 | CHAPTER XXIII.
MYRTLE HAZARD AT THE CITY SCHOOL. The guardian angel |  |
23. CHAPTER XXIII.
MYRTLE HAZARD AT THE CITY SCHOOL.
MR. BRADSHAW was obliged to leave town for a
week or two on business connected with the great
land-claim. On his return, feeling in pretty good spirits,
as the prospects looked favorable, he went to make a call
at The Poplars. He asked first for Miss Hazard.
“Bliss your soul, Mr. Bridshaw,” answered Mistress
Kitty Fagan, “she 's been gahn nigh a wake. It 's to the
city, to the big school, they 've sint her.”
This announcement seemed to make a deep impression
on Murray Bradshaw, for his feelings found utterance in
one of the most energetic forms of language to which ears
polite or impolite are accustomed. He next asked for
Miss Silence, who soon presented herself. Mr. Bradshaw
asked, in a rather excited way, “Is it possible, Miss
Withers, that your niece has quitted you to go to a city
school?”
Miss Silence answered, with her chief-mourner expression,
and her death-chamber tone: “Yes, she has left us
for a season. I trust it may not be her destruction. I
had hoped in former years that she would become a missionary,
but I have given up all expectation of that now.
Two whole years, from the age of four to that of six, I
had prevailed upon her to give up sugar, — the money so
saved to go to a graduate of our institution — who was
afterwards — he labored among the cannibal-islanders.
I thought she seemed to take pleasure in this small act of
secret lumps. It was by Mr. Gridley's advice that she
went, and by his pecuniary assistance. What could I do?
She was bent on going, and I was afraid she would have
fits, or do something dreadful, if I did not let her have her
way. I am afraid she will come back to us spoiled. She
has seemed so fond of dress lately, and once she spoke of
learning — yes, Mr. Bradshaw, of learning to — dance! I
wept when I heard of it. Yes, I wept.”
That was such a tremendous thing to think of, and
especially to speak of in Mr. Bradshaw's presence, — for
the most pathetic image in the world to many women is
that of themselves in tears, — that it brought a return of
the same overflow, which served as a substitute for conversation
until Miss Badlam entered the apartment.
Miss Cynthia followed the same general course of remark.
They could not help Myrtle's going if they tried.
She had always maintained that, if they had only once
broke her will when she was little, they would have kept
the upper hand of her; but her will never was broke.
They came pretty near it once, but the child would n't
give in.
Miss Cynthia went to the door with Mr. Bradshaw,
and the conversation immediately became short and informal.
“Demonish pretty business! All up for a year or
more, — hey?”
“Don't blame me, — I could n't stop her.”
“Give me her address, — I 'll write to her. Any young
men teach in the school?”
“Can't tell you. She 'll write to Olive and Bathsheba,
and I 'll find out all about it.”
Murray Bradshaw went home and wrote a long letter to
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place, containing many
interesting remarks and inquiries, some of the latter relating
to Madam Delacoste's institution for the education of
young ladies.
While this was going on at Oxbow Village, Myrtle was
establishing herself at the rather fashionable school to
which Mr. Gridley had recommended her. Mrs. or Madam
Delacoste's boarding-school had a name which on the
whole it deserved pretty well. She had some very good
instructors for girls who wished to get up useful knowledge
in case they might marry professors or ministers. They
had a chance to learn music, dancing, drawing, and the
way of behaving in company. There was a chance, too, to
pick up available acquaintances, for many rich people sent
their daughters to the school, and it was something to have
been bred in their company.
There was the usual division of the scholars into a first
and second set, according to the social position, mainly depending
upon the fortune, of the families to which they
belonged. The wholesale dealer's daughter very naturally
considered herself as belonging to a different order from
the retail dealer's daughter. The keeper of a great hotel
and the editor of a widely circulated newspaper were considered
as ranking with the wholesale dealers, and their
daughters belonged also to the untitled nobility which has
the dollar for its armorial bearing. The second set had
most of the good scholars, and some of the prettiest girls;
but nobody knew anything about their families, who lived
off the great streets and avenues, or vegetated in country
towns.
Myrtle Hazard's advent made something like a sensation.
They did not know exactly what to make of her. Hazard?
Hazard? No great firm of that name. No leading hotel
kept by any Hazard, was there? No newspaper of note
edited by anybody called Hazard, was there? Came from
where? Oxbow Village. O, rural district. Yes. — Still
they could not help owning that she was handsome, — a
concession which of course had to be made with reservations.
“Don't you think she 's vurry good-lookin'?” said a
Boston girl to a New York girl. “I think she 's real
pooty.”
“I dew, indeed. I did n't think she was haäf so handsome
the feeest time I saw her,” answered the New York
girl.
“What a pity she had n't been bawn in Bawston!”
“Yes, and moved very young to Ne Yock!”
“And married a sarsaparilla man, and lived in Fiff
Avenoo, and moved in the fust society.”
“Better dew that than be strong-mainded, and dew your
own cook'n, and live in your own kitch'n.”
“Don't forgit to send your card when you are Mrs. Old
Dr. Jacob!”
“Indeed I shaän't. What 's the name of the alley, and
which bell?” The New York girl took out a memorandum-book
as if to put it down.
“Had n't you better let me write it for you, dear?”
said the Boston girl. “It is as well to have it legible, you
know.”
“Take it,” said the New York girl. “There 's tew
York shill'ns in it when I hand it to you.”
“Your whole quarter's allowance, I bullieve, — ain't
it?” said the Boston girl.
“Elegant manners, correct deportment, and propriety of
language will be strictly attended to in this institution.
The most correct standards of pronunciation will be inculcated
by precept and example. It will be the special aim
of the teachers to educate their pupils out of all provincialisms,
so that they may be recognized as well-bred English
scholars wherever the language is spoken in its purity.” —
Extract from the Prospectus of Madam Delacoste's Boarding-School.
Myrtle Hazard was a puzzle to all the girls. Striking,
they all agreed, but then the criticisms began. Many of
the girls chattered a little broken French, and one of them,
Miss Euphrosyne De Lacy, had been half educated in
Paris, so that she had all the phrases which are to social
operators what his cutting instruments are to the surgeon.
Her face she allowed was handsome; but her style, according
to this oracle, was a little bourgeoise, and her air not exactly
comme il faut. More specifically, she was guilty of
contours fortement prononcés, — corsage de paysanne, —
quelque chose de sauvage, etc., etc. This girl prided herself
on her figure.
Miss Bella Pool, (La Belle Poule as the demi-Parisian
girl had christened her,) the beauty of the school, did not
think so much of Myrtle's face, but considered her figure
as better than the De Lacy girl's.
The two sets, first and second, fought over her as the
Greeks and Trojans over a dead hero, or the Yale College
societies over a live freshman. She was nobody by her
connections, it is true, so far as they could find out, but
then, on the other hand, she had the walk of a queen, and
she looked as if a few stylish dresses and a season or two
would make her a belle of the first water. She had that
which is surest to disarm all the critics of a small
tattling community. On the other hand, she came to this
school to learn, and not to play; and the modest and more
plainly dressed girls, whose fathers did not sell by the cargo,
or keep victualling establishments for some hundreds of
people, considered her as rather in sympathy with them than
with the daughters of the rough-and-tumble millionnaires
who were grappling and rolling over each other in the golden
dust of the great city markets.
She did not mean to belong exclusively to either of their
sets. She came with that sense of manifold deficiencies,
and eager ambition to supply them, which carries any
learner upward, as if on wings, over the heads of the
mechanical plodders and the indifferent routinists. She
learned, therefore, in a way to surprise the experienced
instructors. Her somewhat rude sketching soon began
to show something of the artist's touch. Her voice, which
had only been taught to warble the simplest melodies, after
a little training began to show its force and sweetness and
flexibility in the airs that enchant drawing-room audiences.
She caught with great readiness the manner of the easiest
girls, unconsciously, for she inherited old social instincts
which became nature with the briefest exercise. Not
much license of dress was allowed in the educational establishment
of Madam Delacoste, but every girl had an
opportunity to show her taste within the conventional limits
prescribed. And Myrtle soon began to challenge remark
by a certain air she contrived to give her dresses, and the
skill with which she blended their colors.
“Tell you what, girls,” said Miss Berengaria Topping,
female representative of the great dynasty that ruled over
it. I call her perfectly splendid, when she 's got up in her
swell clothes. That oriole's wing she wears in her bonnet
makes her look gorgeous, — she 'll be a stunning Pocahontas
for the next tableau.”
Miss Rose Bugbee, whose family opulence grew out of
the only merchantable article a Hebrew is never known to
seek profit from, thought she could be made presentable in
the first circles if taken in hand in good season. So it
came about that, before many weeks had passed over her
as a scholar in the great educational establishment, she
might be considered as on the whole the most popular girl
in the whole bevy of them. The studious ones admired
her for her facility of learning, and her extraordinary appetite
for every form of instruction, and the showy girls,
who were only enduring school as the purgatory that
opened into the celestial world of society, recognized in
her a very handsome young person, who would be like to
make a sensation sooner or later.
There were, however, it must be confessed, a few who
considered themselves the thickest of the cream of the
school-girls, who submitted her to a more trying ordeal
than any she had yet passed.
“How many horses does your papa keep?” asked Miss
Florence Smythe. “We keep nine and a pony for Edgar.”
Myrtle had to explain that she had no papa, and that
they did not keep any horses. Thereupon Miss Florence
Smythe lost her desire to form an acquaintance, and wrote
home to her mother (who was an ex-bonnet-maker) that
the school was getting common, she was afraid, — they
were letting in persons one knew nothing about.
Miss Clara Browne had a similar curiosity about the
amount of plate used in the household from which Myrtle
came. Her father had just bought a complete silver service.
Myrtle had to own that they used a good deal of
china at her own home, — old china, which had been a
hundred years in the family, some of it.
“A hundred years old!” exclaimed Miss Clara Browne.
“What queer-looking stuff it must be! Why, everything
in our house is just as new and bright! Papaä had all
our pictures painted on purpose for us. Have you got
any handsome pictures in your house?”
“We have a good many portraits of members of the
family,” she said “some of them older than the china.”
“How very very odd! What do the dear old things
look like?”
“One was a great beauty in her time.”
“How jolly!”
“Another was a young woman who was put to death
for her religion, — burned to ashes at the stake in Queen
Mary's time.”
“How very very wicked! It was n't nice a bit, was
it? Ain't you telling me stories? Was that a hundred
years ago? — But you 've got some new pictures and
things, have n't you? Who furnished your parlors?”
“My great-grandfather, or his father, I believe.”
“Stuff and nonsense. I don't believe it. What color
are your carriage-horses?”
“Our woman, Kitty Fagan, told somebody once we did
n't keep any horse but a cow.”
“Not keep any horses! Do for pity's sake let me look
at your feet.”
Myrtle put out as neat a little foot as a shoemaker ever
tempted to do with it, if she had been a boy, we will not
stop to guess. After all, the questions amused her quite
as much as the answers instructed Miss Clara Browne.
Of that young lady's ancestral claims to distinction there
is no need of discoursing. Her “papaä” commonly said
sir in talking with a gentleman, and her “mammaä” would
once in a while forget, and go down the area steps instead
of entering at the proper door; but they lived behind a
brown stone front, which veneers everybody's antecedents
with a facing of respectability.
Miss Clara Browne wrote home to her mother in the
same terms as Miss Florence Smythe, — that the school
was getting dreadful common, and they were letting in
very queer folks.
Still another trial awaited Myrtle, and one which not
one girl in a thousand would have been so unprepared to
meet. She knew absolutely nothing of certain things with
which the vast majority of young persons were quite familiar.
There were literary young ladies, who had read everything
of Dickens and Thackeray, and something at least
of Sir Walter, and occasionally, perhaps, a French novel,
which they had better have let alone. One of the talking
young ladies of this set began upon Myrtle one day.
“O, is n't Pickwick nice?” she asked.
“I don't know,” Myrtle replied; “I never tasted any.”
The girl stared at her as if she were a crazy creature.
“Tasted any! Why, I mean the Pickwick Papers, Dickens's
story. Don't you think they 're nice?”
Poor Myrtle had to confess that she had never read
them, and did n't know anything about them.
“What! did you never read any novels?” said the
young lady.
“O, to be sure I have,” said Myrtle, blushing as she
thought of the great trunk and its contents. “I have
read Caleb Williams, and Evelina, and Tristram Shandy”
(naughty girl!), “and the Castle of Otranto, and the Mysteries
of Udolpho, and the Vicar of Wakefield, and Don
Quixote —”
The young lady burst out laughing. “Stop! stop! for
mercy's sake,” she cried. “You must be somebody that 's
been dead and buried and come back to life again. Why
you 're Rip Van Winkle in a petticoat! You ought to
powder your hair and wear patches.”
“We 've got the oddest girl here,” this young lady wrote
home. “She has n't read any book that is n't a thousand
years old. One of the girls says she wears a trilobite for
a breastpin; some horrid old stone, I believe that is, that
was a bug ever so long ago. Her name, she says, is Myrtle
Hazard, but I call her Rip Van Myrtle.”
Notwithstanding the quiet life which these young girls
were compelled to lead, they did once in a while have their
gatherings, at which a few young gentlemen were admitted.
One of these took place about a month after Myrtle had
joined the school. The girls were all in their best, and by
and by they were to have a tableau. Myrtle came out in all
her force. She dressed herself as nearly as she dared like
the handsome woman of the past generation whom she resembled.
The very spirit of the dead beauty seemed to animate
every feature and every movement of the young girl,
whose position in the school was assured from that moment.
She had a good solid foundation to build upon in the jealousy
of two or three of the leading girls of the style of
given. There is no possible success without some opposition
as a fulcrum: force is always aggressive, and crowds
something or other, if it does not hit or trample on it.
The cruelest cut of all was the remark attributed to
Mr. Livingston Jenkins, who was what the opposition
girls just referred to called the great “swell” among the
privileged young gentlemen who were present at the gathering.
“Rip Van Myrtle, you call that handsome girl, do you,
Miss Clara? By Jove, she 's the stylishest of the whole
lot, to say nothing of being a first-class beauty. Of course
you know I except one, Miss Clara. If a girl can go to
sleep and wake up after twenty years looking like that, I
know a good many who had better begin their nap without
waiting. If I were Florence Smythe, I 'd try it, and begin
now, — eh, Clara?”
Miss Browne felt the praise of Myrtle to be slightly
alleviated by the depreciation of Miss Smythe, who had
long been a rival of her own. A little later in the evening
Miss Smythe enjoyed almost precisely the same sensation,
produced in a very economical way by Mr. Livingston
Jenkins's repeating pretty nearly the same sentiments to
her, only with a change in the arrangement of the proper
names. The two young ladies were left feeling comparatively
comfortable with regard to each other, each intending
to repeat Mr. Livingston Jenkins's remark about her
friend to such of her other friends as enjoyed clever sayings,
but not at all comfortable with reference to Myrtle
Hazard, who was evidently considered by the leading
“swell” of their circle as the most noticeable personage
of the assembly. The individual exception in each case
well enough what he meant.
It seemed to Myrtle Hazard, that evening, that she felt
the bracelet on her wrist glow with a strange, unaccustomed
warmth. It was as if it had just been unclasped
from the arm of a young woman full of red blood and
tingling all over with swift nerve-currents. Life had
never looked to her as it did that evening. It was the
swan's first breasting the water, — bred on the desert sand,
with vague dreams of lake and river, and strange longings
as the mirage came and dissolved, and at length afloat
upon the sparkling wave. She felt as if she had for the
first time found her destiny. It was to please, and so to
command, — to rule with gentle sway in virtue of the
royal gift of beauty, — to enchant with the commonest
exercise of speech, through the rare quality of a voice
which could not help being always gracious and winning,
of a manner which came to her as an inheritance of which
she had just found the title. She read in the eyes of all
that she was more than any other the centre of admiration.
Blame her who may, the world was a very splendid
vision as it opened before her eyes in its long vista of
pleasures and of triumphs. How different the light of these
bright saloons from the glimmer of the dim chamber at
The Poplars! Silence Withers was at that very moment
looking at the portraits of Anne Holyoake and of Judith
Pride. “The old picture seems to me to be fading faster
than ever,” she was thinking. But when she held her
lamp before the other, it seemed to her that the picture
never was so fresh before, and that the proud smile upon
its lips was more full of conscious triumph than she remembered
it. A reflex, doubtless, of her own thoughts,
over her lost descendant, and that the beauty, changed to the
nature of the malignant spiritual company with which she
had long consorted in the under-world, was pleasing herself
with the thought that Myrtle was in due time to bring
her news from the Satanic province overhead, where she
herself had so long indulged in the profligacy of embonpoint
and loveliness.
The evening at the school-party was to terminate with
some tableaux. The girl who had suggested that Myrtle
would look “stunning” or “gorgeous” or “jolly,” or
whatever the expression was, as Pocahontas, was not far
out of the way, and it was so evident to the managing
heads that she would make a fine appearance in that character,
that the “Rescue of Captain John Smith” was
specially got up to show her off.
Myrtle had sufficient reason to believe that there was
a hint of Indian blood in her veins. It was one of those
family legends which some of the members are a little
proud of, and others are willing to leave uninvestigated.
But with Myrtle it was a fixed belief that she felt perfectly
distinct currents of her ancestral blood at intervals, and
she had sometimes thought there were instincts and vague
recollections which must have come from the old warriors
and hunters and their dusky brides. The Indians who
visited the neighborhood recognized something of their
own race in her dark eyes, as the reader may remember
they told the persons who were searching after her. It
had almost frightened her sometimes to find how like
a wild creature she felt when alone in the woods. Her
senses had much of that delicacy for which the red people
are noted, and she often thought she could follow the trail
forest, as unerringly as if she were a Pequot or a Mohegan.
It was a strange feeling that came over Myrtle, as they
dressed her for the part she was to take. Had she never
worn that painted robe before? Was it the first time that
these strings of wampum had ever rattled upon her neck
and arms? And could it be that the plume of eagle's
feathers with which they crowned her dark, fast-lengthening
locks had never shadowed her forehead until now?
She felt herself carried back into the dim ages when the
wilderness was yet untrodden save by the feet of its native
lords. Think of her wild fancy as we may, she felt as if
that dusky woman of her midnight vision on the river
were breathing for one hour through her lips. If this
belief had lasted, it is plain enough where it would have
carried her. But it came into her imagination and vivifying
consciousness with the putting on of her unwonted
costume, and might well leave her when she put it off.
It is not for us, who tell only what happened, to solve
these mysteries of the seeming admission of unhoused
souls into the fleshly tenements belonging to air-breathing
personalities. A very little more, and from that evening
forward the question would have been treated in full in all
the works on medical jurisprudence published throughout
the limits of Christendom. The story must be told or we
should not be honest with the reader.
Tableau 1. Captain John Smith (Miss Euphrosyne
de Lacy) was to be represented prostrate and bound,
ready for execution; Powhatan (Miss Florence Smythe)
sitting upon a log; savages with clubs (Misses Clara
Browne, A. Van Boodle, E. Van Boodle, Heister, Booster,
in her hand, ready to cut the cords with which Captain
John Smith is bound. — Curtain.
Tableau 2. Captain John Smith released and kneeling
before Pocahontas, whose hand is extended in the act
of raising him and presenting him to her father. Savages
in various attitudes of surprise. Clubs fallen from their
hands. Strontian flame to be kindled. — Curtain.
This was a portion of the programme for the evening,
as arranged behind the scenes. The first part went off
with wonderful éclat, and at its close there were loud cries
for Pocahontas. She appeared for a moment. Bouquets
were flung to her; and a wreath, which one of the young
ladies had expected for herself in another part, was tossed
upon the stage, and laid at her feet. The curtain fell.
“Put the wreath on her for the next tableau,” some
of them whispered, just as the curtain was going to rise,
and one of the girls hastened to place it upon her head.
The disappointed young lady could not endure it, and,
in a spasm of jealous passion, sprang at Myrtle, snatched
it from her head, and trampled it under her feet at the
very instant the curtain was rising. With a cry which
some said had the blood-chilling tone of an Indian's
battle-shriek, Myrtle caught the knife up, and raised her
arm against the girl who had thus rudely assailed her.
The girl sank to the ground, covering her eyes in her terror.
Myrtle, with her arm still lifted, and the blade glistening
in her hand, stood over her, rigid as if she had been suddenly
changed to stone. Many of those looking on thought
all this was a part of the show, and were thrilled with the
wonderful acting. Before those immediately around her
had had time to recover from the palsy of their fright,
her head bowed and her hands crossed upon her
breast. The audience went into a rapture of applause as
the curtain came suddenly down; but Myrtle had forgotten
all but the dread peril she had just passed, and
was thanking God that his angel — her own protecting
spirit, as it seemed to her — had stayed the arm which
a passion such as her nature had never known, such as she
believed was alien to her truest self, had lifted with deadliest
purpose. She alone knew how extreme the danger had
been. “She meant to scare her, — that 's all,” they said.
But Myrtle tore the eagle's feathers from her hair, and
stripped off her colored beads, and threw off her painted
robe. The metempsychosis was far too real for her to let
her wear the semblance of the savage from whom, as she
believed, had come the lawless impulse at the thought
of which her soul recoiled in horror.
“Pocahontas has got a horrid headache,” the managing
young ladies gave it out, “and can't come to time for the
last tableau.” So this all passed over, not only without
loss of credit to Myrtle, but with no small addition to her
local fame, — for it must have been acting; “and was n't it
stunning to see her with that knife, looking as if she was
going to stab Bella, or to scalp her, or something?”
As Master Gridley had predicted, and as is the case
commonly with new-comers at colleges and schools, Myrtle
had come first in contact with those who were least agreeable
to meet. The low-bred youth who amuse themselves
with scurvy tricks on freshmen, and the vulgar girls who
try to show off their gentility to those whom they think less
important than themselves, are exceptions in every institution;
but they make themselves odiously prominent before
the new scholar's confidence. Myrtle found friends in due
time, some of them daughters of rich people, some poor
girls, who came with the same sincerity of purpose as herself.
But not one was her match in the facility of acquiring
knowledge. Not one promised to make such a mark
in society, if she found an opening into its loftier circles.
She was by no means ignorant of her natural gifts, and she
cultivated them with the ambition which would not let her
rest.
During her stay at the great school, she made but
one visit to Oxbow Village. She did not try to startle
the good people with her accomplishments, but they were
surprised at the change which had taken place in her.
Her dress was hardly more showy, for she was but a
school-girl, but it fitted her more gracefully. She had
gained a softness of expression, and an ease in conversation,
which produced their effect on all with whom she
came in contact. Her aunt's voice lost something of its
plaintiveness in talking with her. Miss Cynthia listened
with involuntary interest to her stories of school and schoolmates.
Master Byles Gridley accepted her as the great
success of his life, and determined to make her his chief
heiress, if there was any occasion for so doing. Cyprian
told Bathsheba that Myrtle must come to be a great lady.
Gifted Hopkins confessed to Susan Posey that he was
afraid of her, since she had been to the great city school.
She knew too much and looked too much like a queen, for
a village boy to talk with.
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw tried all his fascinations
upon her, but she parried compliments so well, and put off
all his nearer advances so dexterously, that he could not
a chance, if so disposed, to risk a question which he would
not ask rashly, believing that, if Myrtle once said No, there
would be little chance of her ever saying Yes.
| CHAPTER XXIII.
MYRTLE HAZARD AT THE CITY SCHOOL. The guardian angel | |