“SOMETIMES YOUR SOUL SHOWS”
It was mid-June before the night of Commencement arrived. The Methodist
Church, being the largest suitable edifice of the town, was used for the
imposing occasion. The lower grades of the high school and friends of
the graduates, as well as the alumni of preceding years, had all
combined in decorating the building for the Commencement exercises. The
big swinging chandeliers hanging from the ceiling were wreathed in
greenery accentuated with flowers. The edge of the pulpit platform was
outlined with gaily blooming plants. The space intervening between that
and the altar railing was filled with showy plants in tubs and buckets,
one end finishing with a white oleander in a mass of snowy bloom, the
other exactly like it except that the flowers were peach-blow pink. The
pulpit had been removed. Back of the chairs for the graduating class
there was a second row for the principal, the teachers of the schools,
the School Board, and several ministers, and lining the wall, a small
forest of gay leaves and bright flowers. Every window was filled with
the lovely roses of June, with flowering almond, japonica, iris, and gay
streamers of striped grass.
It was the custom to hold the graduating exercises in the church, then
to repair to Newberry’s Hotel for a supper which was the last word in
culinary effort on the part of the owners, helped out by table
decorations provided by the alumni and the lower classes of the high
school. The long tables for the graduates and their parents, for the
singers and speakers, were lovely. They were laid with linen that was
truly snowy, with silver provided by several of the wealthiest families
of the town, with china that came from the same cabinets as the silver;
and these tables were made beautiful beyond words with great bowls of
yellow, white, and purple wild violets, starry campion, anemones,
maidenhair fern, and every exquisite wilding that knew June in the
Central States.
After the banquet, the class and its guests took up the line of march
across the street and in the upstairs of the big building known as
Franklin’s Opera House, they danced until morning. Commencement was the
one great social affair known to Ashwater. Nothing else in the history
of the town called forth such an audience. It was the one occasion upon
which the church people forgot that the lure of the dance would imperil
the souls of their young. They went and drank lemonade and fanned
themselves as they sat in double rows of chairs lining the walls, many
of them joining the dance to the mellow notes of a harp brought all the
way from Indianapolis.
Never was a gathering more cosmopolitan. The invited guests were
relatives and friends of the graduates. So it happened that the august
person of Martin Moreland, the banker, might come in very close contact
with that of Jimmy Price, general handy-man, in such case as to-night
when one of Jimmy’s lean daughters was a graduate. For once in his life
Jimmy might don his wedding suit, accompanied by any remnants of dignity
that forty years of playing the clown had left in his mental cosmos, and
making an effort to be grave and correct, he might have this one peep at
what the truly great of his town did when they entertained themselves.
June in the Central States is a hot month; mid-June the crucial time.
The thermometer is likely, at that period, to hover persistently at
anywhere from ninety-five to a hundred and ten. The dew of night closely
following such a degree of heat was sure to breed a moist stickiness
that washed the pink powder from the noses of the august, and in slow
streams of discouragement, saw to it that artificially waved hair
degenerated into little winding rivers of despair. It was very likely to
emphasize mothy complexions and deeply cut wrinkles by washing into
their cruel lines white or vivid pink powder, leaving high promontories
lacking decoration in ghastly contrast. To appear cool and fresh and
charming upon such a night, was the height of triumph. It was the thing
that few people even remotely hoped to do. The men frankly mopped their
streaming faces and the backs of their necks. They tried to look
cheerful if they found that their high linen collars were even half way
upstanding; mostly these were protected by a tucked-in handkerchief
until the doors were reached. They were often seen wiping their hands
and their wrists with these same moist handkerchiefs, and the ladies, in
their billowing skirts containing yards upon yards of heavy goods, in
their tightly fitting sleeves and waists, religiously wearing headgear,
which they would have thought it absolutely indecent to remove, dabbled
frantically at their complexions, the corners of their mouths sagged in
despair as they felt the hair slowly drooping over their foreheads,
while they fanned frantically in an effort to keep sufficiently cool to
save their silk dresses.
It was the custom for the omnibus from Newberry’s Hotel to drive to the
residences gathering up the graduates and depositing them at the side
door leading into the prayer-meeting room of the church, slightly before
the time the organist began to play the entrance march.
Usually the four walls of the church heard nothing gayer than “Onward
Christian Soldiers” or “Marching to Zion,” but it was conceded to the
youth of the city that on Commencement night the organist might tackle
what was spoken of, in rather awed tones, as “sheet music.” It was
customary to hire, for these occasions, a graduate from the Fort Wayne
Conservatory to sing several solos. This marked a high light in the
exercises. These graduates from a musical school might do the daring
thing of coming clothed in billowing silks of peach-blow pink. In one
instance, the crowd had lost its breath over such a dress glaringly
trimmed in blood-red. This, in conjunction with a bared breast and arms,
a becurled head as yellow as the cowslips down by the Ashwater river,
had been almost too much for the morality of the audience. The young
lady had saved the situation by a sobbingly pathetic rendition of “When
the Flowing Tide Comes In.” When she had her audience audibly weeping
over the “ships that came in clouds like flocks of evil birds,” and then
led them on to the salt-saturated ending of “remembering Donald’s
words,” the weeping crowd so thoroughly enjoyed the performance that
they forgave what they considered the extreme bad taste of the
blood-decorated pink dress.
In gathering the graduates, it might have been instinct on the part of
the driver, and it might have been suggestion on the part of authority,
at any rate, it was customary to bring in the poor and the unimportant
and give them this one ride of their lives in state, usually down Hill
Street, past the bank, the main business buildings, and the Court House,
ending at the side steps of the Methodist Church. After all the poor and
the unimportant had been collected, then by degrees came the socially
and financially prominent, it being generally conceded that the boy or
girl having the salutatory came next to last, while the valedictorian
held the place of honour.
In to-night’s exercises every former custom had been religiously kept
and religiously exaggerated to the last possible degree. In the annals
of the town, such a distinguished class never before had been graduated.
This class embodied the son of the banker, the handsome, carefree boy
concerning whom every one prophesied evil, whose escapades were laughed
at and glossed over as they would have been in the case of no other boy
in the community. Men who should have known better, rather evinced pride
when Junior Moreland stopped to say a few words to them. It was the
common talk of the town that the Senior Moreland lay awake nights
thinking up ways to indulge, to pamper, his only son. The influence of
Junior’s good looks and his brazen assurance was so pronounced that the
whole town combined in helping to spoil him. Where he should have had a
reprimand, where any other boy would have had it, Junior usually evoked
a laugh. So he had grown to feel that he was a law unto himself; that he
might do things which the other boys might not; that he was a natural
leader upon any occasion on which he chose to lead.
This night’s class embraced Edith Williams, grown thus far to womanhood
with most of the ills and the discontent of her childhood clinging to
her. It was very probable that Edith’s first conscious thought was that
she had been defrauded. Why didn’t God make her with a strong, beautiful
body? Why didn’t He give her voice the power of song, her fingers
facility for the harp or the piano that she could buy if she chose? Why
did He take both her parents and leave her to live with an uncle whom
she never could endure, and with an aunt, sycophant to such a degree,
that the child shrewdly suspected, from a very early age, that the
otherwise estimable lady was hoping that she would die and leave “all
that money” to her only heir, who happened to be the husband of the lady
in question. Edith had heard about “all that money” ever since she had
been born. She had come to understand that it could buy her the most
expensive clothing worn in the town. It could buy her entrance into any
gaiety taking place in any home. It could buy the most expensive house
in Ashwater and any furnishings her taste might dictate. It could, in
fact, buy everything to which she had been accustomed all her life, but
it could not buy her the two things which she craved almost above life
itself—beauty and happiness. No one could convince her that at least a
moderate degree of beauty lay within her own power. She had only
contempt for a woman like Elizabeth Spellman, who tried to tell her that
keeping irregular hours, practically living on cake and candy, that the
wearing of stays which reduced her slender proportions to pipe-stem
slenderness, were responsible for the things in life against which Edith
most strongly rebelled. In vain Mrs. Spellman tried to point out that
regular sleep, regular bathing, a diet consisting largely of fruits and
vegetables, freedom of the body, and regular exercise, were responsible
for Mahala’s bright eyes, her rounded figure, her hard, smooth flesh.
These things Edith coveted to an unholy degree, but not sufficiently to
change one wrong habit or to shake off her natural indolence in order to
attain them. Edith’s happiest moment was, in all probability, the one in
which, dressed in the extreme of the prevailing fashion, she lay upon a
sofa with a box of rich candy and wickedly read a French novel that she
was not supposed to have and that no one ever knew precisely where she
secured.
Commencement time marked a thrilling epoch in Edith’s life. A few days
after the great event, she would attain the age at which her dying
father had specified that she should come into full and uncontrolled
possession of his large fortune. As the time approached, Edith spent
hours dreaming of trips to New York and Chicago, of the beautiful
clothing that she would purchase, and how these advantages would
certainly add to her attractiveness to such a degree that finally she
would succeed in completely overshadowing Mahala. She was so certain
that this would be the case, that she had decided to make the first step
the night of graduation. She had horrified both her uncle and her aunt
by the extravagance of her outfit. She had persisted in making her own
selections.
Commencement night found her in a nervous state bordering on a sick
headache. She had been absent from school a great deal. She never had
known what her lessons were about when they concerned mathematics,
astronomy, or any difficult branch requiring real concentration and
study. Her brain was almost wholly untrained; it kept flying off at
queer tangents. With the help of her uncle and her aunt she had
succeeded in getting together a creditable essay which she was supposed
to read from memory. She had gotten through it on several occasions with
slight promptings, but in the final class rehearsal, she had broken down
completely and been forced to take refuge in the written pages held by
the professor. After that, she had really studied, but it had been too
late. She never had made public appearances as had many of the members
of her class because she hated the mental work required to commit poems
or orations to memory. She was too indolent really to work at anything
because she never had been taught that in work alone lies the greatest
panacea for discontent the world ever has known.
It was a general supposition in Ashwater that Commencement night should
be the happiest period of a girl’s life. To many of them it was a happy
period. There was joy of a substantial kind in the honest breast of
little Susanna, who had been helped in a surreptitious way with her
lessons and her clothing all through her school course by Mahala, and
who, in turn, had worshipped Mahala dumbly and had returned all the help
she could give upon knotty problems when her brain had begun to develop
to a commanding degree. Many of the boys and girls who were to graduate
that night had worked hard and conscientiously. They were proud of the
new clothes they were wearing; eager to begin the life they had planned
for themselves.
This class included the daughter of the dry-goods merchant. No one was
happier than Mahala. She had worked hard all her school life. She had
been perfectly willing to receive the same help from others that she was
accustomed to give when she was more fortunate in mastering a difficult
problem or a perplexing proposition in any of her studies. Her facility
in music and the superficial part of her education, her quickness in
picking up hints and indirections, the clever way in which she made her
recitations, made her vastly popular with all of her teachers to whom
she always showed a polite deference never equalled by any of the other
pupils.
The valedictory was hers because she had earned it, and for several
other reasons. Her mother had kept her eye upon that especial honour for
her only child from the day of her birth. She had not arisen from the
sheets of accouchement without having decided upon a great many things
concerning the career of her little daughter, and one of the essential
things had been the valedictory upon the night of her graduation. She
and Mahala engaged in a number of long talks concerning this momentous
occasion, and in the seclusion of their room, she and Mahlon discussed
these things interminably. They were both agreed that Mahala must have
the valedictory, quite agreed that she must honestly earn it. This the
girl felt she had done. They were agreed that she must be exquisitely
clothed. This was their part. They were unanimous as to a compelling
subject; also she must handle it in an interesting manner; she must
deliver her valedictory without a flaw in composition, delivery, or
deportment.
Long before the remainder of the class had even thought of subjects, in
the secret conclaves of her family, Mahala’s subject had been decided
upon, outlined, and developed. Many things she had wanted to say had
been ruled out for reasons paramount in the minds of Elizabeth and
Mahlon. Once or twice a week, she had been put through her paces either
by her father or her mother, occasionally before both. The thing had
become so habitual with Mahala that she recited her valedictory every
night before she went to sleep and snatches of it were in her mind many
times during the day. In all this intensive study, she had dwelt upon
pronunciations, upon phrasing, and inflection until she really had an
extremely praiseworthy offering at the tip of her tongue, one which
either Elizabeth or Mahlon could have delivered equally as well. All her
life she had been making her bow and speaking her piece at mite
societies and tea meetings, at Sunday School festivals, last days of
school, and Grand Army celebrations.
To Mahala, Commencement night was not a thing of cold shivers, shaking
knees, and throbbing heart. She had been trained from birth and was an
adept at public appearances. She could recall no occasion in her life
when she had come in contact with any of the other boys and girls in
public in which she had not easily made the most attractive figure and
carried off the honours.
At the noon hour, her father had said to her: “I’m going to stop at the
Newberry House and tell the busman he needn’t come for you to-night. I
don’t propose that you shall risk soiling your shoes and your dress by
climbing into that dirty omnibus, even though there is a supposition
that it is to be cleaned after the last load of drummers is taken to the
train.”
Mahala hesitated a second, then she looked at her father with
speculative eyes. “Don’t you think, Papa,” she said, “that it would be
better for me to go with the others?”
There were nerve strain and asperity in Elizabeth Spellman’s voice that
Mahala recognized. She gave Mahlon no chance.
“Mahala,” she said, “when Papa tells you that he’s going to do a thing
that he has studied out and has decided will be the best thing for you,
the proper answer for you to make is: ‘Yes, Papa. Thank you very much
for your loving consideration.’”
“I was only thinking,” said Mahala, “that the other boys and girls might
resent it; that it might make them feel that they were unfortunate not
to have a father who had made such a success of life that he could do
for them the lovely things that Papa daily does for me.”
Mahala looked at her father to see what effect this would have, and her
heart took one surging leap and then stopped for an instant and stood
still, frightened by the whiteness of Mahlon Spellman’s face. She
noticed his grip upon the fork he was handling and that his hand was
shaking so that he put back upon his plate the food he was intending to
lift to his lips. For one long instant Mahala surveyed him and a little
bit of the light went out of her eyes, the keenest edge of the colour
washing in her cheeks faded. She saw the shaking hand, and in her heart
she said: “Either Papa is dreadfully troubled, or he’s getting old; and
come to think of it, he is nearly twenty years older than Mama. He’s
been a darling papa, so I’ve got to begin taking extra good care of
him.” Her mind reverted to the variety of care that always had been
taken of her, and while she rebelled against a great deal of it, even as
she was now rebelling against this distinction to be made between her
and her classmates, she was placed where all her life she had been
placed, in such a position that she would look heartless and ungracious
to refuse.
“I am going,” said Elizabeth Spellman, “to spread a sheet all over the
back seat of the surrey and on the floor. Jemima has wiped the seats
very carefully and the steps, and swept the carpet until there isn’t a
particle of dust. You cannot crowd into that omnibus without crushing
your skirts. I think we can lift them in such a manner when you enter
the surrey, that by occupying the back seat alone, you won’t need to sit
upon them at all. It will enable you to head the procession down the
church aisle with your frock as fresh and immaculate as when it is
lifted from the form to be put upon you.”
“Very well, Mama,” said Mahala with a little sigh. “It’s awfully good of
you and Papa to take so much trouble and I do appreciate it, but I
cannot help thinking it would be better——”
“There, there, Mahala!” said Mrs. Spellman.
A queer, ugly red with which Mahala was very familiar crept into her
mother’s cheeks. So nothing more was said on the subject until that
night in the sweltering heat when the Newberry House omnibus had pounded
up and down and across Ashwater, picking up a red-faced boy here, a
perspiring girl there, pausing in state before the humble door of
Susanna and shortly thereafter before the gate of the banker.
The surrey was waiting to take Mr. and Mrs. Moreland to the church.
Junior’s mother came on the veranda with him and stood looking him over.
Her face was very pale and her hands were trembling.
“Do you think,” she questioned eagerly, “that you won’t get frightened,
that you can remember your speech?”
“You bet your life I can remember my speech!” said Junior boastfully.
“When did I ever forget a speech, if I wanted to make one? Never broke
down in my life. Why should I now? I’m going to try the old bank a
little and if I don’t like it, I’m going to be a lawyer. I think it
would be a lot of fun to be a lawyer, and you bet a lawyer doesn’t
forget a speech. You needn’t sit and shake and worry, or Father either.
Don’t have cold feet and hot sweats.”
The driver of the omnibus halooed and called to Junior to hurry, that he
was two minutes late. In order to show his authority and his position in
the village, Junior deliberately stepped inside the door. He could not
think of a thing on earth to use as an excuse for having done so. His
handkerchief was in his pocket, the notes for his speech he had placed
himself in order that he might refresh his memory if he felt a bit
rattled as his turn came to speak. He had no need to look in the mirror
to see that he was as handsome as a boy well could be. His mother
hurried after him.
“Junior, what is it?” she cried in a panic.
“Oh, I just thought I’d wet my whistle once more,” said Junior, starting
toward the dining room. His mother hurried to bring him a drink of
water, and when he was perfectly ready, Junior kissed her, telling her
to get his father and hurry up because she should be in her place before
the march down the aisle began. Mrs. Moreland, comfortable in the
dignity of reserved seats, also took her time. She was to be separated
from her lord who sat upon the platform as President of the School
Board.
She left Mr. Moreland at the side door opening into the small room where
the official board of the church transacted its business. He was the
last one of the officials to arrive. His fellow townsmen and neighbours
amused Martin Moreland that night. They stood so straight, their faces
were so grave, they were gasping in the heat, they felt over their hair
and held their heads at an angle calculated best to allow the
perspiration to run down their necks without touching their stiffly
starched high collars.
In casting his eyes over the gathering, he noted with satisfaction the
absence of his old enemy, Mahlon Spellman. Not that Mahlon knew that he
was the enemy of the banker. He did not. He thought that Martin thought
that they were friends. There was no intuition which told him that
Martin Moreland hated his precision of language, hated his taste in
dressing, hated his poise and self-possession, hated to loathing scorn
his fidelity to the paths of virtue, cordially hated any appearance in
public that he ever had made. It certainly was unfortunate for Mahlon
that only the spring preceding Mahala’s graduation his period on the
School Board had elapsed and a new man had taken his place.
As Mahlon made his way down the church aisle with Elizabeth on his arm,
he was probably the only man in the room who was not perspiring. A sort
of clammy indifference seemed to have settled upon him. It was purely
from force of habit that he ran his fingers over his hair, felt of his
tie, and went through the old familiar gestures of flecking his sleeve
and straightening his vest as he stepped into the light of the
chandeliers and marched to the strains of the organ down to their
reservations.
The unconscious Elizabeth was in the height of her glory. She had waited
for this, she had prayed for this; only God knew how she had worked for
it. She had just accomplished the delivery of her offspring at the side
door of the church without a fleck of dust having touched her shoes of
white satin, without a fold or crease disfiguring the billowing skirts
of her frock. She had done her share perfectly. Never a fear crossed her
mind that Mahala would fail. When had Mahala ever failed? Why _should_
she?
As Mahala stood a second to shake out her skirts after stepping down,
her mother had deliberately gone to the door and looked in upon the
assembled graduates. She had eyes for only one figure. She wanted to see
Edith Williams. Standing in the centre of the room, Edith had given her
a distinct shock.
All day the girl had been nervous, frantically trying to remember her
speech. In the humid heat of the evening she had gotten herself into a
closely fitting dress of heavy white velvet. It was a dress that a queen
might have worn upon a state occasion. Pearl-white like the shell of an
oyster, very plain both as to waist and skirt—a dress that trusted to
the richness of its material to make up for any lack of the elaborate
trimmings of the day. As Edith had stood before her mirror giving the
finishing touches to her toilet she had seen above the tightly embracing
waist her face flushed with the strain of fear that she might forget her
speech, her figure tense with the nerve strain of her unaccustomed
public appearance. That minute she was wildly envying even Susanna who
could have been called upon and recited any one of a hundred poems from
the readers that had been used in the school course or supplementary
works on elocution. The doubt and uncertainty in her mind had given to
the girl a flashing vividness she never before had possessed.
Lifting her skirts around her, she had entered the omnibus and glanced
at its occupants. She had said nothing until the driver turned the
corner and started in the direction of the church. Involuntarily she
threw up her hand, crying: “Stop him! He has forgotten Mahala!”
Instantly, Junior Moreland arose in his place, and catching a swaying
strap above his head, leaned to the opening beside the driver and spoke
to him roughly, crying: “Here you! You’ve forgotten Mahala Spellman!”
Without stopping, the driver cracked his whip over his team and plunged
ahead. There was rather a dazed look on Junior’s face as he lurched back
and dropped into his seat. Edith Williams leaned forward and with wide
eyes looked at Junior.
“What did he say?” she cried.
“‘Father’s fetching her,’” answered Junior tartly, and it happened that
he accompanied the information by a look at Edith. Unquestionably he saw
the lunge of her angered heart. He saw the red blood surge up to her
lips and paint her cheeks. He saw the black malice that stirred in the
depths of her eyes. He caught the smothered exclamation, a shocking
exclamation, that arose to her lips, and he knew, and every member of
the class knew, that the bitter little “Damn!” which sprang past the
lips of Edith Williams was unadulterated, forceful invective.
She was outdone in the first round. Mahala would not ride to the church
with the remainder of the class. Why was she in that omnibus among the
sons and daughters of blacksmiths, and cobblers, and lawn cleaners? Why
had she not had the sense to think of having her uncle take her in their
beautiful surrey? Why was she always letting Mahala Spellman get ahead
of her? There rushed through her heart the conviction that when Mahala
stepped through the door, in some way she would have managed, probably
with half the money Edith had spent, to outdo her costume.
The velvet of her dress, rose-petal soft, shut her in like the walls of
a furnace. The heat and anger in her eyes made her what she never before
in her life had been—arrestingly beautiful. She bit her dry lips and
clenched her gloved hands. What matter that she had bought herself what
she felt would be said to be the handsomest basket of flowers that would
be carried to the stage that night, with the imaginary name of an
imaginary lover attached by her own hands to the handle? What matter
that she had coached both her uncle and her aunt concerning the handsome
offerings that they were to send up to her? In some way, Mahala would
see to it that she would have finer. For one thing it was certain, after
the expense of the piano lamp of four years ago, that Junior would stop
at nothing. No doubt the basket he would send Mahala would far surpass
hers.
When the omnibus stopped at the church door, with his usual lithe
smoothness of movement, Junior was on his feet and out of it first.
Instead of marching straight into the church in the lead, as all of them
expected him to do, he had surprised them by turning, and with one
white-gloved hand upon the door, he had looked into the eyes of Edith
Williams. Instantly she arose, gathering her skirts around her, and made
her way to the door. She laid her hand in Junior’s outstretched one; she
encountered the look in his eyes in a state of dumb bewilderment. She
came carefully down the three steps leading from the eminence of the
omnibus. Her ears heard the sweetest music this world ever had
vouchsafed to them: “I say, Edith, you are a riproaring beauty to-night!
Keep your head up, and show folks how it’s done!”
In that instant Edith remembered that she knew her speech. A sort of
cold self-possession washed in a big wave through her entire body. Her
head tipped to a coquettish angle and she looked into the eyes of the
boy she was passing so closely, with an alluring smile.
“Thank you, Junior,” she said in dry breathlessness. “I’m so glad you
like me.”
Then she passed him and hurried across the sidewalk into the
prayer-meeting room.
Junior stood his ground and gave his hand to the girls in turn as they
alighted from the omnibus. In his heart he was saying to himself: “Oh,
Hell! I didn’t say I ‘liked’ her. I was trying to say that she was
good-looking for the first time in her life, and maybe the last. But if
she _could_ keep that up, she’d be some punkins to look at, and that’s
the truth!”
Junior’s words had been overheard by the class behind Edith. They stood
back, carefully scrutinizing her, and realized that what he had said was
the truth.
Edith worked her way to one side of the room and from her left hand let
slide down among the folds of her dress the copy of her speech that she
was carrying. With a deft foot she kicked it under the seats, confident
that no one had observed the movement. In this confidence she retained
her poise and her pose, and it was thus that Mrs. Spellman saw her.
At that instant the voice of the organ, rolling an unaccustomed march,
came to their ears. Again involuntarily the thing that was deep in
Edith’s mind arose to her lips, “Mahala!” Mahala’s mother was standing
in the door, smiling and bowing and speaking in her gracious way to all
of the boys and girls, cautioning them to keep cool, to keep in mind the
opening phrases of their speeches and the rest must follow; then she
made way for the Superintendent, who ordered them to “Come on!” and in
mechanical obedience, Edith led the way from the room. In the darkness
of the early June evening she could see a blur of white waiting on the
sidewalk.
In the order in which they were to sit upon the platform, the class fell
into line. The sidewalk cleared of a waiting crowd of unfortunates who
had not the clothing or the invitation to enter the coveted portals, who
yet had come to press back into the darkness and watch the spectacle.
As Mahala advanced up the broad walk that led to the front steps of the
church, there came scuffling through the crowd, she could not have told
from where, a figure in white, as white as the new-born thoughts of
white that contributed to her own dress. She realized that there was a
catching and a snatching, an effort to make some one pause, and then she
saw, scurrying up the steps before her, standing in the broad light of
the open doors of the church, her bonnet lost in the crowd, Rebecca, her
white flag lifted above the path the graduating class must follow to
enter the doors. The figures of two working men in their shirt sleeves,
with rough jests on their lips and their hands outstretched, started
forward.
Mahala looked up. Her first thought was that never in all her life had
she seen a figure so appealingly beautiful. Probably no one in all that
crowd, since the day of her self-imposed appearance with sheltered face
as the bearer of the flag advocating purity, had seen Rebecca Sampson as
she really was. The years untouched by mental strain had left her the
lovely rounded face of girlhood. The deeply shadowing headpiece, always
stiffly starched and filled in with sustaining slats of pasteboard, had
kept Rebecca’s complexion that of a little child. Her hands and arms
were soft and white. Her throat, delicately rounded, was a miracle of
whiteness. The plain white dress that she wore was as mistily white as
the petals of a cherry bloom. The fringed flag that she held in Mahala’s
pathway was as white as her dress. Suddenly Mahala threw out her hands.
“Never mind!” she cried to the men. “Let her alone! I have been passing
under her flag all my life.”
She smiled on the crowds pressing forward on either side of her.
“You know,” she said, “somehow this seems fitting. I rather like the
idea of passing under Becky’s emblem of purity on Commencement night.”
She half turned and called back to the other boys and girls: “Come on!
Let’s all pass under the white flag with Becky’s blessing. Maybe it will
help us to remember our speeches.”
She raised her skirts and stepped into the full blaze of light falling
from the church doors, and like a misty veil of purity, she shimmered
and gleamed as she climbed the steps. Her head was as yellow as
sunshine, her eyes were deep wells of blue-gray, and her long, dark
lashes swept her pink cheeks, while the smile with which she went toward
Rebecca seemed to Jason, crowded tightly against the wall of the church
looking up at her, the loveliest thing that this world could possibly
have to offer. To him the gold head and the billowing skirts of gauzy
fineness made Mahala look like a gold-hearted white rose.
Immediately back of her, with her head tilted and a new light gleaming
in her eyes, came Edith Williams. There was a smile on Jason’s lips. It
was lingering from the vision of Mahala as she had bent her head and
lifted her hands to her breast for the blessing of “Crazy Becky.” But
the smile merged into an expression of aroused indignation. His thought
had been that Edith Williams looked like a lily that needed a gold
heart, but that thought quickly passed, for with uplifted hand, she
struck aside the white flag and entered the church door. The crowd
outside heard Rebecca’s shrill curse: “To the devil, you velvet-clad
jade! You have a black heart—as black as your head!”
Little Susanna, ever anxious to save any unpleasant occasion, came next,
crying to Rebecca: “My turn now. I want to go under your flag, Rebecca!”
Instantly Rebecca was all smiles again and the flag was back in place
while her lips were murmuring a blessing.
Down the line, Junior had heartily sympathized with the uplifted hand.
What mummery that a crazy woman should be allowed to stand there! She
might even come into the church and spoil the graduating exercises. He
said to the men standing nearest him: “Watch her! Don’t let her get into
the church. She’ll spoil everything. She ought to be taken to the
lock-up at a time like this.”
But as he came up the steps, Junior had not quite the courage to subject
himself to the black curse that had fallen upon Edith. With a shamefaced
grin and a muttered, “Better avoid a fight,” he ducked under the flag
and hurried into the church. Following the example of the graduating
class, the Principal, the Superintendent, the high-school teachers, and
the School Board passed under the flag to Rebecca’s intense delight. The
last man in the procession was Martin Moreland. Since he could not be
first, he had deliberately chosen to be last. He would be more
conspicuous in the outside seat than he would be between two other men.
As he came up the steps, Rebecca’s eyes fastened on him. Instantly, she
whirled the flag from over the head of the man before him and snatched
it to her breast. She folded her hands over it and held it there tight,
crying to the outraged banker as he advanced: “Woe upon you, Martin
Moreland, despoiler of white flags, despoiler of white women! The
blackest curse of the Almighty is waiting for your head!”
Martin Moreland’s outstretched arm swept her off the steps and backward
into the crowd.
“Take that crazy helion where she can’t possibly get into the building,”
he said. “I’ll hold you responsible if it happens.”
Exactly who was to be held responsible, no man knew. It was Jason who
made his way through the crowd, put a protecting arm around Rebecca, who
whispered into her ear words that would calm and soothe her, who led her
to the outskirts of the crowd and saw her safely started on her homeward
way before he slipped up the stairs and found a seat in the suffocating
balcony from which he meant to watch until he saw whether his gift
gained any attention from Mahala.
It was not until they were seated that Edith Williams had an opportunity
surreptitiously to take a full look at Mahala from behind the screen of
her swaying fan. Mahala had been ahead of her. From the sidewalk, behind
her mother’s back, she had secured a full-length look at Edith, and she
had been as distinctly shocked as had Junior. There was no gainsaying
the fact that Edith was wearing an exquisite gown, and for that night at
least she was lovely. Mahala suspected that the red lips and the pink
cheeks were painted, and there she partially misjudged. Edith was
painted, but Junior had been the artist. She decided that Edith’s dress
was probably the most expensive in the church, that it was wonderfully
lovely, but it was not appropriate for the occasion. She felt that it
was not in as good taste as was her own; but there was a pang of
disappointment, because the verdict in her favour would not be so easy,
or so unanimous, as it always had been. Many in the house that night
would think Edith quite as beautiful as she and more handsomely gowned.