It is now an old and respected adage that "coming events cast their
shadows before," and had I only been at all alive to the growing
changes in the routine of our daily life, I might easily have detected
the outline of some hovering shadow which was heralding the advent of
some strange, and hitherto undreamt of interruption, into the
questionably peaceful monotony of my early career.
One fine August morning, some weeks after my tragic interview with Mr.
Dalton, I sat on the step of the outer kitchen stairway, which led
into an artistically cultivated vegetable patch at the rear of the
house, absorbed in the intensely interesting occupation of cutting
some elegantly-coloured ladies out of a superannuated fashion-plate.
On the step above me was my garden hat, inverted, into which I
deposited my paper "swells" according as I trimmed them: on the step
below me sat old Hannah, scraping some new potatoes, according to her
established principles of economy. We both worked diligently and
silently for awhile, and then old Hannah, pausing with a half cleaned
potatoe in one hand and a knife dripping with water in the other,
looked at me seriously for a moment and said half meditatively:
"Well now; arn't you the baby, Miss Amelia, to spend your time over
that foolish stuff; fitter for you be knitting a little garter, or
hemming a little handkerchief for yourself."
I smiled, and without raising my eyes from the critical curve of my
paper lady's bustle, which I was then rounding most carefully, I
answered:
"I suppose I might do better with my time, Hannah, if I knew how, but
as I don't, I'd rather be doing this than nothing."
"It says a lot for Miss Forty, then," Hannah put in indignantly, "to
think you're goin' into your teens before long and that's all you know
how to do!"
"Miss de Fortier did not come to teach me sewing and knitting, Hannah.
She taught me lessons."
"Lessons how are you! And what's become of them if she did? Oh, its a
fine way children are brought up in this country," the old woman went
on half in soliloquy; "a bit of this and a bit of that and not much of
either. I pity the housekeepers ye'll make yet. God help the poor men
that are waiting for ye. Many's the missing button and broken sock
they'll have to put up with!"
"Well, Hannah," I interrupted, beginning an impromptu justification
and defence--but Hannah was destined never to have her conviction
shaken, for just then I heard a sharp rapping at the library window,
and gathering up the fragments of my fashion-plate in my linen
pinafore, I ran outside and looked towards that end of the house. My
father was standing at the open casement, and beckoned me to go to
him. Whether from the novelty of the occurrence, or the instinctive
awe in which I stood of my father, I immediately let go the margin of
my pinafore, dropping scissors and ladies and all, in a most brusque
and heedless manner, and hastened into the library, while I was
smoothing out the wrinkled folds of my clean, starched apron.
In my excitement I had forgotten to wonder at the strange
circumstance, but when my little hand clutched the great knob of the
library door and turned it, and when the placid countenance of my
step-mother looked up at me from a comfortable easy-chair at the
opposite side of the room, I felt that some awful moment had dawned on
my existence. With as much nerve and self-control as a child usually
displays on such an occasion, I closed the door behind me and walked
towards the window where my father was standing.
He was clad in a gown of ruby cashmere, and wore an expensive cap and
slippers to match; the girdle was untied, leaving the rich chenille
tassels to trail almost upon the ground, and the velvet fronts so
elaborately embroidered were crushed rudely aside by his hands, which
were thrust into his breeches pockets.
When I came up to where he stood, he turned slowly around and viewed
me in my diminutive entirety from head to foot. Unable to restrain her
love of interference any longer, my step-mother here advised me
parenthetically to "stand up straight," sustaining her reasons for
thus counselling me by the cheerful intelligence that "I was disposed
to be round-shouldered any way, and should do my best to check the
deformity." I raised my head and lowered my shoulders in silent
obedience to this meek injunction, preparing myself inwardly for an
attack of a much less generous and still more personal nature than
this. What was my surprise when my father, taking a step towards me,
and placing one hand half affectionately on my head, remarked in a
rather playful and, for him, quite a frivolous tone:
"Oh, we none of us go straight to Heaven, do we, Amey? We must bend
our shoulders and droop our heads a little first."
I was grateful to him for coming thus to my rescue, although I
understood neither the meaning of his ambiguous words, nor the motives
which prompted him to use them. I see more clearly through them now,
however.
"But," he continued, taking me by the hand and leading me towards the
lounge behind him, "this is not exactly what I want to talk to you
about; I admit that you are backward in many respects, but that is not
altogether your fault."
I was looking at him with riveted attention while he spoke, sublimely
innocent of the import of a single word he uttered.
"And," he added, in a slower and more directly communicative tone, as
he disengaged his hand from mine and leaned his arm on the back of the
lounge behind me, "I have decided to send you to a first-rate school,
Amey, where you will have a chance to perfect yourself in every way;
do you think you will like to go away to school?" he asked, so timidly
that one would have thought my opinion on the matter could have some
little value.
Before I had time to master this question with all its ponderous
possibilities, my step-mother observed obligingly,
"Of course she would like it, Alfred, and even if she wouldn't you
know she ought to go; Amelia herself knows," she continued, without
looking at me, "that she is quite a dunce for her age, and will need
to work very hard in order to make up for lost time. So, your father
and I have decided," she added conclusively, "that you shall go to
boarding-school, Amelia, as early next month as you can be got ready."
The word "boarding-school" was to me, perhaps, the vaguest and most
indefinite in the English language. I knew that such places existed,
but it had never entered into my juvenile conception of things to
associate them in any way with my present or future career. In my
dreamings I had often pictured myself as grown up and matured; I had
even pictured my womanhood so far as tying two of Hannah's long aprons
about my waist, one in front and the other behind, and with a shawl
thrown cornerwise over my shoulders, to fancy myself a lady in "long
dresses" like the "Miss Hartmanns" that called upon my step-mother.
I had wished to be the wife of a great, rich man, that I might do as I
pleased with myself, and be "somebody" with my airs and graces, but I
had never met such an obstacle in the long rambles of my reverie as
"going to school." When, therefore, the subject was thrust upon me
without any preparation, I felt as if I had seen a ghost and was told
to go and speak to it, that it wouldn't harm me; and, lest the reader
should attribute my emotion to a more natural, and, I dare say,
becoming sentiment, I will confess that it was owing purely to the
nervous shock which I sustained at the unexpected mention of so
important a change in my life, that my eyes filled up with tears, and
that I gave way to other ambiguous signs of appropriate agitation.
All this, however, was neither here nor there, so far as the fixed
intention of my parents was concerned to dispose of me for an
indefinite period of time, and within three weeks of that day when the
announcement was first made to me, I was crying myself to sleep in a
narrow little bed, hundreds of miles away from my father's house.
Perhaps there was not another girl among the three hundred boarders of
Notre Dame Abbey, that had such little reason to be home-sick as Amey
Hampden; and yet--God help us! into what strange moods we are prone to
fall! When a wide-spreading distance had thrust itself between me and
the home of my early days, I could not help feeling that, after all,
my heart had tendrils like other people's, and that this separation
had torn them rudely away from the objects, few or many, worthy or
unworthy, around which they had twined with a clinging firmness.
The bare, white-washed walls of this strange dormitory brought out in
touching relief the cosy corners of my own little room at home, and
the strict and rigid discipline, to which I felt I never could
conform, made me look back with a hopeless regret upon the wandering,
aimless hours I had spent unfettered, before I became a pupil of this
bleak institution.
I did not know then, as I know now, that it is not the house which
makes the home; that white-washed walls and painted floors may melt
into artistic beauty, where glows the never smouldering fire of
Christian love; and I have searched the world in vain for many a year,
among riches and luxuries and comforts, but I have never had the
smallest glimpse of that same abiding, enduring and self-sacrificing
love which presided over me, waking or sleeping, smiling or weeping,
during my happy, yet transient sojourn, in that distant Abbey of Notre
Dame.
Within its walls my childhood melted into girlhood, and my girlhood
into womanhood, and still, when I look out over the tree-tops, away
beyond the misty mountains in the west, towards the spot where this my
truly happiest home lies nestled, when with one sweeping stroke of my
active pen I cancel twenty years of my life, and am back again a
laughing, careless girl among my school companions, what is time to
me? Only a huge and ugly shadow flitting between me and all that I
have ever loved or cherished! A shadow, however, that flickers and
bounds away, when, with her magic lantern, memory floods the vista of
the past, with the light of "other days."
When I returned to my father's house to spend a short vacation among
my earliest friends, I had entered upon my sixteenth year. I had of
course, in the interval, been visited alternately by my father and
step-mother, who kept me quite _au courant_ of all that transpired in
their fashionable world in my absence.
I had received photographs of my interesting half brother, which made
me familiar with the changes wrought in him physically, by time; but
all this had no satisfaction for me, who would rather one glimpse of
old Hannah's frilled cap, or one peep through the narrow panes of Ella
Wray's humble cottage, than all the spicy intelligences of the doings
and sayings of possibly great people, for whom, however, I cared but
very little.
At the close of our summer session of that year my father brought me
home for a visit of three months. I had grown considerably, and for a
person of tolerably good health, was very slender, which gave me the
appearance of being yet taller than I was, and I felt an instinctively
spiteful satisfaction in the consciousness that I had quite overcome
any tendencies I might ever have had towards being round-shouldered;
the regular calisthenic exercises which we went through at the convent
had made a decided change for the better in my personal appearance.
I was not long at home before I detected a resolution on the part of
my step-mother to adopt a new, and altogether plausible, attitude
towards me. I was no longer a child; that was a self-evident fact:
neither was I yet what society calls a "young lady," but now-a-days an
interesting medium has been established and acknowledged; it is the
first grade wherein the embryo society belles are initiated into all
the intricacies of high life. It has its own peculiarities, its
flutters of excitement, its rounds of pleasures, and distractions of
every kind, aye--it has even its gossip, although the whisperers are
but budding misses with golden or raven locks floating down their
backs.
It is the adolescent stage: where the lisp or drawl, most popular in
the advanced circles, is affected with unquestionable propriety: when
growing girls of susceptible sixteen, or thereabout, are meekly
subjected to a rigid training and instruction by their older and more
sophisticated sisters, when they learn "dauncing" and "tennis" and
"riding," and go to small-and-earlies where a few grown couples are
also invited to amuse them, or rather I should say instruct them.
Quite unconscious of any such prescribed routine being the "thing"
among my family circle, I was almost stupefied by the look of
distracted horror which flashed over my step-mother's face, when, the
week after my arrival, I shocked her sensitive good breeding by a
coarse betrayal of my unpardonable ignorance.
It was a perfect June day, flooded with a bright but not overwarm
sunshine; the young leaves on the maple boughs outside my bed-room
window were swaying gently against the lattice, and below in the
freshly trimmed garden the flowers were unfolding their early beauty
to the summer warmth.
I had sought the safe retreat of my room, that I might, as I had
promised, write long and loving letters to some of my much-regretted
school-friends. When all my preparations were ready, and I had dated
the first of these effusions, I was disturbed by a timid knock at the
door. I laid down my pen resignedly and went to open: it was the pert
housemaid, who delivered "Mrs. Hampden's request that Miss Amelia
would kindly begin to dress."
"Dress for what?" said I, in impatient surprise. "This is Tuesday,
Miss," the pampered maid answered insinuatingly, "Mrs. Hampden will be
at home."
"So will I, Janet," I interrupted hastily, "and my present toilet is
quite good enough for the house."
With this rejoinder I closed the door a little forcibly, and went back
to my writing. I had only time to trace--"My darling Ruby,"--when,
without intimation or announcement of any kind, my step-mother burst
into my room, with her hair half dressed, and her toilet jacket flying
loosely about her,--
"Do you want to disgrace us in the eyes of these prattling servants,
Amelia Hampden?" she began in a hoarse undertone, beckoning towards
the hall outside: "the idea of not understanding my message any better
than that," she went on in a whisper of reproachful despair. "Anyone
would know, that when you've been away so long, you will be sure to
have people calling on you, so put away that"--she added imperatively,
pointing disdainfully to my treasured writing materials--"and dress
yourself. The Merivale girls, and the Hunters, and all those others
will be here before you are half ready."
I obeyed in placid silence; this was not the first hint which
circumstances had thrown out of what was before me, while I remained
at home. We were very stylish, very fashionable people, it seemed,
although I was so unworthy of sustaining my part of the reputation, in
my insignificant opinion we were very silly and very empty-minded
creatures, and it was with this very encouraging conviction that I
proceeded to stow away my pen and paper, to renounce the rare pleasure
I had counted upon for two days before that, and to prepare myself for
the possible intrusion of some juvenile Merivales and Hunters.
Janet came in to dress my hair and fasten my new kid boots, and
otherwise bore me with endeavors to beautify me for my reception. It
was a task, however, that was soon ended, and half an hour later I was
seated in the drawing room below listening passively to the small talk
of some very well dressed girls who had opened the list of my
ceremonious callers.
Having never seen them before, my demeanor was naturally timid and
restrained, they were two sisters, and the younger one did all or most
of the talking. They were very well dressed, and altogether
non-committal, as far as speech and manners were concerned, but our
vocabulary of drawing-room chat very soon became exhausted, and with a
quiet "good afternoon" they arose and passed out.
As they left the drawing-room they were met at the door by two other
young misses who, at sight of them, raised their chins considerably
above their natural level, and swept in without condescending to
bestow even an accidental glance upon them. From where I sat I
observed all this quietly, and with an effort to suppress a smile of
bland amusement, I arose and greeted my new-comers--the Merivales!
Alice glided towards me with an air of imposing consciousness, and
thrust a tiny, gloved hand into mine, and then with a graceful gesture
she turned towards her companion and murmured faintly, "my cousin,
Miss Holgate--Miss Hampden."
I bowed and smiled, and directed them to convenient seats, the
situation was becoming more and more trying to my inclination to laugh
outright. When we were all three comfortably deposited in our chairs,
Alice Merivale turned her beaming countenance languidly towards me and
remarked that "it was a perfectly lovely aufternoon," and while I
smiled my eager corroboration, her cousin surreptitiously observed,
that it was "fairly delicious."
Then followed exclamations over my long absence, and questions too
numerous ever to require answers, they were much more finished talkers
than their predecessors, and when I thought we had touched upon every
subject which could interest us mutually, Alice asked in a most
insinuating tone if I had "known Florrie Grant before I went away to
to school?"
Florrie and Carrie Grant were the slighted heroines who had just gone
out. Fully alive to the import of her question, I affected a most
placid expression of countenance and voice, and answered that I had
not.
"I thought so," she remarked with an incisive smile, looking
significantly at her cousin, then changing her tone to one of most
provoking haughtiness, she drooped her white lids over a daintily
plush satchel she held between her hands and drawled out a languid
"How do you like her?"
I felt that I was taking in Miss Merivale's tone and words and meaning
with a wincing suspicious glance. I was being initiated, and the
sensation was so utterly different from anything I had ever
experienced before, that my self-control suffered a momentary
suspension, when words came to me I used them with a particular
emphasis.
"I think I shall like her very much," I answered, "when I have seen
more of her. I never like to judge people according to early
impressions," I continued, looking straight at the ottoman before me,
"because people so often appear to disadvantage at first," but my
arrow fell flat to the ground. Miss Merivale had not enough acumen to
detect anything personal in the innuendo; resuming her incisive smile
she exclaimed quietly
"Oh, but _some_ people you know, Miss Hampden, are always the same,
they have only one set of manners, of course I don't mean to say that
the Grants are any of these, indeed I _never do_ say _anything_
against _anyone_. Florrie, I believe, is a very nice little girl, in
her set, of course I don't know much about her as _I_ have never met
her anywhere."
"Oh, no! None of _our_ friends know her," Miss Holgate broke in with a
relish.
The elder girl frowned at this indiscreet remark, and interrupted it
with grave remonstrance, saying
"Hush, Edith! You shouldn't talk quite so plainly," then with a
wonderful tact in one so young she lit up her face with a happy
expression, appropriate to her change of subject, and asked:
"Where does Mrs. Hampden think of spending the summer, this year?"
I could vouch no information on this point, as, I had not troubled to
put the question to my step-mother myself, and so, after relating to
me in a somewhat confidential tone, all the plans and projects which
her Mama and her Aunt Ada had arranged for their holiday season, and
their strong temptation to try Riviere du Loup, where so many
fashionable people were said to be retiring just then, she finally
arose, and with an emphasized request that I would "run in" without
the least ceremony, to see her at any time, she bowed herself most
gracefully out of the room, followed by her younger and less
sophisticated relative.
I need hardly say what turn the rising tide of my impressions and
opinions took about this time. To one who had passed from the
cheerless, loveless guardianship of a worldly step-mother, into the
tender hands of patient and devoted sisters, to become, instead of a
wandering, uncared for waif, the object of the truest and holiest
solicitude that ever animated Christian hearts, this hollow mockery of
fashionable life was nothing more than a matchless absurdity.
Had I grown up to this, in the unpropitious atmosphere of my own home,
I daresay such phases of existence would have come upon me quite
naturally, and without my ever stopping to question their real or
relative solidity. But the "twig" had been differently inclined, by
hands more worthy of training tender, susceptible off-shoots. Where
can frail young innocence find a safe, secure and profitable refuge,
from the destroying influence of evil, if not within convent walls? It
is there, or nowhere, that girlhood, growing, aspiring girlhood,
ripens into a glorious womanhood. There, go hand in hand the
development of mind, and what is more necessary, if possible for a
woman, the cultivation of heart. Everyone who looks about him in the
social world, and gives a moment of calm consideration to what he sees
and hears, cannot but admit, that though surrounded by a vast field
for active and profitable labour, and with multiplied favours of
circumstances thrown in their way, our girls lead comparatively
useless lives, as if they were a recremental fraction of the human
race, than which, indeed, many are no better, since they choose to
lead such lives as can be fruitful of no direct benefit to themselves
or their fellow-mortals.
It is not because a woman is excluded (rightly or not) from the more
public arena of active life, that her energies need become paralyzed
and wasted. It is not because the popular idea of propriety would deny
her the right or opportunity to do great things for society or for the
state, in the same way as men are expected to do them, that she cannot
work her own great or little wonders in a quieter, but yet more direct
manner.
It is acknowledged that hers is the mission of the heart; it is
admitted that her sphere is in the family, and what is the mightiest
commonwealth in the world, but a family of families. Ah me! It is a
dark day with humankind when the sphere of a woman's action lies
rigidly between her toilet table and the drawing-room.
The proof that such limits as these are both unlawful and unnatural,
is, that our women who are confined within them, are conscious in
their hearts of the wrong they are doing the world and themselves.
Conscience is not yet an extinct, though it is fast becoming an
unpopular and unfashionable faculty, and men and women play the
Pharisee with a deep sense of their own worthlessness and littleness
gnawing at their spirit all the while.
I had been taught all this in time, and as early as my first vacation
at home, among the fashionable juveniles of my step-mother's circle, I
had begun to submit my valuable precepts to profitable practice. My
first callers taught me a very wholesome lesson which I have held upon
the surface of my memory through all these years.
Whenever I have witnessed a repetition of that early experience, the
past has come forcibly back to me, with all the golden admonitions of
my school-days, and I have felt myself stimulated anew, towards the
steady pursuit of those social virtues which are the outgrowth of
Christian charity, and a generous, impartial discrimination.
I have met many Alice Merivales, since my youth, who cast their
stylish shadows ominously over the lives of many a Florrie Grant, and
I have tried to sustain the weaker one, whenever it was in my power,
the evil, I regret to see, is unabating. A new generation of little
maidens is springing up around us, are they, too, destined to follow
the beaten track their elders have trodden so unworthily? Will they be
taught these nice discriminations between wealth and no wealth? Must
they, too, meet a struggling gentility with a haughty, overbearing
carriage, and elbow out less independent aspirants, whom some
capricious fortune has brought within their contact? Does one little
star in the vault above shine less brightly or twinkle less gladly
because myriads of others do likewise? After all, what vainglory need
there be in accidents of birth or fortune. They are not virtually
ours, they have been given to us, and rest upon a changing wind that,
to-morrow, may waft them far out of our Reach or sight forever.
"All flesh is grass; and all its glory fades Like the fair flower
dishevelled in the wind, Riches have wings, and grandeur is a
dream!"
To attack this evil, at its root, is to expose one of the most
powerful defects of our times, for no one can deny that this spirit
which prevails among so-called well-bred people, is the evident result
of that "little learning" which is "a dangerous thing." Of this I
became more strongly convinced as I grew older.
My summer vacation was not long in coming to an end. I had whiled away
some happy hours, and days and weeks, forming fleeting pleasures and
seeing novel sights. My brother Freddie had entered very sparingly
into my pleasures, as our tastes were vastly different, and his health
on the whole rather delicate, he was a pretty boy in a sailor costume,
when I saw him after our long separation, with mild blue eyes and a
pallid countenance. He was sickly looking, with an expression of
helpless peevishness about his otherwise pleasing mouth; his hair was
wavy and of a golden colour, and his hands were thin and white, like
those of a baby girl.
His mother persuaded herself that in multiplying and dwelling upon his
complaints, she was caring for him with affectionate solicitude, and
to be told that he was not looking well, was enough to convince
Freddie that his life was hanging upon a thread, and that he must
swallow powders and pills without a question or a grimace.
One morning towards the end of August, about a fortnight before my
return to school, I heard my step-mother remark in a fretful tone that
"Freddie's old symptoms" were "beginning to threaten him again," and
that she "must send for Dr Campbell to come and see him."
I looked up with some astonishment from the book which I was reading,
and ventured to ask.
"Cannot papa cure him?"
"I suppose he could," she answered, "if he were not his father, but
Freddie won't listen to his papa's directions, and cannot be persuaded
to take the remedies he prescribes--besides," she continued
apologetically, "when your father was away last fall and Freddie had a
very miserable attack, I called in Dr. Campbell, and he cured him in a
fortnight, he is very clever," she added with slow emphasis,
straightening a fancy panel on the mantelpiece by which she stood.
There was silence for a few moments, as I went on reading.
"And he is by far the most popular person in the city," my step-mother
broke forth again, sinking into a seat near the window and folding her
arms I looked up, but did not close my book.
"Who?" I asked indifferently.
"Dr. Campbell, to be sure," she answered a little snappishly, piqued
that I had not paid more attention to her favorite subject. Still
unwilling to drop the topic without having done it fuller justice, she
went on, half in soliloquy.
"He is not married either, and has the best practice here; besides
being courted by everybody who is anything. I am confident that the
Hunters, and those people, call him in for mere trifles, just to
cultivate his friendship. I know that Laura Hunter is fairly wild
about him--and she is a chronic dyspeptic, luckily," my step-mother
added with a malicious chuckle.
"Poor girl!" I exclaimed with well feigned sympathy, "I should think
she would not care to see any one she liked under such trying
circumstances."
"Neither does she--_except Dr Campbell_--she digests him so well that
her family would like to see her live upon him altogether."
I began to see that I was serving as a target for my step-mother's
ridicule of something which wounded her jealous tendencies, she knew
that I could make no retort for or against the absent ones at whom
these sly missiles were being aimed. I knew nothing of the
circumstances so broadly treated by her, and I therefore kept silent,
and applied myself to my book with renewed interest, and left my
step-mother mistress of the field--there was no glory in the conquest,
to speak of.
Towards four o'clock of the same afternoon Freddie and I were seated
upon the library floor, matching some very irregular blocks that, when
rightly fitted together, would display to our eager eyes the vividly
coloured representations of that classic and time-honoured tale known
as the "Death and burial of Cock Robin."
We were progressing slowly, and had reached that very important part
where the "fly," as an ocular witness, gives his substantial and
straightforward evidence. I had a little narrow block between my
fingers, and was glancing carefully among the unused pieces for its
mate, repeating abstractedly all the while:
"I, said the fly, With my little eye I saw him die."
"I, said the fly, with my little"--here the library was thrown open,
and my step-mother, accompanied by a strange gentleman, walked
laughingly into the room.
"Here are both my babies!" she exclaimed with a well feigned air of
proud maternity, as she came towards us. "Are they not good little
children?" she asked in grand condescension, looking up into the
stranger's face, then turning abruptly around she said in her formal
tone
"Amelia, this is Dr. Campbell."
I had sprung to my feet at sight of the intruders and stood distantly
in the shadow of the window curtains. I was conscious of looking
flushed and indignant, and did not relish the situation from any stand
point. The sing-song testimony of the fly was still ringing in my
ears, and I knew how very undignified and ridiculous it must have
sounded to an uninterested stranger coming in suddenly upon us in this
way.
Instead of going forward, therefore, with the careless simplicity
becoming my years, I merely inclined my head from where I stood, and
got perceptibly redder in the face. I must have looked up, since I
afterwards remembered the tall serious man standing like a dark shadow
in the doorway, but this was the only impression of him I could
recall. While he was bending over Freddie in professional solicitude,
I effected a stealthy retreat by the door that led into the garden and
saw no more of him.
In less than a month afterwards I was bending over my Algebra in the
study hall of the dear old Abbey, striving most perseveringly to
master an obstinate, unknown quantity that baffled me considerably. I
did not suspect that I was then setting myself a double task of this
nature, or that many another girl, besides myself, had first begun to
chase some "unknown" phantom through the intricate stages of life at
the same time that she was puzzling over the hidden meaning of an
algebraic equation.
I had worked at my task with a steady perseverance for nearly an hour,
but other things distracted me and I could not succeed with it. I laid
one cheek pensively in the palm of my idle hand and with the other,
which held my busy pencil, I played a random tattoo on my desk. Before
me on my paper was a confused multitude of a's and y's and z's which I
had failed to master with any satisfaction, although I had repeated
many a patient effort with placid, hopeful, good-humor.
Other thoughts quite alien to the subject I was then studying, began
to suggest themselves as a sort of refreshment to my mind. My vacation
at home among worldly people and pursuits seemed to have thrown open
before my eyes the hitherto undreamt of arena of active experience,
and whether I willed it or not my memory dwelt persistently at
intervals upon all I had seen, and heard, and done during the fleeting
summer months.
In a few moments I was far outside the limits of Notre Dame Abbey,
hovering in spirit around the neighborhood of my home, calling up
those faces and forms that had impressed me more than others. I went
back to the embarassing meeting with Dr Campbell in the library, and
as I thought over it I felt the warm blood rising within me and
suffusing both my cheeks, as it is wont to do when any of the blunders
of my life come back to me in my reverie.
What was most vexing to all in this case was that I could not resolve
my floating memories of him into any definite outline or form, he was
a mere shadow to me, that had flitted across my way for a short moment
and then left me bewildered and wondering.
I was rudely awakened from my reflections by the loud unmusical
summons of the class bell which set up a prolonged and monotonous
ringing just as I was struggling with all my vaguest and most
uncertain recollections of the much talked-of Dr Campbell.
I arose with my task undone and went listlessly down to the
class-room. I could not help the dissatisfied mood which crept over me
as I strolled lazily along the corridors and down the winding
stairway. I felt myself suspended between two distinct lives since my
return to school, two lives that ran as widely apart as the streams of
the old and new world. The common-place reality of one was a constant
and rather unwelcome intruder upon the dreamy uncertainty of the
other, and I stood midway between the powers and attractions of both,
a neutral, passive, and helpless victim.
As might be expected I was one of Sister Andre's "black sheep" or
dilatory pupils that morning. When our Algebra class was called I felt
humbled and fallen. It was the first time for many years that Amey
Hampden had been backward in her lessons, and what was worse, there
were girls in my section who had looked forward with an eager desire
to a day when my conquering spirit would be baffled.
I could detect a gathering expression of the meanest gratification on
more faces than one as I stood up to accuse myself, without any
justification whatever, of having brought my task unprepared to the
school-room. The words almost stifled me. I fain would have pleaded
illness or some other false reason for my transgression. Nothing
seemed so dreadful as to provoke a sneer from my unworthy rivals.
I could feel myself losing ground even at that moment, I, who had felt
myself so secure in my superiority, now saw myself threatened with a
most inglorious downfall--a mere trifle in the eyes of the matured and
sophisticated worldling who has had to do battle with some of the most
merciless freaks of fate, but every ambitious student knows that such
a crisis as this, under circumstances such as these, tries his moral
endurance, which is yet necessarily very limited, as severely as a
like turning-point, on a grander scale, tested that of a Caesar or a
Bonaparte.
I had made my own little conquests, and had established myself as a
leading power among my fellow-students, in a way, maybe, I took a vain
pleasure in my own successes which, after all, were only the lawful
performances of my duty, but then, it is a very plausible thing for
people to do what is expected of them now-a-days, and I had reaped a
bountiful harvest of recompense for my diligence and assiduity.
However, I now saw plainly the truth of the proverbial warning that
"Pride must have a fall," and I resolved to bear up as bravely and
worthily as my self-control would allow me. It seemed to me that
Sister Andre's tone had never been so encouraging, or so partial, as
she said:
"I see these examples are very intricate, young ladies; I am afraid I
will have to call upon Miss Hampden to solve them for us."
Some of my rivals exchanged sarcastic glances. My hour had arrived! I
stood boldly up and turned towards the dais upon which our mistress
was seated.
"I have not prepared them, Sister Andre," I answered, in a clear,
steady voice. Just then a tall, slender girl, with dark eyes and hair,
who was seated opposite to me, and whom I had never seen in our class
before, rose from her seat and went up to Sister Andre's throne. She
spoke to her in a low, inaudible tone for a few short moments, and
then went back as quietly, and resumed her place.
Sister Andre followed the stranger with a wistful glance, and then
turned her eyes upon me.
"It is all right, Amey," she said, gently, "to-morrow will do."
I sat down in a state of dumb confusion, feeling dazed and mystified.
Something urged me to affirm I had no valid reason for being excused,
and looking across towards my apparent benefactor for some vague
explanation of her conduct, I saw a re-assuring, encouraging
expression in her eyes as they met mine, so I merely smiled and said
nothing.
That evening when supper was over and the hour of recreation had
arrived, I walked to the end of the pillared hall, where our new pupil
stood gazing aimlessly out of a window that looked into our summer
play-ground, at the rear of the convent, she did not hear my
approaching step, apparently, for she never moved until I slipped my
arm gently within her own and whispered:
"I have come to thank you for the great service you have done me
to-day."
She started suddenly and looked up at me with the loveliest brown eyes
I ever saw, a smile crept into the corners of her rich red lips, which
broke asunder quietly and somewhat sadly, revealing, as they did so,
two rows of pretty, even teeth. Whether or not, I was partially
disposed to admire her on account of the sentiments with which I
approached her, I must admit that I thought I never saw such a vision
of sparkling, feminine beauty in my life as she presented at that
moment.
"Oh, Miss Hampden," she exclaimed, with a suspicion of a pretty
foreign accent "don't speak of it, please, I realized your trying
situation, and thought I knew something of the cause that provoked
it."
She had turned from the window and was toying familiarly with the blue
badge which, as a member of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, I have
always worn, her words surprised me, and I asked with an undisguised
curiosity.
"What did you know, Miss. ----?"
"Not _Miss_" she interrupted, while I stopped, not knowing what name
to call her by, "Hortense," she emphasized, "Hortense de Beaumont,
that is my name."
"Well, Hortense, then," I repeated, "what did you know about me?"
She lifted her fine, lustrous eyes to mine, but this time they were
wistful and penetrating; then, taking my hand impulsively, she led me
to a bench that stood a little away from us, saying:
"Come and I will tell you, Amey--for I am going to call you Amey," she
put in parenthetically. We sat down, and without preamble my
interesting friend went on in her pretty foreign way to tell me the
following.
"You see, Amey," she began, "I arrived only last night at this convent
and I have come from such a long way. Oh! I was tired and _ennuyee_
when I reached here, and then every face was so strange. Oh! it was
dreadful" she exclaimed ardently, clasping her small white hands and
looking eagerly into my face. "I could not sleep at all, you may
imagine," she continued, resuming the thread of her narrative, "and
this morning I felt fatigued again and quite lonesome. I went into the
study-hall because I had nothing to do with myself, and, do you know,
Amey," she said with renewed earnestness, "when I saw you, it was so
queer, I felt sure that I knew you already. Your face was so familiar.
I looked at you all the time, while you sat bending over your task,
but you never looked at me. I was asking questions to myself about
you; I thought I should remember you, and while I was noticing you
like that, you halted suddenly in your work and began to think, and
then--oh! your face _was_ like one that I have seen somewhere, and
that I cannot now remember I knew that your thoughts had changed
quickly, and dwelt no longer on your books," she said smiling and
laying her hand gently on my two that were folded in my lap, "They
were far away, perhaps with mine, and Amey, I liked you so much then,
I did want to speak to you, but the bell just rang, and we went down
to the class-room. When Sister Andre asked for the algebra class, I
knew you would not be pleased, and looking at you eagerly, I saw
disappointment and vexation in your face. I went up then to Sister
Andre, and said 'Do not blame Miss Hampden if she is backward this
morning, it is hardly her fault. I will explain it to you better
by-and-bye, Sister,' I said, and indeed" Hortense concluded,
gesticulating prettily with both her slender hands, "it was not your
fault, as Sister Andre agreed with me when I told her of it after."
Her eyes sparkled with a _piquante_ brightness as she finished her
interesting little story. There was a rich crimson spot on each dusky
cheek, and her red lips were parted in a bewitching smile. I was
enraptured, and told her, without the slightest reserve, the whole
prospect which was looming up so darkly before me had she not come to
my rescue.
"At the same time, Hortense," I argued, "I think you like me and
sympathize with me, under a false conviction. You have surely never
seen me before, and I most certainly have never laid eyes upon you
until now. If I had, I should not be likely to forget it," I said,
insinuating something of the profound admiration, with which her
ravishing beauty inspired me, in my tone as I did so.
"O you will make me too proud, Amey!" she exclaimed so innocently,
that I leaned over and touched her peach-like cheek with my lips. She
coloured still more, as I did so. I noticed it, and I said:
"I will never tell you anything but the truth Hortense, will we be
friends enough for this?"
"Oh, yes! Surely we will be friends," she answered warmly, "not now
only, but always, will we not?" she urged warmly. I need not say how
readily I agreed, and from that moment Hortense de Beaumont and I were
all in all to each other.