Anne Part 19

"But none the less beautiful in its way," continued Tante, unmoved. "It is the Greek type."

"I am not acquainted with any Greeks," replied Miss Vanhorn.

"You are still as devoted as ever to the beautiful and refined study of plant life, dear madame," pursued Tante, changing the current of conversation. "How delightful to have a young relative to a.s.sist you, with the fresh and ardent interest belonging to her age, when the flowers bloom again upon the rural slopes of Haarderwyck!" As Tante said this, she looked off dreamily into s.p.a.ce, as if she saw aunt and niece wandering together through groves of allegorical flowers.

"She is not likely to see Haarderwyck," answered Miss Vanhorn. Then, after a moment's pause--a pause which Tante did not break--she peered at Anne with half-open eyes, and asked, abruptly, "Do you, then, know anything of botany?"

Tante made a slight motion with her delicate withered old hand. But Anne did not comprehend her, and answered, honestly, "No, grandaunt, I do not."

"Bah!" said Miss Vanhorn; "I might have known without the asking. Make what you can of her, madame. I will pay your bill for one year: no longer. But no nonsense, no extras, mind that." Again she sought a caraway seed, pursuing it vindictively along the bottom of her bag, and losing it at the last, after all.

"As regards wardrobe, I would advise some few changes," said Tante, smoothly. "It is one of my axioms that pupils study to greater advantage when their thoughts are not disturbed by deficiencies in dress.

Conformity to our simple standard is therefore desirable."

"It may be desirable; it is not always, on that account, attainable,"

answered Miss Vanhorn, conveying a finally caught seed to her mouth, dropping it at the last moment, and carefully and firmly biting the seam of the glove finger in its place.

"Purchases are made for the pupils with discretion by one of our most experienced teachers," continued Tante.

"Glad to hear it," said her visitor, releasing the glove finger, and pretending to chew the seed which was not there.

"But I do not need anything, Tante," interposed Anne, the deep color deepening in her cheeks.

"So much the better," said her grandaunt, dryly, "since you will have nothing."

She went away soon afterward somewhat placated, owing to skillful reminiscences of a favorite cousin, who, it seemed, had been one of Tante's "dearest pupils" in times past; "a true Vanhorn, worthy of her Knickerbocker blood." The word "Neeker-bo-ker," delicately comprehended, applied, and, what was more important still, limited, was one of Tante's most telling achievements--a shibboleth. She knew all the old Dutch names, and remembered their intermarriages; she was acquainted with the peculiar flavor of Huguenot descent; she comprehended the especial aristocracy of Tory families, whose original property had been confiscated by a raw republic under George Washington. Ah! skillful old Tante, what a general you would have made!

Anne Douglas, the new pupil, was now left to face the school with her island-made gowns, and what courage she could muster. Fortunately the gowns were black and severely plain. Tante, not at all disturbed by Miss Vanhorn's refusal, ordered a simple cloak and bonnet for her through an inexpensive French channel, so that in the street she pa.s.sed unremarked; but, in the house, every-day life required more courage than scaling a wall. Girls are not brutal, like boys, but their light wit is pitiless. The Southern pupils, provided generously with money in the lavish old-time Southern way, the day scholars, dressed with the exquisite simplicity of Northern school-girls of good family, glanced with amus.e.m.e.nt at the attire of this girl from the Northwest. This girl, being young, felt their glances; as a refuge, she threw herself into her studies with double energy, and gaining confidence respecting what she had been afraid was her island patois, she advanced so rapidly in the French cla.s.ses that she pa.s.sed from the lowest to the highest, and was publicly congratulated by Tante herself. In Italian her progress was more slow. Her companion, in the cla.s.s of two, was a beautiful dark-eyed Southern girl, who read musically, but seldom deigned to open her grammar. The forlorn, soiled old exile to whom, with unconscious irony, the bath-room had been a.s.signed for recitations in the crowded house, regarded this pupil with mixed admiration and despair. Her remarks on Mary Stuart, represented by Alfieri, were nicely calculated to rouse him to patriotic fury, and then, when the old man burst forth in a torrent of excited words, she would raise her soft eyes in surprise, and inquire if he was ill. The two girls sat on the bath-tub, which was decorously covered over and cushioned; the exile had a chair for dignity's sake.

Above, in a corresponding room, a screen was drawn round the tub, and a piano placed against it. Here, all day long, another exile, a German music-master, with little gold rings in his ears, gave piano lessons, and Anne was one of his pupils. To Signor Belzini, the teacher of vocal music, the drawing-room itself was a.s.signed. He was a prosperous and smiling Italian, who had a habit of bringing pieces of pink cream candy with him, and arranging them in a row on the piano for his own refreshment after each song. There was an atmosphere of perfume and mystery about Belzini. It was whispered that he knew the leading opera-singers, even taking supper with them sometimes after the opera.

The pupils exhausted their imaginations in picturing to each other the probable poetry and romance of these occasions.

Belzini was a musical trick-master; but he was not ignorant. When Anne came to take her first lesson, he smiled effusively, as usual, took a piece of candy, and, while enjoying it, asked if she could read notes, and gave her the "Drinking Song" from _Lucrezia Borgia_ as a trial. Anne sang it correctly without accompaniment, but slowly and solemnly as a dead march. It is probable that "Il Segreto" never heard itself so sung before or since. Belzini was walking up and down with his plump hands behind him.

"You have never heard it sung?" he said.

"No," replied Anne.

"Sing something else, then. Something you like yourself."

After a moment's hesitation, Anne sang an island ballad in the voyageur patois.

"May I ask who has taught you, mademoiselle?"

"My father," said the pupil, with a slight tremor in her voice.

"He must be a cultivated musician, although of the German school," said Belzini, seating himself at the piano and running his white fingers over the keys. "Try these scales."

It was soon understood that "the islander" could sing as well as study.

Tolerance was therefore accorded to her. But not much more. It is only in "books for the young" that poorly clad girls are found leading whole schools by the mere power of intellectual or moral supremacy. The emotional type of boarding-school, also, is seldom seen in cities; its home is amid the dead lethargy of a winter-bound country village.

The great event in the opening of Anne's school life was her first opera. Tante, not at all blinded by the country garb and silence of the new pupil, had written her name with her own hand upon the opera list for the winter, without consulting Miss Vanhorn, who would, however, pay for it in the end, as she would also pay for the drawing and dancing lessons ordered by the same autocratic command. For it was one of Tante's rules to cultivate every talent of the agreeable and decorative order which her pupils possessed; she bathed them as the photographer bathes his shadowy plate, bringing out and "setting," as it were, as deeply as possible, their colors, whatever they happened to be. Tante always attended the opera in person. Preceded by the usher, the old Frenchwoman glided down the awkward central aisle of the Academy of Music, with her inimitable step, clad in her narrow satin gown and all her laces, well aware that tongues in every direction were saying: "There is Madame Moreau at the head of her school, as usual. What a wonderful old lady she is!" While the pupils were filing into their places, Tante remained in the aisle fanning herself majestically, and surveying them with a benignant smile. When all were seated, with a graceful little bend she glided into her place at the end, the motion of sitting down and the bend fused into one in a manner known only to herself.

Anne's strong idealism, shown in her vivid although mistaken conceptions of Shakspeare's women, was now turned into the channel of opera music.

After hearing several operas, she threw herself into her Italian songs with so much fervor that Belzini sat aghast; this was not the manner in which demoiselles of private life should sing. Tante, pa.s.sing one day (by the merest chance, of course) through the drawing-room while Anne was singing, paused a moment to listen. "Ma fille," she said, when the song was ended, tapping Anne's shoulder affably, "give no more expression to the Italian words you sing than to the syllables of your scales. Interpretations are not required." The old Frenchwoman always put down with iron hand what she called the predominant tendency toward too great freedom--sensationalism--in young girls. She spent her life in a constant struggle with the American "jeune fille."

During this time Rast wrote regularly; but his letters, not being authorized by Miss Vanhorn, Anne's guardian, pa.s.sed first through the hands of one of the teachers, and the knowledge of this inspection naturally dulled the youth's pen. But Anne's letters to him pa.s.sed the same ordeal without change in word or in spirit. Miss Lois and Dr.

Gaston wrote once a week; Pere Michaux contented himself with postscripts added to the long, badly spelled, but elaborately worded epistles with which Mademoiselle t.i.ta favored her elder sister. It was evident to Anne that Miss Lois was having a severe winter.

The second event in Anne's school life was the gaining of a friend.

At first it was but a musical companion. Helen Lorrington lived not far from the school; she was one of Tante's old scholars, and this Napoleon of teachers especially liked this pupil, who was modelled after her own heart. Helen held what may be called a woman's most untrammelled position in life, namely, that of a young widow, protected but not controlled, rich, beautiful, and without children. She was also heir to the estate of an eccentric grandfather, who detested her, yet would not allow his money to go to any collateral branch. He detested her because her father was a Spaniard, whose dark eyes had so reprehensibly fascinated his little Dutch daughter that she had unexpectedly plucked up courage to marry in spite of the paternal prohibition, and not only that, but to be very happy also during the short portion of life allotted to her afterward. The young Spanish husband, with an unaccountable indifference to the wealth for which he was supposed to have plotted so perseveringly, was pusillanimous enough to die soon afterward, leaving only one little pale-faced child, a puny girl, to inherit the money. The baby Helen had never possessed the dimples and rose tints that make the beauty of childhood; the girl Helen had not the rounded curves and peach-like bloom that make the beauty of youth. At seventeen she was what she was now; therefore at seventeen she was old.

At twenty-seven she was what she was then; therefore at twenty-seven she was young.

She was tall, and extremely, marvellously slender; yet her bones were so small that there were no angles visible in all her graceful length.

She was a long woman; her arms were long, her throat was long, her eyes and face were long. Her form, slight enough for a spirit, was as natural as the swaying gra.s.ses on a hill-side. She was as flexible as a ribbon.

Her beauties were a regally poised little head, a delicately cut profile, and a remarkable length of hair; her peculiarities, the color of this hair, the color of her skin, and the narrowness of her eyes. The hue of her hair was called flaxen; but it was more than that--it was the color of bleached straw. There was not a trace of gold in it, nor did it ever shine, but hung, when unbound, a soft even ma.s.s straight down below the knee. It was very thick, but so fine that it was manageable; it was never rough, because there were no short locks. The complexion which accompanied this hair was white, with an under-tint of ivory. There are skins with under-tints of pink, of blue, and of brown; but this was different in that it shaded off into cream, without any indication of these hues. This soft ivory-color gave a shade of fuller richness to the slender straw-haired woman--an effect increased by the hue of the eyes, when visible under the long light lashes. For Helen's eyes were of a bright dark unexpected brown. The eyes were so long and narrow, however, that generally only a line of bright brown looked at you when you met their gaze. Small features, narrow cheeks, delicate lips, and little milk-white teeth, like a child's, completed this face which never had a red tint, even the lips being but faintly colored. There were many men who, seeing Helen Lorrington for the first time, thought her exquisitely beautiful; there were others who, seeing her for the first time, thought her singularly ugly. The _second_ time, there was never a question. Her grandfather called her an albino; but he was nearly blind, and could only see the color of her hair. He could not see the strong brown light of her eyes, or the soft ivory complexion, which never changed in the wind, the heat, or the cold.

Mrs. Lorrington was always dressed richly, but after a fashion of her own. Instead of disguising the slenderness of her form, she intensified it; instead of contrasting hues, she often wore amber tints like her hair. Amid all her silks, jewels, and laces, there was always supreme her own personality, which reduced her costumes to what, after all, costumes should be, merely the subordinate coverings of a beautiful woman.

Helen had a clear, flute-like voice, with few low notes, and a remarkably high range. She continued her lessons with Belzini whenever she was in the city, more in order that he might transpose her songs for her than for any instruction he could now bestow. She was an old pupil of his, and the sentimental Italian adored her; this adoration, however, did not prevent him from being very comfortable at home with his portly wife. One morning Helen, coming in for a moment to leave a new song, found Anne at the piano taking her lesson. Belzini, always anxious to please his fair-haired divinity, motioned to her to stay and listen.

Anne's rich voice pleased her ears; but she had heard rich voices before. What held her attention now was the girl herself. For although Helen was a marvel of self-belief, although she made her own peculiar beauty an object of worship, and was so saturated with knowledge of herself that she could not take an att.i.tude which did not become her, she yet possessed a comprehension of other types of beauty, and had, if not an admiration for, at least a curiosity about, them. In Anne she recognized at once what Tante had also recognized--unfolding beauty of an unfamiliar type, the curves of a n.o.bly shaped form hidden under an ugly gown, above the round white throat a beautiful head, and a singularly young face shadowed by a thoughtfulness which was very grave and impersonal when compared with the usual light, self-centred expressions of young girls' faces. At once Helen's artistic eye had Anne before her, robed in fit attire; in imagination she dressed her slowly from head to foot as the song went on, and was considering the question of jewels when the music ceased, and Belzini was turning toward her.

"I hope I may become better acquainted with this rich voice," she said, coming back gracefully to the present. "May I introduce myself? I should like to try a duet with you, if you will allow me, Miss--"

"Douglas," said Belzini; "and this, mademoiselle, is Mrs. Lorrington."

Such was the beginning.

In addition to Helen's fancy for Anne's fair grave face, the young girl's voice proved a firmer support for her high soprano than it had ever obtained. Her own circle in society and the music cla.s.ses had been searched in vain more than once. For she needed a soprano, not a contralto. And as soprani are particularly human, there had never been any lasting co-operation. Anne, however, cheerfully sang whatever Belzini put before her, remained admiringly silent while Helen executed the rapid runs and trills with which she always decorated her part, and then, when the mezzo was needed again, gave her full voice willingly, supporting the other as the notes of an organ meet and support a flute after its solo.

Belzini was in ecstasies; he sat up all night to copy music for them. He said, anxiously, to Helen: "And the young girl? You like her, do you not? Such a voice for you!"

"But I can not exactly buy young girls, can I?" said Mrs. Lorrington, smiling.

More and more, however, each day she liked "the young girl" for herself alone. She was an original, of course; almost an aboriginal; for she told the truth exactly upon all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and she had convictions. She was not aware, apparently, of the old-fashioned and c.u.mbrous appearance of these last-named articles of mental furniture. But the real secret of Helen's liking lay in the fact that Anne admired her, and was at the same time neither envious nor jealous, and from her youth she had been troubled by the sure development of these two feelings, sooner or later, in all her girl companions. In truth, Helen's lot _was_ enviable; and also, whether consciously or unconsciously, she had a skill in provoking jealousy. She was the spoiled child of fortune. It was no wonder, therefore, that those of her own s.e.x and age seldom enjoyed being with her: the contrast was too great. Helen was, besides, the very queen of Whim.

The queen of Whim! By nature; which means that she had a highly developed imagination. By the life she had led, having never, save for the six short months of her husband's adoring rule, been under the control, or even advice, of any man. For whim can be thoroughly developed only in feminine households: it is essentially feminine. And Helen had been brought up by a maiden aunt, who lived alone. A man, however mild, demands in a home at least a pretense of fixed hours and regularity; only a household of women is capable of no regularity at all, of changing the serious dinner hour capriciously, and even giving up dinner altogether. Only a household of women has sudden inspirations as to journeys and departures within the hour; brings forth sudden ideas as to changes of route while actually on the way, and a going southward instead of westward, with a total indifference to supper. Helen's present whim was Anne.

"I want you to spend part of the holidays with me," she said, a few days before Christmas. "Come on Monday, and stay over New-Year's Day."

"Oh, I can not," said Anne, startled.

"Why not? Tante will consent if I ask her; she always does. Do you love this crowded house so much that you can not leave it?"

"It is not that. But--"

"But you are shy. But Miss Vanhorn might not like it. You do not know Aunt Margaretta. You have no silk gown. Now let _me_ talk. I will write to Miss Vanhorn. Aunt Margaretta is as gentle as a dove. I am bold enough for two. And the silk dress shall come from me."

"I could not take that, Mrs. Lorrington."