Her good, vigorous blood built up her courage during the night, but she was hardly a sweet and lovable companion in the days which followed. She (temporarily) hated Josie and feared Mrs. Thatcher. Thatcher himself, however, was her savior, for she would surely have gone home had it not been for him.
She had a notable set-to with the dressmaker.
"I won't come here again," she said, sullenly. "I don't want any dresses, I'm going home. I'm tired of being pulled and hauled."
The dressmaker was a brisk little Alsatian, with something of the French adroitness in her manner.
"O, my dear young friend! If you only knew! I am in despair! You have such a beautiful figure. You would give me such pleasure if I might but finish this lovely gown."
Rose looked at her from under a scowling prominent forehead. She had never been called beautiful before, at least not by one who was disinterested or a stranger, and she did not believe the woman.
The dressmaker passed her hands caressingly over the girl's splendid bust and side.
"Ah! I can make myself famous if I may but fit those lines."
Rose softened and put on the gown once more and silently permitted herself to be turned and turned about like a tin sign, while the little artist (which she was) went about with a mouth full of pins, gurgling, murmuring and patting. This was the worst of the worry, and the end of all the shopping was in sight.
The touch of soft flannels upon her flesh, the flow of ample and graceful gowns helped her at once. Her shoulders lifted and her bust expanded under properly cut and fitted garments. Quickly, unconsciously she became herself again, moving with large, unfettered movements. She dominated her clothing, and yet her clothing helped her. Being fit to be seen, she was not so much troubled by the faces of people who studied her.
It was wonderful to see how she took on (in the first few weeks) the graces and refinements of her new life. She met her schoolmates each day with added ease, and came at last to be a leader among them, just as in the home coulé. Her strength and grace and mastery they felt at once.
Her heart beat very hard and fast on the first day as she joined the stream of students moving toward the Central Hall. The maple trees were still in full leaf and blazing color. The sunlight was a magical cataract of etherealized gold, and the clouds were too beautiful to look at without a choking in the throat.
As she stepped over the deeply-worn stone sill, she thought of the thousands of other country girls whose feet had helped to wear that hollow, and her heart ached with unaccountable emotion.
Above her noisy feet clattered and bounded on the winding stairway, and careless voices resounded. She climbed in silence. In such wise she began to climb the way of knowledge, the way which has no returning foot-steps, and which becomes ever more lonely as the climber rises.
Outwardly her days were uneventful. She came and went quietly, and answered her teachers with certainty and precision. She was not communicative to her companions, and came to know but few of them during the first term. She watched the trees go sere and bare, and calculated on the progress of the farmwork. She wondered if the men were in the corn yet, or whether it were too cold a morning to plow. She studied the sky to see if there were signs of snow. She could not at once throw off her daily supervision of the weather and of farmwork.
Her father wrote only at long intervals. His chapped and stiffened hands managed the pen-stock but painfully. He wrote of the farm affairs, the yield of corn, the weight of the steers or hogs he had sold, and asked her how many turkeys he had best keep over.
Carl wrote once or twice and stopped. He was a still more reluctant correspondent. Carl meant little to her now. The Doctor's dominion was absolute, and yet there was a subtle change. She no longer blushed in his presence, and he seemed older and nearer to her, more like an uncle and adviser. The figure he had been, took its place beside that of William De Lisle. More substantial, but less sweet and mythical.
Her school life was not her entire intellectual life by any means. She had the power of absorbing and making use of every sight and sound about her. She saw a graceful action at table or in the drawing room, and her mind seized upon it and incorporated it. She did not imitate; she took something from every one, but from no one too much.
Her eyes lost their round nervous stare, but they searched, searched constantly, as was natural for a girl of her years and fine animal nature, but there was brain back of it all. The young men knew nothing of her searching eyes; indeed, they thought her cold, and a little contemptuous of them.
Meanwhile their elegance often alienated them from her. There were many types not far removed from Carl and Henry; farmer's boys with some touch of refinement and grace, but others had a subtle quality, which told of homes of refinement and luxury.
Two wonderful things had come to her. One was the knowledge that she was beautiful, which she came to understand was the burning desire of all women; and again that she was master of things which had scared her. She could wear lovely dresses unconsciously, and sit at table with ease, and walk before her classmates without tremor. She felt power in her heart, as well as in her fist.
Her winter was a quiet one. She came and went between her classes and her home at Dr. Thatcher's. She studied in her own room or recited to the Doctor when he was at leisure. He liked to have the girls come into his study when he was not too busy, and there he sat figuring on the probable effect of cocaine or atropine in a certain case, while the girls read or talked.
Those were wonderful hours to the country girl. She was a long way from the little cottage on the old coulé farm at such times. Dr. Thatcher felt the same beauty and power in the droop of the head which had attracted him first in the old school-house, only enriched and in nobler colorings here.
They went sleighing together, with shouting and laughter, as if the Doctor were a girl, too. They went skating, and once in awhile to some entertainment at the church. They were not theatre-going people, and the lectures and socials of the town and college made up their outings. It was the Doctor's merry interest in their doings which made young men so unnecessary to Rose as well as to Josephine.
Then came spring again; the southwest wind awoke, snow began to go, the grass showed here and there, and Rose's thoughts turned back toward the coulé. There were days when every drop of her blood called out for the hills and the country roads, the bleat of lambs, the odor of fields, and the hum of bees, but she kept on at work.
Something elemental stirred in her blood as the leaves came out. The young men took on added grace and power in her eyes. When they came before her in their athletic suits, lithe, clean-limbed, joyous, then her eyes dreamed and her heart beat till the blood choked her breathing.
O, the beautiful sky; O, the shine and shade of leaves! O, the splendor of young manhood! She fought down the dizziness which came to her. She smiled mechanically as they stood before her with frank, clean eyes and laughing lips, and so, slowly, brain reasserted itself over flesh, and she, too, grew frank and gay.
Then came the vacation. The partings, the bitter pain of leaving the young people she had learned to love, and, too, came the thought of home. The dear old coulé with its peaks and camel humps, and pappa John! He was waiting to see her there!
So the pain of leaving her mates was mingled with the joy of home-coming. She romped on the grass with the young lambs. She followed Pappa John about as of old, in the fields, while he wondered and marveled at her. She was so fine and white and lady-like.
She was fain to know all the news of the farm, and the neighborhood. She felt like kissing all the dear old ladies in the coulé. O, the old friends were the best after all! You could rest on them. They didn't care how you ate soup. They didn't keep you keyed up to company manners all the time.
She went back to her old dresses and cotton underwear, and went dirty as she liked, and got brown and iron-muscled again.
Carl met her on the road one day and bowed and drove on, with hurried action of the lines. He still bore her rejection of him fresh in mind. It is everlastingly to his credit, let it be said now, that he never made use of his youthful intimacy with her. He was a man, with all the honesty and sincerity and chivalry of a race of gentlemen in his head, slow-witted as he was.
She came back each September with delight and exultation. It was not so much like going to the world's end now, and besides, her father seemed resigned to it. Back to the gleam of the lakes, the flaming sunsets, the moonlit nights filled with twang of guitars and floating harmony of fresh boyish voices, back to her girl-lovers and her books, back to the chalky odor of the recitation room.
It was so sweet to climb the circular stairway again. The booming roar of the feet did not disturb her now. The greetings of the Professors as they passed, made her eyes dim with pleasure. The spirit of the University had established dominion over her.
These were days without care, days of silent pleasant growth. A year of sweet gravity over books and wholesome laughter over games. She studied hard, but it was a quiet pleasure to study, for she had the power of concentration which gives mastery.
She was never behind, never fagged out with study. She had time for the splendor of nature and for the world of books. She read more and more each year because she felt lacking in literary knowledge. She read the books she ought to know—read them religiously. Occasionally it chanced the books were those she loved to read, but not often. Generally she had to bend to them as if they were lessons.
She read also Scott, Dickens and Thackeray, a volume or two each. Then one day in mid-winter it chanced she fell upon "Mosses from an Old Manse," and then all the other books waited. She read it while she walked home from the library. She read it after dinner and put it in her satchel as she went to recite. She finished it and secured the second volume; then came "Twice Told Tales," then "The Scarlet Letter," and the world of woman's sin opened to her.
She read that terrible book, rebelling against the dark picture, raging against the insatiable vengeance of the populace who condemned Hester as if she had opened the gates of hell in the path of every daughter of New England.
She could not understand, then nor thereafter, the ferocity of hate which went out against the poor defenseless woman. What had the woman done? She struggled over the problem. She felt in herself that terrible ceaseless urging. Her thoughts were not clear, they were still only raised figures in the web of organic thought, but she was accomplishing great conceptions.
She knew it was wrong, but why it was wrong troubled her. The law—yes, but what lay behind the law? The Mormon had one law, the Turks another. Why was this English law better than any other? Why were the animals freer than men? Their lives were good and healthy, they lived in the sunshine and were untroubled. Such were a few of the questions she grappled with.
God only knows the temptations which came to her. She had days when all the (so-called) unclean things she had ever seen, all the overheard words of men's coarse jests, came back like vultures to trouble her. Sometimes when she walked forth of a morning, the sun flamed across the grass with ineffable beauty. The whole earth was radiant; every sound was a song; every lithe youth moved like a god before her, and it was then that something deep in her, something drawn from generations of virtuous wives and mothers, saved her from the whirlpool of passion.
At such times she felt dimly the enormous difference between her nature and that of Josephine. Josephine's passion was that of a child—hers that of an imaginative and complex man.
She was silent after these days of gayety. She was not a chatterer at any time, but after these moods she was almost sullen once more, and she fell upon her lessons with renewed zeal, as a monk flagellates his rebellious flesh.
After these days of searching eyes she refused to look at any of her young male friends. She answered them crustily and turned away from them, but this did not serve to cure her nor to keep the young men away.
Always at such times William De Lisle's glorious presence drew near in the dusk, insubstantial and luminous as a cloud, and she set her teeth in fresh resolve to be wise and famous; to be worthy his look and his word of praise.
She had suitors constantly. Her dark haughty face, warm with blood, her erect and powerful figure excited admiration among the young men, and they courted her with the wholesome frankness of clean and vigorous manhood. The free and natural intercourse of the college kept the young people healthy as a home circle.
As the Doctor came to take a different place in her love, Rose became open to the advances of other men. Twice during the winter she felt the power of love touch her. In the first instance her eyes sought and found among her classmates a young man's physical beauty, and her imagination clothed him with power and mystery, and she looked for him each day, and life was less interesting and purposeful when he was not present.
She made no open advances, she scarcely needed to, for he also saw, and when he came to her and she flushed and trembled with weakness, it seemed as if her life had at last taken a fixed direction. For a few weeks the man was her ideal. She saw him before her constantly. She knew his smile, the lift of his eye-brows, the shape of his ears, the slope of his shoulders, the sound of his voice. She looked at him stealthily from her book. She contrived to sit where she could watch every motion. She walked down the street with him each day, half numb with her emotion.
But this ecstasy did not last. She felt eventually his shallowness and narrowness. He was vain and ungenerous. He grew sere and bare of grace and charm like the autumn elms, and at last he stood empty and characterless before her, and her eyes looked over and beyond him, into the blue sky again, and throughout it all she kept her place in her classes and no one was aware of her new ideal.
When she turned away from him he did not grow pale and lean. He grew a little vicious and said: "She is too cold and proud for my taste."
Her next suitor was a worthy young man who was studying law in the town. A fine, clean young fellow, who paid court to her with masterly address. He was older than she, and was a better scholar and brought to her less of the clotheshorse and more of the man than her freshly outgrown lover. Before spring began he had won great intimacy with her—almost an engagement.
He was adroit. He did not see her too much, and he came always at his best. He appealed to the most imaginative side of her nature. She glorified his calling as well as his person. He was less handsome than his predecessor, but he brought an ample and flowing phraseology, and a critical knowledge of farm-life as well as of town-life. Once he took her to the court-room to hear him plead.
He took her to the socials, and once to the theater. There was his mistake! The play made a most powerful impression upon her, more powerful than anything since the circus at Tyre.
It raised new and wordless ambitions. For the first time in her life she saw society dress on the stage. The play was one which pretended, at least, to show New York and London life. Therefore men in claw-hammer coats came and went, with strange accents and with cabalistic motions of hats and gloves, and women moved about with mystic swagger.
The heroine glowed like a precious stone in each act, now sapphire, now pearl, now ruby. She spoke in a thick, throaty murmur and her white shoulders shone like silver, and her wide childish eyes were like wells of light-diffusing liquid.
Rose gazed at her with unwearying eyes. Her bosom rose and fell as if she had been running, and she said in her heart: "Ican do that! I could stand there and do that!"
Then the theme of the play filled her with strange new thoughts. These people lived out before her a condition which she had read about but which had never been discussed in her presence. A husband discovers his wife to have been a lover and mother in her girlhood, and in a tempest of self-righteous passion flings her to the ground in scorn and horror.
She clings to his feet (in approved stage fashion), pleading for mercy: "I was so young!"
He would not listen. "Go!—or no, stay—I will go. I make the home over to you, but never look upon my face again."
While Rose burned with shame and indignation, the outraged woman on the stage grew white and stern.
"Who are you to condemn me so?" she asked in icy calm. "Are you the saint you profess to be? Will one offence contain your crime against me?"
"What do you mean?" thundered the man and husband.
"You know what I mean. In my weakness I was stained, ineffaceably; I admit it—but you, in your strength, have you not preyed upon weak women? The law allows you to escape disgrace—nature and law force me to suffer with mine."
Rose thought of Carl and his courtship with such a shudder as one feels in remembering a rescue from an abyss. A hundred great confusing questions floated by in her mind, like clouds in a mist of rain—formless, vast, trailing deeper shadow beneath them. The self-sufficient young lawyer beside her said as the curtain fell:
"There was nothing else for her husband to do but just fire her out."
Rose heard him but did not reply. She felt a sharp revulsion of feeling toward him for his coarse, hard tone. When he laid his hand on her she shook it off, and when he asked a question of her she did not reply. He was annoyed also, and so they waited for the curtain to rise on the final act.
The wife was sick and dying. The dramatist had not the courage to work out his theme. He killed the wife, so that the husband should not appear to condone and take her to wife again. She died while he, magnanimously, forgave her.
As they walked home, with fatuous insistence her lover talked with Rose about the case. He took the man's side. He hinted at the reason—presuming upon their intimacy. Men outgrow such experiences, he said; women do not. They are either one thing or the other—either pure as angels or black as devils.
Rose closed her lips tight, and her eyes flamed with indignant protest, but she said nothing in reply. In her heart she knew it was a lie. A woman can set her foot above her dead self as well as a man.
When he tried to kiss her good-bye she pushed him aside and left him without a word. He, too, was a bare and broken ideal. Her heart went back again to William De Lisle, as the young eagle goes back to the sun-warmed cliff to rest and dream, with eyes to the sun.
That night put her girlhood far from her. She grew five years older in the weeks which followed. Her mind took up irresistibly one insoluble problem after another and wrestled with it in silence. Josie's chatter went on around her like the sound of the swallows in the eaves of the old barn at home.
Her mind was like a piece of inconceivably intricate machinery, full of latent and complicated motion. A word, a touch, and it set to work, and out of its working some fine inner heat and glow changed the whole mental and physical equilibrium of her nature, and she became something else, finer, more mysterious, and more alluring—though this she did not realize.
Thereafter the young man of her acquaintance did not draw her. Her eyes had been raised to higher altitudes. She fell upon her books with terrible industry, in the hope that they would throw some light on her problems and ambitions.
There was nothing she did not think of during these character-forming days. The beauty and peace of love, the physical joy of it; the problem of marriage, the terror of birth—all the things girls are supposed not to think of, and which such girls as Rose must irresistibly think of, came to her, tormenting her, shaking her to the inmost center of her nature, and through it all she seemed quite the hearty young school girl she was, for this thought was wholesome and natural, not morbid in any degree.
She was a child in the presence of the Doctor, but a woman with her suitors. The Doctor helped her very much, but in the most trying moments of her life (and no man can realize these moments) some hidden force rose up to dominate the merely animal forces within. Some organic magnificent inheritance of moral purity.
She was saved by forces within, not by laws without. Opportunities to sin always offer in every life. Virtue is not negative, it is positive; it is a decoration won by fighting, resisting. This sweet and terrible attraction of men and women towards each other is as natural and as moral as the law of gravity, and as inexorable. Its perversion produces trouble. Love must be good and fine and according to nature, else why did it give such joy and beauty?
Natural as was this thought, she hid it from her associates. Most women die with it unacknowledged, even to their own spoken thought. She would have been helped by talk with the Doctor, or at least with his wife. But there was a growing barrier between Mrs. Thatcher and herself, and the Doctor did not seem the same good friend. She felt a change coming in the whole household.
When she went home at the close of her second year, she had a feeling that she would never again return to the old sweet companionship with Dr. Thatcher. He was too busy now, apparently, to give her the time he once seemed so glad to give. He never asked her to ride with him now. She was troubled by it and concluded they were tired of her, and so she, too, grew cold and reserved.
The day she left, the Doctor, after he had driven Rose to the train, called his wife into the office.
"Sit down a moment, wife, I want to talk with you." He faced her bravely. "I guess we'd better arrange for Rose to go to one of the chapter-houses next year. There's no need to beat around the bush—she takes up too much of my thought, and you know it and I know it."
It drew blood to say that. It took manhood to look his wife in the eyes then, but he did it.
"It isn't her fault, and it isn't yours—it isn't mine, as a matter of justice. Rose is just what she's always been, a good, sweet girl—I wouldn't have her see anything but friendly interest in my eyes for half my heart—I'm afraid she will, so—I guess——"
He was talking through set teeth. "I wish you'd tell her we can't offer her a home; I can't do it."
He rose and went to his wife. "My dear, don't cry—you've watched this thing come on in brave silence—not every wife would have kept silence so long. It won't break up our comradeship, will it, dear? We've jogged along so peacefully these fifteen years—we ought to overlook a little thing like this!" He smiled a little, then he stooped and put his arm about her.
"Come, give me a kiss, and let's adopt no more handsome girls till I'm sixty-five."
She rose and lifted her sad face to his. "It's my fault, if I—"
He kissed her and said: "No more of that! You're my faithful wife. What helps the matter materially is this—Rose thinks of me as a sober old settler now."
This ended it so far as any outward showing ever defined his feeling, but the presence of the girl never left him. At night, as he sat at his desk at the hour which almost always used to bring Rose down from her room to discuss her lessons with him, he grew sad and lonely. "If I had a child," he said to himself, "I could bear it more easily."
When Rose returned, she went into one of the co-operative boarding-houses, and slowly drifted away from the Doctor and his family. She never quite knew why. It puzzled her for a time, and then she forgot it—in the fashion of youth.
Of what avail the attempt to chronicle those days? They were all happy, and all busy, yet never alike. When the sun shone it was beautiful, and when the wind roared in the trees and the rain slashed like falling sails, it was equally glorious. On clear, crisp, bright winter days the air grew magical with bells, and the grating snarl of the ice-boat's rudder was thrilling as a lion's cry. It was apart from the world of care and politics and revolution.
There was fun, whirlwinds of it, at the chapter-house when studies were over, and there was fun at the professedly-formal girl-banquets where the chairman arose to say, "Gentlemen, the honor—" and everybody shrieked to see her pull an imaginary chin-whisker. There was more fun on winter nights, when loads of people packed into the bob-tail mule-cars (which tinkled up the snowy street with wonderful persistency), while the passengers trod on each other's toes and chaffed the driver. And the wonderful nights under the stars, walking home with arm fast anchored in a fellow's grip; or strolls in summer beside the Lake, or dreamy hours floating at sunset in a boat which lay like a lily's petal, where skies of orange and purple met water of russet-gold and steely-blue.
And there was the glory of mounting also. One by one the formidable mesas of calculations, conjugations, argumentations, fell below her feet, and Rose grew tall in intellectual grace. She had no mental timidities. Truth with her came first, or if not first, certainly she had little superstitious sentiment to stand in the way. She was still the same impatient soul as when she shook her little fist at the Almighty's lightning.
It was this calm, subconscious assumption of truth's ultimate harmony with nature's first cause which she delighted in as she entered physics and astronomy. Her enthusiasm for the hopeless study of the stars developed into a passion. They exalted her and saddened her.
She lifted her eyes to them, and the ultimate distances of their orbits swept upon her with overwhelming power.
She felt again the ache in the heart which came to her as a child on the bluff-top, when the world seemed spread out before her. When she turned her face upward now it was to think of the awful void spaces there, of the mysteries of each flaming planet, and of the helplessness and weakness of the strongest man.
For a year she plunged into astronomy. It had the allurement and the sombre aloofness of unrequited love. It harmonized well with her restless, limitless inner desire.
These sudden passions for this or that art were signs of her strength and not her weakness. They sprang out of her swift and ready imagination, which enabled her to take on the personality of the artist, and to feel his joy of power. It was quite normal that she should desire to be successively circus rider, poet and astronomer, and yet, now that her graduation was near, she was as far from a real decision as ever.
"What are you going to do after graduation?" Josie said.
Rose grew grave. "I don't know. Go on studying somewhere."
"I'm going to have a good time!"
"You're always having a good time, you little oriole." Rose had come to patronize Josie in these later days. "I envy you so," she sighed. "The world is so simple for you."
"I don't understand you when you go on like that—you'll come tomorrow and see my new dress, won't you?"
Graduation meant for Josephine the chance to wear a fetching gown, and be looked at by an immense crowd—and one extra man. This was supposed to be a secret, but everybody who cared to give it a thought, knew of it and smiled at her as they would at a child. Josie could be nothing else but a child.
To most of the students graduation day came rushing with sorrowful speed. It meant passing from sunlit lanes of maple and lilac out into the bleak highways of trade and labor. It meant the beginning of struggle with pitilessness in man and nature. As students they were not in the race for subsistence, but as citizens and professional men they were to be competitors in trades and crafts already overflowing.
Graduation day drew near, and a tremulous ecstasy came into the lives of the outgoing students—a joy made more precious by its certainty of passing.
To Rose graduation day came as the sweetest, saddest day of her life. It seemed to close a gate upon something in her history. The smiling, yet mournful, faces of her friends, the wistful eyes of the young men who loved her, the rustle of leaves, the gleam of the water, the dapple of light and shade on the campus, the exaltation of the public moment, all these wondrous things rushed upon her like a flood, and overwhelmed her ambitions and desires, powerful as they were.
At last the books were closed and packed away.
The commencement exercises began with the reception in Science Hall. The night fell slowly, and the fine new building grew alight story after story, and crowds began to stream in. The students led the way, rakish, full of airs, except when piloting their parents about. The fun had been almost furious all day.
There were many of the relatives of the students present, and often they stood out in sharp contrast with the decorations and with the joy of the young people. Beautiful girls might be seen leading bent and wrinkled fathers and mothers, who had sacrificed all for them. Rose wished for her father, and passionately desired to do something for him. He had written that he couldn't leave the farm, and so she wandered about with others, like herself, free. Everywhere the young men met her. She never escaped them for a moment, their pursuit was relentless.
The crowd swarmed into each room, where the professors stood beside show-cases, polite and patient, exhibiting machines, specimens, drawings. At another place sherbet was served to the guests, and music could be heard in the lower halls. Everywhere was the lisp of feet, the ripple of talk.
All this was a bore to many of the pupils, for there was the peace-pipe ceremonial preparing on the campus, that they really waited for. Mysteriously in the deep dusk a huge heap of combustibles had been piled up on the wet grass, and one by one the two classes began to gather. There was a mutter of voices, a command, then a red flame flashed out, and with it the college yell soared up from a little bunch of dark forms:
"RAH-RAH-RAH-WISCONSIN!"
The stragglers on the walks turned toward the fire, like insects. They came in crawling dark lines like ants, across the wet grass. They formed a blue-black mass, lighted on one side by the orange light of the bonfire. The stars overhead grew green and dim in the light of the fire, and the encircling trees of the campus came out like silhouettes of purple-green cardboard.
The class rolled out its carpet for the girls and opened its boxes of long clay pipes. It seemed so much more important to Rose now that she stood there in the center as one of the graduating class. There was not much talk. They lined up and sang song after song. Then the boys moved about and showed the girls how to light their pipes.
"You want to suck, not blow, on it!" a voice called out, and everybody laughed dutifully. For a few moments all was laughter. The girls tried to assume the airs of smokers, and puffed their kinnikinnick furiously. Then as they sang they swung their pipes with rakish air,—"There is a Tavern in our Town" and "The Bull-frog in the Pool," and their voices floated out and up into the wreathing smoke of the fire, as deliciously sweet as though their songs were hymns of praise as they were hymns of youth.
The pipes needed constant relighting. In every silence some girl cried out: "O, my pipe's gone out!" One cried: "Give me a bite!" as if the pipe-stem were taffy.
To Rose the whole ceremony was glorious. It carried her out of herself. It gave her a glimpse into the world which men keep to themselves, and, besides, she had written the speech handing the pipe down to the custodian of the succeeding class, a really admirable ceremony.
Here on this spot the red men warred and loved. Here, with the sheen of lakes about, and the wild grass under their feet, it was beautiful and appropriate that they should be remembered by these young western sons and daughters of the white man.
The mock antagonism between seniors and juniors seemed to have great meaning when Tom Harris spoke the lofty phrases she had written for him, standing outlined against the soaring fire like a silhouette of velvet, his voice rolling out with lofty suspensive power.
"Here on the spot where our fathers have dwelt for countless suns and moons we ask for peace. We call upon you to bury the hatchet. Forgive and forget; you who have scars forgive, and you who have wrongs forget. Let all evil spirits be exorcised by the pipe. Here we break the arrow. Here we tender the sacred pipe. Brothers—sisters, we have spoken!"
The fire burned low. As they sat in circles on the ground and chanted their songs, the sky grew blacker, the trees melted into the darkness, the last wailing cadence floated into silence, and then subdued, tender, they rose and vanished, in pairs and groups, into the darkness like the songs they sang. The class of 189— had entered upon its long, long trail, some to the plains of failure, some to the mountains of victory.
This quaint and suggestive custom received new strength from the oration which Rose contributed. All felt its power and beauty. To the girls the whole ceremony was a rare and delicious piece of audacity. It did them good. It gave them something to look back upon with laughter, into which a sigh and a little catching of the breath might also come.
Something elemental and primitive came to Rose amid all the laughter and song. What was she more than the swart women who had lived here and been wooed of men? Was there not something magnificent in their frank following of the trail of pure passion? They loved, and bore children, and ground at the corn mills, and died as the female bison died, and other women came after them to do like unto them, to what end?
Some such questions, vague, ever shadowy, formless, moved Rose, as she lay down to sleep that night. Outside a mandolin twanged—the boys were serenading her, but she had not the wish to see them. She did not go to the window, as the other girls did, deliciously excited, almost hysteric with the daring of being possibly seen in their night-gowns. She kept sombre silence, stirred by profounder emotions than they were capable of.
She thought of William De Lisle but seldom now. In open daylight she was a little ashamed of her idolatry, but on nights like these, when love songs and moonlight fused together, his figure came before her, not so clear a personality now, but as a type of beauty, as a center of dreams, of something wild and free and splendid—something she was to attain to some good day.
She had no thought of attaining him, but some one like unto him. Some one who was grand as her dream of heroes and loyal as her father.
It was characteristic of her that while the lovers singing without made her companions utter hysterical laughter, she was sad and wished to be alone. Their desires were on the surface, shifting, sparkling, seeking kisses. Hers was dark, and deep down, sombre, savage, prophetic. Love with her was a thing not to be uttered. She silenced all jests about it, and all familiarity on the part of her suitors she had put away.
During her first year she had allowed her lover to take her hand, as Carl used to do, because it seemed the usual thing, but after breaking off that entanglement she resolutely set to work to study, and no man had since considered himself her lover. To permit a caress now meant all the world to her. It meant change, undoing of plans, throwing away ambitions. It meant flinging herself to the immemorial sacrifice men demand of women.
There were times when she felt the impulse to do this. She felt it that night as the clear voices of the serenaders came floating in at her window. What did it matter? What could she do in the mighty world? What did the Indian girl, when her lover sang from his canoe among the water lilies in the lake? Why not go to one of these good, clean young men and be a wife? What did it matter—her ambition—her hope? "I will," she said, and a wild rush of blood choked her breathing, "I'll end it all."
But the singing died away, the moonlight vanished out of the room, and the passionate longing and tumult of her blood grew slowly quiet, and she slept.
When the sun rose there was no man in her world who could have won her consent to marriage. Her ambitions rose like the sun, buoyant as young eagles, while the singers of the night before were hapless fireflies, tangled in the dewy grass, their love-light dim, their singing lost.
She was not done with this problem, however.
She saw in one man's eyes something to be answered. She had her answer ready, though she hoped to escape the ordeal. He hovered close about her all the morning. He came by the chapter-house for her, but she had gone to the chapel.
She felt a little guilty toward him. She had attended concerts with him. She had accepted his company now and again because she liked him and because—well, it was convenient, and by selecting him she escaped the attentions of others. She had seemed to acquiesce in his proprietorship of her, and yet always when alone she had tried to show him that they could only be friends. This he had persistently misunderstood.
She was almost the tallest of her classmates, she led the march into the chapel for the final ceremonies, a splendid and terrible moment, toward which they had looked for weeks, and for which they had elaborately planned dresses and procedure.
It was all so wistfully beautiful. The cool spacious hall filled with hushed people; the vivid green trees looking in at the windows and the soft air burdened with bee songs and the smell of flowers. The June sunlight dappled the lawn with marvels of shade and shine. The music seemed to wail as they marched, and the rustling stir and murmur of comment helped to unnerve them all even to men.
The speaker looked down upon them with comprehension. He was an eastern man and an old man, also he was a poet. He was just, and he had seen how clean and fine this co-educational school was. The day was beautiful to him as to them, and he comprehended their feelings well. He looked down into their pensive faces, he saw the sorrowful arching of their brows, the sad droop of their lips.
His shaggy head drooped forward as he talked to them, till his kind old face, lined with genial wrinkles, seemed to grow beautiful and tender and maternal. He had reared many children of his own, and he now took the young people into his heart. He told them much of his life and trials—how work was in the world for them; play, too—but work, hard work, glorious work! work for humanity as well as for themselves. He conveyed to them something of the spirit of altruism into which the world seemed about to enter on its orbit as it swings through clouds of star-dust.
They cheered him when he ended, and then the president, in brief words, presented their diplomas. Among them now were bitten lips, and tremulous chins and tearful eyes. The doors had closed behind them and they faced the whole world, it seemed. For years they had studied here, in storm and sun, but now they remembered only the sunlight, all fused and blended into one radiant vista.
As they stood for their final benediction a splendid snowy cloud sailed across the sun, and the room darkened mystically. A shudder of exquisite pleasure and pain thrilled Rose, and a little moan pushed from her throat, but the shadow lifted, the organ sounded out a fine brave strain, and the class of 189— was ended. It was now a group of men and women facing the open road.
With low words of greeting and congratulation the graduates and their friends lingered about the chapel. Slowly it emptied and the hill grew populous again with groups of leisurely moving figures.
There were scholars showing their parents about the grounds, there were groups of visiting towns-people, and there were the lovers, two and two, loitering, wandering (she in dainty white gown, he in cap and jacket), two-and-two in world-old, sex-old fashion. They lay on the banks and watched the boats on the gleaming lake where other lovers were. They threaded the hill-paths where the thrush moved with quick rustle, and the pale wood-flowers peered above the fragrant mosses. They stood on the beach skipping pebbles, he lithe and laughing, she tender, palpitating, wistful and sombre, or fitfully gay. Everywhere laughter had a solemn sweet undertone; "Good-bye!" trembled so close to "I love you!"
Rose saw young Harris approaching, and a faintness took hold upon her limbs. He was at his princeliest estate—never would he be handsomer. His summer suit set close to his agile and sinewy figure. His cap rested lightly on his curly hair. His frank blue eyes were laughing, but his lips were tremulous with feeling.
"Well, Rose, all the girls have deserted me so I'm glad to find you alone," he said, but she knew he was never deserted. "Let's take a walk. The whole school seems to be divided off into teams. Looks as if the whole crowd would trot in double harness, don't it?"
She did not reply, he hardly expected her to do so.
"Going to the ball with me tonight, aren't you?"
"No, I guess not."
"I was in hopes you'd change your mind."
"I can't dance those new-fangled figures."
"O, you'd catch on in a jiffy. You should have gone out more."
They moved down the hill to the beach road, and as they walked Harris talked, talked against time, he would have said. They strolled on past the small boys fishing, past other low-voiced couples, out into comparative solitude where the farms began. She knew what was coming but she could not stop, could not then turn back.
They came at last to a grassy little knoll which looked out upon the lake, and there he laughingly spread out his handkerchief for her.
"Sit here, my liege lady!"
It was red clover, and its powerful fragrance swept upon her with a vision of the hay-field at home.
Harris lay down below her so that he could see her face, and the look in his eyes made her shiver again. Nothing so beautiful and powerful and pagan-free had come to her since that day when she danced with Carl beneath the dappling leaves, when woman's passion first stirred within her. The sailing clouds, the clicking insects, the smell of leaves and flowers all strove on the side of the lover. It was immemorial, this scene, this impulse.
"Well, Rose, this is our last day at school, and what I want to know is this, is it the last we shall see of each other?"
She made an effort and answered:
"Why, no, I hope not."
"You hope not—then there is hope for me? Confound it, Rose, I'm not going to talk in riddles. You're the only girl in the world for me." He took her hand. "And I can't live without you. You are going to live with me, aren't you, Rose?"
She shook her head, but tears dropped upon his hand. He allured her like the sunshine, this lithe young lover.
His keen eyes saw a lack of decision in this head shake. He held her hand and his fingers caressed her wrist. Unconsciously, with pure intent, he used all the wiles of men, which women love, yet dread. His voice grew vibrant, yet remained low, his clear eyes called in subtler speech than his tongue. His wrist touched her knee, his hair moved in the soft wind.
"I can't bear to go home without you, Rose, darling. Come, tell me, don't you care for me at all, not the least bit?"
She tried to draw her hand away, but he held it and continued:
"I've got everything all planned. I'm going into law with my father. I've got plans for a house, and we'll begin life together today——"
His physical charm united itself some way with the smell of clover, the movement of the wind and the warm flood of sunshine. She had never loved him, though she had always liked him, but now something sweet and powerful, something deep buried, rose in her heart and shortened her breath. Her face burned, her throat was swollen shut, her face was distorted, for one moment she was mastered.
Then the swift revulsion came, and she drew her hand away and sprang up.
"No!" she cried harshly and bitterly, "I can't do it; it is impossible. Go away!"
Then the blood slowly fell away from her neck and face, and her heart ceased to pound, her eyes cleared and she grew gentle again, seeing his pained and frightened face.
"I didn't mean that—I didn't mean to be so rough, Tom, but it's no use. I don't want to marry you, nor anybody else. All I want is to be let alone. I'm going to Chicago. I want to see the world. I can't be shut up in a little town like Lodi. I want to see people—thousands of people. I want to see what the world is like. I may go to Europe before I get done with it. I'm going to study art. I'm going to be great. I can't marry any one now."
She poured out her confidences in swift, almost furious protest. She had never confided to him so much before.
His pain was not so overpowering but he found strength to say:
"I thought you were going to be a writer."
She flushed again. "Well, I am. But I'm going to be a painter, too. I'm going home," she said abruptly, and in such wise they walked along the returning way.
The glamour was gone from the young man's hair and eyes. She saw him as he was, clean, boyish, shallow. His physical charm was lost, and a sort of disgust of his supple waist and rounded limbs came upon her, and disgust at herself for that one moment of yielding weakness; and also the keen fear of having been unjust, of having given him a claim which she was repudiating, troubled her.
He made one last attempt.
"Rose, I wish you'd reconsider. What can you do in the world?"
"I don't know. I can be my own master for one thing," she replied. "I can see the world for another thing—and besides, I don't want to marry any one just yet." Her voice was abrupt, merciless, and the young fellow bowed his head to his sentence. She was too mysterious and powerful for him to understand.
"What could I do in Lodi? Gossip with old women and grow old. I know those towns. I had rather live in the country than in one of those flat little towns."
"But I'll go to the city with you if you want me to. I can get a place there. I know two men—"
"No, no! I can't do it. I want to be free. I've got something to do, and,—I don't care for you—"
"Well, go to the ball with me tonight, won't you?" he pleaded.
"Yes, if you never speak about this to me again."
He promised; of course he promised. Standing where he did he would have promised anything.
It was a singular and lovely ball. The people came together simply and quietly, on foot, or on the tinkling mule-car.
There were no ultra-fashionable dresses, and no jewelry. The men came in various cuts of coats, and the girls wore simple white, or blue or mauve dresses, beneath which their lithe untrammeled waists and firm rounded limbs moved with splendid grace.
It was plain all were not practised dancers. Some of the young men danced with hands waggling at the wrist, and the girls did not know all the changes, but laughter was hearty and without stint.
Around the walls sat or stood the parents of the dancers, dignified business men and their wives, keen-eyed farmers and village merchants and lawyers. There were also the alumni from all over the West, returned to take part in the exercises, to catch a glimpse of the dear old campus. It was all a renewal of youth to them. Many came from the prairies. Some came from the bleak mountain towns, and the gleam of the lakes, the smell of grass, the dapple of sunlight on the hillside affected them almost to tears. Now they danced with their wives and were without thought or care of business.
Professors danced with their pupils, husbands with their wives, who had also been pupils here. Lovely, lithe young girls dragged their bearded old fathers out into the middle of the floor, amid much laughter, and the orchestra played "Money-Musk" and "Old Zip Coon" and "The Fireman's Dance" for their benefit.
Then the old fellows warmed up to it, and danced right manfully, so that the young people applauded with swift clapping of their hands. Plump mothers took part in the quaint old fashioned figures, and swung and balanced and "sashayed" in a gale of fun.
It was a beautiful coming together of the University. It represented the unspoiled neighborliness and sexcamaraderieof the West. Its refinement was not finicky, its dignity was not frigidity, and its fun was frank and hearty. May the inexorable march of wealth and fashion pass by afar off, and leave us some little of these dear old forms of social life.
It had a tender and pensive quality, also. The old were re-living the past, as well as the young, and all had an unconscious feeling of the transitoriness of these tender and careless hours. Smiles flashed forth on the faces of the girls like hidden roses disclosed in deep hedges by a passing wind-gust, to disappear again in pensive, thoughtful deeps.
Rose danced with Dr. Thatcher, who took occasion to say:
"Well, Rose, you leave us soon."
"Yes, tomorrow, Doctor."
"What are your plans?"
"I don't know; I must go home this summer. I want to go to Chicago next winter."
"Aha, you go from world to world. Rose, you will do whatever you dream of—providedyou don't marry." He said this as lightly as he could, but she knew he meant it.
"There isn't much danger of that," she said, trying to laugh.
"Well, no, perhaps not." They fell into a walk, and moved slowly just outside the throng of dancers.
"Now, mark you, I don't advise you at all. I have realized from the first a fatality in you. No one can advise you. You must test all things for yourself. You are alone; advice cannot reach you nor influence you except as it appeals to your own reason. To most women marriage is the end of ambition, to you it may be an incentive. If you are big enough, you will succeed in spite of being wife and mother. I believe in you. Can't you come and see me tomorrow? I want to give you letters to some Chicago people."
The company began to disperse, and the sadness impending fell upon them all. One by one good-byes were said, and the dancers one and all slipped silently away into the night.
It was all over at last, the good-byes, the tearful embraces, the cheery waving of hands, and Rose was off for home. There were other students on the train, but they were young students whom she did not know. At the moment it seemed as if she were leaving all that was worth while—five years of the most beautiful time of her life lay behind her.
She had gone there a country girl, scared and awkward. She was now a woman (it seemed to her) and the time for action of some sort had come. She did not look to marriage as a safe harbor. Neither had she regarded it as an end of all individual effort, as many of her companions unequivocally had done.
After her experiences during those last three days, she felt as if sex were an abomination, and she wished for freedom from love. She had already the premonition that she was of those who seem destined to know much persecution of men.
Her strong, forceful, full-blooded, magnetic beauty could not be hidden so deep under sober garments but that the ever-seeking male eye quickly discovered it. As she entered the car she felt its penetrating, remorseless glare, and her face darkened, though she was no longer exposed to the open insults of brakemen and drummers. There was something in the droop of her eyelids and the curve of her mouth which kept all men at a distance, even the most depraved. She was not a victim—a girl to be preyed upon. She was quite evidently a proud, strong woman, to be sued for by all flatteries and attentions.
The train whirled along over the familiar route, and the land was most beautiful. Fresh grass everywhere, seas of green flashing foliage, alternating with smooth slopes of meadow where cattle fed, yet she saw little of it. With sombre eyes turned to the pane she thought and thought.
What was to be done now? That was the question. For a year she had been secretly writing verse and sending it to the magazines. It had all been returned to her. It made her flush hot to think how they had come back to her with scarcely a word of civility. Evidently she was wrong. She was not intended for a writer after all. She thought of the stage, but she did not know how to get upon the stage.
The train drew steadily forward, and familiar lines of hill-tops aroused her, and as she turned her face toward home, the bent and grizzled figure of her father came to her mind as another determining cause. He demanded something of her now after nearly five year's absence from home, for he had paid her way—made it possible for her to be what she was.
There he sat holding his rearing horses and watching, waiting for her. She had a sudden, swift realization of his being a type as he sat there, and it made her throat fill, for it seemed to put him so far away, seemed to take away something of her own sweet dignified personality.
There was a crowd of people on the platform. Some of them she knew, some of them she did not. She looked very fine and lady-like to John Dutcher as she came down the car steps, and the brakeman helped her down, with elaborate and very respectful courtesy.
The horses pranced about, so that John could not even take her hand, and so she climbed into the buggy alone.
"Carl will take care of your trunk," he said. "Give him the check."
She turned to Carl, whom she had not noticed. He bowed awkwardly.
"How de do, Rosie," he said, as he took the check. He wore brown denims, and a broad hat and looked strong and clumsy.
She had no time to speak to him, for the horses whirled away up the street. The air was heavy with the scent of clover, and the bitter-sweet, pungent smells of Lombardy poplar trees.
They rode in silence till the village lay behind them and the horses calmed down.
"Cap's a perfect fool about the cars," said John. "But I had to take him; Jennie's getting too heavy, I darsent take her."
"How is the stock?"
"O, all right. We had a big crop of lambs this spring. The bees are doing well, but the clover don't seem to attract 'em this year. The corn looks well except down near the creek—it's been wet there in rainy seasons, you remember." He gave other reports concerning stock.
Rose felt for the first time the unusualness of this talk. All her life she had discussed such things with him, but on previous vacations she had not been conscious of its startling plainness, but now it came to her with a sudden hot flush—think of such talk being reported of her to the Doctor and Mrs. Thatcher!
There was something strange in her father's manner, an excitement very badly concealed, which puzzled her. He drove with almost reckless swiftness up the winding coulé road. He called her attention to the way-side crops, and succeeded in making her ask:
"Father, what in the world is the matter with you? I never knew you to act like this."
John laughed. "I'm a little upset getting you home again, that's all."
She caught a gleam of new shingles through the trees.
"What have you been building?"
"O, nothing much—new granary—patchin' up a little," he replied evasively. When they whirled into the yard she was bewildered—the old cottage was gone and a new house stood in its place.
John broke into a laugh.
"How's that for a new granary?"
"O father, did you do thatfor me?"
"For you and me together, Rosie."
They sat in the carriage and looked at it. Rose peered through tear-blurred lids. He loved her so—this bent old father! He had torn down the old home and built thisfor her.
Her aunt came out on the side porch: "Hello, Rosie, just in time! The shortcake is about ready. Ain't you comin' in?"
John gave the team up to the hired hand (who stared at Rose with wondering eyes) and then they walked upon the front porch and in the front door. It was new—so new it glistened everywhere and was full of the fragrance of new lumber and the odor of paint.
"I didn't get any new furniture," John said. "I thought I'd let you do that."
Rose turned and put her arms about his neck.
"You dear old daddy, what can I do for you, you're so good to me?"
"There now, don't mind, I'm paid for it now. I just want you to enjoy it, that's all, and if any feller comes around and you like him, why, you can bring him right here. It's big enough now, and I'm ready to let the farm any time."
Rose saw his purpose to the uttermost line. He had built this to keep her at home. How little he knew her now, to think that she could marry and bring her husband home to this place!
She kissed him and then they passed into all the rooms.
"Come here—I've got something to show you," he said mysteriously. "I justdeterminedto have it, no matter what it cost." He pushed open a door at the head of the stairway, calling triumphantly:
"There—how's that?—a bathroom!"
For an instant she felt like laughing. Then she looked at his kind and simple face and she broke down again and cried.
John understood now that this was only her way of being glad, so he just patted her shoulder and got her a chair, and waited for her to dry her eyes.
"Yes, sir," he went on, "cost me a hundred dollars to put that in, say nothin' of the fixin's. I had to have special set of eave-spouts made to run the water into a cistern on top of the kitchen. I thought of bringing the water from the spring, but that's a little hard."
They went down to supper at last, he full of talk, she very quiet. His loquacity was painful to her, for it seemed to indicate growing age and loneliness.
The meagreness of the furniture and tableware never struck her so forcibly as now, lost in the big new house. Intellectual poverty was shown also in the absence of books and newspapers, for John Dutcher read little, even of political newspapers, and magazines were quite outside his experimental knowledge till Rose brought a few home with her in her later vacations.
There were no elegancies at their table—that too was borne in upon her along with the other disturbing things. It was as if her eyes had suddenly been opened to all the intolerable meagreness of her old-time life.
"I didn't buy any carpets or wallpaper, Rosie; I thought you'd like to do that yourself," John explained as she looked around the room.
But outside all was beautiful, very beautiful. Under the trees the sinking sun could be seen hanging just above the purple-green hills to the northwest. Robins clucked, orioles whistled, a ring-dove uttered its never changing, sorrowful, sweet love-note. A thrush, high on a poplar, sang to the setting sun a wonderful hymn, and the vivid green valley, with its white houses and red barns, was flooded with orange light, heaped and brimming full of radiance and fragrance.
And yet what was all that to a girl without love, a brain which craved activity, not repose? Vain were sunset sky, flaming green slopes and rows of purple hills to eyes which dreamed of cities and the movement of masses of men. She was young, not old; ambitious, not vegetative. She was seeking, seeking, and to wait was not her will or wish.
The old man saw nothing difficult in all this. She was educated now. He had patiently sent her to school and now it was over; she was to be his once more, his pride and comfort as of olden time. Without knowing it he had forged the chains round her with great skill. Every carpet she bought would bind her to stay. She was to select the wallpaper, and by so doing to proclaim her intention to conform and to content herself in the new home.
She rose the next morning feeling, in spite of disturbing thought, the wonderful peace and beauty of the coulé, while her heart responded to the birds, rioting as never before—orioles, thrushes, bob-o-links, robins, larks—their voices wonderful and brilliant as the sunlight which streamed in upon her new, uncarpeted floor.
As she looked around at the large, fine new room, she thought of the little attic in which she had slept so many years. Yes, decidedly there would be pleasure in furnishing the house, in making her room pretty with delicate drapery and cheerful furniture.
She began to plan, only to break off—it seemed in some way to be deceit. No, before she did anything to it she must tell him she could not stay here, and she went down to breakfast with that resolution tightly clutched in her teeth, but when she saw his smiling face she could not speak the word. He was so pathetically happy. She had never seen him so demonstrative, and this mood showed her how deeply he had missed her.
Now that she was home for good, he felt no need of concealing his exceeding great joy of her daily presence with him. She remembered all the brave words he had spoken to her in order to make her feel he did not suffer when she was happy at school. Fortunately at breakfast he was full of another subject.
"I s'pose you heard that Carl is to be married?" he announced rather than asked her.
She looked up quickly—"No, is he? To whom?"
"Little Sary Wilson."
"Well, I'm very glad to hear it," she said quietly.
Some way, at that moment she seemed more alien to him than ever before, and he looked across at her in wonder. How lady-like she was in her tasty dress. How white her hands were! And it was wonderful to think she could sit so at ease and hear of Carl's approaching marriage. He remembered the time when he called them to his knee, the two young rogues.
She was thinking of that too. It was far in the past, yet, far as it was, it was still measurable, and a faint flush crept over her face. No one in the world knew of that experience but Carl and her father. Would Carl's wife ever know of it? That was the thought which caused the flush.
The first day she spent in looking about the farm with John. Towards evening she climbed the hills alone, and spent an hour on the familiar slope. It helped her to look down on her plans and her daily life, and the next day she met the question direct.
"Well, Rosie, when will you go to Tyre and do our buyin'?"
"O, not yet. I want to look around a few days first."
"All right—you're the captain! only we can't have any company till we get some furniture."
True enough! there was the excuse for buying the furniture; even if she were to go to the city she would be home during the summer, and she would want to entertain her friends. The fever seized her thereupon, and she plunged into planning and cataloguing. They had but little to spend, and she was put to her wit's end to passably furnish the house.
This filled in the first week or two of her stay, and she suffered less from loneliness than she expected; it came only at intervals, just before going to sleep, or in the morning, as she made her toilet for each new but eventless day.
As the home came to look pretty and complete, she thought of asking Josie to come on to visit her, and finally wrote her, and when she had promised to come, there was something to look forward to.
Meanwhile, she found something wrong between herself and her old friends. She meant to be just the same as ever, and at first she seemed to succeed, but she found herself not listening to them, or looking at them with alien eyes. She heard their harsh, loud voices, not their words, and she saw their stiff, ungraceful gestures instead of the fancy-work and worked-over dresses which they showed her. They looked at each other with significant nods. Other young people had gone away to school without acquiring airs, why should she?
It was not her education in books, but in manners, which made her alien. She was educated above them, too. Her thoughts were higher than theirs, and she did not attempt to play the hypocrite. She was not interested in them; for the most part they bored her. In a few cases the misunderstanding grew to be anger and distrust.
Carl drove over once with his bride-elect, and they all sat stiffly in the front room for one distressing hour; then they left, never to come again.
Sarah counted the visit not all in vain, however, for she quite closely reproduced Rose's shirt-waist the following week—that much she got out of the call. Carl was awed and troubled a little by the failure of his bride to get on with Rose, and Rose was bitter over it in heart. She could not see the fun of all this, as so many story-writers had done. It was all pitiful and bitter and barren, and to eat with the knife and drink coffee with a loud, sipping sound were inexcusable misdemeanors to her overwrought temper.
Josie came in like a little oriole. She fluffed down off the train like a bunch of lilac bloom one July day.
"O, what a funny little town," she said, after kissing Rose how-de-do. "Are we to ride in this carriage? O, I'msodisappointed!"
"Why so?"
"O, I wanted to ride on a hay-cart or dray or whatever it is. Mr. Dutcher, I'm so glad to see you." She sprang upon John and kissed him, "like a swaller lightin' on me," he said afterward. It astonished him but gratified him.
"Do you live far out in the country—the real country?" she asked.
"Well, you'd think so if you had to haul corn over it in the spring," he replied.
"I'd like to haul corn over it," she replied. "May I?"
"You can do anything you want to," John said.
Josie got at the picturesque qualities of the people. They all interested her and amused her like the cattle without horns, and the guinea-hens which clacked like clocks, and the tadpoles in the marsh. She had no personal relations—no responsibilities toward them such as Rose felt were inescapably hers. Josie had no responsibilities at all, none under heaven!
She laughed at the ill-made dresses, and winked over the heads of the old wives when they talked in dialect, and made fun of the boys who came courting her, and sang "Where did they get those hats?" after coming out of the church.
Rose laughed and yet suffered, as one might whose blood relatives were ridiculed. It was a new experience to John Dutcher to have one about who cried out at everything as if it were the seventh wonder. The summer visitor had never before penetrated to his farm and all the women he had ever known could talk about cattle and drainage and wool-washing almost like men. In his interest and desire to do the part of entertainer, he pushed on into subjects which the girl listened to with wonder-wide eyes and a flushed face.
He talked to her as he would with Rose, about "farrer cows" and other commonplaces of stock-raising to which Rose would have listened abstractedly or with a slight feeling of disgust. To Josie it was deeply fascinating, and just a little bit like reading a forbidden book. It affected her a little unwholesomely, just as it would have made Ed, the hand, spasmodically guffaw to stand before the Venus de Milo—use and custom do much.
She sometimes asked questions which she would not have dared to ask her uncle, for John Dutcher was beyond sex; indeed, he had always been a man of pure heart and plain speech. He was even in youth perfectly free from any sensuality, and now in his later middle life sex was a fact like the color of a horse or a squash, and all that pertained to it he talked of, on the same plane. It did not occur to him that he was going beyond the lines of propriety in explaining to this delicate little woman various vital facts of stock-raising.
Josie sometimes went back to Rose smilingly, and told her what had taken place.
"Why didn't you ask me—you little goose? I never thought you didn't know those things. We farm girls know all that when we are toddlers. We can't help it."
All this should have been tonic, thoroughly wholesome to the dainty over-bred girl, and so it ultimately became, though it disturbed her at the time.