Chapter II: The Cabinet

Winnie's queer toboggan ride was innocent enough in itself but it brought in its train many unforeseen circumstances, chief among which was the affair of the old oak cabinet.

This cabinet stood in our study parlor, in the corner diagonally opposite the door leading into the new studio, and was used as a depository of the funds of all the occupants of the Amen Corner.

The cabinet was always left locked and there was but one key to it, which was kept in the match-box, well covered with matches. Only we five knew its hiding place, or the fact that the cabinet was used as a bank. We had agreed that it was best to keep this a secret among ourselves--and it was so kept until the day after the robbery, weeks after Winnie's escapade. We intended to follow Professor Waite's advice and buy a bolt for the door, but what was everybody's business was nobody's business, and whenever we went shopping there were so many errands that we forgot it, or some other girl, or one of the teachers was with us, and it would have been embarrassing to explain why the bolt was needed.

The door, as has been explained, opened outward from our parlor into the studio. Professor Waite had placed a heavy carved chest against it on his side, so that there was no danger of its flying open, and we had uncorded the knob and rolled Adelaide's trunk back to her bedroom. No one occupied the studio at night, and, though I spent several hours there during the day, I always entered the room by its corridor door, and we never thought when we locked our own corridor door at night how easily any one so minded could push aside the chest and enter our apartment from the studio.

That the contents of the old oak cabinet on the night of the robbery may be understood, an explanation of the finances of the different occupants of the Amen Corner is possibly now in order.

Adelaide's father and mother had gone West for the winter. Mr. Armstrong was an able financier, and he wished to make Adelaide a thorough business woman. She was eighteen years old and she might be a great heiress some day, if his wealth continued to accumulate, and he wished to accustom her to the management of money.

He had given her the year before a model tenement house, built after the most approved principles, on the site of Richetts' Court, previously occupied by one of the worst tenement houses in the city. The new building contained accommodations for ten families; the sanitation was perfect; there were no dark rooms, but bath rooms, fire escapes, and provision for every necessity. A good janitor, Stephen Trimble, occupied the lower apartment and looked after the order and comfort of the building, and every month Adelaide, attended by one of the teachers, went down and personally collected her rents, and listened to the complaints and requests of her tenants. There were few of either, and as a general rule the pay was prompt, for the rent was low, and Adelaide did all she could to oblige her tenants, having a small drying room built for the laundress, Mrs. McCarthy, who had contracted rheumatic fever from hanging out her wash on the roof and so exposing herself to the icy winds, when over-heated from the steaming tubs. Adelaide had no stringent rules against pets. She caused kennels to be built in the court for several pet dogs, and added some blossoming plants to Mrs. Blumenthal's small conservatory in the sunny south window. Noticing that the Morettis were fond of art, and had pasted cigarette pictures on their walls and driven nails to suspend some gaudy prints of the virgin and saints, she had a narrow moulding with picture hooks placed just under the ceiling in every sitting-room. She patronized all their small industries as far as it was in her power, and interested her friends in them; having her boots made by the little shoemaker on the top floor, who was really a good workman, but had been turned away from a prominent firm, as they had cut down their list of employees. Her underclothing was made by the little seamstress on the third floor back. She gave each of her tenants a Thanksgiving dinner and a substantial present on Christmas Day, and only allowed those to be evicted whose flagrant misbehaviour showed that nothing could be done for them.

From the income of this building her father had insisted that Adelaide must pay all her expenses. As Madame's boarding school was a fashionable one, the margin left, after the payment of tuition, to be divided between dress and charity, was not very large.

Mr. Armstrong knew that Adelaide's weakness was a love for beautiful clothing; that she delighted in sumptuous velvets, in the sheen of satin, and the shimmer of gauze. Her regal beauty would not have been over-powered by a queen's toilette, but she adorned the simplest costume, and set the fashion in hats for the school season.

Mr. Armstrong also knew that Adelaide was very tender of heart, and that if left entirely to herself she would gladly have opened the doors of her tenement house freely to unscrupulous and undeserving people; that she would have easily credited every woeful story, and have remitted rents when it would have been no real kindness to do so. He therefore pitted these two weaknesses against each other. "We will see what comes of it at the close of the year," he said. "She may become a grinding, close-fisted proprietress, screwing the last possible dollar out of the poor to lavish it on her own personal adornment, but I hope better things of Adelaide than that. It would be more like her, I think, to go to the opposite extreme--dress like an Ursuline nun and take nothing from her tenants; but let us hope that she may be able to strike the golden mean."

It was a hard thing to do, and Adelaide went without a new winter cloak until nearly Christmas time, waiting for the Morettis to pay up an arrearage; and only consented to the turning out of a shiftless family who occupied the best apartment, and were three months behind hand, because the tuition for the first term at Madame's would be due in a few days, and a respectable wood engraver offered to pay two months in advance. It was hard, because she did not wish to spend all the money on herself. She was as interested as any of us in the Home of the Elder Brother, and longed to contribute more generously to it; but since these poor people were her tenants, they were in some sense her own family, and she felt that charity began at home. Often I know that Adelaide denied herself as really, in not being more lenient, as her tenants did to scrape together their monthly rental. She was a generous girl to her friends, and before her father had made this arrangement she deluged us all with her presents. Milly, who had unlimited credit at several stores, kept up this pernicious custom of lavishly giving presents of flowers and candies. It was hard for Winnie and me, who were in moderate circumstances, not to return them, but doubly so for Adelaide--who entreated her to desist, as we all did, but without avail. Milly was incorrigible. "You don't seem to understand," Winnie said to her at Christmas time, "that the receipt of a gift which one cannot return in kind is a bitter pill to a sensitive nature."

"No," replied Milly, "I don't understand anything of the sort. Adelaide always translates my Caesar for me. You help me with my algebra, and Tib as good as writes my compositions. I couldn't return any of those favors '_in kind_,' and they are pills that are not the least bit bitter to me----"

"It's of no use, Adelaide," laughed Winnie, "we must let Milly have her own way. It is such a pleasure to Milly to give that we will sacrifice our own feelings and bear the infliction."

Mr. Armstrong had given Adelaide an old oak cabinet, beautifully carved in the style of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century, with architectural columns, caryatides, scroll work, and arabesques. The upper cupboard of this cabinet was used as a strong box to hold the funds of our little circle. The interior was divided into pigeon holes and shelves, and the door was provided with a curious key with a delicate wrought-iron handle.

Adelaide had given each of us a compartment in this little safe, but when its entire contents were counted there was rarely much money kept here, for Adelaide had a bank account, and after collecting her rents usually deposited them at the bank before returning to school, paying all her debts by cheque. Milly, as before explained, had her running accounts charged to her father,--a book at Arnold's, at the florist's, the confectioner's, the dressmaker's, stationer's, etc.,--but her supply of ready cash was never equal to demand, and though she could telephone for a messenger and order a coupe at any time, she was always in debt to the other girls, and I have frequently lent her postage stamps and paid her car fare.

Mr. Roseveldt had a horror of entrusting funds to young girls with no limitation of the way in which they were to be spent; he felt that in looking over the shop-keeper's accounts he knew exactly how much Milly expended, and for what the money went. But his plan was a mistaken one; and the perfect freedom which Adelaide enjoyed was training her in a sense of responsibility, while Milly was becoming unscrupulous as to waste, where waste was encouraged, and frequently ordered a coupe when the street car would have done just as well, or rang for a messenger to save a postage stamp.

Winnie and I, the two poorer girls, were the ones who usually had money in the safe. Winnie received a moderate allowance from her father outside of her tuition, which he sent directly to Madame. As soon as the cheque arrived, she cashed it and placed the new, crisp bills in separate envelopes labelled, "Personal expenses," "Charity." She was very generous, but she had a horror of debt, and she never expended the funds in the latter envelope until she had received another remittance. As Winnie abhorred sweets, and would rather any day have gone to the dentist's than the dressmaker's, and as she had a supreme contempt for display of any kind, the charity envelope was always full, and she had usually a comfortable margin in personal expenditure to lend or bestow on others. Winnie had always been generous, but this quality of foresight had only come to her during the past year in her work as a member of the finance committee of the Home of the Elder Brother.

My own case was different from that of the others. My father was a Long Island farmer, and my allowance, though meagre as related to my necessities, was liberal when compared with his own income. Miss Sartoris, Madame's former drawing teacher, had boarded with us one summer, during which I had sketched with her, and she had persuaded father that I possessed a talent for art and had taken me back with her to Madame's. So far I had easily led all the art students, and my studies, although abounding in faults, presumptuous and immature, were considered by the school as something quite remarkable. During the past summer a young man of engaging address, and otherwise irreproachable honesty, had stolen our beloved teacher, and Miss Sartoris, now Mrs. Stillman, was known to Madame's no more. When the school reorganized in the fall, Madame engaged me to take charge of the art department, temporarily, until she could provide herself with a more competent instructor. We had a small, crowded studio, with a poor light, but the class was large. I did the best I could, but we sorely needed ampler accommodations, and a head whose ability in his profession should be unquestioned. Both were now provided. Carrington Waite was a young artist fresh from the _Ecole des Beaux Arts_ at Paris, and he brought to us the training traditions of the schools, and the latest European ideas in art.

There were very few girls in the school sufficiently advanced to understand his instruction, but they flocked into the studio and listened with undisguised admiration to words that might as well have been uttered in an unknown tongue. Poor little Milly gazed at him in a rapt, adoring way, without ever comprehending what he said. The tears came to her eyes and rolled swiftly down her cheeks when he told her that it was manifestly absurd to draw a full face seen from the front with its nose in profile, but she smiled a brave little quiver of a smile while he reviled her work, and thanked him as though he had uttered the most fulsome compliments.

Even Winnie had felt the wave of influence and joined the class in spite of her assertion that she had no taste for art and never wished to see Professor Waite again. Only Adelaide held firmly out and would none of him. Winnie was not at all afraid of the Professor, and seemed to devote herself especially to making his life miserable. When he informed her that she must join the "preparatory antique" section and draw in charcoal, she calmly explained that she "perfectly loathed" casts, and she had purchased an outfit of oil paints and intended to devote herself at once to color. Strange to say, Professor Waite humored her and gave her some of his landscape studies to copy. She was never contented with reproducing these faithfully, but always "improved" upon them, as she audaciously expressed it.

It was a common thing for Professor Waite to remark, when he sat down before Winnie's easel, "Well, this is about the worst atrocity you have yet committed."

Winnie, standing behind him, would make eyes at the rest of the girls, and remark penitently, "I am very sorry."

"You look sorry," Professor Waite replied, on one occasion.

"I don't see how you can tell how I look," Winnie answered, "when you are sitting with your back to me."

I do not know whether Milly's denseness or Winnie's impudence was the more irritating to Professor Waite. Winnie resented his severity to Milly and was always more provoking whenever he had grieved her pet and left her sobbing in a mire of charcoal and tears.

"You give me more trouble than a three-week's-old baby," Professor Waite had remarked to poor Milly, and Winnie had retorted spitefully, "I wish you had to take care of one--I guess you would find a difference."

Winnie's sauciness and Milly's dulness, combined with that of many of his other pupils, drove the Professor to despair after a week's trial. He told Madame, as I learned later, that he must give up the position, as her pupils were all "too hopelessly elementary."

Madame was disappointed. Her art department had always been an attractive feature, and since the name of Professor Carrington Waite, late of the _Academie des Beaux Arts_, had appeared in her circulars, many had joined the school purely for the sake of the studio instruction. Madame explained this to the young artist.

He ran his fingers through his hair in despair. "Of what manner of use is it for me to remain?" he asked. "There is only one pupil sufficiently advanced to gain anything from my instruction, and that is Miss Smith. The others made as much advance, perhaps more, under her teaching as they have under mine."

A happy thought came to Madame. "If I engage Miss Smith as your assistant, Professor Waite, perhaps she can translate your ideas into terms which will be intelligible by the students of lower intelligence or advancement, and possibly she can so enlighten some of them that they can profit later by your personal teaching."

This plan struck Professor Waite as practicable. He now only visited the studio for an hour each morning, during which time he criticised the work which had been done under my supervision during the previous day. The new arrangement was an excellent one for me, for I profited by all his remarks, listening to them with the keenest attention, and thus received thirty lessons during the hour instead of one. As I had but three other studies, and these were in the senior class, it was possible for me to give the necessary time by preparing all of my lessons in the evening. It was unremitting, incessant work, but my health was excellent, and art was my supreme delight. Moreover, Madame had offered me a salary of three hundred dollars beyond my school expenses, and it was perfect joy to be able to relieve father of this burden. I had a high ambition to go abroad some day and study art in Paris, and I wished to save as much as possible of my salary toward this purpose. I had the lower compartment in the safe, and here I laid away every dollar that I could spare, limiting myself in everything but my subscription to the Home of the Elder Brother; but for this outlet I would have grown niggardly and avaricious. The same charity which made Winnie prudently retrench her propensity to lavish expenditure, and take thought carefully for the morrow, kept me from utter selfishness and penuriousness by keeping one channel of generous giving open and pulsing freely toward others.

Cynthia Vaughn's affairs were kept closely to herself. We sometimes fancied that she pretended to greater wealth and consequence than she really possessed. Certainly, if the sums of which she frequently spoke of receiving were at her disposal she was a veritable miser; for her subscription to the Home was the smallest of any girl in the King's Daughters' Ten; the presents which she ostentatiously bestowed upon Adelaide and Milly were cheap though showy, as was her own clothing.

The treasures which she committed to the cabinet safe were carefully locked in a small japanned tin box, the key of which she kept in her pocket-book, and she was the only one of us whose belongings within the safe were so protected. We had perfect confidence in one another, and our funds lay open to the observation or handling of any one possessing the pass key in the match box. It is needless to say that up to the night of the robbery our security had been inviolate.