REPENTANCE.
It is a common error that to send a girl into a boarding-school to
finish her education is to bring her out a model, not only in
learning, but in accomplishments and character.
Here were two hundred girls, coming from nearly two hundred different
families, each one brought up, until she was in her teens, in
different ways. Looking over the population of a small village, the
most careless observer must see how unlike the homes are; how every
grade of morals and manners is represented, and with what telling
effect they show themselves in the characters of the young trained
under their roofs.
It happened often that Montrose Academy was looked upon by anxious
parents--who were just discovering, in wilfulness, disobedience,
perhaps in matters more serious even than these, the mistakes they had
made in the education of their daughters--as a sort of reformatory
school, where Miss Ashton took in the erring, and after one or more
years sent them out perfect in every good work and way.
While Miss Ashton made all inquiries in her power to prevent any
undesirable girls from joining her school, she was often imposed upon,
sometimes by concealments, and not unseldom by positive falsehoods,
but oftener by the parental fondness which could see nothing but good
in a spoilt, darling child.
It often happened that with just such characters Miss Ashton was very
successful, not seldom receiving a girl of a really fine nature which
had been distorted by home influences, and sending her away, after
years of patient work, with this nature so fully developed and
improved that her whole family rose to her standard.
Instances of this kind made Miss Ashton careful in her discipline. She
well understood that a girl once expelled from a school, no matter how
lightly her friends might appear to regard the occurrence, was under a
ban, which time and circumstances might remove, but might not.
In the case of this sleigh-ride, the disobedience to known and
strictly enforced rules made her more anxiety than any case of a
similar kind had given her for years.
She knew now the names of the girls concerned: they had given her
trouble before. Mamie Smythe she had often been on the point of
sending home, but she was one of those characters with fine traits,
capable of being very good or very bad in her life's work. The mother
was a wealthy widow, Mamie her only child. Spoiled by weak and foolish
fondness she had been; but her brightness, her lovableness, her
cheery, witty, sunshiny ways remained.
Evidently, here she was the accountable one; she should be expelled as
a lesson to the school, but to expel her meant, _what_?
She had wealth, she had position, she would in a few years be able to
wield an influence that, in the right direction, would outweigh that
of almost any other girl in school.
To be sent home, back to that weak mother, with a life of frivolous
pleasures before her, what, under these circumstances, was it the
wisest and best thing to do?
Favoritism for the rich or the poor was not one of Miss Ashton's
faults. By this time the whole school knew of the ride, of its
discovery, and was holding its breath over the probable consequences.
The girls said, "Miss Ashton grew thin and pale from the worry." The
feeling of the school, most of whom were tenderly attached to her, was
decidedly against those who had troubled her; and if she could have
known the true state of the case, when she was neither eating nor
sleeping, in her anxiety to do what was right, she would have found
that the good for order, discipline, and propriety, which was growing
from this evil done, was to exceed any influence she could hope to
exert, even from the severest act of just discipline.
She was to be helped in a most unexpected way.
Two days after her interview with Myra Peters, there was a soft tap on
her door, and opening it, there stood Mamie Smythe!
Her face, usually covered with smiles, was grave and even sad.
"Miss Ashton," she said, without waiting to close the door, "please
don't be hard on the other girls. It was all my fault; I was the Eve
that tempted them. I know it was wrong; I know it was _dreadful_
wrong! I was worse than Eve; I was the serpent that tempted Eve! They
wouldn't a single one of them have gone if it hadn't been for me! Do,
please, Miss Ashton, punish me, and not them! They never, never,
_never_ would have gone if I hadn't tempted them. Please, please, Miss
Ashton! I'll do anything; I'll get extra lessons for a year! I won't
have a single spread; I'll be good; you won't know me, Miss Ashton,
I'll be so good; and I'll bear any punishment. You may ferule me, as
they do in district schools," and she held out a little diamond-ringed
hand toward Miss Ashton; "I'll be shut up for a week in a dark closet,
and live on bread and water. You may do anything you please with me,
only spare them," and she looked so earnestly and imploringly up in
Miss Ashton's face, that her heart, in spite of her better judgment,
was touched; all she said was,--
"Tell me about it, Mamie."
"When Susan gave me the note," began Mamie. Miss Ashton started.
"Susan who?" she asked, for Susan Downer had not confessed to any
note; indeed, had virtually denied connection with the ride.
"Susan Downer, of course; she gave me the note. Her brother brought
it to her, and I was wild with joy to have a sleigh-ride. It was such
a bright moon, and the sleighing looked so fine, I wanted all day to
ask you to let me have a big sleigh, and take the girls out, but I
knew you wouldn't."
"Yes, I should have," interrupted Miss Ashton.
"That's just awful," said Mamie, after a moment's reflection; "and if
I'd been brave enough to ask you, nothing of this would have
happened.
"I hadn't time to think only of the girls--you know them all, Miss
Ashton!"
"And who were the boys?" asked Miss Ashton, thinking perhaps she might
aid the other troubled principal.
"The boys! oh, the boys!" and Mamie's face looked truly distressed
now. "Please don't ask me, Miss Ashton. I'd cut my tongue out before
I'd tell you!"
"Very well, go on with your ride."
Then Mamie repeated fully and truly all that a girl in the flush of
excitement caused by a stolen sleigh-ride could be expected to
remember, not palliating one thing, from the supper to the dance, and
the clamber in at midnight through the open window.
If at some points a little laugh gurgled up from her fun-loving soul,
as she told her tale, Miss Ashton understood, and forgave it.
"I thank you, Mamie," said she at last; and she stroked the little
hand given to her so loyally for the sacrificial feruling, but she
turned her eyes away. What Mamie might have read there, she dared not
trust to the girl's quick sight; indeed, she hardly dared to trust the
feeling that prompted it in herself.
There was no use to have another Faculty meeting, and depend upon it
for help; she must settle the trouble alone.
It was Susan Downer who was next called to the principal's room.
She went tremblingly. What was to happen to her now? Miss Ashton knew
the girls' names who went on the sleigh-ride, and as yet no one had
been punished. Could it be about "Storied West Rock"? How Susan by
this time hated its very name, and how much she would have given if
she had never known it, she could best have told.
"Susan," said Miss Ashton, as with a pale face and downcast eyes the
girl stood before her, "when I asked you about your brother's visit to
you on the night of the sleigh-ride, you did not tell me of the note
he gave you, and you gave to Mamie Smythe. If you had, you would have
saved me many troubled hours."
"You did not ask me," said Susan promptly.
"True. Did you know the contents of the note?"
"Mamie asked me to go with them, but I refused. I was afraid you
wouldn't like it, and I'd much rather lose a ride any time than
displease you;" and Susan, as she said this, looked bravely in Miss
Ashton's face.
"That's all," the principal said gravely, and Susan, with a lighter
heart than that with which she had entered, left the room; but Miss
Ashton thought, as she watched the forced smile on the girl's face,
"There's one that can't be trusted; what a pity, for she is not
without ability!" Then she remembered the story she had read and
praised, and wondered over it.
Two days before the time for the term to close, Miss Ashton received
this note:--
OUR DEAR MISS ASHTON,--We, the undersigned, do regret in
sackcloth and ashes our serious misconduct in going away at an
improper time, and in an improper manner, on a sleigh-ride,
without your consent and approval.
We promise, if you will forgive us, and restore us to your trust
and affection, that we will never, NEVER be guilty of such a
misdemeanor again. That we will try our best faithfully to
observe the rules of the school, and endeavor to be good and
faithful scholars.
Pray forgive and test us!
MAMIE SMYTHE, HELEN NORRIS,
JANE SOMERS, JULIA ABBEY,
MYRA PETERS, ETTA SPRING.
Miss Ashton smiled as she read the note. Repentance by the wholesale
she had never found very reliable; and in this instance she would have
had much more confidence if the girls had come to her, and made a full
confession, without waiting to be found out.
It was not until after two sleepless nights that she came to the
conclusion to give them further trial; and when she called them to her
room, one by one, and had a long and faithful talk with them, sending
them from her tenderly penitent, she felt sure her course had been a
right one.
Then she made a short speech to the school, went over briefly what had
happened, not in the least sparing the impropriety of the stolen ride,
but, on account of the repentance and promises from the girls
concerned, she had decided not to expel them now, but to give them a
chance to redeem the character they had lost. The school clapped her
enthusiastically as she closed.