Blythewood (11 page)

“Oh, dash that infernal fog!” I turned to find Helen behind me. She was looking over my shoulder toward the river,
seemingly unconcerned by the approaching smoke. “It’s always
worse in this bend of the river, something about the cold water from the mountains meeting the warmer tide from the bay.
Nathan was explaining it. Whatever its cause, though, it’ll soak
the lawn and ruin any chance of a walk after dinner . . . which
we’ll be late to if we don’t hurry. It’s almost six o’clock.”

I turned to look at the river again. Of course, it wasn’t
smoke, I realized now. It was only fog. I turned to join Helen
and Daisy, but as I did I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a long
tendril of fog swirl into a shape. For a moment it looked like the
man in the Inverness cape, but then the tower bells began to
ring, dispersing the fog and the illusion at the same time.

By the time we got downstairs, the Great Hall was full, the din
of a hundred girls’ excited voices rising to the rafters like a great
exaltation of larks. It reminded me of the closing-time clamor
at the Triangle, but the snatches of conversation I caught as we
threaded our way through the tables were far different.

“Mama says our new Newport cottage will be even grander
than the Vanderbilts’.”
“I simply explained to Papa that he couldn’t expect me to
catch a husband on such a skimpy dress allowance. Imagine . . .”
The girl—Alfreda Driscoll I realized as we drew closer, named
a figure that was more than all the salaries of all the girls at the
Triangle for an entire year.
Georgiana waived a delicate hand at the figure as if shooing away a moth, the yellow diamonds on her fingers catching
the candlelight from the tall candelabrums that stood on each
table. “You were right to put your foot down, Freddie. Men!
What do they know of dresses?”
All the second-year girls at Georgiana’s table tittered as if
she had said something witty.
“Did that girl really mean she spent that much on dresses?”
Daisy whispered into my ear. “Why that’s more than we spent
feeding our draft horses last year!”
Helen snorted. “Better spent money than outfitting Alfreda Driscoll in French couture,” she quipped as we sat down at
the table next to the one where Georgiana Montmorency held
court. “No amount of Peau de Chine and Chantilly lace would
make that face look any less like a horse’s.”
“Oh!” Daisy cried, looking anxiously to see if Alfreda had
overheard the remark. “I didn’t mean . . . why . . . I wasn’t comparing . . .”
“Don’t worry,” Helen drawled, unfurling a thick white
linen napkin. “Freddy
likes
horses. And with her dowry and
family lineage she can marry anyone she pleases. I believe she’s
set her cap at Georgiana’s brother.”
“Is everyone so rich?” Daisy asked, staring at the gilt-edged
china and the baffling array of polished silverware.
Helen blinked at the directness of the question and then
laughed. “Why, yes, except for the scholarship cases, I guess so.
Most of the girls come from the One Hundred.”
“You mean like the Four Hundred,” I said, recalling that
how my mother referred to the New York aristocracy.
“Oh, the Blythewood One Hundred are ever so much more
exclusive than that! We’re descended from the original founding families. Of course the school takes in girls from all over
now . . .”
“Yes, like stray cats,” Sarah Lehman said as she sat down at
the head of our table.
“What are
you
doing here?” Helen asked.
“I’m your head girl. Every nestling table’s got one to show
you how things are done.” She smiled sweetly. “And to make
sure you stay in line. Oh, look, watercress soup. My favorite!”
A girl dressed in pale gray had brought a tureen and a covered basket that smelled deliciously of freshly baked bread, but
since no one at the other tables touched theirs, we didn’t either.
Three other girls sat down across from us.
“Hullo!” A girl with short dark hair and a heavy fringe
stuck out her hand. “I’m Cam, short for Camilla, Bennett, and
these are my roommates, Dolores and Beatrice Jager. They’re
twins, in case you haven’t noticed.”
It was impossible not to notice. The girls were not only
identical in features—long sallow faces, aquiline noses, deepset brown eyes—but they also wore their thick brown hair in
identical plaits piled high on their heads and the same hornrimmed glasses balanced on their long noses.
“Jager?” Helen inquired. “What kind of name is that?”
The girls exchanged a guarded look. The girl on the left—
Beatrice, I thought—answered for both of them. “We are Austrian on our father’s side. Our mother was English. Our father
was just given the appointment of professor of natural sciences.”
“Oh, the new science professor.” Helen leaned across the
table and we all leaned in with her to hear her whisper, “I hear
the old one just up and vanished. The rumor is she eloped with
a traveling Bible salesman. Imagine!”
The two sisters regarded each other soberly and again Beatrice answered for them. “Scientists are just as likely to fall
victim to the tender emotions as anyone else. Our father fell in
love with our mother while employed as her instructor. They
ran away together and lived in a cottage until she died giving
birth to us. My sister and I . . .” she gave her sister Dolores a
baleful look, “have concluded it is best to avoid the romantic
emotions altogether.”
“Oh!” Helen remarked, her blue eyes gone wide at this story. “How extraordinary! I’ve never met—”
We didn’t get to hear the types of people Helen van Beek
had never met—a list that would have been, I guessed, quite
extensive—because at that moment a bell rang, a clear sweet
chime that pierced through the cacophony of a hundred girls’
chatter. It came from the front of the hall, where a figure in a
hooded cloak stood on the dais holding a gleaming gold handbell aloft. With a flick of her wrist she sounded the bell again
and the sound swallowed every last scrap of conversation and
shuffle of feet as if the bell were a dark pit that absorbed sound
and transformed it into ringing silence. Then an echo of the
first bell rang from one of the tables, and then from another
and another, until the hall was filled with the sound of bells.
“One of you must ring our bell,” Sarah said, pointing to the
gold bell in the middle of our table. I looked to Helen, expecting
that she would seize this honor, but before she could reach for
the bell, Daisy had grabbed it. She held it up and gave it a firm
shake when it was our turn.
“Brava!” Cam said, reaching across the table to clap Daisy
on the shoulder. “Thatta girl!”
“Yes,” Helen conceded. “Well done, Daisy.” But then she
added under her breath, “It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch
out for.”
While the tables were ringing their bells, a procession filed
out onto the dais. I recognized Vionetta Sharp, her blonde hair
and violet eyes set off by her purple robe. She was followed by a
tall, gangly man whose robes flapped loosely over tweed trousers. He ducked his head when he came onto the dais as if embarrassed to be the center of attention, but when one of the students shouted “Bellows!” he looked up, brushed back his hair,
and grinned boyishly.
“That’s Rupert Bellows,” Sarah whispered. “Our history
teacher. All the girls have crushes on him. It’s quite ridiculous
how they swoon over him.” Despite her professed indifference
to the history teacher, Sarah’s eyes were fastened on him, as
were the eyes of all the girls in the hall. The very temperature in
the hall seemed to warm when he smiled, but that warmth vanished with the appearance of the next teacher. Euphorbia Frost
steered onto the dais like a great ship coming into port, her
bulk under layers of robes soaking up all the light in the room
and all but swallowing up the slight, nervous-looking man following in her wake.
“Martin Peale,” Sarah whispered. “The bell master.”
“Peale?” Cam giggled. “D’you think he went into that profession because of his name?”
“Possibly,” Sarah answered seriously. “The Peales have
been bell ringers at Blythewood since its founding. Just as
Matilda Swift is the third Swift to be archery mistress.” Sarah
tilted her chin toward the next teacher arriving on the dais, a
tall slim brunette with an angular face, hair scraped back unfashionably tight, and keen dark eyes that scanned the farthest
corners of the room as though alert for prey.
“How old
is
Blythewood?” I asked as a slight elderly woman,
whom someone identified as Mrs. Calendar, the Latin teacher,
tottered across the stage.
“The castle was brought over in the seventeenth century
by the founding families,” Sarah replied promptly. “And the
school opened in eighteen sixty-one, so we’re celebrating our
Golden Jubilee this spring.”
“But that’s impossible,” I said. “Gilles Duffy told me he’d
been here since the castle was brought over.”
“I’m surprised you got more than two words out of Gillie,” Sarah said. “You must have misunderstood him. What
did he—?”
She was interrupted by Beatrice crying out, “There’s Papa!
Doesn’t he look dignified in his robes?” Mr. Jager looked more
somber than dignified, I thought. He was a large man with
abundant gray hair, unruly eyebrows, and a face lined with
woe. His heavy-hooded eyes looked out at his new pupils with
an expression of unutterable sadness as if he saw a church full
of mourners instead of girls on the first day of school.
“Poor Papa,” Beatrice said. “You can tell he’s thinking of
Mama. She was his student here at Blythewood. I’m afraid being here has brought back painful memories of the first time he
met her.”
Mr. Jager glanced around the room, no doubt seeking out
the table where his daughters sat. He smiled sadly when he
saw them, but when he saw me his eyes widened with surprise.
Perhaps he had recognized my resemblance to my mother. I
leaned over to ask Beatrice and Dolores what years their father
had taught at Blythewood, but was interrupted by a gasp from
Daisy.
“Why is that woman wearing a veil?”
Looking up, I saw that the last teacher to reach the stage
was a slim woman wearing a close-fitting bell-shaped hat with
a short-netted veil.
“That’s Lillian Corey,” Sarah whispered. “She’s the librarian. No one knows why she wears that veil.”
“Really?” Daisy asked, “Do you think—”
But Sarah shushed Daisy. “No one talks about it. Now quiet, Dame Beckwith is ready to address us.”
The woman who had first appeared on the dais stood now
in front of the teachers. She held aloft the golden handbell, but
she didn’t need to ring it to command silence. With one hand
she drew back her hood, revealing silver hair piled high over
a smooth white forehead and gray eyes the same color as her
son’s. She had only to look at a whispering girl to silence her.
Her gaze seemed to take in all of us, and when it reached me
I felt she was looking into my very being. I sat up straighter,
squared my shoulders, and lifted my chin as if her eyes were
magnets drawing me upright. I felt that same magnetic pull on
my soul—and a desire to be
better
.
After her gaze moved on I glanced around to see that she
had had the same effect on all the girls—but not on the one boy
in the room. Nathan Beckwith was standing in the rear of the
great hall, leaning against a tapestry of a hunting scene. He was
giving his mother the same look with which the hunter in the
tapestry regarded the stag he was about to spear. As if he’d finally caught his prey.
“Girrrls of Blythewood,” Dame Beckwith began, rolling
the
r
, “new and old, welcome. It does my heart good to look out
and see so many of you returned safe and sound.” Someone
made a sound like a half-strangled laugh. I turned to see Nathan Beckwith leaving the hall. Dame Beckwith resumed, with
a deeper note of sadness in her voice. “I am reminded, though,
of those who have not returned to us, those who have lost their
way in the dark.”
My throat tightened as I thought of Tillie Kupermann and
all the girls who had died in the fire. But she couldn’t be thinking of them. Was she referring to the girl who had recently gone
missing from Blythewood? Had the girl really just run off, as
Helen thought, or had something terrible happened to her?
But then Dame Beckwith’s eyes fell on me and I wondered
if she was thinking about my mother, who, if Nathan was
right, had gone missing from Blythewood but had come back.
Where had she gone, and for how long? And why would Dame
Beckwith have been telling Nathan about it? Maybe, in a way,
Mother had never completely come back from wherever she’d
disappeared to. She had always seemed like a lost soul, but I’d
thought that was just her nature. Now I wondered if she’d seen
something—or someone—that had changed her.
I lifted my chin, intending to meet Dame Beckwith’s gaze
with defiance, but the look of pity in her eyes melted my resolve
to a fervent desire to succeed at Blythewood and remove the apparent tarnish of my mother’s memory.
“Here at Blythewood we begin each year by pledging ourselves to the light,” she continued. “We pledge by the bell.” She
held up the gold bell, her hand so steady that the bell remained
silent. “Our forebears knew that the power of the bell is to warn
of evil’s approach and to ward it off. No matter what differences
we may have”—here I thought I saw her eyes fall on the veiled
librarian, Lillian Corey—“we must remember that our mission
unites us. Let us now recite the Blythewood oath with one hand
over our hearts and one hand on the bell.”
I’d read about school oaths in Mrs. Moore’s books about
girls’ schools. But still it seemed a queer practice to pledge
to a bell. Or perhaps it felt queer to me because of the bells
I’d been hearing in my head. Did I want to pledge an oath to
that
? True, the sound had warned me of danger, but it had also
made me fear for my sanity. All around the room girls placed
their right hands over their hearts and their left on the bells
on their tables. Helen, eager to show she knew what to do, was
the first one to touch the bell on our table, followed by Cam,
Beatrice, Dolores, and Daisy. Only Sarah and I hadn’t touched
it. I saw Sarah’s eyes on mine, as if she guessed my hesitation.
She gave me an encouraging smile as she lifted her own hand.
We touched the bell at the same instant. I thought I felt a faint
vibration.
“For the new girls you have only to repeat after me,”
Dame Beckwith said in her loud, ringing voice. “I solemnly
swear to uphold the honor, traditions, rules, and mysteries of
Blythewood.”
As I repeated the words the vibration under my fingertips
seemed to grow. Was my hand trembling—or the hand of one
of the other girls? But all our hands appeared to be steady.
“To stand by my sisters in peril and adversity, to lead my life
in a fashion that will be a shining example to all.”
I stared at the bell, willing the vibration to cease. There
were etchings in the metal that went around the circumference
of the bell: “Maia-Electra-Taygete-Alcyone-Celaeno-SteropeMerope”—the names of the seven sisters who had made the
original bells. I focused on the names to keep my hand from
trembling.
“And I swear to hold the enemies of my sisters as my enemies,” Dame Beckwith concluded. “Amen.”
That was the last of it. I repeated the words hurriedly, glad
to be at an end, but as I spoke, the bell beneath my fingers began
to chime. The rest of the girls were so startled that they drew
their hands away from the bell. All except me. I looked up and
saw Daisy staring. I quickly withdrew my hand.