But lessons—examinations—
He had tried—but before he understood the beginnings of things, the class was leaping on, and he was trying to leap with it, trying to read before he knew his letters. Clutching his hair in his hands, he would scowl at his books under his green shaded student-lamp, despairing, yawning, taking a great bite of apple, and wishing for some open-sesame that would magically unlock the door of knowledge for him.
He hadn’t passed his examinations. He had been warned after the midyears, and now he had to tell the girls that he wasn’t going back. The train lurched towards home from familiar station to familiar station. The car lamps swung and creaked.
“Well, girls, brace yourselves for a shock—yours truly is home for good.”
The blue river with its white sails unrolled alongside the tracks, the daisies ran down to them.
“I have to tell you something. I couldn’t pass the exams., and the pleasure of my company is not requested for next year.”
The church spire over the trees, the Leaf’s high hedge, Mrs. Pennock’s cows a brown fleet in the foam of daisies. But the feeling of home withheld itself, he couldn’t feel anything but that gnawing sickness at the pit of his stomach.
“Girls, I am sorry to have to tell you—”
And in the middle of Maggie’s account of the ridiculous time Aunt Priscilla was having with her guinea-chickens, he burst out, sounding loud and rough because he had been planning it so long:
“I can’t go back next year! I couldn’t pass my examinations!”
He had told! He had told, and they didn’t scorn him. Maggie said she’d always heard, always, that examinations didn’t signify anything, really; and, of course, he couldn’t go back and be a freshman all over again. Lily cried, “Those mean professors,” and wept a little; and May said everybody knew that what you went to college for was the friends you made, not the things you learned out of books. Waves of love broke over him, waves of gratitude, and he would have died for his sisters happily.
And at last the blinding, numbing tension was dissolved, and he could let the feeling of home flow through him, the sweet air, the lights moving silently on the river, the shadowy parlor and the absurd things that had been there forever, no one knew why, no one knew from where—the lacquer bowl with its strange sweet smell, the three-cornered bronze inkwell that never held any ink in its little glass hat, the penwiper of a doll’s head dressed as a nun on which no pens were wiped. Drunk with relief he plunged after Maggie, helping her shut the windows for the night, and doing such things to the curtains! It nearly drove her crazy, and yet she couldn’t say anything, it was so sweet of him to try to help.
XVIII
Happiness to wake at dawn and lie listening to the birds, to bathe in the crackling copper-lined tub, and go leaping down through the soaking grass to get a brown and yellow pansy all beaded with dew for his buttonhole; to eat strawberries and mud, and presently at breakfast, with the girls beaming on him, more strawberries, and coffee with thick, yellow cream instead of chalk and water and bluing (“Really chalk and water and bluing?” Lily wanted to know) brown eggs Albert had brought in an hour ago, corn bread, and ham still sputtering and sizzling in the dish. Home again!
And that morning he met Lucy Hawthorn.
They all went to the Leafs, even Maggie, who said she was too old for such gadding and had a hundred things she had to do at home, anyway. But Victor wanted her to come.
The dark cedar trees half hid the blue stone house with its low bay-windows, and swept the shaven lawn that unrolled to the stone breakwater against which the river was clucking and slapping now, and from which at low tide the river mud spread like wet chocolate icing. The air above the round beds of heliotrope quivered with fragrance.
“Well, Victor! How does it seem to be home?”
“Hello, Victor! How did you leave Fair Harvard?”
“Mrs. Hawthorn, Mr. Campion.”
Mrs. Hawthorn, sitting in the lovely, liquid shadow of her lilac parasol, gave him her famous smile, while she took in every detail through the little black lace veil that came just to the tip of her nose.
Prentice Page with ferns inside his hat to keep off the sun, looking like a faun from the forest, played with May against pretty Fannie and Maggie in her manly straw sailor, and Lily good-naturedly trotted after the balls, protesting, “Oh, I like to, really, truly I do, I’d loads rather!”
The ball bounced gently from tiny racquet to tiny racquet across the casual sagging of the low net. The girls in their eelskin dresses and long ruffled skirts held on their hats as they played, but Lucy, sitting on the grass with Victor, had taken hers off, and the sun gleamed on the pale brown silk sweep of her hair from the cloud of soft frizz on her forehead to the low knot of braids like shining brown nuts. She was all pink and cream, her little ears, her tender little nose, the delicate soft curve of her chin, candid and young. The rose, fringed about with other sweetnesses, heliotrope, pinks, and rose geranium leaves, is the heart of the nosegay; and in the lovely surrounding of sunny fragrant air, kind happy voices, being home again, the relief of having told, Lucy was the rose.
“What funny little gold pigs on your bracelet!”
“They’re porte-bonheurs. Aren’t they sweet? I love my piggie-wiggies!”
“Lucky pigs! Oh, look! Three brown butterflies have settled on your skirt!”
“Where? Oh, you mean those bows! But real flowers are the most fashionable trimming now, so why not real butterflies?”
“Happy thought! How about real fruit and vegetables? A ball gown with
