CHAPTER I I ON a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago , a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky .
She saw no Indians now ; she saw flour-mills and the blinking windows of skyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul .
Nor was she thinking of squaws and portages , and the Yankee fur-traders whose shadows were all about her .
She was meditating upon walnut fudge , the plays of Brieux , the reasons why heels run over , and the fact that the chemistry instructor had stared at the new coiffure which concealed her ears .
A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful , so full of animation and moving beauty , that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom .
She lifted her arms , she leaned back against the wind , her skirt dipped and flared , a lock blew wild .
A girl on a hilltop ; credulous , plastic , young ; drinking the air as she longed to drink life .
The eternal aching comedy of expectant youth .
It is Carol Milford , fleeing for an hour from Blodgett College .
The days of pioneering , of lassies in sunbonnets , and bears killed with axes in piney clearings , are deader now than Camelot ; and a rebellious girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American Middlewest .
II Blodgett College is on the edge of Minneapolis .
It is a bulwark of sound religion .
It is still combating the recent heresies of Voltaire , Darwin , and Robert Ingersoll .
Pious families in Minnesota , Iowa , Wisconsin , the Dakotas send their children thither , and Blodgett protects them from the wickedness of the universities .
But it secretes friendly girls , young men who sing , and one lady instructress who really likes Milton and Carlyle .
So the four years which Carol spent at Blodgett were not altogether wasted .
The smallness of the school , the fewness of rivals , permitted her to experiment with her perilous versatility .
She played tennis , gave chafing-dish parties , took a graduate seminar in the drama , went “ twosing , ” and joined half a dozen societies for the practise of the arts or the tense stalking of a thing called General Culture .
In her class there were two or three prettier girls , but none more eager .
She was noticeable equally in the classroom grind and at dances , though out of the three hundred students of Blodgett , scores recited more accurately and dozens Bostoned more smoothly .
Every cell of her body was alive -- thin wrists , quince-blossom skin , ingenue eyes , black hair .
The other girls in her dormitory marveled at the slightness of her body when they saw her in sheer negligee , or darting out wet from a shower-bath .
She seemed then but half as large as they had supposed ; a fragile child who must be cloaked with understanding kindness .
“ Psychic , ” the girls whispered , and “ spiritual . ”
Yet so radioactive were her nerves , so adventurous her trust in rather vaguely conceived sweetness and light , that she was more energetic than any of the hulking young women who , with calves bulging in heavy-ribbed woolen stockings beneath decorous blue serge bloomers , thuddingly galloped across the floor of the “ gym ” in practise for the Blodgett Ladies ’ Basket-Ball Team .
Even when she was tired her dark eyes were observant .
She did not yet know the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudly dull , but if she should ever learn those dismaying powers , her eyes would never become sullen or heavy or rheumily amorous .
For all her enthusiasms , for all the fondness and the “ crushes ” which she inspired , Carol ’s acquaintances were shy of her .
When she was most ardently singing hymns or planning deviltry she yet seemed gently aloof and critical .
She was credulous , perhaps ; a born hero-worshipper ; yet she did question and examine unceasingly .
Whatever she might become she would never be static .
Her versatility ensnared her .
By turns she hoped to discover that she had an unusual voice , a talent for the piano , the ability to act , to write , to manage organizations .
Always she was disappointed , but always she effervesced anew -- over the Student Volunteers , who intended to become missionaries , over painting scenery for the dramatic club , over soliciting advertisements for the college magazine .
She was on the peak that Sunday afternoon when she played in chapel .
Out of the dusk her violin took up the organ theme , and the candle-light revealed her in a straight golden frock , her arm arched to the bow , her lips serious .
Every man fell in love then with religion and Carol .
Throughout Senior year she anxiously related all her experiments and partial successes to a career .
Daily , on the library steps or in the hall of the Main Building , the co-eds talked of “ What shall we do when we finish college ? ”
Even the girls who knew that they were going to be married pretended to be considering important business positions ; even they who knew that they would have to work hinted about fabulous suitors .
As for Carol , she was an orphan ; her only near relative was a vanilla-flavored sister married to an optician in St. Paul .
She had used most of the money from her father ’s estate .
She was not in love -- that is , not often , nor ever long at a time .
She would earn her living .
But how she was to earn it , how she was to conquer the world -- almost entirely for the world ’s own good -- she did not see .
Most of the girls who were not betrothed meant to be teachers .
Of these there were two sorts : careless young women who admitted that they intended to leave the “ beastly classroom and grubby children ” the minute they had a chance to marry ; and studious , sometimes bulbous-browed and pop-eyed maidens who at class prayer-meetings requested God to “ guide their feet along the paths of greatest usefulness . ”
Neither sort tempted Carol .
The former seemed insincere ( a favorite word of hers at this era ) .
The earnest virgins were , she fancied , as likely to do harm as to do good by their faith in the value of parsing Caesar .
At various times during Senior year Carol finally decided upon studying law , writing motion-picture scenarios , professional nursing , and marrying an unidentified hero .
Then she found a hobby in sociology .
The sociology instructor was new .
He was married , and therefore taboo , but he had come from Boston , he had lived among poets and socialists and Jews and millionaire uplifters at the University Settlement in New York , and he had a beautiful white strong neck .
He led a giggling class through the prisons , the charity bureaus , the employment agencies of Minneapolis and St. Paul .
Trailing at the end of the line Carol was indignant at the prodding curiosity of the others , their manner of staring at the poor as at a Zoo .
She felt herself a great liberator .
She put her hand to her mouth , her forefinger and thumb quite painfully pinching her lower lip , and frowned , and enjoyed being aloof .
A classmate named Stewart Snyder , a competent bulky young man in a gray flannel shirt , a rusty black bow tie , and the green-and-purple class cap , grumbled to her as they walked behind the others in the muck of the South St. Paul stockyards , “ These college chumps make me tired .
They ’re so top-lofty .
They ought to of worked on the farm , the way I have .
These workmen put it all over them . ”
“ I just love common workmen , ” glowed Carol .
“ Only you do n’t want to forget that common workmen do n’t think they ’re common ! ”
“ You ’re right !
I apologize ! ”
Carol ’s brows lifted in the astonishment of emotion , in a glory of abasement .
Her eyes mothered the world .
Stewart Snyder peered at her .
He rammed his large red fists into his pockets , he jerked them out , he resolutely got rid of them by clenching his hands behind him , and he stammered : “ I know .
You _ get _ people .
Most of these darn co-eds ---- Say , Carol , you could do a lot for people . ”
“ Oh -- oh well -- you know -- sympathy and everything -- if you were -- say you were a lawyer ’s wife .
You ’d understand his clients .
I ’m going to be a lawyer .
I admit I fall down in sympathy sometimes .
I get so dog-gone impatient with people that ca n’t stand the gaff .
You ’d be good for a fellow that was too serious .
Make him more -- more -- YOU know -- sympathetic ! ”
His slightly pouting lips , his mastiff eyes , were begging her to beg him to go on .
She fled from the steam-roller of his sentiment .
She cried , “ Oh , see those poor sheep -- millions and millions of them . ”
She darted on .
Stewart was not interesting .
He had n’t a shapely white neck , and he had never lived among celebrated reformers .
She wanted , just now , to have a cell in a settlement-house , like a nun without the bother of a black robe , and be kind , and read Bernard Shaw , and enormously improve a horde of grateful poor .
The supplementary reading in sociology led her to a book on village-improvement -- tree-planting , town pageants , girls ’ clubs .
It had pictures of greens and garden-walls in France , New England , Pennsylvania .
She had picked it up carelessly , with a slight yawn which she patted down with her finger-tips as delicately as a cat .
She dipped into the book , lounging on her window-seat , with her slim , lisle-stockinged legs crossed , and her knees up under her chin .
She stroked a satin pillow while she read .
About her was the clothy exuberance of a Blodgett College room : cretonne-covered window-seat , photographs of girls , a carbon print of the Coliseum , a chafing-dish , and a dozen pillows embroidered or beaded or pyrographed .
Shockingly out of place was a miniature of the Dancing Bacchante .
It was the only trace of Carol in the room .
She had inherited the rest from generations of girl students .
It was as a part of all this commonplaceness that she regarded the treatise on village-improvement .
But she suddenly stopped fidgeting .
She strode into the book .
She had fled half-way through it before the three o’clock bell called her to the class in English history .
She sighed , “ That ’s what I ’ll do after college !
I ’ll get my hands on one of these prairie towns and make it beautiful .
Be an inspiration .
I suppose I ’d better become a teacher then , but -- I wo n’t be that kind of a teacher .
I wo n’t drone .
Why should they have all the garden suburbs on Long Island ?
Nobody has done anything with the ugly towns here in the Northwest except hold revivals and build libraries to contain the Elsie books .
I ’ll make ‘ em put in a village green , and darling cottages , and a quaint Main Street ! ”