T had been a raw, blustering day, the pines showing a white light where they tipped beneath the wind that blew across them. November had stripped the fields, and over the whole landscape lay only the high serenity of earth and sky.
Gabrielle Eaton, walking across the great meadow, lifted her face to the sky. She had come out from faculty meeting tired and depressed and longing for a breath of air. The meeting had droned through its three interminable hours of detail and bickering. Little dried-up morsels of men had argued and plotted and counterplotted over the mental and spiritual food that should be served out to vigorous, growing girls. And each had voted with a thrifty eye to the advance of his own department. The small minority that cared for education as a whole and saw the subject in its wider relations had been far outvoted. To-morrow, she knew, there would be lobbying and small factions at work for each other and for themselves, and next week would see the same miserable travesty repeated. She lifted her face again and breathed deep. How was one to bear a life that choked and stifled at every turn? For twelve years she had been teaching girls, and each year she came to feel less certain of what was best for them, what to give, and what to withhold. And Professor Harben's small, round, intelligent face in spectacles, with its pointed beard spearing at knowledge, flashed before her. He had no doubts as to what was best for the young. In his flat, thin voice he had talked for half an hour, explaining, elaborating, systematizing ways of educating girls. And at home, Gabrielle knew, Mrs. Harben, small and flat-chested, with the three little Harbens about her, was trying to I make two thousand dollars do the work of four in the college community.
And men whose business enterprises affected a continent and involved millions intrusted the care of their daughters, the discipline and nurture of their minds, the training of their bodies, to Professor Harbens—to men to whom in their business they would have hesitated to trust the care of office buildings.
The long, low line of mountains to the west beckoned her. She lifted a level gaze to them. She was a tall, thin woman, with dark eyes and flexible, curving lips that seemed half ready to mock at herself, and caught themselves in a little smile. It was the smile that gave the face a subtle beauty, something on-looking, forward-reaching, not to be denied. Suppose she gave up the work? She walked more slowly. A letter in the pocket of her coat brushed against her hand as it swung idly. Suppose she gave up her work?
The light lessened and deepened. The mountains caught a glow above their blueness and became mysterious. The sky lifted itself, vaulting, and a single star hung out above the meadow. She walked slowly, looking down. Why could she not respond, give up this vexing work, and join hands with him for the rest of life? There was no lack of fire in the letter thrust carelessly into her pocket. It was the letter of a man ardently in love. Could she give up her work for John Fairchild, take her place in the world with a man already distinguished, administer his house, receive his guests, and represent him in the world, and be at last in a home of her own? She threw back her head, breathing in the clean-swept November air.
So this was what they might come to—all her dreams! What had forced her to put the dream aside every time it strove to shape itself in the form of some man and held out its hand, beckoning her? Now she was thirty-five, and life again was holding out what it called reality to her. "Come away from your dreams."
The flexible lips smiled; then the light filled her face, and she turned back, walking slowly, her skirt touching the tall grass on each side and bending it a little as she went.
He was coming next week, and he had begged her not to answer the letter. He wanted to look in her face, he had said. The flexible lips mocked a little. Then the smile flooded them, and her face was beautiful again.
What had life to give a woman who would not love, who followed a dream! Ah, but she did love. Her heart was filled with the ache of it, a longing that beat upon her and set her searching every face for the life that was her right. Why should it come to some women, and not to her? She saw Mrs. Harben's thin-chested little figure breasted to the fight, her whole life devoted to Charles and the children. And then suddenly, deep in Mrs. Harben's eyes, she caught a glimpse of something that startled her—something akin to this force in herself that drove her, stripped and desolate and searching.