The Charm School/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
IT would have been a great surprise to George, who had so long secretly loved Elise, to know that Mr. Johns secretly approved of his suit. Yet such was the case. No one has ever explained why it is that parents and guardians consider dull people such safe matrimonial investments for their young charges. Even granting the unsound assumption that dull people are more apt to be content with their own matrimonial fetters, they are certainly more apt to be the cause of discontent in others. Mr. Johns, who was bored to death by five minutes of George's society, believed that his granddaughter—not fond of being bored, either—would be happy to spend the rest of her life with him.
But of all this George was completely ignorant—indeed, he supposed that he was the last person Mr. Johns would tolerate as grandson-in-law, and so he believed that in coming to protect Elise in the immediate danger in which he feared she stood he was sacrificing his future relation both with her and his employer.
It had been easily enough arranged. George happened to be in the room when Mr. Johns told the head bookkeeper to choose "a sensible young fellar and send him out to the Bevans School on Saturday." The daring, the adventurous, the chivalrous scheme of being that young fellar was born instantly in George's mind, and as he was on very good terms with the head bookkeeper he was able to persuade him that no one in the bank was steadier than himself.
He had taken his sister Sally into his confidence, and she had, of course, told the little princess, who was, therefore, at no loss to explain his sudden appearance in Mr. Bevans's study, but she cannot be said to have expected it, because at the moment she had totally forgotten that such a person as George Boyd existed.
"Look here," said Austin, angrily, "that's no way to come into a room. You nearly knocked this young lady down."
"Oh, it's no matter. I didn't mind what happened," said Elise, with a brilliant smile.
I'm sorry," said the accountant, stiffly, but of course I supposed that you were alone."
The note of reproof was so clear in his tone that Austin, who had already felt himself antagonistic to the new bookkeeper, now found himself decidedly irritated.
"And may I ask," he said, "why you assumed that I was alone?"
"I assumed it," began George, with the wild rush of a balky horse at a fence it doesn't mean to jump—"I assumed it because—" He stopped and began all over again. "I cannot associate myself with any institution without taking an interest in its welfare, and I must tell you—"
"Will you be so awfully good as to mind your own business?" said Austin. "There seems to be some misunderstanding. I hire you to run the books, not the school. If you don't like the way it's being done, you can always leave."
But the accountant had not so much liberty in this respect as Austin imagined.
Seeing the two men engaged in what for lack of a better word she called conversation, the little princess decided to escape before a worse thing happened to her, for she feared a second explosion on the part of George might involve her, too. She was softly opening the study door when Bevans stopped her.
"No, wait a moment," he said. "I want to speak to you. I've had a complaint of you this morning—no, not of you"—as the accountant raised his head angrily—"I was speaking to this young lady. The writing-master says your hand is not satisfactory."
"My hand, sir?" said Elise, fluttering the two white trifles that served her in that capacity.
"Your handwriting," answered Austin. "I understand that it isn't even legible. Now what in the world is the use of writing a letter if no one can read what you say? There's no excuse for that. I don't intend any girl to graduate from this school who cannot write a creditable note. So from now until the Easter vacation I want you to write a sample letter every day."
"To whom, sir?"
"To Miss Curtis, who will go over it with Mr. Browning and return it corrected."
Elise bowed, as one who never questioned authority. "Only," she said, "I often do write to Miss Curtis and she has never criticized my writing, or even my spelling, though I remember that in one of my last I spelled actress 'actrice,' which I found out for myself afterward was wrong, but Miss Curtis never said anything about it at all."
"Miss Curtis is almost too kind-hearted," said Austin.
"But you wouldn't be, would you, sir, if I wrote letters to you?"
"To me?" said Austin. The idea had its points, certainly. He caught the accountant's eye fixed upon him with a menacing glare. "My time is very much occupied. And yet," he added, as if yielding graciously, "a note a day would not take much time. Very well. Write to me, then."
The little princess beamed upon him. "Oh, thank you, sir," she said. "And what shall I write about?"
"Anything that has caught your attention during the day—it doesn't matter."
"Such funny things catch my attention sometimes," she replied, thoughtfully. "But I'm afraid that our talking disturbs your bookkeeper."
"No, no," said Bevans, looking as if he didn't much care if he were disturbed or not. "These fellows are accustomed to working in all sorts of noises. However, that's all I had to say to you—a note every morning, and I'll return it to you corrected." He opened the door with a gesture of dismissal.
Just as she went out her glance crossed for an instant the eyes of the accountant, and at once the sound of an erasure was heard from the desk. It seemed to Austin that the young man was peculiarly lacking in concentration.
"Would you prefer to work in another room?" he said.
"No," replied the other, in a strangled tone. "I would much rather be here—where I can consult you if necessary."
"All right," said Austin, "only we are very apt to be interrupted."
They were interrupted within a few minutes; this time by Miss Hayes. A definite situation had developed between Austin and Miss Hayes even in these few days. It was perfectly recognized between them that they were opponents. They wanted different things for women, for the school, and for Elise Benedotti. Yet he and she could co-operate in minor matters in a way that he and Miss Curtis, who admired him so much as to be absolutely inhibited from understanding what he meant, couldn't manage at all.
Miss Hayes, like many mathematicians, was a great believer in the power of the spoken word. She always felt that if she could state her case she could convince. She had been looking for her moment.
"Is this a good time for me to talk to you?" she asked, considerate as always of other people's leisure.
"Excellent," answered Austin. "Except," he added, with a disarming smile, "I don't suppose I'm going to like what you have to say."
"All the more reason for hearing it," she returned. "Mr. Bevans, the intellectual standards of this school are going down, really they are, and that's hard on those of us who have given the best part of our lives to building them up. I know you think the girls are going to get something to compensate them, but isn't it really something that compensates you—men, I mean? I feel as if there were something profoundly wrong and unjust in a young man having control of the destinies of these girls. One knows what men have always thought women ought to be educated for."
"You think it's like letting the butcher decide on the happiest destiny for lambs?"
She brushed his frivolity aside. "But I didn't really come to speak about the general theory. I want to speak of one girl—of Elise, I have known her since she was a child, and you don't know her at all. I want you to make an exception in her case. I want you to let her go on with her college preparation. She doesn't need to be taught charm. She has too much already. After a good deal of indecision she has finally formed a determination to go to college, in spite of her grandfather's disapproval. Don't prevent her carrying out that resolve."
"If she has formed a real determination, I couldn't prevent her," said Austin.
Miss Hayes looked him straight in the eyes. "Yes, you could," she answered. "You have done exactly what you intended to do; you have gained a decisive influence over all these girls—particularly over Elise, who is extremely impressionable. In the end she will do exactly what you tell her to do."
The words intoxicated Austin a little. "You don't think I'd tell her anything but what I thought best for her, do you?"
"Oh no, no," said Miss Hayes, desperately, "but I think you don't know. Mr. Bevans, I think you are a very ignorant boy, and you think me an unhuman old maid, and we may both be right. It doesn't matter. The point is Elise. You must consider what you offer her in place of college for the next four years. She isn't to stay here with us. She is to go back and live with her grandfather, where no young person would be particularly happy, and where Elise will be incredibly lonely. You, perhaps, don't understand how much that child craves affection, intimate daily affection. She has one of the warmest, tenderest hearts I ever knew. If you send her to live alone in that great lonely house with that selfish, busy old man, she will simply marry the first commonplace boy who presents himself. I hear there's one hanging about her now. But I'm afraid we are disturbing the bookkeeper. He doesn't seem to be able to work while we talk."
"Oh no, he doesn't even hear us," said Austin, impatient of this interruption to the train of thought. "Who's hanging about her?"
"No one of importance—her room-mate's brother, I hear."
"Elise seems to be a little young for that sort of thing," Austin began in a manner thoroughly pedagogic, but Miss Hayes interrupted him:
"Too young? Why, half the girls are engaged and all of them in love. As for Elise, I could tell you things about her love-affairs for the last two years. Too young! Why, that just shows that you really are not fit to have the education of girls. When Elise was sixteen, there was a Frenchman— But that wouldn't interest you, I suppose." She stopped suddenly, aware that both men were hanging upon her next word. In fact, the accountant had risen, and now. to explain his action, he said, faintly:
"That's all I can do on the books now. I must go."
"You must go?" said Austin. "I thought you were here for the rest of the morning."
"Oh no," said Miss Hayes, "the books are only half his work. Mrs. Bevans always laid great stress on the importance of the girls understanding simple bookkeeping. He has a class with the seniors—ten minutes' individual instruction with each. I'll show him the way."
The principle that the girls should know how to balance their own check-books was one with which Austin was in thorough accord, and yet when Miss Hayes had hurried the accountant away he found himself with a vague sense of discomfort. He had taken a swift and unaccountable dislike to George Boyd. It seemed to him also that the bookkeeper's attention had been peculiarly alert while Elise was in the room. The idea of her receiving individual instruction from that young man was disagreeable to Austin. Of course he supposed that Miss Curtis would arrange for such lessons to be properly chaperoned; but had a man in his position any right to suppose? Didn't he owe it to the girls' parents to be absolutely sure? He closed his roller-top desk and went over to the main building to satisfy himself.
The individual lessons in bookkeeping (open to seniors only) took place in Miss Curtis's study, and she, devoted soul, had just as keen a desire that they should be properly chaperoned as Austin himself had. She greeted George civilly, and asked his name.
"Boyd," said George.
"Ah!" said Miss Curtis. "We have a student of that name."
"The name is not uncommon, I find."
"Shall we call the young ladies alphabetically?" she asked.
Observing that the name of Benedotti stood first on the list, George replied that this seemed to him by far the wisest course to follow.
It was rather disappointing, therefore, to see Miss Curtis return with his own sister, who was very red in the face and showed a dangerous tendency to giggle.
"Miss Benedotti was not quite ready, and so I brought the next name on the list. My dear Sally," she added, as Sally was suddenly shaken by a suspicious cough, "I hope you haven't taken cold."
No, Sally assured her that she hadn't, and took her place at the desk.
"Do you have any special difficulty with your accounts?" inquired the bookkeeper.
"Yes," said Sally, "the difficulty of keeping any money in the bank," and she giggled irrepressibly.
Miss Curtis reproved such levity with a kindly word, but the accountant, seizing a pencil, wrote down this less polite admonition: "Behave, you idiot."
"The general scheme of a monthly balance with the bank," he went on, "and of course you must balance monthly—is this—" And again having recourse to his pencil he wrote: "Get this old girl out of the room while Elise is here."
"I can't do it," said Sally, aloud.
"Oh yes, you can, if you try," answered the accountant, and Miss Curtis thought he gave the dear girl an unnecessarily severe look.
Exactly at the end of ten minutes Sally was dismissed and Elise entered. She did not glance at her new instructor, but said, unsmilingly, to Miss Curtis: "I can't see any point in my taking this course, Miss Curtis. My grandfather would always have some young man from his bank take care of my check-book for me."
"Perhaps," said the accountant, haughtily, "you mightn't always be able to get a young man from the bank."
"I've never found any trouble about that," said the little princess. But she sat down at the desk, and George opened her check-book and turned over the pages.
"To self, to self, to self— Why, Miss Benedotti," he said, reprovingly, "this is no way to keep a book. You don't say for what you draw the amounts."
"Sometimes I do," she returned, and she pointed to one item which read, "For George's birthday present, $20."
The accountant colored deeply. "It was a wonderful present," he said. "I mean it must have been."
"It was nice," answered the princess, "but not too nice for George." And then turning to Miss Curtis she asked, innocently, "Is it part of this gentleman's duty to comment on the way I spend my money?"
"No, certainly," said Miss Curtis, who had been thinking the same thing, but lacked the courage to initiate the remark. And at this moment Sally appeared at the door
"Please, Miss Curtis, you're wanted on the long-distance telephone," she said. "And the operator says to be sure to use the switch in the pantry, as she would have to disconnect you if you used any other."
Miss Curtis looked wistfully at the telephone standing so conveniently on her desk.
"How very strange!" she said.
"Isn't it!" said Sally, cordially, and managed to carry her point.
"Elise," said the accountant, passionately, as soon as they were alone, "you must never go to that man's office alone like that—never. You don't know how it looked when I found you there—in his arms."
"George!" said Elise. "How dare you say such a thing, when it was the way you opened the door that nearly knocked me down. Mr. Bevans was only trying to—"
"Nonsense!" cried George. "That had nothing to do with his liking it. My point is he liked having you in his arms. Who wouldn't!"
Elise looked down, and then in a voice hardly audible said: "How could you possibly tell that, George—that Mr. Bevans liked it? How could you know?"
"How did I know?" said George, who innocently supposed that his veracity was being impugned. "Why, by his expression, by his eyes. Do you think I don't know the world? And those letters, Elise, ordering you to write to him every day under the pretense of improving your handwriting. Oh, if I could only order you to write to me every month, how happy I should be! You're too innocent to understand, dear, but that man is in love with you—insanely, passionately in love with you."
Elise did not immediately answer this, for the simple reason that she couldn't, but she drew back a little to get a better look at George, and her eyes seemed to have increased to twice their usual size and brilliance. It was at this moment that Austin entered. Exactly what he had feared had happened.
"What's this?" he said. "Where's Miss Curtis?" And before any one had got round to answering him. Miss Curtis herself hurried into the room, talking.
"The funniest thing," she was saying. "Central kept on repeating, 'Number please, number please,' when it was they who specially told me—"
"Miss Curtis," said Austin, with a sort of cold violence, "I consider it essential that a teacher remain in the room during these lessons; if you do not feel able to obey this rule, we must make other arrangements."
The soundest and best explanation always sounded like a flimsy excuse in Miss Curtis's mouth, but no one could have made the story of the pantry switch sound like anything but nonsense. Austin received it in a glowering silence, and remained during the rest of the lesson. When it was over he took whatever satisfaction was to be derived from making Miss Curtis cry bitterly. After which he suddenly recovered his temper and felt very much ashamed of himself.
"I'm sorry I was cross," he said, "but—"
"Oh, I know," she answered. "You feel your great responsibility to the parents."
"Yes, of course," said Austin. "And I don't like this young man. He seems to take a personal interest in the girls."
"Oh no!" said Miss Curtis, shocked at the idea that a bookkeeper should so far forget himself. "I think you do him injustice. I watched him closely while he was giving Sally her lesson, and there was nothing of the kind, nothing, although poor Sally was quite silly and giggled and made foolish answers."
"There was nothing of that kind with Elise."
"Oh no, but then Elise is very different."
That was the way it seemed to Austin.
The next day the first of her notes arrived, it was written in a careful, clear hand, and no one could have missed a word:
Dear Mr. Bevans,— You told me to write about anything that struck me—did you see the moon last night? It came up suddenly out of a black cloud with silver edges. I watched it a very long time as it shone down upon your cottage, and I hoped you were not missing such a very lovely sight.
Yours
Now it struck Austin as a strange coincidence that he had observed the moon—the very lovely sight—and had felt, as he could not help suspecting the writer of that letter had felt, that it was a pity to view so much beauty without a sympathetic companion. This, however, was not the comment he wrote upon the letter, which, after deliberation, he did not submit to the writing-master's criticism. He did his own criticizing. He was extremely conscientious about it.
"This is much better as to writing than I was led to suppose," he wrote, "though your capital I's and S's are too much alike. In a note of this kind it is better to sign your full name, with some more formal expression than 'yours.' Also, avoid the excessive use of the word 'very.'"
He had some misgivings lest he had been too severe, but the next day's note betrayed no hurt feelings.
Dear Mr. Bevans,—We are reading Shelley in English literature, but some of the most beautiful things we have not read in class. I find my enjoyment of poetry increases as I grow older. Some of these lines ring in my head day and night, like "I never thought before my death to see youth's vision thus made perfect"—and all that part that follows which doubtless you know.
Very respectfully yours,
Now it happened that Austin's education had been somewhat neglected in the matter of poets. He did not know either the line or its context. But he found out before he went to bed that night. He spent a delightful evening, only, he wondered, was "Epipsychidion" the best reading for school-girls?
He began to look forward to the notes almost as much as to the checks for the last semester, and this was saying a good deal, for, as he constantly reminded himself, he had gone into school-teaching strictly on the commercial basis. One of her letters ran:
Dear Mr. Bevans,—What do you think about moods? I know what you will say—that we should conquer them. I think so, too. But how? All to-day I have been so dreadfully depressed—so that my heart really aches like a tooth, and anything beautiful makes me want to cry. Yet I have no reason for being unhappy—quite the contrary. I keep telling myself how fortunate I am—one of the luckiest girls. Only the world seems so large and dangerous, and I so small and inexperienced.
Respectfully yours,
The subject of punctuation was one to which Austin had never even given a passing thought, but now the idea that Elise used too many dashes haunted him like a nightmare. It was hard on him to feel obliged to get up the whole subject, because, ever since the Latin teacher had quoted something to him which he couldn't understand, he was spending all his evenings trying to reacquire a reading knowledge of Virgil. But now, nothing daunted, he borrowed a book on punctuation from the English teacher, and after he had done his Virgil—that is to say from eleven to midnight, he gave his whole attention to the use of stops. As usual, his active mind was rewarded by a new interest. "There's more in punctuation than I thought," he said to himself. Whoever else the school was instructing, it was certainly giving its head-master a liberal education.