Dozens of positions were almost forced upon her. Mentally she was qualified to fill any of them, physically not one. Nor could she remain near the only relatives she possessed had they even cared two straws to have her remain.
While in this depressing state of mind and body a girl whom she had coached in the college graduated and was about to return to her home in Virginia. She was several years Virginia’s junior, pretty, warm-hearted and charming, and possessed the power of looking a little deeper below the surface than the average human being possesses. She invited Miss Woodhull to accompany her to Roanoke and fate stepped in and did the rest. The month was spent in a lovely old home, Virginia Woodhull gained in health and strength, and recovered something in the way of nerve control and mental poise. When the month ended she decided to “do” the state whose name she bore and spent the rest of the year in going from one point to another in it until she knew its entire topography by heart.
In the course of her journeyings she visited the Luray Caverns as a matter of course, and enroute came upon picturesque, deserted, decrepit Leslie Manor, and fell as enthusiastically in love with it as it was given to her repressed nature to fall in love.
Moreover, for a long time she had been obsessed with a desire to bring into this happy, easy-going, contented state something of the energy, progress, intellectual activities (as she gauged them) of New England. The general uplift inspired by the seat of learning she had just left after post-graduate courses unto the nth degree: To thoroughly stir things up and make these comfortable, contented, easy-going Virginians sit up and take notice of their shortcomings. She was given a work in life, though quite unsought, and she meant to undertake it exactly as she has undertaken her college course and make a fine job of it.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, according to the viewpoint taken, the aunt in Boston was ceremoniously tucked away in the tomb of her ancestors just as this resolution crystalized and Virginia Woodhull found herself in possession of a very comfortable income, though said income had a string attached to it which was intended to yank it back to the religious cult before mentioned in the event of Virginia’s marriage or death. Either way considered, it was a rather dubious heritage. But it served to purchase Leslie Manor and the school became a fait accompli. This was in the early eighties and from its opening day the school had flourished. Perhaps this was due to New England energy and culture, or possibly some credit rested with Mrs. Bonnell, the matron, and real head of the house; a sweet lovable, gracious Southern gentlewoman whose own family and fortunes had vanished when she was a tiny child, but who had grown up with relatives in whose home love ruled supreme and in which the little Veronica Dulany had blossomed as a flower. At forty years of age she still retained a genuine love and understanding of her fellow-beings in spite of many sorrows, and the death when she was still a mere girl of husband and little daughter before she had been called Mrs. Percy Bonnell five years.
At any rate, for ten years Mrs. Bonnell had ruled supreme at Leslie Manor, engaging its servants as she saw fit, directing the household, economizing as she felt wisest; feeding hungry girls, cuddling the homesick ones, caring for the ailing ones, and loved by every creature human or animal upon the place. Miss Woodhull had no time for domestic matters and all the sentiment in her had been killed in her early childhood.
And curiously enough the academic force at Leslie Manor was about equally divided into Woodhull and Bonnell factions. Miss Stetson, the teacher of mathematics was in keen sympathy with Miss Woodhull, as was Miss Forsdyke the Latin teacher, and Miss Baylis, the teacher of history and literature, but Miss Dalton the gymnasium and physical culture teacher, and Miss Powell who had charge of the little girls, sided with Mrs. Bonnell as did Monsieur Santelle, and old Herr Professor Stenzel. Even Miss Juliet Atwell, who came twice each week for aesthetic dancing, and several other stunts, openly worshiped at the Bonnell’s shrine. Herr Stenzel’s admiration had more than once proved an embarrassing proposition to the lady, for Herr Stenzel loved the flesh pots of Leslie Manor and knew right well who presided over them. But Mrs. Bonnell was equal to a good many Herr Stenzels.
But in one sense we have wandered a long way from Beverly Ashby and opening day at Leslie Manor, though all these people vitally concern her.
Leslie Manor stood in the centre of a wide, rolling, thickly wooded estate encompassed by a holly hedge noted for miles around for its beauty and its prickly barrier to freedom. The house had been restored and added to in order to meet the demands of a school harboring sixty or seventy girls, though it still retained its old lines of beauty and its air of hominess.
Miss Woodhull’s first concern had been “to make the place sanitary,” the last word spelled with italics, and to this end modern improvements and conveniences had supplanted the old, easy-going expedients of domestic economy. Everything in Leslie Manor became strictly modern and up-to-date. The upper floors were arranged in the most approved single bed-chambers or suites for the teachers and the seniors, the lower ones were accurately divided into living, dining and reception rooms. In one wing were the model recitation rooms and Miss Woodhull’s office; in another the undergraduate’s rooms. Nor had the grounds been overlooked. They were very trim, very prim, very perfectly kept and made one realize this at every turn. It also made one wonder how the old owner would feel could he return from his nameless grave at Appomatox and be obliged to pace along the faultless walks where formerly he had romped with his children across the velvety turf. But he and his were dead and gone and the spirit of New England primness, personified in Virginia Woodhull, spinster aged fifty-seven, now dominated the place.