Читать книгу Miss Bishop - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 7

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By Ella’s third year a teachers’ course and a music course were launched—and she straightway began studying didactics. To clerk in a store, do housework, or teach school were the only three avenues open for any girl, and her mind’s selection was immediate. To teach—well, at least until her Lochinvar came riding by, she admitted to that innermost recess of her heart where dwelt her real self. To have a home of her own—children—nothing could ever take the place of that. But she could not look at the lovely picture hanging there so sacredly in her heart and place therein any young man she knew now. The only one who had ever offered himself was Sam Peters—and Sam was unthinkable.

The college boys were all good young chaps. She admired their energy and their sincerity, but to her fastidious mind there was no one outstanding among them—George Schroeder with his big head of rough hair, his foreign accent and his constant praise of anything Germanic—little Albert Fonda with his obsession for the study of the moon and the stars—or any of the others.

So the last two years were spent in a frame of mind as fancy-free as were the first two. Those last ones saw the faculty enlarged by the additional courses—Professor Cunningham for the didactics—Miss Susie McAlister for the music—the former friendly and humorous—the latter so devoted to the goddess Euterpe that she lived in a world apart, breathed the atmosphere of the upper strata.

Newcomers entered the young college, knowledge was disseminated, minds expanded, the Minerva Society waxed strong in numbers and oratory, the prairie grass was cut, the elms and maples looked superciliously down on their pickle-kegs from a height of five feet. Growth was in the air.

One might ride in state now to the very door of Central Hall in a public vehicle termed “the hack,”—but always with the precautionary measure of placing a newspaper or one’s shawl on the seat so the red of the plush cushions would not identify itself too intimately with one’s clothes.

The spring of 1880 came on and the first class was to graduate. Ella sent applications to the Oak River board, to Maynard, to Maple City, to every place she thought there might be a chance for a teaching position.

Janet McLaughlin was elected at Maynard, Mary Crombie at Maple City. Mina Gordon and Evelyn Hobbs and Emily Teasdale were all to be married. Irene Van Ness was to stay at home in anticipation of Chester Peters’ sudden desire to become wholly and completely engaged. And still Ella had not secured a position.

The time for final examinations was in the offing. For harried days and sleepless nights, Ella and the eleven others comprising the first graduating class crammed for the fray. No dates for execution could have contained any greater element of dread than the June third, fourth and fifth marked with warning crosses in twelve almanacs. Ella grew wan-eyed, lost appetite and weight, and always among her worries was the realization that she had not yet been hired for fall work. Her one great wish had been to get a school near enough so that she could live at home with her always-frail mother. Sometimes in the night she awoke in a cold perspiration with the appalling thought that it looked as though she might not get any school at all. She would lie awake with tense nerves and think: “But I must.... I have to get a school.... Mother has put me through the college ... she hasn’t enough to live on....” All of which was not highly conducive to a healthy physical condition or calm mentality for the figurative Ides of March on which the examinations were to be held.

And then,—the miracle happened. President Corcoran called her to his office and asked her how she would like to teach English Grammar in the college. The school was growing,—they were rearranging classes—

Ella thought she could not believe what she was hearing. She was dreaming,—would waken in her bedroom and laugh at the wild fancy. But no, President Corcoran was saying: “I have watched you for four years, Miss Ella. You have done good work in grammar. You have a keen mind, an open heart, an enviable disposition, and that something which seems to me the very soul of the teaching profession—a keen interest in your fellow man.”

No one knighted by a king’s touch ever felt so honored.

There was the formality of the written application, the waiting of a few days for the decision already made in board meeting,—and Ella Bishop was to stay on at her youthful Alma Mater and teach. To earn a salary, even though modest, support her mother, live at home,—the whole world took on brilliant roseate lights.

“What have I ever done to have so much good luck?” she said over and over to her mother.

“You’re like your father, Ella. He ... there was something ... he was always ...” Mrs. Bishop groped, moist-eyed, for the explanation. “You go into things ... just the way....”

The examinations ended with no fatalities. Commencement was a reality, and under the bright glow of the knowledge of the new position, a thing of happiness and joy. Happiness and joy to Ella Bishop is meant, for to the towns-people, friends and relatives of the twelve graduates the merrymaking had its difficult moments. On Sunday, President Corcoran gave a tedious, if earnest, Baccalaureate address,—on Monday, class-day exercises were held. On Tuesday, four of the twelve members of the class delivered orations, each of forty-five minutes’ duration,—on Wednesday, four more held the rostrum for another three hours,—on Thursday, the last group spoke for three more hours to a wilted, perspiring, dog-tired audience of the faithful. George Schroeder, not yet over his German accent, gave a glowing tribute to his beloved Goethe. Albert Fonda spoke on “The Course of the Stars.” Mary Crombie presented the case of Woman’s Rights so forcibly that she half ripped out a sleeve of her navy blue silk dress. Ella gave all she had ever known or would ever know about “Our American Authors.” Irene Van Ness, whose father had written her oration, presented a profound dissertation on “The Financial System of Our Country.” “Across the Alps Lies Italy,” “Heaven Is Not Reached by a Single Bound,” and “Black the Heel of Your Boot” were conspicuous by their presence.

The long-drawn-out exercises were in the auditorium. The girls wore trailing silk dresses with camel-like humps in the rear over wire bustles. Long gold watch chains entwined their necks, coming to rest somewhere in the region of their padded bosoms. The windows were open to the stifling summer air, the June-bugs, and the sound of stamping horses tied to hitch-racks. The odor that penetrated to the farthermost corner of the huge room was a combination of June roses and livery barn. Palm leaf fans whacked vigorously against buttons and lodge emblems. There were instrumental and vocal numbers,—solos, duets, trios, quartets, and choruses. There were invocations and benedictions, presentations and acceptances. Never did it take so long to go through the birth pangs of graduation.

Twelve tables in the hallway, representing each graduate, were laden with bouquets of home-grown flowers, gold watches, pearl-handled opera glasses, plush albums, and many duplicates of cushioned and padded “Poems of Keats,”—or “Burns” or “Shelley.”

Chris Jensen, resplendent in a new suit of purplish hue which gave his red face the appearance of being about to suffer apoplexy, guarded the treasures.

The sixth evening the Alumni banquet was held in the auditorium cleared of a portion of its pews, but luckily for the long-suffering public, the attendance was limited to graduates and faculty and faculty wives. The whole procedure had consumed as many days as the fundamentalists’ conception of the genesis of the world. Small wonder that the entire community rested the seventh day and called it holy.

At this first Alumni banquet less than two dozen sat down to the tables. President Corcoran referred in his talk to the possible day when two hundred graduates would sup together. It did not seem possible to contemplate.

Ella felt that it was one of the happiest events in her life. Examinations passed, the nightmare moments of her oration behind her—nothing now but the friendly intercourse with those closest to her in school, and the warm glow of the knowledge that she had won the cream of the teaching positions. Life was all before her. She was young,—gloriously young,—only twenty. She could do with her life as she wished.

Happy Ella,—not to know yet for a little while that life is to do as it wishes to you.