XI

The civilized inhabitants of our twentieth-century world are acquainted

with many more kinds of torture than the ingenious managers of the

Inquisition ever dreamed of in their most lurid nightmares. And of all

these peculiarly modern forms of torture, perhaps the fashionable girls'

school such as Herndon Hall takes first rank. A boys' school of the same

order--conducted under the patronage of some holy saint's name--is often

pretty bad, but it cannot rival the girls' school because women are more

skillful in applying social torture and have a thousand ways of doing it

to a man's or boy's one. Even among the softest and snobbiest of boys

and masters there will always remain a residuum of male self-respect. If

the newcomer, no matter how wrongly classed, proves that he has physical

courage, or an aptitude for sports, or even a sunny, common-sense

disposition, he will quickly escape from his probationary period of

torture and become tolerated; while if a girl appears among her future

schoolmates with an ill-made, unfashionable frock, or has manners that

betray less sophistication than is to be expected, she may never survive

the torture that begins on the instant and follows her relentlessly, in

the schoolroom and out, until she either adapts herself to her

environment, becoming in turn a torturer, or is removed to a more

congenial environment.

Adelle Clark presented to the little world of Herndon Hall a very

vulnerable appearance when she arrived at the school on that Friday

evening. She was still wearing the blue serge school dress that she and

her aunt had made for her high-school debut, also some coarse, faded

brown stockings, and stout cheap shoes, not to mention an unmentionable

hat of no style at all. She had taken that unfortunate joke of the trust

company's president literally: she must not waste her substance upon

clothes. Even without this inhibition she had scarcely the skill and the

courage necessary to spend her two hundred dollars to advantage in three

days. So she had bought herself a trunk, a few suits of much-needed

heavy underwear, some handkerchiefs, and a coat that she had desired all

winter, a thick, clumsy affair that completely enveloped her slight

figure. Then her imagination of wants had given out.

The young teacher, who had taken Miss Thompson's place because of a

sudden indisposition that attacked the head mistress, had made Adelle

uncomfortably aware that something was wrong, but she put down her

coolness and unsympathetic silence during their brief journey to the

fact that Miss Stevens was a "teacher" and therefore felt "superior,"

"Rosy," as the older Hall girls called Miss Stevens, was not at all

"superior" in her attitude to the girls. She dressed quite smartly and

youthfully and was their best confidante. But she had received a shock

when she saw "that little fright" (as she reported to Miss Thompson)

timidly sitting on the edge of her chair in the parlor of the Eclair

Hotel. "Where can she come from?" she had said to herself; and later she

had supplemented this query by thinking, "wherever it was, she had

better go back to it as fast as she can--the little fright!"

Fortunately Adelle did not understand the glances that the elegant young

women who were chattering in the Hall drawing-room before dinner cast

upon her when she was introduced to her schoolmates. Nor did she

immediately comprehend the intention of the insults and tortures to

which she was submitted during the ensuing year. She felt lonely: she

missed her aunt and even the "roomers" more than she had expected to.

But gradually even into her dumb mind there penetrated a sense of

undeserved ignominy, not clearly localized, because she did not possess

a sufficient knowledge of sophisticated manners to realize the refined

nature of her torture. She had merely an accumulating sense of pain and

outrage. She was not happy in Herndon Hall: she did not know it until

afterwards, but that was the plain truth. Nobody wanted her there, and

she knew enough to understand it. Even a cat or a dog has sufficient

social sense for that!

* * * * *

Externally Herndon Hall was all that was charming and gracious--a much

more beautiful and refined home than Adelle had ever seen. It occupied

one of those spacious old manorial houses above the Hudson, where the

river swept in a gracious curve at the foot of the long lawn. An avenue

of old trees led up to the large stone house from the high road half a

mile away. There were all sorts of dependencies,--stables, greenhouses,

and ornamental gardens of the old-fashioned kind,--which were carefully

kept up so that the Hall resembled a large private estate, such as it

was meant to be, rather than a school. It was popularly supposed that

Herndon Hall had once been the country-place of Miss Thompson's people,

which was not true; but that shrewd woman of the world, recognizing all

the advantages of an aristocratic background, kept up the place on a

generous footing, with gardeners, stablemen, and many inside servants,

for which, of course, the pupils paid liberally. The Hall was run less

as a school than as a private estate. Many of the girls had their own

horses in the stable, and rode every pleasant afternoon under the care

of an old English riding-master, who was supposed to have been "Somebody

in England" once. (Later on, when the motor became popular the girls had

their own machines, but that was after Adelle's time.) There was lawn

tennis on the ample lawns, and this with the horseback riding and

occasional strolls was the only concession to the athletic spirit of the

day.

The schoolrooms were not the feature of the Hall that one might expect.

They were confined to a small wing in the rear, or the basement, and

there were no laboratories or other paraphernalia of modern education.

The long drawing-room, with its recessed windows facing the river, was

hung with "old masters"--a few faded American protraits and some recent

copies of the Italian school. It was also furnished luxuriously and had

books in handsome bindings. But educationally, in any accepted sense of

the word, Herndon Hall was quite negligible, as all such institutions

for the care of the daughters of the rich must be, as long as the chief

concern of its patrons is to see their daughters properly married and

"taking a good position in society." Adelle quickly perceived that,

though she had been reckoned a dull pupil in the Alton Girls' High

School, she had much more than enough book knowledge to hold her own in

the classes of her new school. If it is difficult to say what is a good

education for a boy whose parents can afford to give him "the best," it

is almost impossible to solve the educational riddle for his sister. She

must have good manners, an attractive person, and, less clearly, some

acquaintance with literature, music, and art, and one modern language to

enable her to hold her own in the social circles that it is presumed she

will adorn. At least that was the way Miss Thompson looked at the

profound problem of girls' education. She herself was accounted

"accomplished," a "brilliant conversationalist," and "broadly cultured,"

with the confident air that the best society is supposed to give, and

her business was to impart some of this polish to her pupils.

"Conversation," it may be added, was one of the features of Herndon

Hall.

Art, music, and literature did not seem to awaken Adelle's dormant mind

any more than had the rigorous course of the public schools. She did as

most of the girls did,--nothing,--coming unprepared day after day to her

recitations to be helped through the lessons by the obliging teachers,

who professed to care little for "mere scholarship" and strove rather to

"awaken the intelligence" and "stir the spirit," "educate the taste,"

and all the rest of the fluff with which an easy age excuses its

laziness. The girls at Herndon Hall impudently bluffed their teachers or

impertinently replied that they "didn't remember," just like their papas

and future husbands when they were cornered on the witness stand by

inconvenient questions about shady transactions.

The tone of the school was distinctly fashionable, also idle and

luxurious, which was what its patrons desired. Many of the mothers and

other female relatives of the girls, besides the "old girls" themselves,

ran up to the school from New York, which was not far away, bringing

with them a rich atmosphere of jewels, clothes, and gossip that seemed

to hang about the large drawing-room of the stately stone mansion. The

more fortunate pupils found frequent excuses for getting down to the gay

city for the theater and parties, and there were besides boys from a

neighboring college, with parties to the races, all discreetly

chaperoned, of course.

Miss Thompson was at great pains to maintain what the "old Hall girls"

called the "tone of Herndon," so that careful mothers and fathers should

have no hesitation in confiding to it their daughters from fear that

they might encounter "undesirable associates." In all the years of its

existence Miss Thompson had never admitted a member of a certain

religious creed. Yet latterly there had been rumors that the Hall was

not what it once had been. There were too many "Western" girls: some

said Herndon was getting "Pittsburghy." There were certain lively

daughters of Western millionaires, two in especial from the great State

of California whom Adelle later on was thrown with, who did not add to

the exclusive atmosphere of the Hall.

The path of the manager of a fashionable school is by no means an easy

one. It is, in fact, as Miss Thompson had found, more difficult than the

famous eye of the needle. For if she were so scrupulous as to bar out

all the daughters of new wealth, she was in danger of lacking that

material support without which Herndon Hall could not be maintained. And

if she admitted too freely rich "Western girls" whose parents were

"nobodies," but were keenly anxious to have their daughters become

"somebodies," she was in danger of watering her wine to the point where

it would lose all its potency. A constant equilibrium between the

good-family class and the merely rich must be maintained if the school

was to preserve its position. And so it can be understood why the

proprietor and the teachers of Herndon Hall carefully scrutinized Adelle

on her first appearance. Would she merely water their precious wine? If

so she must be very rich, indeed, to compensate for her diluting

presence. Miss Thompson had accepted her on the strength of President

West's personal letter, and it did not take her long to discover that

she had made a grave mistake. Adelle was all water!

She folded up her napkin at dinner in the thrifty manner of the Church

Street house. She ate her soup from the point of her spoon, and the

wrong spoon, and she wore her one dress from the time she got up in the

morning until she went to bed. If it had not been for the solid social

position of President West and the prestige of the trust company, whose

ward she was, it is probable that Adelle would have been sent packing by

the end of the second day. As it was, the head mistress said to Miss

Stevens, with a sigh of commendable Christian resignation,--"We must do

our best for the poor little thing--send her in to me after dinner."

When Adelle entered the private sitting-room of the head mistress, she

expected to be given directions about her classes. Not at all. Miss

Thomson, who still seemed to be suffering from the indisposition that

Adelle found frequently attacked her, looked her over coldly as she

sipped her coffee and remarked that she "must have something fit to wear

at once." She put the little girl through a careful examination as to

the contents of her trunk, with the result that in a few days Adelle's

wardrobe was marvelously increased with a supply of suitable frocks for

all occasions, slippers, lingerie, and hats, and the bill was sent to

the trust company, which honored it promptly without question, not

knowing exactly what a girl ought to cost. Having equipped her pupil

"decently," Miss Thompson observed "that she didn't have an idea how to

wear her clothes," but she trusted to the spirit of the school to

correct that deficiency. Next she sent Adelle to the dentist and had her

teeth straightened,--a painful operation that dragged through several

years at great cost of time and money, and resulted finally in a set of

regular teeth that looked much like false ones. Having provided for her

outside, the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form,"

and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture. That young teacher, "Rosy"

Stevens, who had fetched her from B----, had this task. "Rosy," who was

only thirty, was supposed to be having "a desperate affair of the heart"

with an actor, which she discussed with the older girls. She was the

most popular chaperone in the school because she was "dead easy" and

connived at much that might have resulted scandalously. "Rosy" shared

the girls' tastes for sweets, dress, and jewelry, and smuggled into the

Hall, not candy--because that was openly permitted in any quantity--but

forbidden "naughty" novels.

Miss Stevens had the deadliest weapon at her command that Adelle had

ever encountered--sarcasm. "My dear girl," she would say before a

tableful of girls, in the pityingly sweet tone of an experienced woman

of the world to a vulgar nobody, "how can you speak like that!" (This

when Adelle had emitted the vernacular grunt in answer to some

question.) "You are not a little ape, my dear." Then she would mimic in

her dainty drawl Adelle's habit of speech, which, of course, set all the

girls at the table tittering. Adelle naturally did not love "Rosy," but

she was helpless before her darts. The other teachers generally ignored

her presence, treating her with the perfect politeness of complete

indifference. Once, soon after her arrival, the child was caught talking

with one of the housemaids in the upper corridor, and was severely

reprimanded. She had merely sought for a ray of human sunlight, but she

was told that young women of her station in life were never familiar

with servants. In a word, Adelle was more nearly encased in an airproof

lining at Herndon Hall than ever before, and remained for another two

years the pale, furtive, undeveloped child she was when she first came.

Some cures, it seems, are so radical that they paralyze the nervous

system and develop rather than cure the disease. Such was the case of

Adelle in Herndon Hall. For nearly two years she sneaked about its

comfortable premises, a silent, forlorn, miserable little being,

frightened at what she could not understand, ready for a blow, but not

keen enough to put up a protecting hand. The verdict of the school was

that "the little fright of a Clark girl" was too stupid to learn

anything. As one girl said to "Rosy,"--"The Clark girl must have piles

of money to be here at all."

And the teacher replied,--"She'll need it all, every cent, she's so

deadly common."

* * * * *

Let no reader suppose that Herndon Hall in which Adelle was suffering

her martyrdom is typical of all fashionable girls' boarding-schools. In

a real sense nothing in this life is sufficiently universal to be

considered typical. There are to-day many schools that have some of the

characteristics of Herndon Hall, though fortunately fewer than there

were when Adelle got her education. But even at that time there were

many excellent schools for girls where the teachers made sincere efforts

to teach the girls something, where the girls were human and well-bred,

and the teachers were kind and sympathetic and would not have tolerated

such conduct as went on almost openly in this "exclusive" establishment,

nor such brutal treatment as the girls dealt out to Adelle.

Herndon Hall, with its utterly false standards of everything that

concerns woman's being, was the fruit of those ideals that have obtained

about women, their position and education, for many centuries. And

Herndon Hall was Adelle's accident--the fate to which the trust officers

in all good will consigned her. There always is and must be, even in our

own enlightened age of feminist movements, a Herndon Hall--perhaps more

than one. Parents who believe that marriage and "a suitable position in

society" are all there is in life for a woman will always create Herndon

Halls.