Miss Vantine bore with her like a martyr—for two reasons. One was that she liked Mrs. Bryce, who had been her pupil; and the other was that she had never yet expelled a girl, and she disliked the idea intensely.
But there came a day in early February of Isabelle’s second year of residence when the end was reached. Herbert Hunter had smuggled a note to her that he was coming to New York to have his tonsils out and he wanted to see her before he went to the hospital. She answered by special delivery and agreed to meet him on Sunday, in the Park. When the girls were entering church on that day, Isabelle was taken with a violent fit of coughing, and was left in the vestibule to quiet herself. She fled to her tryst. But she miscalculated the length of the sermon, and met the school coming out, on the church steps. She was questioned, led home in disgrace. She was accused of truancy; she admitted it, even confessed her rendezvous in the Park.
Miss Vantine had to act this time. She sent a final letter to the Bryces with a sentence of suspension for their daughter, who was packed off home at once, in disgrace. Mrs. Bryce was furious because she and Wally were going off with the Abercrombie Brendons on their yacht. She explained their dilemma to their hostess and she was decent enough to include the girl, but it was a nuisance to have her along.
No time was lost in letting Isabelle feel her disgrace. After a perfunctory greeting, her mother remarked:
“You’ve made a nice record for yourself, haven’t you?”
Isabelle made no reply.
“Why don’t you answer me?”
“Foolish question, Number One. Yes, I have made a nice record for myself.”
“If you make yourself a nuisance around here, I shall find a way to punish you,” she threatened her.
“Go ahead. Get it all off your chest at once and then drop it.”
Mrs. Bryce decided upon injured dignity, as her best rôle.
“Where’s Wally?” demanded Isabelle.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s doing around here? I expect to enjoy myself on this little vacation. I hope you don’t intend to be too disagreeable.”
Later at dinner Wally remarked to his wife—
“Tell her about the trip?”
“No.”
“What trip?” demanded their daughter.
“We are going off on the Abercrombie Brendons’ yacht, and your unfortunate return has forced Mrs. Brendon to include you in the party.”
“I hope you said ‘No, thanks’ for me.”
“We said ‘yes’ for you,” replied Wally.
“But I won’t go. Shut up on a boat with you two and the Brendons? Not much.”
“You’re not being consulted,” remarked her mother, coolly.
“You’ll have to drag me aboard.”
Mrs. Bryce’s temper flared.
“You will walk aboard and you will behave like a decent individual while we are on this cruise, or there will be the most serious consequences you have ever met yet. Nobody wants you on this party, you understand, and the less conspicuous you make yourself, the better.”
Isabelle beamed upon them.
“Thank you so much for your charming invitation, my dear, doting parents. I accept with pleasure, and I think I can promise you that your little outing will be a complete success, so far as I am concerned.”
She laughed lightly, and Mr. and Mrs. Bryce exchanged uneasy glances. Something in that laugh did not promise well for their holiday.
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The motor boat from theEmpresswas at the pier when the three Bryces made their appearance on the day of the departure. They were taken out to the yacht at once, where Mr. Abercrombie Brendon was already ensconced. He was a pompous, red-faced little man, with a great deal of stomach and a great deal of manner. He was in high good humour with the weather and the world in general. He greeted Isabelle by singing, a line from a light opera success of his younger days—
“Isabella, Isabella, the love-e-ly queen of Spain.”
“Silly ass!” said she to herself, and she went to lean over the rail and watch for the coming of the others. They arrived shortly and she took inventory. First Mrs. Abercrombie Brendon ascended the steps. She was a big, arrogant, impressive woman whom Isabelle immediately named “Hecuba.” She was followed by a lovely, blonde creature, with deep-blue eyes and a short upper lip.
Isabelle fixed her attention upon the last comer, who certainly was an attention-fixing young man. He was extremely handsome. Here was the one and only hope of this party, so far as she was concerned.
There was a great clatter of greetings.
“Come here, Isabelle, and make your manners,” ordered her mother. She obeyed, reluctantly.
“So glad to have a young thing with us, my dear,” boomed Mrs. Brendon in her big voice. “Althea, this is Isabelle Bryce. Miss Morton, Isabelle.”
The lovely vision smiled faintly and nodded.
“This is Mr. Jerry Paxton,” Mrs. Brendon continued.
Isabelle shot a glance at him, but he failed to get it.
“How do you do?” he said, absently, turning to help Althea adjust her veil.
There followed the ceremony of apportioning the staterooms, getting into deck hats, and the other preliminaries, while the boat was steaming down the harbour. Isabelle stayed on deck and made friends with the captain and the sailors. It was fun to watch them padding about so swiftly, coiling ropes, and doing their tasks so featly.
The first few days were clear and beautiful. They spent the time on deck. Isabelle appraised the situation the first day out. Mrs. Brendon intended that the handsome Paxton man should be permanently annexed to the blonde beauty, who entirely concurred in the idea. The Paxton man was not yet entirely won over to the plan; therefore, he was restless and on his guard. Max flirted with old Brendon, and Wally was at loose ends. He occasionally donated his society to his daughter.
“I’ll make a bet with you, Wally, that Madame Hecuba Brendon won’t put it through.”
“Put what through?”
“Marry Jerry Paxton to the lady with the short lip.”
Wally laughed.
“You don’t miss anything, do you?”
“I do not.”
“You’re too young to notice such things.”
“Lord! but parents are a bore!” quoth Isabelle at that.
For the most part she kept out of their way those first days. Max noticed it, and warned Wally that she was probably cooking up some mischief to explode on them.
It would have surprised them could they have peeped into the girl’s mind. She liked being alone, being still. There had been considerable strain to keeping up a reputation as a school terror. It had meant being constantly on the alert for an opportunity to misbehave; it meant thinking up plots, living up to an exacting standard of wickedness. The reaction had come with these idle days and she enjoyed it.
Then, too, she loved the vastness of the sea and the sky, between which they made their way. She sat for hours watching white gulls that followed in their wake. She wondered if they were not the souls of the departed, and she conceived one friendly one, which flew quite near them for days, to be the soul of Mrs. Benjamin. Sometimes when she was sure that no one was near she stood in the stern and called out to it.
“Dear Mrs. Benjamin, I know you’re there. Don’t leave me, will you? I love so to watch you circling up there. Is it nice in Heaven?”
She pondered about death a good deal, and about heaven. She had not been able to bear such thoughts since Mrs. Benjamin died, so bitter had been her grief.But there was soothing in the silent vastness, and she came to think of heaven as a sublimated Hill Top with Mrs. Benjamin still teaching the young.
She watched Jerry and Althea pacing the deck together. She noted the way she looked at him—the half-playful wholly tender way she appropriated him. It led the girl to ponder upon love also. Here were two beautiful people who, according to all the rules of play and story, should be making love every minute, in this paradise. Why did the beautiful young man hesitate?
She watched Jerry and Althea pacing the deck together. . . . It led the girl to ponder upon love alsoShe watched Jerry and Althea pacing the deck together. . . . It led the girl to ponder upon love also
She decided to interview Althea and see what sort of creature she might be. It was not so simple, because Althea was barely aware of Isabelle’s existence, also she was never without Jerry at her side, if either she or Mrs. Brendon could manage it. But there came a chance, when she was alone on deck, and Isabelle hastily took the vacated seat beside her. Althea glanced at her, faintly surprised.
“Are you having a good time on this cruise?” Isabelle opened fire.
“Oh, yes—very. Aren’t you?”
“Not especially. But then I haven’t any handsome young man to play with.”
Althea frowned and made her first mistake.
“You’re quite too young for any such ideas,” she said.
“I’m out of the cradle, you know!”—hotly. “I’m old enough to know that I could handle a handsome young man better than you do, for all your age.”
“I think you’re extremely impertinent!”
“You ought to make a friend of me. I can tell you a thing or two. For one thing, he’s too sure of you.”
Althea rose, white with fury.
“I shall certainly report this impudence to your mother,” she said, haughtily, moving away. But Isabelle fired the last shot.
“Oh, Max will agree with me. You ought to watch her. She’s got some technique herself.”
After that encounter Althea looked over and through Isabelle, as if she were thin air. It amused the girl immensely, and in her wise head she made a fair judgment of Miss Morton’s mind and disposition. She decided that she was entirely unworthy of the god-like Jerry, and she was glad he hesitated.
She began to watch him with increased interest. She made romances about him, with herself as heroine. She played scenes in which she outwitted the haughty beauty, and fled with the hero. She began to pity Jerry. He was the unwilling victim of Althea and Mrs. Brendon. How could she, Isabelle Bryce, rescue him from their clutches?
In the process of her dreaming she wrecked the yacht, Jerry saved her, and as soon as they reached shore they were married. In one version, Althea, seeing that he loved Isabelle, threw herself overboard and perished. There were many stories, but they always had one ending—Isabelle won and wed the handsome young man.
One windy morning when the other “stuffies” (as she called them to herself) were playing bridge inside, Isabelle squatted on deck, her chin on her knees, watching the big breakers, listening to the scream of the petrels, and asusual building air castles about herself and Jerry, when lo! her hero came striding down the deck and all at once he stopped before her.
“Hello! Aren’t you afraid you’ll blow overboard?” he inquired.
“No, I’m not. You’ve waked up, have you?”
“Have I been asleep?”
“You haven’t seen me before,” she retorted.
“Well, I see you now. Do you know what you look like?” He smiled down at her.
“Yes. I look like a ripe olive.”
“No, you look like a cricket. Are you always so silent? Don’t you ever chirp?”
“Me, silent? I’ve given the Wallys the blow of their lives. They think I’m sick, I’ve been so good on this rotten cruise.”
“What caused the reform—good company?”
“No, I’m getting ready to break it to them, that I may not be taken back at that school. I got into the devil of a row.”
“Did you? And they expelled you?”
“Suspended me, until they decide. That’s why I had to come on this jolly party.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Of course, I don’t like it. How’d I know whether you’d wake up or not?”
“Did you want me to wake up?” he asked, curiously.
“But,oui, aye,ja, yes, of course. You don’t suppose I want to play with fat old Brendon, do you? Wally is a fearful bore, so there is only you.”
“Poor little cricket, she wanted a playmate,” he teased.
“She did. I can’t rub my knees together and make a ‘crick,’ you know, so I had to wait until you came to. I’d have pushed you overboard if it hadn’t happened to-day. I’m so full of unused pep, I’m ready to pop!”
“Come on. I’m awake. Now what?”
“Let’s warm up,” she said, and was up and off down the deck in one spring. Jerry pursued. She raced around the whole deck twice, then waited for him to catch up with her.
“Puffing, Jerry? You’re getting fat,” she jeered.
“You impudent little beggar, I’d like to shake you.”
“Try it!”
This might have been called Isabelle’s entrance on the scene, because from that moment on, she took the stage and exerted herself to hold it. She tantalized Jerry every minute. She took all the privileges of youthful sixteen, and made frank, outspoken love to him. She never left him alone with Althea for a moment. She roused in the breast of that blonde young woman such a fierce hatred that murder would have been a mild expression of her desires.
Even Mrs. Abercrombie Brendon took a hand, trying first hauteur and disapproval, descending finally to bribery and entreaty. Max and Wally laboured with their offspring. She only turned big eyes upon them and entreated them to tell her what displeased them. She was trying to be a credit to them, to save them all from complete dissolution through the boredom that had settled down upon them like a cloud.
“You let Jerry Paxton alone,” ordered her mother.
“But he adores me, and he is so bored.”
“Conceited jackanapes!” said Mrs. Bryce.
“He’d jump overboard if it wasn’t for me. I’m his only salvation from the wax doll.”
Wally laughed and the fight was lost. Mrs. Brendon ordered the captain to Palm Beach at once, all steam on. As soon as they landed Jerry prepared for flight. He produced a fictitious telegram calling him at once to New York.
“Jerry, how can you leave me, in the house of the enemy?” Isabelle demanded, when she got him alone.
“Hard lines, kid, but I’m off,” he laughed.
“If you loved me you’d take me too.”
“You’re crazy!”
“But you like me crazy, Jerry.”
He grinned and made no reply.
But Isabelle had seen a way. She asked Wally for some money to buy a souvenir. The treasure she bought was a ticket to New York on the night train. When she was ordered to bed because she was too young for hotel hops, she bade Jerry farewell, and went off without protest. From that moment on, she worked fast. She pinned a note to Max’s pincushion, in the most approved fashion. She packed a bag, took a cab to the station, went to bed, and what is more, to sleep, in the calm satisfaction, that the story was to have a happy ending!
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The romantic adventure of running off with Jerry proved a dismal failure. She had failed to study the psychology of herparticeps criminisin the fascination of analyzing her own. Far from being pleased with her company, he was greatly annoyed thereat. He wired her father the facts, begged him to follow to Jacksonville and take her off his hands. When Wally stepped from under, as it were, directing Jerry to hand the pest over to a teacher in New York, the young man’s irritation became excessive and he was at no trouble to conceal it.
Isabelle confessed that she had informed her mother “in a pin-cushion note” that she had eloped with Jerry. She pointed out to him that, after this public announcement of her intentions, it would be necessary for him to marry her, “to save her honour” as she phrased it. He laughed, brutally. He inquired her age, and when she boasted that she was “going on seventeen”—that many girls were “wooed and married and a’,” by that time—he laughed again.
When, however, she persisted in the idea, and declared her love for him, he talked to her like a disagreeable elder brother, casting reflections upon her breeding and her manners. He told her that she was a silly little thing,that she did not amuse him in the least, and that it was high time she began to conduct herself like a lady. He began to address her, coldly, as Miss Bryce.
She appealed to him, coquetted with him, abused him; all to no effect. He remained formal and distant during the entire journey. She was deeply hurt and humiliated by his actions, but on the whole she got considerable satisfaction out of the rôle of blighted being.
They both concentrated upon the end of the trip. Jerry longed to be rid of his unwelcome responsibility, and Isabelle was interested because she had arranged a coup for the moment.
Wally had assured Jerry, by wire, that a teacher from the school would meet Isabelle at the station. Isabelle, in the meantime, had wired Miss Vantine that a change of plans made it unnecessary for the teacher to meet the train. She signed the telegram with her father’s name. She awaited the moment when Jerry realized that he was not to be rid of her, with considerable excitement.
Arrived in New York at ten o’clock, she preserved a demure silence while he stormed up and down the station looking for the teacher. He was finally convinced that there was no one to meet them.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Come along,” he replied, ungraciously, bundling her into a cab.
They went to a studio building and Jerry pounded on somebody’s door for ten minutes, in vain. Then he tried another.
“None of your friends care to see us, Jerry,” grinnedIsabelle. Finally he unlocked a door and turned on a light.
“This is your place, Jerry,” she cried; and she began a swift inspection.
“You can turn in here for the night, and in the morning I will take you to the school.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“At a club.”
“And leave me in this spooky place alone? I won’t stay.”
“Don’t you see that I cannot take you around town at this hour of the night looking for lodgings?”
“I’ll go in the bedroom, and you can sleep on the couch. I won’t stay here alone.”
Eventually he telephoned a friend of his, named Miss Jane Judd. He invited her to stay with Isabelle. He even went and brought her and explained to her that he would call for Isabelle in the morning.
“Oh, Jerry, don’t leave me,” cried Isabelle, clinging to him. “I don’t want to stay with this strange woman. I want to go with you—always, Jerry—because I love you so. Won’t you take me, Jerry?”
“Don’t be a little goose, Isabelle.”
“Please don’t hate me, Jerry,” she sobbed.
“I don’t hate you when you’re sensible.”
“Won’t you call me Cr-Cricket, just once, Jerry?”
“If you’ll be a good girl and go to bed.”
“Kiss me good-night.”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind. Miss Judd, take charge of this crazy kid. I’ll be back in the morning,” he said, desperately, as he escaped.
Isabelle wept, more from weariness and chagrin than anything else, but a sort of amused patience on Miss Judd’s part caused her to cut short any histrionic display. As they prepared for bed she began to regale Miss Judd with spicy descriptions of the yachting party. Jane Judd laughed heartily.
“You’re very naughty, but you are funny,” she said to the girl.
“I don’t suppose Mrs. Brendon and Althea think I’m funny. Poor old baby-doll Althea! She must be furious. She was so sure of Jerry.”
“You hop into bed and forget all about Altheas and Jerrys. Sleep is what you need,” said Miss Judd, putting out the light.
But the flow of Isabelle’s talk was not to be stayed. She was excited and keyed up high. There was a simplicity and directness about this Judd woman that made her think of Mrs. Benjamin, so she told all about Hill Top and her life there, her love of it, her despair at Mrs. Benjamin’s death.
Jane Judd listened with patience and understanding. Here was laid out before her the bared heart of the “poor little rich girl.” She pieced the bits together until she had the whole picture of this odd, unnatural, hothouse child—antagonistic to her parents, to her school, yet full of feeling, and coming into the age when the emotions play such havoc. No wonder she had settled her youthful affections upon Jerry. He was so preëminently the type one loves at sixteen, Jane smiled to herself.
“Do you think he will marry me?”
“I doubt it.”
“Don’t you think he loves me?”
“Lots of other women are in love with Mr. Paxton, too,” said Jane.
“You just say that to scare me!” cried Isabelle.
So the self-revelation of this young egotist went on and on until sleep laid a finger on her lips.
Long after she was silent the older woman lay awake, and thought about her, about the conditions in our world that produced her. She was so sorry for the child, even while she laughed at the memory of Jerry’s furious embarrassment, at the mercy of her jejune affections.
Jerry arrived early, and Jane and Isabelle parted like old friends.
“Miss Judd is very understanding,” remarked Isabelle, en route to the school.
“Yes, isn’t she?”
“She’s not at all snippy like so many people. It’s ridiculous to act as if it were so clever just to be grown up. It isn’t clever; it’s only luck.”
“The luck lies in being young, Isabelle.”
“Can’t you evenrememberhow you hated being squelched by elders?” she inquired.
“Do they ever squelch you, Cricket?”
“You ought to know. You’ve done enough of it.”
“Let’s make a new compact. Let’s be good pals,” he said, heartily.
“I do not want yourfriendship,” she answered, coldly.
“O good Lord, you wretched baby!”—irritably.
“It is all right, Jerry. I see that it can never be, but I shall always care for you deeply,” she said with nobility.
When they came to the school Jerry left her with a deep sigh of relief. She certainly was too much for him. He was no longer surprised that Max and Wally avoided the problem.
There certainly was no fatted calf killed for the return of the prodigal in Miss Vantine’s school. At her reappearance an air of chastened endurance settled upon all the teachers from Miss Vantine down to the elocution teacher. But their fears were doomed to disappointment, because Isabelle was for the time being absorbed in her unrequited love affair.
She walked through her lessons like one in a trance; she devoted all her leisure, and some of her study hours, to a series of daily letters to the object of her passion. Most of these raptures were never to meet his eye, but they furnished an outlet for the girl’s over-full heart, and to the psychologist they would have proved interesting. To her schoolmates she was, as ever, an enigma.
“What is the matter with you, Isabelle? Trying to get one hundred in deportment?” they teased her.
“I have larger things to think of, than deportment,” she answered, airily.
“She’s in love again,” scoffed Margie Hunter.
This was greeted with a deep sigh.
“Who is he, Isabelle?” they demanded.
“He is a great artist whose name is sacred to me.”
“Do you know him?”
“Intimately.”
“And does he care for you?”
“I cannot betray his confidence”—nobly.
“Is he handsome?”
“He is wonderful.”
“Not so handsome as Shelley Hull, or Jack Barrymore,” they protested.
“Oh, heaps handsomer!”
“Do have him come here. Couldn’t we ask Miss Vantine to get him to lecture on art?”
“He hasn’t time. He goes from function to function. Many women love him, he’s a great social favourite,” boasted Isabelle.
This distinction set her apart as never before. She went among them as one baptized with greatness. When in the course of their daily walks with a teacher, they encountered a personable young man, Isabelle’s eyes would never swerve in his direction. When there were midnight spreads, Isabelle did not care for food, or she had her letter to write.
“Isabelle, will you marry him as soon as you graduate from here?” Margie inquired.
“Oh, no. I expect to spend years at work in the arts before I am worthy of him.”
“What arts?”
“It is not decided. I may paint, or sing, or act.”
“But you haven’t any talent for painting or singing.”
“You never can tell, Margie. I’ve had no chance ta show what I can do. Besides, Icanact.”
“I think you’re too plain to go on the stage, myself,” was the withering reply, but it did not wither Isabelle.
“Beauty, my dear, is nothing; Art is everything,” was her unassailable reply.
So upon the wings of romance Isabelle floated through the spring term. She was to spend the summer at an inn in the mountains, as The Beeches was not to be opened. Her parents and teachers, encouraged by three months of good behaviour, believed that a permanent change of heart had taken place in the girl. On the day of her departure, Miss Vantine congratulated her upon her improvement, and alluded to the coming year as the crown of her achievements. Isabelle smiled politely, for she had thoroughly decided in her own mind that this was her farewell to school.
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If Max and Wally had ever shown one grain of intelligence in regard to Isabelle they never would have taken her to this big, fashionable mountain inn where her field of adventure was so greatly enlarged. But they never had shown any discrimination in regard to her, so nothing could be expected of them at this stage.
Isabelle was a marked figure wherever she went now. She had forcibly taken over the matter of her own wardrobe in the spring of this year. Max had never made a success of it because she never gave any study to the girl’s points; she dismissed her as plain, and bought her things with indifference.
Now Isabelle had a flair for the odd, and she understood her own limitations and her own style. She was small, and slim as a reed, without being bony. She had what she called “hair-coloured” hair, and an odd face—wide between the eyes, but a perfect oval in shape. Her eyes were her only beauty.
Fluffy, young-girl clothes merely accentuated her lack of youthful prettiness. With unerring instinct as a child, she had chosen her riding clothes to show off in. Now these same clothes formed the basis of her system. By day she was always in tailored frocks of the strictest simplicity. They were linen, or silk, or wool, made afterthe same model. Slim, tight skirt; slim, fitted coat; sailor hat, and strange boots, which she had made to order after her own design. They were like short riding boots, pulled on and crumpled over the instep like a glove. She was striking,chic, a personality.
“By Jove! Isabelle gets herself up smartly, Max,” commented Wally, soon after their arrival at the inn. Their daughter walked toward them, with every eye on the long piazza following in her wake.
“It is toooutrée, but it is effective. She knows everybody looks at her, she intends they shall, but look how the monkey carries it off,” laughed Max, struck into a sort of admiration.
“What’s doing with you to-day, my noble parents?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What areyoudoing?” Wally answered.
“I’m going to ride. I can’t stand this clack-clatter,” she said, indicating the groups on the veranda. “Dull lot, don’t you think?”
“Have you met any one yet?” inquired her mother.
“Don’t have to. I know what they are by just looking at them.”
“L’enfant prodige!” jeered Max.
A tall, very fine-looking man in riding togs passed them, with a swift look at Isabelle.
“That’s Cartel, isn’t it?” Wally asked.
“The actor man?” said Max, looking after him.
“Actor-manager he calls himself now. Good-looking brute, isn’t he?” answered Wally, idly.
Isabelle seemed oblivious to the whole incident butprivately she marked Sidney Cartel as her own. She went off, shortly, to change.
“Why don’t you ride with her, Wally? She oughtn’t to go off around these mountains alone.”
“Too hot. She can take care of herself.”
“Which way did Mr. Cartel go?” Isabelle inquired of the stable groom who mounted her.
“Sunrise Trail, Miss,” he answered.
Isabelle started off for Sunrise Trail, with the directness of purpose which marked all her actions. It was some time before she caught sight of him, and to her annoyance she saw he was with a party of friends. Whenever the trail permitted he rode beside a certain woman—leaning toward her with marked devotion. Isabelle brought up the rear of the procession. The others became aware of her, evidently commented on her. Mr. Cartel looked back frequently.
When Isabelle came to a place wide enough to turn she retraced her steps. She went back to the inn determined to discover who Mr. Cartel’s special companion was. The groom furnished it, for a price:
“Mrs. Andrews was with him, Miss. She mostly is.”
Saturday night was the weekly hop, the most festive occasion of the week. Max had given Isabelle orders that she could not sit up for dances, as she was still a schoolgirl. The girl made no protest.
“Hops don’t interest me,” she said, indifferently.
After dinner she took a few turns on the piazza with Wally before she went to bed. She wore an odd, whitecrêpe frock, which hung very close. Her hair was bound round her head like a cap.
“Let’s sneak in and have the first dance together,” said Wally; “Max has a beau.”
“All right; then I’ll skip,” agreed Isabelle.
With the first strains of music they swung into a waltz. They danced well, and enjoyed it.
“Go to bed,” ordered Max as she passed them.
Isabelle saw Mr. Cartel idly glance in, then at sight of her he came to the door and watched them.
“Some dance, Miss Bryce. Much obliged. Sorry you have to leave us,” said Wally as the dance was over.
Cartel strolled off down the hall, and a few seconds later she followed him. She saw him saunter into one of the many little rooms used for cards, or tea. She noticed it was not lighted and, on the impulse of the moment, she stepped in after him.
In a second she was caught and lifted in strong arms. She was kissed again and again, while he said laughingly:
“You little devil, you came after all.”
“I wonder who you are,” said Isabelle sweetly, “and who you think I am.”
“Thunder!” said Mr. Cartel, holding her off, and trying to peer at her.
“There must be some mistake,” Isabelle suggested. “I will ask you to stand just where you are, until I have time to get into the elevator. That will save us both any embarrassment.”
“But I don’t understand,” he mumbled. “I do beg your pardon, I thought——”
“Give me three minutes; and I rely on you not to peep into the hall,” she said, with a chuckle. And was gone, leaving the actor-manager more at a loss than such events usually found him.
Now whether Mr. Cartel peeped or not, the next day he recalled a previous meeting with Wally, and asked to be presented to his daughter.
“Haven’t we met before, Miss Bryce?” he asked, giving her a very special look.
“No,” she replied, with the faintest suspicion of a taunt in her tone.
“I was under the impression that we had.”
“I’m sure I couldn’t forget.”
“Are you enjoying yourself here?”
“Not especially.”
“What do you enjoy, Miss Bryce?”
“Excitement.”
“Couldn’t we find you some?”
“You might,” with the slightest accent on the pronoun.
“Let’s try,” he countered.
From that moment he devoted himself to the “little Bryce girl.” He rode with her, walked with her, talked with her, roared with amusement over herdiablerie, until all tongues clacked about it. Mrs. Andrews left, in a huff.
“You’ve got to stop it, Wally,” Max ordered. “Every one is talking.”
“How can I stop it? You never should have brought her here.”
“Well, I’m not going to leave because she makes a fool of herself, so you can just take a hand.”
About this time a group of enthusiasts decided to get up an entertainment. With fear and trembling they asked the great actor to take part.
“How would you like to act a play with me, Cricket?” he asked her, in the tone of a god condescending to mortal.
“It would amuse me,” she replied.
He laughed.
“This to the great Cartel!” said he, modestly. “Do you know that the finest actresses in America esteem it a privilege to act with me?”
She grinned.
“There are women in this hotel who would give their eyes for the chance,” he added.
“I need my eyes for seeing my way about,” she drawled.
Well as she managed him she was greatly excited at the prospect of acting with him. She had a dreadful row with Max and Wally on the subject, but she won out, and the announcement was made that the great man would put on a Shaw playlet, assisted by the “little Bryce girl.”
There followed days of rehearsal and preparation, during which Mr. Cartel tried to impress his amateur leading lady, and succeeded not at all.
“That’s not the way to do it!” he thundered at her repeatedly.
“All right. But that’s the wayIhave to do it. If I’m going to be this woman, I have to be hermyway, not yours.”
So the impudent little baggage faced him out, on hisown ground; and he was forced to admit to himself that, crude as she was, she managed effects.
“You might be able to act some day,” he said to her on an occasion.
“Give me a job, and let me try.”
“You mean it?”
“Certainly.”
“But your parents?”
“They’d howl—and give in. They always do.”
“H’m—well, we’ll see.”
The great night came. Needless to say that the Shaw playlet and the brilliant Cartel were the events of the occasion. Isabelle was by no means obliterated in his shadow. She made a very considerable impression. There was a sort of fire about her. Her lines were read, not recited; and Shaw is the acid test for the amateur. The performance received an ovation.
“You were quite interesting,” Cartel said, sparingly—inspecting her with half-closed, speculative eyes.
“Do I get my job?” she inquired.
Later, he spoke to her parents about her talent.
“For goodness’ sake, don’t tell her,” urged her mother.
“You wouldn’t let me take her for a season?” he inquired.
“I should say not!” replied Mrs. Bryce, with emphasis.
The fuss that was made over the girl was enough to turn her head completely.
“We’ve got to take her away, that’s all,” said Wally, a day or two later.
“Where?” inquired Max, irritated to brevity.
“I don’t know. She gets into trouble wherever she goes. We might open The Beeches.”
“Well, we won’t.”
In the meantime Isabelle asked Cartel daily about a job in his company.
“Nothing doing without your parents’ consent.”
“If I make them consent, do I get it?”
“Possibly; but they won’t,” he teased her.
“You don’t know me,” she warned him.
The end of August came, and with it the great man’s departure, for rehearsals in town. Isabelle was desolated. Her god, her idol, was leaving her behind, and only because of those eternal drawbacks—her parents. She said her farewell to him demurely, and echoed his hope that they would meet soon in town.
“You’ve made my summer for me, little witch,” he said, in an aside.