CHAPTER XXXI.
[THE LADY PRINCIPAL].
The Principal of the Female College of Montpelier sat in her room--office, call it, or study--her seat of authority, absorbed in business. Her table was littered with papers; the waste-paper basket overflowed with them. There was ink before her, a pen in her hand. Her cap sat crooked on her head; her whitened hair was rumpled. The too active cerebration within had no doubt disturbed the external trimness of her dome of thought, as phrenologists used to tell us that it worked ridges and hollows in the bones of the skull. She was deep in thought. Her grey, intellectual features were tightened in the effort, and her eye roved vacantly in space in search of those choice forms which had long made her style the model of literary expression in Montpelier.
She had spent the morning in compounding a syllabus, or a compendium--matters in the manufacture of which she was unrivalled. Now she was considering her address on female self-culture, shortly to be delivered before the Institute of Emancipated Woman, with a list of the hundred books which should form the inseparable companions of every female aspirant to Breadth of View. Her eye wandered to the terrestrial globe at her elbow--a symbol of her learned office, handed down from her predecessors in more simple-minded times; and she reviewed the distinguished literary reputations in remote places and times--the less vulgarly popular or comprehensible, the better for her purpose.
Ha! there was the Nile--Egypt--Manetho! A most respectable name Manetho, and not too much said about him. The only difficulty was, were his works extant? She was not sure, and her encyclopædia was too old an edition to make it worth while looking up. Her eye moved eastward: India? eureka! The Rig Veda,--Max Müller and the 'Asiatic Review'! She had read all about it in Littel's 'Living Age,' the pirate's treasure-house.
The Rig Veda should head her list. She had not read it, to be sure; but neither had those whom she addressed, and they would not be able to read it, if they were to try--in the original, at least, and she intended to pour scorn upon the use of translations; but it looked well at the head of a list, showed comprehensiveness in the lecturer, and ensured respect from the omniscient critic of the 'Montpelier Review.'
The 'Zend-Avesta' made a handsome second; but as she did not desire to smother her audience under the load of erudition, she considerately offered it as an alternative to the Rig Veda. "A Saga" came next--she did not specify which. Her familiarity with Scandinavian literature was not intimate enough to particularise; but as not one of her audience would know anything about it, that made little difference. Being minded that nothing she said should savour of the too familiar, she gave Klopstock the first place in her German list rather than Goethe; and for the same reason Marlowe led off her English dramatists, with Shakespeare far down among the ruck. Then there were Hegel and Haekel, with permission to add the 'Critique of Pure Reason' for those who relished intellectual nut-cracking. There was to have been a name or two from every tribe and tongue in Europe; but in her ignorance she could think of no Russian but Turguenief; and when she came to the Lapps, Finns, Liths, and Basques, they had no literary representative whom she had ever heard of. After that she took up a publisher's list and filled up the remaining sixty places at random. What did it matter? People would read what they liked or understood. If they did not understand, it could not influence them one way or other. She knew as well as you or I do, reader, that wheat is not grown on pure sand; that loams, clays, moulds, each produce a vegetation limited by their capacity; that everything will not grow everywhere, and that, if it could, it would not be worth much. But while the public laboured under the fad of comprehensiveness, she recognised that she, its servant, must be comprehensive too, or her employer would pay her off and get some one else who was up to its standard. No one person could read, or, if they could, would care to read, a tenth part of the literature upon her list; but that she considered the one useful element in what she was about. It introduced a moral influence. It would keep her audience humble--an end not always easy to achieve where that audience is feminine, and more richly endowed with aspiration than with solid learning--and show them how much there still was which they did not know, notwithstanding their acquirements.
There came a timid knock at the door, and a second, which the Principal heard; and laying down her pen she sat bolt-upright and said, "Come in."
It was Maida Springer who entered.
At the sight of her subordinate looking crushed and wan, the Principal's aspect softened. Her impatience of interruption gave place to those motherly instincts which nestled sweet and fresh about her heart, though usually sheltered and concealed from an uncongenial world under the dry husk of her superior-woman-hood.
"You--Maida?... I had almost given up hope of seeing you again. But have you been sick? You do not look much benefited by your stay at the shore--rather the other way."
Maida looked down. "I am well, Miss Rolph. I arrived by the night-train. I suppose that accounts for my--for my want of looks," and she sighed; but more for the want of looks, than for herself.
"Did my letter miscarry? It is nearly a fortnight since I wrote."
Maida coloured. "I got it, Miss Rolph, and I am come to thank you. I know I should have written at once; but--I meant to come instead. Indeed I started, but--when----" Her voice died away. She looked down more than she had done before, and her colour deepened.
"What was it, my dear? What prevented your coming?"
Maida lifted her head, drew a long breath, and raised her eyes to Miss Rolph's face. Then the impossibility of uttering what there was to tell arose before her. She bowed her head till the hat-brim and the wisp of blue veil came down between her eyes and those of the Principal. She strained down her arms before her, locked the fingers of both hands together, and was speechless.
Miss Rolph was scarcely pleased that her kindly meant interest should be put aside; but she was not the woman to obtrude unwelcome sympathy. She stiffened back to business, and observed with manifest coldness of voice--
"Your neglect may prove prejudicial to your interests, I fear; though perhaps not. It would have been great advancement for you, and quite a distinguished position, if you had been able to give the course on political economy and sociology. You would have been the first woman in this State to enter that important field. You would have made a name, and become a leader in our sex's emancipation. On the other hand, I admit that I felt a misgiving as to whether your character was yet sufficiently formed for the post. The long ages of woman's subordination have communicated a weakness of moral fibre to the individual of today, which it requires maturity of years, experience, and study, to overcome. I have feared at times that I detected some remains of the old-fashioned missishness in your character, not yet subdued. A year or two longer in your present duties may be advantageous. I have arranged with Dr Langenwoert from Boston to lecture three times a-week next term. After that--who knows?--but it depends on yourself. The Committee believes, as you are aware, that female education should be confided to women alone. You have been appointed a professorial assistant pro tem. to Dr Langenwoert. Avail yourself of your opportunities. Study his methods; and who knows but you may succeed him?"
"Oh, Miss Rolph, how good you are! Forgive my seeming thanklessness,--but, indeed--oh, Miss Rolph!"
Maida came forward and took the Principal's hand. Her voice was too tremulous to be trusted; her eyes were brimming full. She had entered that room feeling so lonely, desolate, and without a friend; and here, in her professional chief, with whom her intercourse had been limited to what related to her duties, was a woman who cared for her, bestowed consideration, and was kind. She could have kissed the hand--she would fain have kissed the lips which had spoken to her kindly; but Miss Rolph was so very superior a woman, so above and beyond female weakness!--and what was that which she had said just now about missish?
Miss Rolph wheeled round on her pivoted chair, and looked with her clear, cool eyes in the other's face.
"Maida Springer, you are in trouble! Tell me what it is. Am not I a woman? Confide in me. I know you have no mother. I would try to advise you as she might have done, though perhaps I am not quite old enough for that."
She might have spared the last observation, being fifty-five, while Maida was but thirty; but, good lady, though undeniably superior, she was still a woman.
Maida's eyes overflowed. This was kindness unexpected.
"Take a chair, my dear. Draw up close to me, and tell me all." And when Maida drew close, she laid a hand upon her shoulder, and one soothingly upon the fingers wringing themselves into knots in perturbed irresolution.
"I would--I would! But how? I cannot speak of it!"
"When people have done no wrong, there is nothing they need fear to tell--to a friend. Injuries and mistakes often seem lessened when we can bring ourselves to speak about them. A burden shared presses with but half the weight it did before. Confide in me, Maida, Unburden your trouble."
Maida's tears flowed freely. She made no effort to restrain them. They softened the dry crust of misery which encased her spirit. Her head inclined to her consoler. So did her heart in tender gratitude. She caressed the soothing hand, but still the pent-up words refused to come. Miss Rolph waited in silence, but found at length that she must assist if the explanation was to be made.
"You said, Maida, that you intended to come instead of answering my letter--that you started?"
"I did. I was at Narwhal Junction waiting for the train, when I met a very old friend on the platform--going to Clam Beach, just as I was coming away. I could not resist going back with my old friend, it was so long since we had met. And after that, the matter of the sociology class escaped my memory."
"Very strange. Is Clam Beach a scene of such rackety dissipation that people forget their private affairs? I had inferred from your descriptions that it was quite retired--a place to rest in."
"My friend and I had not met for years. The meeting engrossed me."
Miss Rolph glanced in Maida's face, one sharp short glance, like an inquisitive bird, and with the flicker of a smile which did not spread beyond the corner of her mouth, inquired--
"And did--she?--your friend, take as engrossing an interest in you, my dear? Such friendships are rare, as well as precious."
"I did not say 'she,' Miss Rolph. It was a gentleman."
"I imagined as much, my dear; but you were so hampered by your noun of epicene gender, that I thought it best to be rid of it."
Maida blushed. "Oh, Miss Rolph! What will you think of me?--of my fitness as a pioneer in Woman's cause?"
"Think, my dear? That you are a woman like the rest of us. This was a feature in your nature that seemed missing. The absence of a universal weakness does not necessarily argue strength. It may arise from insensibility, and merely show an incomplete nature. I think better of you, perhaps. Go on."
"I had known him long ago. My first situation, when I began to teach, was in his uncle's house. He was a student at Harvard, but spent his vacations at home with us. His cousins were mere children; his uncle and aunt had their own affairs; I was his sole companion. He taught me much. It was a happy time. We were both young, fresh and hopeful, and--well---- He is the only young man I ever saw much of. He expected to make his fortune right away, and we---- But I cannot speak of it....
"That was ten years ago. We corresponded--for the first year or so. After that we lost sight of one another. I came to Montpelier; he--was making his fortune. He recognised me on the platform at Narwhal Junction. I was so pleased to find that he remembered me. He asked if I was married, and he told me that he was not. He went back with me to Clam Beach--or so I thought. Perhaps I ought to put it the other way, and say that it was I who went with him; but at any rate we went together, and we were together there all the time. He knew nobody but myself, and he did not care to make acquaintances, it seemed; and he stayed on, though at first he had spoken of leaving in two days. And so it appeared to me--is there not some excuse for me, Miss Rolph?--that we were taking up our intimacy just where we had laid it down before."
"Ah!" said Miss Rolph. The bird-like look of the philosophic investigator had left her features now, and she was listening with genuine interest. She had still a heart, away down deep below her theories and professional fads, and there was perennial interest for her in a kindness between man and woman; which may have been unworthy of her position, but was as salt to preserve her nature sound and wholesome.
"What is his name, my dear? One follows a story so much better for knowing the names."
"Roe--Gilbert Roe. Has it not a pleasant sound?"
Miss Rolph's eyelids quivered in a momentary start. Then she looked down into her lap, compressing her lips, and making as if she would show no sign till all was told.
"He stayed on more than a week. He is there now, I daresay. He was with me constantly--sat beside me at table. People said it was a sure case, and congratulated me; and I--well--what else could I think? I believed them. Looking back now, with my insight cleared by what came after, I am bound to own that he said nothing in all that time. When I tried to hark back to the community of feeling that had subsisted between us long ago, he disregarded and passed it by. I am not accusing him of behaving badly, remember. It is my own foolish credulity alone which I have to blame; and oh, Miss Rolph, what humiliation it has brought on me! It hunted me away home here. I dared not, for shame, go back to Clam Beach, even to bring away my things."
"I do not follow."
"We went one day--it was yesterday, but it seems like years since, for the gulf of misery I have waded across since then. There was a clam-bake at Blue Fish Creek, and we were there. Everybody was there. We were sitting apart in a shady place, waiting till the heat would temper down. He was smoking or reading the paper, I forget which. All of a sudden he jumped up and left me. I looked round. He was addressing a lady who seemed unwilling to hear him. She tried to pass on without noticing him. She had taken no notice of him at the Beach, though they had been living under the same roof for a week. He persisted in accosting her, and angry words passed between them. She said she was free of him. He would not admit it."
"Who was the lady?"
"A Miss Hillyard of Chicago or somewhere. I am not acquainted with her."
"That is my niece! The Gilbert Roe you speak of must be her husband."
"Husband? Ah! that may explain the cruelty of what he did next. And it was cruel and humiliating to me! And there need have been no occasion for it, if he had told me at the first that he was married. She taunted him with my friendship. I heard her. And he--was it manly of him?--he actually proposed to bring her to me, to ask if there was anything between us more than old acquaintanceship!" Maida's voice rose into a cry as she said it. She clenched her hands; and cheeks, brow, neck, grew scarlet, and then she buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed.
"It must be Rose, my niece, and her husband. I would believe anything that could be told me of them. There never were two such ill-regulated young things brought together, I do believe--so fond, so foolish, so obstinate and wayward. There never was such a fiasco as their married life has proved. Both handsome, both clever, both well off, and each, I believe, most truly attached to the other; yet neither would forbear to gratify a whim, neither would submit to be crossed in the smallest trifle by the other. They squabbled away for not much over a year, and then the Divorce Court came in and parted them. A pair of unruly children! It was whipped they should have been, and made promise to kiss and be friends. Instead of that, they are divorced and discredited for life, and nothing good need be expected ever to happen to either of them any more. These ill-considered changes in our customs are deplorable. It is good to rescue the downtrodden from oppression, but only evil can come of confounding liberty with licence."
"Perhaps you may be mistaken," Maida answered, looking up and drying her eyes. It consoled her to hear her affronters soundly scolded, even in their absence. "Hillyard is no such uncommon name. This lady passed for unmarried at the hotel, and they say she is engaged to be married to a gentleman from Canada. Yes, by the by, it was to remonstrate about that, that Mr Roe spoke to her."
"So the Divorce Court, even, does not end their squabbles! Whom was she said to be engaged to?"
"A Mr Naylor--a real nice gentleman, and devoted to her. Every one was talking about the beautiful presents of jewellery he had ordered her from New York."
"Naylor? What is he like?"
"He is real nice, I should say, by his looks, and very rich. He has some nieces with him, well dressed and real aristocratic. Belong to the first families, I guess, and quite thick with all the first people at the Beach. No culture to speak of, but high-strung--very!"
"How old is this Mr Naylor, should you suppose? and what is he like? Is he a tall man, now, for instance?"
"He is not tall--no. Thick-set, almost stout; a heap shorter than Gil----Mr Roe. Middle-aged. His hair is beginning to turn. Not old, though certainly not young, but with a nice kindly face, and real cheerful. I hope she will stick to him. It would be real distressing if she were to jilt him, and I don't see what call a divorced husband can have to interfere. What were divorces made for, if not to keep bad husbands from bothering?"
Miss Rolph had been moving uneasily in her chair. She stood up now, looking agitated but very firm.
"I believe I know this Mr Naylor. The engagement must be broken off without an hour's delay. The idea is horrible!... I thought I had done with this awful girl. When she left her husband, and refused to listen to right principle and common decency, I washed my hands of her. But this---- It is an unimaginable horror! When does the next train leave for Clam Beach, I wonder? How do you go?"
"You cannot go to-night You will not be able to connect," Maida answered in some disgust. The idea of Naylor's coming in and securing the lady, and leaving Roe forlorn, which she had begun to conjure up, was distinctly consoling. She did not like to think of the energetic Miss Rolph intervening to upset the pleasing possibility.
Miss Rolph spread out a map. "There is Lippenstock, a station where all trains stop, close by. I can book for there, and drive over in the evening."
Maida sighed. "If you go, Miss Rolph, would you kindly mention to Mrs Denwiddie that I am here? You know her, I daresay; you seem to know every one at the Beach. Say I got a telegram--say anything. She is sure to be thinking something dreadful about my going away so sudden-like--without a word, or taking away my things."
Miss Rolph, in her agitation, looked round on Maida. She could not help smiling, notwithstanding her anxiety. The world is filled with such a tangle of conflicting interests, and each of us has room in his little brain only for the few which connect with himself.
"I do not know the lady, my dear; but I shall mention at the office that you were suddenly called home. I will settle your bill, and bid them pack up and forward your things."