Mr. Bradshaw was obliged to leave town for a week or two on business
connected with the great land-claim. On his return, feeling in pretty
good spirits, as the prospects looked favorable, he went to make a call
at The Poplars. He asked first for Miss Hazard.
“Bliss your soul, Mr. Bridshaw,” answered Mistress Kitty Fagan, “she's
been gahn nigh a wake. It's to the city, to the big school, they've sint
her.”
This announcement seemed to make a deep impression on Murray Bradshaw,
for his feelings found utterance in one of the most energetic forms of
language to which ears polite or impolite are accustomed. He next asked
for Miss Silence, who soon presented herself. Mr. Bradshaw asked, in a
rather excited way, “Is it possible, Miss Withers, that your niece has
quitted you to go to a city school?”
Miss Silence answered, with her chief--mourner expression, and her
death-chamber tone: “Yes, she has left us for a season. I trust it
may not be her destruction. I had hoped in former years that she would
become a missionary, but I have given up all expectation of that now.
Two whole years, from the age of four to that of six, I had prevailed
upon her to give up sugar,--the money so saved to go to a graduate
of our institution--who was afterwards----he labored among the
cannibal-islanders. I thought she seemed to take pleasure in this small
act of self-denial, but I have since suspected that Kitty gave her
secret lumps. It was by Mr. Gridley's advice that she went, and by his
pecuniary assistance. What could I do? She was bent on going, and I was
afraid she would have fits, or do something dreadful, if I did not let
her have her way. I am afraid she will come back to us spoiled. She has
seemed so fond of dress lately, and once she spoke of learning--yes,
Mr. Bradshaw, of learning to--dance! I wept when I heard of it. Yes, I
wept.”
That was such a tremendous thing to think of, and especially to speak of
in Mr. Bradshaw's presence, for the most pathetic image in the world to
many women is that of themselves in tears,--that it brought a return of
the same overflow, which served as a substitute for conversation until
Miss Badlam entered the apartment.
Miss Cynthia followed the same general course of remark. They could not
help Myrtle's going if they tried. She had always maintained that, if
they had only once broke her will when she was little, they would have
kept the upper hand of her; but her will never was broke. They came
pretty near it once, but the child would n't give in.
Miss Cynthia went to the door with Mr. Bradshaw, and the conversation
immediately became short and informal.
“Demonish pretty business! All up for a year or more,--hey?”
“Don't blame me,--I couldn't stop her.”
“Give me her address,--I 'll write to her. Any young men teach in the
school?”
“Can't tell you. She'll write to Olive and Bathsheba, and I'll find out
all about it.”
Murray Bradshaw went home and wrote a long letter to Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place, containing many interesting remarks and
inquiries, some of the latter relating to Madam Delacoste's institution
for the education of young ladies.
While this was going on at Oxbow Village, Myrtle was establishing
herself at the rather fashionable school to which Mr. Gridley had
recommended her. Mrs. or Madam Delacoste's boarding-school had a name
which on the whole it deserved pretty well. She had some very good
instructors for girls who wished to get up useful knowledge in case they
might marry professors or ministers. They had a chance to learn music,
dancing, drawing, and the way of behaving in company. There was a
chance, too, to pick up available acquaintances, for many rich people
sent their daughters to the school, and it was something to have been
bred in their company.
There was the usual division of the scholars into a first and second
set, according to the social position, mainly depending upon the
fortune, of the families to which they belonged. The wholesale dealer's
daughter very naturally considered herself as belonging to a different
order from the retail dealer's daughter. The keeper of a great hotel and
the editor of a widely circulated newspaper were considered as ranking
with the wholesale dealers, and their daughters belonged also to the
untitled nobility which has the dollar for its armorial bearing. The
second set had most of the good scholars, and some of the prettiest
girls; but nobody knew anything about their families, who lived off the
great streets and avenues, or vegetated in country towns.
Myrtle Hazard's advent made something like a sensation. They did not
know exactly what to make of her. Hazard? Hazard? No great firm of that
name. No leading hotel kept by any Hazard, was there? No newspaper of
note edited by anybody called Hazard, was there? Came from where? Oxbow
Village. Oh, rural district. Yes.--Still they could not help owning
that she was handsome, a concession which of course had to be made with
reservations.
“Don't you think she's vuiry good-lookin'?” said a Boston girl to a New
York girl. “I think she's real pooty.”
“I dew, indeed. I didn't think she was haaf so handsome the feeest time
I saw her,” answered the New York girl.
“What a pity she had n't been bawn in Bawston!”
“Yes, and moved very young to Ne Yock!”
“And married a sarsaparilla man, and lived in Fiff Avenoo, and moved in
the fust society.”
“Better dew that than be strong-mainded, and dew your own cook'n, and
live in your own kitch'n.”
“Don't forgit to send your card when you are Mrs. Old Dr. Jacob!”
“Indeed I shaan't. What's the name of the alley, and which bell?” The
New York girl took out a memorandum-book as if to put it down.
“Had n't you better let me write it for you, dear?” said the Boston
girl. “It is as well to have it legible, you know.”
“Take it,” said the New York girl. “There 's tew York shill'ns in it
when I hand it to you.”
“Your whole quarter's allowance, I bullieve,--ain't it?” said the Boston
girl.
“Elegant manners, correct deportment, and propriety of language will be
strictly attended to in this institution. The most correct standards of
pronunciation will be inculcated by precept and example. It will be
the special aim of the teachers to educate their pupils out of all
provincialisms, so that they may be recognized as well-bred English
scholars wherever the language is spoken in its purity.”--Extract from
the Prospectus of Madam Delacoste's Boarding-school.
Myrtle Hazard was a puzzle to all the girls. Striking, they all agreed,
but then the criticisms began. Many of the girls chattered a little
broken French, and one of them, Miss Euphrosyne De Lacy, had been half
educated in Paris, so that she had all the phrases which are to social
operators what his cutting instruments are to the surgeon. Her face she
allowed was handsome; but her style, according to this oracle, was
a little bourgeoise, and her air not exactly comme il faut. More
specifically, she was guilty of contours fortement prononces,--corsage
de paysanne,--quelque chose de sauvage, etc., etc. This girl prided
herself on her figure.
Miss Bella Pool, (La Belle Poule as the demi-Parisian girl had
christened her,) the beauty of the school, did not think so much of
Myrtle's face, but considered her figure as better than the De Lacy
girl's.
The two sets, first and second, fought over her as the Greeks and
Trojans over a dead hero, or the Yale College societies over a live
freshman. She was nobody by her connections, it is true, so far as
they could find out, but then, on the other hand, she had the walk of
a queen, and she looked as if a few stylish dresses and a season or
two would make her a belle of the first water. She had that air of
indifference to their little looks and whispered comments which is
surest to disarm all the critics of a small tattling community. On the
other hand, she came to this school to learn, and not to play; and the
modest and more plainly dressed girls, whose fathers did not sell by the
cargo, or keep victualling establishments for some hundreds of people,
considered her as rather in sympathy with them than with the daughters
of the rough-and-tumble millionnaires who were grappling and rolling
over each other in the golden dust of the great city markets.
She did not mean to belong exclusively to either of their sets. She came
with that sense of manifold deficiencies, and eager ambition to supply
them, which carries any learner upward, as if on wings, over the heads
of the mechanical plodders and the indifferent routinists. She learned,
therefore, in a way to surprise the experienced instructors. Her
somewhat rude sketching soon began to show something of the artist's
touch. Her voice, which had only been taught to warble the simplest
melodies, after a little training began to show its force and sweetness
and flexibility in the airs that enchant drawing-room audiences.
She caught with great readiness the manner of the easiest girls,
unconsciously, for she inherited old social instincts which became
nature with the briefest exercise. Not much license of dress was allowed
in the educational establishment of Madam Delacoste, but every girl
had an opportunity to show her taste within the conventional limits
prescribed. And Myrtle soon began to challenge remark by a certain air
she contrived to give her dresses, and the skill with which she blended
their colors.
“Tell you what, girls,” said Miss Berengaria Topping, female
representative of the great dynasty that ruled over the world-famous
Planet Hotel, “she's got style, lots of it. I call her perfectly
splendid, when she's got up in her swell clothes. That oriole's wing
she wears in her bonnet makes her look gorgeous, she'll be a stunning
Pocahontas for the next tableau.”
Miss Rose Bugbee, whose family opulence grew out of the only
merchantable article a Hebrew is never known to seek profit from,
thought she could be made presentable in the first circles if taken in
hand in good season. So it came about that, before many weeks had passed
over her as a scholar in the great educational establishment, she might
be considered as on the whole the most popular girl in the whole bevy
of them. The studious ones admired her for her facility of learning, and
her extraordinary appetite for every form of instruction, and the showy
girls, who were only enduring school as the purgatory that opened into
the celestial world of society, recognized in her a very handsome young
person, who would be like to make a sensation sooner or later.
There were, however, it must be confessed, a few who considered
themselves the thickest of the cream of the school-girls, who submitted
her to a more trying ordeal than any she had yet passed.
“How many horses does your papa keep?” asked Miss Florence Smythe. “We
keep nine, and a pony for Edgar.”
Myrtle had to explain that she had no papa, and that they did not keep
any horses. Thereupon Miss Florence Smythe lost her desire to form an
acquaintance, and wrote home to her mother (who was an ex-bonnet-maker)
that the school was getting common, she was afraid,--they were letting
in persons one knew nothing about.
Miss Clare Browne had a similar curiosity about the amount of plate used
in the household from which Myrtle came. Her father had just bought a
complete silver service. Myrtle had to own that they used a good deal of
china at her own home,--old china, which had been a hundred years in the
family, some of it.
“A hundred years old!” exclaimed Miss Clare Browne. “What queer-looking
stuff it must be! Why, everything in our house is just as new and
bright! Papaa had all our pictures painted on purpose for us. Have you
got any handsome pictures in your house?”
“We have a good many portraits of members of the family,” she said,
“some of them older than the china.”
“How very very odd! What do the dear old things look like?”
“One was a great beauty in her time.”
“How jolly!”
“Another was a young woman who was put to death for her
religion,--burned to ashes at the stake in Queen Mary's time.”
“How very very wicked! It was n't nice a bit, was it? Ain't you telling
me stories? Was that a hundred years ago?--But you 've got some new
pictures and things, have n't you? Who furnished your parlors?”
“My great-grandfather, or his father, I believe.”
“Stuff and nonsense. I don't believe it. What color are your
carriage-horses?”
“Our woman, Kitty Fagan, told somebody once we didn't keep any horse but
a cow.”
“Not keep any horses! Do for pity's sake let me look at your feet.”
Myrtle put out as neat a little foot as a shoemaker ever fitted with a
pair of number two. What she would have been tempted to do with it, if
she had been a boy, we will not stop to guess. After all, the questions
amused her quite as much as the answers instructed Miss Clara Browne.
Of that young lady's ancestral claims to distinction there is no need of
discoursing. Her “papaa” commonly said sir in talking with a gentleman,
and her “mammaa” would once in a while forget, and go down the area
steps instead of entering at the proper door; but they lived behind a
brown stone front, which veneers everybody's antecedents with a facing
of respectability.
Miss Clara Browne wrote home to her mother in the same terms as Miss
Florence Smythe,--that the school was getting dreadful common, and they
were letting in very queer folks.
Still another trial awaited Myrtle, and one which not one girl in a
thousand would have been so unprepared to meet. She knew absolutely
nothing of certain things with which the vast majority of young persons
were quite familiar.
There were literary young ladies, who had read everything of Dickens
and Thackeray, and something at least of Sir Walter, and occasionally,
perhaps, a French novel, which they had better have let alone. One of
the talking young ladies of this set began upon Myrtle one day.
“Oh, is n't 'Pickwick' nice?” she asked.
“I don't know,” Myrtle replied; “I never tasted any.”
The girl stared at her as if she were a crazy creature. “Tasted any!
Why, I mean the 'Pickwick Papers,' Dickens's story. Don't you think
they're nice.”
Poor Myrtle had to confess that she had never read them, and did n't
know anything about them.
“What! did you never read any novels?” said the young lady.
“Oh, to be sure I have,” said Myrtle, blushing as she thought of
the great trunk and its contents. “I have read 'Caleb Williams,' and
'Evelina,' and 'Tristram Shandy'” (naughty girl!), “and the 'Castle of
Otranto,' and the 'Mysteries of Udolpho,' and the 'Vicar of Wakefield,'
and 'Don Quixote'--”
The young lady burst out laughing. “Stop! stop! for mercy's sake,” she
cried. “You must be somebody that's been dead and buried and come back
to life again. Why you're Rip Van Winkle in a petticoat! You ought to
powder your hair and wear patches.”
“We've got the oddest girl here,” this young lady wrote home. “She has
n't read any book that is n't a thousand years old. One of the girls
says she wears a trilobite for a breastpin; some horrid old stone, I
believe that is, that was a bug ever so long ago. Her name, she says, is
Myrtle Hazard, but I call her Rip Van Myrtle.”
Notwithstanding the quiet life which these young girls were compelled
to lead, they did once in a while have their gatherings, at which a few
young gentlemen were admitted. One of these took place about a month
after Myrtle had joined the school. The girls were all in their best,
and by and by they were to have a tableau. Myrtle came out in all her
force. She dressed herself as nearly as she dared like the handsome
woman of the past generation whom she resembled. The very spirit of the
dead beauty seemed to animate every feature and every movement of the
young girl whose position in the school was assured from that moment.
She had a good solid foundation to build upon in the jealousy of two or
three of the leading girls of the style of pretensions illustrated by
some of their talk which has been given. There is no possible success
without some opposition as a fulcrum: force is always aggressive, and
crowds something or other, if it does not hit or trample on it.
The cruelest cut of all was the remark attributed to Mr. Livingston
Jerkins, who was what the opposition girls just referred to called the
great “swell” among the privileged young gentlemen who were present at
the gathering.
“Rip Van Myrtle, you call that handsome girl, do you, Miss Clara? By
Jove, she's the stylishest of the whole lot, to say nothing of being a
first-class beauty. Of course you know I except one, Miss Clara. If a
girl can go to sleep and wake up after twenty years looking like that,
I know a good many who had better begin their nap without waiting. If I
were Florence Smythe, I'd try it, and begin now,--eh, Clara?”
Miss Browne felt the praise of Myrtle to be slightly alleviated by the
depreciation of Miss Smythe, who had long been a rival of her own. A
little later in the evening Miss Smythe enjoyed almost precisely the
same sensation, produced in a very economical way by Mr. Livingston
Jenkins's repeating pretty nearly the same sentiments to her, only with
a change in the arrangement of the proper names. The two young ladies
were left feeling comparatively comfortable with regard to each other,
each intending to repeat Mr. Livingston Jenkins's remark about her
friend to such of her other friends as enjoyed clever sayings, but not
at all comfortable with reference to Myrtle Hazard, who was evidently
considered by the leading “swell” of their circle as the most noticeable
personage of the assembly. The individual exception in each case did
very well as a matter of politeness, but they knew well enough what he
meant.
It seemed to Myrtle Hazard, that evening, that she felt the bracelet on
her wrist glow with a strange, unaccustomed warmth. It was as if it had
just been unclasped from the arm of a yohng woman full of red blood and
tingling all over with swift nerve-currents. Life had never looked
to her as it did that evening. It was the swan's first breasting the
water,--bred on the desert sand, with vague dreams of lake and river,
and strange longings as the mirage came and dissolved, and at length
afloat upon the sparkling wave. She felt as if she had for the first
time found her destiny. It was to please, and so to command, to rule
with gentle sway in virtue of the royal gift of beauty,--to enchant with
the commonest exercise of speech, through the rare quality of a voice
which could not help being always gracious and winning, of a manner
which came to her as an inheritance of which she had just found the
title. She read in the eyes of all that she was more than any other the
centre of admiration. Blame her who may, the world was a very splendid
vision as it opened before her eyes in its long vista of pleasures and
of triumphs. How different the light of these bright saloons from the
glimmer of the dim chamber at The Poplars! Silence Withers was at that
very moment looking at the portraits of Anne Holyoake and of Judith
Pride. “The old picture seems to me to be fading faster than ever,” she
was thinking. But when she held her lamp before the other, it seemed to
her that the picture never was so fresh before, and that the proud smile
upon its lips was more full of conscious triumph than she remembered
it. A reflex, doubtless, of her own thoughts, for she believed that the
martyr was weeping even in heaven over her lost descendant, and that the
beauty, changed to the nature of the malignant spiritual company with
which she had long consorted in the under-world, was pleasing herself
with the thought that Myrtle was in due time to bring her news from the
Satanic province overhead, where she herself had so long indulged in the
profligacy of embonpoint and loveliness.
The evening at the school-party was to terminate with some tableaux. The
girl who had suggested that Myrtle would look “stunning” or “gorgeous”
or “jolly,” or whatever the expression was, as Pocahontas, was not far
out of the way, and it was so evident to the managing heads that she
would make a fine appearance in that character, that the “Rescue of
Captain John Smith” was specially got up to show her off.
Myrtle had sufficient reason to believe that there was a hint of Indian
blood in her veins. It was one of those family legends which some of
the members are a little proud of, and others are willing to leave
uninvestigated. But with Myrtle it was a fixed belief that she felt
perfectly distinct currents of her ancestral blood at intervals, and she
had sometimes thought there were instincts and vague recollections which
must have come from the old warriors and hunters and their dusky brides.
The Indians who visited the neighborhood recognized something of their
own race in her dark eyes, as the reader may remember they told the
persons who were searching after her. It had almost frightened her
sometimes to find how like a wild creature she felt when alone in the
woods. Her senses had much of that delicacy for which the red people are
noted, and she often thought she could follow the trail of an enemy, if
she wished to track one through the forest, as unerringly as if she were
a Pequot or a Mohegan.
It was a strange feeling that came over Myrtle, as they dressed her for
the part she was to take. Had she never worn that painted robe before?
Was it the first time that these strings of wampum had ever rattled upon
her neck and arms? And could it be that the plume of eagle's feathers
with which they crowned her dark, fast-lengthening locks had never
shadowed her forehead until now? She felt herself carried back into the
dim ages when the wilderness was yet untrodden save by the feet of its
native lords. Think of her wild fancy as we may, she felt as if that
dusky woman of her midnight vision on the river were breathing for one
hour through her lips. If this belief had lasted, it is plain enough
where it would have carried her. But it came into her imagination and
vivifying consciousness with the putting on of her unwonted costume,
and might well leave her when she put it off. It is not for us, who tell
only what happened, to solve these mysteries of the seeming admission
of unhoused souls into the fleshly tenements belonging to air-breathing
personalities. A very little more, and from that evening forward the
question would have been treated in full in all the works on medical
jurisprudence published throughout the limits of Christendom. The story
must be told or we should not be honest with the reader.
TABLEAU 1. Captain John Smith (Miss Euphrosyne de Lacy) was to be
represented prostrate and bound, ready for execution; Powhatan (Miss
Florence Smythe) sitting upon a log; savages with clubs (Misses Clara
Browne, A. Van Boodle, E. Van Boodle, Heister, Booster, etc., etc.)
standing around; Pocahontas holding the knife in her hand, ready to cut
the cords with which Captain John Smith is bound.--Curtain.
TABLEAU 2. Captain John Smith released and kneeling before Pocahontas,
whose hand is extended in the act of raising him and presenting him to
her father. Savages in various attitudes of surprise. Clubs fallen from
their hands. Strontian flame to be kindled.--Curtain.
This was a portion of the programme for the evening, as arranged behind
the scenes. The first part went off with wonderful eclat, and at its
close there were loud cries for Pocahontas. She appeared for a moment.
Bouquets were flung to her; and a wreath, which one of the young ladies
had expected for herself in another part, was tossed upon the stage, and
laid at her feet. The curtain fell.
“Put the wreath on her for the next tableau,” some of them whispered,
just as the curtain was going to rise, and one of the girls hastened to
place it upon her head.
The disappointed young lady could not endure it, and, in a spasm of
jealous passion, sprang at Myrtle, snatched it from her head, and
trampled it under her feet at the very instant the curtain was rising.
With a cry which some said had the blood-chilling tone of an Indian's
battle-shriek, Myrtle caught the knife up, and raised her arm against
the girl who had thus rudely assailed her. The girl sank to the ground,
covering her eyes in her terror. Myrtle, with her arm still lifted, and
the blade glistening in her hand, stood over her, rigid as if she had
been suddenly changed to stone. Many of those looking on thought all
this was a part of the show, and were thrilled with the wonderful
acting. Before those immediately around her had had time to recover from
the palsy of their fright Myrtle had flung the knife away from her, and
was kneeling, her head bowed and her hands crossed upon her breast. The
audience went into a rapture of applause as the curtain came suddenly
down; but Myrtle had forgotten all but the dread peril she had just
passed, and was thanking God that his angel--her own protecting spirit,
as it seemed to her had stayed the arm which a passion such as her
nature had never known, such as she believed was alien to her truest
self, had lifted with deadliest purpose. She alone knew how extreme the
danger had been. “She meant to scare her,--that 's all,” they said. But
Myrtle tore the eagle's feathers from her hair, and stripped off her
colored beads, and threw off her painted robe. The metempsychosis was
far too real for her to let her wear the semblance of the savage from
whom, as she believed, had come the lawless impulse at the thought of
which her soul recoiled in horror.
“Pocahontas has got a horrid headache,” the managing young ladies gave
it out, “and can't come to time for the last tableau.” So this all
passed over, not only without loss of credit to Myrtle, but with no
small addition to her local fame,--for it must have been acting; “and
was n't it stunning to see her with that knife, looking as if she was
going to stab Bells, or to scalp her, or something?”
As Master Gridley had predicted, and as is the case commonly with
new-comers at colleges and schools, Myrtle had come first in contact
with those who were least agreeable to meet. The low-bred youth who
amuse themselves with scurvy tricks on freshmen, and the vulgar girls
who try to show off their gentility to those whom they think less
important than themselves, are exceptions in every institution; but they
make themselves odiously prominent before the quiet and modest young
people have had time to gain the new scholar's confidence. Myrtle found
friends in due time, some of them daughters of rich people, some poor
girls, who came with the same sincerity of purpose as herself. But
not one was her match in the facility of acquiring knowledge. Not one
promised to make such a mark in society, if she found an opening into
its loftier circles. She was by no means ignorant of her natural gifts,
and she cultivated them with the ambition which would not let her rest.
During her stay at the great school, she made but one visit to
Oxbow Village. She did not try to startle the good people with her
accomplishments, but they were surprised at the change which had
taken place in her. Her dress was hardly more showy, for she was but
a school-girl, but it fitted her more gracefully. She had gained a
softness of expression, and an ease in conversation, which produced
their effect on all with whom she came in contact. Her aunt's voice
lost something of its plaintiveness in talking with her. Miss Cynthia
listened with involuntary interest to her stories of school and
school-mates. Master Byles Gridley accepted her as the great success of
his life, and determined to make her his chief heiress, if there was any
occasion for so doing. Cyprian told Bathsheba that Myrtle must come to
be a great lady. Gifted Hopkins confessed to Susan Posey that he was
afraid of her, since she had been to the great city school. She knew too
much and looked too much like a queen, for a village boy to talk with.
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw tried all his fascinations upon her, but
she parried compliments so well, and put off all his nearer advances
so dexterously, that he could not advance beyond the region of florid
courtesy, and never got a chance, if so disposed, to risk a question
which he would not ask rashly, believing that, if Myrtle once said No,
there would be little chance of her ever saying Yes.