A Daughter of To-Day. Sara Jeannette Duncan
had any vulgar prejudice against the fact that Miss Kimpsey earned her own living—more than one of its ornaments had done the same thing—and Miss Kimpsey's relations were all "in grain" and obviously respectable. It was simply that none, of the Kimpseys, prosperous or poor, had ever been in society in Sparta, for reasons which Sparta itself would probably be unable to define; and this one was not likely to be thrust among the elect because she taught school and enjoyed life upon a scale of ethics.
Mrs. Bell's drawing-room was a slight distraction to Miss Kimpsey's nervous thoughts. The little school-teacher had never been in it before, and it impressed her. "It's just what you would expect her parlor to be," she said to herself, looking furtively round. She could not help her sense of impropriety; she had always been taught that it was very bad manners to observe anything hi another person's house, but she could not help looking either. She longed to get up and read the names of the books behind the glass doors of the tall bookcase at the other end of the room, for the sake of the little quiver of respectful admiration she knew they would give her; but she did not dare to do that. Her eyes went from the bookcase to the photogravure of Dore's "Entry into Jerusalem," under which three Japanese dolls were arranged with charming effect. "The Reading Magdalen" caught them next, a colored photograph, and then a Magdalen of more obscure origin in much blackened oils and a very deep frame; then still another Magdalen, more modern, in monochrome. In fact, the room was full of Magdalens, and on an easel in the corner stood a Mater Dolorosa, lifting up her streaming eyes. Granting the capacity to take them seriously, they might have depressed some people, but they elevated Miss Kimpsey.
She was equally elevated by the imitation willow pattern plates over the door, and the painted yellow daffodils on the panels, and the orange-colored Revue des Deux Mondes on the corner of the table, and the absence of all bows or draperies from the furniture. Miss Kimpsey's own parlor was excrescent with bows and draperies. "She is above them," thought Miss Kimpsey, with a little pang. The room was so dark that she could not see how old the Revue was; she did not know either that it was always there, that unexceptionable Parisian periodical, with Dante in the original and red leather, Academy Notes, and the Nineteenth Century, all helping to furnish Mrs. Leslie Bell's drawing-room in a manner in accordance with her tastes; but if she had, Miss Kimpsey would have been equally impressed. It took intellect even to select these things. The other books, Miss Kimpsey noticed by the numbers labelled on their backs, were mostly from the circulating library—"David Grieve," "Cometh up as a Flower," "The Earthly Paradise," Ruskin's "Stones of Venice," Marie Corelli's "Romance of Two Worlds." The mantelpiece was arranged in geometrical disorder, but it had a gilt clock under a glass shade precisely in the middle. When the gilt clock indicated, in a mincing way, that Miss Kimpsey had been kept waiting fifteen minutes, Mrs. Bell came in. She had fastened her last button and assumed the expression appropriate to Miss Kimpsey at the foot of the stair. She was a tall, thin woman, with no color and rather narrow brown eyes much wrinkled round about, and a forehead that loomed at you, and grayish hair twisted high into a knot behind—a knot from which a wispy end almost invariably escaped. When she smiled her mouth curved downward, showing a number of large even white teeth, and made deep lines which suggested various things, according to the nature of the smile, on either side of her face. As a rule one might take them to mean a rather deprecating acceptance of life as it stands—they seemed intended for that—and then Mrs. Bell would express an enthusiasm and contradict them. As she came through the door under the "Entry into Jerusalem," saying that she really must apologize, she was sure it was unpardonable keeping Miss Kimpsey waiting like this, the lines expressed an intention of being as agreeable as possible without committing herself to return Miss Kimpsey's visit.
"Why, no, Mrs. Bell," Miss Kimpsey said earnestly, with a protesting buff-and-gray smile, "I didn't mind waiting a particle—honestly I didn't. Besides, I presume it's early for a call; but I thought I'd drop in on my way from school." Miss Kimpsey was determined that Mrs. Bell should have every excuse that charity could invent for her. She sat down again, and agreed with Mrs. Bell that they were having lovely weather, especially when they remembered what a disagreeable fall it had been last year; certainly this October had been just about perfect. The ladies used these superlatives in the tone of mild defiance that almost any statement of fact has upon feminine lips in America. It did not seem to matter that their observations were entirely in union.
"I thought I'd run in—" said Miss Kimpsey, screwing herself up by the arm of her chair.
"Yes?"
"And speak to you about a thing I've been thinking a good deal of, Mrs. Bell, this last day or two. It's about Elfrida."
Mrs. Bell's expression became judicial. If this was a complaint—and she was not accustomed to complaints of Elfrida—she would be careful how she took it.
"I hope—" she began.
"Oh, you needn't worry, Mrs. Bell. It's nothing about her conduct, and it's nothing about her school work."
"Well, that's a relief," said Mrs. Bell, as if she had expected it would be. "But I know she's bad at figures. The child can't help that, though; she gets it from me. I think I ought to ask you to be lenient with her on that account."
"I have nothing to do with the mathematical branches, Mrs, Bell. I teach only English to the senior classes. But I haven't heard Mr. Jackson complain of Elfrida at all." Feeling that she could no longer keep her errand at arm's length, Miss Kimpsey desperately closed with it. "I've come—I hope you won't mind—Mrs. Bell, Elfrida has been quoting Rousseau in her compositions, and I thought you'd like to know."
"In the original?" asked Mrs. Bell, with interest. "I didn't think her French was advanced enough for that."
"No, from a translation," Miss Kimpsey replied. "Her sentence ran: 'As the gifted Jean Jacques Rousseau told the world in his "Confessions"'—I forget the rest. That was the part that struck me most. She had evidently been reading the works of Rousseau."
"Very likely. Elfrida has her own subscription at the library," Mrs. Bell said speculatively. "It shows a taste in reading beyond her years, doesn't it, Miss Kimpsey? The child is only fifteen."
"Well, I've never read Rousseau," the little teacher stated definitely. "Isn't he—atheistical, Mrs. Bell, and improper every way?"
Mrs. Bell raised her eyebrows and pushed out her lips at the severity of this ignorant condemnation. "He was a genius, Miss Kimpsey—rather I should say he is, for genius cannot die. He is much thought of in France. People there make a little shrine of the house he occupied with Madame Warens, you know."
"Oh!" returned Miss Kimpsey, "French people."
"Yes. The French are peculiarly happy in the way they sanctify genius," said Mrs. Bell vaguely, with a feeling that she was wasting a really valuable idea.
"Well, you'll have to excuse me, Mrs. Bell. I'd always heard you entertained about as liberal views as there were going on any subject, but I didn't expect they embraced Rousseau." Miss Kimpsey spoke quite meekly. "I know we live in an age of progress, but I guess I'm not as progressive as some."
"Many will stay behind," interrupted Mrs. Bell impartially, "but many more will advance."
"And I thought maybe Elfrida had been reading that author without your knowledge or approval, and that perhaps you'd like to know."
"I neither approve nor disapprove," said Mrs. Bell, poising her elbow on the table, her chin upon her hand, and her judgment, as it were, upon her chin. "I think her mind ought to develop along the lines that nature intended; I think nature is wiser than I am"—there was an effect of condescending explanation here—"and I don't feel justified in interfering. I may be wrong—"
"Oh no!" said Miss Kimpsey.
"But Elfrida's reading has always been very general. She has a remarkable mind, if you will excuse my saying so; it devours everything. I can't tell you when she learned to read, Miss Kimpsey—it seemed to come to her. She has often reminded me of what you see in the biographies of distinguished people about their youth. There are really a great many points of similarity sometimes. I shouldn't be surprised if Elfrida did anything. I wish I had