The coffee was thick and sweet.
“You like our coffee? That’s Damascus coffee.”
“These nuts—they’re named pistachio.”
“Please honor us, Miss, by taking another fig.”
When she got to her feet at last, all four started chattering. Layla, running to an inner room, returned in a coat with a yellow scarf over her braids, and Kalil replaced on his curly head the cap he had taken off.
“But you’re not coming with me!” Emily cried.
“Of course, ma’am!”
“It’s not at all necessary. And it must be time for your supper.”
“They are honored to go.”
With Kalil and Layla holding her hands on either side, Emily went down the steps.
“God preserve you and your blessed grandfather!” The big man smiled.
“God bless!” cried the little mother. They were the first English words she had used.
Emily smiled, delighted and bewildered. “I must come again,” she thought.
They went back to the little path. There were myriads of stars now, and the slough slept beneath a silver counterpane.
“What language do Syrians speak?” Emily asked.
“Arabic, ma’am. But we wish to speak the English.”
“Does Layla speak any English?”
“Sure,” said Layla, dancing at her side. “I speak the dandy English.”
“And she sings,” said Kalil. “My sister sings like a—like a—sparrow.”
“No, sparrows don’t sing! You must mean like a thrush.”
“Sure. She sings like a thrush.”
“I wish you’d come to my house and sing for me some day. Does your mother speak English?”
“No. She’s a woman. Women,” Kalil explained grandly, “don’t speak the English much.”
“Your father,” remarked Emily, “speaks wonderful English.” She paused for a tactful approach. “But I was puzzled by something.”
“What was that, ma’am?”
“He said I could burn your house.”
“Oh,” answered Kalil, shrugging, “he said that to be polite. Of course, ma’am, he knows you won’t do it.”
“But she could—if she wanted to—my brother,” Layla reproved him gently.
12
Poetry, Music, and Dance
“How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!”
EMILY WAS COMING HOME from the Browning class. It was a boisterous night; snow blew into her face as she walked across the slough, her body bent and braced to meet the wind. She didn’t feel cold. She felt exhilarated to the ends of her mittened fingers. The richness of “Saul” warmed her like a fire.
“No wonder Don loves Browning!” But she amended that thought. “No, it’s surprising! Don hasn’t the joy in life, and the faith in people, and the—the love of God that Browning has. Or has he? Maybe I don’t understand Don.”
She struggled up the snowy path to her door.
“I’m going to talk with him when he comes home for Christmas,” she resolved, stamping her feet at the threshold. It was silly to let him ignore her when they had so much in common.
Going into the silent house, she laughed suddenly. “I’m not so humble as I used to be. But who could be humble, studying Browning? He makes you feel important just because you’re a human being.”
The Browning class had met only twice, but it had already changed the color of Emily’s winter. Miss Fowler had stressed her conviction that Browning was not “a poet for the cultured few.” It was true, she said, that he wasn’t easy reading. You had to keep your dictionaries and reference books handy. But he was vital, red-blooded, with a deep interest in all human problems. He gave supreme importance to the battle between right and wrong.
“I count life just a stuff
To try the soul’s strength on…”
Miss Fowler quoted, and Emily felt it a tonic.
She was braced, too, by the reference, in Dr. Richard Burton’s introduction, to Browning’s schooling, which had been irregular, ending with a single term at London University, but “…his education then was just beginning and was to last through a long lifetime of eager, wide and absorptive culture until death itself.”
Emily wrote down that phrase, “eager, wide and absorptive culture.”
“That’s what I’m going to try for,” she thought.
She was absorbing culture in Miss Fowler’s apartment, absorbing it with every pore. Miss Fowler had, indeed, seen the originals of the pictures on her walls. When they discussed the life of Browning and his invalid poetess wife in Florence, Italy, she brought out a great stack of postcards collected during a European sojourn. There were pictures not only of Italy but of Switzerland, the German cities, Paris, the British Isles.
And even more important than Browning and the postcards was the talk beside Miss Fowler’s fire. The group of women included, besides Emily and Alice, Miss Sparrow, the librarian, two young teachers and a young married woman named Mrs. Jack Delaney who was a graduate of Smith.
Their talk ranged over a wide field: Woman Suffrage—Mrs. Pankhurst and Christobel were both in prison that winter. President-elect Woodrow Wilson. Henry George. Ibsen. Tolstoy. George Bernard Shaw—Miss Fowler loaned Emily Man and Superman.
They talked about the New York plays. Mrs. Delaney went to New York often. They talked about music, about opera. Miss Fowler had heard Wagner’s Ring in Bayreuth, Germany.
Emily found she had much to think about as she shoveled high-walled paths through December snows, chopped wood for the kitchen range and tended the coal stove. This sat on its zinc pad like a fat insatiable monster. She shared with her grandfather the work of shaking it down and filling it with coal and taking out the ashes. The red glow behind its isinglass windows was pleasant, but it spread dust unmercifully, making housework harder. Ruefully Emily rubbed cream into her chapped hands at night.
She was extremely busy. Planted seeds produce a garden that requires tending. And all her desperate efforts to find self-expression were sprouting into demanding growths. Dancing lessons took only an hour a week. But piano lessons must be practised, and Browning and Lincoln took time.
Mrs. Delaney entertained the group at Sunday night supper, and they made a pleasant plan to go to plays at the Opera House together. Deep Valley was conveniently located between the Twin Cities and Omaha; and a good theatrical production stopped there now and then.
Moreover, quite unexpectedly, in mid-December, Cab invited her to another dance.
“Why the dickens don’t you have a phone put in?” he accosted her when they met on Front Street. “It’s a long way across your slough. Do your beaus write notes of invitation and wait for an answer? You’ve got a lot of confidence, girl.”
Emily laughed, shy but pleased, and Cab proceeded, “It’s the Elks Club again. Same crowd as before. If you had fun the last time—”
“I did.”
“Will you come then? Next Saturday night?”
She wore the corn-colored silk again, and again she had a very good time. In the first place, her dancing had improved.
“Gee whiz! I must be quite a teacher,” Cab exclaimed after they had circled the room.
She danced with zestful accuracy through a program of waltzes, two-steps, schottisches, polkas. There was no chance to try out her Gaby Glide; the Elks Club was too conservative for that.
“No wonder the girls are so crazy about dances!” Emily thought. “They’re fun!”
She had just finished a lively polka with Jack Delaney when she saw Mr. Wakeman. The big young man was standing alone, his hands thrust casually into his pockets, surveying the room with a smile. His gaze reached her just as Jack Delaney took her to her chair, where Cab was waiting. She saw him look at her with a puzzled expression and then he came forward.
“Good evening, Miss—Emily,” he said in his soft southern voice. “I didn’t
recognize you for a moment. I’ve been wanting to see you, to hear what you thought of the St. John game.”
“I didn’t go,” Emily replied.
“You didn’t go? After the way you pumped for it? Whatever happened?”
“Say you sprained your ankle,” Cab joked.
But Emily only smiled.
“Can’t I have a dance and get at the truth of the matter?” He took her card, but it was full.
“Next time, then!” he said. “Remember, I’m going to find out.” His brown eyes smiled down at her; he bowed and turned away.
“He’s a nice guy,” remarked Cab.
“The team certainly likes him,” Emily answered. Her own feelings were mixed; he was associated in her mind with that awful “high school girl in a hair ribbon” remark! But if he hadn’t made her angry that day she wouldn’t have put up her hair! She wouldn’t be here!
Cab laughed. “The team’s crazy about him. It took them a while to figure him out, though. He’s so easygoing, and speaks so soft. The team thought at first that maybe he was soft. At practise one day he was saying, ‘Get down, when you charge! Keep low! Hit hard!’ and the right guard on the first team, a big strong smart alec, said, ‘Maybe you’d play guard on the scrubs, and give me the idea, Mr. Wakeman.’
“Wake looked them all over, and smiled that slow easy smile of his and said, ‘Sure, if you think that’d help.’ And he got down in the scrub line, but before he did he told the quarterback to send the next play through him.
“I doubt if he put out more than half his strength. But he certainly hit hard enough to knock Mr. Smart Alec flat. The scrubs picked up twenty yards.
“When Wake came back the first-team guard was just getting up. ‘Did that give you the idea?’ Wake asked with that easy smile, ‘or shall we try it again?’
“The big kid grinned and said, ‘Nope. We won’t try that again. Not ever, Mr. Wakeman. I got the idea—completely.’”
Emily laughed, well able to visualize the scene.
The next day she bought a new party dress—just in case she should be invited to the Christmas dances. She didn’t want to have Miss Mix make it, for then Aunt Sophie would know that she had hoped to be invited—and, of course, she never had been in the past. But things were getting to be so different!
She found a beautiful gown: a patterned white tunic over pale blue silk with a spray of blue silk corn flowers embroidered on the bodice.
“You ought to wear blue corn flowers in your hair,” said the saleswoman. “It would be good because your eyes are so blue.”
“I will,” Emily thought. “And I’ll wear those old pearl earrings from the jewel box.” They were just the lustrous shade of her tunic.
It was almost time for the Christmas college visitation. Front Street was putting on evergreens and holly; the store windows were glowing with gifts and the sleighbells, ringing along snow-packed roads, had a holiday chime.
In the little house across the slough there were holidayish things to be done. Emily picked greens from her own hillside and wove them into wreaths for the windows and made a decoration for the table of hemlock boughs and pine cones. She had long since baked her fruit cake. Now she baked Christmas cookies and a mince pie, too, for although they always went to Aunt Sophie’s for dinner, she liked to have a mince pie in the house.
She had bought gifts for Aunt Sophie, Uncle Chester and Annette, and a copy of Herndon’s Lincoln for her grandfather. Library copies were all very well, but when you loved a book as much as he loved that one, you ought to own it. She was working slippers for him, too.
He had taken cold and sat at the big window in the dining room with a shawl over his shoulders. He wasn’t allowed to go out. But he sent Judge Hodges on a mysterious errand which meant, Emily knew, presents for herself. And shortly before Christmas he said, “Emmy, I want you to do some shopping for me.”
“Of course, Grandpa. What is it?”
“I want you to take some money out of the bank and buy skates for Kalil and Yusef.”
“Grandpa! What a nice idea!”
“Buy good ones,” he adjured her. “There’s nothing worse than a poor pair of skates.”
“I certainly will,” said Emily. “And I’ll buy presents for them, too.” She would also, she thought, buy a doll for Layla. She felt a little ashamed that her grandfather had been the one to think of the Syrian children.
“It’s because my mind’s on the crowd coming,” she thought. That great event was expanding in her thoughts like a soap bubble—and was just as iridescent.
They would be home for two weeks and a half.
“Two whole weeks and a half!” Emily exclaimed often.
Although she had lost some of her dependence on the crowd, she longed for them even more than she had at Thanksgiving. For this return would have a peculiar quality, she felt. During this vacation she might cease to be an outsider in man-and-girl affairs; she might really come to belong.
She had changed. It wasn’t just that she had put her hair up and bought some pretty clothes. She was growing up, just as they were. She was changing inside. For the first time, she felt herself their equal.
“I wish,” she thought more than once, glancing at the new white and blue dress hanging in her closet, “I wish I would be invited to the New Year’s Eve dance.” That was held every year at the Melborn Hotel and was the climax of the holiday season.
She counted the days of that last week. Before it ended Hunter and Ellen had arrived. Mabel, rumor said, would be on the train with the University group when it came in Friday night.
She was! Hunter and Ellen and Emily, waiting with the parents on the platform, saw her first of all when the train rolled steaming into the station. She had been standing with her wraps on since the last town, she cried to them, jumping down the steps. She was followed by them all—Don, Annette, Jim Baxter, Fred, Nell, Gladys, and college students from other classes—but they didn’t count.
There was a melee of bags and satchels, willow plumes and new fur caps, Christmas bundles, flung arms and cries of rejoicing.
The home-coming freshmen gathered in a yelling circle.
“Cheer, cheer, the gang’s all here,” they sang revolving, their arms on one another’s shoulders. They opened the circle to let Emily in. She sang with them, blurry-eyed.
13
“The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi”
EMILY WAS THANKFUL next morning for Judge Hodges and the interminable chess. The Judge came in early, stroking his beard, his eyes twinkling. He had a new opening, he said—Cy Webster could never figure this one out.
“By Jingo, I can!” Grandpa Webster knotted the shawl closer around his shoulders and began to set up the chessmen. Content that they were settled for the morning, Emily hurried into her wraps and ran out, her face glowing with anticipation.
She went first to Mabel’s, and they went together to Ellen’s who was said to be at Annette’s. On the Webster steps they met Nell and Gladys. Aunt Sophie, in high spirits, welcomed them all.
“This is like old times,” she said, as they pulled off snowy overshoes. “Now don’t go up to Annette’s room! I want to hear, too.”
While they talked and laughed on the sun porch, which had a miraculous summerlike warmth, Aunt Sophie came in and out happily, bringing apples and fudge. Once she stopped to put her hand on Annette’s dark head.
“We’re glad; aren’t we, Emily?”
“Are we! Aunt Sophie and I have certainly missed you.”
The merits of the University, Carleton, St. Catherine’s and Vassar were argued in every conceivable combination. Mabel told of a trip to New York. She had seen Otis Skinner in Kismet. Nell told of a Christmas pageant in which she had played an angel and lost a wing. Annette and Gladys told of sunlight dances, of the freshman-sophomore debate.
“Is Don on the team?” Emily asked.
“He isn’t going out for debating.”
Why not? Emily wondered.
“Are there any g
irls on the team?”
She did not mean to sound wistful, but Gladys suddenly enveloped her in a bear hug. “There would be if you were there!”
“Emily!” Nell cried penitently. “We’re doing all the talking!”
“That’s what I want you to do!” Emily said. But it wasn’t quite true. She was rather anxious to tell them about the Browning Club, and the dances with Cab, and even her dancing lessons. She had learned to do the Gaby Glide. But the girls were accustomed to her listening rather than talking. The conversational tide swept on without her.
Mabel asked Emily to go home with her, but she shook her head. The chess game couldn’t last forever; she had to get her grandfather’s dinner.
“Why don’t you all come to my house this afternoon?”
“I have to wash my hair,” said Annette. “And Mamma won’t let me go out afterward. Come here!”
“But so do I have to wash my hair!” cried Gladys.
“I’m going for a marcel wave,” said Nell, and Ellen added, “I have to press a dress and do my nails.”
“What is all the beautifying for?” asked Mabel. “Oh, I see! Dates! Men! Then, Em, you come up to my house tonight and we’ll talk them over.”
“We’ll pick them to pieces,” Emily agreed, and everyone laughed.
Annette broke in, “Before we part—I’m giving a sleighing party Monday night. Papa’s hiring the Bluejay, and you’re all invited.”
“I want you for a luncheon after Christmas.”
“I’m planning an evening party.”
“Well, don’t make it Sunday!” Annette said. “We’re busy then, you know.”
“I’m not busy,” Emily thought quickly. She felt a twinge that she had not been invited to what was plainly a man-and-girl party.
“But it doesn’t matter,” she thought, walking home. “Nobody realizes that I’ve started going out. There’ll be men at Annette’s on Monday. And there are more than two weeks left.”