At the lower-lake port she was met by an old French priest, one of Père Michaux's friends, who took her to the railway station in a carriage, bought her ticket, checked her trunk, gave her a few careful words of instruction as to the journey, and then, business matters over, sat down by her side and talked to her with enchanting politeness and ease until the moment of departure. Père Michaux had arranged this: although not of their faith, Anne was to travel all the way to New York in the care of the Roman Catholic Church, represented by its priests, handed from one to the next, and met at the entrance of the great city by another, who would cross the river for the purpose, in order that her young island eyes might not be confused by the crowd and turmoil. At first Dr. Gaston had talked of escorting Anne in person; but it was so long since he had travelled anywhere, and he was so absent-minded, that it was evident even to himself that Anne would in reality escort him. Miss Lois had the children, and of course could not leave them.
"I would go myself if there was any necessity for it," said Père Michaux, "but there is not. Let me arrange it, and I promise you that Anne shall reach her school in safety; I will have competent persons to meet her all along the route – unless, indeed, you have friends of your own upon whom you prefer to rely?"
This was one of the little winds which Père Michaux occasionally sent over the self-esteem of his two Protestant companions: he could not help it. Dr. Gaston frowned: he had not an acquaintance between New York and the island, and Père Michaux knew it. But Miss Lois, undaunted, rushed into the fray.
"Oh, certainly, it would be quite easy for us to have her met by friends on the way," she began, making for the moment common and Protestant cause with Dr. Gaston; "it would require only a few letters. In New England I should have my own family connections to call upon – persons of the highest respectability, descendants, most of them, of the celebrated patriot Israel Putnam."
"Certainly," replied Père Michaux. "I understand. Then I will leave Anne to you."
"But unfortunately, as Anne is going to New York, not Boston, my connections do not live along the route, exactly," continued Miss Lois, the adverb standing for a small matter of a thousand miles or so; "nor," she added, again admitting Dr. Gaston to a partnership, "can we make them."
"There remain, then, the pastors of your church," said the priest.
"Certainly – the pastors. It will be the simplest thing in the world for Dr. Gaston to write to them; they will be delighted to take charge of any friend of ours."
The chaplain pushed his wig back a little, and murmured, "Church Almanac."
Miss Lois glanced at him angrily. "I am sure I do not know what Dr. Gaston means by mentioning 'Church Almanac' in that way," she said, sharply. "We know most of the prominent pastors, of course. Dr. Shepherd, for instance, and Dr. Dell."
Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Dell, who occasionally came up to the island during the summer for a few days of rest, lived in the lower-lake town where Anne's long railway journey began. They were not pastors, but rectors, and the misuse of the terms grated on the chaplain's Anglican ear. But he was a patient man, and accustomed now to the heterogeneous phrasing of the Western border.
"And besides," added Miss Lois, triumphantly, "there is the bishop!"
Now the bishop lived five miles farther. It was not evident, therefore, to the ordinary mind what aid these reverend gentlemen could give to Anne, all living, as they did, at the western beginning of her railway journey; but Miss Lois, who, like others of her sex, possessed the power (unattainable by man) of rising above mere logical sequence, felt that she had conquered.
"I have no bishops to offer," said Père Michaux, with mock humility; "only ordinary priests. I will therefore leave Anne to your care, Miss Lois – yours and Dr. Gaston's."
So the discussion ended, and Miss Lois came off with Protestant colors flying. None the less Père Michaux wrote his letters; and Dr. Gaston did not write his. For the two men understood each other. There was no need for the old chaplain to say, plainly, "I have lived out of the world so long that I have not a single clerical friend this side of New York upon whom I can call"; the priest comprehended it without words. And there was no need for Père Michaux to parade the close ties and net-work of communication which prevailed in the ancient Church to which he belonged; the chaplain knew them without the telling. Each understood the other; and being men, they could do without the small teasing comments, like the buzzing of flies, with which women enliven their days. Thus it happened that Anne Douglas travelled from the northern island across to the great city on the ocean border in the charge of the Roman Catholic Church.
She arrived in New York worn out and bewildered, and having lost her sense of comparison by the strangeness and fatigue of the long journey, she did not appreciate the city's size, the crowded streets, and roar of traffic, but regarded everything vaguely, like a tired child who has neither surprise nor attention to give.
At length the carriage stopped; she went up a broad flight of stone steps; she was entering an open door. Some one was speaking to her; she was in a room where there were chairs, and she sank down. The priest who had brought her from the other side of the river was exchanging a few words with a lady; he was going; he was gone. The lady was coming toward her.
"You are very tired, my child;" she said. "Let me take you a moment to Tante, and then you can go to your room."
"To Tante?" said Anne.
"Yes, to Tante, or Madame Moreau, the principal of the school. She expects you."
CHAPTER IX
"Manners – not what, but how. Manners are happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love – now repeated and hardened into usage. Manners require time; nothing is more vulgar than haste."
– Emerson.
Madame Moreau was a Frenchwoman, small and old, with a thin shrewd face and large features. She wore a plain black satin gown, the narrow skirt gathered in the old-fashioned style, and falling straight to the floor; the waist of the gown, fastened behind, was in front plaited into a long rounded point. Broad ruffles of fine lace shielded her throat and hands, and her cap, garnished with violet velvet, was trimmed with the same delicate fabric. She was never a handsome woman even in youth, and she was now seventy-five years of age; yet she was charming.
She rose, kissed the young girl lightly on each cheek, and said a few words of welcome. Her manner was affectionate, but impersonal. She never took fancies; but neither did she take dislikes. That her young ladies were all charming young persons was an axiom never allowed to be brought into question; that they were simply and gracefully feminine was with equal firmness established. Other schools of modern and American origin might make a feature of public examinations, with questions by bearded professors from boys' colleges; but the establishment of Madame Moreau knew nothing of such innovations. The Frenchwoman's idea was not a bad one; good or bad, it was inflexible. She was a woman of marked character, and may be said to have accomplished much good in a mannerless generation and land. Thoroughly French, she was respected and loved by all her American scholars; and it will be long ere her name and memory fade away.
Miss Vanhorn did not come to see her niece until a week had passed. Anne had been assigned to the lowest French class among the children, had taken her first singing lesson from one Italian, fat, rosy, and smiling, and her first Italian lesson from another, lean, old, and soiled, had learned to answer questions in the Moreau French, and to talk a little, as well as to comprehend the fact that her clothes were remarkable, and that she herself was considered an oddity, when one morning Tante sent word that she was to come down to the drawing-room to see a visitor.
The visitor was an old woman with black eyes, a black wig, shining false teeth, a Roman nose, and a high color (which was, however, natural), and she was talking to Tante, who, with her own soft gray hair, and teeth which if false did not appear so, looked charmingly real beside her. Miss Vanhorn was short and stout; she was muffled in an India shawl, and upon her hands were a pair of cream-colored kid gloves much too large for her, so that when she fumbled, as she did every few moments, in an embroidered bag for aromatic seeds coated with sugar, she had much difficulty in finding them, owing to the empty wrinkled ends of the glove fingers. She lifted a gold-rimmed eye-glass to her eyes as Anne entered, and coolly inspected her.
"Dear me! dear me!" she said. Then, in execrable French, "What can be done with such a young savage as this?"
"How do you do, aunt?" said Anne, using the conventional words with a slight tremor in her voice. This was the woman who had brought up her mother – her dear, unremembered mother.
"Grandaunt," said Miss Vanhorn, tartly. "Sit down; I can not bear to have people standing in front of me. How old are you?"
"I am seventeen, grandaunt."
Miss Vanhorn let her eyeglass drop, and groaned. "Can anything be done with her?" she asked, closing her eyes tightly, and turning toward Tante, while Anne flushed crimson, not so much from the criticism as the unkindness.
"Oh yes," said Tante, taking the opportunity given by the closed eyes to pat the young girl's hand encouragingly. "Miss Douglas is very intelligent; and she has a fine mezzo-soprano voice. Signor Belzini is much pleased with it. It would be well, also, I think, if you would allow her to take a few dancing lessons."
"She will have no occasion for dancing," answered Miss Vanhorn, still with her eyes closed.
"It was not so much for the dancing itself as for grace of carriage," replied Tante. "Miss Douglas has a type of figure rare among American girls."
"I should say so, indeed!" groaned the other, shaking her head gloomily, still voluntarily blinded.
"But none the less beautiful in its way," continued Tante, unmoved. "It is the Greek type."
"I am not acquainted with any Greeks," replied Miss Vanhorn.
"You are still as devoted as ever to the beautiful and refined study of plant life, dear madame," pursued Tante, changing the current of conversation. "How delightful to have a young relative to assist you, with the fresh and ardent interest belonging to her age, when the flowers bloom again upon the rural slopes of Haarderwyck!" As Tante said this, she looked off dreamily into space, as if she saw aunt and niece wandering together through groves of allegorical flowers.
"She is not likely to see Haarderwyck," answered Miss Vanhorn. Then, after a moment's pause – a pause which Tante did not break – she peered at Anne with half-open eyes, and asked, abruptly, "Do you, then, know anything of botany?"
Tante made a slight motion with her delicate withered old hand. But Anne did not comprehend her, and answered, honestly, "No, grandaunt, I do not."
"Bah!" said Miss Vanhorn; "I might have known without the asking. Make what you can of her, madame. I will pay your bill for one year: no longer. But no nonsense, no extras, mind that." Again she sought a caraway seed, pursuing it vindictively along the bottom of her bag, and losing it at the last, after all.
"As regards wardrobe, I would advise some few changes," said Tante, smoothly. "It is one of my axioms that pupils study to greater advantage when their thoughts are not disturbed by deficiencies in dress. Conformity to our simple standard is therefore desirable."
"It may be desirable; it is not always, on that account, attainable," answered Miss Vanhorn, conveying a finally caught seed to her mouth, dropping it at the last moment, and carefully and firmly biting the seam of the glove finger in its place.
"Purchases are made for the pupils with discretion by one of our most experienced teachers," continued Tante.
"Glad to hear it," said her visitor, releasing the glove finger, and pretending to chew the seed which was not there.
"But I do not need anything, Tante," interposed Anne, the deep color deepening in her cheeks.
"So much the better," said her grandaunt, dryly, "since you will have nothing."
She went away soon afterward somewhat placated, owing to skillful reminiscences of a favorite cousin, who, it seemed, had been one of Tante's "dearest pupils" in times past; "a true Vanhorn, worthy of her Knickerbocker blood." The word "Neeker-bo-ker," delicately comprehended, applied, and, what was more important still, limited, was one of Tante's most telling achievements – a shibboleth. She knew all the old Dutch names, and remembered their intermarriages; she was acquainted with the peculiar flavor of Huguenot descent; she comprehended the especial aristocracy of Tory families, whose original property had been confiscated by a raw republic under George Washington. Ah! skillful old Tante, what a general you would have made!
Anne Douglas, the new pupil, was now left to face the school with her island-made gowns, and what courage she could muster. Fortunately the gowns were black and severely plain. Tante, not at all disturbed by Miss Vanhorn's refusal, ordered a simple cloak and bonnet for her through an inexpensive French channel, so that in the street she passed unremarked; but, in the house, every-day life required more courage than scaling a wall. Girls are not brutal, like boys, but their light wit is pitiless. The Southern pupils, provided generously with money in the lavish old-time Southern way, the day scholars, dressed with the exquisite simplicity of Northern school-girls of good family, glanced with amusement at the attire of this girl from the Northwest. This girl, being young, felt their glances; as a refuge, she threw herself into her studies with double energy, and gaining confidence respecting what she had been afraid was her island patois, she advanced so rapidly in the French classes that she passed from the lowest to the highest, and was publicly congratulated by Tante herself. In Italian her progress was more slow. Her companion, in the class of two, was a beautiful dark-eyed Southern girl, who read musically, but seldom deigned to open her grammar. The forlorn, soiled old exile to whom, with unconscious irony, the bath-room had been assigned for recitations in the crowded house, regarded this pupil with mixed admiration and despair. Her remarks on Mary Stuart, represented by Alfieri, were nicely calculated to rouse him to patriotic fury, and then, when the old man burst forth in a torrent of excited words, she would raise her soft eyes in surprise, and inquire if he was ill. The two girls sat on the bath-tub, which was decorously covered over and cushioned; the exile had a chair for dignity's sake. Above, in a corresponding room, a screen was drawn round the tub, and a piano placed against it. Here, all day long, another exile, a German music-master, with little gold rings in his ears, gave piano lessons, and Anne was one of his pupils. To Signor Belzini, the teacher of vocal music, the drawing-room itself was assigned. He was a prosperous and smiling Italian, who had a habit of bringing pieces of pink cream candy with him, and arranging them in a row on the piano for his own refreshment after each song. There was an atmosphere of perfume and mystery about Belzini. It was whispered that he knew the leading opera-singers, even taking supper with them sometimes after the opera. The pupils exhausted their imaginations in picturing to each other the probable poetry and romance of these occasions.
Belzini was a musical trick-master; but he was not ignorant. When Anne came to take her first lesson, he smiled effusively, as usual, took a piece of candy, and, while enjoying it, asked if she could read notes, and gave her the "Drinking Song" from Lucrezia Borgia as a trial. Anne sang it correctly without accompaniment, but slowly and solemnly as a dead march. It is probable that "Il Segreto" never heard itself so sung before or since. Belzini was walking up and down with his plump hands behind him.
"You have never heard it sung?" he said.
"No," replied Anne.
"Sing something else, then. Something you like yourself."
After a moment's hesitation, Anne sang an island ballad in the voyageur patois.
"May I ask who has taught you, mademoiselle?"
"My father," said the pupil, with a slight tremor in her voice.
"He must be a cultivated musician, although of the German school," said Belzini, seating himself at the piano and running his white fingers over the keys. "Try these scales."
It was soon understood that "the islander" could sing as well as study. Tolerance was therefore accorded to her. But not much more. It is only in "books for the young" that poorly clad girls are found leading whole schools by the mere power of intellectual or moral supremacy. The emotional type of boarding-school, also, is seldom seen in cities; its home is amid the dead lethargy of a winter-bound country village.
The great event in the opening of Anne's school life was her first opera. Tante, not at all blinded by the country garb and silence of the new pupil, had written her name with her own hand upon the opera list for the winter, without consulting Miss Vanhorn, who would, however, pay for it in the end, as she would also pay for the drawing and dancing lessons ordered by the same autocratic command. For it was one of Tante's rules to cultivate every talent of the agreeable and decorative order which her pupils possessed; she bathed them as the photographer bathes his shadowy plate, bringing out and "setting," as it were, as deeply as possible, their colors, whatever they happened to be. Tante always attended the opera in person. Preceded by the usher, the old Frenchwoman glided down the awkward central aisle of the Academy of Music, with her inimitable step, clad in her narrow satin gown and all her laces, well aware that tongues in every direction were saying: "There is Madame Moreau at the head of her school, as usual. What a wonderful old lady she is!" While the pupils were filing into their places, Tante remained in the aisle fanning herself majestically, and surveying them with a benignant smile. When all were seated, with a graceful little bend she glided into her place at the end, the motion of sitting down and the bend fused into one in a manner known only to herself.
Anne's strong idealism, shown in her vivid although mistaken conceptions of Shakspeare's women, was now turned into the channel of opera music. After hearing several operas, she threw herself into her Italian songs with so much fervor that Belzini sat aghast; this was not the manner in which demoiselles of private life should sing. Tante, passing one day (by the merest chance, of course) through the drawing-room while Anne was singing, paused a moment to listen. "Ma fille," she said, when the song was ended, tapping Anne's shoulder affably, "give no more expression to the Italian words you sing than to the syllables of your scales. Interpretations are not required." The old Frenchwoman always put down with iron hand what she called the predominant tendency toward too great freedom – sensationalism – in young girls. She spent her life in a constant struggle with the American "jeune fille."
During this time Rast wrote regularly; but his letters, not being authorized by Miss Vanhorn, Anne's guardian, passed first through the hands of one of the teachers, and the knowledge of this inspection naturally dulled the youth's pen. But Anne's letters to him passed the same ordeal without change in word or in spirit. Miss Lois and Dr. Gaston wrote once a week; Père Michaux contented himself with postscripts added to the long, badly spelled, but elaborately worded epistles with which Mademoiselle Tita favored her elder sister. It was evident to Anne that Miss Lois was having a severe winter.
The second event in Anne's school life was the gaining of a friend.
At first it was but a musical companion. Helen Lorrington lived not far from the school; she was one of Tante's old scholars, and this Napoleon of teachers especially liked this pupil, who was modelled after her own heart. Helen held what may be called a woman's most untrammelled position in life, namely, that of a young widow, protected but not controlled, rich, beautiful, and without children. She was also heir to the estate of an eccentric grandfather, who detested her, yet would not allow his money to go to any collateral branch. He detested her because her father was a Spaniard, whose dark eyes had so reprehensibly fascinated his little Dutch daughter that she had unexpectedly plucked up courage to marry in spite of the paternal prohibition, and not only that, but to be very happy also during the short portion of life allotted to her afterward. The young Spanish husband, with an unaccountable indifference to the wealth for which he was supposed to have plotted so perseveringly, was pusillanimous enough to die soon afterward, leaving only one little pale-faced child, a puny girl, to inherit the money. The baby Helen had never possessed the dimples and rose tints that make the beauty of childhood; the girl Helen had not the rounded curves and peach-like bloom that make the beauty of youth. At seventeen she was what she was now; therefore at seventeen she was old. At twenty-seven she was what she was then; therefore at twenty-seven she was young.
She was tall, and extremely, marvellously slender; yet her bones were so small that there were no angles visible in all her graceful length. She was a long woman; her arms were long, her throat was long, her eyes and face were long. Her form, slight enough for a spirit, was as natural as the swaying grasses on a hill-side. She was as flexible as a ribbon. Her beauties were a regally poised little head, a delicately cut profile, and a remarkable length of hair; her peculiarities, the color of this hair, the color of her skin, and the narrowness of her eyes. The hue of her hair was called flaxen; but it was more than that – it was the color of bleached straw. There was not a trace of gold in it, nor did it ever shine, but hung, when unbound, a soft even mass straight down below the knee. It was very thick, but so fine that it was manageable; it was never rough, because there were no short locks. The complexion which accompanied this hair was white, with an under-tint of ivory. There are skins with under-tints of pink, of blue, and of brown; but this was different in that it shaded off into cream, without any indication of these hues. This soft ivory-color gave a shade of fuller richness to the slender straw-haired woman – an effect increased by the hue of the eyes, when visible under the long light lashes. For Helen's eyes were of a bright dark unexpected brown. The eyes were so long and narrow, however, that generally only a line of bright brown looked at you when you met their gaze. Small features, narrow cheeks, delicate lips, and little milk-white teeth, like a child's, completed this face which never had a red tint, even the lips being but faintly colored. There were many men who, seeing Helen Lorrington for the first time, thought her exquisitely beautiful; there were others who, seeing her for the first time, thought her singularly ugly. The second time, there was never a question. Her grandfather called her an albino; but he was nearly blind, and could only see the color of her hair. He could not see the strong brown light of her eyes, or the soft ivory complexion, which never changed in the wind, the heat, or the cold.
Mrs. Lorrington was always dressed richly, but after a fashion of her own. Instead of disguising the slenderness of her form, she intensified it; instead of contrasting hues, she often wore amber tints like her hair. Amid all her silks, jewels, and laces, there was always supreme her own personality, which reduced her costumes to what, after all, costumes should be, merely the subordinate coverings of a beautiful woman.
Helen had a clear, flute-like voice, with few low notes, and a remarkably high range. She continued her lessons with Belzini whenever she was in the city, more in order that he might transpose her songs for her than for any instruction he could now bestow. She was an old pupil of his, and the sentimental Italian adored her; this adoration, however, did not prevent him from being very comfortable at home with his portly wife. One morning Helen, coming in for a moment to leave a new song, found Anne at the piano taking her lesson. Belzini, always anxious to please his fair-haired divinity, motioned to her to stay and listen. Anne's rich voice pleased her ears; but she had heard rich voices before. What held her attention now was the girl herself. For although Helen was a marvel of self-belief, although she made her own peculiar beauty an object of worship, and was so saturated with knowledge of herself that she could not take an attitude which did not become her, she yet possessed a comprehension of other types of beauty, and had, if not an admiration for, at least a curiosity about, them. In Anne she recognized at once what Tante had also recognized – unfolding beauty of an unfamiliar type, the curves of a nobly shaped form hidden under an ugly gown, above the round white throat a beautiful head, and a singularly young face shadowed by a thoughtfulness which was very grave and impersonal when compared with the usual light, self-centred expressions of young girls' faces. At once Helen's artistic eye had Anne before her, robed in fit attire; in imagination she dressed her slowly from head to foot as the song went on, and was considering the question of jewels when the music ceased, and Belzini was turning toward her.
"I hope I may become better acquainted with this rich voice," she said, coming back gracefully to the present. "May I introduce myself? I should like to try a duet with you, if you will allow me, Miss – "
"Douglas," said Belzini; "and this, mademoiselle, is Mrs. Lorrington."
Such was the beginning.
In addition to Helen's fancy for Anne's fair grave face, the young girl's voice proved a firmer support for her high soprano than it had ever obtained. Her own circle in society and the music classes had been searched in vain more than once. For she needed a soprano, not a contralto. And as soprani are particularly human, there had never been any lasting co-operation. Anne, however, cheerfully sang whatever Belzini put before her, remained admiringly silent while Helen executed the rapid runs and trills with which she always decorated her part, and then, when the mezzo was needed again, gave her full voice willingly, supporting the other as the notes of an organ meet and support a flute after its solo.
Belzini was in ecstasies; he sat up all night to copy music for them. He said, anxiously, to Helen: "And the young girl? You like her, do you not? Such a voice for you!"
"But I can not exactly buy young girls, can I?" said Mrs. Lorrington, smiling.
More and more, however, each day she liked "the young girl" for herself alone. She was an original, of course; almost an aboriginal; for she told the truth exactly upon all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and she had convictions. She was not aware, apparently, of the old-fashioned and cumbrous appearance of these last-named articles of mental furniture. But the real secret of Helen's liking lay in the fact that Anne admired her, and was at the same time neither envious nor jealous, and from her youth she had been troubled by the sure development of these two feelings, sooner or later, in all her girl companions. In truth, Helen's lot was enviable; and also, whether consciously or unconsciously, she had a skill in provoking jealousy. She was the spoiled child of fortune. It was no wonder, therefore, that those of her own sex and age seldom enjoyed being with her: the contrast was too great. Helen was, besides, the very queen of Whim.
The queen of Whim! By nature; which means that she had a highly developed imagination. By the life she had led, having never, save for the six short months of her husband's adoring rule, been under the control, or even advice, of any man. For whim can be thoroughly developed only in feminine households: it is essentially feminine. And Helen had been brought up by a maiden aunt, who lived alone. A man, however mild, demands in a home at least a pretense of fixed hours and regularity; only a household of women is capable of no regularity at all, of changing the serious dinner hour capriciously, and even giving up dinner altogether. Only a household of women has sudden inspirations as to journeys and departures within the hour; brings forth sudden ideas as to changes of route while actually on the way, and a going southward instead of westward, with a total indifference to supper. Helen's present whim was Anne.
"I want you to spend part of the holidays with me," she said, a few days before Christmas. "Come on Monday, and stay over New-Year's Day."
"Oh, I can not," said Anne, startled.
"Why not? Tante will consent if I ask her; she always does. Do you love this crowded house so much that you can not leave it?"
"It is not that. But – "
"But you are shy. But Miss Vanhorn might not like it. You do not know Aunt Margaretta. You have no silk gown. Now let me talk. I will write to Miss Vanhorn. Aunt Margaretta is as gentle as a dove. I am bold enough for two. And the silk dress shall come from me."
"I could not take that, Mrs. Lorrington."
"Because you are proud?"
"No; but because I would rather not. It would be too great an obligation."
"You repay me by your voice a thousandfold, Anne. I have never had the right voice for mine until now; and therefore the obligation is on my side. I do not speak of the pleasure your visit will give me, because I hope to make that mutual. But say no more. I intend to have my way."