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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 "Herve 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-a.s.surance 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 a.s.similating 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 pa.s.sionate 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 m.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.sing, 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 pa.s.s. 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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."