CHAPTER II
MR. HOMER JOHNS was in his library—a long, high room lined throughout with books. "Nothing valuable," he was fond of saying, "just a gentleman's library"—a statement which made those who kept all their books in one section of a patent bookcase feel very inferior. The long windows, hung in an old crimson satin, were in recess by the depths of the shelves, and in two of these recesses stood blue-and-yellow globes. At one end of the room a good fire was blazing, and by it, in a large arm-chair, Mr. Johns was sitting, reading the financial article in an evening paper—not because he had the least respect for the writer's opinions, but because, as he often said, he was curious to see how wrong a fellow could be who drew a salary for being right. Mr. Johns had for many years been a stock-broker, who veiled beneath the beauteous name of banker all that was insupportable to him in the former profession. But late in life he had actually become the president of the great union of banks known as the New Republic. He was a man nearing seventy. In the good old days of piratical finance he had been thought rather moderate, but in regenerate modern times he was sometimes spoken of as "one of the old gang."
"Oh, well," he was thinking, as he read some particularly unmeaning phrase about the decline of values, "if a fellow like that really knew anything, he'd be in the Street and not in a newspaper office," when a footman came in with a card.
Mr. Johns scowled over his spectacles—that scowl was one of his greatest business assets; he had also a priceless grunt which was considered terrifying in the extreme. He read the card and grunted.
"Who the devil is Mr. Austin Bevans? Who is he?"
The footman, though an excellent mimic, and able to do both the scowl and the grunt to perfection in the kitchen, had his nerves—like other artists. He murmured something unintelligible, and Mr. Johns roared:
"What is it? What do you say? I can't hear you."
Steadying himself, the footman explained that it was a young man who said he had sold Mr. Johns an automobile the day before.
"Why the devil does he come at such an hour as this? Show him in," said Mr. Johns, who had had trouble with the foot-brake of his car.
Almost immediately Bevans was standing in the doorway, looking rather timid, and, except for his evening dress, like a captured faun.
"Evening," said Johns. "I suppose you've come in answer to my note about the brake. Tell your employers from me, will you, that it would be better business—and I'm supposed to know something about business—if they'd give more time to perfecting their machine and less to having to apologize for its defects."
"I haven't come about the car, Mr. Johns," said Austin, with an almost seraphic gentleness. "But I'm sorry there has been trouble with the brake. Your man has probably oiled it."
"My man has done nothing of the kind," shouted Johns in a voice that made the footman waiting in the hall outside tremble. "That's the way with manufacturers nowadays—if their article isn't up to standard, they say it's the consumer's fault. Why the devil should my man oil it? Do you think I employ fools? And if you haven't come about the car what in hell have you come about?"
"I've come to ask you to lend me some money," said Be vans.
"Why to me?"
"Because you are the only man I know who has much into whose house I thought I could get," replied the young man, unwaveringly.
"And you got in here under false pretenses, sir," shouted Johns, who, it is to be feared, actually valued himself in the rôle of the raging lion. "What right have you to steal my time any more than my money? Men like me have important matters on our minds, and we have a right to peace and leisure in our own homes. My servants have orders to keep out every one—even my own relations—"
"Oh, one's relations," murmured Bevans, as if they always came first on every one's list of outsiders.
"Yes, sir, my relations. And do you suppose that the first little jackanapes who forces his way in to borrow a five-dollar bill—"
"I want to borrow ten thousand dollars," said Austin.
He made just the effect he wanted to. Mr. Johns was so staggered at the sum that he was silent for an instant, and while he was gathering his powers together the young man went on:
"You see, Mr. Johns, a very extraordinary thing has just happened to me."
"You've lost your pocketbook, I suppose."
"No. Queerer than that. I've inherited a girls' school."
"A girls' school! What school? Not— What school?"
"The Bevans School."
"God bless my soul!" said Johns in a tone of such complete surrender that Austin sat down without being asked.
"Mrs. Bevans was my aunt by marriage, and, as she died without a will and I am her nearest of kin, the school is mine."
"Oh," said Johns. "I see! If she had deliberately left it you, she ought to have ended her days in a lunatic-asylum."
"You mean I am not a fit person to manage a girls' school?"
"About the most unfit I ever saw."
"Mr. Johns," said Austin, seriously, "there you are absolutely wrong—as I will prove to you. I am a peculiarly suitable person, infinitely more so, as a matter of fact, than poor Aunt Sophy. You know as well as I do, sir, that education—one of the great necessities of modern life—is wretchedly behind from a commercial point of view. Educators are not business men—nor even philanthropists; they don't give their services and yet they don't get a big return. Are great fortunes made out of education? No. Why not? I'll tell you: because the one great business principle which has made the commercial success of the stage, the movie and the newspaper has never been applied to education."
"What principle is that?" asked Mr. Johns, not even pretending that he wasn't interested.
"Giving the public what it wants."
"Giving the girls what they want?"
"Mercy, no! Who cares about the girls? No, the parents—the parents of our public in education. Now, Mr. Johns, what is it that every parent who sends a girl to a fashionable school really wants?"
"To get rid of her," answered Johns, with utmost conviction.
"Very true, but that's not all. It's no good to get rid of them for four or five years and then have them back on their hands forever. Parents want them made into charming women—marriageable women. Parents don't dare to say this—least of all to teachers, of whom they are naturally afraid. They talk a lot of bunk about cultivation and womanliness, but what they really mean is attractiveness—they want their daughters to be charming and have beaux—of course they do. Well, my scheme is to meet the parents half-way. To come out boldly and say that the object of my school is to teach charm. And, by heavens! I'll teach 'em—have 'em taught, that is."
"By constant personal contact with young ladies?" asked Johns, mildly.
"Quite the contrary," answered Bevans, firmly. "I shall hold myself entirely aloof. I shall be an unseen power. Oh, I shall speak to the assembled school whenever it is necessary to put over an idea. I shall set my ideals before them. Now when a dear old fat woman like my aunt told them to stand up straight and lower their voices, they didn't pay the least attention, but when a young man about their own age tells them, you'll find it makes a lot more impression. Do you see the idea?"
"I think I get your point."
"Another thing I mean to do," Bevans went on. "I shall let it be known that I accept only promising material—only girls that in my opinion may be made charming. Of course, as a matter of fact I shall take pretty much any one, just as my aunt did, but it will give them all a wonderful sense of having been specially selected, allowed in on their looks. We'll have a waiting-list as long as your arm."
"Hem!" said Mr. Johns. "One difficulty occurs to me. School-girls are notoriously silly creatures. Suppose they all took it into their heads to fall in love with you. You know your appearance—"
"Please don't let us speak of that," said Austin, turning his toes slightly inward, as was his habit in moments of embarrassment. "For as a matter of fact I am not a man who inspires affection."
"You surprise me," said Mr. Johns, quite politely.
"Thank you," returned the other, "and, anyway, I'm in love with another girl, and only interested in this whole scheme in the hope of getting enough money to marry her before she sees some one she likes better—so I really don't care what my pupils do—as long as the school succeeds. But even accepting your warning—suppose they did fall in love with me? All the better. We should immediately sublimate the emotion into love of their work."
"You would do what?"
"Sublimate their emotion. Not familiar with the works of Freud?"
"Never heard of him."
"Mercy! you've led a sheltered life! Well, in a word, the Freudian theory is that though our lower emotions are always there, trying to sweep us down-stream, if properly understood they may be dammed up and made to run the useful mills of every-day life."
"I don't get it."
"Oh, I'll lend you a book about it, but don't leave it about. But the point is that if any of them should develop a sentiment for me, she'd work all the harder."
"I see," said Johns. "Pass her college entrance to please you, if not to please her parents."
"College," cried Austin. "I shall not allow my girls to go to college."
"The Bevans School has always made a specialty of college examinations," said Mr. Johns.
"Why, how did you know that?"
"No matter. Some girls are very intellectually ambitious."
"Mr. Johns, would you want your daughter to go to college?"
"No."
"Well, if she came to my school, I would guarantee that she wouldn't want to, either."
"How would you accomplish that?"
"Oh, it's a question of understanding psychology. The indirect suggestion, you know. Every fine-looking man who came to lecture to them on architecture or the drama or geology would be instructed to slip in somewhere that no really attractive woman ever had been to college—Cleopatra, you know, and Juliet. You'll see. Within a year not a girl would be hired to go."
"Well, if you can accomplish that I'll lend you ten thousand dollars gladly. My granddaughter's there."
"Good heavens!" cried Bevans. "Are you one of my parents?"
"One of your parents, sir!"
"You know what I mean. I never suspected it."
"I did not mean that you should until I had examined your scheme. Well, I approve of all of your ideas. When do you begin?"
"At once. I'm going there to-morrow to look things over and address the school, and next week I shall move in."
"To address the school?"
"A short talk on my ideals to teachers and pupils."
"I'll take you up in the car."
"Thank you," said Bevans, "but with my new responsibilities, I don't know that I ought to trust myself in a car whose foot-brake doesn't work."
"Oh, don't be a fuss," said Johns. "The brake's all right."
David, who got up at five to study, had already gone to bed when Austin came home, so he heard nothing of the evening's work, and was much astonished the next morning to see his friend beautifully dressed in a suit of gray clothes, with a blue tie exactly the color of his eyes, stepping into an immense car in which an elderly man was already seated, smoking a cigar.
Bevans had not slept at all—the penalty of an active mind. He had done better: he had outlined his speech, rewritten the school circular, and altered the curriculum. He got up feeling more refreshed than if he had rested.
The morning was calm and mild. They moved north at a high rate of speed.
"The cops are rather officious in this neighborhood," he said, speaking from a long and bitter experience.
Won't arrest me.," said Johns.
"Why not?"
"Know too much," answered the great man; and that was all the explanation Austin ever obtained of a phenomenon which long continued to excite his astonishment.
A little before eleven they turned in at the school gates between clumps of drooping rhododendron. The school buildings were high and ugly, but the lawn was beginning to turn green, and beyond the lawn the waters of the Sound were very blue, and at the very edge of the water Austin saw the little white cottage that was to be his home—his, and perhaps Susie's. His spirits rose to the adventure.
"Humph!" said Mr. Johns. "If I were about to address fifty giggling girls I should be nervous."
"They won't giggle," answered Austin, almost grimly.
They were met in the hall by Miss Curtis, a little gray-haired woman who, having been chosen the school secretary for her fitness as a subordinate, had been suffering tortures during the last weeks, owing to the number of decisions that had been forced upon her since Mrs. Bevans's death.
"Oh," she cried, with relief in her tone, "is this Mr. Bevans?" and she held out her hand to Johns.
"What, you don't remember me, Miss Curtis?" said he. "My name is Johns."
Miss Curtis was overcome at her stupidity in forgetting the face of one of the school's most influential patrons. "But the fact is, Mr. Johns," she explained, "we are expecting Mr. Austin Bevans this morning, and my head was full of that."
"And I've brought him," said Johns. "This is Mr. Bevans."
Miss Curtis looked at Austin and gave a low cry. "Good heavens!" was all she could think of to say.
Austin saw that it was time to assert bis authority. He spoke firmly. "I should like to speak a few words to the school—pupils and teachers both. Will you call them together."
"But they are in classes," stammered Miss Curtis.
"They must be taken out of them."
"Of course, of course," murmured Miss Curtis, experiencing once again the joy of being under orders. "Please wait a moment in the office, and I'll assemble them in the great hall." She ushered them into a little room, and hurried away.
"Ha!" said Johns, when they were alone. "Going to be a tyrant, eh?"
"Most people like orders better when they're clear," said Austin.
Johns nodded. "Young man," he said, "you have some very sound ideas."
In the mean time, Miss Curtis, breathless and flustered, rushed into the geometry class. A fat girl in a navy blouse was at the black-board (thinking, not why one side of a triangle was shorter than the sum of the other two sides, but rather, why it was that any one should torture her to give her reasons for believing so obvious a fact) when Miss Curtis beckoned away the teacher and closed the door behind them both.
"Oh," she cried, "the most extraordinary thing has happened! There's a young man down-stairs who looks like a god and says he owns this school."
Miss Hayes, who looked rather like a worn middle-aged Diana herself, smiled at her friend's excitement. She was Ph.D. in mathematics and had always been Mrs. Bevans's right hand—so much so that most people had expected that the school would be left to her. Nevertheless, she laughed.
"You wouldn't laugh if you had seen him," Miss Curtis went on. "He's just the kind of young man who ought never to be allowed to enter a girls' school at all. He's—he's unsettling; he's beautiful," she added, as if nothing could be wickeder than that.
"Well, if he owns the school we can't keep him out," said Miss Hayes, growing grave in deference to her friend's obvious distress. "You're sure he really is Mr. Bevans?"
Miss Curtis sighed. "Oh, I'm afraid there's no doubt about that. Mr. Johns, the little princess's grandfather, brought him. And the worst of it is he's going to break up the whole morning's work. He wants us all assembled so that he can address us."
"I'll attend to it at once," said Miss Hayes.
A thrill of the wildest excitement ran through the school at the news that the new owner was actually in the building. They knew, of course, that their school had been inherited by a male relation of Mrs. Bevans, and some of them had even got hold of a rumor that he was in the automobile business. But there are all kinds of ways of being connected with this great industry, and two opposing theories had developed in the school—one, that the new owner was a rich old man who wouldn't be bothered and meant to close the school immediately, and all the girls were to be shipped home at once and would never work again, because, of course, their parents couldn't get them into other schools at this late date, and, my dear, isn't it too divine! The other, that he was just a day laborer who couldn't even read and write, and what is he going to do with a girls' school, my dear, I ask you? The whole school had gone through the name of Bevans in the telephone-book, from Abimelech Bevans, an upholsterer in West End Avenue, to Zachary, who did a business in wines and cigars on the Bowery, without discovering anything, since Austin's telephone was under David's name.
As soon as every one, with much laughing and shuffling of feet, was gathered in the assembly-room—a large room shaped like an amphitheater. Miss Curtis summoned Austin and Mr. Johns. As they entered Austin said to her:
"Say a word or two to introduce me."
Miss Curtis wrung her hands. "Oh, I can't, Mr. Bevans. I never have." But as the two men had firmly sat down, leaving her standing alone, she began in a voice almost inaudible: "Girls, it is a great pleasure to leave our classes"—the girls giggled, and she changed the sentence—"I mean it will be a great pleasure to you to know that you are to hear a few words—or more—from our new principal, Mr. Bevans."
Austin stood up.
Now every girl in the audience, except Mr. Johns's granddaughter, had supposed that Mr. Johns was the man. He certainly looked more like what a new principal should be. In spite of the optimism of youth, no girl really thought that Fate was going to send her a schoolmaster of the physical appearance of Austin, and so when he rose, an "oh" went up from the entire audience, like the exclamation with which a holiday crowd greets a rocket.
He stood silent a moment and then began, easily: "First I want to assure you all that nothing is going to be changed, I hope, so far as our staff and our students are concerned. I should not wish to change what my aunt—" He passed into a restrained but moving eulogy of his aunt Sophy. Miss Curtis wiped her eyes.
But praise of an old lady he had hardly seen a dozen times in his life did not take all Austin's attention, and it was during this part of his speech that his eyes began to rove critically over his audience. They were a very nice-looking group of girls, he thought, some positively handsome; it would not be out of the question to teach them charm. His eye fell on a fat, red-faced girl chewing something rhythmically. Should he allow her to stay? Could she be made to do him credit? Yes, fat people had a peculiar charm all their own. He must not be narrow.
"—whose mind thought out, whose heart warmed, whose will achieved this institution," he was saying, when, glancing a little farther along the line, his eyes met another pair of eyes lifted to his with such an expression of adoration that he instantly lost his place. They were wonderful eyes, soft, dark, and large as pansies, set in a lovely little face turned up to him with the look of a worshiper to a saint. It was only for a second, of course. Austin wrenched away his eyes and managed to go on with what he was saying, just as if nothing momentous had happened.
But, he went on to say, there was one point in which it seemed to him all schools failed in their duty. It was the duty of a school not only to train the mind, but to fit for life—to make its pupils happy, useful, well-developed people—in other words, to fit them not only for intellectual achievements, but for their human relations.
And here, with something of a bound, he passed on to the question of charm. What was charm? (The whole school sat up.) It was first of all an affair of the soul—of the very core of the being, but it was also an affair of expressing that soul outwardly, of voice, of manner, of bearing. Truths expressed in a rasping voice were at a disadvantage, and, judging by the sounds he heard as he came down the corridor, he feared a good many truths were put at that disadvantage by members of the school. Well, he simply did not intend his pupils to go through life with any such handicap as that, every time they opened their mouths. They needn't think he was going to have them taught elocution in the sense of wasting time repeating Anthony's speech—no indeed, it was every-day speech he was after—every-day life. He knew colleges that taught men to write splendid briefs about municipal ownership which did not trouble to teach them to write a decent note. That was the trouble with colleges. He did not mean his girls to fall into that error. While keeping up the highest intellectual standards for which the school was known, he hoped to teach his pupils to be women of the world in the best sense—charming women of the world. "You'll find it," he added, with his first smile, "a very useful thing to be."
He withdrew, leaving behind such a tumult of applause and discussion as the assembly-room had never heard before. Miss Curtis, still emotionally stirred, followed him to the office.
"Oh, Mr. Bevans," she said, "that did touch us all—what you said about your dear aunt. It was beautiful—beautiful."
Mr. Bevans was immensely gratified that Miss Curtis liked it, but did she know where Mr. Johns was, as he had business in town. As a matter of fact, he had not as yet notified the automobile company that he had ceased to be their salesman.
"I think Mr. Johns must have stopped to speak to the little princess."
"To the what?" said Austin.
"To his little granddaughter—Elise Benedotti. You know his daughter married, most unhappily, an Italian prince—both dead—the child—a sweet child—I'll go and see."
Miss Curtis hurried away, still murmuring information.
Could it have been a princess who had looked at him with that expression? Austin caught himself wondering. Then he thought: "How ridiculous! What difference does it make who she is—one of my pupils—that's all."
The door opened and a tall, angular woman entered.
"I'm Miss Hayes, Mr. Bevans," she said, in a brisk, pleasant, almost too competent voice. "I teach mathematics. I think it's more honest to tell you I'm not a bit in sympathy with a great deal that you said this morning. You want them taught to please—the poor dears. They're too eager to please as it is—women, I mean."
"Not all," said Austin, and then wished he hadn't, for she laughed, understanding him quickly.
"I couldn't assist in any such plan. This continual thinking about their charms holds women back so, and—yes—even from your point of view—makes them less charming."
"You mean you are not sufficiently in sympathy to stay with us?" said Austin, firmly.
She smiled, but not triumphantly. "I have a three years' contract," she answered.
Austin looked at her. He thought she would be a determined, but not a dangerous opponent. At this point Miss Curtis came fluttering back.
"Oh, Mr. Bevans," she began, "won't you please say just a word to poor Sally Boyd—one of our dearest girls? She's in tears because she thinks you mean to turn her out, that no one could ever make a woman of the world of her. She says she saw you look at her with disgust—her own word. She's rather plump, it's true, but one of the kindest natures—"
"Ask her to come in," said Austin. He had not anticipated an interview with a pupil so soon, but he was not one to turn back at the call of duty.
"Awkward, when they take us literally, isn't it?" said Miss Hayes. Austin regarded her coldly. He saw he would have trouble with this woman.
Miss Curtis returned presently, bringing with her Sally, who was pulling down her navy blouse in the hope of lengthening the lines of her figure. She was no longer crying—only sniffing a little. Austin found himself confronted with a new problem—what he should call his pupils. He had to make a decision.
"How do you do, Sally?" he said, quite paternally.
Encouraged by his kind manner, Sally broke out: "Oh, Mr. Bevans, I agreed with every word you said, but I don't see how I ever can be made into a charming woman of the world—you know I can't, and so I think I'd just better go away and not be a blot on the school."
"Sally," said Austin, and this time he spoke with great severity, "you must understand that that is entirely a question for me to decide. I intend to retain you as a pupil. When in my opinion you become a blot, you will hear from me. Until then confine your attention to matters within your comprehension. You can be made anything I decide to make you. That will do."
Immensely relieved and hopelessly intimidated, Sally withdrew, and was swallowed up at the door by a questioning group whose voices, all talking at once, could be heard moving away down the corridor.
Presently the door opened and Mr. Johns entered, but, to Austin's profound disappointment, entered alone. "Ready to go?" he demanded, briskly.
"Quite," answered Bevans, "only, I thought you would want to see your granddaughter."
"Oh, I've seen her," said Johns. "Was bringing her in here to speak to you, but her room-mate, Sally Boyd, gave such a terrifying account of you that she lost heart and ran away."
Austin felt less satisfied with his newly acquired manner. He held out his hand to Miss Curtis.
"Oh, Mr. Bevans," she began, as if she were about to ask some personal favor, "might we—would you be so very kind—as to send us out a bookkeeper once a week? Our old one has left, and, oh, dear me! I don't understand accounts and—"
"I'll send you out a young man from the bank," said Mr. Johns.
"A very steady one, please, Mr. Johns," said Miss Curtis, with unusual firmness, "because, you know, the school bookkeeper gives the seniors individual instruction once a week—at a small salary."
"Well, if any one can teach my granddaughter to keep accounts, he ought to have a halo, not a salary. Come along, Bevans."
"You'll see that he's steady?" Miss Curtis pleaded, following them to the hall door.
"All my young men are steady," grunted Mr. Johns, getting heavily into the car, and added, under his breath, "What does she think a bank is?"
Austin did not reply, for his attention had been completely distracted by a sight which had escaped Mr. Johns's notice. As they drove down the avenue toward the gate, a slim little figure suddenly rose on a rock at some distance and waved. Turning completely round in the motor, Austin gazed again upon the velvet softness of those eyes. As he did so, she kissed her hand—doubtless to her grandfather, who fortunately continued to look in the opposite direction.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," he was saying. "I'll lend you five thousand if within a month Elise notifies me that she has given up the college idea."
"That's too easy."
"Ha! You think so, do you? She's awfully self-willed."
Self-willed! Austin reflected. With those eyes!