For the long climb up Cemetery Hill, the “old soldiers” accepted the automobile. Emily joined the crowd walking in that direction, and heard herself hailed brusquely.
“Em!”
Turning, she saw Don, tall and square-shouldered. He had a poise, an air of sophistication, which always marked him out. Her welcoming smile did not betray the excitement she felt as he joined her, swinging to the outside of the walk.
He looked gloomy. She sympathized with these moods of dejection for she was subject to them, too. She fought them, but not always with success.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
He rolled a cigarette. “I certainly need this! Gosh, what a lot of bunk!”
“Bunk? Decoration Day?”
“Don’t you think it’s bunk?”
“Certainly not!” Her surprised indignation swept her into speech. “If I had gone out and gotten killed for my country I’d like to be thanked for it once a year.”
“These fellows weren’t killed.”
“Well, we’re all thinking about the ones who were!”
“Oh, are we? How many people are thinking about anything except the impression they are making, or the picnic they are headed for, or how their feet hurt?”
“I imagine that everyone gives a little thought to what the day means,” she answered slowly. It meant more to her than to most people, she realized. Those young men of the First Minnesota who had charged so bravely to their death were almost as real to her as last year’s football team.
She was saturated with her grandfather’s joy and pride in the day, and Don’s scornfulness hurt her.
“It’s so nice,” she said in abrupt appeal. “It comes in May when everything’s so pretty. And the children are so clean and excited and the old men so happy. And it’s always the same. It’s—part of growing up in America.”
“Emily,” said Don, “I’m afraid you’re a sentimentalist.” He sounded ill-humored and bored.
The blaring horn of an automobile scattered the crowd walking in the road. They looked up to see Annette waving from a Reo driven by Gladys Dunn. Scid and Jim Baxter and Nell were also in the car.
“We’ve had enough. We’re going to Heinz’s. Want to come along?” they called, stopping the car.
Emily shook her head. “I have to go to the cemetery.”
“Besides,” said Don sarcastically, “she likes all this. She’s been lecturing me, preaching my duty to flag and country.”
“I haven’t!” Emily cried in distress.
“Oh, but you have!” said Don, his deep voice scornful, and climbed into the car without even saying good-by.
“I wish you’d come along, Emily,” Annette said. But Emily shook her head. She wasn’t resentful. She was used to being left out of boy and girl jaunts. The conversation with Don still rankled, though.
“He may think I’m wrong, but I think he’s wrong. The idea of wanting to deprive the ‘old soldiers’ of this day! And it doesn’t hurt anyone to hear the Gettysburg Address.”
Clouds were sailing in a bright blue sky above the hill-top cemetery. More speeches were made, and the graves of the veterans received new flags and wreaths of flowers. Aaron Sibley’s grave received its share, but it didn’t need them. It looked loved and alive.
“Today means something to the Sibley boys, just as it does to me,” Emily thought.
She reached home ahead of her grandfather. He looked tired when the automobile left him at the gate, but he was still happy. Now he wanted to talk about the glories of the afternoon.
“How did we look marching, Emmy? Didn’t we cut a dash?”
“You certainly did. Do you know, I think you kept time better than anybody?”
“I always did,” he answered. “The Judge doesn’t know his right foot from his left.”
There were callers—with presents for her. Mrs. MacDonald, the Presbyterian minister’s wife, brought a framed copy of the young John the Baptist by Andrea Del Sarto. A neighbor from across the street brought beauty pins. There was quite a nice array on the parlor table now.
After supper Emily said, “Now Grandpa, you get to bed. It’s been a long day.”
“All right,” he answered. “But how about playing me a few tunes first?”
She knew which ones he wanted.
She went to the old piano and played and sang “A Faded Coat of Blue,” “Wrap the Flag Around Me, Boys,” and “The Vacant Chair.” When she started “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching,” her grandfather joined in, in a quavering voice.
“And Don Walker would like to take this away from them!” Emily thought, pressing hard on the pedals.
5
Commencement Day
“We hate to leave the high school
The heck we do…!”
AT THE BACK DOOR of the Opera House a wild crowd was milling around Don, Hunter and Scid, who stood with their arms spread over each other’s shoulders, bawling a parody of the Class Song to the sky.
Emily, just arrived for the last commencement rehearsal, joined in the laughter which rolled down the narrow alley. Miss Clarke, the history teacher, was pleading distractedly, “Boys and girls! Come in! You must come in!”
No one paid any attention to her. She was joined finally by Mr. Stewart—Stewie, the popular coach of debating society and football team. The seniors went inside at last, but they behaved no better.
Laughing and shouting, they roamed and tussled, clambered over the chairs set in ascending rows on the stage, got in the way of a frantic decorating committee.
“Children! Children!” Miss Clarke had stopped calling them “boys and girls” now. Clapping her hands like castanets, she got order at last. The laughter died down, but not out of their eyes. They were all breathing hard. It was only a respite.
Waiting in line on the stage, the boys began to throw their caps, neckties and notebooks into the auditorium. Scid even took off his shoes and threw them. Gladys Dunn dashed down and picked them up and hurled them into the balcony. Bedlam was let loose again.
The Class of 1912 was expressing its excitement, its relaxation, its joy and sorrow and its secret fear in a burst of juvenile hilarity.
Emily leaned against a wall, weak from laughter.
“I hope we’re not going to rehearse our orations in all this,” she remarked to Mabel who stood next in line.
“We’re not. We just have to be assigned our seats, and practise going down front like we’ll do tonight when we get our diplomas.”
This was achieved at last. Dismissed, the seniors lingered, exchanging their class pictures. Emily exchanged with Annette, of course, and with dimpled, soft-eyed Nell, and big exuberant Gladys, and Ellen and Mabel. She exchanged with Hunter and Fred and Scid. To her great pleasure, Stewie asked her for a picture. He was leaving Deep Valley—to teach in Chicago.
“And I want to take along autographed pictures of my star debating team. I never expect to have such a team again. Here, Don!” he called. “Your picture!”
“A pleasure, sir!” said Don, saluting. Eyes and teeth shining, he came and stood beside Emily. “How shall I sign it? Walker or Demosthenes?” He wrote with a flourish.
When Stewie had moved on, Don smiled at Emily. “Aren’t you going to ask me for a picture? Don’t tell me you don’t want one!”
As usual, when he teased her, she was at a loss for a reply. He poised his pen above another photograph.
“To the patriot, Emily Webster,” he read aloud as he wrote. Handing it to her, he strolled away without even asking for her picture in return.
Back at home Emily found her grandfather’s easy chair empty. Adding her booty of photographs to the presents on the center table, she went out of doors, calling him. It was pleasant outside with birds everywhere and white, pink and lavender bushes in bloom. But her grandfather wasn’t there, and Emily began to feel a little apprehensive. He seldom went out, and he had been tired this morning.
“Probab
ly he went over to Judge Hodges’,” she thought, but as she set the table and creamed chicken for dinner, she kept glancing out the window. Presently, to her great relief, she saw him with the Judge coming up the walk.
She ran out to meet him. “Grandpa! Where have you been?”
He and the Judge smiled slyly. “We’ve been downtown.”
“Downtown? But why? You shouldn’t get tired today, you know. It’s my graduation tonight.”
“Oh, is it? I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Can’t you remember when your own granddaughter graduates?” asked Judge Hodges. He dug his elbow mockingly into his friend’s ribs. “Didn’t you even remember to buy her a present?”
Grandpa Webster pulled a long face. “Everyone has given her a present but me.”
“But you’re giving me my flowers, Grandpa.” Emily was troubled. “They’ll be delivered any time now. Don’t you remember? Pink roses.”
“Pink roses, eh?” he said, and his hand went to his pocket. Beaming, he brought out a small package and handed it to her while Judge Hodges stroked his beard with satisfaction.
“Grandpa!” cried Emily. “What under the sun is this?”
“It’s a present.”
“But you…I…why…I didn’t expect…” She was really confused now, and the two old men roared with laughter.
Her grandfather’s face shone like the sun. He nudged Judge Hodges and they both leaned forward as she took off the tissue paper and lifted the cover from a small round box.
“Grandpa!” Her voice was childishly high and excited. Shining from the white satin lining of the box was a round gold watch attached to a dainty bracelet. A watch bracelet! They were the very newest thing. And Emily loved new things.
“Grandpa!” she breathed, unbelieving.
“Do you like it?”
“Oh, yes!” She pushed it over her hand to that point halfway up the arm where it was the custom to wear watch bracelets. “But, Grandpa! I didn’t know…” she paused.
“You didn’t know I knew graduation was a time for presents? Well, I graduated once myself. Got my first watch then. Your grandmother got that big cameo brooch up in the jewel box. And do you know what your mother got?”
“No,” said Emily. She was amazed that her grandfather knew.
“She got a locket on a chain. She told me so. That’s in the jewel box, too.”
“She’s wearing it in the picture I have on my bureau!” Emily cried. She felt tears stinging her eyes. After a moment she kissed her grandfather on the cheek. He looked proudly at Judge Hodges.
“I helped pick it out,” hinted the Judge, and Emily kissed him, too.
The watch shed its glory over the gifts assembled on the center table. Emily looked at it at intervals during the long afternoon, while her grandfather napped and she practised her oration for a final time, pressed her dress, and watched for the Windmiller delivery boy. He came, and the pink roses were put into the ice box.
After supper she went up to her bedroom to bathe and dress. In embroidered corset cover and petticoat, she brushed out her curly hair. On an impulse she twisted it into a psyche knot and picked up a hand mirror to get the effect. It was becoming, for the modeling of her head was good. But after a moment she took it down.
“I’ve gone through high school with my hair in a braid, and I’ll graduate that way,” she decided.
When her hair was turned up with a ribbon as usual and she was dressed in the snowy white lawn, she unlocked the jewel box. The black japanned box, gilded in a swirling pattern and flecked with mother-of-pearl, held her mother’s and grandmother’s jewelry. Some of it was valuable but Emily had always been indifferent to it. She was surfeited with old-fashioned things.
Now, however, she pulled out the locket which had been her mother’s, an oval of chased gold, in a pattern of leaves and flowers, set with garnets. Emily picked up the photograph of her mother and studied it. Sure enough, she was wearing this very locket!
“Probably this was her graduation picture,” Emily thought. For the first time the photograph seemed to take on reality. Her mother had been eighteen once, and she had graduated. She had known this strange feeling that something was ending which you had never really expected to end. She had felt excited and relieved, happy and afraid, as Emily and the others had felt this afternoon.
Emily opened the locket, but whatever pictures it had once contained had been removed. There was only a wisp of dark hair, probably her father’s. Slowly she hung the chain around her neck and the locket dropped warmly to her breast.
Downstairs, she took her roses from the ice box and turned before her grandfather. She stood very straight, which added several glorifying inches to her height.
“How do I look?”
“You look like a real young lady. You look nice.”
“Grandpa,” she said suddenly. “Do I look like my mother?”
“It always seems to me you favor your grandmother,” he answered. “And your grandmother used to say you favored me.” He added thoughtfully after a moment, “Sometimes, though, you remind me of your mother. It’s when you laugh. She was very full of fun.”
“She was full of fun?” Emily repeated, startled.
“She certainly was. Will you tie this tie for me, Emmy?”
“Yes. And I want to brush your suit.”
Uncle Chester called for them late. He had already delivered Annette and the others, he said. He helped Emily into her new opera coat, of satin-smooth tan broadcloth. She threw chiffon over her head and picked up her roses and slipper bag.
They left her at the back door of the Opera House.
“I’ll be looking for you,” Emily said to her grandfather. Although he wasn’t used to being up so late, he was smiling and fresh.
The decorating committee had done its work well. And decorum had descended on the class. When the curtain rose, the graduates were seated on the stage against a resplendent back-drop of red, white and blue bunting. Suspended above them—in red, white and blue, also—were the numerals 1912. Ministers and priests of the city, members of the school board and their wives were seated in the boxes. Relatives and friends made an enthusiastic audience.
After the invocation came the stirring “Soldiers’ Chorus” from Faust.
“Glory and love to the men of old,
Their sons may copy their virtue bold,
Courage in heart and a sword in hand…”
There were no swords present, but courage was being summoned desperately by almost all those scheduled to take part in the program. After a shakily given oration, a tremulous quartette sang “The Lost Chord.” Another oration was recited with agonized speed, and Gladys Dunn—subdued, for once—played “Love’s Awakening” by Moszkowski on the piano.
Don, who preceded Emily, wasn’t nervous. Like herself, he enjoyed command of a stage. In his dark blue suit, with a carnation in his buttonhole, he looked cool and superior; his deep voice rang out impressively.
His subject was “The Need of an Artistic Life in America,” and he drew scathing comparisons between the old world and the new. He decried America’s dearth of art galleries, museums and symphony orchestras. He scoffed at American architecture and railed especially at middle-western homes, calling them crude and in poor taste. Emily shrank from the memory of her crowded little parlor.
When her turn came she stood up very straight as she always did on the debating platform.
“A woman has awakened the social conscience of this generation,” she began in her clear voice. And she told how that conscience had been awakened in Jane Addams during a chance visit to London’s east side to watch a Saturday night sale of decaying fruits and vegetables to the poor.
She described the years of travel and thought which led up to Hull House. She outlined Jane Addams’ reasons for joining a church: the need to put dependence on some power outside herself, the longing for fellowship, and a growing devotion to the ideals of democracy.
“‘When in al
l history,’” asked Emily, quoting her subject, “‘had these ideals been so thrillingly expressed as when the faith of the fisherman and the slave had been boldly opposed to the accepted moral belief that the well-being of a privileged few might justly be built upon the ignorance and sacrifice of the many?’”
Then she discussed Hull House, describing its manifold activities—its kindergartens, its clubs for young and old, and its work for the foreign born.
Down in the parquet her grandfather was looking pleased but sleepy beside Uncle Chester and Aunt Sophie. The LaDous and other relatives filled the row. Her oration was good; there was abundant applause at the end. Emily smiled her slow shy smile.
The president of the school board delivered the address of the evening. Mr. Luther Whitlock was a banker, a short, pompous man with mutton-chop whiskers which he stroked, first to the right side and then to the left, with a commanding finger.
His talk to the graduates seemed to indicate that he would measure their success chiefly in terms of money. Emily didn’t care much for him or his speech. But when it was ended he took his place behind a table piled with beribboned parchment cylinders. He called the names of the graduates, and each one crossed the stage to wild applause.
Emily watched them go, one by one. They were going out of her life. They were going out of one another’s lives. She herself crossed the stage. It was happening, this climactic event which had always seemed so impossibly remote.
The chorus sang Kipling’s “Recessional,” and it was over.
At once the class scattered in all directions, and the audience swarmed to the stage. Graduates were surrounded with friends offering congratulations, and with teachers saying good-by. Emily shook hand after hand, feeling happy and tearful.
Groups began to dissolve and disappear. A crowd was going to Annette’s, she gathered. Not a real party, or she would have been invited. It was just as well she wasn’t, she thought, for her grandfather now looked tired and bewildered. She was glad when Uncle Chester took them home.
Emily of Deep Valley Page 5
