Chapter 2

It was Sunday afternoon, and she had omitted, in deference to the day, the short skirt and walking-hat of her weekday stroll. Sunk in accusing shame, her cheeks flaming under her wide, dark hat, her quick step more sweeping than she knew, her eyes on the ground, she just escaped collision with a suddenly looming masculine figure. A hasty apology, a startled glance of appeal, a quick breath that parted her lips, and she was past the stranger. But not before she had caught in his eyes a look that quickened her heart, that soothed her angry humility. The sudden sincere admiration, the involuntary tribute to her charm, was new to her, but the instinct of countless generations made it as plain and as much her prerogative as if she had been the most successful débutante. She was not, then, an object of pity, to be treasured for the sake of the old days; other men, too--the impulse outstripped thought, but she caught up with it.

“How dreadful!” she murmured, with a consciousness of undreamed depths in herself. “Of course he is the only one--the only one!” and across the water she begged his forgiveness.

But through all her agony of doubt in the days that followed, one shame was miraculously removed, one hope sang faintly beneath: she, too, had her power! A glance in the street had called her from one army of her sisters to the other, and the difference was inestimable.

Her classes stared at her with naïve admiration. The girls in the house begged for her as a chaperon to Amherst entertainments, and sulked when a report that the young hosts found her too attractive to enable strangers to distinguish readily between her and her charges rendered another selection advisable. The fact that her interest in them was fitful, sometimes making her merry and intimate, sometimes relegating them to a connection purely professional, only left her more interesting to them; and boxes of flowers, respectful solicitations to spreads, and tempting invitations to long drives through the lengthening afternoons began to elect her to an obvious popularity. Once it would have meant much to her; she marvelled now at the little shade of jealousy with which her colleagues assured her of it. How long must she wait? When would life be real again?

She seemed to herself to move in a dream that heightened and strained quicker as it neared an inevitable shock of waking--to what? Even at the best, to what? Even supposing that--she put it boldly, as if it had been another woman--she should marry the man who had asked her seven years ago, what was there in the very obvious future thus assured her that could match the hopes her heart held out? How could it be at once the golden harbor, the peaceful end of hurried, empty years, and the delicious, shifting unrest that made a tumult of her days and nights? Yet something told her that it was; something repeated insistently, “Always I will wait.”... He would keep faith, that grave, big man!

But every day, as she moved with tightened lips to the table where the mail lay spread, coloring at a foreign stamp, paling with the disappointment, her hope grew fainter. He dared not write and tell her. It was over. Violet shadows darkened her eyes; a feverish flush made her, as it grew and faded at the slightest warning, more girlish than ever.

But the young life about her seemed only to mock her own late weakened impulse. It was not the same. She was playing heavy stakes: they hardly realized the game. All but one, they irritated her. This one, since her first short call, had come and come again. No explanations, no confidences, had passed between them; their sympathy, deep-rooted, expressed itself perfectly in the ordinary conventional tone of two reserved if congenial natures. The girl did not discuss herself, the woman dared not. They talked of books, music, travel; never, as if by tacit agreement, of any of the countless possible personalities in a place so given to personal discussion.

She could not have told how she knew that the girl had come to college to please a mother whose great regret was to have missed such training, nor did she remember when her incurious friend had learned her tense determination of flight; she could have sworn that she had never spoken of it. Sometimes, so perfectly did they appear to understand each other beneath an indifferent conversation, it seemed to her that the words must be the merest symbols, and that the girl who always caught her lightest shade of meaning knew to exactness her alternate hope and fear, the rudderless tossing toward and from her taunting harbor-light.

They sat by an open window, breathing in the moist air from the fresh, upturned earth. The gardeners were working over the sprouting beds; the sun came in warm and sweet.

“Three weeks ago it was almost cold at this time,” said the girl. “In the springtime I give up going home, and love the place. But two years more--two years!”

“Do you really mind it so much?”

“I think what I mind the most is that I don't like it more,” said the girl slowly. “Mamma wanted it so. She really loved study. I don't, but if I did--I should love it more than this. This would seem so childish. And if I just wanted a good time, why, then this would seem such a lot of trouble. All the good things here seem--seem remedies!”

The older woman laughed nervously. Three weeks--three weeks and no word!

“You will be making epigrams, my dear, if you don't take care,” she said lightly. “But you're going to finish just the same? The girls like you, your work is good; you ought to stay.”

The girl flashed a look of surprise at her. It was her only hint of sympathy.

“You advise me to?” she asked quietly.

“I think it would be a pity to disappoint your mother,” with a light hand on her shoulder. “You are so young--four years is very, little. Of course you could do the work in half the time, but you admit that you are not an ardent student. If nobody came here but the girls that really needed to, we shouldn't have the reputation that we have. The girls to whom this place means the last word in learning and the last grace of social life are estimable young women, but not so pleasant to meet as you.”

Three weeks--but he had waited seven years!

“I am very childish,” said the girl. “Of course I will stay. And some of it I like very much. It's only that mamma doesn't understand. She overestimates it so. Somehow, the more complete it is, the more like everything else, the more you have to find fault with on all sides. I'd rather have come when mamma was a girl.”

“I see. I have thought that, too.”

Ah, fool, give up your senseless hope! You had your chance--you lost it. Fate cannot stop and wait while you grow wise.

“When that shadow covers the hill, I will give it up forever. Then I will write to Henry's wife and ask her to let me come and help take care of the children. She will like it, and I can get tutoring if I want it. I will make the children love me, and there will be a place where I shall be wanted and can help,” she thought.

The shadow slipped lower. The fresh turf steeped in the last rays, the birds sang, the warming earth seemed to have touched the very core of spring. Her hopes had answered the eager years, but her miracle was too wonderful to be.

A light knock at the door, and a maid came toward her, tray in hand. She lifted the card carelessly--her heart dropped a moment and beat in hard, slow throbs. Her eyes filled with tears; her cheeks were hot and brilliant.

“I will be there in a moment.” How deep her voice sounded!

The girl slipped by her.

“I was going anyway,” she said softly. “Good-by! Don't touch your hair--it's just right.”

She did not wait for an answer, but went out. As she passed by the little reception-room a tall, eager man made toward her with outstretched hands. Her voice trembled as she laughed.

“No, no--I'm not the one,” she murmured, “but she--she's coming!”