LESLIE MANOR
It was the opening day at Leslie Manor. Late the evening before the last
girl had come straggling reluctantly back after a long summer vacation.
This morning all was hustle and bustle. At the rear of the building the
last trunks were being bumped down from the express wagon which had
brought them from the railway station, and under the direction of Wesley
Watts Mather, the dusky porter, janitor and general handy man, were being
conveyed to the various rooms in which they and their owners would bide
for the ensuing eight months, for Leslie Manor did not open its doors to
its pupils until October first and closed them the first week in June.
This was at the option of Miss Woodhull, the principal, who went abroad
each June taking with her several of her pupils for a European tour, to
return with her enlightened, edified charges in September. It was a
pleasurable as well as a profitable arrangement for the lady who was
absolutely free of encumbrance and could do as she chose.
Leslie Manor had once been the home of a widely known southern family
whose fortunes had sadly decreased during the war and completely
evaporated after it. For several years the place was entirely deserted
and neglected, then Miss Woodhull, recently graduated from a New England
college, and fairly bristling with degrees, for which she had exchanged
the freshness, sweetness and spontaneity of youth and health, was ordered
to spend at least a year in the south in the doubtful hope of recovering
the youth and health.
Just where to find these valuable assets was the hardest question to
answer. Her only relatives were an elderly maiden aunt and an irascible
old uncle whose time was too filled with providing the wherewithal to
maintain a very elaborate establishment for a very vain wife and three
frivolous daughters, to leave any left over in which to think of the
welfare of his only sister's child. Moreover, his wife and daughters
could not endure her, and, truth to tell, they had about as much affinity
for one another as have oil and water. They might flow side by side
forever but never mingle.
The maiden aunt was her father's sister, an austere dignified old party
who resided most exclusively in her ancestral home on Beacon Street, and
lived in a rut worn _ages_ deep by tradition, conviction and self-will.
Virginia was, so-to-speak, heiress-presumptive. Not that she was likely
to be supplanted by the birth of some one having greater claim to her
aunt's fortune. Her possible rivals for the very substantial income which
her aunt enjoyed were foundling asylums, a new religious cult just then
in its infancy in the hub of the universe, and innumerable "movements"
and "reforms."
She had sent Virginia through college, provided her with a fair
allowance, bidden her make something of herself for the sake of her name
and then washed her hands of all responsibility. In her own sight she had
fulfilled all her duty. When Virginia Woodhull left ---- College after
attaining degrees galore, but in broken health, and with twenty-eight
years checked off upon her life's calendar, she seemed to have run plump
up against a stone wall.
Dozens of positions were almost forced upon her. Mentally she was
qualified to fill any of them, physically _not one_. Nor could she remain
near the only relatives she possessed had they even cared two straws to
have her remain.
While in this depressing state of mind and body a girl whom she had
coached in the college graduated and was about to return to her home in
Virginia. She was several years Virginia's junior, pretty, warm-hearted
and charming, and possessed the power of looking a little deeper below
the surface than the average human being possesses. She invited Miss
Woodhull to accompany her to Roanoke and fate stepped in and did the
rest. The month was spent in a lovely old home, Virginia Woodhull gained
in health and strength, and recovered something in the way of nerve
control and mental poise. When the month ended she decided to "do" the
state whose name she bore and spent the rest of the year in going from
one point to another in it until she knew its entire topography by heart.
In the course of her journeyings she visited the Luray Caverns as a
matter of course, and enroute came upon picturesque, deserted, decrepit
Leslie Manor, and fell as enthusiastically in love with it as it was
given to her repressed nature to fall in love.
Moreover, for a long time she had been obsessed with a desire to bring
into this happy, easy-going, contented state something of the energy,
progress, intellectual activities (as she gauged them) of New England.
The general uplift inspired by the seat of learning she had just left
after post-graduate courses unto the nth degree: To thoroughly stir
things up and make these comfortable, contented, easy-going Virginians
sit up and take notice of their shortcomings. She was given a work in
life, though quite unsought, and she meant to undertake it exactly as she
has undertaken her college course and make a fine job of it.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, according to the viewpoint taken, the aunt
in Boston was ceremoniously tucked away in the tomb of her ancestors just
as this resolution crystalized and Virginia Woodhull found herself in
possession of a very comfortable income, though said income had a string
attached to it which was intended to yank it back to the religious cult
before mentioned in the event of Virginia's _marriage_ or death. Either
way considered, it was a rather dubious heritage. But it served to
purchase Leslie Manor and the school became a fait accompli. This was in
the early eighties and from its opening day the school had flourished.
Perhaps this was due to New England energy and culture, or possibly some
credit rested with Mrs. Bonnell, the matron, and real head of the house;
a sweet lovable, gracious Southern gentlewoman whose own family and
fortunes had vanished when she was a tiny child, but who had grown up
with relatives in whose home love ruled supreme and in which the little
Veronica Dulany had blossomed as a flower. At forty years of age she
still retained a genuine love and understanding of her fellow-beings in
spite of many sorrows, and the death when she was still a mere girl of
husband and little daughter before she had been called Mrs. Percy Bonnell
five years.
At any rate, for ten years Mrs. Bonnell had ruled supreme at Leslie
Manor, engaging its servants as she saw fit, directing the household,
economizing as she felt wisest; feeding hungry girls, cuddling the
homesick ones, caring for the ailing ones, and loved by every creature
human or animal upon the place. Miss Woodhull had no time for domestic
matters and all the sentiment in her had been killed in her early
childhood.
And curiously enough the academic force at Leslie Manor was about equally
divided into Woodhull and Bonnell factions. Miss Stetson, the teacher of
mathematics was in keen sympathy with Miss Woodhull, as was Miss Forsdyke
the Latin teacher, and Miss Baylis, the teacher of history and
literature, but Miss Dalton the gymnasium and physical culture teacher,
and Miss Powell who had charge of the little girls, sided with Mrs.
Bonnell as did Monsieur Santelle, and old Herr Professor Stenzel. Even
Miss Juliet Atwell, who came twice each week for aesthetic dancing, and
several other stunts, openly worshiped at the Bonnell's shrine. Herr
Stenzel's admiration had more than once proved an embarrassing
proposition to the lady, for Herr Stenzel loved the flesh pots of Leslie
Manor and knew right well who presided over them. But Mrs. Bonnell was
equal to a good many Herr Stenzels.
But in one sense we have wandered a long way from Beverly Ashby and
opening day at Leslie Manor, though all these people vitally concern her.
Leslie Manor stood in the centre of a wide, rolling, thickly wooded
estate encompassed by a holly hedge noted for miles around for its beauty
and its prickly barrier to freedom. The house had been restored and added
to in order to meet the demands of a school harboring sixty or seventy
girls, though it still retained its old lines of beauty and its air of
hominess.
Miss Woodhull's first concern had been "to make the place sanitary," the
last word spelled with italics, and to this end modern improvements and
conveniences had supplanted the old, easy-going expedients of domestic
economy. Everything in Leslie Manor became strictly modern and
up-to-date. The upper floors were arranged in the most approved single
bed-chambers or suites for the teachers and the seniors, the lower ones
were accurately divided into living, dining and reception rooms. In one
wing were the model recitation rooms and Miss Woodhull's office; in
another the undergraduate's rooms. Nor had the grounds been overlooked.
They were very trim, very prim, very perfectly kept and made one realize
this at every turn. It also made one wonder how the old owner would feel
could he return from his nameless grave at Appomatox and be obliged to
pace along the faultless walks where formerly he had romped with his
children across the velvety turf. But he and his were dead and gone and
the spirit of New England primness, personified in Virginia Woodhull,
spinster aged fifty-seven, now dominated the place.
It was lovely to look upon, and compelled one's admiration, though it
left some indefinable longing unsatisfied. It was so orderly it almost
made one ache.
Perhaps something of this ache unconsciously obsessed Beverly Ashby as
she sat upon one of the immaculate garden seats, placed at the side of an
immaculate gravel walk, and looked through a vista of immaculately
trimmed trees at the dozens of girls _boiling_ out of the door of the
wing in which most of the undergraduate's rooms were situated, for all
members of the under classes were housed in the south wing, the seniors
rooming in the more luxurious quarters of the main building. Not that the
seniors were the happier for their exaltation. They had enjoyed some
pretty merry hours in that old south wing, but with the advent of the
senior year were forced to live up to the dignity of the main building.
The faculty occupied the north end of it.
Beverly had arrived the previous afternoon and, owing to the fact that
she had never been at school before in all her fifteen years, nor
journeyed very far afield from dear old Woodbine, she did not know a soul
at Leslie Manor so far as she now knew.
The parting of the ways when Athol and Archie bade her good-by at Front
Royal and, accompanied by Admiral Seldon, went on to Kilton Hall gave
Beverly an entirely new sensation. She then fully realized that she was
growing up and that the old happy-go-lucky days of boy and girl frolicking
were slipping into the background. That from that very spot where the
roads branched she must begin her journey toward young-ladyhood, as the
boys must begin theirs toward manhood, and the thought hurt like a
physical pain. She didn't want to grow up and leave those happy days
behind.
She had been met at Front Royal by one of the teachers who was returning
to the school. Beverly had tried to talk to her as she would have talked
with any one at home. But Miss Baylis did not encourage familiarity upon
the part of the pupils, and promptly decided that Beverly was one of
those irresponsible, impulsive Southern girls who always proved such
trials to her and Miss Woodhull before they could be brought to
understand strict conventions. Consequently, she had met Beverly's
warm-hearted, spontaneous manner with frigid politeness and had relieved
herself of the young girl's society the moment the school was reached.
Luckily, Beverly had fallen into Mrs. Bonnell's hands directly she
reached Leslie Manor, so some of the ice coating in which she had made
the five-mile drive from the railway station had been thawed by that
lovable lady. But she had passed a desperately lonely evening in her room
unpacking and getting settled, and had gone to bed in a frame of mind
rarely experienced by Beverly Ashby.
Her room-mate, like many other tardy ones, would not arrive until the
next day, and the whole atmosphere of the place spelled desolation for
Beverly.
Her first Waterloo had been encountered early that morning when, feeling
lonelier than she ever had felt in all her life, she dressed early and
ran out to the stable to visit Apache. He seemed as lonely and forlorn as
his little mistress and thinking to cheer him as well as herself, she had
led him forth by his halter and together they had enjoyed one grand
prance down the driveway. Unluckily, Miss Baylis had seen this harmless
little performance, and not being able to appreciate perfect human and
equine grace, had been promptly scandalized. It was at once reported to
Miss Woodhull and Beverly was informed that "such hoydenish actions
should be relegated to the uncultured herd."
Beverly did not ask whether she must number herself among that herd but
the fact had been implied nevertheless, and she smarted under what she
felt to be an unmerited and unduly severe rebuke, if not an open insult.
She was still smarting as she sat hidden in her nook, and sorely in need
of an antidote for the smart.
Presently it came in the homeopathic form of like curing like.