It is, perhaps, just as well not to describe all that followed—the confusion, the embarrassment, the confession, the explanations, the pleas for secrecy. It is quite enough to say that William, standing with his arm around Mary in the shadow of the great boulder, led the conversation, as was entirely fitting and proper, and that Mary Christmas, in spite of earlier misgivings, the result no doubt of surprise, felt her heart warm toward him as he professed his intentions the most honorable in the world and maintained his decision to interview Father Wescott as a gentleman should, just as soon as another year of college should have added dignity and certainty to their dream. Mary Wescott, on her part, cried a little, as I believe girls did on similar occasions a quarter of a century ago, absurd as it doubtless was; and then as the lengthening shadows foretold the evening light, Mary Christmas gave her promise and her blessing. They all went back to the pushcart together, where Mary Wescott straightened the red hat and perked up the daisies. It was all in vain, however; for when Mary Christmas again started on her way, the hat lurched in such reckless abandon that Mary and William both wished the daisies had been allowed to retain their former modest expression.
That evening, as she journeyed along the cool, fragrant roads, Mary Christmas sang, not now the songs of Vartan or of the Virgin’s festival, but one of wedded love. How clearly the unfamiliar, musical words rose and fell in the still air, accompanied by the monotonous undertone of the pushcart:—
“It rained showers of gold when Artasches became a bridegroom;
It rained pearls when Satenik became a bride.”
IX
FOLKLORE AND POLITICS
THAT fall Mary and Cynthia went to college. The preparation for this event of events had been almost more overwhelming than the journey itself and those first over-crowded, uncomfortable days away from home. In extent and quality their new wardrobes were in themselves unbelievable. A half dozen times a day they experienced entirely unaccustomed thrills as they raised the lids of their new trunks and gazed upon outfits in which blue gingham and serge did not predominate. Their graduation frocks with Mary Christmas’ lace were, of course, their best dresses, to be reserved for the gayest of parties; but there was a sprigged muslin apiece for second best and—wonder of wonders!—silk gowns in brown and dark red for Sundays, with wide shoulder-collars of heavy white embroidery. Blue serge, indeed, was absent, except for their sailor suits for everyday and for the most startling innovation of all, their gymnasium suits.
Now those gymnasium suits had caused more problematical musing than all the other effects of the wardrobes combined. The college catalogue had announced them as necessities, and some forceful woman in a high position had sent explicit directions for their manufacture. And yet Father Wescott, when Cynthia and Mary turned around slowly before him, was frankly puzzled, and would, I fear, have been remonstrant had not the realization of his faith in legitimate authority prevented him. As for Mrs. Wescott, it is not too much to say that her sense of rectitude had been outraged. Indeed, upon the first trying on, she remarked with no lack of decision that she almost preferred her daughters to remain uneducated than to appear in such clothing. She became somewhat reconciled, however, when she discovered that if Cynthia and Mary remained perfectly stationary the bloomers might easily be mistaken for short and full skirts; and the girls were wise enough not to raise the objection that in all probability they could not stand still indefinitely in a gymnasium. Mrs. Wescott worried also over the local seamstress; for in spite of the tax imposed upon her ingenuity by the modeling of these extraordinary garments, she had taken occasion to express her opinion of them in no uncertain terms, and Mrs. Wescott did not feel that she could so impair her own dignity as to make a plea for secrecy.
But the passage of time had somewhat minimized even these forebodings, and the great day had come and gone, leaving Mrs. Wescott with ample time to study at close range the psychology of boyhood in the early teens, and plunging Mary and Cynthia into a sea of new events and places, new personalities and studies, which, after the first few days, allowed no room for homesickness.
They were, although they did not know it, particularly fortunate in the college life of their age. It was, in a sense, more peculiarly receptive than in these latter days. Like the hungry multitude waiting for the loaves and fishes, students “sat down” in order that they might be fed, and were miraculously supplied. In still another scriptural phrase, they “asked”; therefore, they received. And all this largely because the individual had not yet discovered himself through the aid of intelligence tests, vocational guidance, and other encouragements toward self-analysis. If Mary and Cynthia Wescott possessed complexes of various sorts, they were not made aware of the fact; and if they were temperamentally unsuited to quadratic equations, no one incited them to act upon this convenient truth. They and their associates without doubt missed much, but they escaped at least the minute dissection of their own natures, and were thus able in later years to be genially surprised upon the occasional discovery of themselves.
Vocational guidance they entirely escaped. No expert, after an interview of ten exhaustive minutes, told them for what they were best fitted. In those days young men and women did what seemed at the time the nearest and best thing to do. Mary and Cynthia, it is true, were more fortunate than most in this respect. Having known Mary Christmas, they needed no vocational adviser. Mary Wescott knew before she had been two years at college that the thing she was most interested in (that is, next to William Howe) was the study of races of people, their history, their customs, their possibilities in the light of American citizenship, and that, if she could only forget William, she wanted to work with such people in some great city. As for Cynthia, she had been sure, ever since the day when she played the penitent pilgrim in the snow, that she wanted to study great literature and some day to unlock for others the door to the majesty of its presence. She had another dream, too. Even more than she wanted to show to others the beauty and magic of words, she longed to write them herself—words that should make one feel the calm arrogance of bright noons on high, treeless plains, words that should suggest the intimacy of those same plains, silver-mantled, at midnight. And when she dreamed this dream a blue light, the color of harebells in sunshine, crept into her clear gray eyes and lingered there.