To be a pupil in Miss Marr's school was a distinction in itself. "Why
don't you give and write your name 'Mademoiselle Marr,' as you have a
right to do?" asked one of Miss Marr's acquaintances, when the school
was first started.
Miss Marr laughed; then she answered soberly, "When my father came to
America, he made himself a legal citizen of the country and he fought in
its battles. He never called himself, and he was never called by any
one, 'Monsieur.'"
"Because he bore the title of General."
"Not at first,--not until he had earned it here. But I--I was born and
brought up here, and I have been always Miss Marr here. Why should I now
suddenly change to Mademoiselle?"
"Because it would be of benefit to your school. Americans are attracted
by anything foreign, and Mademoiselle Marr's school would sound so much
more distinguished than Miss Marr's school."
"Oh!" and Miss Marr flung up her hands impatiently; "I am a better
American than these foolish people who like foreign titles so much. But
they shall come to me, they shall send their children to Miss Marr's
school. I am not going to begin with any little tricks,--to throw out
any little bait to catch silly folk, for it is not such folk's patronage
that I want. I am going to keep an honest school, and I shall start as I
mean to go on."
The acquaintance sighed, and shook her head, and told all her friends
how obstinate Miss Marr was, how she had been advised and how she had
gone against the advice, and that the school wouldn't come to anything,
would get no start as Miss Marr's school, whereas as Mademoiselle Marr's
it would at once impress everybody.
But Miss Marr went on in her own way, and at the end of five years there
was no school in all New York that had the kind of high reputation that
hers had. It was, in a certain sense, the fashion, and yet it was not
fashionable.
"It's that French way of hers, after all," said the acquaintance whose
advice had not been taken; "it's that French way that she inherited from
the General. Nobody had finer manners than General Marr, and he had the
qualities of a leader, too, in some ways,--though he never could keep
any money; and these qualities also his daughter inherits."
Miss Marr laughed at this explanation when she was told of it,--laughed,
and declared that the only secret of her success lay in the fact that
she liked her work, and put her whole heart into it. And I'm inclined to
think she was right. If she got a start at first because she was General
Marr's daughter, she held it and made much of it because she had
character and purpose. She put her heart into her work, and that meant
that she put the magic of her lively sympathy and interest into it; and
if she had not possessed this character and purpose, she couldn't have
done what she did, even if she had been the daughter of an even more
distinguished man than General Marr. She had said in the beginning: "I
am not going to model my school after any fashionable pattern, for I
don't care to have what is called a fashionable school, and I don't
solicit fashionable patronage. There are plenty of quiet, cultivated
people in New York and elsewhere who, I am sure, want just such a school
as I mean to have,--a sensible, honest school, that shall give a
sensible, honest, all-round education." And she was right, as events
proved. The quiet, cultivated people came forth at once to her support;
and then the queerest thing happened,--the fashionable folk began to
come forward too, and in such numbers that she couldn't accommodate half
of them, and they, instead of accepting the situation, and going
elsewhere at this crisis, patiently bided their time, waiting until a
vacancy occurred. It will readily be understood that when things had
come to this pass, it was considered a most decided distinction to be a
pupil at Miss Marr's school.
It was just at the climax of this popularity, just before the beginning
of a new year, that a certain young lady said to her younger sister,--
"Now, Dorothy"--
"Doro_thea_! Doro_thea_! I'm going to have my whole name, every syllable
of it, to start off in New York with."
"Well, Dorothea, then; you must remember one thing about Miss Marr,--she
won't put up with any of your flippant smartness."
"She needn't."
"But, Dorothea, you won't be punished, and you won't be allowed to
argue, as you did at Miss Maynard's. It will be like this,--Miss Marr
will let you go on and reveal yourself and all your faults without a
word of comment, as she would if you were a guest; then if she finds
that you or your faults are of the kind that she doesn't care to have in
her school, she'll send you home. She says, you know, that her school is
neither an infant school, nor a reform school,--that by the time girls
are fifteen, they are young ladies enough to have some idea of good
breeding, and if they haven't, they are not the sort of girls that she
wants in her school. Now remember that, Dorothea."
"I never heard of a school-teacher putting on such airs as this Miss
Marr does, in my life. It's always what _she_ wants, what _she_ expects,
what _she_ is going to do. I know I shall hate her!"
"Well, if this is the spirit that you propose to start with, it is very
easy to foresee the result."
"I don't care."
"Now, Dorothea, you _do_ care. Just think--your name has been on the
list for a whole year for this vacancy; and it was your own idea, you
know. Nothing would satisfy you but to go to Miss Marr's."
"Oh, I know, I know; don't preach, you dear Molly Polly! I'm not going
to fly at Miss Marr and call her an old cat, if I think she's one."
"No, I should say not, but you mustn't fly at a good many things,--at
certain rules and regulations, for instance,--and you mustn't take any
saucy little liberties, such as you have been in the habit of taking at
Miss Maynard's."
"Oh, not a liberty!" smiling and nodding at her elder sister. "I shall
pull my face down like this"--drawing down her lips and lowering her
eyes--"when I meet the great Miss Marr, and I shall say, in a little bit
of a frightened voice like this, 'Oh, Miss Marr, Miss Marr, _please_
don't shut me up in a dark closet and put me on bread and water,
whatever I do.'"
"What a goose you are, Dorothy!" but the elder sister laughed.
"Doro_thea_! Doro_thea_! remember now it's to be Doro_thea_, and you
must write Doro_thea_ on the envelopes of your letters to me," was the
swift protest.
Three days after this conversation, Dolly, or Dorothea Dering, sat
waiting with her mother in a handsome but rather old-fashioned-looking
parlor in a rather old-fashioned house in New York, for the appearance
of its hostess, Miss Marr. Dolly had been fidgeting about, examining the
ornaments on the tables and the pictures on the walls, with a mingled
expression of curiosity and irritability on her face, when she caught
the sound of a firm even footfall on the polished oak floor of the hall.
The girl made a little face at this firm, even sound, and said to
herself, "It's just like her,--old Madam Prim!"
In another moment the footsteps came to the threshold of the parlor, and
Dolly looked across the room to see--Why, there was some mistake! This
was one of the pupils, and no Madam Prim; and what a stylish girl, what
a stunning plain gown! thought Dolly. The minute after, "the stylish
girl in the stunning plain gown" was saying, "How do you do, Mrs.
Dering?" and Mrs. Dering was saying, "How do you do, Miss Marr?"
Dolly almost gasped with astonishment. "_This_, Miss Marr! Why, she
didn't look any older than Mary."
The fact was, that Miss Marr was seven years older than Mary Dering, who
was only twenty-three; but Angelique Marr was one of those persons who
never look their age. Though not childish or immature, she had a fresh
girl's aspect. In looking at her, Dolly forgot all her little plans for
saying or doing this or that. Miss Marr looking at _her_ said to
herself: "Poor child! how shy and awkward and overgrown she is!" and
forthwith concluded that it would be better not to notice her much for a
time, and therefore gave all her attention to the mother, bestowing a
swift fleeting smile now and then upon the girl,--a _young_ smile, like
that of a comrade in passing. Dolly was out of all her reckoning; her
program of word and action which she had so carefully arranged being
completely destroyed by this surprise of personality,--this substitution
of the "stylish girl in a stunning plain gown" for an old Madam Prim. So
absorbed was she in these thoughts, she heard but vaguely what her
mother was saying, and was quite startled when the moment of parting
from her came, forgetting all the fine little airs and good-bye messages
she had arranged. She was so dazed, indeed, that she seemed stupid, and
impressed Miss Marr more than ever as shy and awkward and overgrown; and
it was out of pity for this shyness that Angelique Marr, as the door
closed upon Mrs. Dering, turned to Mrs. Dering's daughter with her
sweetest and friendliest of young smiles, and said to her,--
"Would you like to come up to my little parlor and have a cup of
chocolate with me before I show you your room?"
As Dolly accepted the invitation, she had an odd subdued sort of
feeling, as if she had been invited to lunch with one of Mary's fine
young lady friends; and this feeling, instead of wearing off, increased,
as she found herself in the little parlor drinking the most delicious
foamy chocolate from a delicate Sevres cup, while her entertainer helped
her to biscuit or extra lumps of sugar, telling, as she did so, a droll
little story about her first lesson in chocolate brewing from an old
French soldier,--a friend of her father.
Dolly listened and laughed, and felt more and more that she was being
treated in a very grown-up way by a very grown-up young lady, and that
she must be equal to the occasion; so she sat up in her chair with a
great deal of dignity, and endeavored to say the proper things in the
proper places, with a delightful sense that she was doing the thing as
well as Mary. It was at this moment that some one knocked at the door;
and at Miss Marr's "Come in," there appeared a tall youth, who cried out
as he entered,--
"Well, Aunt Angel!"
"What! Victor?"
Then followed embraces and inquiries; and Dolly began to feel out of
place, and the stranger that she was, when Miss Marr turned, smiled,
begged her pardon, and introduced her to her nephew,--Victor Graham, who
was just back from his vacation at Moosehead Lake. With the grace and
tact that people called "that French way" of hers, Miss Marr managed to
include Dolly in the conversation, and, finding that she had spent
several summers at Kineo, the Moosehead Lake region, drew her out by
clever questions to tell what she knew about it. And Dolly knew a great
deal about it; she had paddled a canoe on the lake, she had caught fish
and helped cook them on the shore, and she had camped out in the Kineo
woods.
Victor Graham, tall as he was, was only sixteen,--a real boy who loved
out-of-door sports,--and, delighted to find somebody who was so familiar
with the charmed region he had just reluctantly left, was soon in the
full swing of reminiscences and questions. Had she been to this place,
did she know that point, etc., etc.? In short, he felt as if he had met
a comrade, and he treated her as such,--as a boy like himself; and Dolly
for the moment responded in the same spirit, and forgot her stiff
dignity and young lady manners, patterned after her sister Mary's.
Miss Marr sat back in her chair, looking and listening and smiling.
Dolly had not the least idea that she was reading, as one would read in
a book, a little page of Dorothea Dering. But she was. Dolly, in talking
to Victor, forgot, as I have said, her dignity and young-lady manners,
and was the Dolly Dering who romped and raced and paddled and cooked at
Moosehead Lake.
"Not so very awkward, and not shy at all, but a big overgrown girl, who
may one day be an attractive woman, when she is toned down and less
crude and hoydenish."
This was part of Miss Marr's reading as she looked and listened; and as
Dolly, getting more excited with her subject, went on more glibly, her
silent smiling listener thought,--
"A good deal of a spoiled child evidently, who has been used to having
her own way and been laughed at for her smart sayings until she is quite
capable, I fear, of being rude and overbearing, if not unfeeling on
occasions. But I think there is good material underneath. We'll see,
we'll see."
What would Dolly have said if she could have heard this criticism of
Dorothea Dering? What would Mrs. Dering have said if she could have
heard her daughter called capable of being rude and overbearing? What
would Mary have said to the whole summing up,--Mary, who was not of the
kind ever to have been spoiled by indulgence, who was finer and had
better instincts than Dolly? Mary would have said, "Oh, Dolly, Dolly,
what have I always told you?"
Just as Miss Marr came to the conclusion of these reflections, she
looked up at the clock on the mantel, and gave a quick start. Victor,
following the direction of her eyes, stopped the story of camp-life that
he was telling, and jumped to his feet, saying,--
"Do excuse me, Aunt Angel; I'd no idea it was so late."
Dolly's face fell like a disappointed child, and she burst out
impatiently,--
"Oh, finish the story, finish the story!"
Victor Graham gave her a glance of surprise; then, flushing a little,
said gently,--
"This is Aunt Angel's busy hour; I'll finish the story some other time."
The blood mounted to Dolly's forehead. That glance of surprise pricked
her sharply. It angered her too. Who was this boy to set his priggish
manners above hers? And in hot rebellion, she cried out flippantly,--
"No, no, tell it now, tell it now! Ten minutes longer can't make much
difference."
She had been accustomed to persist in this fashion at home; and beyond a
"Dolly, how impolite!" or "Be quiet, Dolly!" spoken at the moment by
father or mother or Mary, not much further notice was taken of her
offence. But neither Miss Marr nor Victor made the slightest suggestion
of a reproving comment now. They made no comment whatever. The boy
simply stared at her a second, then lowered his eyes, showing clearly
that he was embarrassed by the girl's rudeness. Miss Marr looked at her
with an expression of wondering astonishment that was in itself a shock
and a revelation to Dolly. There was not a particle of personal
resentment in this expression; it was the wondering astonishment of a
person who is regarding for the first time some strange new species of
development. Dolly had hitherto gloried in her impertinence, as
something witty and audacious. Now all at once she was made to see that
to another person, and that person this "stylish girl in a stunning
plain gown," this audacious impertinence looked vulgar. The shock of
this revelation was so sudden to Miss Dolly that all self-possession
deserted her, and again Miss Marr saw her apparently shy and awkward and
speechless. The deep red flush that overspread her face at the same time
added to the appearance of shyness, and pleaded for her more than words
would have done.
"She'd be a jolly girl, if she didn't break up into such Hottentot ways.
I wonder where she came from?" was Victor's inward reflection. His
concluding reflection, as he went out of the house, was, "Wonder what
Aunt Angel will do with her."
Aunt Angel wondered, too, as she accompanied Dolly up to the room that
had been arranged for her; and as she wondered, she could not help
thinking, "How glad I am the girl is going to have a room to herself,
and not with any one of the other girls!"
The room was small, but it was charmingly furnished,--a little pink and
white chamber, with all sorts of pretty contrivances for comfort and
convenience. As Dolly looked about her, when Miss Marr closed the door
upon her, she thought of what her mother had said, after inspecting the
room the day before: "It isn't in the least like a boarding-school,--it
is like a visitor's room, Dolly, as you will see."
And Dolly did see, but she was in no mood to enjoy the pretty details
just then, for the sense of humiliation was weighing heavily upon her.
In vain she tried to blow it away with the breath of anger,--to call
Miss Marr "old Madam Prim," and Victor "that prig of a boy." Nothing of
this kind availed to relieve her. Never in her life had she been so
impressed by anybody as by Miss Marr, and she was also sure that she had
also begun to impress Miss Marr, in her turn. And now and now!--and down
on the pink and white bed Dolly flung herself in a paroxysm of mingled
regret, rage, mortification, and disappointment, and, like the big,
overgrown, undisciplined child that she was, sobbed herself to sleep.
The short October afternoon had come nearly to an end when she woke; and
she looked about her in dismay. It must be late; and, springing up, she
glanced at her watch. It was half-past four. At this moment she heard,
in the hall outside, a murmur of girls' voices. One called, "Miss Marr;"
and another said, "The Boston train was delayed, or I should have been
here earlier."
Then followed a soft tinkle of laughter, a little tap of heels, and an
opening and shutting of doors. Dolly, listening, knew what this
meant,--knew that these girls were the late arrivals, the returning
pupils.
"And they all know each other," she commented rather lonesomely and
enviously, "and I shall dress myself and get down before them. I'm not
going to enter a room full of strange girls, if I know it!"
Dolly's taste was generally excellent. She knew what to wear and when to
wear it; but some mistaken idea of outshining those strange girls at the
start took possession of her, and instead of putting on a gown suited to
the occasion, she donned a fine affair,--a combination of old-rose
cashmere and velvet, with rose ribbons at her throat. As she left the
room in this finery, she saw a door farther down the hall open, and a
tall slender girl, dressed with the severest simplicity, come forth.
One of those strange girls! And Dolly, as they met, stared at her, with
her head in the air. But the strange girl, with a matter of course
manner, gave a little courteous inclination of greeting as she passed,
whereat Dolly grew rather red. "I wonder if that is the girl who talked
about 'my train,'" thought Dolly. "I'll bet it is. She has a look like
that girl I saw one day last spring with the Edlicotts at Papanti's
dancing-school. I wonder what her name is."
As the girl ran lightly down the stairs, one of the maids came up. Dolly
stopped her and asked, "Is that one of the pupils?"
"Yes, miss."
"What is her name?"
"Miss Hope Benham."