XXVII

"THE VISION SPLENDID"

A year had elapsed since Adam Ladd's prize had been discussed over the

teacups in Riverboro. The months had come and gone, and at length the

great day had dawned for Rebecca,--the day to which she had been

looking forward for five years, as the first goal to be reached on her

little journey through the world. School-days were ended, and the

mystic function known to the initiated as "graduation" was about to be

celebrated; it was even now heralded by the sun dawning in the eastern

sky. Rebecca stole softly out of bed, crept to the window, threw open

the blinds, and welcomed the rosy light that meant a cloudless morning.

Even the sun looked different somehow,--larger, redder, more important

than usual; and if it were really so, there was no member of the

graduating class who would have thought it strange or unbecoming, in

view of all the circumstances. Emma Jane stirred on her pillow, woke,

and seeing Rebecca at the window, came and knelt on the floor beside

her. "It's going to be pleasant!" she sighed gratefully. "If it wasn't

wicked, 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, and

the accompaniments of the songs; and worse than anything, Mary Queen of

Scots' 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 imagine

the gravity, the importance, the solemnity of this last day of school.

In the matter of preparation, wealth of detail, and general excitement

it far surpasses a wedding; for that is commonly a simple affair in the

country, sometimes even beginning and ending in a visit to the

parsonage. Nothing quite equals graduation in the minds of the

graduates themselves, their families, and the younger students, unless

it be the inauguration of a governor at the State Capitol. Wareham,

then, was shaken to its very centre on this day of days. Mothers and

fathers of the scholars, as well as relatives to the remotest

generation, had been coming on the train and driving into the town

since breakfast time; old pupils, both married and single, with and

without families, streamed back to the dear old village. The two livery

stables were crowded with vehicles of all sorts, and lines of buggies

and wagons were drawn up along the sides of the shady roads, the horses

switching their tails in luxurious idleness. The streets were filled

with people wearing their best clothes, and the fashions included not

only "the latest thing," but the well preserved relic of a bygone day.

There were all sorts and conditions of men and women, for there were

sons 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 was

an excitement so deep and profound that it expressed itself in a kind

of hushed silence, a transient suspension of life, as those most

interested approached the crucial moment. The feminine graduates-to-be

were seated in their own bedrooms, dressed with a completeness of

detail 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, owing

to 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 of

curl known to the girl of that period. Rolling the hair on leads or

papers was a favorite method of attaining the desired result, and

though it often entailed a sleepless night, there were those who gladly

paid the price. Others, in whose veins the blood of martyrs did not

flow, substituted rags for leads and pretended that they made a more

natural and less woolly curl. Heat, however, will melt the proudest

head and reduce to fiddling strings the finest product of the

waving-pin; so anxious mothers were stationed over their offspring,

waving palm-leaf fans, it having been decided that the supreme instant

when the town clock struck ten should be the one chosen for releasing

the prisoners from their self-imposed tortures.

Dotted or plain Swiss muslin was the favorite garb, though there were

those who were steaming in white cashmere or alpaca, because in some

cases such frocks were thought more useful afterwards. Blue and pink

waist ribbons were lying over the backs of chairs, and the girl who had

a 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 Rebecca

until a month before. Then, in company with Emma Jane, she visited the

Perkins attic, found piece after piece of white butter-muslin or

cheesecloth, and decided that, at a pinch, it would do. The "rich

blacksmith's daughter" cast the thought of dotted Swiss behind her, and

elected 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 thread

tatting that, in order to be finished, Rebecca's dress was given out in

sections,--the sash to Hannah, waist and sleeves to Mrs. Cobb, and

skirt to aunt Jane. The stitches that went into the despised material,

worth only three or four pennies a yard, made the dresses altogether

lovely, and as for the folds and lines into which they fell, they could

have given points to satins and brocades.

The two girls were waiting in their room alone, Emma Jane in rather a

tearful state of mind. She kept thinking that it was the last day that

they would be together in this altogether sweet and close intimacy. The

beginning of the end seemed to have dawned, for two positions had been

offered Rebecca by Mr. Morrison the day before: one in which she would

play for singing and calisthenics, and superintend the piano practice

of the younger girls in a boarding-school; the other an assistant's

place in the Edgewood High School. Both were very modest as to salary,

but the former included educational advantages that Miss Maxwell

thought might be valuable.

Rebecca's mood had passed from that of excitement into a sort of

exaltation, and when the first bell rang through the corridors

announcing that in five minutes the class would proceed in a body to

the church for the exercises, she stood motionless and speechless at

the window with her hand on her heart.

"It is coming, Emmie," she said presently; "do you remember in The Mill

on the Floss, when Maggie Tulliver closed the golden gates of childhood

behind her? I can almost see them swing; almost hear them clang; and I

can't tell whether I am glad or sorry."

"I shouldn't care how they swung or clanged," said Emma Jane, "if only

you and I were on the same side of the gate; but we shan't be, I know

we shan't!"

"Emmie, don't dare to cry, for I'm just on the brink myself! If only

you were graduating with me; that's my only sorrow! There! I hear the

rumble of the wheels! People will be seeing our grand surprise now! Hug

me once for luck, dear Emmie; a careful hug, remembering our

butter-muslin frailty!"

Ten minutes later, Adam Ladd, who had just arrived from Portland and

was wending his way to the church, came suddenly into the main street

and stopped short under a tree by the wayside, riveted to the spot by a

scene of picturesque loveliness such as his eyes had seldom witnessed

before. The class of which Rebecca was president was not likely to

follow accepted customs. Instead of marching two by two from the

seminary to the church, they had elected to proceed thither by royal

chariot. A haycart had been decked with green vines and bunches of

long-stemmed field daisies, those gay darlings of New England meadows.

Every inch of the rail, the body, even the spokes, all were twined with

yellow and green and white. There were two white horses, flower-trimmed

reins, and in the floral bower, seated on maple boughs, were the twelve

girls of the class, while the ten boys marched on either side of the

vehicle, wearing buttonhole bouquets of daisies, the class flower.

Rebecca drove, seated on a green-covered bench that looked not unlike a

throne. No girl clad in white muslin, no happy girl of seventeen, is

plain; and the twelve little country maids, from the vantage ground of

their setting, looked beautiful, as the June sunlight filtered down on

their 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 pretty

panorama,--Rebecca, with her tall slenderness, her thoughtful brow, the

fire of young joy in her face, her fillet of dark braided hair, might

have been a young Muse or Sibyl; and the flowery hayrack, with its

freight of blooming girlhood, might have been painted as an allegorical

picture of The Morning of Life. It all passed him, as he stood under

the elms in the old village street where his mother had walked half a

century ago, and he was turning with the crowd towards the church when

he heard a little sob. Behind a hedge in the garden near where he was

standing 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 of

spoiling my looks, but I must have just one chance before I go in. I

can be as homely as I like, after all, for I only have to sing with the

school; 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 Emma

Jane, until they reached the old meeting-house where the Commencement

exercises were always held. The interior, with its decorations of

yellow, green, and white, was crowded, the air hot and breathless, the

essays and songs and recitations precisely like all others that have

been since the world began. One always fears that the platform may sink

under the weight of youthful platitudes uttered on such occasions; yet

one can never be properly critical, because the sight of the boys and

girls themselves, those young and hopeful makers of to-morrow, disarms

one's scorn. We yawn desperately at the essays, but our hearts go out

to the essayists, all the same, for "the vision splendid" is shining in

their eyes, and there is no fear of "th' inevitable yoke" that the

years are so surely bringing them.

Rebecca saw Hannah and her husband in the audience; dear old John and

cousin Ann also, and felt a pang at the absence of her mother, though

she had known there was no possibility of seeing her; for poor Aurelia

was kept at Sunnybrook by cares of children and farm, and lack of money

either for the journey or for suitable dress. The Cobbs she saw too. No

one, indeed, could fail to see uncle Jerry; for he shed tears more than

once, and in the intervals between the essays descanted to his

neighbors concerning the marvelous gifts of one of the graduating class

whom he had known ever since she was a child; in fact, had driven her

from Maplewood to Riverboro when she left her home, and he had told

mother that same night that there wan't nary rung on the ladder o' fame

that that child wouldn't mount before she got through with it.

The Cobbs, then, had come, and there were other Riverboro faces, but

where was aunt Jane, in her black silk made over especially for this

occasion? 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 was

like a series of magic lantern pictures, crossing and recrossing her

field of vision. She played, she sang, she recited Queen Mary's Latin

prayer, like one in a dream, only brought to consciousness by meeting

Mr. Aladdin's eyes as she spoke the last line. Then at the end of the

programme came her class poem, Makers of To-morrow; and there, as on

many a former occasion, her personality played so great a part that she

seemed 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 had

listened to a masterpiece. Most of her hearers knew little of Carlyle

or Emerson, or they might have remembered that the one said, "We are

all poets when we read a poem well," and the other, "'T is the good

reader makes the good book."

It was over! The diplomas had been presented, and each girl, after

giving furtive touches to her hair, sly tweaks to her muslin skirts,

and caressing pats to her sash, had gone forward to receive the roll of

parchment with a bow that had been the subject of anxious thought for

weeks. Rounds of applause greeted each graduate at this thrilling

moment, and Jeremiah Cobb's behavior, when Rebecca came forward, was

the talk of Wareham and Riverboro for days. Old Mrs. Webb avowed that

he, 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 Ladd

made his way to the platform. Rebecca turned from speaking to some

strangers and met him in the aisle. "Oh, Mr. Aladdin, I am so glad you

could come! Tell me"--and she looked at him half shyly, for his

approval was dearer to her, and more difficult to win, than that of the

others--"tell me, Mr. Aladdin,--were you satisfied?"

"More than satisfied!" he said; "glad I met the child, proud I know the

girl, longing to meet the woman!"