Francine was awakened the next morning by one of the housemaids,
bringing up her breakfast on a tray. Astonished at this concession to
laziness, in an institution devoted to the practice of all virtues, she
looked round. The bedroom was deserted.
“The other young ladies are as busy as bees, miss,” the housemaid
explained. “They were up and dressed two hours ago: and the breakfast
has been cleared away long since. It’s Miss Emily’s fault. She wouldn’t
allow them to wake you; she said you could be of no possible use
downstairs, and you had better be treated like a visitor. Miss Cecilia
was so distressed at your missing your breakfast that she spoke to the
housekeeper, and I was sent up to you. Please to excuse it if the tea’s
cold. This is Grand Day, and we are all topsy-turvy in consequence.”
Inquiring what “Grand Day” meant, and why it produced this extraordinary
result in a ladies’ school, Francine discovered that the first day of
the vacation was devoted to the distribution of prizes, in the
presence of parents, guardians and friends. An Entertainment was added,
comprising those merciless tests of human endurance called Recitations;
light refreshments and musical performances being distributed at
intervals, to encourage the exhausted audience. The local newspaper sent
a reporter to describe the proceedings, and some of Miss Ladd’s young
ladies enjoyed the intoxicating luxury of seeing their names in print.
“It begins at three o’clock,” the housemaid went on, “and, what with
practicing and rehearsing, and ornamenting the schoolroom, there’s a
hubbub fit to make a person’s head spin. Besides which,” said the girl,
lowering her voice, and approaching a little nearer to Francine, “we
have all been taken by surprise. The first thing in the morning Miss
Jethro left us, without saying good-by to anybody.”
“Who is Miss Jethro?”
“The new teacher, miss. We none of us liked her, and we all suspect
there’s something wrong. Miss Ladd and the clergyman had a long talk
together yesterday (in private, you know), and they sent for Miss
Jethro--which looks bad, doesn’t it? Is there anything more I can do for
you, miss? It’s a beautiful day after the rain. If I was you, I should
go and enjoy myself in the garden.”
Having finished her breakfast, Francine decided on profiting by this
sensible suggestion.
The servant who showed her the way to the garden was not favorably
impressed by the new pupil: Francine’s temper asserted itself a little
too plainly in her face. To a girl possessing a high opinion of her own
importance it was not very agreeable to feel herself excluded, as
an illiterate stranger, from the one absorbing interest of her
schoolfellows. “Will the time ever come,” she wondered bitterly, “when
I shall win a prize, and sing and play before all the company? How I
should enjoy making the girls envy me!”
A broad lawn, overshadowed at one end by fine old trees--flower beds and
shrubberies, and winding paths prettily and invitingly laid out--made
the garden a welcome refuge on that fine summer morning. The novelty
of the scene, after her experience in the West Indies, the delicious
breezes cooled by the rain of the night, exerted their cheering
influence even on the sullen disposition of Francine. She smiled, in
spite of herself, as she followed the pleasant paths, and heard the
birds singing their summer songs over her head.
Wandering among the trees, which occupied a considerable extent of
ground, she passed into an open space beyond, and discovered an old
fish-pond, overgrown by aquatic plants. Driblets of water trickled from
a dilapidated fountain in the middle. On the further side of the pond
the ground sloped downward toward the south, and revealed, over a low
paling, a pretty view of a village and its church, backed by fir woods
mounting the heathy sides of a range of hills beyond. A fanciful little
wooden building, imitating the form of a Swiss cottage, was placed so as
to command the prospect. Near it, in the shadow of the building, stood a
rustic chair and table--with a color-box on one, and a portfolio on the
other. Fluttering over the grass, at the mercy of the capricious breeze,
was a neglected sheet of drawing-paper. Francine ran round the pond, and
picked up the paper just as it was on the point of being tilted into
the water. It contained a sketch in water colors of the village and the
woods, and Francine had looked at the view itself with indifference--the
picture of the view interested her. Ordinary visitors to Galleries of
Art, which admit students, show the same strange perversity. The work of
the copyist commands their whole attention; they take no interest in the
original picture.
Looking up from the sketch, Francine was startled. She discovered a man,
at the window of the Swiss summer-house, watching her.
“When you have done with that drawing,” he said quietly, “please let me
have it back again.”
He was tall and thin and dark. His finely-shaped intelligent
face--hidden, as to the lower part of it, by a curly black beard--would
have been absolutely handsome, even in the eyes of a schoolgirl, but for
the deep furrows that marked it prematurely between the eyebrows, and at
the sides of the mouth. In the same way, an underlying mockery impaired
the attraction of his otherwise refined and gentle manner. Among
his fellow-creatures, children and dogs were the only critics who
appreciated his merits without discovering the defects which lessened
the favorable appreciation of him by men and women. He dressed neatly,
but his morning coat was badly made, and his picturesque felt hat was
too old. In short, there seemed to be no good quality about him which
was not perversely associated with a drawback of some kind. He was one
of those harmless and luckless men, possessed of excellent qualities,
who fail nevertheless to achieve popularity in their social sphere.
Francine handed his sketch to him, through the window; doubtful whether
the words that he had addressed to her were spoken in jest or in
earnest.
“I only presumed to touch your drawing,” she said, “because it was in
danger.”
“What danger?” he inquired.
Francine pointed to the pond. “If I had not been in time to pick it up,
it would have been blown into the water.”
“Do you think it was worth picking up?”
Putting that question, he looked first at the sketch--then at the view
which it represented--then back again at the sketch. The corners of his
mouth turned upward with a humorous expression of scorn. “Madam Nature,”
he said, “I beg your pardon.” With those words, he composedly tore his
work of art into small pieces, and scattered them out of the window.
“What a pity!” said Francine.
He joined her on the ground outside the cottage. “Why is it a pity?” he
asked.
“Such a nice drawing.”
“It isn’t a nice drawing.”
“You’re not very polite, sir.”
He looked at her--and sighed as if he pitied so young a woman for having
a temper so ready to take offense. In his flattest contradictions he
always preserved the character of a politely-positive man.
“Put it in plain words, miss,” he replied. “I have offended the
predominant sense in your nature--your sense of self-esteem. You don’t
like to be told, even indirectly, that you know nothing of Art. In these
days, everybody knows everything--and thinks nothing worth knowing after
all. But beware how you presume on an appearance of indifference, which
is nothing but conceit in disguise. The ruling passion of civilized
humanity is, Conceit. You may try the regard of your dearest friend
in any other way, and be forgiven. Ruffle the smooth surface of your
friend’s self-esteem--and there will be an acknowledged coolness between
you which will last for life. Excuse me for giving you the benefit of
my trumpery experience. This sort of smart talk is _my_ form of conceit.
Can I be of use to you in some better way? Are you looking for one of
our young ladies?”
Francine began to feel a certain reluctant interest in him when he spoke
of “our young ladies.” She asked if he belonged to the school.
The corners of his mouth turned up again. “I’m one of the masters,” he
said. “Are _you_ going to belong to the school, too?”
Francine bent her head, with a gravity and condescension intended
to keep him at his proper distance. Far from being discouraged, he
permitted his curiosity to take additional liberties. “Are you to have
the misfortune of being one of my pupils?” he asked.
“I don’t know who you are.”
“You won’t be much wiser when you do know. My name is Alban Morris.”
Francine corrected herself. “I mean, I don’t know what you teach.”
Alban Morris pointed to the fragments of his sketch from Nature. “I am a
bad artist,” he said. “Some bad artists become Royal Academicians. Some
take to drink. Some get a pension. And some--I am one of them--find
refuge in schools. Drawing is an ‘Extra’ at this school. Will you take
my advice? Spare your good father’s pocket; say you don’t want to learn
to draw.”
He was so gravely in earnest that Francine burst out laughing. “You are
a strange man,” she said.
“Wrong again, miss. I am only an unhappy man.”
The furrows in his face deepened, the latent humor died out of his eyes.
He turned to the summer-house window, and took up a pipe and tobacco
pouch, left on the ledge.
“I lost my only friend last year,” he said. “Since the death of my dog,
my pipe is the one companion I have left. Naturally I am not allowed to
enjoy the honest fellow’s society in the presence of ladies. They have
their own taste in perfumes. Their clothes and their letters reek with
the foetid secretion of the musk deer. The clean vegetable smell of
tobacco is unendurable to them. Allow me to retire--and let me thank you
for the trouble you took to save my drawing.”
The tone of indifference in which he expressed his gratitude piqued
Francine. She resented it by drawing her own conclusion from what he
had said of the ladies and the musk deer. “I was wrong in admiring your
drawing,” she remarked; “and wrong again in thinking you a strange man.
Am I wrong, for the third time, in believing that you dislike women?”
“I am sorry to say you are right,” Alban Morris answered gravely.
“Is there not even one exception?”
The instant the words passed her lips, she saw that there was some
secretly sensitive feeling in him which she had hurt. His black brows
gathered into a frown, his piercing eyes looked at her with angry
surprise. It was over in a moment. He raised his shabby hat, and made
her a bow.
“There is a sore place still left in me,” he said; “and you have
innocently hit it. Good-morning.”
Before she could speak again, he had turned the corner of the
summer-house, and was lost to view in a shrubbery on the westward side
of the grounds.