Daisy
evening I could hardly see how the rooms looked, for the lining of
humanity which ran round all the walls. There was a shimmer as of
every colour in the rainbow; and a buzz that could only come from a
hive full. I, who had lived all my life where people spoke softly, and
where many never spoke together, was bewildered.
The buzz hushed suddenly, and I saw Mme. Ricard's figure going slowly
down the rooms. She was in the uttermost contrast to all her
household. Ladylike always, and always dignified, her style was her
own, and I am sure that nobody ever felt that she had not enough. Yet
Mme. Ricard had nothing about her that was conformed to the fashions
of the day. Her dress was of a soft kind of serge, which fell around
her or swept across the rooms in noiseless yielding folds. Hoops were
the fashion of the day; but Mme. Ricard wore no hoops; she went with
ease and silence where others went with a rustle and a warning to
clear the way. The back of her head was covered with a little cap as
plain as a nun's cap; and I never saw an ornament about her. Yet
criticism never touched Mme. Ricard. Not even the criticism of a set
of school-girls; and I had soon to learn that there is none more
relentless.
The tea-table was set in the further room of the three. Mme. Ricard
passed down to that. Presently I heard her low voice saying, "Miss
Randolph." Low as it always was, it was always heard. I made my way
down through the rooms to her presence; and there I was introduced to
the various teachers. Mademoiselle Genevieve, Miss Babbitt, Mme.
Jupon, and Miss Dumps. I could not examine them just then. I felt I
was on exhibition myself.
"Is Miss Randolph to come to me, Madame?" the first of these ladies
asked. She was young, bright, black-eyed, and full of energy; I saw so
much.
"I fancy she will come to all of you," said Madame. "Except Miss
Babbitt. You can write and read, I dare say, Miss Randolph?" she went
on with a smile. I answered of course.
"What have been your principal studies for the past year?"
I said mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy and history.
"Then she is mine!" exclaimed Mlle. Genevieve.
"She is older than she looks," said Miss Babbitt.
"Her hair is young, but her eyes are not," said the former speaker,
who was a lively lady.
"French have you studied?" Madame went on.
"Not so much," I said.
"Mme. Jupon will want you."
"I am sure she is a good child," said Mme. Jupon, who was a
good-natured, plain-looking Frenchwoman, without a particle of a
Frenchwoman's grace or address. "I will be charmed to have her."
"You may go back to your place, Miss Randolph," said my mistress. "We
will arrange all the rest to-morrow."
"Shall I go back with you?" asked Mlle. Genevieve. "Do you mind going
alone?"
She spoke very kindly, but I was at a loss for her meaning. I saw the
kindness; why it showed itself in such an offer I could not imagine.
"I am very much obliged to you, ma'am," I began, when a little burst
of laughter stopped me. It came from all the teachers; even Mme.
Ricard was smiling.
"You are out for once, Genevieve," she said.
"La charmante!" said Mme. Jupon. "Voyez l'a plomb!"
"No, you don't want me," said Mlle. Genevieve, nodding. "Go--you'll
do."
I went back to the upper room and presently tea was served. I sat
alone; there was nobody near me who knew me; I had nothing to do while
munching my bread and butter but to examine the new scene. There was a
great deal to move my curiosity. In the first place, I was surprised
to see the rooms gay with fine dresses. I had come from the quiet of
Magnolia, and accustomed to the simplicity of my mother's taste; which
if it sometimes adorned me, did it always in subdued fashion, and
never flaunted either its wealth or beauty. But on every side of me I
beheld startling costumes; dresses that explained my mantua-maker's
eagerness about velvet and green leaves. I saw that she was right; her
trimmings would have been "quiet" here. Opposite me was a brown
merino, bordered with blocks of blue silk running round the skirt.
Near it was a dress of brilliant red picked out with black cord and
heavy with large black buttons. Then a black dress caught my eye which
had an embattled trimming of black and gold, continued round the waist
and completed with a large gold buckle. Then there was a grey cashmere
with red stars; and a bronze-coloured silk with black velvet a quarter
of a yard wide let into the skirt; the body all of black velvet. I
could go on if my memory would serve me. The rooms were full of this
sort of thing. Yet more than the dresses the heads surprised me. Just
at that time the style of hair dressing was one of those styles which
are endurable, and perhaps even very beautiful, in the hands of a
first-rate artist and on the heads of those very few women who dress
well; but which are more and more hideous the farther you get from
that distant pinnacle of the mode, and the lower down they spread
among the ranks of society. I thought, as I looked from one to
another, I had never seen anything so ill in taste, so outraged in
style, so unspeakable in ugliness as well as in pretension. I supposed
then it was the fashion principally which was to blame. Since then, I
have seen the same fashion on one of those heads that never wear
anything but in good style. It gathered a great wealth of rich hair
into a mass at the back of the head, yet leaving the top and front of
the hair in soft waves; and the bound up mass behind was loose and
soft and flowed naturally from the head, it had no hard outline nor
regular shape; it was nature's luxuriance just held in there from
bursting down over neck and shoulders; and hardly that, for some locks
were almost escaping. The whole was to the utmost simple, natural,
graceful, rich. But these caricatures! All that they knew was to mass
the hair at the back of the head; and that fact was attained. But some
looked as if they had a hard round cannon-ball fastened there; others
suggested a stuffed pincushion, ready for pins; others had a
mortar-shell in place of a cannon-ball, the size was so enormous; in
nearly all, the hair was strained tight over or under something; in
not one was there an effect which the originator of the fashion would
not have abhorred. Girlish grace was nowhere to be seen, either in
heads or persons; girlish simplicity had no place. It was a school:
but the company looked fitter for the stiff assemblages of ceremony
that should be twenty years later in their lives.
My heart grew very blank. I felt unspeakably alone; not merely because
there was nobody there whom I knew, but because there was nobody whom
it seemed to me I ever should know. I took my tea and bits of bread
and butter, feeling forlorn. A year in that place seemed to me longer
than I could bear. I had exchanged my King Log for King Stork.
It was some relief when after tea we were separated into other rooms
and sat down to study. But I dreamed over my book. I wondered how
heads could study that had so much trouble on the outside. I wandered
over the seas to that spot somewhere that was marked by the ship that
carried my father and mother. Only now going out towards China; and
how long months might pass before China would be done with and the
ship be bearing them back again. The lesson given me that night was
not difficult enough to bind my attention; and my heart grew very
heavy. So heavy, that I felt I _must_ find help somewhere. And when
one's need is so shut in, then it looks in the right quarter--the only
one left open.
My little book was upstairs in my bag: but my thoughts flew to my page
of that day and the "Fear thou not, for I am with thee." Nobody knows,
who has not wanted them, how good those words are. Nobody else can
understand how sweet they were to me. I lost for a little all sight of
the study table and the faces round it. I just remembered who was WITH ME;
in the freedom and joy of that presence both fears and loneliness seemed
to fade away. "I, the Lord, will hold thy right hand." Yes, and I, a weak
little child, put my hand in the hand of my great Leader, and felt safe
and strong.
I found very soon I had enemies to meet that I had not yet reckoned
with. The night passed peacefully enough; and the next day I was put
in the schoolroom and found my place in the various classes. The
schoolrooms were large and pleasant; large they had need to be, for
the number of day scholars who attended in them was very great. They
were many as well as spacious; different ages being parted off from
each other. Besides the schoolrooms proper, there were rooms for
recitation, where the classes met their teachers; so we had the change
and variety of moving from one part of the house to another. We met
Mlle. Genevieve in one room, for mathematics and Italian; Mme. Jupon
in another, for French. Miss Dumps seized us in another, for writing
and geography, and made the most of us; she was a severe little
person in her teaching and in her discipline; but she was good. We
called her Miss Maria, in general. Miss Babbitt had the history; and
she did nothing to make it intelligible or interesting. My best
historical times thus far, by much, had been over my clay map and my
red and black headed pins, studying the changes of England and her
people. But Mlle. Genevieve put a new life into mathematics. I could
never love the study; but she made it a great deal better than Miss
Pinshon made it. Indeed, I believe that to learn anything under Mlle.
Genevieve would have been pleasant. She had so much fire and energy;
she taught with such a will; her black eyes were so keen both for her
pupils and her subject. One never thought of the discipline in Mlle.
Genevieve's room, but only of the study. I was young to be there, in
the class where she put me; but my training had fitted me for it. With
Mme. Jupon also I had an easy time. She was good-nature itself, and
from the first showed a particular favour and liking for me. And as I
had no sort of wish to break rules, with Miss Maria too I got on well.
It was out of school and out of study hours that my difficulties came
upon me.
For a day or two I did not meet them. I was busy with the school
routine, and beginning already to take pleasure in it. Knowledge was
to be had here; lay waiting to be gathered up; and that gathering I
always enjoyed. Miss Pinshon had kept me on short allowance. It was
the third or fourth day after my arrival, that going up after dinner
to get ready for a walk I missed my chinchilla cap from its peg. I
sought for it in vain.
"Come, Daisy," said Miss Lansing, "make haste. Babbitt will be after
you directly if you aren't ready. Put on your cap."
"I can't find it," I said. "I left it here, in its place, but I can't
find it."
There was a burst of laughter from three of my room-mates, as Miss St.
Clair danced out from the closet with the cap on her own brows; and
then with a caper of agility, taking it off, flung it up to the
chandelier, where it hung on one of the burners.
"For shame, Faustina, that's too bad. How can she get it?" said Miss
Bentley.
"I don't want her to get it," said the St. Clair coolly.
"Then how can she go to walk?"
"I don't want her to go to walk."
"Faustina, that isn't right. Miss Randolph is a stranger; you
shouldn't play tricks on her."
"Roundheads were always revolutionists," said the girl recklessly. "_A
la lanterne!_ Heads or hats--it don't signify which. That is an
example of what our Madame calls 'symbolism.'"
"Hush--sh! Madame would call it something else. Now how are we going
to get the cap down?"
For the lamp hung high, having been pushed up out of reach for the
day. The St. Clair ran off, and Miss Macy followed; but the two others