A Dixie School Girl Part 3

Bidding them good-by at the railway station Beverly, Athol and Archie rode back to Woodbine, in no mood for one of their wild stampedes. The real parting was too close at hand.

That day and evening seemed the longest to Beverly that she had ever known. Archie was to spend the night at Woodbine, and Aunt Caroline, Mammy Riah and Earl Queen, the butler, did their best to make up for the absence of the heads of the house, but it surely was a sober little group which sat down at the brightly polished mahogany dining table. Beverly in her mother's seat, Athol in his uncle's and Archie as guest. Aunt Caroline had sent up her daintiest preserves and had prepared a supper "fitten' for a queen," she averred. Her fried chicken would have put Delmonico's to shame and her hot waffles were "lak ter fly up offen de dish I serve 'em on," was Queen's affirmation as he took them from her, but nothing was eaten with its usual relish.

At ten the next morning came a long distance phone call from Admiral Seldon.

Beverly reached the phone first.

"And it's all settled? Which one? Leslie Manor? Good! And Ath's going to Kilton Hall? Oh, splendid! You'll be down on the three o'clock train?

Meet you? Of course. Yes, I'll tell the boys. Mother sends love? Give her ours and tell her we are all right and have been as good as gold.

Good-by!" and the phone was hung up with a snap as Beverly spun round and catching the one nearest at hand who happened to be Archie, turkey trotted him the length of the big hall before she'd end their curiosity.

And thus came the selection of the two schools. Athol with Archie at Kilton Hall, and Beverly at Leslie Manor, ten miles away, and near one of the most wonderful and beautiful caprices of that capricious lady Dame Nature, that human eye is ever likely to rest upon.

They were to leave Woodbine and Uplands on the last day of September, as the school term began October first, the intervening days being full of the excitement incident to their departure.

The thirtieth of September came at once too rapidly and too slowly, and dawned crisp and clear; a good omen for the start.

Good-bys were said to the servants, Mrs. Ashby was embraced tempestuously by Beverly and given a bear hug by Athol, Archie shook hands and all three followed Admiral Seldon in to the waiting carriage, to wave good-bys to Mrs. Ashby who stood upon the south portico, and to all the servants gathered in the south colonnade.

Then Mrs. Ashby re-entered the silent house, went upstairs to Beverly's deserted room, dropped into a chair beside her bed and burying her head in the tumbled pillow wept like a girl.

A moment later Mammy Riah entered the room, caught sight of the weeper, grabbed up an old muddy shoe of Beverly's and raining tears into it forthwith raised a genuine darkey wail of woe which very nearly turned Mrs. Ashby's tears into hysterics.

CHAPTER V

LESLIE MANOR

It was the opening day at Leslie Manor. Late the evening before the last girl had come straggling reluctantly back after a long summer vacation.

This morning all was hustle and bustle. At the rear of the building the last trunks were being b.u.mped down from the express wagon which had brought them from the railway station, and under the direction of Wesley Watts Mather, the dusky porter, janitor and general handy man, were being conveyed to the various rooms in which they and their owners would bide for the ensuing eight months, for Leslie Manor did not open its doors to its pupils until October first and closed them the first week in June.

This was at the option of Miss Woodhull, the princ.i.p.al, who went abroad each June taking with her several of her pupils for a European tour, to return with her enlightened, edified charges in September. It was a pleasurable as well as a profitable arrangement for the lady who was absolutely free of enc.u.mbrance and could do as she chose.

Leslie Manor had once been the home of a widely known southern family whose fortunes had sadly decreased during the war and completely evaporated after it. For several years the place was entirely deserted and neglected, then Miss Woodhull, recently graduated from a New England college, and fairly bristling with degrees, for which she had exchanged the freshness, sweetness and spontaneity of youth and health, was ordered to spend at least a year in the south in the doubtful hope of recovering the youth and health.

Just where to find these valuable a.s.sets was the hardest question to answer. Her only relatives were an elderly maiden aunt and an irascible old uncle whose time was too filled with providing the wherewithal to maintain a very elaborate establishment for a very vain wife and three frivolous daughters, to leave any left over in which to think of the welfare of his only sister's child. Moreover, his wife and daughters could not endure her, and, truth to tell, they had about as much affinity for one another as have oil and water. They might flow side by side forever but never mingle.

The maiden aunt was her father's sister, an austere dignified old party who resided most exclusively in her ancestral home on Beacon Street, and lived in a rut worn _ages_ deep by tradition, conviction and self-will.

Virginia was, so-to-speak, heiress-presumptive. Not that she was likely to be supplanted by the birth of some one having greater claim to her aunt's fortune. Her possible rivals for the very substantial income which her aunt enjoyed were foundling asylums, a new religious cult just then in its infancy in the hub of the universe, and innumerable "movements"

and "reforms."

She had sent Virginia through college, provided her with a fair allowance, bidden her make something of herself for the sake of her name and then washed her hands of all responsibility. In her own sight she had fulfilled all her duty. When Virginia Woodhull left ---- College after attaining degrees galore, but in broken health, and with twenty-eight years checked off upon her life's calendar, she seemed to have run plump up against a stone wall.

Dozens of positions were almost forced upon her. Mentally she was qualified to fill any of them, physically _not one_. Nor could she remain near the only relatives she possessed had they even cared two straws to have her remain.

While in this depressing state of mind and body a girl whom she had coached in the college graduated and was about to return to her home in Virginia. She was several years Virginia's junior, pretty, warm-hearted and charming, and possessed the power of looking a little deeper below the surface than the average human being possesses. She invited Miss Woodhull to accompany her to Roanoke and fate stepped in and did the rest. The month was spent in a lovely old home, Virginia Woodhull gained in health and strength, and recovered something in the way of nerve control and mental poise. When the month ended she decided to "do" the state whose name she bore and spent the rest of the year in going from one point to another in it until she knew its entire topography by heart.

In the course of her journeyings she visited the Luray Caverns as a matter of course, and enroute came upon picturesque, deserted, decrepit Leslie Manor, and fell as enthusiastically in love with it as it was given to her repressed nature to fall in love.

Moreover, for a long time she had been obsessed with a desire to bring into this happy, easy-going, contented state something of the energy, progress, intellectual activities (as she gauged them) of New England.

The general uplift inspired by the seat of learning she had just left after post-graduate courses unto the nth degree: To thoroughly stir things up and make these comfortable, contented, easy-going Virginians sit up and take notice of their shortcomings. She was given a work in life, though quite unsought, and she meant to undertake it exactly as she has undertaken her college course and make a fine job of it.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, according to the viewpoint taken, the aunt in Boston was ceremoniously tucked away in the tomb of her ancestors just as this resolution crystalized and Virginia Woodhull found herself in possession of a very comfortable income, though said income had a string attached to it which was intended to yank it back to the religious cult before mentioned in the event of Virginia's _marriage_ or death. Either way considered, it was a rather dubious heritage. But it served to purchase Leslie Manor and the school became a fait accompli. This was in the early eighties and from its opening day the school had flourished.

Perhaps this was due to New England energy and culture, or possibly some credit rested with Mrs. Bonnell, the matron, and real head of the house; a sweet lovable, gracious Southern gentlewoman whose own family and fortunes had vanished when she was a tiny child, but who had grown up with relatives in whose home love ruled supreme and in which the little Veronica Dulany had blossomed as a flower. At forty years of age she still retained a genuine love and understanding of her fellow-beings in spite of many sorrows, and the death when she was still a mere girl of husband and little daughter before she had been called Mrs. Percy Bonnell five years.

At any rate, for ten years Mrs. Bonnell had ruled supreme at Leslie Manor, engaging its servants as she saw fit, directing the household, economizing as she felt wisest; feeding hungry girls, cuddling the homesick ones, caring for the ailing ones, and loved by every creature human or animal upon the place. Miss Woodhull had no time for domestic matters and all the sentiment in her had been killed in her early childhood.

And curiously enough the academic force at Leslie Manor was about equally divided into Woodhull and Bonnell factions. Miss Stetson, the teacher of mathematics was in keen sympathy with Miss Woodhull, as was Miss Forsd.y.k.e the Latin teacher, and Miss Baylis, the teacher of history and literature, but Miss Dalton the gymnasium and physical culture teacher, and Miss Powell who had charge of the little girls, sided with Mrs.

Bonnell as did Monsieur Santelle, and old Herr Professor Stenzel. Even Miss Juliet Atwell, who came twice each week for aesthetic dancing, and several other stunts, openly worshiped at the Bonnell's shrine. Herr Stenzel's admiration had more than once proved an embarra.s.sing proposition to the lady, for Herr Stenzel loved the flesh pots of Leslie Manor and knew right well who presided over them. But Mrs. Bonnell was equal to a good many Herr Stenzels.

But in one sense we have wandered a long way from Beverly Ashby and opening day at Leslie Manor, though all these people vitally concern her.

Leslie Manor stood in the centre of a wide, rolling, thickly wooded estate encompa.s.sed by a holly hedge noted for miles around for its beauty and its p.r.i.c.kly barrier to freedom. The house had been restored and added to in order to meet the demands of a school harboring sixty or seventy girls, though it still retained its old lines of beauty and its air of hominess.

Miss Woodhull's first concern had been "to make the place sanitary," the last word spelled with italics, and to this end modern improvements and conveniences had supplanted the old, easy-going expedients of domestic economy. Everything in Leslie Manor became strictly modern and up-to-date. The upper floors were arranged in the most approved single bed-chambers or suites for the teachers and the seniors, the lower ones were accurately divided into living, dining and reception rooms. In one wing were the model recitation rooms and Miss Woodhull's office; in another the undergraduate's rooms. Nor had the grounds been overlooked.

They were very trim, very prim, very perfectly kept and made one realize this at every turn. It also made one wonder how the old owner would feel could he return from his nameless grave at Appomatox and be obliged to pace along the faultless walks where formerly he had romped with his children across the velvety turf. But he and his were dead and gone and the spirit of New England primness, personified in Virginia Woodhull, spinster aged fifty-seven, now dominated the place.

It was lovely to look upon, and compelled one's admiration, though it left some indefinable longing unsatisfied. It was so orderly it almost made one ache.

Perhaps something of this ache unconsciously obsessed Beverly Ashby as she sat upon one of the immaculate garden seats, placed at the side of an immaculate gravel walk, and looked through a vista of immaculately trimmed trees at the dozens of girls _boiling_ out of the door of the wing in which most of the undergraduate's rooms were situated, for all members of the under cla.s.ses were housed in the south wing, the seniors rooming in the more luxurious quarters of the main building. Not that the seniors were the happier for their exaltation. They had enjoyed some pretty merry hours in that old south wing, but with the advent of the senior year were forced to live up to the dignity of the main building.

The faculty occupied the north end of it.

Beverly had arrived the previous afternoon and, owing to the fact that she had never been at school before in all her fifteen years, nor journeyed very far afield from dear old Woodbine, she did not know a soul at Leslie Manor so far as she now knew.

The parting of the ways when Athol and Archie bade her good-by at Front Royal and, accompanied by Admiral Seldon, went on to Kilton Hall gave Beverly an entirely new sensation. She then fully realized that she was growing up and that the old happy-go-lucky days of boy and girl frolicking were slipping into the background. That from that very spot where the roads branched she must begin her journey toward young-ladyhood, as the boys must begin theirs toward manhood, and the thought hurt like a physical pain. She didn't want to grow up and leave those happy days behind.

She had been met at Front Royal by one of the teachers who was returning to the school. Beverly had tried to talk to her as she would have talked with any one at home. But Miss Baylis did not encourage familiarity upon the part of the pupils, and promptly decided that Beverly was one of those irresponsible, impulsive Southern girls who always proved such trials to her and Miss Woodhull before they could be brought to understand strict conventions. Consequently, she had met Beverly's warm-hearted, spontaneous manner with frigid politeness and had relieved herself of the young girl's society the moment the school was reached.

Luckily, Beverly had fallen into Mrs. Bonnell's hands directly she reached Leslie Manor, so some of the ice coating in which she had made the five-mile drive from the railway station had been thawed by that lovable lady. But she had pa.s.sed a desperately lonely evening in her room unpacking and getting settled, and had gone to bed in a frame of mind rarely experienced by Beverly Ashby.

Her room-mate, like many other tardy ones, would not arrive until the next day, and the whole atmosphere of the place spelled desolation for Beverly.

Her first Waterloo had been encountered early that morning when, feeling lonelier than she ever had felt in all her life, she dressed early and ran out to the stable to visit Apache. He seemed as lonely and forlorn as his little mistress and thinking to cheer him as well as herself, she had led him forth by his halter and together they had enjoyed one grand prance down the driveway. Unluckily, Miss Baylis had seen this harmless little performance, and not being able to appreciate perfect human and equine grace, had been promptly scandalized. It was at once reported to Miss Woodhull and Beverly was informed that "such hoydenish actions should be relegated to the uncultured herd."

Beverly did not ask whether she must number herself among that herd but the fact had been implied nevertheless, and she smarted under what she felt to be an unmerited and unduly severe rebuke, if not an open insult.

She was still smarting as she sat hidden in her nook, and sorely in need of an antidote for the smart.

Presently it came in the homeopathic form of like curing like.

CHAPTER VI

NEW FRIENDS