CHAPTER XVII
IN THE DELIGHTFUL CURRENT
Helen Grant came to Aldred House again on Friday afternoon. Miss Daisy, who had been there but an hour, rushed down to welcome her.
"Oh, dear! If something had happened and you had not come," she cried, "I should really have been broken-hearted, and I don't see what good Samaritan could have bound up the wounds. And most things are going to be strange and new."
"New girls?" inquiringly.
"Yes, ever so many of them. There were several Mrs. Aldred could not take last year. She is closeted with two now, and you may as well come upstairs at once. I have some new pictures – we will give away the old ones. And the sweetest new willow rocker. But what do you think has happened to Roxy Mays?"
"Marriage," cried Helen laughingly.
"No, but a fortune. And her oldest sister was married to a designer or something who goes abroad to illustrate Russia. The old great-aunt died suddenly, and left a good deal of money to Mr. Mays, and ten thousand dollars to Roxy. So her mother and the other sister and she sailed the last week in August. Of course Roxy is in high feather. And Miss Reid and Miss Gertrude Aldred have gone to Rome under the care of a friend of Mrs. Aldred's. Two of the girls have gone to Leipsic. Oh, dear, I wonder if we will ever go abroad?"
"It is a lovely dream. I do hope to compass it some time," and a longing light filled Helen's eyes.
"And there is so much to see here. We had a cousin of father's visiting us who had spent seven years in Mexico, and knew President Diaz quite well. He tells such interesting stories about the wonders there, the discoveries and the traces of people who must have lived a thousand or perhaps more years ago. Then my brother has a friend who is deep in those marvelous exhumations in Arizona. Presently we shall be a famous country, if we haven't castles and cathedrals."
Helen's trunk came up and she began to unpack. There were some new gowns.
"Are you going in long skirts?" inquired Daisy.
"Not this winter. I should like to be 'only a girl' ever so long," and Helen smiled dreamily. "It seems as if I had been only a very little girl thirteen years or so, and now I want to be just a big girl. Womanhood looks so strange and mysterious to me. There are so many things to be decided then, and now you can hover about the edge, just slip into the surf of that river called the future and then draw back. You don't have to cross it. But some day you must, and shoulder its responsibilities."
"How queer and solemn that sounds. And I am a whole year older, and I ought to be ever so much ahead of you."
"You are in Latin and French. I studied up some. I met a delightful woman, – well I saw her last summer, and oddly enough she remembered me from the books I read, – that I never should have known about but for Mrs. Van Dorn. She is the librarian. And we have had such a nice time. She is a college graduate, and she has inspired me with a longing to go. But then I want everything. Travel and music and churches and ruins and histories of nations that have been swept away, and to climb the pyramids, and to ask the Sphinx her mighty question – "
"Your mighty question as to what secret is in her ponderous brain?"
Both girls laughed heartily, merrily.
"Well, I must say, Helen Grant, your wishes comprise enough for a lifetime! And you have left out Paris, and that quaint, delightful, clean, watery Holland, and Moscow, and India."
"There is too much for one lifetime. I wonder if we do come back and take some of the pleasures in the life afterward? But then we don't remember what has gone before, so where is the benefit?"
"There are ever so many new girls," said Daisy presently.
"I wonder if we haven't a small share of duty towards them," remarked Helen, considering. "I thought it lovely of you girls to come and welcome me when I was a stranger."
"Roxy was splendid at that. I am not sure but there was some curiosity in it. She liked to get down to the bottom of a girl's soul and life and know all that had happened to her. And she was very amusing with her bright comments and comparisons. I was desperately in love with her at first," and Daisy colored warmly. "Then she said little things about other girls that I didn't like. And you were so upright, so generous in your criticisms, so ready to make allowance. And after all that mistake about Miss Craven she was very unwilling to own she had been wrong. Wasn't I fearfully jealous? Didn't I act like a fiend?"
There were tears in Daisy's eyes.
Helen gave a vague smile.
"I can see now that it was somewhat due to Roxy's influence. She kept saying you were so bewitched about her, and that you were on the lookout for new sensations, that you tried on friendships and then cast them off. I think that was what she did. What a foolishly miserable girl I was, but I did love you. And I do, I shall."
Helen kissed her fondly.
"And mamma thought it was very kind in you to take up Miss Craven. She is curiously interested in her, wondering how she will develop. Papa says the Craven mines are remarkable, the new one with all that hematite is a fortune by itself. I hope she comes back."
That evening they made acquaintance with a few of the new girls. And the next day came a crowd, new and old, Miss Craven among them.
Juliet Craven had changed wonderfully under the influence of a woman who had always longed for a daughter and had three sons instead. There was a brightness about her, a kind of new interest that shone in her eyes and brought a tint to her cheeks. A little contrast would have made her quite a pretty girl, for her features were fairly good, but she was too much of a nondescript.
For the first time she had known personal interest and affection from a woman who might have been her mother, and who certainly had no ulterior object. She had outgrown some of her timidity, she stood up straighter, as if she was more conscious of her own power, and she dared to meet the eyes of the other girls, to answer their smiles. She was to go in most of the classes this year, though the girls would be much younger, but Mrs. Aldred judged that the companionship would prove beneficial.
There were several changes in the teaching corps. A Mrs. Wiley, middle-aged and experienced, who had been employed in a girls' college in the West, shared with Miss Grace the duties of the senior classes. Her daughter, Miss Esther, taught in the younger day-school classes and was a pupil in several studies. After a month matters ran along smoothly.
Not that the girls fell into the traces without any friction. Some were pert and self-sufficient, others consequential, and several not remarkable for anything, taking mental culture along objective lines, and a few ambitious, intellectual, loving study for the sake of the sweet kernel knowledge when you had cracked the rough outer shell. There were the bright and sweet, who had no aims above the average, and who would get trained into nice, wholesome girls and make good wives and mothers.
Helen enjoyed her studies immensely. The botany rambles were one of her great pleasures, and when she went at the wonders of astronomy she was enraptured.
"Such a student is worth having; she inspires the rest," Mrs. Wiley said to Mrs. Aldred. "There is a girl who should go to college."
"Yes, she ought," but in her secret soul Mrs. Aldred feared that was not Mrs. Van Dorn's design.
She was beginning to understand and love Latin, and doing very well at French. She did not display much aptitude for drawing, though she had a certain artistic taste in arrangement.
"But I really do not see any use of hammering away at music," she protested. "I never shall make a fine player."
"You will make a fine singer and you want some thorough knowledge for that," said Madame Meran.
"It was one of the branches Mrs. Van Dorn is very particular about," Mrs. Aldred added, in a tone that left no room for demur.
There was the usual fun and perhaps a little sly flirting among the newer students with the young men in the law offices. Autumn was quite a lively time, since court was in session. The girls were allowed to visit the fairs and entertainments of their respective churches, and occasionally spend Saturday afternoon with an outside acquaintance.
During the holidays Mrs. Dayton wrote that one of the High-School teachers had resigned and Mr. Warfield had gained the appointment, being much delighted with it, and would board with her. From home she heard that Jenny had a little son and they were all very joyous. Fan was going to spend the winter with her. Aurelia had been taken out of school as she didn't learn anything worth while, and Aunt Jane believed in making her girls useful.
"I don't wonder teachers get discouraged in a small country place," she thought, "when the parents care so little for education." She was glad Mr. Warfield had gone to the High School, where he could have a more congenial atmosphere.
Helen often wondered in these days what her father had been like, and how he came to drift to such a dull place as Hope Center. Twenty years before it had been a center of several things. The Church was flourishing. In the winter the large boys and girls came to school and the old-fashioned alligation, mensuration, and surveying were taught and made useful, the history of the country, parsing out of Milton's Paradise Lost, learning as much about the older English essayists and writers as was taught in the High School.
Now, the children, before they were fairly grown, went into shops or learned a trade. There had been a fine debating society in the Center, and people drove in from miles around to listen to the arguments, which were generally on stirring questions of the day, psychological fads being unknown, or the highest truth in them called by some other name.
Then the railroad had really cut it off. North Hope had grown at its expense.
She thought, too, not a little about her own future. What would happen at the close of the school year. At the first of January she and Daisy Bell and a Miss Gardiner went into Senior B. In another year she would graduate.
There was something in Mrs. Van Dorn's letters that appealed to her deeply at times, an interest that gave her a curious thrill. She wrote more earnestly herself, she realized what a great thing this had been to her, lifting her out of the common groove and giving her a decided standing among Hope people. And, oh! it had afforded her such splendid experiences with cultured people, some friends who might go a long way through life with her and enrich her path with their life.
"If you were going to college, I should want to go too," Daisy Bell said one day. "Papa would be delighted, I am sure. And though you are younger, I do not know so very much more," laughingly. "You always study in such desperate earnest. We should keep step together. Oh, don't you wish we could see into the future?"
Yes, she really did.
Her friendship with Juliet Craven touched another side of her nature. Miss Craven had a vein of peculiar romance. She improvised in music, she could imitate bird-songs in rare melody, she could go to depths of feeling in a few chords that stirred one's very soul. It was absolute genius.
"These are the things I used to sing to myself in the old home," she would say. "Sometimes I would put words to them."
"Why, that would be poetry. Why don't you try to write them down?" Helen inquired with newborn interest.
"There are so many things to study, to learn, to do. I am not pretty enough to attract people, but of course, I know the money would. Sometimes I wish I had only just enough for my own wants. Another year I shall come into actual possession of a large sum, and three years later, if the mines should be sold, there will be – well, I haven't any idea how much more. Mrs. Davis' plan is to take me abroad and find someone with a title to marry me. What could I do in that kind of life? I want something quiet, far-reaching. I should like to make unfortunate people happy. I wonder if there are any young girls in the world as lonely and as unfortunate as I was! I shudder when I think I might have gone on with grandfather until all the best years of my life were spent. Mrs. Howard advises me to stay here and get a thorough education, and I think that is best."
Helen was very decided in her opinion that it was by far the best. How queer that money should be so unequally divided, Miss Craven having so much more than she could use, Mrs. Van Dorn having so much, and some of the girls with such rich fathers, then others just squeezing through, she really having none at all.
Mrs. Van Dorn was doing just what Miss Craven longed to do. No, not just. If Helen had been unpromising she realized keenly that she might have gone back to Uncle Jason, or worked her way through the High School as she best might. She knew now, most girls of sixteen do, that an attractive face and manner was an excellent capital. She sometimes gave herself a little mental hug at the thought of having just the right share of good looks, enough to please, and not enough to be vain of, and not the sort of fascination Roxy Mays had possessed. There were several beautiful girls in school. Daisy Bell had many charms, a lovely, subtle, easily-flushing complexion that was like pink and pearl, beautiful even teeth, tender and loving eyes.
"My face is just like me," she comforted herself, looking in the glass. "It is strong, earnest, and capable. And I do mean to do something with life before I die. I hope God will put me in the way of it."
Toward spring there was an episode that now and then happens in a girls' school in spite of the closest supervision. Mrs. Aldred tried to train the girls to a high sense of honor, and allowed them a certain liberty, though no one girl ever went out alone. Among the new scholars was a pretty, saucy little thing, bright with her lessons and full of fun, seemingly innocent enough. But she had adroitly managed a flirtation with the brother of one of the day scholars. Letters had passed between them, and she had eluded supervision and taken several strolls with him by climbing over the fence at the back of the grounds, with the assistance of her admirer. The daring went a little too far, and one evening Miss Wiley saw the return of the culprit, who begged and pleaded a little at first, and then became defiant.
"I don't care," she said angrily. "We are engaged. I knew I wouldn't be allowed to see him alone if he called, and I had a right to his visits."
Mrs. Aldred was surprised and had a rather stormy time with the girl, who was sent home at once.
"Now that Roxy Mays will never come back," said Daisy gravely, "I will say to you that she did go as far as the letters once. It was with the clerk in Adams' drug store. He gave a note to me and said it was a prescription, and she laughed about it, saying she only did it to prove how easily a girl could write letters and get answers, but that she was not going to follow it up, and she knew I would not betray her. It was the very week before school closed, and though it wasn't just right I let it pass. She still corresponds with him, but now her mother must know it. It doesn't seem real fun to me to break rules that way. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if she had returned to school!"
Helen smiled, thinking of her innocent letter to Mr. Warfield. And now Mrs. Dayton quoted him so often she wondered if that was quite right.
But she did enjoy writing to Mrs. Van Dorn. Often there was only a few lines from her, the rest finished by Miss Gage, who had a very methodical manner of going over their doings.
In April an announcement was made that surprised and troubled many of the scholars. Mrs. Aldred had decided to go to Europe, taking her daughter Grace and chaperoning several other young ladies. Gertrude, who had been studying hard in Paris, would join them, and they would spend the ensuing winter in Rome. Mrs. Wiley and her daughter would take the school, keeping it on the same lines.
"I wish you could remain another year and graduate," she said to Helen. "I shall write to Mrs. Van Dorn about it. Then you would be fitted for whatever might happen afterward."
"Oh, thank you!" Helen replied earnestly. "I have been troubled about it, and thought I ought to inquire. I should be so sorry to have my schooldays end. I have been so happy here."
No one could doubt it to look at her radiant face. Mrs. Aldred was much gratified.
Yes, she should hate to part with Daisy now that they were growing so dear to each other. And she felt as if she wanted a life interest in Miss Craven, to know the sort of woman she would make and what she would do with her fortune.
It was May when the reply came, a reply that so astounded Helen, even after reading the letter over two or three times, that she was still bewildered. She took it to Mrs. Aldred.
"Yes," that lady rejoined, "you may read mine. Mrs. Van Dorn keeps her mind as fresh as a person of half her age, and she is past eighty. She has made all the arrangements."
And the arrangements were that Mrs. Aldred should bring Helen to Paris with the other young ladies. She was going there and would be ready to receive her. She was very grateful for the care bestowed upon Helen, she had been very much gratified with the girl's letters, and this must answer until she could express the rest in person.
"And you think – I can't make it seem true," faltered Helen, – "that such a thing should happen to me?"
"It does not altogether surprise me," Mrs. Aldred answered in a reassuring tone. "I surmised this from the beginning. Mrs. Van Dorn took an unusual fancy to you, and knowing you these two years I must give her penetration great credit. For certain reasons, I regret you cannot go on with your education. But you will learn a great deal abroad."
"I feel as if all of life is a school, and you are learning right along to do what comes next. I have worked hard at the French, and now I see the use of it. I dare say it will be so with other things. I wish I were a better musician."
"Mrs. Van Dorn will care more for your voice. You can take excellent singing lessons abroad. Helen, I do congratulate you from the bottom of my heart. And whatever happens I shall always want to be considered your sincere friend. I have been very much interested in your development, and shall continue so to be."
She bent over and kissed Helen, who returned the caress with much warmth.
"You will answer your letter to go by noon to-morrow."
Helen bowed, too much moved to speak.
It was still strange to her. One might dream of an event coming in the future, but to have it here, to put your hand on it, as one might say, dazed her. Daisy was at a music practice, though she did not think she could talk it over with anyone just now.
Miss Craven stood hesitatingly in the half open doorway, with beseeching eyes.
"If you are not too very busy – I'm in trouble about the Latin. Oh, if I could be quick to see into things!" in a passion of regret that emphasized every line of her face where last year it would have been unmoved.
"I had an awful time about it, too, so we can sympathize," smiling cheerfully. "I just wanted something to start up my energies."
"Oh, what should I do without you? Shall I ever be able to go on alone?"
"Think what you have accomplished in the two years," was the reassuring answer.
There was a saunter around the grounds afterwards, meeting several groups of girls and flinging bright jests at each other. Then dinner, the study period, some conversation and it was bedtime. But Helen could not sleep. She smiled to herself as she wondered what Mr. Warfield would say and there was a consciousness that he would think her only half educated. Well, could one ever be wholly educated at sixteen? – even at sixty, professors are learning new things. And, oh, what a stir it would make all through the Hopes!
She was up early the next morning. Daisy was asleep in her little white bed with a smile on her face. Yes, she would hate to leave her and Miss Craven, and several others. She slipped on her lovely Japanese silk morning gown, she reveled in pretty garments nowadays, though they were all befitting a girl of sixteen, and picking up her portfolio she glided softly down to the study room.
Oh, what a morning it was! The sun was throwing out long shining rays in the east and they glistened on the tree-tops, on the distant hills, on the wide slopes, leaving the nooks and haunts in suggestive darkness. Just a dainty little mist fit for dryad robes lingered about. And here at the back, down to the small stream, dogwoods and late red maples and horse-chestnuts were in bloom. Could there be a lovelier picture? Had Europe anything better? And the fragrance might have come from Araby the blest. It was all youth and freshness, and it took her back to the summer of two years ago when everything wonderful had just dawned upon her.
In this mood she wrote her letter. All her life long she was glad she had not come to second thoughts, about the matter, but kept the first thoughts of joyous youth and gladness and gratefulness. The rising bell rang and she hurried along, wrote her last word at the next summons and sealed her letter.
"Where have you been?" cried Daisy at the apparition in trailing gown, as she opened her eyes.
"Writing a letter in the study." Then she hurried into skirt and waist and joined the group going downstairs, giving bright good-mornings to one and another.
"I can't think what ails you," cried Daisy in astonishment. "You look – enchanted and – frightened."
"I will tell you – the first of anybody. It is so strange I hardly believe it myself."
They were all striving their utmost, this group of girls. Examinations were so near, pictures were to be finished, little gifts made to be exchanged, remembrances of one's handiwork. An excursion across the river to add pages to their lore on wild flowers which were to be pressed and put in books. A lecture on Browning that evening down at the town-hall, and Mrs. Wiley was to take a host of girls.
"If he only would read 'Hervé Riel'!" said Helen. And to think she might see the very place where the ships came in safely. It would be worth much to her.
There is always a reaction from an exalted state, and this came to Helen Grant. By degrees she remembered what she might be giving up, what she might be called upon to do. If Miss Gage was coming home, she would take her place, and be companion, have the whims, the impatience, and the restlessness to contend with. She had experienced some of it already. Past eighty – why, that was old age, decrepitude presently, loss of memory – some old people had to be told things over and over again. She had never thought of real old age in connection with Mrs. Van Dorn. And she would spend all her bright young years – there would be no further delightful school, no graduation, no college, and she did love study so.
Mrs. Van Dorn had given her these two splendid years, but if she asked back ten, and she was so confident of living to ninety – oh, could she grant it cheerfully? There would have to be some greater grace than her own. And if God gave her this to do – if the friends of girlhood were denied her, if Mrs. Van Dorn claimed all, would she have to submit?
It was a hard question for sixteen who had only enjoyed two years of freedom about the things she loved best, the thing she wanted most, education.
She told Daisy Bell, who didn't know whether to rejoice or not. It was splendid, of course, but if she should be away for years and all their lovely friendship come to an end!
"For I am sure I shall never find a girl I love so thoroughly, that I depend on, that is a strong tower to me. Mamma said my letters had been her treasures this year, I was taking so much more serious and sacred views of life. And they will be dismal enough next winter."
"Then I am afraid I haven't done you much good," Helen smiled through tears.
"Yes, you have. And I will try to remember all the nice talks we have had and keep strong on them. We will appoint one hour in the day when we shall always think of each other."
"And pray that God may give us grace to remember for years if there is need," Helen returned solemnly.
Miss Craven was glad for her. "It must be wonderful to have a person care that much for you," she said, "to want to keep you near her. Why, it is almost as mothers feel, I suppose. I couldn't bear the thought of you being away alone – if you were alone I should ask you to come and be a sister to me. I don't know how I can get along without you, but I must try and comfort myself with the thought of what you have been to me. And, oh, if you should be absent years, I will come over. Why, I should like to see the dear old lady who loves you so."
Helen felt almost convicted of ingratitude.