Rosalie took her aside to tell it: “There was a bride, ready, even to her veil, and he, the bridegroom, never came—he was dead.”
Rosalie called this a Romantic Situation. Emily admitted it, feeling, however, that it was more, though she could not tell Rosalie that. It—it was like the poetry in the book, only poetry would not have left it there!
“O mither, mither mak my bed
O mak it saft and narrow;
Since my love died for me to-day,
Ise die for him to-morrowe.”
“It’s about a teacher right here in the High School,” Rosalie went on to tell.
Then it was true. “Which one?” asked Emily.
But that Rosalie did not know.
It was like poetry. But then life was all turning to poetry now. One climbed the stairs to the mansard now with winged feet, for Rhetoric is concerned with metaphor and simile, and Rhetoric treats of rhyme. There is a sudden meaning in Learning since it leads to a desired end.
Poetry is everywhere around. The prose light of common day is breaking into prismatic rays. Into the dusty highway of Ancient History all at once sweeps the pageantry of Mythology. Philemon bends above old Baucis at the High School gate, though hitherto they have been sycamores. Olympus is just beyond the clouds. The Elysian Fields lie only the surrender of the will away, if one but droops, with absent eye, head propped on hand, and dreams——
But Emily, all at once, is conscious that Miss Beaton’s eyes are on her, at which she moves suddenly and looks up. But this mild-eyed teacher with the sweet, strong smile is but gazing absently down on her the while she talks.
Emily likes Miss Beaton, the teacher of History. Her skirts trail softly and her hair is ruddy where it is not brown; she forgets, and when she rises her handkerchief is always fluttering to the floor. Emily loves to be the one to jump and pick it up. Miss Beaton’s handkerchiefs are fine and faintly sweet and softly crumpled, and Emily loves the smile when Miss Beaton’s absent gaze comes back and finds her waiting.