A good deal had happened in a quiet way during these seven days that had much influence upon the fate of Clark's Field and of Adelle Clark. Up to this time Judge Orcutt had never heard of Clark's Field or of the Clarks. He lived on the other side of B——, in the country, and was not much of a gossip. But he had ways of finding out about what was going on when he wanted to. A word lightly cast forth at the club table where he always lunched, and he could get a clue to almost anything of current interest. And that noon, after he had first seen Mrs. Clark and her niece, my friend Edsall happened to be at the judge's table. Orcutt asked him what he knew about the Clark property in Alton. Edsall happened to know almost all of importance that has been told here and more. He knew of the movement on foot to develop the property, so long held in idleness, but he did not know who were the persons interested. He could find out. He did so, and within the week he had given the probate judge the outline of as pretty a story of cheap knavishness as the judge had come across for years.
"No one can say what the property is worth now," Edsall reported, "but it must be millions."
"Millions!" the judge growled. "And they're trying to get it from an old woman and a girl for twenty-five thousand dollars."
"A plain steal," the real estate man remarked.
"Sculduggery—I smelt it!" laughed the judge.
One of the first results of this was that Mr. Osmond Bright, senior member of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright, was invited to call upon Judge Orcutt in his chambers, and there received probably the worst lecture this eminent corporation lawyer ever took from any man. He blustered, of course, and defended his clients on the ground that they were taking a great risk with the title, which was unsound, etc., etc. The poet judge dealt him a savage look and curtly advised him to withdraw at once from the position of counsel to the men involved in this shady transaction; at least never to appear in his court in the guardianship case. (It may be said here that the firm did withdraw from the case, as there was, in their words, "nothing doing." But not much was accomplished, for another equally eminent and unscrupulous firm of lawyers was employed the next day and went to work in a more devious manner to get hold of the Field.)
Next the judge devoted half an hour to meditation over the fate of Adelle Clark, more time than any one in her whole career hitherto had given to consideration of her. It was clear enough to him that Mrs. John Clark, honest woman though she appeared to be, could not cope with the situation that must present itself. Nor, of course, could the girl. The nefarious agreement to sell out all the Clark equity in the Field which John Clark had executed prior to his departure for the Grand Army Reunion, and which Judge Orcutt had forced the elder Bright to produce, was evidence enough that the little girl needed some strong defender if she were not to be fleeced utterly of her property. For she was heir now to nearly three fourths of what the Clark estate might bring, and her aunt to the remaining portion—so said the law. But who could be found, modern knight, honest and disinterested and able enough to take upon his shoulders the difficult defense of the girl's rights?
Judge Orcutt had not been greatly impressed by the appearance of the girl. She was nearly fourteen now, and seemed to the discriminating taste of the judge to be a quite ordinary young girl with a rather common aunt. Nevertheless that must not enter into the question: she had her rights just as much as if she had been all that his poet's heart might desire a young girl to be! Rights—a curious term over which the judge often stumbled. Had she any more real right to the property than the sharks who were trying to steal it from her? Who had any right to this abandoned field that for fifty years had been waiting for an absent heir to announce himself? Did it really belong to the Public? When he got thus far in his speculation, the judge always pulled himself up with a start. That wasn't his business. He was bound to administer the antiquated and curious system of laws concerning the bequest of property with a serious sense of their sacredness whether he felt it or not. They seemed to be an essential part of the crazy structure of society that must not be questioned, least of all by a probate judge! If men had devised these unreal rules and absurd regulations, probably there was some divine necessity for them beyond his human insight. Judge Orcutt never got farther than this point in his speculations. With a sigh he dropped the Clark case, and the next morning sent for the two women to appear in his court.
It did not take him long this time to discover that they were singularly without good friends or advisers. They had no known relatives, no one who could be expected to take a friendly interest in their affairs and trusted to manage the business wisely. In earlier days Judge Orcutt would have tried to find, in such a case, some able and scrupulous young lawyer to perform the necessary function, somebody like himself who would have a chivalrous regard for the defenseless condition of the two women. Either that breed of lawyers had run out, or the judge was becoming less confiding. For latterly, since the introduction of trust companies, he had more than once put such cases in charge of these impersonal agents. Trust companies were specially designed to meet two pressing human wants,—permanence and honesty. They might not always be efficient, for they were under such strict legal supervision that they must always take the timid course, and they charged highly for their services. But they could not very well be dishonest, nor die! They would go on forever, at least as long as there was the institution of private property and an intricate code of laws to safeguard it. Thus the judge argued to himself again in considering the plight of these Clarks, and decided to use the Washington Trust Company of B——, whose officers he knew....
After explaining all this in simple terms to Mrs. Clark, he proposed to her that her niece's interest in the Clark estate should be placed in the hands of the trust company rather than hers, if they would accept such an involved guardianship as Adelle Clark's promised to be.
"You know, my good woman," he said in conclusion, "you must be careful in this matter." (The judge's manner towards "ordinary people" was aristocratically condescending, and he considered the rooming-house keeper very ordinary.) "Of course, you understand that I—that this court—has no control whatever over your acts. You can if you like carry out your husband's intention and convey to these parties all your interest in his estate. But I cannot permit you to jeopardize the interests of this minor, who is a ward of my court, by conveying her share of the estate to them on any such terms as they propose."
"I'm sure," Mrs. John Clark mumbled in an aggrieved tone, "I had no idea of doing any harm to the girl."
"No, of course not, my good woman. But you don't understand. As I have told you, it looks as if there might be some money, considerable money, coming to you and to her from this land when the title is straightened out, and you don't want to do anything foolish now."
"I s'pose not," Mrs. Clark assented, somewhat dubiously. The "good woman" had heard of this bonanza to come from Clark's Field when the title was made right for so many years that she was humanly anxious to touch a tangible profit at once. But she knew only too well that her husband was a poor business man and probably the judge was right in telling her not to sell the Field yet. The probate judge seemed to take a good deal of interest in them for a gentleman of his importance. So she listened respectfully to what he went on to say.
"You can do whatever you like, as I said. But if you should decide to dispose of your husband's estate as he intended, your niece's representative might be forced to oppose you, which would add another bad complication to the legal troubles of Clark's Field, and necessarily defer the time when either of you could sell the land or derive an adequate return from it."
He paused after this polite threat, to let the idea sink in.
"I'm sure she and me don't want to fight," Mrs. Clark quickly replied with a touch of humor, and the first expression that the judge had seen upon the little girl's mute face appeared. A smile touched her lips, flickered and went out. She sat stiffly beside her aunt in the judge's great leather chair,—a pale, badly dressed little mouse of a girl, who did not seem to understand the conversation.
"Well, then, I take it you will be guided in your actions about your estate by the advice of your niece's guardian, whom I shall appoint."
He explained to them what a trust company was, and said that he hoped to get the Washington Trust Company to undertake the guardianship of the little girl. Then he dismissed them, appointing another meeting a week hence when they were to return for final settlement of the matter. So they left the judge's chambers. The girl neither dropped a curtesy, as the judge would have thought suitable, nor gave him another smile, nor even opened her lips. She faded out of his chambers after her black aunt like a pale winter shadow.
The judge thought she showed a deplorable lack of breeding. He was conscious that he had probably saved a fortune for the girl by all the pains he was taking in this matter and felt that at least common politeness was his due. But one was never paid for these things except by a sense of duty generously performed. What was duty? And off the judge went into another thorny speculation that would have made Bright, Seagrove, and Bright laugh, and they were not inclined to laugh either at or with Judge Orcutt these days. For in the words of the junior member, this old maid of a probate judge had cut them out of the fattest little piece of graft the office had seen in a twelvemonth! If judges had been elective in the good old Commonwealth of M——, Judge Orcutt's chances of reelection would have been slim, for Bright, Seagrove, and Bright had strange underground connections with the politicians then governing the city. Perhaps the poet in the judge would have rejoiced at such a misadventure and profited thereby. As it was, whenever Bright, Seagrove, and Bright had business in the probate court, which was not often, they got other lawyers to represent them. Even "eminent counsel" shrink from appearing before a judge who knows their real character.
Adelle was not really unresponsive to the judge's kindness. She liked the polite old gentleman,—old to fourteen because of the grizzled mustache,—and was for her deeply impressed by her visits to the probate judge's chambers. It was the first real event in her pale life, that and her uncle's funeral, which seemed closely related. They made the date from which she could reckon herself a person. What impressed her more than the austere dignity of the judge's private rooms, with their prints of famous personages, lined bookcases, and rich furniture, was Judge Orcutt himself. He was the first gentleman she had ever met in any real sense of the word. And Judge Orcutt was very much of a gentleman in almost every sense of the word. He came from an old Puritan family, as American families are reckoned, which had had its worthies for a young man to respect, and its traditions, not of wealth but of culture and breeding, kindly humanity, and an interest in life and letters. Something of this aristocratic inheritance could be felt in his manners by the two women who were not of his social class and who were treated with an even greater consideration than if they had been. Adelle liked also his sober gray suit with the very white linen and black tie, which he wore like a man who cares more for the cleanliness and propriety of his person than for fashion. All this and the modulated tones of his cultivated voice had made a lively impression upon the dumb little girl. She would have done anything in the world to please the judge, even defying her aunt if that had been necessary. And she had always stood in a healthy awe of her vigorous, outspoken aunt.
The first occasion when Adelle had an opinion all her own and announced it publicly and unasked was due to the judge. Of course the question of guardianship was much discussed in their very limited circle. Joseph Lovejoy, the manager of Pike's Livery at the corner of Church Street,—the Pike whose son Addie Clark had disdained,—was the oldest and most important of the "roomers." Mr. Lovejoy was of the opinion that trust companies were risky inventions that might some day disappear in smoke. He advised the perplexed widow to "hire a smart lawyer" to look out for her business interests. What did an old probate judge know about real estate? This was the occasion on which Adelle made her one contribution: she thought that "Judge Orcutt must be wiser than any lawyer because he was a judge." A silly answer as the liveryman said, yet surprising to her aunt. And she added—"He's a gentleman, too," though how the little girl discovered it is inexplicable.
The news of the prospective importance of Clark's Field had quickly spread through Church Street and the Square, where the widow's credit much improved. Something really seemed about to happen of consequence to the old Field and the modest remnants of the Clark family. Emissaries from the routed speculators came to see the widow. It dribbled down from the magnates of the local bank, the River National, by way of the cashier to the chief clerk, that the widow Clark might easily get herself into trouble and lose her property if she took everybody's advice. It should be said that the River National Bank disliked these rich upstart trust companies; also that the capitalists who had laid envious eyes on the Field were associated with the local bank, which expected to derive profit from this deal,-the largest that Alton had ever known even during the boom years at the turn of the century.
What wonder, then, that the widow Clark, who was a sensible enough woman in the matter of roomers and household management and knew a bum from a modest paying laboring man as well as any one in the profession, was perplexed in the present situation as to the course of true wisdom? Incredible as it may seem, it was Adelle who during this time of doubt gave her aunt strength to resist much bad advice. Her influence was, as might be expected, merely negative. For after that single deliverance of opinion she made no comment on all the discussion and advice. She seemed to consider the question settled already: it was this tacit method of treating the guardianship as an accomplished fact that really influenced her troubled aunt. When a certain point of household routine came up between them, Adelle observed that, as they should not be at home on Thursday morning, the thing would have to go over till the following day. Thursday was the day of their appointment with the probate judge. Mrs. Clark, of course, had not forgotten this important fact, but not having yet made up her distracted mind she had purposely ignored the appointment to see what her niece would say. Thus Adelle quietly settled the point: they were to keep the appointment with the judge. Another faint occasion of displaying will came to her, so faint that it would seem hardly worth mentioning except that a faithful historian must present every possible manifestation of character on the part of this colorless heroine.
It occurred when they saw the judge on Thursday. The probate judge, who was busy with another case on their arrival, did not invite them into his private room as on former occasions, but merely shoved across his bench a card on which he had written a name and an address.
"It's all arranged," he said to Mrs. Clark. "Just go over to the Washington Trust Company and ask for Mr. Gardiner. He will take care of you," and he smiled pleasantly in dismissal.
The widow was much put out by this summary way of dealing, for she had intended to pour out to the judge her doubts, though she probably knew that in the end she should follow his advice. She hesitated in the corridor of the court-house, saying something about not being in any hurry to go to the Washington Trust Company. She had not fully made up her mind, etc. But Adelle, as if she had not heard her aunt's objections, set off down the street in the direction of the trust company's handsome building. Her aunt followed her. The matter was thus settled.
Adelle had also felt disappointed at their brief interview; not bitterly disappointed because she never felt bitterly about anything, but consciously sorry to have missed the expected conference in the judge's private chamber. She might never see him again! As a matter of fact, although the probate court necessarily had much to do with her fate in the settlement of the involved estate, it was not for seven years that she had another chance of seeing the judge in chambers, and that, as we shall discover, was on a very different occasion. Whether during all these years Adelle ever thought much about the judge, nobody knows, but Judge Orcutt often had occasion to recollect the pale, badly dressed little girl who had no manners, when he signed orders and approved papersin re Adelle Clark, minor.
The Washington Trust Company had grown in power to the envy of its conservative rivals ever since its organization, and was now one of the richest reservoirs of capital in the city. Recently it had moved into its new home in the banking quarter of the city,—the most expensive, commodious, and richly ornamented bank premises in B——. The Washington Trust Company was managed by "the younger crowd," and one way in which the new blood manifested itself was by the erection of this handsome granite building with its ornate bronze and marble appointments. The officers felt that theirs was a new kind of business, largely involving women, invalids, and dependents of rich habits, and for these a display of magnificence was "good business."
When Adelle and her aunt paused inside the massive bronze doors of the Trust Building and looked about them in bewilderment across the immense surface of polished marble floor, it probably did not occur to either of them that a new page in the book of destiny had been turned for them. Yet even in Adelle's small, silent brain there must have penetrated a consciousness of the place,—the home as it were of her new guardian,—and such a magnificent home that it inspired at once both timidity and pride. The two women wandered about the banking floor for some minutes, peering through the various grilles at the busy clerks, observing the careless profusion of notes, gold, and documents of value that seemed piled on every desk, as if to indicate ostentatiously the immensity of the property interests confided to the company's care. At last, after they had been rebuffed by several busy clerks, a uniformed attendant found them and inquired their business. The widow handed to him the card she had received from the probate judge, and the usher at once led them to an elegant little private elevator that shot them upwards through the floors of the bank to the upper story. Here, in a small, heavily rugged room behind a broad mahogany table, they met Mr. John Gardiner, then the "trust officer" of the Washington Trust Company. He was a heavy, serious-minded, bald man of middle age, and Adelle at once made up her mind that she liked him far less than the judge. The trust officer did not rise on their entrance as the judge always had risen; merely nodded to them, motioned to some chairs against the wall, and continued writing on a memorandum pad. Both the widow and Adelle felt that they were not of much importance to the Washington Trust Company, which was precisely what the trust company liked to have its clients feel.
"Well," Mr. Gardiner said at last, clearing his voice, "so you are Mrs. John Clark and Miss Adelle Clark?"
Of course he knew the fact, but some sort of introduction must be made. Mrs. Clark, who was sitting hostilely on the edge of her chair, hugging to herself a little black bag, nodded her head guardedly in response.
"I presume you have come to see me about the guardianship matter," the trust officer continued. Then he fussed for some moments among the papers on his desk as if he were hunting for something, which he at last found. He seized the paper with relief, and took another furtive look at his visitors from under his gold glasses as if to make sure that no mistake had been made and began again:—
"At the request of Judge Orcutt,"—he pronounced the probate judge's name with unction and emphasis,—"we have looked into the matter of the Clark estate, and we have found, what I suppose you are already aware of, that your husband's estate is extremely involved and with it this little girl's interest in the property," For the first time he turned his big bald head in Adelle's direction, and finding there apparently nothing to hold his attention, ignored her completely thereafter, and confined himself exclusively to the widow.
He paused and cleared his throat as if he expected some defense of the Clark estate from the widow. But she said nothing. To tell the truth, she didn't like the trust officer's manner. As she said afterwards to Mr. Lovejoy, he seemed to be "throwing it into her," trying to impress her with her own unimportance and the goodness of the Washington Trust Company in concerning itself with her soiled linen. "As if he were doing me a big favor," she grumbled. That was in fact exactly the idea that Mr. Gardiner had of the whole affair. If it had been left to him, as he had told the president of the trust company, he would not have the Washington Trust Company mix itself up in such a dubious "proposition" as the Clark estate was likely to prove. He was of the "old school" of banking,—a relic of earlier days,—and did not approve of the company's accepting any but the most solid trusts that involved merely the trouble of cutting four per cent coupons in their management. But his superior officers had listened favorably to the request of the probate judge, wishing always to "keep in close touch" with the judge of the court where they had so much business, and also having a somewhat farther vision than the trust officer, as will be seen. A recommendation by the probate judge was to the Washington Trust Company in the nature of a royal invitation, not to be considered on purely selfish grounds; and besides, they already scented rich pickings in the litigious situation of Clark's Fields. They would be stupid if they had to content themselves with their usual one per cent commission on income. The assistant to the president of the trust company, a lively young banker of the "new school," Mr. Ashly Crane, who had been asked to examine into the situation of the Clark estate, had recognized its manifold possibilities and had recommended favorable action. In the event it proved that the "new school" was right: the Washington Trust Company lost nothing by its disinterested act. (It never did lose anything by its acts of charity, and that is why it has prospered so abundantly.)
"I do not know what the trust company will be able to do with the property," the cautious Mr. Gardiner continued. "We have not yet completed our examination: our attorneys are at present considering certain legal points. But one thing is pretty certain," he hastened to add with emphasis. "You must look for no income from the estate for the present,—probably not for a term of years."
This made little impression upon the women. It meant nothing at all to Adelle, and the widow had become so accustomed to disappointments about the Clark property that she did not move a muscle at the announcement, though she inwardly might regret the twenty-five thousand dollars which had been promised her husband by the other crowd. That would mean a good deal more to her business than two or three times the amount after a "term of years." She was getting on, and the rooming business needed capital badly. However, she had determined to do nothing detrimental to the interests of her husband's niece, as the probate judge had told her she might if she listened to the seduction of immediate cash. And fortunately the bank officer did not ask for money to pay taxes and interest on the mortgages, which had been the bugbear of her married life. This was the next point touched upon by the trust officer.
"I presume that you are not in a financial position to advance anything towards the expenses of the estate, which for the present may be heavy?" He gave the widow another furtive look under his glasses, as if to detect what money she had on her person.
Mrs. Clark shook her head vigorously: that she would not do—go on pouring money into the bottomless pit of Clark's Field! Of course the trust company had considered this point and made up its mind already to advance the estate the necessary funds up to a safe amount, which would become another lien on the little girl's income from her mother's inheritance, should there be any.
This matter disposed of, the trust officer asked searching questions about the Clark genealogy, which the widow answered quite fully, for it was a subject on which her sister-in-law Addie had educated her so completely that she knew everything there was to know except the exact whereabouts of Edward S. or his heirs. Mr. Gardiner was specially interested in Edward S., who had disappeared fifty years ago, and asked Mrs. Clark to send him immediately all family letters bearing on Edward. It was apparent that the trust company meant to go after Edward and his heirs and either discover them if it were humanly possible or establish the fact that they could safely be ignored. And they were in a much better position, with their numerous connections and correspondents, to prosecute such a search successfully than any one else who had tried it. Mr. Gardiner, however, expressed himself doubtfully of their success.
"We shall do our best," he said, "and let you know from time to time of the progress we are making."
And after exacting a few more signatures from the widow, who by this time had become adept in signing "Ellen Trigg Clark," the trust officer nodded to his visitors in dismissal.
It would be difficult to say what Adelle was thinking about during this interview. She sat perfectly still as she always did: one of her minor virtues as a child was that she could sit for hours without wriggling or saying a word. She did not even stare about her at the lofty room with its colored glass windows and shiny mahogany furniture as any other young person might. She gazed just above the bald crown of the trust officer's head and seemed more nearly absorbed in Nirvana than a young American ever becomes. But there is little doubt that the long interview in the still, high room of the bank building did make an impression upon the trust company's ward.
She trailed after her aunt down the marble stairs, for the trust officer did not trouble himself about their exit from his office as he did with solid clients who had going estates, and the widow was too timid to summon the bronze car from its hole in the wall. They passed through the great banking room on the main floor, where, because of the largeness and the decorum of this sanctuary of property, a crowd of patrons seemed to make no disturbance. Adelle sat in reverie all the way out to Alton in the street-car and did not wake up until they turned from the Square into the dingy side street. Then she said, apropos of nothing,—
"It's a pretty place."
"What place?" snapped the widow, who realized that a whole working day had been lost "for nothing," and the roomers' beds were still to make.
"That trust place," Adelle explained.
"Um," her aunt responded enigmatically, as one who would say that "pretty is as pretty does."
It had not appeared to her as a place of beauty. But to Adelle, who had seen nothing more ornate than the Everitt Grade School of Alton, the Second Congregational Church, and the new City Hall, the interior of the Washington Trust Company, with its bronze and marble and windows that shed soft violet lights on the white floors, awakened an unknown appetite for richness and splendor, color and size. That was what she had been thinking about without realizing it while the trust officer talked to her aunt. She called this barbaric profusion of rich materials "pretty," and felt, very faintly, a personal happiness in being connected with it in some slight manner.
If the excursions to the probate court and the trust company had roused expectations of change in their condition, they were to be disappointed. From that afternoon when they turned into Church Street on their return from the Washington Trust Company, the monotony and drudgery of their former life settled down on them with an even greater insistence. The dusty ROOMS FOR RENT sign was tucked into the front window with its usual regularity, for do what she could, Mrs. Clark could not attain that pinnacle of the landlady's aspirations, a houseful of permanent roomers. The young men were inconstant, the middle-aged liable to matrimony, the old to death, and all to penury or change of occupation and residence. So the old fight went on as before during all the twenty-three years of the widow Clark's married life,—a fight to exist in a dusty, worn, and shabby fashion, with a file of roomers tramping out the stair carpet, spotting the furniture, and using up the linen. To be sure, two great drains upon income no longer troubled her,—Clark's Field and the Veteran. With these encumbrances removed she could make ends meet.
After a few weeks she forgot her doubts about the wisdom of following Judge Orcutt's advice and placing her interest in the estate together with her niece's in care of the trust company. The manager of the livery-stable, who was the nearest thing to permanency the house knew, shook his head over her folly in trusting a trust company, but the speculators and their lawyers let her severely alone, knowing that they had been outwitted and flitting to other schemes. The Square seemed to accept the fresh eclipse of the Clark estate after its false appearance of coming to a crisis. And the character of the Square was fast changing with all else these busy years. It was no longer a neighborhood center of gossip. There were new faces—and many foreign ones—in the rows of shops. The neighborhood was deteriorating, or evolving, as you happened to look at it.
The Washington Trust Company seemed to have quite forgotten the existence of the Clark women except for the occasional appearance in the mail of an oblong letter addressed in type to Mrs. Ellen Trigg Clark, which bore in its upper left-hand corner a neat vignette of the trust building. Adelle studied these envelopes carefully, not to say tenderly, with something of the emotion that the trust company's home had roused in her the only time she had been within its doors. The vignette, which represented a considerable Grecian temple, she thought "pretty," and the neat, substantial-looking envelope suggested a rich importance to the communication within that also pleased the girl. She knew that it had to do with her remotely. Yet there was never anything thrilling in these communications from the trust company. They were signed by Mr. Gardiner and curtly informed Mrs. Clark of certain meaningless facts or more often curtly inquired for information,—"Awaiting your kind reply," etc., or merely requested politely another example of the widow's signature. They were models of brief, impersonal, business communications. If Adelle had ever had any experience of personal relationship she might have resented these perfunctory epistles from her legal guardian, but for all she knew that was the way all people treated one another. Evidently her legal guardian had no desire for any closer personal contact with its ward, and she waited, not so much patiently as pensively, for it to demonstrate a more lively interest in her existence....
Meanwhile there was debate in the Church Street house about a matter that more closely touched the young girl. She had graduated from the Everitt School the preceding June and would naturally be going on now into the high school with her better conditioned schoolmates. But she herself, though not averse to school, had suggested that she should stay at home and help her aunt in the house or find a place in one of the shops in the Square where she might earn a little money. Mrs. Clark, who has been described as a realist, might have favored this practical plan, had it not been that Adelle was a Clark—all that was left of them, in fact. The widow had lived so long under the shadow of the Clark expectations that she could not easily escape from their control now that she was alone. A Trigg, of course, under similar circumstances would have gone into a shop at once, but a Clark ought to have a better education in deference to her expectations. The heiress of Clark's Field must never conclude her education with the grades.... So finally it was decided that Adelle should enter the high school for a year, at any rate, and to that end a new school dress of sober blue serge was provided, made by Adelle with her aunt's assistance.
These days Adelle rose at an early hour to do the chamber work while her aunt got breakfast, then changed her dress, looked hurriedly over her lessons, gobbled her breakfast, and with her books and a tin lunch-box strapped together set forth to walk the mile and a half to the high school in order to save car-fare. There she performed her daily tasks in a perfunctory, dead manner, not uncommon. Once an exasperated teacher had demanded testily,—
"Miss Clark, don't you ever think?"
The timid child had answered seriously,—
"Yes, sometimes I think."
Whereat the class tittered and Adelle had a mild sensation of dislike for the irascible teacher, who reported in "teachers' meeting" that Adelle Clark was as nearly defective as a child of her years could be and be "all right," and that the grades ought not to permit such pupils to graduate into the high school. Indeed, algebra, Cæsar, and Greek history were as nearly senseless to Adelle Clark as they could be. They were entirely remote from her life, and nothing of imagination rose from within to give them meaning. She learned by rote, and she had a poor memory. It was much the same, however, with English literature or social science or French, subjects that might be expected to awaken some response in the mind of a girl. The only subject that she really liked was dancing, which the gymnasium instructor taught. Adelle danced very well, as if she were aware of being alive when she danced. But even the athletic young woman who had the gymnasium classes reported that Adelle Clark was too dull, too lifeless, to succeed as a dancer or athletic teacher. These public guardians of youth may or may not have been right in their judgments, but certainly as yet the girl had not "waked up"....
Adelle's high-school career was interrupted in January, just as she had turned fifteen, by her aunt's sickness. For the first time in forty years, as the widow told the doctor, she had taken to her bed. "Time to make up for all the good loafing you have missed," the young doctor joked cheaply in reply, not realizing the hardship of invalidism, with a houseful of roomers, in a small back bedroom near enough to the center of activities for the sick woman to know all that happened without having the strength to interfere. It was only the grippe, the doctor said, advising rest, care, and food. It would be a matter of a week or two, and Adelle was doing her best to take her aunt's place in the house and also nurse her aunt. But Mrs. Clark never left her bed until she was carried to the cemetery to be laid beside the Veteran in the already crowded lot. The grippe proved to be a convenient name to conceal a general breaking-up, due to years of wearing, ceaseless woman's toil without hope, in the disintegrating Clark atmosphere that ate like an acid into the consciousness even of plain Ellen Trigg, with her humble expectations from life.
Adelle was much moved by the death of her aunt, the last remaining relative that she knew of, though the few people who saw her at this time thought she "took it remarkably well." They interpreted her expressionless passivity to a lack of feeling. As a matter of fact, she had been much more attached to her aunt than to any one she had ever known. The plain woman, who had no pretensions and did her work uncomplainingly because it was useless to complain, had inspired the girl with respect and given her what little character she had. Ellen Clark was a stoic, unconsciously, and she had taught Adelle the wisdom of the stoic's creed. The girl realized fully now that she was alone in life, alone spiritually as well as physically, and though she did not drop tears as she came back to the empty Church Street house from the cemetery,—for that was not the thing to do now: it was to get back as soon as possible and set the house to rights as her aunt would have done so that the roomers should not be put out any further,—her heart was heavy, nevertheless, and she may even have wondered sadly what was to become of her.
That was the question that disturbed the few persons who had any interest in the Clark women,—the manager of the livery-stable among them. It was plainly not the "proper thing" for the girl to continue long in a house full of men, and irresponsible men at that. Adelle was not aware what was the "proper thing," but she felt herself inadequate to keeping up the establishment unaided by her aunt, although that is what she would have liked to do, go on sweeping and making beds and counting out the wash and making up the bills, with or without school. But the liveryman hinted to her on her return from the funeral that she ought to go immediately to some friend's house, or have some married woman stay with her until her future had been determined upon. Adelle knew of no house where she could make such a visit, nor of any one whom she could invite to stay with her. It may seem incredible, as it did to Mr. Lovejoy, that "folks could live all their lives in Alton like the Clarks" and have no relatives or friends to lean upon in an emergency. But the truth is that when a family begins to go down in this world, after having some pretensions, it is likely to shed social relations very fast instead of acquiring new ones. A family in a settled social equilibrium (rarely the case in America), or one that is going up in the human scale, is apt to acquire connections, quite apart from the accidents of birth and social gifts, because the mental attitude is an open and optimistic one, attracting to itself humanity instead of timidly withdrawing into itself. Strength attracts and weakness repels in the long run here as elsewhere. The Clarks, who had never been considerable or numerous, had in the course of three generations gradually lost their hold upon the complex threads of life, shiftlessly shedding relationships as the Veteran had done, or proudly refusing inferior connections as Addie had, until the family was left solitary in the person of this one fifteen-year-old girl, in whom the social habit seemed utterly atrophied. Of course, Adelle could have appealed to her aunt's pastor, but it never occurred to her to do that or to make use of any other social machinery. She went back to the Church Street house, occupied her old room, and for the next few days continued the catlike routine of her life as nearly as she could under the changed conditions.
Mr. Lovejoy, who continued to be the one most concerned in her welfare, induced her to write a crude little note to the "Washington Trust Company, Dear Sirs," notifying them of the demise of her aunt. The livery-stable man, who was a widower and not beyond middle age, which does not necessarily mean in his class that the wife is dead and buried, but merely permanently absent for one reason or another, might have thrown sentimental eyes upon the girl if she had been different, more of a woman.
"She'll likely enough be an heiress some of these days," he said to his employer, old John Pike.
Pike was an old resident of Alton and had known all the Clarks. He grunted as if he had heard that song before. "That's what they used to say of her mother, Addie Clark," he remarked, remembering Addie's superior air towards his son.
"Well," his manager continued, "I see that trust company's got its signs up all over the Field."
"'T ain't the first time there's been signs there," Pike retorted, eyeing a succulent cigar he had succeeded in extracting from an inner pocket, "nor the last either, I expect!"
"It looks as if they meant business this time."
"They can't get no title," Pike averred, for he banked with the River National, which was now quite bearish on Clark's Field. After a pause the old liveryman asked with a broad smile,—"Why don't you go in for the heiress, Jim?"
(Mr. Lovejoy was accounted "gay," a man to please the ladies.)
"Me! I never thought of it—she's nothing but a girl. The old one pleased me better—she was a smart woman!"
"The girl's got all the property, ain't she?"
"I suppose so."
"Well, then, you get two bites from the same cherry."
The manager made no advances to the girl, however, and for that we must consider Adelle herself as chiefly responsible. For, as a woman, or rather the hope of a woman, she was uninteresting,—still a pale, passive, commonplace girl. What womanhood she might expect was slow in coming to her. Even with the halo of the Clark inheritance she could arouse slight amorous interest in any man. And thus Adelle's insignificance again saved her—shall we say?—from the mean fate of becoming the prey of this "roomer."
"No man will ever take the trouble to marry that girl," Mr. Love joy remarked to his employer, "unless she gets her fortune in hard cash." In which prophecy the widower was wrong.
In a few days Mr. Gardiner called at the Church Street house on behalf of the trust company, to express to its ward its sympathy with her in her bereavement and to find out what her situation was, and her needs for the future. Adelle, sitting opposite the portly, bald-headed bank officer in the little front room, did not feel especially excited. She could not imagine what this visit might mean to her. She answered all his questions in a low, colorless voice, promptly enough and intelligently enough. Yes, her aunt was her only relative so far as she knew. No, she had made no plans—she would like to stay where she was if she could. It would be pretty hard to do everything alone, etc. As the trust officer, puzzled by the situation, continued to ply her with questions so that he might gain a clearer understanding of the circumstances, he became more and more perplexed. This was something quite out of his experience as a trust officer. He had supposed in making this call that he would have merely a perfunctory duty to perform, to ratify some obviously "sensible" plan for the future of the institution's ward. As he happened to have other business in Alton, he called personally instead of writing a note.
But now he discovered that this fifteen-year-old girl had absolutely no relatives, nor "proper friends," nor visible means of support except the income from "a third-class boarding-house," as he told the president of the trust company the next day. Clearly the company must do something for its ward, whose fortune they were now beginning to discuss in seven figures.
"She must have a suitable allowance."
That the good Mr. Gardiner saw at once. For to his thrifty, suburban soul the situation of a girl of fifteen with large prospects in a third-class rooming-house was truly deplorable. The dignities and proprieties of life were being outraged: it might affect the character of the trust company should it become known....
Rising at last from the dusty sofa where he had placed his large person for this talk, the trust officer said kindly,—
"We must consider what is best to be done, my girl. Can you come to the bank to see me next Monday?"
Adelle saw no reason why she should not go to see him Monday, as high school still seemed impossible with the house on her hands.
"Come in, then, Monday morning!" And the trust officer went homewards to confide his perplexity to his wife as trust officers sometimes do. It was a queer business, his. As trust officer he had once gone out to some awful place in Dakota to take charge of the remains of a client who had got himself shot in a brawl, and brought the body back and buried it decently in a New England graveyard with his ancestors. He had advised young widows how to conduct themselves so that they should not be exposed to the wiles of rapacious men. Once even he had counseled matrimony to a client who was difficult to control and had approved, unofficially, of her selection of a mate. A good many of the social burdens of humanity came upon his desk in the course of the day's business, and he was no more inhuman than the next man. He was a father of a respectable family in the neighboring suburb of Chester. His habit was naturally to hunt for the proper formula for each situation as it arose and to apply this formula conscientiously. According to Mr. Gardiner, the duty of trust companies to society consisted in applying suitable formulas to the human tangles submitted to them by their clients. And in the present case Mrs. Gardiner suggested the necessary formula.
"Why don't you send the girl to a good boarding-school? You say she's fifteen and will have money."
"Yes,—some money, perhaps a good deal," her husband replied. Even in the bosom of his family, the trust officer was guarded in statement.
"How much?" Mrs. Gardiner demanded.
"What difference does it make how much, so long as we can pay her school bills?"
"It makes all the difference in the world!" the wife replied, with the superior tone of wisdom. "It makes the difference whether you send her to St. Catherine's or Herndon Hall."
It will be seen that the trust officer's wife believed in that clause of the catechism that recommends contentment with that state of life to which Providence hath called one, and also that education should fit one for the state of life to which he or she was to be called by Providence. St. Catherine's, as the trust officer very well knew, was a modest institution for girls under the direction of the Episcopal Church, for which he served as trustee, where needy girls were cheaply provided with a "sensible" education, and "the household arts" were not neglected. In other words, the girls swept their rooms, made their own beds, and washed the dishes after the austere repasts, and the fee was correspondingly small. Whereas Herndon Hall—well, every one who has young daughters to launch upon the troubled sea of social life, and the ambition to give them the most exclusive companionship and no very high regard for learning,—at least for women,—knows all about Herndon Hall, by that name or some other equally euphonious. The fees at Herndon Hall were fabulous, and it was supposed to be so "careful" in its scrutiny of applicants that only those parents with the best introductions could possibly secure admission for their daughters. There were, of course, no examinations or mental tests of any kind.
Mrs. Gardiner, who had the ambition to send her Alicia to Herndon Hall in due course, if the trust officer felt that he could afford the expense, opened her eyes when her husband replied to her question promptly,—
"I guess we'll figure on Herndon Hall."
Mrs. Gardiner inferred that the prospects of the trust company's ward must be quite brilliant, and she was prepared to do her part.
"Why don't you ask the girl out here over Sunday?" she suggested.
"Oh, she's a queer little piece," the trust officer replied evasively. "I don't believe you would find her interesting—it isn't necessary."
On her next visit to the splendid home of her guardian, Adelle was received by no less a person than the president of the trust company himself. In conference between the officers of the trust company it had been decided that the president, his assistant, and the trust officer should meet the girl, explain to her cautiously the nature of her prospects, and announce to her the arrangement for her education that they had made. But before recording this interview a word should be said about the present situation of Clark's Field.
The search that the bank had started for trace of the missing Edward S. and his heirs had resulted as futilely as the more feeble measures taken earlier by Samuel Clark. It is astonishing how completely people can obliterate themselves, give them a few years! There was absolutely no clue in all the United States for discovering this lost branch of the Alton Clarks, nor any reason to believe in their existence except the established fact that in 1848 Edward S., with a wife and at least three babies, had left Chicago for St. Louis. Although the Alton branch of the Clarks had shown no powers of multiplying,—their sole representative now being one little girl,—nevertheless there might be a whole colony of Clarks somewhere interested in one half of the valuable Field. But more than fifty years had now passed since the final disappearance of Edward S. Clark, and the law was willing to consider means of ignoring all claims derived from him. It was the young assistant to the president, Mr. Ashly Crane, who worked out the details of the plan by which the restless title was to be finally "quieted" and the trust company enabled to dispose of its ward's valuable estate. Some of the officers and larger stockholders of the trust company were interested in an affiliated institution known as the Washington Guaranty and Title Company, which was prepared to do business in the guaranteeing of real-estate titles that were from one reason or another defective, which it is needless to say the majority are. For a reasonable sum this new company undertook to perfect the title to Clark's Field and then to insure purchasers and sellers against any inconvenient claims that might arise in the future, defending the title against all comers or in case of defeat assuming the losses. A very convenient institution in a society where the laws of property are so intricate and sacred! As a first step there was an extensive public advertisement for the missing heir or heirs, and then in due form a "judicial sale" of the property by order of court, after which the court pronounced the title to Clark's Field, so long clouded, to be "quieted." And woe to any one who might now dare to raise that restless spirit, be he Edward S. or any descendant of his!
This legal process of purification for Clark's Field being under way, the ingenious mind of Mr. Ashly Crane turned to the next problem, which was to dispose of the property advantageously. Manifestly the Washington Trust Company could not go into the real estate business on behalf of its ward and peddle out slices of her Field. That would not be proper, nor would it be especially profitable to the trust company. Mr. Crane, therefore, conceived the brilliant idea of forming a "Clark's Field Associates" corporation to buy the undeveloped tract of land from the trust company, who as guardian could sell it in whole or in part, and the new corporation might then proceed at its leisure to "develop" the old Field advantageously. For the benefit of the ignorant it maybe bluntly stated here that this was merely a device for buying Adelle's property cheaply and selling it at a big profit,—not as crude a method as the other that the Veteran had almost fallen a victim to, because the Washington Trust Company was a "high-toned" institution and did not do things crudely; but in effect the device was the same.
The Clark's Field Associates was, therefore, incorporated and made an offer to the trust company for Clark's Field,—a fair offer in the neighborhood of a million dollars for the fifty-acre tract of city land. An obstacle, however, presented itself at this point, which in the end forced the Associates to modify their plan materially. The sale had to be approved by the probate judge, the same Judge Orcutt who had once before befriended the unknown little girl. This time the judge examined the scheme carefully, even asked for a list of the Associates, which was an innocent collection of dummy names, and finally after conference with the trust officers insisted that the ward should reserve for herself one half the shares of the Clark's Field Associates, thus obtaining an interest in the possible benefits to be derived from their transactions. This was accordingly done, and the subscription to the stock of the new corporation by some of the capitalists who had been invited to "participate" in this juicy melon was cut down one half. They were not pleased by the act of the probate judge, but they accepted half the melon with good grace, assuring the judge through Mr. Crane that it was a highly speculative venture anyhow to put Clark's Field on the market, and the Associates might lose every penny they risked on it. The judge merely smiled. Poet that he was, he was by no means a fool in the affairs of this life.
When Adelle made her second visit to the Washington Trust Company, the scheme outlined above had not been perfected, but the legal process was far enough along to show promise of a brilliant fulfillment. The "queer little piece," as Mr. Gardiner described Adelle to his wife, had thus grown in importance within a brief year to such dignified persons as President West of the trust company and the wealthy stockholders who under various disguises were embarking upon the venture of the Clark's Field Associates. She was no longer merely the heiress of a legal mess: she was the means by which a powerful modern banking institution hoped to make for its inner circle of patrons a very profitable investment. So these gentlemen examined with curiosity the shy little person who slowly advanced across the carpeted floor of Mr. Gardiner's private office. The president himself rose from his chair and extended to Adelle a large, handsome, white hand with the polite greeting,—
"I am very glad to meet you, Miss Clark."
Adelle was more than ordinarily dumb. She had expected to see the trust officer alone as she had the other time, and in the presence of these strangers she took her one means of defense,—silence. The president, however, did the talking, and he talked more humanly than stuffy Mr. Gardiner. After expressing a deep sympathy with Adelle for the death of her aunt (of whose existence he had not been aware before this week), he easily shifted to the topic of Adelle's future. She must, of course, continue her education. Adelle replied that she should like to keep on with school, by which she meant the Alton Girls' High.
"Of course, of course," the president said easily. "Every girl should have the proper sort of education, and it is all the more important when her responsibilities and opportunities in life are likely to be increased by the possession of property."
But Adelle did not see how she could continue at the high school, now that her aunt had died and there was no one but herself to look after the roomers.
"Oh, very easily, very easily," the president thought. "How would you like to go to boarding-school, my dear?"
Adelle did not know all at once. She had read something about boarding-schools in story-books, but her conception of them was hazy. And she ventured to say out loud that they must take a "sight of money." The president of the trust company smiled for the benefit of his fellow-officers and proceeded to break the news of the rich expectations awaiting the timid little girl.
"I think we shall find enough money somehow to send you to a good school," he said gayly. "You know we have some money in the bank that will be yours,—oh, not a great deal at present, but enough to give you a good education, provided you don't spend too much on clothes, young lady."
This was a cruel jest, considering the quality of Adelle's one poor little serge dress which she had on, and she took it quite literally. While absorbing the idea that she must make her clothes go as far as possible, she made no remark.
"The property that we hold in trust for you until you shall become of age," the president resumed more seriously, "is not yet in such condition that we can tell you exactly how much it will amount to. But it is safe to say that all your reasonable needs will be provided for. You'll never have to worry about money!"
He congratulated himself upon the happy phrasing of his announcement. It was cautiously vague, and yet must relieve the little girl of all apprehension or worry. Adelle made no response. For a Clark to be told that there was no need to worry over money was too astounding for belief.
"Now," said the president, who felt that he had done everything called for in the situation, "I will leave Mr. Gardiner to explain all the details to you. I hope you will enjoy your new school.... Whenever you are in the city, come in and see us!"
He shook the little girl's hand and went off with his good-looking young assistant, whose sharp glances had made Adelle shyer than ever. The two men smiled as they went out, as though they were saying to themselves,—"Queer little piece to have all that money!"
Mr. Gardiner took a great many words to explain to Adelle that her guardians had thought it best "after due consideration" to send her to an excellent boarding-school for young ladies—Herndon Hall. He rolled the name with an unction he had learned from his wife. Herndon Hall, it seemed, was in a neighboring State, not far from the great city of New York, and Adelle must prepare herself for her first long railroad journey. She would not have to take this alone, however, for Miss Thompson, the head teacher, had telephoned the trust company that she herself would be in B—— on the following Friday and would escort Miss Clark to the Hall. Adelle could be ready, of course, by Friday.
Here Adelle demurred. There were the roomers—what would happen to them? And the old Church Street house—what was to become of the house? The banker waved aside these practical woman's considerations with a smile. Some one would be sent out from the trust company to look after all such unimportant matters. So, intimidated rather than persuaded, Adelle left the trust company building to prepare herself for her new life that was to begin on the following Friday noon.
They were accustomed to doing large things in the Washington Trust Company, and of course they did small things in a large way. But the little orphan's fate had really been the subject of more consideration than might possibly be inferred from the foregoing. The school matter had been carefully canvassed among the officers of the company. Mr. Gardiner had expressed some doubts as to the wisdom of sending Adelle at once to a large, fashionable school, even if she had the money to pay for it. Vague glimmerings of reason as to what really might make for the little girl's happiness in life troubled him, even after his wife's unhesitating verdict. But President West had no doubts whatever and easily bore down his scruples. He belonged to a slightly superior class socially and did not hold Herndon Hall in the same awe in which it was regarded in the Gardiner household. His daughters had friends who had got what education they had under Miss Annette Thompson and had married well afterwards and "taken a good position in society," which was really the important thing. Miss Thompson herself was of a very good New York family,—he had known her father who had been something of a figure in finance until the crash of ninety-three,—and the head of Herndon Hall was reputed to have an excellent "formative" influence upon her girls. And certainly that raw little specimen who had presented herself in his office needed all the "formative influence" she could get!
"We must give her the best," he pronounced easily, "for she is likely to be a rich woman some day."
It may be seen that President West agreed with Mrs. Gardiner's practical interpretation of the catechism. After his interview with Adelle he said to the trust officer,—"She needs—everything! Herndon Hall will be the very thing for her—will teach her what a girl in her position ought to know."
These remarks reveal on his part a special philosophy that will become clearer as we get to know better Miss Annette Thompson and Herndon Hall. The officers of the trust company felt that in sending their ward to this fashionable girls' school, they were doing their duty by her not only safely but handsomely, and thenceforth dismissed her from their thoughts, except when a subordinate brought them at regular intervals a voucher to sign before issuing a check on behalf of Adelle....
"Terribly crude little piece," the president of the trust company said of Adelle, thinking of his own vivacious daughters, who at her age had been complete little women of the world, and of all the other pretty, confident, voluble girls he met in his social life. "She has seen nothing of life," he said in extenuation, by which he meant naturally that Adelle Clark had never known how "nice people live," had never been to dancing-school or parties, or country clubs or smart dressmakers, and all the rest of what to him constituted a "suitable education" for a young girl who was to inherit money.
Meanwhile the "crude little piece" returned to her old home, somewhat shaken in mind by what had happened to her. It never entered her little head to argue with the august officers of the trust company, who stood to her as the sacred symbol of Authority. She must buy a trunk, pack it, and be at the Eclair Hotel in B—— by noon on the following Friday. Those were her orders. She looked wonderingly at the two hundred dollar check which Mr. Gardiner had given her for the expense of making herself ready. She had never before seen two hundred dollars. She knew only abstractly by the way of her arithmetic that such vast sums of money existed. And now she was expected to spend this fortune in the space of three days upon herself. She folded up the slip of paper and tucked it carefully into her purse. When she presented it at one of the shops in the Square in payment for the cheap trunk she had selected, she started a local sensation. By the time the check had traveled from the clerk to the proprietor and thence to the River National Bank, which did not take long, it was known in that busy neighborhood that Clark's Field had made good at last! Here was ready money from it as evidence. Adelle Clark was in fact the heiress that her mother Addie had been in fancy.
The manager of the livery-stable may have had his regrets for the light manner in which he had treated old Pike's suggestion. He drove the girl himself into B—— on Friday with her new trunk strapped behind the closed carriage and touched his high hat when she dismounted before the flunky-guarded doors of the hotel. Adelle did not notice the hat business: she gave her old friend and best "roomer" her hand as she said good-bye, then slowly mounted the stone steps of the hotel. And that was the last that Church Street saw of the Clarks.
The liveryman, slowly retracing his way across the bridge to Alton, mused upon the picture that the little girl presented in her blue school suit, going up the steps of the Eclair Hotel. It was all like a stage story, he felt, and he thought long about the Clarks, whom he had known for two generations and about human fate generally. He summed up his reflections in one enigmatic exclamation,—"That blamed old pasture!"
Adelle was an "heiress." Already she had been whisked away from Church Street to her new life. And all because of "that blamed old pasture"—otherwise Clark's Field.
The civilized inhabitants of our twentieth-century world are acquainted with many more kinds of torture than the ingenious managers of the Inquisition ever dreamed of in their most lurid nightmares. And of all these peculiarly modern forms of torture, perhaps the fashionable girls' school such as Herndon Hall takes first rank. A boys' school of the same order—conducted under the patronage of some holy saint's name—is often pretty bad, but it cannot rival the girls' school because women are more skillful in applying social torture and have a thousand ways of doing it to a man's or boy's one. Even among the softest and snobbiest of boys and masters there will always remain a residuum of male self-respect. If the newcomer, no matter how wrongly classed, proves that he has physical courage, or an aptitude for sports, or even a sunny, common-sense disposition, he will quickly escape from his probationary period of torture and become tolerated; while if a girl appears among her future schoolmates with an ill-made, unfashionable frock, or has manners that betray less sophistication than is to be expected, she may never survive the torture that begins on the instant and follows her relentlessly, in the schoolroom and out, until she either adapts herself to her environment, becoming in turn a torturer, or is removed to a more congenial environment.
Adelle Clark presented to the little world of Herndon Hall a very vulnerable appearance when she arrived at the school on that Friday evening. She was still wearing the blue serge school dress that she and her aunt had made for her high-school début, also some coarse, faded brown stockings, and stout cheap shoes, not to mention an unmentionable hat of no style at all. She had taken that unfortunate joke of the trust company's president literally: she must not waste her substance upon clothes. Even without this inhibition she had scarcely the skill and the courage necessary to spend her two hundred dollars to advantage in three days. So she had bought herself a trunk, a few suits of much-needed heavy underwear, some handkerchiefs, and a coat that she had desired all winter, a thick, clumsy affair that completely enveloped her slight figure. Then her imagination of wants had given out.
The young teacher, who had taken Miss Thompson's place because of a sudden indisposition that attacked the head mistress, had made Adelle uncomfortably aware that something was wrong, but she put down her coolness and unsympathetic silence during their brief journey to the fact that Miss Stevens was a "teacher" and therefore felt "superior," "Rosy," as the older Hall girls called Miss Stevens, was not at all "superior" in her attitude to the girls. She dressed quite smartly and youthfully and was their best confidante. But she had received a shock when she saw "that little fright" (as she reported to Miss Thompson) timidly sitting on the edge of her chair in the parlor of the Eclair Hotel. "Where can she come from?" she had said to herself; and later she had supplemented this query by thinking, "wherever it was, she had better go back to it as fast as she can—the little fright!"
Fortunately Adelle did not understand the glances that the elegant young women who were chattering in the Hall drawing-room before dinner cast upon her when she was introduced to her schoolmates. Nor did she immediately comprehend the intention of the insults and tortures to which she was submitted during the ensuing year. She felt lonely: she missed her aunt and even the "roomers" more than she had expected to. But gradually even into her dumb mind there penetrated a sense of undeserved ignominy, not clearly localized, because she did not possess a sufficient knowledge of sophisticated manners to realize the refined nature of her torture. She had merely an accumulating sense of pain and outrage. She was not happy in Herndon Hall: she did not know it until afterwards, but that was the plain truth. Nobody wanted her there, and she knew enough to understand it. Even a cat or a dog has sufficient social sense for that!
Externally Herndon Hall was all that was charming and gracious—a much more beautiful and refined home than Adelle had ever seen. It occupied one of those spacious old manorial houses above the Hudson, where the river swept in a gracious curve at the foot of the long lawn. An avenue of old trees led up to the large stone house from the high road half a mile away. There were all sorts of dependencies,—stables, greenhouses, and ornamental gardens of the old-fashioned kind,—which were carefully kept up so that the Hall resembled a large private estate, such as it was meant to be, rather than a school. It was popularly supposed that Herndon Hall had once been the country-place of Miss Thompson's people, which was not true; but that shrewd woman of the world, recognizing all the advantages of an aristocratic background, kept up the place on a generous footing, with gardeners, stablemen, and many inside servants, for which, of course, the pupils paid liberally. The Hall was run less as a school than as a private estate. Many of the girls had their own horses in the stable, and rode every pleasant afternoon under the care of an old English riding-master, who was supposed to have been "Somebody in England" once. (Later on, when the motor became popular the girls had their own machines, but that was after Adelle's time.) There was lawn tennis on the ample lawns, and this with the horseback riding and occasional strolls was the only concession to the athletic spirit of the day.
The schoolrooms were not the feature of the Hall that one might expect. They were confined to a small wing in the rear, or the basement, and there were no laboratories or other paraphernalia of modern education. The long drawing-room, with its recessed windows facing the river, was hung with "old masters"—a few faded American protraits and some recent copies of the Italian school. It was also furnished luxuriously and had books in handsome bindings. But educationally, in any accepted sense of the word, Herndon Hall was quite negligible, as all such institutions for the care of the daughters of the rich must be, as long as the chief concern of its patrons is to see their daughters properly married and "taking a good position in society." Adelle quickly perceived that, though she had been reckoned a dull pupil in the Alton Girls' High School, she had much more than enough book knowledge to hold her own in the classes of her new school. If it is difficult to say what is a good education for a boy whose parents can afford to give him "the best," it is almost impossible to solve the educational riddle for his sister. She must have good manners, an attractive person, and, less clearly, some acquaintance with literature, music, and art, and one modern language to enable her to hold her own in the social circles that it is presumed she will adorn. At least that was the way Miss Thompson looked at the profound problem of girls' education. She herself was accounted "accomplished," a "brilliant conversationalist," and "broadly cultured," with the confident air that the best society is supposed to give, and her business was to impart some of this polish to her pupils. "Conversation," it may be added, was one of the features of Herndon Hall.
Art, music, and literature did not seem to awaken Adelle's dormant mind any more than had the rigorous course of the public schools. She did as most of the girls did,—nothing,—coming unprepared day after day to her recitations to be helped through the lessons by the obliging teachers, who professed to care little for "mere scholarship" and strove rather to "awaken the intelligence" and "stir the spirit," "educate the taste," and all the rest of the fluff with which an easy age excuses its laziness. The girls at Herndon Hall impudently bluffed their teachers or impertinently replied that they "didn't remember," just like their papas and future husbands when they were cornered on the witness stand by inconvenient questions about shady transactions.
The tone of the school was distinctly fashionable, also idle and luxurious, which was what its patrons desired. Many of the mothers and other female relatives of the girls, besides the "old girls" themselves, ran up to the school from New York, which was not far away, bringing with them a rich atmosphere of jewels, clothes, and gossip that seemed to hang about the large drawing-room of the stately stone mansion. The more fortunate pupils found frequent excuses for getting down to the gay city for the theater and parties, and there were besides boys from a neighboring college, with parties to the races, all discreetly chaperoned, of course.
Miss Thompson was at great pains to maintain what the "old Hall girls" called the "tone of Herndon," so that careful mothers and fathers should have no hesitation in confiding to it their daughters from fear that they might encounter "undesirable associates." In all the years of its existence Miss Thompson had never admitted a member of a certain religious creed. Yet latterly there had been rumors that the Hall was not what it once had been. There were too many "Western" girls: some said Herndon was getting "Pittsburghy." There were certain lively daughters of Western millionaires, two in especial from the great State of California whom Adelle later on was thrown with, who did not add to the exclusive atmosphere of the Hall.
The path of the manager of a fashionable school is by no means an easy one. It is, in fact, as Miss Thompson had found, more difficult than the famous eye of the needle. For if she were so scrupulous as to bar out all the daughters of new wealth, she was in danger of lacking that material support without which Herndon Hall could not be maintained. And if she admitted too freely rich "Western girls" whose parents were "nobodies," but were keenly anxious to have their daughters become "somebodies," she was in danger of watering her wine to the point where it would lose all its potency. A constant equilibrium between the good-family class and the merely rich must be maintained if the school was to preserve its position. And so it can be understood why the proprietor and the teachers of Herndon Hall carefully scrutinized Adelle on her first appearance. Would she merely water their precious wine? If so she must be very rich, indeed, to compensate for her diluting presence. Miss Thompson had accepted her on the strength of President West's personal letter, and it did not take her long to discover that she had made a grave mistake. Adelle was all water!