THE MUSICAL ROMANCE OF AMELIA
A SUBTLE thrill was disturbing the atmosphere of high-bred serenity
which the Misses Ryder, with a strenuousness far afield from serenity,
fostered in their Select School for Young Ladies. As a matter of fact,
this aristocratic calm existed only in the intent and the imaginations
of the lady principals, and in the convictions of parents credulous
concerning school prospectuses. With fifty girls of assorted sizes and
temperaments collected under one roof agitation of one sort or another
is fairly well assured.
Miss Ryder's teachers were by no means blind to the excitement pervading
the school, but its cause was wrapped in mystery. Amelia Bowers seemed
to be occupying the centre of the stage and claiming the calcium light
as her due, while Amelia's own particular clique gathered in knots in
all the corners, and went about brimming over with some portentous
secret which they imparted to the other girls with a generosity
approaching lavishness.
It was after running into a crowd of arch conspirators in the music-room
alcove and producing a solemn hush that Miss Barnes sought the Youngest
Teacher and labored with her.
"Belinda," she began in her usual brusque fashion, "what's the matter
with the girls?"
"Youth," replied the Youngest Teacher laconically.
She was trimming a hat, and when Belinda trims a hat it is hard to
divert her serious attention to less vital issues.
"Have you noticed that something is going on, and that Amelia Bowers is
at the bottom of it?"
Belinda looked up from her millinery for one fleeting instant of scorn.
"Have I noticed it? Am I stone blind?"
Miss Barnes ignored the sarcasm.
"But what are they doing? The light-headed set is crazy over something,
and I suppose there's a man in it. They wouldn't be so excited unless
there were. Now, who is he? What is he? Where is he?"
"Search me," replied the Youngest Teacher with a flippancy lamentable in
an instructor of youth.
"I suppose Amelia is making a fool of herself in some way.
Sentimentality oozes out of that girl's pores."
"And yet I'm fond of Amelia," protested Belinda.
Amelia was one of the twelve who had witnessed the Youngest Teacher's
first disastrous experiment in chaperoning and had remained loyally
mute.
Miss Barnes shook her head.
"My dear, I can stand sharp angles, but I detest a human feather pillow.
Push Amelia in at one spot and she bulges out at another. It's
impossible to make a clean-cut and permanent impression upon that girl."
The teacher of mathematics always stated her opinions with a frankness
not conducive to popularity.
Belinda laughed.
"It ought to be easy for you to find out what the girls are giggling and
whispering about," continued Miss Barnes. "They are so foolish over
you."
"I hate a sneak."
"But, Belinda----"
"Yes, I know--the good of the school and all that. I've every intention
of earning my salary and being loyal to Miss Ryder. I'll keep my eyes
open and try to find out why the girls are whispering and hugging each
other; but if you think I'm going to get one of the silly things into my
room, and because she's fond of me hypnotise her into a confidence, and
then use it to bring punishment down on her and her chums--I'm not!"
"But what do you suppose is the trouble?" asked the Elder Teacher.
"I don't believe there is any trouble. Probably Amelia's engaged again.
If she is it's the sixth time."
"That wouldn't stir up the other girls."
"Wouldn't it? My dear, you may know cube roots, but you don't know
schoolgirls. An absolutely fresh engagement is enough to make a flock of
girls twitter for weeks. If there are smuggled love letters it's
convulsing, and if there's parental disapproval and 'persecution' the
thing assumes dramatic quality. Probably all the third-floor girls
gather in Amelia's room after lights are out, and she tells them what he
said, and what she said, and what papa would probably say, and they plan
elopements and schemes for foiling stern teachers and parents. Amelia
won't elope, though. She won't have time before her next engagement."
A bell rang sharply below stairs. Miss Barnes sprang to her feet.
"There's the evening study bell. I must go. I'm in charge to-night. But
they do elope sometimes. This school business isn't all farce. Do watch
Amelia, Belinda."
Belinda had finished the hat and was trying it on before the glass with
evident and natural satisfaction.
"My respect for Amelia would soar if she should attempt an elopement,
but even the sea-serpent couldn't elope with a jellyfish. Amelia's young
man may be a charmer, but he couldn't budge Amelia beyond hysterics."
In the history of the school there had been an experiment with silent
study in the individual rooms; but an impartial distribution of fudge
over the bedroom carpets, gas fixtures and furniture, an epidemic of
indigestion, and a falling off in class standing had effected a return
to less confiding and more effectual methods of insuring quiet study.
As Miss Barnes entered the study-room, after her talk with Belinda, a
group of agitated backs surrounding Amelia Bowers dispersed guiltily,
and the girls took their seats with the italicized demureness of cats
who have been at the cream. Amelia herself radiated modest self-esteem.
She was IT; she was up to her eyebrows in romance! What better thing had
life to offer her?
The teacher in charge looked at her sharply.
"Miss Bowers, if you will transfer your attention from the wall paper to
your French verbs you will stand a better chance of giving a respectable
recitation to-morrow."
Amelia's dreamy blue eyes wandered from the intricate design on the wall
to the pages of her book, but they were still melting with sentiment,
and her pink and white face still held its pensive, rapt expression.
"_J'aime, tu aimes, il aime_," she read. "_Il aime!_"--she was off in
another trance.
Miss Barnes would have builded better had she recommended algebraic
equations instead of French verbs.
Following the study hour came an hour of recreation before the retiring
bell rang. Usually the girls inclined to music and dancing in the
parlours, but now the tide set heavily upstairs toward Amelia's room,
which was at the back, and was the most coveted room in the house
because the most discreetly removed from teachers' surveillance.
When Miss Barnes passed the door later she heard the twang of a guitar
and Amelia's reedy voice raised in song. The teacher smiled. Harmless
enough, certainly. Probably she had been over-earnest and suspicious.
Meanwhile, behind the closed door the girls of Amelia's set were showing
a strange and abnormal interest in her music--an interest hardly
justified by the quality of the performance. The lights in the room were
turned down as low as possible. Amelia and her roommate, Laura May Lee,
were crouched on the floor close by the open window, beyond which the
lights of the houses around the square twinkled in the clear dark of the
October night.
Huddled close to the two owners of the room on the floor were six other
girls, all big-eyed, expectant, athrill with interest and excitement.
Amelia touched her guitar with a white, if somewhat pudgy, hand, and
sang a few lines of a popular love song. Then suddenly she stopped and
leaned forward, her elbows on the windowsill, her lips apart, her plump
figure actually intense. The other girls edged closer to the window and
listened with bated breath. A moment's hush--then, out of the night,
came an echo of Amelia's guitar, and a tenor voice took up the song
where she had left it.
[Illustration: "Amelia touched her guitar with a white, pudgy hand"]
A sigh of satisfaction went up from the group by the window, and Amelia
laid one fat hand upon what she fondly believed to be the location of
her heart. The stage business was appropriate, but the star's knowledge
of anatomy was limited, and the gesture indicated acute indigestion.
The other girls, however, were properly impressed.
"It's him," murmured the fair one rapturously, as reckless of grammar as
of anatomical precision. "Oh, girls, isn't it just too sweet; what a lot
of feeling he puts into it!"
"The way he sings 'My Love, My Own,' is simply elegant," gasped Laura
May. "I shouldn't wonder a bit if he's a foreigner. They're so much more
romantic over there. An Italian's just as likely as not to fall in love
this way and go perfectly crazy over it."
"Maybe he's a prince," Kittie Dayton suggested. "The folks on this block
go round with princes and counts and earls and things all the time. Like
as not he's visiting somebody, and----"
"If he were an Italian prince he wouldn't sing such good English," put
in Serena Adams. Serena hailed from Massachusetts and hadn't the fervid
exotic imagination characteristic of the daughters of the South.
"Well, earls are English."
"Earls don't sing."
"Why don't they?"
Serena tried in vain to imagine the English earl of her fiction reading
warbling love songs out of a back window to an unknown charmer, but gave
it up.
"I think he's a poet," Amelia whispered, "or maybe a musician--one of
the high-strung, quivering kind, don't you know." They all knew.
"They're so sensitive--and responsive."
Amelia spoke as though a host of lute-souled artists had worshipped at
her shrine and had broken into melody at her touch.
"Like as not he's only a nice American fellow. My cousin Sam at Yale
sings like an angel. All he has to do is sing love songs to a girl and
she's positively mushy."
Amelia looked reflectively at the last speaker.
"Well, I wouldn't mind so much," she said. "If he lives on this block
his folks must be rich."
"Some day, some day,"
yearned the tenor voice.
"Some day I shall meet you."
"My, won't it be exciting when he does," gurgled Kittie.
"Does he do this every night?" Serena asked. This was her first entrance
into the romantic circle.
"Five nights now," Laura May explained. "Amelia was just sitting in the
window Wednesday night playing and singing, and somebody answered her.
Then they played and sang back and forth. We were awfully afraid the
servants in the kitchen would hear it and report, but they didn't. It's
been going on every night since. We're most afraid to go outside the
house for fear he'll walk right up and speak."
"He wouldn't know you."
Amelia turned from the window to look scornfully at the sordid-souled
Serena.
"Not know me! Why, he'd feel that I was The One, the moment he saw me.
It's like that when you love this way."
She pillowed her chin on her arms again and stared sentimentally into
the back yard.
"Only this, only this, this, that once you loved me.
Only this, I love you now, I love you now--I lo-o-ve you-u-u now."
The song ended upon a high, quavering note just as the retiring bell
clanged in the hall.
The visiting girls waited a few moments, then reluctantly scrambled to
their feet and started for their rooms. But Amelia still knelt by the
window.
"I'm positive he has raven black hair and an olive complexion," she said
to Laura May as finally she drew the shade and began to get ready for
bed.
The next morning the Youngest Teacher took the girls for their
after-breakfast walk. Trailing up and down the streets at the tail of
the "crocodile" was one of the features of the boarding-school work
which she particularly disliked; but, as a rule, the proceeding was
commonplace enough.
For a few mornings past Belinda had noticed something unusual about the
morning expedition. She was used to chattering and giggling. She had
learned that the passing of a good-looking young man touched off both
the giggles and the chatter. She had even forced herself to watch the
young man and see that no note found its way from his hand to that of
one of the girls; but this new spirit was something she couldn't figure
out.
[Illustration: "For a few mornings past Belinda had noticed something
unusual about the morning expedition"]
In the first place the girls developed a mad passion for walking around
the block. Formerly they had begged her to ramble to Fifth Avenue and to
the Park. One saw more pedestrians on the avenue than elsewhere at that
hour of the morning; and, if one walked to the Park, one might perchance
be late for chapel and have to stay out in the hall until it was over.
But now Fifth Avenue held no charms; the Park did not beckon. Round and
round the home block the crocodile dragged its length, with Amelia and
Laura May at its head and Belinda bringing up the rear. Men were leaving
their homes on their way to business, and every time a young man made
his appearance upon the steps of one of the houses on the circuit
something like an electric shock ran along the school line and the
crocodile quivered from head to tail.
The problem was too much for the Youngest Teacher. She led her charges
home in time for chapel, and meditated deeply during the morning
session.
Late on that same afternoon Belinda was conferring with Miss Lucilla
Ryder when the maid brought a card to the principal.
"'Mr. Satterly'--I don't know the gentleman. What did he look like,
Katy?"
"Turribly prosperous, ma'am."
"Ah! possibly some one with a daughter. Miss Carewe, will you go down
with me? I am greatly pressed for time. Perhaps this is something you
could attend to."
Belinda followed the stately figure in softly flowing black. Miss Ryder
always looked the part. No parent could fail to see her superiority and
be impressed.
The little old gentleman who rose to greet them in the reception-room
was not, however, awed by Miss Lucilla's gracious elegance.
He was a corpulent, red-faced little man with a bristling moustache and
a nervous manner; his voice when he spoke was incisive and crisp.
"Miss Ryder, I presume."
Miss Ryder bowed.
"This is Miss Carewe, one of our teachers," she said, waving both
Belinda and the visitor toward seats.
Mr. Satterly declined the seat.
"I've come to ask you if you know how your pupils are scandalizing the
neighborhood," he said abruptly.
Belinda jumped perceptibly. Miss Ryder's lips straightened slightly,
very slightly, but she showed no other sign of emotion.
"I am not aware of any misconduct on the part of the young ladies." Her
manner was the perfection of courteous dignity. Belinda mentally
applauded.
"It's scandalous, madam, scandalous," sputtered the old gentleman,
growing more excited with every second.
[Illustration: "'It's scandalous, madam'"]
"So you observed before, I believe. Will you kindly tell me the nature
of the offence?"
"Clandestine love-making with the Astorbilt's coachman--for five nights,
flirting out of windows, singing mawkish songs back and forth to each
other till it's enough to make a man sick. My daughters hanging out of
our back window to hear! Nice example for them! Nice performance for a
school where girls are supposed to be taken care of!"
A faint flush had crept into Miss Ryder's cheeks. A great awakening
light had dawned in Belinda's brain.
"Amelia," she murmured.
Miss Ryder nodded comprehension.
"She's so romantic, and she supposed it was Prince Charming."
Again the principal nodded. She was not slow of comprehension.
"One of our young ladies is excessively romantic," she explained to the
irate Mr. Satterly. "I think I understand the situation, and I shall
deal with it at once. I am grieved that the neighbors have been
annoyed."
The old gentleman relented slightly. "Well, of course, I thought you
ought to know," he said.
"You were quite right. I am deeply indebted to you, and shall be still
more so if you will not mention the unfortunate incident to outsiders.
Good-morning."
The door closed behind him.
Principal and teacher faced each other. Miss Ryder's superb calm had
vanished. Her eyes were blazing.
"Dis-gust-ing!" she said.
Belinda wrestled heroically to suppress a fit of untimely mirth. She
knew Amelia and her set so well. She could picture each detail of the
musical flirtation, each ridiculous touch of sentimentality.
"I shall expel her."
Miss Ryder's tone was firm.
Belinda laid a soft hand impulsively upon the arm of the August One.
"She isn't bad--just foolish----"
"She's made the school ridiculous."
"The school can stand it. She's made herself more ridiculous, and it
will be hard for her to stand that."
"How would you punish her?"
"Tell the story to the whole school to-morrow. Rub in the fact that the
serenader is a coarse, common, illiterate groom. Mention that the
stablemen and other servants all around the block are chuckling over the
thing. Rob the episode of every atom of romance. Make it utterly vulgar,
and sordid, and ugly, and absurd."
Miss Ryder looked at the Youngest Teacher with something akin to
admiration.
"I believe you are right, Miss Carewe. It will be punishment enough.
I'll mention no names."
"Oh, no. Everyone will know."
There was a short but dramatic special session the next morning. The
principal slew and spared not; and all the guilty squirmed
uncomfortably, while the arch offender hid her face in her hands and
sobbed miserably over shattered romance and open humiliation.
Even her boon companions tittered and grinned derisively at her as she
fled to her room when the conference ended.
But the Youngest Teacher followed, and her eyes were very kind.