THE GATES OPEN WIDE
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 sex _camaraderie_ of 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--_provided_ you 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.