Mrs. Blakesly turned and saw Ware close behind her, and said, "O Mr.
Ware, where is my dear, dear husband?"
"Back in the swirl," Ware replied.
Mrs. Blakesly artfully dropped Miss Powell"s arm and fell back. "I must not desert the poor dear." As she pa.s.sed Ware she said, "Take my place."
"With pleasure," he replied, and walked on after Miss Powell, who seemed not to care to wait.
How simply she was dressed! She moved like an athlete, without effort and without constraint. As he walked quickly to overtake her a finer light fell over the hills and a fresher green came into the gra.s.s. The daisies nodding in the wind blurred together in a dance of light and loveliness which moved him like a song.
"How beautiful everything is to-day!" he said, as he stepped to her side. He felt as if he had said, "How beautiful you are!"
She flashed a quick, inquiring glance at him.
"Yes; June can be beautiful with us. Still, there is a beauty more mature, when the sickle is about to be thrust into the grain."
He did not hear what she said. He was thinking of the power that lay in the oval of her face, in the fluffy tangle of her hair. _Ah! now he knew._ With that upward glance she brought back his boy love, his teacher whom he had worshiped as boys sometimes will, with a love as pure as winter starlight. Yes, now it was clear. There was the same flex of the splendid waist, the same slow lift of the head, and steady, beautiful eyes.
As she talked, he was a youth of seventeen, he was lying at his teacher"s feet by the river while she read wonderful love stories. There were others there, but they did not count. Then the tears blurred his eyes; he remembered walking behind her dead body as it was borne to the hillside burying ground, and all the world was desolate for him.
He became aware that Miss Powell was looking at him with startled eyes.
He hastened to apologize and explain. "Pardon me; you look so much like a schoolboy idol--I--I seem to see her again. I didn"t hear what you said, you brought the past back so poignantly."
There was something in his voice which touched her, but before he could go on they were joined by Mr. and Mrs. Blakesly and one of the other teachers. There was a dancing light in Mrs. Blakesly"s eyes as she looked at Ware. She had just been saying to her husband: "What a splendid figure Miss Powell is! How well they look together! Wouldn"t it be splendid if----"
"Oh, my dear, you"re too bad. Please don"t match-make any more to-day.
Let Nature attend to these things," Mr. Blakesly replied with manifest impatience; "Nature attended to our case."
"I have no faith in Nature any more. I want to have at least a finger in the pie myself. Nature don"t work in all cases. I"m afraid Nature can"t in his case."
"Careful! He"ll hear you, my dear."
"Where do we go now, Miss Powell?" asked Blakesly as they came to a halt on the opposite side of the campus.
"I think they are all going to the gymnasium building. Won"t you come?
That is my dominion."
They answered by moving off, Mrs. Blakesly taking Miss Powell"s arm. As they streamed away in files she said: "Isn"t he good-looking? We"ve known him for years. He"s all right," she said significantly, and squeezed Miss Powell"s arm.
"Well, Lou Blakesly, you"re the same old irrepressible!"
"Blushing already, you _dear_! I tell you he"s splendid. I wish he"d take to you," and she gave Miss Powell another squeeze. "It would be _such_ a match! Brains and beauty, too."
"Oh, hush!"
They entered the cool, wide hall of the gymnasium, with its red brick walls, its polished floor, and the yellow-red wooden beams lining the ceiling.
There were only a few people remaining in the hall, most of them having pa.s.sed on into the museum. As they came to the various appliances, Miss Powell explained them.
"What are these things for?" inquired Mrs. Blakesly, pointing at the row of iron rings depending from long ropes.
"They are for swinging on," and she leaped lightly upward and caught and swung by one hand.
"Mercy! Do you do that?"
"She seems to be doing it now," Blakesly said.
"I am one of the teachers," Miss Powell replied, dropping to the floor.
It was glorious to see how easily she seized a heavy dumb-bell and swung it above her head. The front line of her body was majestic as she stood thus.
"Gracious! I couldn"t do that," exclaimed Mrs. Blakesly.
"No, not with your style of dress," replied her husband.--"I have to pin her hat on this year," he said to Ware.
"I love it," said Miss Powell, as she drew a heavy weight from the floor and stood with the cord across her shoulder. "It adds so much to life!
It gives what Browning calls the wild joy of living. Do you know, few women know what that means? It"s been denied us. Only the men have known
""The wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the cool silver shock Of a plunge in the pool"s living water."
I try to teach my girls "How good is man"s life, the mere living!""
The men cheered as she paused for a moment flushed and breathless.
She went on: "We women have been shut out from the sports too long--I mean sports in the sun. The men have had the best of it. All the swimming, all the boating, wheeling, all the grand, wild life; now we"re going to have a part."
The young ladies cl.u.s.tered about with flushed, excited faces while their teacher planted her flag and claimed new territory for women.
Miss Powell herself grew conscious, and flushed and paused abruptly.
Mrs. Blakesly effervesced in admiring astonishment. "Well, well! I didn"t know you could make a speech."
"I didn"t mean to do so," she replied.
"Go on! Go on!" everybody called out, but she turned away to show some other apparatus.
"Wasn"t she fine?" exclaimed Mrs. Blakesly to Ware.
"Beyond praise," he replied. She went at once to communicate her morsel of news to her husband, and at length to Miss Powell.
The company pa.s.sed out into other rooms until no one was left but Mrs.
Blakesly, the professor, and Ware. Miss Powell was talking again, and to Ware mainly. Ware was thoughtful, Miss Powell radiant.
"I didn"t know what life was till I could do that." She took up a large dumb-bell and, extending it at arm"s length, whirled it back and forth.
Her forearm, white and smooth, swelled into strong action, and her supple hands had the unwavering power and pressure of an athlete, and withal Ware thought: "She is feminine. Her physical power has not coa.r.s.ened her; it has enlarged her life, but left her entirely womanly."
In some adroit way Mrs. Blakesly got her husband out of the room and left Ware and Miss Powell together. She was showing him the view from the windows, and they seemed to be perfectly absorbed. She looked around once and saw that Mrs. Blakesly was showing her husband something in the farther end of the room. After that she did not think of them.