She folded up her napkin at dinner in the thrifty manner of the Church Street house. She ate her soup from the point of her spoon, and the wrong spoon, and she wore her one dress from the time she got up in the morning until she went to bed. If it had not been for the solid social position of President West and the prestige of the trust company, whose ward she was, it is probable that Adelle would have been sent packing by the end of the second day. As it was, the head mistress said to Miss Stevens, with a sigh of commendable Christian resignation,—"We must do our best for the poor little thing—send her in to me after dinner."
When Adelle entered the private sitting-room of the head mistress, she expected to be given directions about her classes. Not at all. Miss Thomson, who still seemed to be suffering from the indisposition that Adelle found frequently attacked her, looked her over coldly as she sipped her coffee and remarked that she "must have something fit to wear at once." She put the little girl through a careful examination as to the contents of her trunk, with the result that in a few days Adelle's wardrobe was marvelously increased with a supply of suitable frocks for all occasions, slippers, lingerie, and hats, and the bill was sent to the trust company, which honored it promptly without question, not knowing exactly what a girl ought to cost. Having equipped her pupil "decently," Miss Thompson observed "that she didn't have an idea how to wear her clothes," but she trusted to the spirit of the school to correct that deficiency. Next she sent Adelle to the dentist and had her teeth straightened,—a painful operation that dragged through several years at great cost of time and money, and resulted finally in a set of regular teeth that looked much like false ones. Having provided for her outside, the teachers turned their attention to her manners and "form," and here lay Adelle's worst mental torture. That young teacher, "Rosy" Stevens, who had fetched her from B——, had this task. "Rosy," who was only thirty, was supposed to be having "a desperate affair of the heart" with an actor, which she discussed with the older girls. She was the most popular chaperone in the school because she was "dead easy" and connived at much that might have resulted scandalously. "Rosy" shared the girls' tastes for sweets, dress, and jewelry, and smuggled into the Hall, not candy—because that was openly permitted in any quantity—but forbidden "naughty" novels.
Miss Stevens had the deadliest weapon at her command that Adelle had ever encountered—sarcasm. "My dear girl," she would say before a tableful of girls, in the pityingly sweet tone of an experienced woman of the world to a vulgar nobody, "how can you speak like that!" (This when Adelle had emitted the vernacular grunt in answer to some question.) "You are not a little ape, my dear." Then she would mimic in her dainty drawl Adelle's habit of speech, which, of course, set all the girls at the table tittering. Adelle naturally did not love "Rosy," but she was helpless before her darts. The other teachers generally ignored her presence, treating her with the perfect politeness of complete indifference. Once, soon after her arrival, the child was caught talking with one of the housemaids in the upper corridor, and was severely reprimanded. She had merely sought for a ray of human sunlight, but she was told that young women of her station in life were never familiar with servants. In a word, Adelle was more nearly encased in an airproof lining at Herndon Hall than ever before, and remained for another two years the pale, furtive, undeveloped child she was when she first came. Some cures, it seems, are so radical that they paralyze the nervous system and develop rather than cure the disease. Such was the case of Adelle in Herndon Hall. For nearly two years she sneaked about its comfortable premises, a silent, forlorn, miserable little being, frightened at what she could not understand, ready for a blow, but not keen enough to put up a protecting hand. The verdict of the school was that "the little fright of a Clark girl" was too stupid to learn anything. As one girl said to "Rosy,"—"The Clark girl must have piles of money to be here at all."
And the teacher replied,—"She'll need it all, every cent, she's so deadly common."
Let no reader suppose that Herndon Hall in which Adelle was suffering her martyrdom is typical of all fashionable girls' boarding-schools. In a real sense nothing in this life is sufficiently universal to be considered typical. There are to-day many schools that have some of the characteristics of Herndon Hall, though fortunately fewer than there were when Adelle got her education. But even at that time there were many excellent schools for girls where the teachers made sincere efforts to teach the girls something, where the girls were human and well-bred, and the teachers were kind and sympathetic and would not have tolerated such conduct as went on almost openly in this "exclusive" establishment, nor such brutal treatment as the girls dealt out to Adelle.
Herndon Hall, with its utterly false standards of everything that concerns woman's being, was the fruit of those ideals that have obtained about women, their position and education, for many centuries. And Herndon Hall was Adelle's accident—the fate to which the trust officers in all good will consigned her. There always is and must be, even in our own enlightened age of feminist movements, a Herndon Hall—perhaps more than one. Parents who believe that marriage and "a suitable position in society" are all there is in life for a woman will always create Herndon Halls.
If the history of Clark's Field and those whom it concerned were an idealistic or romantic story, striving to present the world as it ought to be rather than as it often happens to be, our little heroine should at this crisis awaken from her apathy. Her spark of a soul should be touched by some sympathetic agent,—one of the teachers who had lived sadly and deeply, or some generous exception among her school-fellows, who would extend a protecting wing to the persecuted girl. No doubt even in Herndon Hall there were such who might have answered at a pinch to regenerate Adelle and start her forth on a series of physical if not spiritual adventures that would be exhilarating to the reader. But nothing of the sort came into her life at this period. She was too unpromising to arouse the incipient Samaritans.
There was, of course, the religious or rather the church side of the school in which Adelle might have taken refuge. This consisted of attending the small Episcopal Church in the neighboring village, where the excellent rector, a married man and the father of daughters, often directed his discourses at the Hall pews. But Adelle was no more religiously minded than her worldly little associates. There was nothing in the service of ritualistic beauty to arouse a latent sensuousness—nothing of color or form or sound. Religion in fact had even less to do with daily life in Herndon Hall, in spite of weekly church and morning prayers, than it had in the Church Street house. There was more or less talk about "the Church" and "the spiritual life," but, as Adelle soon perceived, the girls lied, cheated in their lessons, spoke spitefully of one another—did even worse—quite as people acted in the world outside. Even the teachers, she learned after a time, failed to connect the religious life with their personal conduct. "Rosy," the teacher with whom she had most to do the first year, aimed to be the companion rather than the guide of the girls in their frequent escapades. Miss Thompson herself, it was whispered among the older girls, suffered from something worse than "neuralgia" in those frequent attacks which incapacitated her. As for the general morale of the school, even more serious things could be said if it were not for fear that the authorities of Herndon Hall and others of a similar mind might ban this tale as unfit for "nice girls" to peruse, although they tolerate the deeds themselves. Of such matters, to be sure, Adelle knew nothing until later, for at first she was so much an outsider that she was not allowed to look beneath the decorous surface, and experienced merely petty attacks of selfishness and snobbery.
She might never have got completely beneath the surface if she had not been obliged to spend all her vacations at the Hall. The teachers were then off duty, when they were not visiting at the homes of their pupils, and spoke and acted before the silent girl quite freely because they considered her lacking mentally and harmless. And she was allowed to converse occasionally with the house servants, who sometimes spoke openly about Herndon Hall. She knew that the teachers had lively parties where wine was served freely. Adelle was supposed to be in her room on the third floor when these festivities were in progress, but she could not be unaware of them. And once she encountered "Rosy" in a curious state of exaltation that filled her with fear. At that time she did not understand the working of wine upon the spirit....
She was, of course, often dull and lonely, especially the first summer in the empty house above the steaming river. It was too hot much of the time to do more than loll about the porches with a book or some sewing. She tried to do a little gardening because she liked flowers, and occasionally took walks alone into the country. It was a lazy, unwholesome existence, and she was surprised to find herself looking forward to the day when her tormentors would return and the routine of school life would begin once more. During this first long vacation Mrs. Gardiner made a feeble effort "to do something" for the trust company's ward. She asked Adelle for a week's visit in the mountains, and shy as she was Adelle longed for that week at the end of August as an escape from prison. But, alas, the Gardiner children inopportunely contracted some minor disease and Mrs. Gardiner wrote to recall her invitation. Providence seemed determined to do nothing more for Adelle at present.
The only other event of this twelve weeks was the letter she wrote to Mr. Lovejoy, the manager of the livery-stable in Alton. This was the result of an acute attack of loneliness when, after a thorough canvass of her friends, Mr. Lovejoy's name was the only one she could think of. She told him in her little letter about the school, said she missed the Church Street house, and asked specifically after certain "roomers." But she never received a reply. Whether the teachers suppressed Mr. Lovejoy's letter, or he had never received Adelle's, or, which was more likely, he was not sufficiently stimulated by the girl's epistle to answer her, she never knew. After that one attempt Adelle made no effort to reach back into her past: she accepted the present with that strange stoicism that young people sometimes exhibit.
At last when she had laboriously completed "Little Dorrit" and was beginning heavily upon the "Christmas Stories," the vacation came to an end and the Herndon girls returned for the fall term. Adelle was now a familiar figure to them, and therefore less interesting to snub. She was merely ignored, which did not hurt her. Whatever might have been her slender expectations of happiness, she must have long since given up any idea of accomplishing them like other girls. She was becoming a perfect small realist, content to take the facts of life for what they seemed. She watched without conscious pain or envy the flurry of greetings and boastful exchanges of experiences among the girls the first day of their return to school. She was either ignored or passed by with a polite nod and a "Hello, Adelle! Did you have a good time with Rosy?"—while the other girls gathered into knots and resorted to each others' rooms for deeper confidences. It was an old story now, being an outsider, and the small, unobtrusive girl of fifteen was fast sinking into a state of apathy—the most dangerous condition of all.
The new school year, however, brought her something—the arrival of a friend. As she was dawdling with a book in a corner of the drawing-room, watching a circle of "old girls" who were whispering and giggling over some vacation tale, a small voice came to her ears,—
"Is it that you also are strange here?"
Adelle was so surprised at being addressed, also at the foreign-looking girl who had spoken, that she did not answer, and the other continued with a smile on her singularly red lips,—
"I speak English ver—ver badly!"
"What is your name?" Adelle asked bluntly.
"Diane Merelda," the girl said in a liquid tone.
"What?" Adelle asked with puckered brows.
"Di-ane Merel-da," came more slowly in the same soft tone. "See!" She took with a gracious movement the pencil from Adelle's hand and wrote on a piece of paper the name, and added beneath in small letters "F. de M."
"Oh," said Adelle, "what do those mean?" pointing to the letters beneath.
"Fille de Marie—a daughter of the Blessed Virgin," the girl translated sweetly.
Adelle looked at the stranger in bewilderment. She was a dainty person, as small as Adelle, but a perfectly formed young woman. Her black hair was tightly braided over her small head, in a fashion then strange, and her face was very pale, of a natural pallor emphasized by the line of carmine lips. Her eyes were black and wide. She smiled gently, contentedly, upon Adelle. Altogether she was an unusual phenomenon to the young American. She explained herself volubly if not fluently in broken English, pausing every now and then with a charming birdlike toss of her little black head and, "You say so, no?"—waiting for Adelle's nod to dash on into further intricacies of speech.
Miss Diane Merelda, as she told Adelle Clark, was the daughter of a wealthy Mexican whose acquaintance with Americans had so liberalized him that he preferred to educate his children in the States and in schools not under Catholic control. Señorita Diane had left her father's home in Morelos earlier than intended, however, because of the outbreak of an insurrection in the province, in which her father was concerned. As his haçienda near Morelos was not safe on account of brigands, Señor Merelda had sent his wife and daughter abroad to join his sons, and so Diane had reached Herndon Hall by the way of Madrid, Paris, and New York, after a summer spent with relatives in Spain. Her mother had learned of Herndon Hall from a chance traveling companion, and in some way had induced Miss Thompson to waive her strict requirements for admission.
From her way of dressing her hair to her pointed slippers and broken English, the little Mexican was even more markedly different from the Herndon type than Adelle, and though the older girls knew enough of the world to recognize a distinction in differences, Diane did not seem to. She was gracious to all, and Adelle happened to be the first girl she could speak to while she waited for her mother, who was closeted with Miss Thompson. Here was Adelle's chance, although she did not recognize it as such. They talked for an hour, rather Diane talked and Adelle did her best to understand the rapid, lisping, birdlike notes of the foreigner. She learned that Diane had a brother in a school near St. Louis, another in a technical college, and still another now in Germany. The Merelda family seemed much scattered, but that did not disturb the little Mexican.
"We shall all be back in Morelos sometime!" She added sweetly, "Perhaps you will come to Mexico with me, no?"
Adelle soon learned all about Madrid, the Spanish relatives, the sight of the young King of Spain at San Sebastian, the trip to Lourdes which the family had taken in hope that the holy cure might help her mother's lame knee, and too much else to relate here. Señorita Diane was exceedingly loquacious: her little tongue wove in and out of the new idiom with surprising facility, forever wagging in a low, sweet babble of nothings. Adelle, as has been sufficiently indicated, absorbed passively the small and the large facts of life. Diane was like a twittering bird on a tiny twig that shook with the vehemence of her expression. She reacted instinctively to every stimulus from a new toothbrush to the sight of a motor-car, and she preferred not to react alone. Thus Adelle did more talking of her blunt, bald kind to her new friend than she had accomplished hitherto all her life. She explained Herndon Hall literally to the stranger, while Diane exclaimed in three languages.
The presence of the little Mexican in the school did much to ameliorate Adelle's lonely lot this second year. She formed a connecting link of a sort between her and the rest of her schoolmates, who liked the foreigner. Diane reported fully to Adelle what the other girls were doing,—how Betty Langton was in love with an actor and for this reason went to New York almost every week on one excuse or another; how the two Californians, Irene and Sadie Paul, had a party in their room the night before, with wine, much wine. Diane shook her head wonderingly over all these doings of "the Americans." American girls seemed to her all "queer," and, though she did not say so, rather vulgar and underbred. Oddly enough she put Adelle apart in this sweeping judgment, for she was not able to appreciate Adelle's common accent and primitive manners. Adelle did not snub nor condescend nor do "naughty" things, and so, from the Mexican's standard, a simple and somewhat antiquated one, Adelle was a lady. Diane concluded that she must be poor and for that reason the other girls treated her badly. To be poor was no disgrace in the eyes of the Mexican. Many of the best people she had known, including her Spanish relatives, were dreadfully poor, but none the less to be considered. Poverty was a matter of God's will in the delightful Latin sense of the word, not a matter of inherited personal disgrace as in a free, Anglo-Saxon democracy.
"I do not like your America," she said gravely to Adelle after she had been a couple of months in the school. "Not to live in always when I am married."
"What's the matter with America?" Adelle asked.
"It is all money, money," the little Mexican replied. "You come to see nothing in your heart but dollars, dollars, dollars. It makes the heart heavy."
Adelle, who had never looked at the world in this light, thought Diane a little "queer." Nevertheless they were good friends as school-girl friendships go and consoled each other for what they lacked in their common environment.
Another event of this new year was perhaps even more momentous to Adelle than the arrival of the little Mexican, and that was the visit paid to her shortly after her sixteenth birthday by one of the trust company's officers. It was Mr. Ashly Crane—the new trust officer, in fact—who rode up the winding avenue from the river road in one of the noisy, new-fangled motors that announced itself from afar. Mr. Gardiner, it seemed, had been retired from his position as trust officer and was no longer to be the human symbol of Adelle's wardship to the trust company. The new trust officer had not of design chosen the occasion of the ward's birthday to pay her a visit. Happening to be in the neighboring city of Albany with a few hours on his hands before he could make connections for the West, he bethought himself of the trust company's young charge and ran out to look over the school and incidentally Adelle. No one from the Washington Trust Company had ever paid its ward a visit,—Adelle was the only unvisited girl in the school,—but Mr. Ashly Crane was the kind of vigorous young banker, not yet quite forty, who could be depended upon to "keep in personal touch" with all his clients. That is why, probably, he had superseded Mr. Gardiner, who had a staid habit of relying upon printed forms and the mail.
Mr. Ashly Crane was a good-looking, keen American banker, who paid strict attention to his manners, clothes, and habits. He was ambitious, of course, and had been so busily climbing upwards from his first clerkship in the trust company that he had not yet married. Very likely he felt that with his ever-widening horizon of prospects it would not be wise to anchor himself socially to any woman, who might prove to be a drag upon his future. He was still well within the marriageable limits and looked even younger. Nothing so well preserves youth as Success, and of this tonic Mr. Ashly Crane had had an abundance. Mr. Crane, it should not be thought, had armed himself with a bunch of enormous red roses from the leading florist of Albany and set forth upon his expedition with any formulated plot against the little heiress who was the company's ward. He recalled her in fact as a most unattractive, gawky little girl, who must have changed inconceivably for the better if she were to interest Mr. Ashly Crane personally. But the Clark estate, under the skillful method of treatment for which he was largely responsible, was growing all the time, and thanks to the probate judge's precaution, Adelle would ultimately reap rather more than one half of the earnings of the Clark's Field Associates. Already her expenses, represented by the liberal checks to Herndon Hall, were a mere nothing in the total of the income that went on rolling up in conservative bonds and stocks that were safely stowed away in the vaults under the Washington Trust Company. It seemed only proper that the sole representative of so much tangible property should be accorded every consideration by those legally constituted her servants and guardians. Single motives are more rarely found in life than in art, and Mr. Ashly Crane's motives this fine April morning were quite typically hybrid.
Whatever incipient anticipations of the girl herself he might have entertained during his ride were immediately dissipated as soon as Adelle entered the drawing-room from the class whence she had been summoned. She was a little larger, perhaps, than he remembered her, but essentially the same awkward, homely child, and she was now wearing an ugly harness upon her teeth that further disfigured her. Mr. Ashly Crane was an observant man, and he became at once merely the business man, solely intent upon performing his duty and getting back to Albany in time to catch his train. He presented his roses, which Adelle took from him clumsily and allowed to lie across her lap, while with legs spread apart to sustain their burden she listened to what he had to say. Mr. Crane explained to her briefly Mr. Gardiner's retirement and his own recent elevation to the post of being her nominal guardian, and then inquired if everything was satisfactory in the school. When Adelle replied, yes, she guessed so, he observed that the Hall was prettily located above the river with a good view and that a girl ought to have a fine time in such a pleasant country.
"What do you do with yourself when you are not studying?" he concluded in a patronizing tone.
"Oh," Adelle responded vaguely, "I don't know. Nothing much—read some and take walks."
The new trust officer was enough of a human being to realize the emptiness of this reply, and for a few moments was puzzled. This was a woman's job, rather than a man's, he reflected sagely. However, being a man he must do the best he could to win the girl's confidence, and after all Herndon Hall had the highest reputation.
"They treat you right?" he inquired bluntly.
The girl murmured something in assent, because she could think of nothing better to say. It was quite impossible for her to phrase the sense of misery and indignity that was nearly constant in her mind.
"The teachers are kind?" the trust officer pursued.
"I guess so," she said, with a dumb look that made him uncomfortable.
He rose nervously and walked across the room. As he gazed out of the open window at the distant prospect across the "Noble River" (so described in the dainty leaflet sent forth by the school) "from the ivy-shrouded old stone Hall," he caught sight of a party of girls riding off on horseback for their daily excursion. That gave him an idea.
"You ride, too?" he inquired, turning again to the girl.
"No, I haven't any horse," she replied simply. "You have to have your own horse."
"But you can have a horse if you want to ride," the trust officer hastily remarked. "Riding is a very good exercise, and I should think it would be fine in this country."
Here was something tangible that a man could get hold of. The girl looked pale and probably needed healthful exercise. If other girls had their own horses, she could have one. It was really ridiculous how little she was spending of her swelling income. And he proceeded at once to take up this topic with Miss Thompson, who presently arrived upon the scene. Mr. Ashly Crane was much more successful in impressing the head mistress of Herndon Hall with the importance of the ward of the Washington Trust Company than in probing the heart of the lonely little girl. He gave the elegant Miss Thompson to understand clearly that Miss Adelle Clark was to have every advantage that money could buy, not merely music and art as extras, but horses,—he even put it in the plural,—a groom, and if she wanted it a private maid, which he was told was never permitted. Miss Thompson quickly gathered from his tone and his words that Miss Adelle Clark's expectations were such as to insure her the most careful consideration in every respect, and if Herndon Hall could not provide her with all the advantages to which wealth was entitled, her guardians would quickly remove her from the school. Miss Thompson accompanied the trust officer to the door out of earshot of Adelle and assured him haughtily that Herndon Hall which sheltered a Steigman of Philadelphia, a Dyboy of Baltimore, not to mention a Miss Saltonsby from his own city, knew quite as well as he what was fitting under the circumstances. However, they shook hands as two persons from the same world and parted in complete understanding. Adelle had already slipped off with her armful of roses.
From the moment, when she emerged upon the corridor that led to the schoolrooms with that huge bunch of American Beauty roses in her arms, a new period of her school life began. The girls, of course, had seen from their desks the arrival of the motor-car and its single occupant,—a Man,—and the older girls who had peeked into the drawing-room reported that Mr. Ashly Crane was a very smart-looking man, indeed. When a woman first receives flowers from a man, an event of importance in her existence has happened. Señorita Diane, who was an incorrigible sentimentalist, went into ecstasies over the roses and at once whispered about the school that they were the fruit of an admirer, not of a mere relative. Miss Thompson talked to her teachers, especially to "Rosy," and it became known throughout the Hall that the ugly duckling was undoubtedly Somebody, and she was treated thereafter with more consideration. If the trust company had thought to take notice of its ward's existence earlier in her school career, Adelle might have been saved a very disagreeable year of her life.
In due time there arrived a beautiful saddle-horse and a groom, both selected with judgment by Mr. Ashly Crane and charged to the ward's account. The appearance of the blooded mount did more than anything else to acquaint Adelle with the meaning and the power of money. In many subtle ways she began to feel a change in the attitude of her world towards her, and naturally related it immediately to the possession of this unknown power. A dangerous weapon had thus been suddenly placed in her hands. She could command respect, attention, even consideration, thanks to this weapon—money. It was merely human that as the years went on the silent child, who had absorbed many unhappy impressions of life before discovering this key to the world, should become rapidly cynical in her use of her one great weapon of offense and defense. The next few years of her life was the period when she exercised herself in the use of this weapon, although she did not become really proficient in its control until much later.
A suitable habit was quickly provided, and she set forth each pleasant day with that little group of older girls who enjoyed this privilege, accompanied always by her own groom, who was a well-trained servant and effaced himself as nearly as possible. The California girls rode, and that Miss Dyboy of Baltimore, but the little Mexican, though she had ridden all her life, had no horse, and as long as affairs continued unsettled in Morelos was not likely to have one. When Adelle discovered this fact, she did not play the part of the unselfish heroine, I am sorry to say, and allow Diane to use her horse even on those days when she did not care to ride (as of course she would do in a well-conducted story). Instead she merely wrote a little letter to Mr. Crane at the Washington Trust Company, telling him rather peremptorily to send her another horse. Somewhat to her surprise the second horse arrived in due season, and now she lent the beast to her little friend, carefully refraining from giving up her title to him. For a second time she felt the sweet sense of unlimited power in response to desire. She wrote her letter as Aladdin rubbed his magic lamp, and straightway her desire became fact! It was modern magic. This time it happened that her desire was a generous one and brought her the approval as well as the envy of the small social world at the Hall. But that was purely accidental: the next time she should try her lamp, as likely as not the cause might be purely selfish. As a matter of fact she soon discovered that, by distributing her favors and lending her extra horse to a number of schoolmates, she could enlarge her circle of influence and consideration. So the little Mexican by no means had all the rides.
Horseback riding was a beneficial pleasure in more than one way. Adelle, of course, profited from the exercise in the open air: she began to grow slowly and to promise womanhood at some not distant day. It also brought her into close relations with some of the leading girls, who had thus far ignored her existence; among them the breezy California sisters, "the two Pols," as they were known in school. These girls profited by Adelle's groom to dispense with the chaperonage of the old riding-master, and before long Adelle learned why this arrangement was made. In their long expeditions across country, with the discreet groom well in the rear, the girls put their heads together in the most intimate gossip, from which Adelle learned much that completed her knowledge of life. Most of this was innocent enough, though some was not, as when one afternoon, when "the Pols" judged that Adelle was a "good sport," they led the way to a remote road-house where a couple of men were waiting evidently by appointment. One of them, a fair-haired, overdressed young man, Adelle was given to understand was Sadie Pol's "artist" friend. She herself was sent back to entertain the groom while the two sisters went into the road-house with their "friends." Conduct, even conduct that came near being vice, was largely meaningless to Adelle: she silently observed. She had no evil impulses herself, very few impulses, in fact, of any kind. But she was the last person to tell tales, and "the two Pols," having tested her and pronounced her "safe," she was allowed to see more and went more than once to the rendezvous at the quiet road-house. In this way she raised herself nearly to a plane of equality with the leaders of the school. Indeed, it was Adelle who assisted Irene Paul to escape from the Hall one winter night, and stayed awake far into the morning in order to let the girl in. But that was a year later....
When Adelle discovered the power of her magic lamp, she was generous with her pocket-money, ordering and buying whatever the older girls desired. In this way she rapidly attained favor in the Hall, where few even of the richer girls could procure money so easily as the ward of the Washington Trust Company. "Get Adelle to do it," or "Adelle will dig up the money," "Ask Adelle to write her bank," became familiar expressions, and Adelle never failed to "make good." It is safe to say that if contact with any sort of human experience gives education, Adelle was being educated rapidly, although she was completely ignorant of books and as nearly illiterate as a carefully protected rich girl can be. Before Nature had completed within her its mission, Adelle was cognizant of many kinds of knowledge, some of which included depravity. For in the exclusive, protected, rich world of Herndon Hall she had met everything she might have encountered in the Alton Girls' High and a good deal more beside.
By the end of this second year she was not much happier, perhaps, but she was perfectly comfortable at the Hall and thoroughly used to her new environment. The blonde Irene had given her a diploma,—
"Dell's all right—she's a good little kid."
That summer she did not have to mope by herself in the empty Hall. The little Mexican carried her away for a long visit to her distant home. The trouble in Morelos had temporarily subsided, so that Señor Merelda felt that it was safe to gather his large family at the haçienda. The journey, which the two girls made alone as far as St. Louis, where Diane's elder brother met them, was the first view of the large world that Adelle had ever had. They were both filled with the excitements of their journey so that even Adelle's pale cheeks glowed with a happy sense of the mystery of living. This ecstasy was somewhat broken by the presence of Carlos, a gentlemanly enough young man; but Adelle was afraid of all men. She failed also to assimilate the strange sights that she encountered south of St. Louis. The journey became a jumble in her memory of heat and red sunsets and dirty Indians and stuffy dining-cars. But Morelos itself made a more lasting impression upon her little mind. There was, first of all, the strange landscape, dominated by the snowy peak of Popocatepetl, the sugar-fields, and the drowsy languor of the little town, and then there was the family life of the Mereldas at the haçienda. That was both delightful and queer to Adelle. Instead of one "queer" person to whom she had become accustomed, there were half a dozen odd human beings in the persons of Señor and Señora Merelda and the older boys and girls. They all spoke all the time as did Diane, about everything and nothing. They seemed to care warmly for one another, yet quarreled like children over nothings. Young Carlos, who was at a technical school, made violent love to Adelle. It was the first time that a boy had looked at her twice even under compulsion, and it bewildered and troubled Adelle until she perceived that it was all a joke, a "queer" way of expressing courtesy to a stranger.
"It would not be polite," Diane explained demurely, "if Carlos did not make the bear to my friend."
So Adelle got over her fright when the youth uttered strange speeches and tried to take her hand. She even felt a faint pleasure in thus becoming of a new importance.
"Of course," Diane remarked sagely, "Carlos cannot marry yet—he is still in school. But he will marry soon—why not you?... You are so very rich. I should like Carlos to marry a rich girl and my friend, too ..." And with a little sigh,—"It must be pleasant to be so rich as you!" From which it will be seen that the little Mexican had also become somewhat corrupted by her year at Herndon Hall.
Adelle had not yet found out fully how nice it was to be rich, but she was learning fast. To be able to attract the attentions of agreeable young men like Carlos Merelda was another of the virtues of her magic lamp that she had never thought of before. Although she had no idea of taking Carlos's courtship seriously, she thought all the better of herself for this extra magnetism which her money gave her person. The kindliness of the Mereldas and their Mexican circle to the little American was due largely to her being a good friend of their Diane and also their guest, but it made Adelle grow in her own estimation. At present life seemed to consist in a gradual unfolding to her of the meaning of her new power, and a consequent enlargement of her egotism. That is unfortunately one of the commonest properties of wealth,—stimulating egotism,—and it takes much experience or an extraordinary nature to counteract this unhealthy stimulus. For the ordinary nature it is impossible to live day after day, year in and year out, under the powerful external stimulus of riches, without confounding the outer source of power with an innate virtue.
But with our Adelle, by the time her visit had come to an end, her new education had got merely to the point where she had the self-interest and assurance of the ordinary American girl of twelve. That Church Street experience had chastened her. But if her education was to continue at the present rate, she was likely to become selfish, egotistical, and purse-proud in a few years. As yet it had not made her unpleasant, merely given her a little needed confidence in her own being.
She chose to make the long journey homewards by water from Vera Cruz to New York in charge of the captain of the vessel. For Señor Merelda, after the harassing activities of political warfare and its pecuniary drains, did not feel able to send his daughter back to Herndon Hall. So the two friends kissed and parted at Vera Cruz, Diane shedding all the tears. They expected to meet again before long, and of course agreed to write frequently. But life never again brought Adelle in contact with the warm-hearted little Latin, who had first held out to her the olive branch of human sympathy.
Adelle was met at the dock by "Rosy," who had with her "the two Pols" and Eveline Glynn at whose country home they were staying. "Rosy," as well as her schoolmates, was agreeably surprised by Adelle's appearance after her summer in Mexico. Nature was tardily asserting herself; Adelle was becoming a woman,—a small, delicate, pale little creature, whose rounding bust under her white dress gave her the dainty atmosphere of an early spring flower, fragile and frigid, but full of charm for some connoisseurs of human beauty. She had also acquired in Mexico a note of her own, which was perhaps due to the clothes she had bought in Mexico City on her way home, of filmy fabric and prominent colors; and her usually taciturn speech had taken on a languorous slowness in imitation of the Mereldas' way of speaking English. In the drawling manner in which she said,—"Hello, Rosy," and nonchalantly accepted Miss Glynn's invitation for the intervening days before school opened, the new Adelle was revealed. The girls exchanged glances. And "Rosy" whispered Irene Paul,—"Our little Adelle is coming on." To which the California girl replied with a chuckle,—"Didn't I tell you she was a good old sport?"
Adelle, overhearing this, felt an almost vivid sense of pride.
But as yet hers was only a very little air, which was quickly wilted by the oppressive luxury of the Glynns' country-place—one of those large, ostentatious establishments that Americans are wont to start before they know how, and where consequently the elaborate domestic machinery creaks. There were men-servants of different nationalities, ladies' maids, and a houseful of guests coming and going as in a private hotel. Adelle shrank into the obscurest corner and her anemonelike charm, tentatively putting forth, was quite lost in the scramble. Beechwood was a much less genial home than the slipshod Mexican haçienda of the Mereldas and nobody paid any attention to the shy girl. Eveline Glynn, who expected in another year to be free from school, was too much occupied with her own flirtations to bother herself about her chance guest. Adelle, being left to her usual occupation of silent observation, managed to absorb a good deal at Beechwood in four days, chiefly of the machinery of modern wealth. There were the elaborate meals, the drinking, the card-playing, the motors, the innumerable servants, and the sickening atmosphere of inane sentimentalism between the sexes. Everybody seemed to be having "an affair," and the talk was redolent of innuendo. Adelle had occasion to observe the potency of her lamp in this society. She worked it first upon the waiting-woman assigned to her, to whom she gave a large fee and who coached her devotedly in the ways of the house and supplied her with the gossip. It also brought her the annoying attentions of a middle-aged man, to whom her hostess had confided that the dumb little Clark girl was "awful rich."
At the end of the visit the girls went back to New York, under the chaperonage of "Rosy," to equip themselves for the school term, staying at a great new hotel, and here Adelle's corruption by her wealth was continued at an accelerated pace. The four girls flitted up and down the Avenue, buying and ordering what they would. There were definite limits to the purse of the Californians, but Adelle, perceiving the distinction to be had from free spending, ordered with a splendid indifference to price or amount. She won the admiration of her friends by the ease with which she gave her name and address. Adelle was in fact a little frightened by her own extravagance, but persisted with a child's curiosity to find out the limit of her magic lamp. She did not reach it, however. Mr. Crane at her request had opened an account for her at the trust company's correspondent on upper Fifth Avenue, and apparently it was of a size that produced respect in the heart of the shopkeeper.
All these purchases, the clothes and the jewelry and the other rubbish that the girl bought, gave her no special pleasure, gratified no desires: she did not know what she could do with half the things at Herndon Hall. What gave her keen pleasure was the prestige of lavish spending.... After a debauch of theaters and dinners and shopping, the four girls were again taken in tow by the sophisticated "Rosy" and went up the river to Herndon Hall for Adelle's third year of boarding-school.
Adelle Clark was thoroughly infected with the corruption of property by this time, and the coming years merely confirmed the ideas and the habits that had been started. She was now seventeen and an "old girl" at the Hall, privileged to torture less sophisticated girls when they presented themselves, if she had felt the desire to do so. She had not forgotten her Church Street existence: it had been much too definite to be easily forgotten. But she had been removed from it long enough to realize herself thoroughly in her new life and to know that it was not a dream. She would always remember Church Street, her aunt and uncle, and the laborious years of poverty with which it was identified; but gradually that part of her life was becoming the dream, while Herndon Hall and the Aladdin lamp of her fortune were the reality. By means of the latter she had won her position among her mates, and naturally she respected more and more the source of her power. Eveline Glynn "took her up" this year, and quite replaced the gentler Diane Merelda in her affections.
There was if anything less study this year than before. The older girls scouted the idea of studying anything. Most of them expected to leave school forever the next spring and under the auspices of their mothers to enter the marriage game. A few intended as a preliminary to travel in Europe, "studying art or music," But the minds of all were much more occupied with love than anything else. Although the sex interest was still entirely dormant in Adelle, she learned a great deal about it from her schoolmates. Those good people who believe in a censorship of literature for the sake of protecting the innocent American girl should become enrolled at Herndon Hall. There they might be occasionally horrified, but they would come out wiser mortals. Adelle knew all about incredible scandals. Divorce, with the reasons for it,—especially the statutory one,—was freely discussed, and a certain base, pandering sheet of fashionable gossip was taken in at the Hall and eagerly devoured each week by the girls, who tried to guess at the thinly disguised persons therein pilloried. Thus Adelle became fully acquainted with the facts of sex in their abnormal as well as more normal aspects. That she got no special personal harm from this irregular education and from the example of "the two Pols" was due solely to her own unawakened temperament. Life had no gloss for her, and it had no poetic appeal. She supposed, when she considered the matter at all, that sometime as a woman she would be submitted to the coil of passion and sex, like all the others about whom her friends talked incessantly. They seemed to regard every man as a possible source of excitement to a woman. But she resolved for her part to put off the interference of this fateful influence as long as possible. Sometime, of course, she must marry and have a child,—that was part of the fate of a girl with money of her own,—and then she should hope to marry a nice man who would not scold or ill-treat her or prefer some other woman—that was all.
"Dell is just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the man's aggressive rôle.
Thus the last months of her formal education slipped by. Adelle went through the easy routine of the Hall like the other girls, riding horseback a good deal during pleasant weather, taking a lively interest in dancing, upon which great stress was laid by Miss Thompson as an accomplishment and healthy exercise. She took a mild share in the escapades of her more lively friends, but for the most part her life was dull, though she did not feel it. The life of the rich, instead of being varied and full of deep experience, is actually in most cases exceedingly monotonous and narrowing. The common belief that wealth is an open sesame to a life of universal human experience is a stupid delusion, frequently used as a gloss to their souls by well-intentioned people. Apart from the strict class limitations imposed by the possession of large property, the object of protected and luxurious people is generally merely pleasure. And pleasure is one of the narrowest fields of human experience conceivable, becoming quickly monotonous, which accounts for many extravagancies and abnormalities among the rich. Moreover, the sensual life of the well-fed and idle deadens imagination to such a degree that even their pleasures are imitative, not original: they do what their kind have found to be pleasurable without the incentive of initiative. If Adelle Clark had not been attached to Clark's Field and had been forced to remain in the Church Street rooming-house, by this time she would have been at work as a clerk or in some other business: in any case she must have touched realities closely and thus been immeasurably ahead of all the Herndon Hall girls.
Probably this doctrine would shock not only the managers of Herndon Hall, but also the officers of the trust company, who felt that they were giving their ward the best preparation for "a full life," such as the possession of a large property entitles mortals to expect. And though it may seem that the Washington Trust Company had been somewhat perfunctory in its care of its young ward, merely accepting the routine ideas of the day in regard to her education and preparation for life, they did nothing more nor worse in this than the majority of well-to-do parents who may be supposed to have every incentive of love and family pride in dealing with their young. The trust company in fact was merely an impersonal and legal means of fulfilling the ideals of the average member of our society. Indeed, the trust company, in the person of its president and also of Mr. Ashly Crane, were just now giving some of their valuable time to consideration of the personal fate of their ward. She had been the subject of at least one conference between these officers. She was now on her way towards eighteen, and that was the age, as President West well knew, when properly conditioned young women usually left school, unless they were "queer" enough to seek college, and entered "society" for the unavowed but perfectly understood object of getting husbands for themselves. The trust company was puzzled as to how best to provide this necessary function for its ward. They felt that there existed no suitable machinery for taking this next step. They could order her clothes, or rather hire some one to buy them for her, order her a suitable "education" and pay for it, but they could not "introduce her to society" nor provide her with a good husband. And that was the situation which now confronted them.
They had received excellent reports of their ward latterly from Herndon Hall. Although Miss Thompson admitted that Miss Clark was not "intellectually brilliant," she had a "good mind," whatever that might mean, and had developed wonderfully at the Hall in bearing, deportment, manner—in all the essential matters of woman's education. Miss Thompson meant that Adelle spoke fairly correct English, drawled herA's, wore her clothes as if she owned them, had sufficiently good table-manners to dine in public, and could hold her own in the conversation of girls of her kind. Miss Thompson recommended warmly that Adelle join Miss Stevens's "Travel Class," which was going abroad in June to tour the Continent and study the masterpieces of art upon the spot. The suggestion came as a relief to the trust company's officers: it put over their problem with Adelle for another year. But before accepting Miss Thompson's advice, Mr. Ashly Crane thought it wise to make another visit to Herndon Hall and talk the matter over with Adelle herself. He believed always in the "personal touch" method. And so once more he broke a journey westwards at Albany and rolled up the long drive in a motor-car.
Adelle enjoyed the impression which she was able to make upon the young banker this time. She had seen his approach in the car on her return from her ride, and had kept him waiting half an hour while she took a bath and dressed herself with elaborate care as she had often seen other girls do. Her teeth had at last been released from their harness and were nice little regular teeth. Her dull brown hair, thanks to constant skillful attention, had lately come to a healthy gloss. Her complexion was clear though pale, and her dress was a dream of revealing simplicity. Mr. Ashly Crane took in all these details at a glance, and felt a glow of satisfaction beyond the purely male sense of appreciation: the trust company which he represented had done its duty by the little orphan, and what is more had got what it paid for. Their ward, as she stood before him with a faint smile on her thin lips, was a creditable creation of modern art. A thoroughly unpromising specimen of female clay had been moulded into something agreeable and almost pretty, with a faint, anemonelike bloom and fragrance. Mr. Ashly Crane, who was rather given to generalization about the might and majesty of American achievements, felt that the girl was a triumphant example of modern power,—"what we do when we try to do something,"—like converting the waste land of Clark's Field into a city of brick and mortar, or making a hydrangea out of a field shrub.
"Well, Miss Clark," he began as the two seated themselves where they had sat the year before, "I needn't ask you how you are—your looks answer the question."
It was a banal remark, but Adelle recognized it for a compliment and smiled prettily. She said nothing. Silence was still the principal method of her social tactics.
"You are getting to be a young woman fast," the banker continued quite bluntly.
Adelle looked down and possibly blushed.
"Mr. West and I have been considering what to do"—he caught himself and tried again;—"that is we have been in consultation with Miss Thompson about—your future."
Here Adelle looked the trust officer fully in the eye. On this point she seemed really interested this time. So Mr. Crane proceeded more easily to question her about the plan of joining Miss Stevens's "Travel Class." Adelle listened blankly while Mr. Crane wandered off into generalities about the advantages of travel and the study of "art" under the guidance of a mature woman. Suddenly she said quite positively,—
"I don't want to go with the 'Travel Class.'"
This was the first positive expression of any sort that the trust officer had ever heard from the ward. It was one of the very few that Adelle Clark had ever made in the eighteen years of her existence. Under Mr. Crane's inquiries it soon developed that Adelle did not like "Rosy" Stevens,—as nearly hated her as she was capable of hating any one,—nor had she any great fondness for the girls who were to compose this year's "Travel Class." They belonged to the snobbiest element in the school.... What, then, did she wish to do with herself—remain another year at Herndon Hall? Here again the ward amazed Mr. Crane, for she had ready a definite plan of her own—a small plan to be sure and imitative, but a plan.
She wished to go with her new friend Eveline Glynn and the California sisters to Paris. Eveline's parents, it seemed, were spending the next season in Europe, and after the manner of their kind they did not propose to be encumbered with a young daughter. So they had arranged to send her to Miss Catherine Comstock at Neuilly, and "the two Pols" had decided to do the same thing. It was not a school,—oh, no, not even a "finishing school,"—but the home of an accomplished and brilliant American woman, who had long lived abroad and who undertook to chaperone in the French capital a very few desirable girls. The banker could not see how Miss Comstock's establishment in Neuilly differed essentially from the "Travel Class," except that it was more permanent, which shows how socially blunt Mr. Crane was. But after an interview with Miss Thompson he satisfied himself that the Glynns were "our very best people"; anything they thought right for their daughter must be fit for the Washington Trust Company's ward. So her guardian's assent to the plan was easily obtained, and the four friends rejoiced in their coming freedom....
Adelle had no clear idea why she preferred Neuilly to the "Travel Class," except to be with Eveline Glynn and the two Paul girls. Paris and Rome were hazily mixed geographically in her ill-furnished mind, and culturally both were blank. Eveline had known girls who had stayed with Miss Comstock and they had given glowing accounts of their experiences. The Neuilly establishment, it appeared, was a place of perfect freedom, where the girls were chaperoned sufficiently to keep them out of serious mischief, but otherwise were allowed to please themselves in their own way. And there was Paris, which, according to Eveline, who had informed herself from many sources, was the best place in the world for a good time. Friends were always coming there, to buy clothes and to make excursions. Adelle could have her own car, in which the four would take motor trips, and there was the opera, etc. And lastly Society—real Society;—for it seemed that this was one of Miss Comstock's strong points. She knew people, and had actually put a number of her girls in the way of marrying titled foreigners. The California girls knew of a compatriot who had thus acquired a Polish title. In short, there was nothing of the boarding-school in Miss Comstock's establishment, except the fees, which were enormous—five thousand dollars to start with.
Thus Adelle left Herndon Hall in the beautiful month of June, having received her last communion in the little ivy-covered stone chapel from the hands of the bishop himself, smiled upon by Miss Thompson and the other teachers, who had three years before pronounced her "a perfect little fright," and kissed by a few of her schoolmates. She felt that she was coming into her own, thanks to her magic lamp—that life ahead looked promising. Yet she had changed as little fundamentally during these three years as a human being well could. She had passed from the narrowest poverty of the Alton side street to the prodigal ease of Herndon Hall, from the environment of an inferior "rooming-house" to companionship with the rich daughters of "our very best people,"—from an unformed child to the full physical estate of womanhood,—all within three short years; but she had accommodated herself to these great transitions with as little inward change as possible. Her soul was the soul of the Clarks, tricked out with good clothes and the manners and habits of the rich. Addie, it seemed, had at last arrived at her paradise in the person of her daughter, but it was a pale and inexpressive Addie, who made no large drafts upon paradise.
Adelle departed in the Glynn motor for the Glynn country-place, where she was to stay until the Glynns sailed for Europe. She was prettily dressed in écru-colored embroidered linen, with a broad straw hat and suède gloves and boots, according to the style of the day, and she was really happy and almost aware of it. Eveline was glum because her mother—a stern-looking matron who knew exactly what she wanted out of life and how to get it—had refused peremptorily to let her invite Bobby Trenow to accompany them. Bobby was Eveline's darling of the hour, as Adelle knew: Eveline had let him kiss her for the first time the previous evening, and she was "perfectly crazy" about him. To Adelle, Bobby was merely a smooth, downy boy like all the rest, who showed bare brown arms and white flannels in summer, and had as little to say for himself as she had. She was amused at Nelly's fussed state over the loss of Bobby; she could not understand Mother Glynn's objection to the harmless Bobby's occupying the vacant seat in the roomy car;—but then she did not understand many things in the intricate social world in which she found herself. She did not know that there is no one of their possessions that the rich learn more quickly to guard than their women. The aristocrats of all ages have jealously housed and protected their women from entangling sexual relations, while permitting the greatest license to their predatory males. The reasons are obvious enough to the mature intelligence, but difficult for the young to comprehend.
Adelle had not yet felt the need of a Bobby Trenow.
Some years ago Prince Ponitowski had built in Neuilly, near the gate of the Bois, what contemporary novelists described as a "nest" for his mistress—a famous Parisian lady. It was a fascinating little villa with a demure brick and stone façade, a terrace, and a few shady trees in a tiny, high-walled garden. The prince died, and the lady having made other arrangements, the smart little villa came into the hands of Miss Catherine Comstock, who took a long lease of the premises and established there her family of "select" American girls. It might seem that the tradition of the Villa Ponitowski (as the place continued to be called) was hardly suitable for her purposes, but the robust common sense of our age rarely hesitates over such intangible considerations, and least of all the sophisticated Miss Comstock. At the Villa Ponitowski the young women enjoyed the healthful freedom of a suburb with the open fields of the Bois directly at their door, and yet were within easy reach of Paris, "with its galleries and many cultural opportunities"—according to the familiar phrasing of Miss Comstock's letters to inquiring parents. (She had no circulars.)
Miss Catherine Comstock herself was, in the last analysis, from Toledo, Ohio, of an excellent family that had its roots in the soil of Muskingum. When her father died, there being no immediate prospect of marriage, she had taken to teaching in a girls' private school. It was not long before the routine of an American private school became irksome to her venturous spirit, and she conceived the idea of touring Europe with rich girls who had nothing else to do. From this developed the Neuilly scheme, which provided for the needs of that increasing number of Americans with daughters who for one reason or another do not live in America, and also for those American girls who could afford to experiment in the fine arts "carefully shielded from undesirable associates"—another favorite Comstock phrase. At first the art and education idea had been much to the fore, and Miss Comstock had fortified herself with one or two teachers and hired other assistants occasionally. But the life of Paris had proved so congenial and its "opportunities" so abundant that Miss Comstock had come to rely more and more upon the "privilege of European residence" and dispensed altogether with formal instruction.
She soon found that that was what the girls who came to her really wanted, even if their parents had vague thoughts of other things. In short, the Neuilly school was nothing else than a superior sort of selectpensionfor eight or ten girls, with facilities for travel and more or less "society." Miss Comstock herself—affectionately known to "her girls" as "Pussy" Comstock—had been rather angular and plain in the Toledo days, but under the congenial air of Paris and good dressmakers had developed into a smart specimen of the free-lance, middle-aged woman, with the sophistication of a thorough acquaintance with the world and much prudence garnered from a varied experience. She made an excellent impression upon the sort of parents she dealt with as a "woman who really knows life," and the girls always liked her, found her "a good chum." They called her "Pussy"! Miss Comstock kept with her a dumpy little American woman with glasses, who did what educational work was attempted, and the more tedious chaperonage. The Villa Ponitowski, in a word, was one of the modern adjustments between the ignorance and selfishness of parents and the selfishness and folly of children. The parents handed over their daughters for a season to Miss Comstock with a sigh of relief, believing that their girls would be perfectly "safe" in her care and might possibly improve themselves in language and knowledge of art and the world. And the daughters rejoiced, knowing from the reports of other girls that they would have "a perfectly bully time," freed from the annoying prejudices of parents, and might pick up an adventure or two of a sentimental nature....
Into this final varnishing bath our heroine was plunged with her three friends, in the autumn of 1902, when she was eighteen years old. The girls arrived at the Villa from a motoring trip across Europe, during which they had scurried over the surface of five countries and put up in thirty-eight different hotels as the labels on their bags triumphantly proclaimed. Miss Comstock received the party in her own little salon in the rear of the Villa, where, after the elder Glynns had withdrawn, liqueurs and cigarettes were served. Miss Comstock lit a cigarette, perched her well-shod feet on a stool, and listened with sympathetic amusement to the adventures of the trio as vivaciously related by Eveline Glynn. The California sisters, it developed, had the cigarette habit, too, and Eveline tried one of "Pussy's" special kind. When the girls went to their rooms, to which they were conducted by Miss Comstock with an arm around the waist of Adelle and another about Irene Paul, the girls agreed that "Pussy" was "all right" and congratulated themselves upon the perspicacity of their choice.
At Herndon Hall there had been at least the pretense of discipline and study, but all such childish notions were laughed at in the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline Glynn thought she had a voice and a teacher was engaged for her. Irene Paul devoted herself to the art of whistling, while her sister "went in for posters." Another girl was supposed to be studying painting and resorted a few afternoons each week to a studio, well chaperoned. Miss Comstock promised to find something for Adelle to do in an art way. But there was nothing pedantic or professional about the Villa Ponitowski. Miss Comstock prided herself upon her outlook. She knew that her girls would marry in all likelihood, and she endeavored to give them something of the horizon of broad boulevards and watering-places as a preparation. All the girls had their own maids, who brought them the morning cup of coffee whenever they rang—usually not before noon. The European day, Adelle learned, began about one o'clock with a variety of expeditions and errands, and frequently ended well after midnight at opera or play, or dancing party at the home of some American resident to whom Miss Comstock introduced her charges. This was during the season. Then there were, of course, expeditions to Rome and Vienna and Madrid, tours of cathedral towns, inspection of watering-places, etc.
Behold, thus, the sole descendant of the hard-grubbing, bucolic Clarks waking from her final nap at eleven in the morning, imbibing her coffee from a delicate china cup, and nibbling at herbrioche, while her maid opened the shutters, started a fire in the grate, and laid out her dresses, chattering all the time in charming French about delectable nothings. Addie Clark, surely, would have felt that she had not lived in vain if she could have beheld her only child at this time, and overheard the serious debate as to which "robe" Mademoiselle Adelle would adorn herself with for the afternoon, and have seen her, finally equipped, descending to the salon to join Miss Comstock, who was usually engaged with her correspondence at this hour.
Adelle, it is perhaps needless to say, had quickly perceived the enlarged opportunity for the use of her magic lamp. She at once ordered a very comfortable limousine, which was driven by an experienced chauffeur, and thus transported herself, Miss Comstock, and any of the girls she chose to invite to the exhibition at the Georges Petit Gallery, thence to a concert, or perhaps merely to tea at the new hotel in the Champs Élysées. If any reader has perhaps considered Adelle backward or stupid, he must quickly revise that opinion at this point. For it was truly extraordinary the rapidity with which the pale, passive young heiress caught the pace of Paris. The note of the world about her was the spending note, and the drafts she made through her French bankers upon the Washington Trust Company caused a certain uneasiness even among those sophisticated officials, used to the expenditures of the rich.
Of course, Miss Comstock introduced her charges to the best dressmakers and dispensers of lingerie and millinery (for which service she obtained free of charge all her own clothes). Adelle soon found her own way into the shops of the Rue de la Paix and developed a genuine passion—the first one of her life—for precious stones. It may be remembered that when she was taken as a little girl for the first time into the new home of the trust company, she had been much impressed by the gorgeousness of colored marble and glass there profusely used. For a long time the great banking-room with its dim violet light had remained in her memory as a source of sensuous delight, and as her opportunities had increased she had turned instinctively to things of color and warmth, especially in stones and fabrics. In those public and private exhibitions to which she was constantly conducted as part of her education in art she hung over the cases that contained specimens of new designs in metal and stone. Miss Comstock, perceiving her interest in these toys, encouraged Adelle to try her own hand at the manufacture of jewelry, and engaged a needy woman worker to give her the necessary lessons in the lapidary art. Adelle had acquired considerable sloth from her desultory way of living; nevertheless, when the chance was forced into her hands, she took to the new work with ardor and produced some bungling imitations of the new art, which were much admired at the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline, not to be outdone, took up bookbinding, though she scarcely knew the inside of one book from another. The art of tooling leather was then cultivated by women of fashion in New York: it gave them something to talk about and a chance to play in a studio.
I should like to record that Adelle developed a latent talent for making beautiful things in the art she had inadvertently chosen to practice. But that would be straining the truth. It requires imagination to produce original and pleasing objects in small jewelry, and of imagination Adelle had not betrayed a spark. Moreover, it takes patience, application, and a skillful hand to become a good craftsman in any art, and these virtues had no encouragement in the life that Adelle had led since leaving the Church Street house. So in spite of the admiration aroused by herbijouxwhen she gave them to the inmates of the Villa, it must be admitted that they were more like the efforts of a school child who has prepared its handiwork for presents to admiring relatives than anything else. But at least it was a real interest, and it raised Adelle in her own estimation. Some of the happiest days she had known were spent in the studio of Miss Cornelia Baxter, on the Rue de l'Université. She would have spent more time there if her other engagements or distractions had not constantly interrupted her pursuit of art. Her position of practical independence and unlimited means gave her a prestige in "Pussy" Comstock's household that exhausted most of her time and energy. Her car and herself were in constant demand. And in the Easter holidays "the family" went to Rome for a month, and to London at the opening of the season there in June. So not much time was left for the pursuit of art.
Yet this effort to make jewelry on Adelle's part is important, as the first sign of promise of individuality. It betrayed the possibility of a taste. She loved color, richness of substance, and Europe was satisfying this instinct. Pale and colorless herself, mentally perhaps anaemic or at least lethargic, she discovered in herself a passion for color and richness. Certain formless dreams about life began to haunt her mind—vague desires of warmth and color and emotion. Thus Paris was developing the latent possibilities of sensuousness in this pale offshoot of Puritanism.