Bettina Vanderpoel's education was a rather fine thing.She herself had more to do with it than girls usually have to do with their own training.In a few months' time those in authority in the French school found that it was not necessary to supervise and expurgate her.She learned with an interested rapacity which was at once unusual and amazing.And she evidently did not learn from books alone.Her voice, as an organ, had been musical and full from babyhood.It began to modulate itself and to express things most voices are incapable of expressing.She had been so built by nature that the carriage of her head and limbs was good to behold.She acquired a harmony of movement which caused her to lose no shade of grace and spirit.Her eyes were full of thought, of speculation, and intentness.
"She thinks a great deal for one so young," was said of her frequently by one or the other of her teachers.One finally went further and added, "She has genius."This was true.She had genius, but it was not specialised.
It was not genius which expressed itself through any one art.It was a genius for life, for living herself, for aiding others to live, for vivifying mere existence.She herself was, however, aware only of an eagerness of temperament, a passion for seeing, doing, and gaining knowledge.Everything interested her, everybody was suggestive and more or less enlightening.
Her relatives thought her original in her fancies.They called them fancies because she was so young.Fortunately for her, there was no reason why she should not be gratified.Most girls preferred to spend their holidays on the Continent.She elected to return to America every alternate year.She enjoyed the voyage and she liked the entire change of atmosphere and people.
"It makes me like both places more," she said to her father when she was thirteen."It makes me see things."Her father discovered that she saw everything.She was the pleasure of his life.He was attracted greatly by the interest she exhibited in all orders of things.He saw her make bold, ingenuous plunges into all waters, without any apparent consciousness that the scraps of knowledge she brought to the surface were unusual possessions for a schoolgirl.She had young views on the politics and commerce of different countries, as she had views on their literature.When Reuben Vanderpoel swooped across the American continent on journeys of thousands of miles, taking her as a companion, he discovered that he actually placed a sort of confidence in her summing up of men and schemes.He took her to see mines and railroads and those who worked them, and he talked them over with her afterward, half with a sense of humour, half with a sense of finding comfort in her intelligent comprehension of all he said.
She enjoyed herself immensely and gained a strong picturesqueness of character.After an American holiday she used to return to France, Germany, or Italy, with a renewed zest of feeling for all things romantic and antique.After a few years in the French convent she asked that she might be sent to Germany.
"I am gradually changing into a French girl," she wrote to her father."One morning I found I was thinking it would be nice to go into a convent, and another day I almost entirely agreed with one of the girls who was declaiming against her brother who had fallen in love with a Californian.
You had better take me away and send me to Germany.
Reuben Vanderpoel laughed.He understood Betty much better than most of her relations did.He knew when seriousness underlay her jests and his respect for her seriousness was great.He sent her to school in Germany.During the early years of her schooldays Betty had observed that America appeared upon the whole to be regarded by her schoolfellows principally as a place to which the more unfortunate among the peasantry emigrated as steerage passengers when things could become no worse for them in their own country.The United States was not mentally detached from any other portion of the huge Western Continent.Quite well-educated persons spoke casually of individuals having "gone to America,"as if there were no particular difference between Brazil and Massachusetts.
"I wonder if you ever saw my cousin Gaston," a French girl once asked her as they sat at their desks."He became very poor through ill living.He was quite without money and he went to America.""To New York?" inquired Bettina.
"I am not sure.The town is called Concepcion.""That is not in the United States," Betty answered disdainfully."It is in Chili."She dragged her atlas towards her and found the place.
"See," she said."It is thousands of miles from New York."Her companion was a near-sighted, rather slow girl.She peered at the map, drawing a line with her finger from New York to Concepcion.
"Yes, they are at a great distance from one another," she admitted, "but they are both in America.""But not both in the United States," cried Betty."French girls always seem to think that North and South America are the same, that they are both the United States.""Yes," said the slow girl with deliberation."We do make odd mistakes sometimes." To which she added with entire innocence of any ironic intention."But you Americans, you seem to feel the United States, your New York, to be all America.