Chapter 9

Probably this doctrine would shock not only the managers of Herndon Hall, but also the officers of the trust company, who felt that they were giving their ward the best preparation for "a full life," such as the possession of a large property entitles mortals to expect. And though it may seem that the Washington Trust Company had been somewhat perfunctory in its care of its young ward, merely accepting the routine ideas of the day in regard to her education and preparation for life, they did nothing more nor worse in this than the majority of well-to-do parents who may be supposed to have every incentive of love and family pride in dealing with their young. The trust company in fact was merely an impersonal and legal means of fulfilling the ideals of the average member of our society. Indeed, the trust company, in the person of its president and also of Mr. Ashly Crane, were just now giving some of their valuable time to consideration of the personal fate of their ward. She had been the subject of at least one conference between these officers. She was now on her way towards eighteen, and that was the age, as President West well knew, when properly conditioned young women usually left school, unless they were "queer" enough to seek college, and entered "society" for the unavowed but perfectly understood object of getting husbands for themselves. The trust company was puzzled as to how best to provide this necessary function for its ward. They felt that there existed no suitable machinery for taking this next step. They could order her clothes, or rather hire some one to buy them for her, order her a suitable "education" and pay for it, but they could not "introduce her to society" nor provide her with a good husband. And that was the situation which now confronted them.

They had received excellent reports of their ward latterly from Herndon Hall. Although Miss Thompson admitted that Miss Clark was not "intellectually brilliant," she had a "good mind," whatever that might mean, and had developed wonderfully at the Hall in bearing, deportment, manner--in all the essential matters of woman's education. Miss Thompson meant that Adelle spoke fairly correct English, drawled her _A_'s, wore her clothes as if she owned them, had sufficiently good table-manners to dine in public, and could hold her own in the conversation of girls of her kind. Miss Thompson recommended warmly that Adelle join Miss Stevens's "Travel Class," which was going abroad in June to tour the Continent and study the masterpieces of art upon the spot. The suggestion came as a relief to the trust company's officers: it put over their problem with Adelle for another year. But before accepting Miss Thompson's advice, Mr. Ashly Crane thought it wise to make another visit to Herndon Hall and talk the matter over with Adelle herself. He believed always in the "personal touch" method. And so once more he broke a journey westwards at Albany and rolled up the long drive in a motor-car.

* * * * *

Adelle enjoyed the impression which she was able to make upon the young banker this time. She had seen his approach in the car on her return from her ride, and had kept him waiting half an hour while she took a bath and dressed herself with elaborate care as she had often seen other girls do. Her teeth had at last been released from their harness and were nice little regular teeth. Her dull brown hair, thanks to constant skillful attention, had lately come to a healthy gloss. Her complexion was clear though pale, and her dress was a dream of revealing simplicity. Mr. Ashly Crane took in all these details at a glance, and felt a glow of satisfaction beyond the purely male sense of appreciation: the trust company which he represented had done its duty by the little orphan, and what is more had got what it paid for. Their ward, as she stood before him with a faint smile on her thin lips, was a creditable creation of modern art. A thoroughly unpromising specimen of female clay had been moulded into something agreeable and almost pretty, with a faint, anemonelike bloom and fragrance. Mr. Ashly Crane, who was rather given to generalization about the might and majesty of American achievements, felt that the girl was a triumphant example of modern power,--"what we do when we try to do something,"--like converting the waste land of Clark's Field into a city of brick and mortar, or making a hydrangea out of a field shrub.

"Well, Miss Clark," he began as the two seated themselves where they had sat the year before, "I needn't ask you how you are--your looks answer the question."

It was a banal remark, but Adelle recognized it for a compliment and smiled prettily. She said nothing. Silence was still the principal method of her social tactics.

"You are getting to be a young woman fast," the banker continued quite bluntly.

Adelle looked down and possibly blushed.

"Mr. West and I have been considering what to do"--he caught himself and tried again;--"that is we have been in consultation with Miss Thompson about--your future."

Here Adelle looked the trust officer fully in the eye. On this point she seemed really interested this time. So Mr. Crane proceeded more easily to question her about the plan of joining Miss Stevens's "Travel Class." Adelle listened blankly while Mr. Crane wandered off into generalities about the advantages of travel and the study of "art" under the guidance of a mature woman. Suddenly she said quite positively,--

"I don't want to go with the 'Travel Class.'"

This was the first positive expression of any sort that the trust officer had ever heard from the ward. It was one of the very few that Adelle Clark had ever made in the eighteen years of her existence. Under Mr. Crane's inquiries it soon developed that Adelle did not like "Rosy" Stevens,--as nearly hated her as she was capable of hating any one,--nor had she any great fondness for the girls who were to compose this year's "Travel Class." They belonged to the snobbiest element in the school.... What, then, did she wish to do with herself--remain another year at Herndon Hall? Here again the ward amazed Mr. Crane, for she had ready a definite plan of her own--a small plan to be sure and imitative, but a plan.

She wished to go with her new friend Eveline Glynn and the California sisters to Paris. Eveline's parents, it seemed, were spending the next season in Europe, and after the manner of their kind they did not propose to be encumbered with a young daughter. So they had arranged to send her to Miss Catherine Comstock at Neuilly, and "the two Pols" had decided to do the same thing. It was not a school,--oh, no, not even a "finishing school,"--but the home of an accomplished and brilliant American woman, who had long lived abroad and who undertook to chaperone in the French capital a very few desirable girls. The banker could not see how Miss Comstock's establishment in Neuilly differed essentially from the "Travel Class," except that it was more permanent, which shows how socially blunt Mr. Crane was. But after an interview with Miss Thompson he satisfied himself that the Glynns were "our very best people"; anything they thought right for their daughter must be fit for the Washington Trust Company's ward. So her guardian's assent to the plan was easily obtained, and the four friends rejoiced in their coming freedom....

Adelle had no clear idea why she preferred Neuilly to the "Travel Class," except to be with Eveline Glynn and the two Paul girls. Paris and Rome were hazily mixed geographically in her ill-furnished mind, and culturally both were blank. Eveline had known girls who had stayed with Miss Comstock and they had given glowing accounts of their experiences. The Neuilly establishment, it appeared, was a place of perfect freedom, where the girls were chaperoned sufficiently to keep them out of serious mischief, but otherwise were allowed to please themselves in their own way. And there was Paris, which, according to Eveline, who had informed herself from many sources, was the best place in the world for a good time. Friends were always coming there, to buy clothes and to make excursions. Adelle could have her own car, in which the four would take motor trips, and there was the opera, etc. And lastly Society--real Society;--for it seemed that this was one of Miss Comstock's strong points. She knew people, and had actually put a number of her girls in the way of marrying titled foreigners. The California girls knew of a compatriot who had thus acquired a Polish title. In short, there was nothing of the boarding-school in Miss Comstock's establishment, except the fees, which were enormous--five thousand dollars to start with.

* * * * *

Thus Adelle left Herndon Hall in the beautiful month of June, having received her last communion in the little ivy-covered stone chapel from the hands of the bishop himself, smiled upon by Miss Thompson and the other teachers, who had three years before pronounced her "a perfect little fright," and kissed by a few of her schoolmates. She felt that she was coming into her own, thanks to her magic lamp--that life ahead looked promising. Yet she had changed as little fundamentally during these three years as a human being well could. She had passed from the narrowest poverty of the Alton side street to the prodigal ease of Herndon Hall, from the environment of an inferior "rooming-house" to companionship with the rich daughters of "our very best people,"--from an unformed child to the full physical estate of womanhood,--all within three short years; but she had accommodated herself to these great transitions with as little inward change as possible. Her soul was the soul of the Clarks, tricked out with good clothes and the manners and habits of the rich. Addie, it seemed, had at last arrived at her paradise in the person of her daughter, but it was a pale and inexpressive Addie, who made no large drafts upon paradise.

Adelle departed in the Glynn motor for the Glynn country-place, where she was to stay until the Glynns sailed for Europe. She was prettily dressed in écru-colored embroidered linen, with a broad straw hat and suède gloves and boots, according to the style of the day, and she was really happy and almost aware of it. Eveline was glum because her mother--a stern-looking matron who knew exactly what she wanted out of life and how to get it--had refused peremptorily to let her invite Bobby Trenow to accompany them. Bobby was Eveline's darling of the hour, as Adelle knew: Eveline had let him kiss her for the first time the previous evening, and she was "perfectly crazy" about him. To Adelle, Bobby was merely a smooth, downy boy like all the rest, who showed bare brown arms and white flannels in summer, and had as little to say for himself as she had. She was amused at Nelly's fussed state over the loss of Bobby; she could not understand Mother Glynn's objection to the harmless Bobby's occupying the vacant seat in the roomy car;--but then she did not understand many things in the intricate social world in which she found herself. She did not know that there is no one of their possessions that the rich learn more quickly to guard than their women. The aristocrats of all ages have jealously housed and protected their women from entangling sexual relations, while permitting the greatest license to their predatory males. The reasons are obvious enough to the mature intelligence, but difficult for the young to comprehend.

Adelle had not yet felt the need of a Bobby Trenow.

XVI

Some years ago Prince Ponitowski had built in Neuilly, near the gate of the Bois, what contemporary novelists described as a "nest" for his mistress--a famous Parisian lady. It was a fascinating little villa with a demure brick and stone façade, a terrace, and a few shady trees in a tiny, high-walled garden. The prince died, and the lady having made other arrangements, the smart little villa came into the hands of Miss Catherine Comstock, who took a long lease of the premises and established there her family of "select" American girls. It might seem that the tradition of the Villa Ponitowski (as the place continued to be called) was hardly suitable for her purposes, but the robust common sense of our age rarely hesitates over such intangible considerations, and least of all the sophisticated Miss Comstock. At the Villa Ponitowski the young women enjoyed the healthful freedom of a suburb with the open fields of the Bois directly at their door, and yet were within easy reach of Paris, "with its galleries and many cultural opportunities"--according to the familiar phrasing of Miss Comstock's letters to inquiring parents. (She had no circulars.)

Miss Catherine Comstock herself was, in the last analysis, from Toledo, Ohio, of an excellent family that had its roots in the soil of Muskingum. When her father died, there being no immediate prospect of marriage, she had taken to teaching in a girls' private school. It was not long before the routine of an American private school became irksome to her venturous spirit, and she conceived the idea of touring Europe with rich girls who had nothing else to do. From this developed the Neuilly scheme, which provided for the needs of that increasing number of Americans with daughters who for one reason or another do not live in America, and also for those American girls who could afford to experiment in the fine arts "carefully shielded from undesirable associates"--another favorite Comstock phrase. At first the art and education idea had been much to the fore, and Miss Comstock had fortified herself with one or two teachers and hired other assistants occasionally. But the life of Paris had proved so congenial and its "opportunities" so abundant that Miss Comstock had come to rely more and more upon the "privilege of European residence" and dispensed altogether with formal instruction.

She soon found that that was what the girls who came to her really wanted, even if their parents had vague thoughts of other things. In short, the Neuilly school was nothing else than a superior sort of select _pension_ for eight or ten girls, with facilities for travel and more or less "society." Miss Comstock herself--affectionately known to "her girls" as "Pussy" Comstock--had been rather angular and plain in the Toledo days, but under the congenial air of Paris and good dressmakers had developed into a smart specimen of the free-lance, middle-aged woman, with the sophistication of a thorough acquaintance with the world and much prudence garnered from a varied experience. She made an excellent impression upon the sort of parents she dealt with as a "woman who really knows life," and the girls always liked her, found her "a good chum." They called her "Pussy"! Miss Comstock kept with her a dumpy little American woman with glasses, who did what educational work was attempted, and the more tedious chaperonage. The Villa Ponitowski, in a word, was one of the modern adjustments between the ignorance and selfishness of parents and the selfishness and folly of children. The parents handed over their daughters for a season to Miss Comstock with a sigh of relief, believing that their girls would be perfectly "safe" in her care and might possibly improve themselves in language and knowledge of art and the world. And the daughters rejoiced, knowing from the reports of other girls that they would have "a perfectly bully time," freed from the annoying prejudices of parents, and might pick up an adventure or two of a sentimental nature....

Into this final varnishing bath our heroine was plunged with her three friends, in the autumn of 1902, when she was eighteen years old. The girls arrived at the Villa from a motoring trip across Europe, during which they had scurried over the surface of five countries and put up in thirty-eight different hotels as the labels on their bags triumphantly proclaimed. Miss Comstock received the party in her own little salon in the rear of the Villa, where, after the elder Glynns had withdrawn, liqueurs and cigarettes were served. Miss Comstock lit a cigarette, perched her well-shod feet on a stool, and listened with sympathetic amusement to the adventures of the trio as vivaciously related by Eveline Glynn. The California sisters, it developed, had the cigarette habit, too, and Eveline tried one of "Pussy's" special kind. When the girls went to their rooms, to which they were conducted by Miss Comstock with an arm around the waist of Adelle and another about Irene Paul, the girls agreed that "Pussy" was "all right" and congratulated themselves upon the perspicacity of their choice.

At Herndon Hall there had been at least the pretense of discipline and study, but all such childish notions were laughed at in the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline Glynn thought she had a voice and a teacher was engaged for her. Irene Paul devoted herself to the art of whistling, while her sister "went in for posters." Another girl was supposed to be studying painting and resorted a few afternoons each week to a studio, well chaperoned. Miss Comstock promised to find something for Adelle to do in an art way. But there was nothing pedantic or professional about the Villa Ponitowski. Miss Comstock prided herself upon her outlook. She knew that her girls would marry in all likelihood, and she endeavored to give them something of the horizon of broad boulevards and watering-places as a preparation. All the girls had their own maids, who brought them the morning cup of coffee whenever they rang--usually not before noon. The European day, Adelle learned, began about one o'clock with a variety of expeditions and errands, and frequently ended well after midnight at opera or play, or dancing party at the home of some American resident to whom Miss Comstock introduced her charges. This was during the season. Then there were, of course, expeditions to Rome and Vienna and Madrid, tours of cathedral towns, inspection of watering-places, etc.

Behold, thus, the sole descendant of the hard-grubbing, bucolic Clarks waking from her final nap at eleven in the morning, imbibing her coffee from a delicate china cup, and nibbling at her _brioche_, while her maid opened the shutters, started a fire in the grate, and laid out her dresses, chattering all the time in charming French about delectable nothings. Addie Clark, surely, would have felt that she had not lived in vain if she could have beheld her only child at this time, and overheard the serious debate as to which "_robe_" Mademoiselle Adelle would adorn herself with for the afternoon, and have seen her, finally equipped, descending to the salon to join Miss Comstock, who was usually engaged with her correspondence at this hour.

Adelle, it is perhaps needless to say, had quickly perceived the enlarged opportunity for the use of her magic lamp. She at once ordered a very comfortable limousine, which was driven by an experienced chauffeur, and thus transported herself, Miss Comstock, and any of the girls she chose to invite to the exhibition at the Georges Petit Gallery, thence to a concert, or perhaps merely to tea at the new hotel in the Champs Élysées. If any reader has perhaps considered Adelle backward or stupid, he must quickly revise that opinion at this point. For it was truly extraordinary the rapidity with which the pale, passive young heiress caught the pace of Paris. The note of the world about her was the spending note, and the drafts she made through her French bankers upon the Washington Trust Company caused a certain uneasiness even among those sophisticated officials, used to the expenditures of the rich.

Of course, Miss Comstock introduced her charges to the best dressmakers and dispensers of lingerie and millinery (for which service she obtained free of charge all her own clothes). Adelle soon found her own way into the shops of the Rue de la Paix and developed a genuine passion--the first one of her life--for precious stones. It may be remembered that when she was taken as a little girl for the first time into the new home of the trust company, she had been much impressed by the gorgeousness of colored marble and glass there profusely used. For a long time the great banking-room with its dim violet light had remained in her memory as a source of sensuous delight, and as her opportunities had increased she had turned instinctively to things of color and warmth, especially in stones and fabrics. In those public and private exhibitions to which she was constantly conducted as part of her education in art she hung over the cases that contained specimens of new designs in metal and stone. Miss Comstock, perceiving her interest in these toys, encouraged Adelle to try her own hand at the manufacture of jewelry, and engaged a needy woman worker to give her the necessary lessons in the lapidary art. Adelle had acquired considerable sloth from her desultory way of living; nevertheless, when the chance was forced into her hands, she took to the new work with ardor and produced some bungling imitations of the new art, which were much admired at the Villa Ponitowski. Eveline, not to be outdone, took up bookbinding, though she scarcely knew the inside of one book from another. The art of tooling leather was then cultivated by women of fashion in New York: it gave them something to talk about and a chance to play in a studio.

I should like to record that Adelle developed a latent talent for making beautiful things in the art she had inadvertently chosen to practice. But that would be straining the truth. It requires imagination to produce original and pleasing objects in small jewelry, and of imagination Adelle had not betrayed a spark. Moreover, it takes patience, application, and a skillful hand to become a good craftsman in any art, and these virtues had no encouragement in the life that Adelle had led since leaving the Church Street house. So in spite of the admiration aroused by her _bijoux_ when she gave them to the inmates of the Villa, it must be admitted that they were more like the efforts of a school child who has prepared its handiwork for presents to admiring relatives than anything else. But at least it was a real interest, and it raised Adelle in her own estimation. Some of the happiest days she had known were spent in the studio of Miss Cornelia Baxter, on the Rue de l'Université. She would have spent more time there if her other engagements or distractions had not constantly interrupted her pursuit of art. Her position of practical independence and unlimited means gave her a prestige in "Pussy" Comstock's household that exhausted most of her time and energy. Her car and herself were in constant demand. And in the Easter holidays "the family" went to Rome for a month, and to London at the opening of the season there in June. So not much time was left for the pursuit of art.

Yet this effort to make jewelry on Adelle's part is important, as the first sign of promise of individuality. It betrayed the possibility of a taste. She loved color, richness of substance, and Europe was satisfying this instinct. Pale and colorless herself, mentally perhaps anaemic or at least lethargic, she discovered in herself a passion for color and richness. Certain formless dreams about life began to haunt her mind--vague desires of warmth and color and emotion. Thus Paris was developing the latent possibilities of sensuousness in this pale offshoot of Puritanism.

XVII