clowns capered, and the ring-master cracked his whip and she enjoyed it, but it was an after-climax. She saw it, but saw it dimly. Nothing but the lions and their trainers aroused her to applause. Her brain was full. It was a feast of glories and her very hunger made her lay hold upon the first that came, to the neglect of what came after.
At last the brazen, resounding voice of the ring-master announced the last of the show, and the audience arose and moved out in a curious sort of a hush, as if in sorrow to think it was all over, and the humdrum world was rushing back upon them.
Rose moved along in perfect silence, clinging to Carl's hand. Around her was the buzz of low speech, the wailing of tired and hungry babies and the clamor of attendants selling tickets for the minstrel show to follow.
Suddenly she perceived that her dress was wet with perspiration and grimy with dust. She saw all about her women with flushed faces and grimy hands, their hats awry and their brows wrinkled with trouble over fretful children. The men walked along with their coats over their arms, and their hats pushed back. The dust arose under their feet with a strange smell. Out in the animal tent the odor was stifling and Rose hurried Carl out into the open air.
Somehow it seemed strange to see the same blue sky arching the earth; things seemed exactly the same and yet Rose had grown older. She had developed immeasurably in those few hours. It took her some time to fully recover the use of her feet, and it took longer to get back a full realization of where she was.
The grass, crushed and trampled and littered with paper, and orange peel, gave out a fresh farm-like odor, that helped her to recover herself. She would not talk, she could not talk yet. She only urged them to go home. She wanted to get home to think.
As they climbed the slope on the other side of the river, they looked back at the tents with their wilted streamers, at the swarming bug-like teams and the ant-like human beings, and it seemed to Rose as if she should weep, so poignant was her sense of personal loss.
She knew something sweet and splendid and mystical was passing out of her life after a few hours' stay there. Her feeling of loss was none the less real because it was indefinable to her.
The others chattered about each part of the show, and shouted admiration about this and that feat, but Rose was silent. When they stopped at sunset beside a spring to eat their lunch she merely said:
"I don't feel hungry."
The others fell silent after a time, and they rode dreamily forward, with the roll of wheels making them sleepy and the trample of the horses' feet telling them how rapidly they were leaving their great day's pleasure behind them.
When Rose huddled into her little attic bed, her eyes were wide open, and her brain active as at noonday. There was no sleep for her then. Lying there in the darkness she lived it all over again; the flutter of flags, the wild voices, the blare of music, the chariots, the wild beasts, the knights and ladies, the surging crowds; but the crowning glory, the pictures which lingered longest in her mind were the splendid and beautiful men, whose naked majesty appealed to her pure wholesome awakening womanhood, with the power of beauty and strength combined, with sex and art both included.
These glorious, glittering graceful beings with their marvelous strength and bravery filled her with a deep sad hunger, which she could not understand. They came out of the unknown, led by her chosen one, like knights in Ivanhoe.
She fell asleep thinking of the one in blue and silver, and in her sleep she grew braver and went closer to him, and he turned and spoke to her, and his voice was like waters running, and his eyes shone some way into her eyes like a light.
When she rose the next day she was changed. She moved about the house dull and languid. Never before had she failed to sleep when her head touched the pillow. She managed to be alone most of the time, and at last her mind cleared. She began to live for him, her ideal. She set him on high as a being to be worshiped, as a man fit to be her judge.
In the days and weeks which followed she asked herself, "Would he like me to do this?" or she thought, "I must not do that. What would he think of me if he saw me now?" And every night when she went to sleep it was with the radiant figure in blue and silver before her eyes.
When the sunset was very beautiful, she thought of him. When the stars seemed larger in the blue sky, she could see the star upon his grand breast. She knew his name; she had the bill in her little box of trinkets, and she could take it out and read, "William De Lisle, the world-famous leader in ground and lofty tumbling, in his stupendous leap over two elephants, six camels and two horses."
In all the talk of the circus which followed among her companions, she took no part because she feared she might be obliged to mention his name. When others spoke his name she could feel a hot flush surge up all over her body and she trembled for fear some one might discover her adoration of him.
She went about with Carl and Rob as before, only she no longer longed for them; they seemed good, familiar comrades, but nothing more. To them she seemed stranger every day. Her eyes had lost their clear, brave look; they were dreamy black, and her lids drooped.
Vast ambitions began in her. She determined to be a great scholar. She would be something great for his sake. She could not determine what, but she, too, would be great. At first she thought of being a circus woman, and then she determined that was impossible.
She dreamed often of being his companion and coming on hand in hand with him, bowing to the multitude, but when she was drawn to the tent-roof, she awoke in a cold sweat of fear, and so she determined to be a writer. She would write books like Ivanhoe. Those were great days! Her mind expanded like the wings of a young eagle. She read everything; theLedger, theWeekly, and all the dog-eared novels of impassioned and unreal type in the neighborhood.
In short, she consecrated herself to him as to a king, and seized upon every chance to educate herself to be worthy of him. Every effort was deeply pathetic, no matter how absurd to others. She took no counsel, allowed no confidants. She lived alone among her playmates.
This ideal came in her romantic and perfervid period, and it did her immeasurable good. It lifted her and developed her. It enabled her to escape the clutch of mere brute passion which seizes so many boys and girls at that age, and leads to destructive early marriages. It kept her out of reach of the young men of the neighborhood.
She did not refuse the pleasures of the autumn and the winter, only she did not seem so hearty in her enjoyment of the rides and parties. She rode with the young fellows on moonlit nights, lying side by side with them on the straw-filled bottom of the sleigh, and her heart leaped with the songs they sang, but it all went out towards her ideal; he filled the circle of her mind. The thought of him made the night magical with meaning. As she danced with Carl it was her hero's arm she felt. At night, when Carl left her on the door-step, she looked up at the stars and the sinking moon, and lifted her face in a wild vow, inarticulate—"I will be worthy of him!" That was the passionate resolution, but it did not reach to the definiteness of words.
As she worked about the house she took graceful attitudes, and wished he might see her; he would be pleased with her. The grace and power of her arm acquired new meaning to her. Her body, she recognized, had something the same statuesque pose of his. In the secrecy of her room she walked up and down, feeling the splendid action of her nude limbs muscled almost like his. And all this was fine and pure physical joy. Her idea remained indefinite, wordless.
These were days of formless imaginings and ambitions. "I will do! I will do!" was her ceaseless cry to herself, but what could she do? What should she do?
She could be wise; that she would be. So she read. She got little out of her reading that she could make a showing of, but still it developed her. It made her dream great things, impossible things, but she had moments when she tried to live these things.
Meanwhile her manners changed. She became absent-minded, and seemed sullen and haughty to her companions at times. She never giggled like the rest of the girls. She had fine teeth, and yet her smile was infrequent. She laughed when occasion demanded, and laughed heartily, but she was not easily stirred to laughter.
Just in proportion as she ignored the young beaux, so they thronged about her. One or two of them eyed her with a look which made her angry. She took refuge in Carl's company, and so escaped much persecution, for Carl was growing to be a powerful young man, with fists like mauls, and was respected among the athletes of the neighborhood.
She did not realize that she would need at some time to settle with Carl. She accepted his company as a matter of course. He filled social requirements for the time being.
Her teacher that winter was a plaintive sort of a little middle-aged man, a man of considerable refinement, but with little force. Rose liked him, but did not respect him as she had two or three of the men who had filled the teacher's chair. She could not go to him for advice.
As the winter wore on the figure of "William De Lisle" grew dimmer, but not less beautiful. Her love for him lost its under-current of inarticulate expectancy; it was raised into a sentiment so ethereal it would seem a breath of present passion would scatter it like vapor, and yet it was immovable as granite. Time alone could change it. He still dominated her thought at quiet times, at dark when the stars began to shine, but in the daytime he was faint as a figure in a dream.
The school-house in Dutcher's coulé, like most country school-houses, was a squalid little den. It was as gray as a rock and as devoid of beauty as a dry goods box. It sat in the midst of the valley and had no trees, to speak of, about it, and in winter it was almost as snow-swept as the school-houses of the prairie.
Its gray clap-boarding was hacked and scarred with knife and stone, and covered with mud and foul marks. A visitor who had turned in from the sun-smit winter road paused before knocking and looked at the walls and the door with a feeling of mirth and sadness. Was there no place to escape the obscene outcome of sexual passion?
Dr. Thatcher had been a pupil here in this same school-house more than twenty years before, and the droning, shuffling sound within had a marvelous reawakening power. He was a physician in Madison now, and was in the coulé on a visit.
His knock on the door brought a timid-looking man to the door.
"I'd like to come in awhile," said the Doctor.
"Certainly, certainly," replied the teacher, much embarrassed by the honor.
He brought him the chair he had been sitting on, and helped his visitor remove his coat and hat.
"Now don't mind me, I want to see everything go on just as if I were not here."
"Very well, that's the way we do," the teacher replied, and returned to his desk and attempted, at least, to carry out his visitor's request.
A feeling of sadness, mingled with something wordlessly vast, came over the Doctor as he sat looking about the familiar things of the room.
He was in another world, an old, familiar world. His eyes wandered lovingly from point to point of the room, filled with whispering lips and shuffling feet and shock-heads of hair, under which shone bright eyes, animal-like in their shifty stare. The curtains, of a characterless shade, the battered maps, the scarred and scratched blackboards, the patched, precarious plastering, the worn floor on which the nails and knots stood like miniature mountains, the lop-sided seats, the master's hacked, unpainted pine desk, dark with dirt and polished with dirty hands, all seemed as familiar as his own face.
He sat there listening to the recitations in a dreamy impassivity. He was deep in the past, thinking of the days when to pass from his seat to the other side of the room was an event; when a visitor was a calamity—for the teacher; when the master was a tyrant and his school-room a ceaselessly rebellious kingdom.
As his eyes fell at last more closely upon the scholars; he caught the eyes of a young girl looking curiously at him, and so deep was he in the past, his heart gave a sudden movement, just as it used to leap when in those far-off days Stella Baird looked at him. He smiled at himself for it. It was really ludicrous; he thought, "I'll tell my wife of it."
The girl looked away slowly and without embarrassment. She was thinking deeply, looking out of the window. His first thought was, "She has beautiful eyes." Then he noticed that she wore her hair neatly arranged, and that her dress, though plain, looked tasteful and womanly about the neck. The line of her head was magnificent. Her color was rich and dark; her mouth looked sad for one so young. Her face had the effect of being veiled by some warm, dusky color.
Was she young? Sometimes as he studied her she seemed a woman, especially as she looked away out of the window, and the profile line of her face could be seen. But she looked younger when she bent her head upon her books, and her long eye-lashes fell upon her cheek.
His persistent study brought a vivid flush into her face, but she did not nudge her companion and whisper as another would have done.
"That is no common girl," the Doctor concluded.
He sat there while the classes were called up one after the other. He heard again these inflections, tones, perpetuated for centuries in the school-room, "The-cat-saw-a-rat."
Again the curfew failed to ring, in the same hard, monotonous, rapid, breathless sing-song, every other line with a falling inflection. The same failure to make the proper pause caused it to appear that "Bessie saw him on her brow."
Again the heavy boy read the story of the ants, and the teacher asked insinuatingly sweet questions.
"What did they do?"
"Made a tunnel."
"Yes! Now whatisa tunnel?"
"A hole that runs under-ground."
"Very good! It says that the ant is a voracious creature. What does that mean?"
"Dunno."
"You don't know what a voracious creature is?"
"No, sir."
And then came the writing exercise, when each grimy fist gripped a pen, and each red tongue rolled around a mouth in the vain effort to guide the pen.Cramp, cramp; scratch, scratch; sputter!What a task it was!
The December afternoon sun struck in at the windows, and fell across the heads of the busy scholars, and as he looked, Dr. Thatcher was a boy again, and Rose and her companions were the "big girls" of the school. He was looking at Stella, the prettiest girl in the district, the sunlight on her hair, a dream of nameless passion in her eyes.
The little room grew wide as romance, and across the aisle seemed over vast spaces. Girlish eyes met his like torches in the night. The dusty air, the shuffle of feet, the murmuring of lips only added to the mysterious power of the scene.
There they sat, these girls, just as in the far-off days, trying to study, and succeeding in dreaming of love songs, and vague, sweet embraces on moonlight nights, beneath limitless star-shot skies, with sound of bells in their ears, and the unspeakable glory of youth and pure passion in their souls.
The Doctor sighed. He was hardly forty yet, but he was old in the history of disillusion and in contempt of human nature. His deep-set eyes glowed with an inward fire of remembrance.
"O pathetic little band of men and women," thought he, "my heart thrills and aches for you."
He was brought back to the present with a start by the voice of the teacher.
"Rose, you may recite now."
The girl he had been admiring came forward. As she did so he perceived her to be not more than sixteen, but she still had in her eyes the look of a dreaming woman.
"Rose Dutcher is our best scholar," smiled the teacher proudly as Rose took her seat. She looked away out of the window abstractedly as the teacher opened the huge geography and passed it to the Doctor.
"Ask her anything you like from the first fifty-six pages." The Doctor smiled and shook his head.
"Bound the Sea of Okhotsk," commanded the teacher.
Thatcher leaned forward eagerly—her voice would tell the story!
Without looking around, with her hands in her lap, an absent look in her eyes, the girl began in a husky contralto voice: "Bounded on the north—" and went through the whole rigmarole in the same way, careless, but certain.
"What rivers would you cross in going from Moscow to Paris?"
Again the voice began and flowed on in the same measured indifferent way till the end was reached.
"Good heavens!" thought the Doctor, "they still teach that useless stuff. But how well she does it!"
After some words of praise, which the girl hardly seemed to listen to, she took her seat again.
Rose, on her part, saw another man of grace and power. She saw every detail of his dress. His dark, sensitive face, and splendid slope of his shoulders, the exquisite neatness and grace of his collar and tie and coat. But in his eyes was something that moved her, drew her. She felt something subtile there, refinement and sorrow, and emotions she could only dimly feel.
She could not keep her eyes from studying his face. She compared him with "William De Lisle," not deliberately, always unconsciously. He had nothing of the bold beauty of her ideal. This man was a scholar, and he was come out of the world beyond the Big Ridge, and besides, there was mystery and allurement in his face.
The teacher called as if commanding a regiment of cavalry. "Books.Ready!" There was a riotous clatter, which ended as quickly as it begun.
Kling!They all rose.Kling!and the boys moved out with clumping of heavy boots and burst into the open air with wild whoopings. The girls gathered into little knots and talked, glancing furtively at the stranger. Some of them wondered if he were the County Superintendent of Schools.
Rose sat in her seat, with her chin on her clasped hands. It was a sign of her complex organization, that the effect of a new experience was rooted deep, and changes took place noiselessly, far below the surface.
"Rose, come here a moment," called the teacher, "bring your history."
"Don't keep her from her playmates," Thatcher remonstrated.
"O she'd rather recite any time than play with the others."
Rose stood near, a lovely figure of wistful hesitation. She had been curiously unembarrassed before, now she feared to do that which was so easy and so proper. At last she saw her opportunity as the teacher turned away to ring the bell.
She touched Thatcher on the arm. "Do you live in Madison, sir?"
"Yes. I am a doctor there."
She looked embarrassed now and twisted her fingers.
"Is it so very hard to get into the university?"
"No. It is very easy—it would be for you," he said with a touch of unconscious gallantry of which he was ashamed the next moment, for the girl was looking away again. "Do you want to go to the university?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"Why?"
"O, because—I want to know all I can."
"Why? What do you want to do?"
"You won't tell on me, will you?" She blushed red as a carnation now. Strange mixture of child and woman, thought Thatcher.
"Why, certainly not."
They stood over by the blackboard; the other girls were pointing and snickering, but she did not mind them.
"I guess I won't tell," she stammered; "you'd laugh at me like everybody else—I know you would."
He caught her arm and turned her face toward his; her eyes were full of tears.
"Tell me. I'll help you."
His eyes glowed with a kindly smile, and she warmed under it.
"I want to write—stories—and books," she half whispered guiltily. The secret was out and she wanted to run away. The Doctor's crucial time had come. If he laughed!—but he did not laugh. He looked thoughtful, almost sad.
"You are starting on a long, long road, Rose," he said at last. "Where it will lead to I cannot tell—nobody can. What put that into your head?"
Rose handed him a newspaper clipping containing a brief account of "how a Wisconsin poetess achieved fame and fortune."
"Why, my dear girl," he began, "don't you know that out of ten thousand—" He stopped. She was looking up at him in expectation, her great luminous grey-brown eyes burning with an inward hungry fire which thrilled him.
"She may be the one in ten thousand, and I'll help her," he said to himself.
The bell ringing brought the boys clattering back into their seats, puffing, gasping, as if at last extremity. For a couple of minutes nothing could be done, so great was the noise.
While they were getting settled he said to her:
"If you want to go to the university you will have to go to a preparatory school. Here is my card—write to me when you get done here, and I'll see what can be done."
Rose went back to her seat, her eyes filled with a burning light, her hands strained together. This great man from Madison had believed in her. O, if he would only come home and see her father!
She painfully penciled a note and handed it to him as she came past to the blackboard. He was putting on his coat to go, but he looked down at the crumpled note, with its Spencerian handwriting.
"Please, sir, won't you come down and see pappa and ask him if I can't go to Madison?"
He looked at the girl, whose eyes, big and sombre and full of wistful timidity, were fixed upon him. Obeying a sudden impulse, he stepped to her side and said: "Yes, I'll help you; don't be troubled."
He stayed until school was out and the winter sun was setting behind the hills. Rose sat and looked at him with more than admiration. She trusted him. He had said he would help her, and his position was one of power in her fancy, and something in his face and dress impressed her more deeply than any man she had ever seen save "William De Lisle," her dim and shadowy yet kingly figure.
On his part he was surprised at himself. He was waiting a final hour in this school-room out of interest and curiosity in a country school girl. His was a childless marriage, and this girl stirred the parental in him. He wished he had such a child to educate, to develop.
The school was out at last, and, as she put on her things and came timidly towards him, he turned from the teacher.
"So you are John Dutcher's daughter? I knew your father when I was a lad here. I am stopping at the Wallace farm, but I'll come over a little later and see your father."
Rose rushed away homeward, full of deep excitement. She burst into the barn where John was rubbing the wet fetlocks of the horses he had been driving. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks were a beautiful pink.
"O, pappa, he said I ought to go to Madison to school. He said he'd help me go."
John looked up in astonishment at her excitement.
"Who said so?"
"Dr. Thatcher, the man who visited our school today. He said I'd ought to go, and he said he'd help me."
Her exultation passed suddenly. Somehow there was not so much to tell as she had fancied, and she suddenly found herself unable to explain the basis of her enthusiasm. The perceived, but untranslatable expression of the Doctor's eyes and voice was the real foundation of her hope, and that she had not definitely and consciously noted—to explain it was impossible. If her father could only have seen him!
"I guess you'd better wait awhile," her father said, with a smile, which Rose resented.
"He's coming tonight."
"Who's he?"
"Dr. Thatcher. He used to live here. He knows you."
John grew a little more intent on her news.
"Does! I wonder if he is old Stuart Thatcher's son? He had a boy who went east to school somewheres."
Rose went into the house and set to work with the graceful celerity which Mrs. Diehl called "knack."
"Rose, you can turn off work when you really want to, to beat anything I ever see."
Rose smiled and hummed a tune. Mrs. Diehl was made curious.
"You're wonderful good-natured, it seems to me. What's the reason, already?"
"We're going to have company."
"Who, for Peter's sake?"
"Dr. Thatcher."
"What's he come here for?"
"To see pappa," said Rose, as she rushed upstairs into her attic-room. It was cold up there, warmed only by the stove-pipe from the sitting-room, but she sat down and fell into a dream in which she recalled every look and word he had given her.
She came suddenly to herself, and began putting on her red dress, which was her company dress. When she came downstairs in her creaking new shoes Mrs. Diehl was properly indignant.
"Well! I declare. Couldn't you get along in your calico?"
"No, I couldn't!" Rose replied, with easy sharpness, which showed the frequent passages at arms between them.
When Thatcher came in with the teacher he was quite startled by the change in her. She looked taller and older and more intricate some way.
She took his hat and coat and made him at home in much better form than he had reason to think she knew. She on her part watched him closely. His manner at the table was a source of enlightenment to her. She felt him to be a strong man, therefore his delicacy and consideration meant much to her. It suggested related things dimly. It made her appreciate vaguely the charm of the world from whence he came.
Dr. Thatcher was not young, and his experience as a physician had added to his natural insight. He studied Rose keenly while he talked with John concerning the changes in the neighborhood.
He saw in the girl great energy and resolution, and a mental organization not simple. She had reason and reserve force not apprehended by her father. The problem was, should he continue to encourage her. Education of a girl like that might be glorious—or tragic! After supper John Dutcher took him into the corner, and, while Rose helped clear away the dishes, the two men talked.
"You see," John explained, "she's been talkin' about going on studyin' for the last six months. I don't know what's got into the girl, but she wants to go to Madison. I suppose her learnin' of that Bluff-Sidin' girl goin' has kind o' spurred her on. I want her to go to the high school at the Sidin', but she wants to go away"—he choked a little on that phrase—"but if you an' teacher here think the girl'd' ought to go, why, I'll send her."
The younger man looked grave—very grave. He foresaw lonely hours for John Dutcher.
"Well—the girl interests me very much, Mr. Dutcher. It's a strong point in her favor that she wants to go. Most girls of her age have little ambition beyond candy and new dresses. I guess it's your duty to send her. What she wants is the larger life that will come to her in Madison. The preparatory work can be done here at the Siding. I believe it is one of the accredited schools. Of course she will come home often, and when she comes to Madison, I will see that she has a home until she gets 'wunted,' as you farmers say."
The teacher came in at this point full of wild praise of Rose's ability. "She's great on history and geography. She knows about every city and river and mountain on the maps."
"She's always been great for geography," confirmed John. "Used to sit and follow out lines on the maps when she wasn't knee-high to a 'tater." A tender tone came into his voice, almost as if he were speaking of a dead child. He too had a quick imagination, and he felt already the loss of his girl, his daily companion.
The matter was decided there. "You send her to me, when she gets ready, and I'll have Mrs. Thatcher look after her for a week or so, till we find her a place to stay."
Rose was in a fever of excitement. She saw the men talking there, and caught disconnected words as she came and went about the table. At last she saw Dr. Thatcher rise to go. She approached him timorously.
"Well, Rose, when you come to Madison you must come to our house. Mrs. Thatcher will be glad to see you." She could not utter a word in thanks. After he had gone Rose turned to her father with a swift appeal.
"Oh, pappa, am I going?"
He smiled a little. "We'll see when the time comes, Rosie."
She knew what that meant and she leaped with a joy swift as flame. John sat silently looking at the wall, his arm flung over the back of his chair. He wondered why she should feel so happy at the thought of leaving home, when to him it was as bitter as death to think of losing her for a single day out of his life.
Thenceforward the world began to open to Rose. Every sign of spring was doubly significant; the warm sun, the passing of wild-fowl, the first robin, the green grass, the fall of the frost, all appealed to her with a power which transcended words. All she did was only preparation for her great career beyond the Ridge.
She pictured the world outside in colors of such splendor that the romance of her story-papers seemed weak and pale.
Out there in the world was William De Lisle. Out there were ladies with white faces and heavy-lidded, haughty eyes, in carriages and in ball-rooms. Out there was battle for her, and from her quiet coulé battle seemed somehow alluring.
As the time for leaving came on Rose had hours of depression, wherein she wondered if it were worth while. Sometimes it began when she noticed a fugitive look of sorrow on her father's face, and sometimes it was at parting with some of her girl friends, and sometimes it was at thought of Carl. She had spent a year in the Siding in preparation for the work in Madison, and the time of her adventure with the world was near.
Carl came to be a disturbing force during those last few weeks. He had been a factor in all of the days of her life. Almost without thought on her part she had relied upon him. She had run to him for any sort of material help, precisely as to a brother, and now he was a man and would not be easily set aside.
He generally drove her to meeting on Sunday, and they loitered on the shady stretches of the coulé roads. He generally put his arm around her, and she permitted it because it was the way all the young fellows did but she really never considered him in the light of a possible husband.
Most of the girls were precocious in the direction of marriage, and brought all their little allurements to bear with the same object in view which directs the coquetry of a city belle. At sixteen they had beaux, at seventeen many of them actually married and at eighteen they might often be seen riding to town with their husbands, covered with dust, clasping wailing babes in their arms; at twenty they were often thin and bent in the shoulders, and flat and stiff in the hips, sallow and querulous wives of slovenly, careless husbands.
Rose did not hold that Carl had any claim upon her. The incidents of two years before were lived down, both by herself and Carl, for as manhood and womanhood came to them they put away all that which they had done in the thoughtlessness of childhood. To Rose it was an unpleasant memory, because associated with her father's grief. She supposed Carl to feel in the same way about it, and so no allusion to it was ever made by any one.
But Carl was grown to be a great stalwart young fellow, with the blood and sinew of a man, and the passions of a man were developing in his rather thick head. The arm which he laid along the buggy seat was less passive and respectful of late. It clutched in upon her at times; though she shook herself angrily each time, he merely laughed.
So matters stood when she told him she was going away to school in Madison.
"That so?" he said, and not much else till the next Sunday. With all the week to think about it in, he began to ask himself in current slang, "Where do I come in?"
So the next time they drove together he tried again to tighten his arm about her while he said:
"I'll miss you, Rosie."
"So'll pap," she said.
There was a long pause, then he said: "What's the use o' going away anyhow? I thought you an' me was goin' to be married when we grew up."
She shook herself free. "We ain't grown up yet."
"I guess we won't never get our growth, then," he said with a chuckle; "you don't need that extra schoolin' any more'n I do."
They rode in silence down the beautiful valley, with the charm of early autumn lying over it.
"You mustn't go and forget me off there in Madison," he said, giving her a squeeze.
"Carl, you stop that! You mustn't do that! I'll jump out o' the buggy if you do that again!"
There was genuine anger in her voice.
"Why, it's all right, Rosie; ain't we engaged?"
"No, we're not, and we never will be, either."
There was a note in her voice that struck through even Carl's thick thought. He did not reply, but continued to dwell upon that reply until its entire meaning came to him. Then his face became pitiful to see. It was usually round and red, but now it looked long and heavy and bitter. He was so infertile of phrases he could only say:
"Then we might as well drive right back home."
"Well, you made me say it," she went on in a softer tone, being much moved by the change in his face. "I like you, Carl, but I'm not a-goin' to promise anything. I'll see when I come back, after I graduate."
They drove on. She was not much more of a talker than he, and so they rode in silence that was sullen on Carl's part. At the gate she relented a little. "Won't you come in, Carl?"
"No, I guess not," he said shortly, and drove off.
After she went in the house she felt more and more the injustice of her anger. "If he hadn't pinched me like that," she said to herself.
She went to work at her packing again, putting in things she would not possibly have any use for. As she worked the ache and weariness at her heart increased, and when they called her to supper the tears were falling again like a shower. It was a silent and miserable meal, though the doors and windows were open and the pleasant sounds of the farm-yard came in, and the red light of the setting sun shone in magically warm and mellow.
John ate slowly, his eyes fixed on his plate. Rose ate not at all and looked out of the window, with big tears rolling childishly down her cheeks. She didn't want to go at all now. Her home seemed all at once so comfortable and happy and safe!
John looked up and saw her tears, and immediately he was choked and could not eat.
"There, there! Rosie, don't cry. We'll be all right, and you'll be back almost 'fore you know it. June comes early in the summer, you know." They were both so childlike they did not consider it possible to come home before the year was up. She came around and knelt down by his side and buried her face on his knees.
"I wish I hadn't promised to go," she wailed; "I don't want to go one bit. I want to stay with you."
He understood her feeling and soothed her and diverted her, though tears would have been a relief to him.
She went with him out to the barn, and she cried over the bossies and the horses, and said good-by to them under her breath, so that her father might not hear.
When she went to bed she lay down disconsolate and miserable. O it was so hard to go, and it was hard not to go. Life was not so simple as it had seemed before. Why did this great fear rise up in her heart? Why should she have this terrible revulsion at the last moment? So she thought and thought. Her only stay in the midst of chaos was Dr. Thatcher. William De Lisle was very far away, like a cold white star.
Just as she made up her mind that she could not sleep, she heard her father call her.
"Rose, time to get up!"
Her heart contracted with a sharp spasm that almost made her scream. The time had come for action—momentous, irrevocable action, like Napoleon's embarking from Elba for France.
It was very chill and dark. She rose and groped about for a light. Her teeth chattered with cold and it seemed to her she was going to be sick. She dressed hurriedly and went down.
John and her aunt were seated at breakfast. She slipped into her seat, white and silent. It was still dark and the lighted lamps made it seem like a midnight meal.
John was strenuously cheerful. "We have to get up early if we get that seven o'clock train," he said.
"Better take some coffee anyhow," urged Mrs. Diehl.
"O, I can't eat a thing," Rose insisted.
"Don't worry her, sis," interposed John. "She'll feel like it later."
While John went to get the team Rose got on her things and walked about, uttering a little moaning sound, like a babe in delirium. It was terrible to hear her and Mrs. Diehl lost patience at last.
"Stop that fuss! Good land! anybody'd think you was goin' to die dead as a hammer, the way you take on, and after all the time we've had gettin' you ready. I declare to goodness I never see such a young'un in all my born days. I will be glad to get rid of you!"
This was good strong medicine to Rose, and she uttered no more of her grief. She punished her aunt by refusing to say good-bye at the door, which grieved John very much.
"You folks had a tiff this morning a'ready?"
It was cold and damp. The wind pushed against their faces like the touch of wet palms. The horses splashed along in pools of water, and out of the dim light the hills rose against the sky full of soft sprawling rain-clouds.
They rode in silence. Rose saw no more of the splendid visions of the world. It was all dark and rainy ahead. Home, and peace, and comfort were all behind her. She was so miserable it seemed as if she must cry out, but her aunt's contemptuous words helped her to silence.
John talked a little about the trains on the road, and the weather, but talk was an effort to him also. As he rode he thought of it all again. He felt as if he were losing his heart, but he did not waver.
He helped her on the cars and then stooped and hugged her hard without kissing her, and so stumbled out again, while she sat white and rigid, breathing hard.
The sun came out after a little, and covered the earth with a glory that found its way into the girl's heart. She ceased to sob, and the ache passed out of her throat, although the shadow still hung in her eyes.
The car interested her. It seemed a palace and of enormous size. She figured out the number of people it would hold, and wondered how the seats which were turned the other way came to be so. The car was mainly occupied by men in careless clothing. Everybody seemed sleepy and unkempt. She wondered where they all came from, and so speculating, she lost something of her poignant sorrow.
Then came one moment of quiet elation. She was going out into the world! the enormous, the incredible had happened! She was going to Madison, the state capital. The speed of the train, which seemed to her very great, aided her to realize how swiftly she was getting into the world. The fields and farms whirled by in dizzying fashion, and the whistle of the engine was like the furious, defiant neigh of a rushing horse. It was all on a scale more splendid than her dreams.
In the midst of her exultant moment the brakeman came through and eyed her with the glare of a sex-maniac. She felt as if a hot iron had touched her flesh, and she shrank back into herself, like a scared mollusk. The man passed on, but her exultation was gone.
She noticed that the hills grew lower as they sped southward, and queer rocks rose squarely out of the flat lands, which were covered with wild swamps of small trees, out of which long skeletons of dead pines lifted with a desolate effect.
There were several tunnels, and every time they went through one Rose clung to the seat in terror. Some young men in the rear of the car smacked their lips to represent kisses, and laughed boisterously afterward, as if that were a very good joke indeed.
The conductor, when he came through the next time, eyed her closely and smiled broadly. She did not understand why he should smile at her. After he had been through the car several times he came and sat down by her.
"Nice day, ain't it? Live in Madison?"
"No, sir," she replied, looking away. She did not want to say more, but some power made her add, "I am going to school there."
He seemed pleased.
"Ah, hah! Going to the university?"
"Yes, sir."
"O, I see." He put his knee against the back of the seat in front of her and took an easy position.
"It's a nice town. Wish I could stop off and help you find a boarding-place."
The brakeman, coming through, winked at the conductor as if to say: "I like your 'mash,'" and the terror and shame of her position flashed over Rose, flushing her from head to foot. Her eyes filled with angry tears, and she looked out of the window, not knowing what to do. She was so helpless here, for she was out in the world alone.
The conductor went on serenely, knowing well how scared and angry she was.
"Yes, sir; it's a fine little town. Great place for boating, summer or winter. You'll see a hundred ice-boats out on Monona there all at once. I've got a cousin there who has a boat. He'd be glad to take you out if I'd tell him about you."
"I don't want to know him," she said, in what she intended to be a fierce tone, but which was a pitifully scared tone.
The conductor saw the brakeman looking at him and in order to convey the impression that he was getting on nicely he bent forward and looked around into her face.
"O, you'd like him first rate."
Rose would have screamed, or burst out into some wild action had not the engine whistled. This gave the conductor an excuse to give the talk up for the moment.
"She's a daisy and as green as grass," he said to the brakeman. Her innocence seemed to place her in his hand.
For the next hour they persecuted the girl with their low presences. First one and then the other came along the aisle and sat down beside her. And when she put her valise there, blocking the seat, the brakeman sat on the armrest and tormented her with questions to which she gave no answer.
Just after Pine City she heard a cool, firm woman's voice ask: "May I sit with you?"
She looked up and made room for a handsome, middle-aged woman, in a neat traveling dress.
"It's a shame!" she said. "I've just got in, but I saw at once how those men were torturing you. Strange no one in the car could see it and take your part."
Rose turned to her gratefully, and laid her head on the lady's stalwart shoulder.
"There, there, no harm done! You must learn to expect such things from some men. It would be libelous on the brutes to call them beasts." She said a great many things which Rose hardly understood, but her presence was strong and helpful. Rose liked her very much.
"How far are you going?"
Rose told her in a few words.
"Ah, are you? You could not have made a better choice. Who sends you there—pardon me?"
"Dr. Thatcher."
"Dr. Thatcher! Well, well, how things come about. I know the Doctor very well."
"Do you? I'm going to live there for a while."
Rose was smiling now.
"Well, you couldn't be more fortunate. You'll get into the most progressive home in the city."
From this on they had a royal good time. Rose grew happier than she had been for weeks. There was something strangely masterful about this woman in spite of her sweet smile and soft gray eyes.
When the conductor came down the aisle again she met his eye with a keen, stern glance.
"Young man, I shall have you discharged from this road."
The astonished cur took her card, and when he read the name of a famous woman lawyer of Milwaukee his face fell.
"I didn't mean any harm."
"I know better. I shall see Mr. Millet, and see that he makes an example of you."
Rose was awed by her calm and commanding voice.
"It has been our boast that our girls could travel from east to west in our broad land, and be safe from insult, and I'm not going to let such a thing pass."
She returned to her grave sweet mood presently, and began to talk of other things.
As they neared the town where they were to part company, the elder woman said:
"Now, my dear, I am to get off here. I may never see you again, but I think I shall. You interest me very much. I am likely to be in Madison during the year, and if I do I will see you. I am getting old though, and things of this life are uncertain to us with gray hair. I like that forehead on you, it tells me you are not to be a victim to the first man who lays his hand on you. Let me give one last word of advice. Don't marry till you are thirty. Choose a profession and work for it. Marry only when you want to be a mother."
She rose. "You don't understand what I mean now, but keep my words in your mind. Some day you will comprehend all I mean—good-bye." Rose was tearful as Mrs. Spencer kissed her and moved away.
Rose saw her on the steps and waved her hand back at her as the train drew away. Her presence had been oppressive in spite of her kindness, and her last words filled the girl's mind with vague doubts of life and of men. Everything seemed forcing her thoughts of marriage to definiteness. Her sex was so emphasized, so insisted upon by this first day's experience in the world, that she leaned her head against the window and cried out: "O, I wish I was dead."
But the train shot round the low green hills fringed with the glorious foliage of the maples, the lake sparkled in the afternoon's sun, the dome of the capitol building loomed against the sky, and the romance and terror of her entry into the world came back to her, driving out her more morbid emotions. She became again the healthy country girl to whom Madison was a center of art and society and literature.
The train drew up to a long platform swarming with people, moving anxiously about with valises in hand, broad-hatted and kindly; many of them were like the people of the coulé. But the young hackmen terrified her with their hard, bold eyes and cruel, tobacco-stained mouths.
She alighted from the car, white and tremulous with fear, and her eyes moved about anxiously. When they fell upon Thatcher the blood gushed up over her face, and her eyes filled with tears of relief.
"Ah, here you are!" he said with a smile, as he shook her hand and took her valise. "I began to fear you'd been delayed."
She followed him to the carriage with down-cast eyes. Her regard for him would not permit her to say a word, even when they were seated together in the carriage and driving up the street. Her breath came so quick and strange the Doctor noticed it.
"A little bit excited about it, aren't you?" he smilingly said. "I remember how I felt when I went to Chicago the first time. I suppose this seems like Chicago to you. How did you leave the people in the coulé, all well?"
"Yes, sir," she replied without looking up.
"Well, now you are about to begin work. I've got everything all arranged. You are to stay with us for the present at least. My niece is with us and you will get along famously I know. How do you like my horse?" he asked, in his effort to get her to speak.
She studied the horse critically.
"First rate!" she said at last.
He laughed. "Well, I am glad you like him, for I know you are a judge. He is a pretty good stepper, too, though he hasn't quite enough fling in his knees, you notice. I'll let you drive him some time."
He drew up before a pretty cottage, set in the midst of a neat lawn. It was discouragingly fine and handsome to the girl. She was afraid it was too good for her to enter.
A very blonde young girl came dancing out to the block.
"O Uncle Joe, did Rose—" Rose suddenly appeared.
"This is Rose. Rose, this is our little chatter-box."
"Now, Uncle Joe! Come right in, Rose. I'm going to call you Rose, mayn't I?"
Mrs. Thatcher, a tall thin woman, welcomed Rose in sober fashion, and led the way into the little parlor, which seemed incredibly elegant to the shy girl.
She sat silently while the rest moved about her. There was a certain dignity in this reserve, and both Mrs. Thatcher and Josie were impressed by it. She was larger and handsomer than either of them and that gave her an advantage, though she did not realize that. She was comparing in swift, disparaging fashion her heavy boots with their dainty soft shoes, and wondering what she could do to escape from them.
"Josie, take her right up to her room," said Mrs. Thatcher, "and let her get ready for dinner."
"Yes, come up, you must feel like a good scrub."
Rose flushed again, wondering if her face had grown grimy enough to be noticeable.
The young girl led Rose into a pretty room with light green walls, and lovely curtains at the windows. There were two dainty little beds occupying opposite corners.
"We're to occupy this room together," said Josie. "This is my dressing case and that's yours."
Rose saw at once Josie had given her the best one. Josie bustled about helping her lay off her things, pouring water for her and talking on with gleeful flow.
"I'm awful glad you've come. I know we'll be just as thick! I wish you were in my classes though, but you won't be, so Doctor says. Don't you think this is a nice room?"
Rose washed her hands as quickly as possible because they looked so big and dingy beside the supple whiteness of Josephine's. She felt dusty and coarse and hopeless in the midst of this exquisite room, the most beautiful room she had ever seen.
Her eyes moving about fell upon a picture which had the gleam of white limbs in it. Josephine followed her look: "O, that's young Samson choking the lion. I just love that; isn't he lovely?"
Rose blushed and tried to answer but could not. The beautiful splendid limbs of the young man flamed upon her with marvelous appeal. It was beautiful, and yet her training made her think it somehow not to be talked about.
Josephine led the way downstairs into the little parlor, which was quite as uncomfortably beautiful as the bedroom. The vases and flowers, and simple pictures, and the piano, all seemed like the furnishings of the homes she had read about in stories.
But dazed as she was she kept her self-command, at least she kept silence and sat in sombre, almost sullen dejection amid it all. Mrs. Thatcher hardly knew what to think of her, but the Doctor comprehended her mood better for he had passed through such experiences himself. He talked to her for a few minutes about her plans, and then they went out to dinner.
Rose entered the dining-room with a great fear in her heart. She longed to run away and hide.
"O I don't know anything!" was the bitter cry welling up in her throat again and again, and she nearly cried out upon the impulse.
The Doctor liked to have his dinner at one, and so Rose found two knives, and two forks at her plate, and two spoons also. She had read in stories of banquets, and she saw that this was to be her greatest trial. She sat very stiff and silent as the soup was brought on by the Norwegian girl.
She took the plate as it was handed her, and handed back the one which was turned down with the napkin on top of it. The Norwegian girl smiled broadly and handed them both back. Then Rose saw her mistake and the hot blood swept over her brown face in a purple wave.
The Doctor and his wife passed it in silence. Josie fortunately was talking to the cat and did not see it.
Rose could hardly touch her soup, which was delicious; her whole mind was filled with a desire to escape as soon as possible.
Which of the knives should she use first, and what was the extra little plate for, were the disturbing questions. She could use a fork, but she was afraid of betraying herself in the minutiæ of the service. As a matter of fact she got along very well, but of that she had no knowledge.
Some way she lived through the dainty dinner, scarcely tasting anything of it. At the close of it Mrs. Thatcher said:
"Wouldn't you like to lie down for a little while? aren't you tired?" Rose hardly knew what weariness was, but she assented because she wished to be alone.
"I'll call you at three, may I?" asked Josie, who was wildly in love with Rose already.
"O, isn't she big and splendid, but she's queer," she said when she came down.
"That'll wear off," said the Doctor. "She feels a little strange now. I know all about it. I went from a farm to the city."
Rose hardly dared lie down on the spotless bed. A latent good taste in her enabled her to see in every detail harmony of effect, and herself as the one discordant note in the house. O, how dirty and rough and awkward she was!
Looking out of the window she saw a couple of ladies come out of a large house opposite and walk down toward a carriage which waited at the gate. The ladies held their dresses with a dainty action of their gloved hands as they stood for a moment in consultation. (How graceful their hats were!) Then they entered the carriage.
As they gathered their soft dresses about their limbs and stooped to enter the door, the flexile line of waist and hip and thigh came out beautifully, modestly.
They were a revelation of elegance and grace to the farmer's daughter. Their gaiters were of the same color as their dresses. This was most wonderful of all. Such unity and completeness of attire was unknown to her before. She looked down at her red dress, which Mattie Teel had cut out for her, and she saw it in all its deformity. The sleeves didn't fit like Josie's did. It didn't hang right; it just wrinkled all around her waist, and hung in bunches, and she knew it. And her hat, made over from her last winter's hat, was awful.
She might just as well die or go back home, and never go out of the coulé again. She was nothing but a great country gawk, anyway.
In this bitter fashion she raged on, lying face downward on the sofa. She lay there until she heard dancing steps, and Josie called out: "May I come in?"
"Yes," said Rose coldly.
"O, you've been having a good cry, I know! I just like to go off and have a good cry that way. It makes your eyes red, but you can fix that. Just sit still now and let me see what I can do."
She bustled about and Rose let her bathe her face with cool water and cologne, and fuss about. Her little fingers were like a baby's and she murmured and gurgled in the goodness of her heart like a kitten. Rose actually fell asleep under her touch.
Josie stopped astonished and startled for a moment, and then tip-toed out of the room like a burglar, and told Mrs. Thatcher all about it.
"And O, auntie, she's very poor, isn't she? Her clothes——"
"Tut," warned Mrs. Thatcher, "you must be careful not to notice that. Edward, is she so very poor?"
The Doctor, seated at his desk in the little office, looked up a moment.
"No, I don't think so. It is lack of judgment partially. A little tact and taste will fix her all right. Dutcher is fairly well-to-do, and she is all he has. He wrote me to get her what she needed, but I'll leave that to you girls."
Josie danced with delight. Buying things for yourself was fun, but buying for another was ecstasy!
"The poor child hasn't a dress that she can wear without alteration, and she is such a splendid creature, too. I can't conceive how they failed to fit her."
"It seems to me that putting her beside Josie is pretty hard on her. I am afraid you are not conversant with the wardrobe of farmer's girls."
"Well, I didn't suppose—and the other room is so small."
"O, well, it all depends upon Josie. Josie, come here."
The girl rose up, and he put his arm around her.
"Now, my kitten, you must be very careful not to allude to any little mistakes Rose makes."
"O, Uncle Ed—you know—"
"Yes, I know chatterboxes mean all right, but they forget. Now, Rose is going to be a great scholar and she is going to be a lady, very quick, too; but she is awkward, now, and my little girl mustn't make it hard for her."
After Josie went out, Thatcher said:
"I know just how the girl feels. I went through it myself. It's hard, but it won't hurt her, only don't try to talk it over with her. If she's the girl I think she is, she'll work the whole matter out in a week herself. More than that, let me talk to her myself. If she's rested, ask her to come down."
Rose came into the Doctor's office in a numb sort of timidity, for there was a great change in the Doctor. He was hardly the same man who had eaten at their table. She couldn't describe it, but there was something in his voice which awed her. He sat now surrounded by his professional books and tools, which gave him dignity in her eyes.
"Sit down, Rose," he said, "I want to talk with you. I've had a letter from your father about you and your expenses."
And then, in some way, she never knew exactly how, he talked away her bitterness and gave her hope and comfort. He advised about books, and said: "And you'll need some little things which Bluff Siding doesn't keep. Mrs. Thatcher will drive you up town tomorrow and you can get what you need. Your father has deposited some money here to pay your expenses. I am going over to University Hill to make a call; perhaps you'd like to go."
She assented, and went to get her hat.
It was the largest town she had ever seen, and the capitol was wonderful to her, set in its park, where squirrels ran about on the velvet green of the grass. The building towered up in the sky, just as she had seen it in pictures. Swarms of people came and went along the hard, blue-black paths, and round it the teams moved before the stores of the square. It was all mightily impressive to her.
They passed the Public Library, and the Doctor said:
"You'll make great use of that, I imagine."
She could not make herself believe that. She saw students coming and going on the street, and they all seemed so gay and well dressed.
"All this will trouble you for a little while," the Doctor said. "When I came to the University the first time I seemed like a cat in a bath tub. I thought everybody was laughing at me, but, as a matter of fact, nobody paid any attention to me at all. Then I got mad, and I said, 'Well, I'llmakeyou pay attention to me before I'm done.'" The Doctor smiled at her and she had the courage to smile back. It was wonderful how well he understood her.
He drove her around the Lake drive. It was beautiful, but in her depression the more beautiful anything was the more it depressed her. The Doctor did not demand speech of her, well knowing she did not care to talk.
"I'm not mistaken in the girl," he said to his wife when they were alone. "She has immense reserve force—I feel it. Wait until she straightens up and broadens out a little, you'll see! There's some half-savage power in her, magnetism, impelling quality. I predict a great future for her if—"
"If what?"
"If she don't marry. She is passionate, willful as a colt. It seems impossible she has come thus far without entanglement. She's going to be very handsome when she gets a little more at ease. I thought her a wonderful creature as she sat in that school-room, with the yellow sun striking across her head. She appeared to me to have destiny in her favor."
"She's fine, but I think you're over-enthusiastic, Edward."
"Wait and see. She isn't a chatter-box like Josie, that is evident."
"In fact, my dear," he went on to say after a silence, "I should like to adopt her—I mean, of course, take a particular interest in her. She has appealed to me very strongly from the first. You can be a mother to Josie and I'll be a father to Rose."
There was something sombre under his smiling utterance of these words. Their eyes did not meet, and there was a silence. At last the Doctor said:
"The girl's physical perfection is wonderful. Most farmers' girls are round in the shoulders, and flat in the hips, but Rose has grown up like a young colt. Add culture and ease to her and she'll mow a wide swath, largely without knowing it, for the girl is incapable of vanity."
The wife listened with a brooding face. Rose's splendid prophecy of maternity oppressed her some way.
When the girls went up to bed, terror and homesickness and depression all came back upon Rose again. She sat down desolately upon the little cream-and-gold chair and watched Josie as she pattered about taking down her hair and arranging it for the night. She could not help seeing the multitude of bottles and little combs and powder puffs and boxes and brushes which Josie gloated over, seeing that Rose was interested.
They were presents, she said, and named the givers of each. It was a revelation to Rose of the elegancies of a dainty, finicky girl's toilet. She thought of the ragged wash-brush and wooden-backed hair-brush and horn comb which made up her own toilet set, and grew hot and cold.
Josephine was delighted to have some one sit and stare in that admiring way at her, therefore she displayed all her paces. She brushed her hair out with her ivory-backed brush, and laid out all her beautiful underwear, trimmed with lace and embroidered in silk. She did it without malice, but Rose thought of her worn cotton things, shapeless and ugly. She never could undress before Josephine in the world!
She delayed and delayed until Josie had cuddled down into her bed with her little pink nose sticking out, and her merry eyes blinking like the gaze of a kitten. Rose waited, hoping those bright eyes would close, but they would not. At last a desperate idea came to her. She sprang up and went to the gaslight.
"How do you put this out?" she asked.
Josie gurgled with laughter. "Just turn that thingamabob underneath. Yes,that—turn it quick—that's right. O, ain't it dark! But you ain't undressed yet, and the matches are out in the bathroom."
Rose was more at her ease in the dark.
"Never mind, I can undress in the dark. I'm used to it." She loosened the collar of her dress, slipped off her shoes, and lay down on the bed bitter and rebellious.
When Josie awoke in the morning the country girl was awake and fully dressed and reading a book by the window.
The wrinkly red dress could not utterly break up the fine lines of her firm bust and powerful side and thigh, and the admiring little creature hopped out of bed and stole across the room, and threw her arms about Rose.
"How big and beautiful you are!"
These wonderful words ran into the country girl's blood like hot scented wine. To be beautiful made some amends for being coarse and uncultured. As she had never felt abasement before, so she had never felt the need of being beautiful until now.
She turned a radiant, tearful face to Josie, and seized her hands.
"I—I like you—O, so much!"
"I knew we'd be friends," cried the little one dancing about. "And you'll let me go and help you buy your things, won't you?"
"O, I'll begladto have you—I'm such a fool. I don't know anything at all that I ought to know."
"You're just splendid. I'm the one who don't know anything."
Then they entered upon a day of shopping. They toiled like ants and buzzed like bees.
Rose came home at night worn out, discouraged and dumb as an Indian. She had submitted to her fate, but she was mentally sore, lame and confused. She no longer cared whether Josie saw her poverty or not, and she went to sleep out of utter fatigue, her eyes wet with tears of homesickness. All she hoped for seemed impossible and of no account, and sleep in her own attic bed appeared to be the sweetest thing in the world.