CHAPTER X
BEGINNING ANEW
Helen went to her room, saying good-night to a group of girls. She crossed over to her window and stood there many minutes. Oh, a picture like this could never be painted. The moon had come up and the tree-tops were clusters of frosted jewels. Such little nooks of almost black shade, such translucent green where the branches were thin. And the meadows, and the far-off fields, the houses within range! Was she far away in some unknown region? Was this a book she had been reading and would she shut it up and find herself in Hope again?
There was such a sweetness and newness and beauty about it all, such a glow in her heart, speeding through every nerve at the wonderful happening. This lovely home, these pretty, merry girls, music, books, and a kind of living that filled and satisfied. Six months ago she was Helen Grant, was she really someone else now? She felt so, as if there had been some strange metamorphosis.
And that delightful, enchanting week in New York. Oh, how full of pleasure and happiness the world must be if a few little spaces could contain so much! And that she could have a share in the real blessedness of it!
Was that the big clock striking the half hour? One was to stop reading or studying at that warning and prepare for bed. Dreaming too, tempting as the picture was.
Helen had always "said her prayers." A wonder as to the real virtue of this had occasionally crossed her mind. So far she had only known a religion of habit; like the other habits of life. To-night a new thought possessed her. Did she owe this simply to Mrs. Van Dorn? If all good and perfect things came from God then this that was so supremely delightful, so almost marvelous of its kind must have been put in the kindly heart by some higher power.
She was curiously awed. Uncle Jason and Aunt Jane were church members, but religion had very little power in their lives. Yet Aunt Jane brought up her children to be strictly honest, and any bald falsehood she truly believed she despised. But injustice or the refusal to see the other side of the question was not connected in her mind with truthfulness. Like many other people the things she believed in and wanted, were right, not only for her, but others must be fitted to the measure. So Helen knew very little of the higher meaning of the word.
Mrs. Van Dorn paid a general outward respect to religion when she was with a certain kind of people, but she was of a sort of heathen who make gods for themselves. Her life was to be enjoyment now, since the early part of it had been hard and comfortless. If it had not been right, a form of reward for those dreary early years it would not have come to her. She thought it bad taste to array herself against beliefs that pervaded the world so largely. All sorts of disbelief coarsened women. She had listened to one great woman speaker who afterward became an Anarchist, and who even then denounced nearly all the moral precepts and attacked modern marriage, and was really shocked. She liked to keep what she called reverence for sacred things. And it pleased her to play Providence to people now and then, and impress it delicately on the recipients that they need look no farther than herself for the giver of their good.
But to-night Helen felt there was some power beyond, and she gave thanks sincerely to it. It was God who had made the world so full of beauty, it must be God who had put these noble and lovely desires in anyone's soul, so she went quite past Mrs. Van Dorn.
There were sweet and merry voices the next morning, but Helen had been up an hour or more looking over some poems in a choice selection. Someone tapped at her door, and she opened it. Miss Mays stood there smiling.
"I suppose you feel a little queer, like the traditional cat in a strange garret. Come down with us."
"To-day is a kind of lawless, irresponsible time. I dote on it. We had lots of fun last year because we came on Friday. It was Daisy Bell's first year, too. You learn to-day what the rules are, but you don't have to keep them. It's a grace day when you are not forced to get your accounts straight."
Helen turned and wished her mates goodmorning, and thought within herself that it was a very pretty thing to say, since the morning was so good. Yet she had a curious feeling within her, as if she was here under some kind of false pretense. She was so utterly honest she would have enjoyed explaining her exact situation, that she was here on the bounty of a friend, and not as these other girls who came from delightful homes, and had fathers to care for them.
Mrs. Aldred summoned Helen to her room. Occasionally this was not a pleasant call to make, but this morning it had no such signification.
All new pupils underwent this examination. Where she had been trained, what she had studied, and what her aims were, if she had any.
Mrs. Van Dorn had explained pretty clearly, and she had also said, "Don't spoil a very nice, honest girl by setting her up too high."
"What I would like to do most of all?" and Helen's eyes lighted with enthusiasm. "I think it would be to teach, because then you always go on learning. There are some things that girls and women do that seem to make you stop off short, turn you into another channel entirely," and she thought of the shoe factory and how narrowly she had escaped that.
Mrs. Van Dorn had been quite as non-commital with her protégée then, or had no real plans for her.
"Now let me hear what you have studied."
Helen went over the list and told of her High School examination and how she had passed. There was a girlish pride in it, of course, but no undue elation. Mrs. Aldred was much pleased with the absence of self-consciousness, the real delight in knowledge.
"You are very well grounded. Mrs. Van Dorn wished you to take up French; of course you will begin with Latin. And music."
"Oh!" Helen's face was radiant then. "Music! I never dreamed of that!"
"You will not enjoy the drudgery, but that has to come first. It is an excellent thing to be interested in what you are doing, to love it, but all studies are not equally pleasant. There are courage and perseverance needed."
"I shall try to do my very best for Mrs. Van Dorn's sake. It was so generous of her to send me here though I do think I should have managed to work my way through the High School."
What a frank, honest girl she was! How little she knew about the world! An astute person could turn her inside out and laugh at her innocence. It was a pity to spoil it, yet it would be worse to leave her at the mercy of a crowd of girls.
"This will be an entirely new experience for you," Mrs. Aldred began gently. "You have had very little acquaintance with the real world, and very little need to be on your guard. As one's sphere grows wider and more people come into it, there is occasion for" – how should she put it – judgment; no, that was not quite it; at this stage of a girl's life she was not likely to have a very correct judgment; "a little caution and reserve. Girls so often exchange confidences about their lives and their friends, and do not always look at things just as they are. Afterward they regret their unreserve."
Helen had been taking in every word, only she could not get the meaning of it, except that it seemed to her confused sense akin to her thoughts of an hour ago. She really studied the face before her, and Mrs. Aldred felt the scrutiny. How could she make the girl understand just what she meant? If Mrs. Van Dorn had been a little more explicit. If she were having the girl educated solely for herself the explanation would be easy enough.
Helen's directness solved the difficulty. There was so much ingrained honesty about her, and yet half the time lately, it seemed to her she had been on the very verge of deceitfulness.
"Mrs. Aldred," she began, with some hesitation, "I was thinking, this morning, when I heard the girls talk, that my life had been so different from theirs, and whether I had the right – " her face went scarlet then – "I don't know as I can just explain it," in some confusion, "but whether I was on an equality with them."
She said it out bravely. Mrs. Aldred admired her courage and her honesty.
"You certainly are on an equality with them here. If Mrs. Van Dorn had asked me to take you as a return for some past favors, you would still have been put on an equality, and I should not have considered it sailing under false colors. But she pays the usual terms for you, and the favor is between yourself and her. So you can dismiss all thoughts of that from your mind. I think she desires to have you trained in society ways, which you can do by watching the best examples and following them. You will like some girls very much, and girls are largely given to think that a true friendship must begin by telling each other all the little happenings of their lives. It is a good rule to consider in these matters whether you would like the girl to tell this over to someone who did not admire you so much, and who repeated it with little embellishments to the next eager listener."
"But she could not if it was a confidence," said Helen decisively.
"Girls' consciences are elastic," smiling a little. "I think they do not mean to make mischief, but I have known more than one regret caused by an incautious confidence. Girls have many things to learn before they are women, but a light and happy heart is the birthright of a girl and she need not hurry to outgrow it. Still one can study wisdom as well as other lessons, and like most of them, it is a lifelong study."
Helen was considering and wondered if she understood. She had never been counseled in this spirit. "I want you to know that you are in no sense a charity scholar, as the phrase goes, though I have had several who worked their way through school, gave for whatever they obtained, which is far from charity, I take it. I will only add, choose your friends, which implies some discrimination on your part. Did you like the girls at the table? They are all in the French class and they talk French during the five school days. That is not demanded of the new scholars. Monday we will begin in regular order and I will have your classes arranged."
Then she touched a pretty bell that stood on the table and Miss Aldred answered the summons.
"Grace, will you take Miss Grant through the schoolrooms?" she asked, and Miss Aldred smiled as she gave a gesture of assent.
Helen followed her guide. This was the general assembly room, here the different recitation rooms, here the drawing classes met and there were casts and busts and figures in plaster, and several very well executed paintings and drawings embellished the walls. Then the music room, and the study room had a piano in it also.
Helen was a trifle appalled. Education had seemed a rather simple thing at Hope. She sighed as she glanced up at Miss Grace.
"Oh, where is there time to learn it all?" she asked with a sinking at the heart.
"You do not have to learn it in one day or one week," was the smiling answer. "And every day it grows easier."
"But – music! I've never even touched a piano."
"Do you sing?"
"Yes, a few little songs and Sunday hymns. And sometimes out of doors I try to catch the bird notes. They are no special tunes, you know, but I always have to stop at the warble," and she laughed brightly.
Miss Grace nodded, rather amused.
"And I have never studied Latin or French."
"Everyone has to begin, though the babies in France talk French, which I believe once surprised a woman who was traveling in France."
"Oh!" Then Helen laughed gayly.
"And this is our drawing room. Once a month we have sociables, given by one of the seniors who has to arrange everything just as she would if she were in society. And the other girls are the guests."
It was a beautiful long room, with a bay window at the side which made a very pretty break in it. At both ends were double windows. The floor was matted, with rugs here and there. The furniture was simple and tasteful; two cabinets were filled with handsome china and bric-a-brac, and there was one case of elegant books. The real reading and study books, histories, and so on, were in the reception room and the study room.
Then they walked out on the porch where a bevy of girls had congregated.
"I have been introducing Miss Grant to the house," Miss Aldred said in her soft, pleasant tone, "and now you girls may tell her what we do and how we do it, and anything else that will not make her feel homesick."
Helen was sure she should never have one yearning for Hope Center.
"Oh, Miss Aldred, don't you think we might go down town this afternoon and introduce her to the town where she will have to find her social nutriment for the next ten months?"
"Social, indeed," laughed Miss Mays.
"Well, what is it? Our intellectual nutriment is here, and though we sometimes study wood and wilds you cannot exactly describe it as natural pabulum, and though we do a little shopping you can't designate it as financial forage. But we will not bother about exact definition until next week, so that we can go, Miss Aldred?" imploringly.
"I see no objection at present."
The stage had come up with some scholars, and Miss Aldred went to receive them.
"I am really going to take Miss Grant in charge. First, let us have a walk about our own domain."
The front and one side were devoted to pleasure and beauty. Some lovely old trees, a willow touching the ground with its long arms, two splendid Norway spruces, a great catalpa, maples, and one fine old elm. Two hammocks were swung in the shade, there were several rustic seats about, and a table that seemed to invite one to a picnic meal. At the back the decline was a tangle of wildness until it reached the little stream. Various wood asters were beginning to bloom, golden-rod, balsams, and several fine, white blossoms. Yet, it was rather shady and they all had a delicate appearance.
"And there is a path. You can go down," exclaimed Helen, rather wistfully.
"And get yourself torn by briers. We won't go down this morning, for there are pleasanter ways, and you will have enough of it when you go out botanizing."
"It is so beautiful. And over there is another hill." Her eyes were alight with enthusiasm.
"And the end of the town lies down in the valley. Now around here is the useful and a bit of orchard. The old branching apple tree gives us oceans of bloom in the spring, and we are allowed to despoil it as it seldom fruits. That's the useful – not exactly the garden of sweet herbs, but there are some in it. And here is the lovely grape arbor, if you are not afraid some fierce caterpillar or savage green worm an inch or two long may swing down upon you."
There was a long bench at one side, and the air was fragrant with ripening grapes. They seated themselves, and Miss Mays extended a cordial invitation to the merry group.
"Are we really allowed to?" asked someone, hesitatingly, a stranger to the privileges.
"In reason, yes. It would be most unkind and ill-bred to strip the vines and offer them for sale in the public market. I hope none of you have been seized with that intention. There are some more prisoners of hope," as another stage stopped.
"Why prisoners? Do they not come of their own accord," asked Helen.
"Oh, Miss Grant, they generally come of their fathers' and mothers' accord the first time. Did you really sigh to come?"
"I wanted to, yes;" in an eager tone.
"Depraved taste."
Helen looked surprised. That everyone of any intelligence should not long for an education amazed her. And these bright, pretty girls who must have congenial surroundings seemed the very ones to appreciate it.
They were still jesting when the luncheon bell rang. One new table was filled and some vacant spaces in several others. It was beginning to look like quite a family. But Helen had the feeling of being a guest at a hotel, just as she had been all the week. They dispersed to their rooms, and Helen tried to read a little, but the words were mixed up with French and music. She would like the music she knew. She listened to the sound of the piano on the floor below, and her whole soul responded to the melody. Had anyone ever been so blest before? It was like a fairy story.
"Well," exclaimed Miss Mays an hour or so later, looking in at the door, "have you a mind ready for a walk, to see the town. For I doubt if otherwise you can be introduced to it before next Saturday."
"Oh, yes," springing up with energy. "I begin to think strange places are – " she cast about for a word – "fascinating."
"How many strange places have you seen?" laughingly.
"Not many. A week in New York and the pretty places and wonders thereabout."
"New York is a marvel by itself. And I've never been there," sighing. "I suppose I may be classed as a Westerner. The western part of the State. I know several of those cities and Niagara Falls and the Canada side; we were there two months ago. I did manage to squeeze in, but the girls didn't want me a bit. Papa managed that," exultingly.
Helen had been studying Miss Mays' attire. Her gray frock and coat were just the thing, and her gray felt hat trimmed with scarlet and a bright wing. So she put it on and was ready.
"You can learn a good deal by watching other people," Mrs. Van Dorn had said. "And it is bad taste to make yourself conspicuous."
As they stepped out in the hall several others joined them. Mrs. Aldred nodded to them as they passed out.
"Did you see those two girls on the veranda? They look like twins and might almost as well be. They are fifteen, birthdays only a week apart. Mothers are sisters, and the fathers cousins. Alice and Annie Otis. They both have light hair, but one has darker eyes than the other. And the blue-eyed one is a little stouter. They are to room together."
"Roxy Mays, I don't see how you find out so much about everybody," said one of the group.
"By using my eyes and ears. One of them told part of this to Miss Grace, and the mother of Annie explained the rest to Mrs. Aldred, but I don't know which Annie is. I'll guess it is the plump one with a dimple in her chin. They have never been away at school before. You can tell that by their half-frightened look."
"Did I look half frightened?" inquired Helen, mirthfully, glancing around.
"I must say you did not. And we descended upon you so unceremoniously. It might be admissible to ask what you thought of us."
"That it was very kind of you to call on me. I should have felt much more strange if I had speculated all the evening and seen you first this morning."
"Now you see the benefit of rushing in where angels fear to tread. You were placed in our neighborhood, and we have been neighborly."
"I thank you very much," Helen returned gravely.
Elm Avenue ran straight down in the town, down to the river, indeed. But the beauty of Westchester was its main street that intersected this and ran parallel with the river about a quarter of a mile below the school, and was called Center Street. It had all that was of the most account in the town, the Court House, a fine building, a public hall with offices on the lower floor, two very pretty churches with their parsonages, several stores, post-office, and bank, and at both ends handsome residences with well-kept grounds. Being the county town, at autumn and spring it displayed a rather busy aspect; the rest of the time was given over to very delightful, refined social living. There had been some doubts at first as to whether a girls' boarding-school would not disturb the serene aspect, but it was not large enough, and kept very well in hand.
From Center Street, streets and avenues branched out both ways. These were substantially built up with large grounds and handsome gardens on the east side, stretching out finally to farms, and on the west running down to the river, that being broken by rifts and rather dangerous places, was hardly navigable for general business, though small sloops ventured up when the river was not too low. A mile further down was a bed of clay and a brick-yard, and two or three factories with a sort of hamlet. Three miles below were large iron-works. The railroad ran along the river, and left the town to its beauty and comparative quiet.
It was, in its surroundings, much handsomer than North Hope, and the style of homes betokened both wealth and culture, a town whose ways were settled, a town of the better class who had not to consider the ordinary chances of making money. Several of the houses were shut up in the winter, while their occupants went to the city for the season. Those who remained at home entertained themselves with various amateur diversions. There was a fine musical club that gave two or three concerts through the winter; another that had a course of lectures, and the churches gave fairs and sociables. The four denominations were represented, but the Presbyterians were the largest, oldest and most influential.
The small river was spanned by a number of pretty rustic bridges, and emptied into the greater one that divided it from the neighboring State, whose wooded heights and rocky bluffs were most picturesque. There were only occasional houses, though down at the brick-yard a small settlement was begun. And already the sun was throwing long shadows from the densest woods, where firs, cedars, and hemlock were almost black against the beeches and hickories, even now turning yellow at the point of the long leaves; chestnuts with the brown fringes of bloom that bore no fruit still hanging to them. Here and there a pile of rocks, gray and brown and dotted with glistening gems, it would seem, there were points that sparkled so. There a hollow that might be a dryad's cave, bunches of sumac in autumnal gorgeousness, tangles of wild growth, blackberry with its deep red leaves, cat-briar still green and glossy, and the confusion of wild woodland growth.
"Oh, how beautiful it is!" Helen exclaimed involuntarily.
"Where are you viewing the universe?"
"Over beyond the river. Do you ever go there?"
"Oh, yes, we row across. The school owns a boat. It is supposed to be good exercise, but it does blister your hands. There is a bridge farther up there, now you can see it."
The church spire had hidden it from view, but it was just a plain, partly-covered structure.
"We went over for our picnic. There are swamps of rhododendrons, and mountain laurel. That is beautiful even in the winter if you are fond of such things. Never mind them to-day. There will be some rambles over there presently. Let us look nearer home. What are you, religiously?"
Helen flushed. Was she really religious at all?
"I mean what denomination claims your family? We generally follow in their footsteps."
"Presbyterian," with a hesitating sound in her voice.
"Then this will be your church. Mrs. Aldred is a member here, and Miss Grace, but curiously enough Miss Gertrude leans toward Episcopacy, and she plays some of the old masses in a way that almost sweeps you along in her current. She is to be an artist. Last winter she was in New York taking lessons, and she teaches painting, but we haven't a very artistic lot of girls I think. Mr. Danforth is the clergyman here. You will like him I guess. My people are Methodists. That is my church 'way down below, but I often go there."
"Oh, let us get on to the stores," said one of the group. "Let me see – there are five of us. I'll treat to-day, that will make us five weeks going round. Only on Saturdays, mind."
They passed the bank, a very modest building with law offices on the second floor. Then the Court House, which was quite imposing, and a row of stores, larger and finer than those in Hope. An inviting ice-cream parlor with a rustic garden at the side, divided into vine-covered booths, claimed their attention, and they sauntered in, seating themselves nonchalantly.