Helen Grant's Schooldays

She did know one day before she sailed and her heart thrilled with a warmth it had not known in a long while. Clara was serene, useful, patient, but she did lack enthusiasm.

There were steps and voices, gay laughs, some new girls had come, some old ones rushed out to welcome them. Helen turned and saw her trunks and began to devote herself to unpacking. There was a best hat in a compartment. She opened the wardrobe door and on the shelf were two hat boxes. That was settled. The small articles she laid on the rug, and lifted out the tray. Then came the gowns and skirts, the shirtwaists and all the paraphernalia. She found places for them. But here were two very precious belongings, the Madonna she had once coveted, and a tall vase of roses with a few fallen leaves so natural that one felt inclined to brush them off. There was also an extremely fine photograph of Mrs. Van Dorn. Of course the artist had done his best and turned back the hand of time; she was not over fifty that day.

Helen was much interested in "settling." There were hooks for her pictures, so she stood up on a chair and hung them. There were several pretty table ornaments, her writing desk with its outfit.

Some one tapped at the partly-opened door. She found a bright rosy-cheeked girl with a fluff of golden red hair, and a laughing face.

"You are one of the new girls," exclaimed a merry voice. "I'm Roxy Mays, not half as hard as my name sounds. In full its Roxalana. I've tried several other ways of shortening it, but they are delusions and snares. I was named after a rich old great-aunt, she was my sponsor and consented to promise I should renounce everything desirable. Why is it that rich people have such ugly names and are always wanting to perpetuate them, or do you get rich on an ugly name? There ought to be some compensation. Now – have you any objection to stating yours before supper time?"

"Mine is Helen Grant."

"Oh, that is splendid and strong and easy to call. There was Helen Mar, and Helen of Troy, and several other famous Helens. Well, I like your name to begin with. Are you going to be a doctor?"

"A doctor!" Helen gave a little shudder.

"Oh, that settles it. You haven't the courage for all you look so brave. Two of our last year's graduates have chosen that walk in life. One goes to New York bound to work her way through, the other to Wellesley. Seven years of study, think of it and weep!"

"But if she loves to study?"

"Depravity of taste. Spider, ask in this timid fly hovering about your gates," and as Helen stepped back with a gesture of the hand Miss Mays entered and glanced around, though she kept on talking. "Do you like getting settled, and are you not bothered about the right places? – oh," with almost a shriek – "you have that lovely Bodenhausen Madonna! I have the Sichel and I never can decide which I like best. And then Gabriel Marx, and Dangerfield! We're not hopelessly modern, for I have the Sistine. Nearly every girl has it. And oh, who is this handsome woman? A Duchess at the very least!"

"That is – a dear friend," Helen flushed. "That must have been taken when she was younger. She is quite old now."

"Elderly. There may be old men and old peasant women in pictures, but the living women are simply elderly. Well, one wouldn't mind growing old if one could look like that. Have you ever been away at school before?"

"No," returned Helen.

"North, South, East or West? Brevity is the soul of wit. I sometimes set up for a wit when I can do it on a small capital."

"Rather southerly from here," laughed Helen. "A little country place called Hope Center."

"Hope Center. Helen Grant. Well that has a sound! You will do. What else are you going to put up?"

"I haven't anything else."

"That's delightful. Most girls bring so much from home, to cry over. You don't really look like the crying kind. And school girl treasures accumulate fearfully. It's nice to have a place to put the new ones."

She had a small photograph of Mrs. Dayton in her writing desk. There had not been any keepsakes to bring.

"Won't you come and be introduced to some of the girls? They are in Daisy Bell's room."

"Wouldn't I – " she hesitated.

"Be an intruder? Oh dear no. The sooner you get over these things the better. Come!"

She took Helen's hand and led her to a room two or three doors down. The screens had been pushed aside. On one bed sat two girls, two others were hanging pictures and spreading bric-a-brac on brackets and shelves. One of the girls was still in short skirts, and Helen felt secretly glad. This was Daisy Bell.

"Oh, thank goodness you're not grown up," cried Daisy, eyeing her from head to toe. "I wept, I prayed, I entreated for long skirts, and I couldn't move my mother, any more than the rock of Gibraltar."

"Well, you're not a senior. Why should you care?"

"How old are you, Miss Grant?"

"Past fourteen the last of June."

"Oh, how tall for that! I'm fifteen. But I have two older sisters, and they are always saying 'That child, Daisy,' as if I was about seven. How many sisters have you?"

"None. And no father or mother."

"You poor wretched orphan!"

"She doesn't look a bit wretched, Roxy Mays," said a girl who had been surveying her. "The juniors are all down there," nodding toward the lower end of the hall, "so you might have known she wasn't 'sweet and twenty.'"

"At what age do you begin to grow sweet so as to get ready for the twenty?"

"Oh, girls, don't let's hurry into the twenty. I'd like to stay sixteen three years, and seventeen four years."

"I wish they'd made the years longer. There could have been another month or two put in vacation time."

"What is Hope Center like?" asked one of the girls. "It doesn't sound like a city."

"It's the country, farms mostly. North Hope is the real town part, and quite pretty, with stores, and churches, and a library, and a small but nice park."

"There's a lovely old park here. Everything is old. There are the oldest women you ever saw. One of them shook hands with Lafayette."

"And I've shaken hands with ever so many people and not a Lafayette or a Washington among them," declared Roxy most lugubriously.

"Now look, girls, would you hang this picture here?"

"I think it's rather dark. Bring it over here."

"Yes, that's better. No one asks Miss Grant to sit down."

"'No stars were shining in the sky —

There were no stars to shine.'

No chairs were idly standing round,

In schools they never do abound,"

laughed Daisy Bell. "Miss Grant, sit on the bed. It won't break down."

"Oh, I don't mind," returned Helen.

"What I am to do with all these things!" moaned Daisy, glancing helplessly about.

"Miss Grant has begun sensibly. She did not cart a lot of truck away from home."

Helen had a mind to say humorously "There was no truck to cart," but two others began to talk at once, and she wondered how they could say such bright merry things. It seemed as if she had never seen real girls before.

Then Daisy finished up and they went down on the big back porch where chairs were plenty and hammocks were swung. Helen was introduced to another bevy of girls, some quite young ladies it seemed. They all went in to supper presently, and Helen found herself next to Daisy Bell. The six girls at this table were all young. Afterwards they went out of doors again and Miss Aldred joined them, welcoming several of the new arrivals personally. She had a very sweet face without being really pretty. She came over to Helen after a few moments and said in a low tone. "You are Mrs. Van Dorn's protégée. I hope you will be very happy among us."

"Oh, I am sure I shall," returned Helen.

At nine there was a hymn sung and a brief prayer. Then the girls dispersed, and at ten everybody was in bed.

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."