IT WAS SUNDOWN WHEN Emily started home. The dance had lasted until the grandparents came, Aunt Sophie’s half-French father and mother, from St. Paul. They had driven up from the depot in Mr. Thumbler’s hack and alighted with much commotion…chattering, embracing, effervescing with pride in Annette. The party had broken up, but Emily had lingered, at Annette’s suggestion, to watch her open presents.
She had begun with a box brought by Grandpa and Grandma LaDou, and it had yielded a gold cross on a chain. From other boxes, with trills of delight, she had pulled silk stockings, a locket set with a half moon of pearls, a princesse slip, a party cap. She had flung the wrappings on the floor, and Aunt Sophie had started to pick them up, but Emily had jumped to do it, folding the papers and winding the bright ribbons neatly around her fingers. She had loved being a part of the family celebration.
The massive round dining table had been laid for supper with a linen cloth and napkins, the best silver, cut glass from the buffet and hand-painted china from the platerail. Savory odors floated from the kitchen where Minnie, the hired girl, a large clean apron tied about her waist, stood over the stove.
“Stay to supper, Emily,” Aunt Sophie had urged, but Emily had felt she should go home. To be sure, all her grandfather ate at night was bread and milk. She prepared their main meal at noon. But he was always looking for her at this time of day. So she said good-by and started over the high road across the slough.
The Deep Valley slough, pronounced sloo, was the marshy inlet of a river. When Emily had first read Pilgrim’s Progress, after finding it mentioned in Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women, she had pronounced the Slough of Despond sloo, too. She had called it sloo until Miss Fowler had told her in English class that Bunyan’s Slough rhymed with “how.” Miss Fowler had made the correction in a casual unembarrassing way, putting her emphasis on the fact that Emily alone, out of the class, had read Pilgrim’s Progress.
The difference in pronunciation had seemed suitable to Emily. Slough pronounced like “how” sounded disagreeable, and so did the miry pit in which Christian had wallowed. She loved her own slough, pronounced sloo, beside which she had lived all her life.
Now its hummocks of grass, its rushes and cat-tails were moistly green, but she loved it too in the autumn when its aspect was russet, and under winter’s pall of snow, and most of all in the spring when it was carpeted with marigolds. It was such a social place—always noisy with frogs and birds. One end deepened to form a pond, and the birds loved it—gulls, sandpipers, red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds. It sounded like a barnyard sometimes when a gathering of marsh hens was cackling on the water. And the bitterns made a noise like her own dooryard pump. “Thunder pumps,” her grandfather called them.
Emily’s bedroom looked over the slough, which extended back into the sheltered valley that the town called Little Syria. From her windows she could see the humble rooftops of the Syrians. She could see the sun rise over the marsh and the pond.
She was walking into the west now, toward the sunset, and her grandfather’s little white house. She walked rapidly, smiling, for she still felt happy about the party. She felt excited, too, as she always did after she had been with Don. He had danced with her again today, which was most unusual.
When the debating team was off on its trips, he always sought her out. They talked for hours, on trains and in restaurants, about books—poetry, especially. He had a brilliant interesting mind. And although Emily listened at first with humble admiration, she always took fire and talked, too—more than she did with anyone else. They had wonderful times together.
But in Deep Valley he treated her differently. He never took her to Heinz’s for a soda. In the Social Room and at parties he paid no attention to her. He was always with lively fashionable girls.
Annette liked him. She was impressed with his intellectual attainments and with an air of worldliness he had. Most of the girls liked him, although he was moody, conceited, and not handsome. There was magnetism in his dark, often sullen, face and his flashing white-toothed smile.
Most of the boys considered him a show-off, but they admired him. And in his good moods he was exuberantly friendly whether he really liked people or not. He slapped them on the back, laughed at their jokes.
“He flatters people,” Emily admitted, reluctantly indicting him with a fault that was serious in her eyes. She added at once, “It’s because he’s so anxious to be liked.”
This was true. In spite of his good mind, good family and more money than most, he seemed to have some inner uncertainty, some urgent need of friendship.
Walking home across the slough, she went over everything he had said while they danced. He had jokingly quoted Lord Byron:
“On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined:
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet…”
“Which will you be, Emily, Youth or Pleasure? I’ll give you your choice. Speak up!”
She had not been able to find a witty answer.
He had asked where she was going to go to college. She had answered calmly but with an inner shrinking that she wasn’t going. Gosh, what a shame! he had said. It was a bum world, and he had always known it. To think of her, of all girls, being stuck in Deep Valley!
“I can’t imagine a nicer place to be stuck in!” Emily had exclaimed indignantly. And he had smiled that gleaming smile which so illumined his face.
“Well,” he had said then, “it’s the State University for me. If I’m a good boy and do my homework, I’ll be sent to Yale next year. That’s my father’s college. How’ll you like to know a Yale man?”
The slough was behind her now. Emily followed the faded white picket fence surrounding her grandfather’s acre to the sagging gate which was always ajar. The sloping yard wasn’t well kept. The grass was filled with dandelions; and the lilacs and snowball bushes needed pruning. The snowballs, though, were in bloom.
The little house huddled against a low hill. It was old and weather-beaten. With its gables trimmed with scroll work and topped by absurd little towers, it looked like a dingy, fussy old lady, shrunken by age.
Emily ran up the steps of the small front porch. No lamps had been lighted, but she knew that her grandfather liked to sit in the dark. The door was closed against the sweet spring evening. Opening it, she was greeted by a familiar musty smell.
“Here I am, Grandpa!” she called.
There was no answer and she went through the dim crowded little parlor to the dining room. His easy chair, upholstered in carpet cloth in a pattern of cabbagelike roses, stood in the bow window which overlooked the slough. He wasn’t there. She went on to the kitchen where he ate his evening bread and milk. He wasn’t there either. She looked in his bedroom which adjoined the kitchen, and went out to the twilit back stoop. The sky was flushed now. Frogs were croaking in the pond.
“Grandpa! Grandpa!” she cried.
There was still no answer and she felt a small twinge of alarm. Turning she ran back to the parlor and up the stairs. Her own bedroom was empty.
“Grandpa!” she called again, and this time there was an answer. It came from the low garret at the back of the upstairs hall.
“Here I am, Emmy. Here I am.”
“But what are you doing?”
“Why, I’m looking for my uniform.”
“Your uniform!” For a moment she thought that he had lost his mind, that he had gone back to the days of his youth when he served in the Northern Army during the Civil War.
“Of course,” answered Grandpa Webster, and his skull cap came through the low door of the garret. His round mild face with arching heavy brows was covered now with dirt and perspiration. A blue bundle dragged from his arms. “You haven’t forgotten that day after tomorrow is Decoration Day?”
Decoration Day! It was the most important day in her grandfather’s year, and she hadn’t given a thought to it. Penitently she took the uniform out of his arms.
“I’d have gotten it for you, Grandpa,” she said. “I want to press it anyway.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he said. He chuckled. “It didn’t get much pressing, though, when we marched thirty-three miles to get to Gettysburg.”
With each passing year her grandfather talked more about Gettysburg. He had served with the First Minnesota there and had reason to be proud.
He followed her to the kitchen where she laid the uniform over a chair while she lit the kerosene lamp and washed her hands.
“You haven’t eaten yet, Grandpa?”
“I was hunting for my uniform. Weren’t you late, Emmy?”
“Yes, I was. We had a sort of party at Annette’s. It was the last day of school.”
He looked up quickly. “Your last day of school?”
“Yes, and not just for this year. I’m graduating. Do you remember, Grandpa?”
“That’s right,” he answered in a pleased tone. “You told me you were. Now you’ll be at home all the time.”
Emily was silent.
“I wouldn’t let you stop until you finished high school,” said the old man, sounding proud. “Would I, Emmy?”
“That’s right, Grandpa.”
He meant to be so generous! In his day there had been no such thing as higher education for women.
He crumbled bread into a bowl and poured milk from a little earthen pitcher. “The snowballs are in bloom.”
“I noticed,” Emily replied. The snowballs should have reminded her, she thought. The old soldiers always wore snowballs, and every year there was anxiety as the great day approached lest they shouldn’t bloom in time. “I’ll go up to the cemetery tomorrow. See that our graves are tidy.”
“I used to go with you,” her grandfather said. He put down his spoon, looking troubled.
“You’ll be going day after tomorrow.”
“I certainly will!” He smiled radiantly. “The Mayor came out to see me today.”
“He did?”
“He wants me to ride in the parade—in an auto. I told him I’d rather walk, the way we did going to Gettysburg. But there aren’t more than a dozen of us old fellows left. He says he wants to take good care of us. Let the Spanish-American fellows do the walking, he said. Maybe there’s something in it?” The old eyes twinkled under his bushy brows with the same humor Emily’s eyes had.
“There’s a lot in it,” said Emily. “You’re eighty-one years old. I don’t want you walking very far.”
“Oh, I’ll only walk up Front Street. Just to show them I can. That’s what Judge Hodges and I have decided. The Judge came over a while today, too.”
He usually did. Tall, gaunt, bearded, he was a veteran of the Fifth Minnesota and the two old men loved to argue about the exploits of their respective regiments.
“I don’t want you to get so tired you can’t come to Commencement,” Emily said.
“Commencement?”
“My graduation.”
“When is it?”
“Friday night.”
“I’ll be there,” he answered. “Do they make much fuss about it?”
“I told you I’m having flowers—and a new white dress. I tried it on today.”
“That’s right. I’m glad you got yourself a nice white dress.” He put down his spoon again. “Your mother was married in a nice white dress.”
She was buried in it, too, thought Emily, remembering the story her grandfather had often told her. The old man’s thoughts didn’t go on to that sad aftermath. “Yes siree,” he said, “the Mayor wants us to ride. But we’re going to walk a ways at least. Show ’em we can.”
“You’d better get to bed,” said Emily. “I’ll press your uniform.”
The old man went into his little bedroom off the kitchen. He always went to bed before the sunset color was quite out of the sky. Emily washed their bowls and spoons. Then she built up the fire in the range and put the irons to heat and brought out her ironing board.
It was astonishing that she had forgotten about Decoration Day. She hadn’t missed a parade in her life. But the dress fitting, the party, Don Walker had put it out of her mind.
“You’re going to have good weather for it, Grandpa,” she called, testing her iron with a moistened finger.
“What’s that? What did you say?”
“You’re going to have good weather for Thursday. Nice and cool.”
He put his head, in a nightcap now, around the bedroom door.
“It was mighty hot when we marched to Gettysburg,” he chuckled. “But we got there just the same.”