XXVII
"THE VISION SPLENDID"
A year had elapsed since Adam Ladd's prize had been discussed over theteacups in Riverboro. The months had come and gone, and at length thegreat day had dawned for Rebecca,--the day to which she had beenlooking forward for five years, as the first goal to be reached on herlittle journey through the world. School-days were ended, and themystic function known to the initiated as "graduation" was about to becelebrated; it was even now heralded by the sun dawning in the easternsky. Rebecca stole softly out of bed, crept to the window, threw openthe blinds, and welcomed the rosy light that meant a cloudless morning.Even the sun looked different somehow,--larger, redder, more importantthan usual; and if it were really so, there was no member of thegraduating class who would have thought it strange or unbecoming, inview of all the circumstances. Emma Jane stirred on her pillow, woke,and seeing Rebecca at the window, came and knelt on the floor besideher. "It's going to be pleasant!" she sighed gratefully. "If it wasn'twicked, I could thank the Lord, I'm so relieved in mind! Did you sleep?"
"Not much; the words of my class poem kept running through my head, andthe accompaniments of the songs; and worse than anything, Mary Queen ofScots' prayer in Latin; it seemed as if
"'Adoro, imploro, Ut liberes me!'
were burned into my brain."
No one who is unfamiliar with life in rural neighborhoods can imaginethe gravity, the importance, the solemnity of this last day of school.In the matter of preparation, wealth of detail, and general excitementit far surpasses a wedding; for that is commonly a simple affair in thecountry, sometimes even beginning and ending in a visit to theparsonage. Nothing quite equals graduation in the minds of thegraduates themselves, their families, and the younger students, unlessit be the inauguration of a governor at the State Capitol. Wareham,then, was shaken to its very centre on this day of days. Mothers andfathers of the scholars, as well as relatives to the remotestgeneration, had been coming on the train and driving into the townsince breakfast time; old pupils, both married and single, with andwithout families, streamed back to the dear old village. The two liverystables were crowded with vehicles of all sorts, and lines of buggiesand wagons were drawn up along the sides of the shady roads, the horsesswitching their tails in luxurious idleness. The streets were filledwith people wearing their best clothes, and the fashions included notonly "the latest thing," but the well preserved relic of a bygone day.There were all sorts and conditions of men and women, for there weresons and daughters of storekeepers, lawyers, butchers, doctors,shoemakers, professors, ministers, and farmers at the Wareham schools,either as boarders or day scholars. In the seminary building there wasan excitement so deep and profound that it expressed itself in a kindof hushed silence, a transient suspension of life, as those mostinterested approached the crucial moment. The feminine graduates-to-bewere seated in their own bedrooms, dressed with a completeness ofdetail to which all their past lives seemed to have been but a prelude.At least, this was the case with their bodies; but their heads, owingto the extreme heat of the day, were one and all ornamented with leads,or papers, or dozens of little braids, to issue later in every sort ofcurl known to the girl of that period. Rolling the hair on leads orpapers was a favorite method of attaining the desired result, andthough it often entailed a sleepless night, there were those who gladlypaid the price. Others, in whose veins the blood of martyrs did notflow, substituted rags for leads and pretended that they made a morenatural and less woolly curl. Heat, however, will melt the proudesthead and reduce to fiddling strings the finest product of thewaving-pin; so anxious mothers were stationed over their offspring,waving palm-leaf fans, it having been decided that the supreme instantwhen the town clock struck ten should be the one chosen for releasingthe prisoners from their self-imposed tortures.
Dotted or plain Swiss muslin was the favorite garb, though there werethose who were steaming in white cashmere or alpaca, because in somecases such frocks were thought more useful afterwards. Blue and pinkwaist ribbons were lying over the backs of chairs, and the girl who hada Roman sash was praying that she might be kept from vanity and pride.
The way to any graduating dress at all had not seemed clear to Rebeccauntil a month before. Then, in company with Emma Jane, she visited thePerkins attic, found piece after piece of white butter-muslin orcheesecloth, and decided that, at a pinch, it would do. The "richblacksmith's daughter" cast the thought of dotted Swiss behind her, andelected to follow Rebecca in cheesecloth as she had in higher matters;straightway devising costumes that included such drawing of threads,such hemstitching and pin-tucking, such insertions of fine threadtatting that, in order to be finished, Rebecca's dress was given out insections,--the sash to Hannah, waist and sleeves to Mrs. Cobb, andskirt to aunt Jane. The stitches that went into the despised material,worth only three or four pennies a yard, made the dresses altogetherlovely, and as for the folds and lines into which they fell, they couldhave given points to satins and brocades.
The two girls were waiting in their room alone, Emma Jane in rather atearful state of mind. She kept thinking that it was the last day thatthey would be together in this altogether sweet and close intimacy. Thebeginning of the end seemed to have dawned, for two positions had beenoffered Rebecca by Mr. Morrison the day before: one in which she wouldplay for singing and calisthenics, and superintend the piano practiceof the younger girls in a boarding-school; the other an assistant'splace in the Edgewood High School. Both were very modest as to salary,but the former included educational advantages that Miss Maxwellthought might be valuable.
Rebecca's mood had passed from that of excitement into a sort ofexaltation, and when the first bell rang through the corridorsannouncing that in five minutes the class would proceed in a body tothe church for the exercises, she stood motionless and speechless atthe window with her hand on her heart.
"It is coming, Emmie," she said presently; "do you remember in The Millon the Floss, when Maggie Tulliver closed the golden gates of childhoodbehind her? I can almost see them swing; almost hear them clang; and Ican't tell whether I am glad or sorry."
"I shouldn't care how they swung or clanged," said Emma Jane, "if onlyyou and I were on the same side of the gate; but we shan't be, I knowwe shan't!"
"Emmie, don't dare to cry, for I'm just on the brink myself! If onlyyou were graduating with me; that's my only sorrow! There! I hear therumble of the wheels! People will be seeing our grand surprise now! Hugme once for luck, dear Emmie; a careful hug, remembering ourbutter-muslin frailty!"
Ten minutes later, Adam Ladd, who had just arrived from Portland andwas wending his way to the church, came suddenly into the main streetand stopped short under a tree by the wayside, riveted to the spot by ascene of picturesque loveliness such as his eyes had seldom witnessedbefore. The class of which Rebecca was president was not likely tofollow accepted customs. Instead of marching two by two from theseminary to the church, they had elected to proceed thither by royalchariot. A haycart had been decked with green vines and bunches oflong-stemmed field daisies, those gay darlings of New England meadows.Every inch of the rail, the body, even the spokes, all were twined withyellow and green and white. There were two white horses, flower-trimmedreins, and in the floral bower, seated on maple boughs, were the twelvegirls of the class, while the ten boys marched on either side of thevehicle, wearing buttonhole bouquets of daisies, the class flower.
Rebecca drove, seated on a green-covered bench that looked not unlike athrone. No girl clad in white muslin, no happy girl of seventeen, isplain; and the twelve little country maids, from the vantage ground oftheir setting, looked beautiful, as the June sunlight filtered down ontheir uncovered heads, showing their bright eyes, their fresh cheeks,their smiles, and their dimples.
Rebecca, Adam thought, as he took off his hat and saluted the prettypanorama,--Rebecca, with her tall slenderness, her thoughtful brow, thefire of young joy in her face, her fillet of dark braided hair, mighthave been a young Muse or Sibyl; and the flowery hayrack, with itsf
reight of blooming girlhood, might have been painted as an allegoricalpicture of The Morning of Life. It all passed him, as he stood underthe elms in the old village street where his mother had walked half acentury ago, and he was turning with the crowd towards the church whenhe heard a little sob. Behind a hedge in the garden near where he wasstanding was a forlorn person in white, whose neat nose, chestnut hair,and blue eyes he seemed to know. He stepped inside the gate and said,"What's wrong, Miss Emma?"
"Oh, is it you, Mr. Ladd? Rebecca wouldn't let me cry for fear ofspoiling my looks, but I must have just one chance before I go in. Ican be as homely as I like, after all, for I only have to sing with theschool; I'm not graduating, I'm just leaving! Not that I mind that;it's only being separated from Rebecca that I never can stand!"
The two walked along together, Adam comforting the disconsolate EmmaJane, until they reached the old meeting-house where the Commencementexercises were always held. The interior, with its decorations ofyellow, green, and white, was crowded, the air hot and breathless, theessays and songs and recitations precisely like all others that havebeen since the world began. One always fears that the platform may sinkunder the weight of youthful platitudes uttered on such occasions; yetone can never be properly critical, because the sight of the boys andgirls themselves, those young and hopeful makers of to-morrow, disarmsone's scorn. We yawn desperately at the essays, but our hearts go outto the essayists, all the same, for "the vision splendid" is shining intheir eyes, and there is no fear of "th' inevitable yoke" that theyears are so surely bringing them.
Rebecca saw Hannah and her husband in the audience; dear old John andcousin Ann also, and felt a pang at the absence of her mother, thoughshe had known there was no possibility of seeing her; for poor Aureliawas kept at Sunnybrook by cares of children and farm, and lack of moneyeither for the journey or for suitable dress. The Cobbs she saw too. Noone, indeed, could fail to see uncle Jerry; for he shed tears more thanonce, and in the intervals between the essays descanted to hisneighbors concerning the marvelous gifts of one of the graduating classwhom he had known ever since she was a child; in fact, had driven herfrom Maplewood to Riverboro when she left her home, and he had toldmother that same night that there wan't nary rung on the ladder o' famethat that child wouldn't mount before she got through with it.
The Cobbs, then, had come, and there were other Riverboro faces, butwhere was aunt Jane, in her black silk made over especially for thisoccasion? Aunt Miranda had not intended to come, she knew, but where,on this day of days, was her beloved aunt Jane? However, this thought,like all others, came and went in a flash, for the whole morning waslike a series of magic lantern pictures, crossing and recrossing herfield of vision. She played, she sang, she recited Queen Mary's Latinprayer, like one in a dream, only brought to consciousness by meetingMr. Aladdin's eyes as she spoke the last line. Then at the end of theprogramme came her class poem, Makers of To-morrow; and there, as onmany a former occasion, her personality played so great a part that sheseemed to be uttering Miltonic sentiments instead of school-girl verse.Her voice, her eyes, her body breathed conviction, earnestness,emotion; and when she left the platform the audience felt that they hadlistened to a masterpiece. Most of her hearers knew little of Carlyleor Emerson, or they might have remembered that the one said, "We areall poets when we read a poem well," and the other, "'T is the goodreader makes the good book."
It was over! The diplomas had been presented, and each girl, aftergiving furtive touches to her hair, sly tweaks to her muslin skirts,and caressing pats to her sash, had gone forward to receive the roll ofparchment with a bow that had been the subject of anxious thought forweeks. Rounds of applause greeted each graduate at this thrillingmoment, and Jeremiah Cobb's behavior, when Rebecca came forward, wasthe talk of Wareham and Riverboro for days. Old Mrs. Webb avowed thathe, in the space of two hours, had worn out her pew more--the carpet,the cushions, and woodwork--than she had by sitting in it forty years.Yes, it was over, and after the crowd had thinned a little, Adam Laddmade his way to the platform. Rebecca turned from speaking to somestrangers and met him in the aisle. "Oh, Mr. Aladdin, I am so glad youcould come! Tell me"--and she looked at him half shyly, for hisapproval was dearer to her, and more difficult to win, than that of theothers--"tell me, Mr. Aladdin,--were you satisfied?"
"More than satisfied!" he said; "glad I met the child, proud I know thegirl, longing to meet the woman!"