Helen Grant's Schooldays

"You can tell it all next week. There's been nothing especially underhand. People don't usually get out on the housetops and proclaim the things they think of doing. And Mr. Warfield will be back. We shall all be ranged on your side."

"Poor Uncle Jason! And I haven't finished grating the corn for the fritters. The cold tongue looks splendid. And the cold chicken. Then we give people scalding hot fritters."

She was merry and arch again in a moment.

Sunday was soft and rainy, the sort of day one lounged about. Monday Mrs. Griggs came to wash, and as there were pears to pickle Helen helped with the ironing. Tuesday she trudged off to school with a beating heart. Louise Searing was there, one girl and two boys from the North Hope school who had been conditioned.

"I don't see what you can do if you do get in, Helen Grant," said Louise. "I'm going to stay with Betty all the week" – this was her married sister. "Or has Mrs. Dayton promised to keep you? That rich old lady is going away, isn't she? How did you like living out this summer? I went up in the mountains with ma. There were some young fellows and we had lots of fun."

"Hush!" said a teacher entering. Papers and pencils were distributed, the children placed far enough apart to prevent collusion. The lady took a seat at the desk.

Helen looked over her questions. Two were from the last year's list, she saw with joy, and she jotted down the answers carefully. The two problems she solved. The analysis rather puzzled her. One of the great seaports of the country, and of Europe. The notable travelers in Africa. Hannibal's journey across the Alps, his conquests and his stay at Brutium. Just a week ago they had been reading Hannibal's wonderful story, and his fifteen years' menace of Rome. How glad she was!

A rather stern looking man came in and took his seat by the lady. As the slips were finished they were signed and passed up. By noon Helen had answered five, when they were dismissed until two o'clock. As Helen passed across the room the lady signaled to her, and handed her three of the slips. She fairly clutched them in her hand and hurried away lest Louise should speak to her.

She did not dare open them. When she reached home, Mrs. Dayton was sugaring blackberries and placing the dishes on the waiter.

"Oh, Helen! You look roasted!"

"I walked so fast. Oh, will you look at these? I have not had the courage. I have done five, there are four more," she cried breathlessly.

"You poor child! Why, Helen, these are all right. It is splendid."

Helen dropped on a chair and wanted to cry from the sudden relief.

"You foolish girl, to prolong your anxiety. Here, take a fan and get some of the redness out of your face."

"I can't go in to lunch. Afterward I will go up and tell Mrs. Van Dorn. Please do not say a word about me," she entreated.

Joanna brought her a glass of iced lemonade, and she thanked her with overflowing eyes. Then she looked at the slips of paper and smiled. That was only three out of nine. What if the others should be adverse!

She had a little lunch in the far end of the kitchen by the open window, and quite recovered her spirits. It seemed as if the ladies would never get done talking over the table. Their loitering never fretted Mrs. Dayton, and Joanna had her lunch in the between time.

When the coast was clear she tripped upstairs smiling and steady of nerve, now.

"And it was so fortunate that we read about Hannibal," she exclaimed, joyously. "I knew, of course, that he crossed the Alps and menaced Rome, but if we hadn't read the history I should have been at a great loss to know just what to say. And one question about the Italian poets. It seems to me I have been learning all summer from you. I was a real ignoramus, wasn't I, except in mathematics. I owe you so much!"

She squeezed the soft wrinkled hands in hers, so plump and warm. Her heartsome cheery voice penetrated deeper into the poor old soul than anything had done in a long while.

She would owe her a good deal more in time. And she wondered about taking her abroad now. They could find teachers in plenty.

"Now I must go back to my four other questions. Just pray that I shall not fail anywhere."

"I have a feeling that you will succeed."

Two of the girls did not get through at four, but begged to stay, and it seemed hardly worth while to break another day, unless there were some new applicants. Helen remained. She saw her answers piled up by themselves. Then Miss Dowling beckoned her.

"You are an excellent student," she exclaimed, "and you have had a very fine teacher in Mr. Warfield. I think we must get him over here. You have missed only one question, and you go in with flying colors. I wish you were to be in my class, but I shall have to wait for you until next year. You live at the Center? You will have to come up to us."

The girl's eyes sparkled with delight at the commendation, and she expressed her gratification in a very pretty manner. Miss Dowling was exceedingly interested in her.

"I like those ambitious girls who are not puffed-up with vanity," she said to Mr. Steele. "Helen Grant. Do you know any Grants at the Center?"

"No. And the Center is the dullest of all the Hopes. We must find out about this bright and shining light. I'll take these papers home and look them over, and call around about nine."

Miss Dowling nodded.

"It's just too mean for anything!" declared Louise Searing. "I'm not sure that I shall even squeeze in, I've lost so many marks. I always did think Mr. Warfield was partial to you, and it isn't fair."

"I've been studying all summer," returned Helen.

"And working at Mrs. Dayton's. For goodness sake what did you do? And I can tell you it will make a difference with the real High School girls. Some here at North Hope are very stylish. So it is true you were out carriage riding half the time?"

The tone was unpleasant, half envious.

"I went out with Mrs. Van Dorn, and read to her, and did little errands. Her real companion comes to-morrow. And about the middle of September they are going to Europe."

"Oh!" Louise opened her eyes wide, rather nonplussed. Hope people did not often go to Europe. And if companions were taken, then it wasn't so bad to be a companion. Perhaps it wouldn't be wise to begin to snub Helen Grant just now.

CHAPTER VIII

MRS. VAN DORN'S WINNING HAND

Helen was sitting on an ottoman and leaning her arms lightly on Mrs. Van Dorn's knees that had a soft wrap thrown over them. She fancied she felt little twinges of neuralgia in them now and then; August nights were damp.

They had been talking about the successful examination. Helen had proved the heroine of the dinner hour. Mr. Pratt admitted that he could not have answered half of the questions. Mrs. Disbrowe said she went into the High School of her town on quite as good a record. Mrs. Lessing said she did not see the need of half the tests, or of College education for women. The most satisfying destiny for a woman was a good marriage and she was quite sure men didn't care for learned women.

"You have been a very nice, cheerful, ready girl all summer, Helen. You really have been a great pleasure to me," said the lady.

"I am very glad." Helen's voice was full of emotion, and she gave the wrinkled hands a soft caress. "It has been a delightful time to me. I am so glad Mrs. Dayton thought of me when there were so many nice girls in the world. It seems to me as if I was brimming over with happiness."

She could feel the thrill in the young hands. Ah, if she had found Helen just as she was now, ten years ago. But she was good for many years yet, and she would have her sweet young life, her charming womanhood.

"Would you feel very much disappointed if you didn't go to the High School?"

"Oh, I think now, it would break my heart."

"But if something better offered?"

"Oh, could there be anything better?"

"Can't you think of anything better?"

The girl was silent. In her narrow life there had not been much room for dreams of real betterment.

"Think, all around the world."

"Well," with a half laugh and a sound like a sigh not going very deep, "there would be travel all round the world. I hope some day to earn money enough to go – well I'll take London first. Then Paris, but I do not believe I shall want to stay there long, for you see I shall not have a great deal of money. And then Rome, dear delightful Rome, with all its old haunts, where its poets have lived and died. And that isn't half, is it? Is any life long enough to see it all?"

Her face was in a glow of enthusiasm, her eyes deep and luminous.

The woman had not begun very early in life and she had seen a good deal of it. She had heard hundreds of people wish for things, but very few who were willing to earn them, like this girl who had so little envy in her composition.

"Suppose someone would say to you, here is a school where you can be taught all the higher branches as well, music, drawing, painting, literature and all the pretty society ways that make one feel at home in any company. Would you go?"

"Oh, that is like a fairy dream," and she laughed with charming softness. "Why, I am afraid to look at it lest I should want it."

"That isn't answering my question."

She raised her face and studied the one above her. It was wrinkled and the eyes were a faded blue-gray. She did not guess the eyebrows were penciled, the lips tinted, that the hair just a little sprinkled with white had come from the hair-dresser's. The curious asking expression transfixed her.

She drew a long breath. "Why, that would be wonderful to happen to a poor girl who is thinking how she can work her way along. It would be like a glimpse of heaven. I should be crazy to refuse it."

Mrs. Van Dorn took both of the warm, throbbing hands in hers. "Listen," she exclaimed. "I like you very much. When you first came, I thought only of a little maid to wait upon me, and run up and down and stay with Joanna when I wanted to be alone. I was rather curious to know whether you understood what you were about when you recited 'Hervé Riel.' You have a great deal of natural or inherited intelligence – your father was a scholar. If you were two or three years older, I should take you abroad with me and finish you on the Continent, that is, if you had not too much self-assurance that growing girls arrogate to themselves so easily. But that is not to be thought of at present – it must be some dream of the future. You need real education and you are capable of assimilating the higher part of it. I should like to send you to a school I know of where you will get the best of training. And if you develop into the girl I think you will, there may be a future before you better than any of your vague dreams."

"Oh! oh!" and Helen Grant buried her face in Mrs. Van Dorn's lap and cried, overcome by a new and strange emotion. If the elder had followed her impulse she would have lifted the face and kissed it with the passionate tenderness that was smoldering in her soul, and had never been satisfied. But her experience in people had been wide and varied, she was suspicious, she could not trust easily, and here were at least two years that would go to the shaping of this girl's character. Might she not care largely for what the money would give her?

"My dear! my dear!" she began in a muffled sort of tone from contradictory emotions.

Helen raised her face of her own accord, and her eyes were like the sun shining through a shower.

"Oh, what must you think," and her voice had a broken tremulous sound, yet was very sweet. "I didn't see how anyone could cry for joy – but I am learning something new all the time. Are you in very earnest? Would you take me with you if I were older and knew more? And would you like to have me trained and made into the kind of girl that suited you?"

"A girl proud and honorable and truthful, sincere and grateful – "

"Oh, I would try to be all that. It seems almost as if I had been deceitful to Uncle Jason, not to tell him about the High School, but I was not sure of passing, and not sure that I could work my way through. And sometimes I don't tell Aunt Jane things because I know she would make such a fuss, and they are not bad in themselves, and often don't come to pass. But I hate falsehoods. It makes me angry when they are told to me."

Mrs. Van Dorn smiled at the impetuosity.

"But you would give up the High School for this other plan? You would be willing to go away among strangers, and trust me for the future? I will provide everything for you, you will not have a care, only to study and do your very best, and take care of yourself. Even if you should decide to teach rather than travel about with me, you would be at liberty to choose."

"I should choose you," she said frankly. "Oh, how can I thank you for anything so splendid! There are no words good enough."

She kissed the wrinkled hands fervently.

"The thanks will be your improvement. Westchester is a beautiful place, with mostly educated people. Mrs. Aldred, who is a connection, is a lady in the truest sense of the word. You will learn what the higher class girls are like – some are fine, some under a charming and well-bred exterior you will find full of petty meanness. I should hate to have you mean, grudging. I want you to keep broad, unselfish; though sometimes you will get the worst and the smallest measure in return. And you will be quite content to leave your people?"

A serious sweetness overspread Helen's countenance.

"If I had a mother who loved me, such a mother as Mrs. Dayton would make, I am afraid I would not want to leave her. Oh, I know I wouldn't," decisively. "But Aunt Jane never liked my father, and I think she didn't care much for my mother. Their desires and ideas are so different from mine, and they care very little for education, yet they are all good and kindly, and Uncle Jason is really fond of me, I think. But it seems as if when one had neither father or mother to be disappointed, one might choose what one liked best, if there was nothing wrong in it."

How did the girl come by so much good sense and uprightness?

"Then you will accept my proffer?"

"Oh, I can hardly believe anything so good can come to me. I feel as if I were dreaming." She looked up uncertain, yet her eyes were dewy sweet, her lips quivering.

"We will make it better than a dream. But we will have to disappoint your Mr. Warfield."

That gave Mrs. Van Dorn a secret gratification. She was jealous of two people who had come into Helen Grant's life, this man and Mrs. Dayton.

"Yes; he will be sorry, I know. But then he could not be my teacher, as he was last year. And, oh, how proud he will be that I passed so splendidly."

"And I shall be glad when you attain to other heights. I really think you will not need any urging. But don't go too deep in the abstruse subjects, and don't let anyone spoil your fashion of reading, for I may want you to read to me in the years to come."

"I shall be glad to do anything for you," the girl replied with deep feeling. "I wish I might spend years and years with you to repay all this generosity and kindliness. Oh, why do you go away?"

She flushed with an eagerness, a glow of excitement that gave her a frank, bewitching sweetness.

Why did she go? Mrs. Van Dorn had gone over the ground by herself. She had been tempted to settle herself for life, but did she want to help tone down the crudeness of the untrained nature, to prune the enthusiasms, to find little faults here and there? She would rather someone else would do the gardening, and she have the bloom in its first sweetness. While she was away Helen would idealize her still more, and be prepared to give her just the same girl-worship, but with more discrimination. She would think of nothing but the benefits. She would see none of the whims and queernesses that Clara Gage had grown accustomed to. She would not note her growing old every day. And then she had a longing for a change.

"Well, I had planned to spend the winter in the south of France. It is supposed to be better to have an entire change every few years. I spent one winter there. I had not been quite up to the mark, and it improved me wonderfully. Then, I have made most of my arrangements."

"But you will come back?" beseechingly. "I may not stay the whole two years. You think you will feel quite satisfied to go to Aldred House? You will be among strangers, but girls soon get acquainted. Of course, I could board you here, and have you go to the High School, but it would not be as well, and it would not make the sort of girl out of you that I should like as well, for two excellent reasons," smiling a little. "What is it?" as a grave expression touched Helen's face.

"You have the right to decide. I know I should like best to go away, but perhaps it will make some trouble for you. I think my aunt – "

"I shall have a talk with Mr. Mulford when he comes in on Saturday. A man is generally master of his house. And I will see how the plan appears to Mrs. Dayton. She is a very sensible person."

She had a talk with Mrs. Dayton that very evening. She would give Helen her two years' schooling, and then she would be old enough and capable of deciding what she would like to do for the future. If she should prefer to take up teaching, that kind of training would be necessary afterward. She had some fine capabilities, and it would be a pity not to make the best of them.

So Mrs. Van Dorn very clearly defined her own position in the matter, without betraying her full intentions.

"If she doesn't get spoiled," commented the listener with an odd smile. "It is a very generous proffer, and I believe Helen is capable of appreciating it to the full. It would be a hard thing for her to remain here and work her way through school, though I had a plan for easing it up somewhat. She is above the ordinary run of girls, though I didn't think of that so much when I asked her to come here. The qualities that decided me then were her cheerfulness and her readiness. I do not believe her aunt half appreciates her."

"She is of a little different kind," returned Mrs. Van Dorn. That lady possessed much cynical enlightenment as to the kinds. "There is a deal of talk about goodness in this world, and even an east wind may be good for something, but it isn't pleasant. You find an immense deal of narrowness in these old country places. Saturday when Mr. Mulford comes I want to have a talk with him."

Mrs. Dayton was really glad that the first explanation was not to come from her.

Miss Gage arrived the next day at noon. She was a quiet, sensible-looking girl, who might have posed for a very attractive one, if she had known how to make the best of herself. She had a fine clear complexion, quite regular features, an abundance of soft, light brown hair, and a slim, graceful figure. But she had begun life weighting herself up with care, and made many little things a matter of conscience that were merely matters of choice. She was honest to a fault, obliging, and with that rare gift of being serviceable. At first Mrs. Van Dorn had been much pleased with her, but she was too proud to accept many favors, and her heart was centered in her own family; perhaps selfishly so.

Helen seemed released from almost every duty, and was glad to devote her time to Mrs. Dayton.

"I should like to know what Mr. Warfield will think of the plan," commented the lady.

"Oh, he will hold up both hands for me to go," laughed Helen. "Everybody will, but Aunt Jane."

The boarders were all out Saturday afternoon; a party had gone picnicking to a pretty, shady nook on the Piqua River, where a little decline and a bed of rock made a dainty waterfall. So Mrs. Van Dorn and Mr. Mulford had the end of the porch to themselves.

She stated her plan in a very straightforward manner. For two years she would send Helen to school, assuming all the expense. After that the girl might take her choice as to what she would like to follow, and she would be willing to assist her in any pursuit for which she was best fitted.

Mr. Mulford gave a long whistle, and stared at Mrs. Van Dorn. There was something so amusing in his surprise that she could hardly refrain from smiling.

"Well, I swow! You must think a mighty sight of her, ma'am, to be willing to spend that money out and out, when she could get her schoolin' right here for nothin'."

"I think of her capabilities. She is ambitious, and can fill an excellent place in the world."

"She's a smart girl in everything, but the book learnin' she takes from her father. Mother's missed her quick handy ways about the house, and I'm afraid she won't agree to givin' her up. And back there, ma'am, I used a word not strictly orthodox, and I'm a deacon of the church. But I was so took aback."

Mrs. Van Dorn nodded her pardon. "You see," she said quietly, "that it isn't quite as if she had been given to you. Her father might have returned and taken her. Then, when a child is fourteen she is allowed to choose her guardians. I shall stand in that capacity for the next two years. I shall arrange matters with my legal man in New York, so that, even if anything should happen to me she would have her two years at school. People lose their wits, sometimes."

"I don't believe you will lose yours. You're wonderfully well kept," he said with blunt admiration. "Well, I d'know as we could do anything if we wanted to. Mother's had other plans for her, but the child didn't fall in with them. She was mighty glad to come over here. There isn't much Mulford about her," with an abrupt sort of laugh. "We never just got along with her father, but he was a good enough sort of man. We've tried to do by Helen as one of our own, and Mother would now. But I can't think it would be quite right to stand in the child's way."

"No, it would not," decisively. "She has her life to live, and you can't do that for her. She has some fine natural gifts which it would be a sin to traverse. I will have my lawyer draw up an agreement that you will not interfere during the next two years – "

"But are we not to see her?" he interrupted, quite aghast at the prospect.

"Yes; you may visit her, and she can spend her vacations at home, and write as often as she has time. I should change my opinion of her if she was glad to go away, and forget you altogether. I am sure, then, I could not trust her gratitude to me," she said decisively.

"No, ma'am, that you couldn't," he subjoined earnestly. "Helen isn't that kind, I'm sure. And we wouldn't like to have her go out of our lives altogether."

"I should not desire her to."

"But, ma'am, after she's had all this fine living and everything, I'm afraid we'll seem very common. You don't think she'd better go to school here, and keep nearer her own folks?"

"Well, the other plan seems best to me. But after she has tried it a year, if she doesn't like it she shall be at liberty to come back to Hope."

"That's fair, I'm sure. Thank you, ma'am. And I don't just know what to say, only that I think it's mighty generous of you, though she's welcome to my home and all I have. I've never grudged her a penny."

"I am sure of that. Will you explain the matter to your wife? The agreement will come next week. And at the last I shall take her to New York to be fitted out with clothes. If there is any point you do not quite understand I shall be very willing to explain."

He rose in a dazed kind of fashion, and made an awkward bow, then went round to the kitchen end, where Helen had been sorting over blackberries.

"Oh, my child," he cried with a new tenderness. "I can't bear to think of your going away!"

Helen gave a long, sighing breath, then smiled.

"Miss Gage is to be taken to Europe, and her folks are willing," she subjoined.

"And this place isn't so far away. You can write and come home in vacation."

Then he would consent. She felt relieved that there was to be no argument.

"What do you think Aunt Jane will say?" she inquired, clasping his arm.

"Well, she'll be mighty set against it. I'll have a hard row to hoe when I go home. There'll be weeds of last year and year before," laughing brusquely. "I wish the old lady had to tackle her."

"But I don't. Aunt Jane says a good many things at first that she doesn't mean. It's the wrong side of something full of seams and knots, but when you get it turned out it is ever so much smoother."